Michael Schnegg

Personal networks and social support in a multiethnic community of southern California

Abstract This paper presents observations on the personal networks of 91 randomly selected inhabitants of a community in southern California who are linked to 941 associates by social and economic interactions. Over 40% of these relations are with individuals in the same locality, and almost 50% refer to kin. Kin act as trouble-shooters; friends are social companions; and neighbors are less significant. The pattern is similar for Anglos and Hispanic immigrants, but kin and local ties are more important among Hispanics (over 70%).

Food Sharing at Meals Kinship, Reciprocity, and Clustering in the Taimyr Autonomous Okrug, Northern Russia

The presence of a kinship link between nuclear families is the strongest predictor of interhousehold sharing in an indigenous, predominantly Dolgan food-sharing network in northern Russia. Attributes such as the summed number of hunters in paired households also account for much of the variation in sharing between nuclear families. Differences in the number of hunters in partner households, as well as proximity and producer/consumer ratios of households, were investigated with regard to cost-benefit models. The subset of households involved in reciprocal meal sharing is 26 of 84 household host-guest pairs. The frequency of reciprocal meal sharing between families in this subset is positively correlated with average household relatedness. The evolution of cooperation through clustering may illuminate the relationship between kinship and reciprocity at this most intimate level of food sharing.

RECIPROCITY AND THE EMERGENCE OF POWER LAWS IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

Research in network science has shown that many naturally occurring and technologically constructed networks are scale free, that means a power law degree distribution emerges from a growth model in which each new node attaches to the existing network with a probability proportional to its number of links (= degree). Little is known about whether the same principles of local attachment and global properties apply to societies as well. Empirical evidence from six ethnographic case studies shows that complex social networks have significantly lower scaling exponents γ ~ 1 than have been assumed in the past. Apparently humans do not only look for the most prominent players to play with. Moreover cooperation in humans is characterized through reciprocity, the tendency to give to those from whom one has received in the past. Both variables — reciprocity and the scaling exponent — are negatively correlated (r = -0.767, sig = 0.075). If we include this effect in simulations of growing networks, degree distributions emerge that are much closer to those empirically observed. While the proportion of nodes with small degrees decreases drastically as we introduce reciprocity, the scaling exponent is more robust and changes only when a relatively large proportion of attachment decisions follow this rule. If social networks are less scale free than previously assumed this has far reaching implications for policy makers, public health programs and marketing alike.

Reciprocity on Demand

Two competing models concerning food transfers prominent in the anthropological literature conceptualize such transfers either as sharing or as exchange. Sharing is understood as situational transactions formed through demands and unconditional giving, whereas reciprocal exchange is understood in terms of networking and keeping score. I propose that the picture is more complicated than these classifications suggests. Drawing on data collected in Northwestern Namibia, I show that sharing and reciprocal exchange are dynamically interrelated in actual food transfers. As a local norm, people can demand food from anyone, and they are typically given food in response to a demand. However, in practice, food transfer networks emerge (N = 62) that are highly reciprocal and fit the exchange model much better. Although the sharing norm makes no restrictions on whom to ask, in practice people often turn to their neighbors. Interpersonal dynamics account for why some of those ties become strongly reciprocal and others do not. Under these circumstances, unconditional sharing, a norm that has been viewed as an alternative to exchange, can lead to reciprocity via reciprocity on demand.

Culture, Nature, and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services in Northern Namibia

Defining culture as shared knowledge, values, and practices, we introduce an anthropological concept of culture to the ecosystem-service debate. In doing so, we shift the focus from an analysis of culture as a residual category including recreational and aesthetic experiences to an analysis of processes that underlie the valuation of nature in general. The empirical analysis draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted along the Okavango River in northern Namibia to demonstrate which landscape units local populations value for which service(s). Results show that subjects perceive many places as providing multiple services and that most of their valuations of ecosystem services are culturally shared. We attribute this finding to common experiences and modes of activities within the cultural groups, and to the public nature of the valuation process.

DYNAMICS OF NETWORKS AND OPINIONS

Social relations between people seldom follow regular lattice structures. In the Barabasi–Albert model nodes link to the existing network structure with a probability proportional to the number of nodes previously attached. Here, we present an anthropologically motivated interpolation between Erdos–Renyi and Barabasi–Albert rules, where people also prefer to help those who helped them in the past and explore some of its properties. The second part of the paper tackles the question how opinions spread through social networks. We restrict our analysis to one end of the spectrum: scale-free networks. We show for two different models how fast and how sustainable single individuals can influence an appreciable fraction of the population through social contacts.

The Value of Landscapes in Northern Namibia: A System of Intertwined Material and Nonmaterial Services

It is increasingly recognized that ecosystems provide varied services that should be considered in land management decisions. One of the challenges in the valuation of landscapes is that they often provide multiple services that combine into one social–ecological system. In this article we show how overlaps of those services can be measured, visualized, and explained. The results from a case study conducted in a rural community in northern Namibia show that in some landscapes, services are intertwined. We draw on a practice approach and ethnographic data to explain this finding and argue that services are related within places and fields of action. More specifically, we show that material services such as the provision of food and income form a unified whole with nonmaterial or “cultural” services such as beauty and social interaction and are often experienced simultaneously. Research for this article is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and is part of The Future Okavango (TFO) project on anthropogenic influences and cultural dimensions of environmental uses in the Okavango catchment (www.future-okavango.org). This is an Open Access article. Non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way, is permitted. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted.

Moral equality and success of common-pool water governance in Namibia.

In the course of decentralization, pastoral communities in Namibia have had to find new ways to share their most salient resource, water, and the costs involved in providing it. Using data from sixty communities, we examine (1) whether and to what extent different sharing rules emerge, (2) how variations can be explained, (3) how rules are perceived and influence success, and (4) what economic consequences they have. Our results reveal that either all members pay the same (numerical equality) or payment is according to usage (proportional equality). We find that although proportional equality provides more success, the rule can only pertain where the state maintains an active role. Simulations show that where it does not prevail, wealth inequality is likely to grow. These findings have political implications and suggest that, in the context of the widespread decentralization policies, the state should not withdraw if it aims to ensure the success of common-pool resource management and to fight poverty.

Collective Foods: Situating Food on the Continuum of Private-Common Property Regimes

In this article, I explore food sharing, one of the most salient social practices in rural Namibia. In so doing, I develop a model that situates food on the continuum between private and communal property regimes. I argue that the place it takes is largely shaped by the social costs involved in excluding someone from having a share. Those costs are situational, and as they rise, basic food, once privately owned, becomes quasi communal and is shared. The model is explored with qualitative and quantitative data about food transactions, which also facilitate an investigation of when, where, and why demands are articulated and typically met.

Networked Governance: A New Research Perspective

In the final chapter, Betina Hollstein, Wenzel Matiaske, Kai-Uwe Schnapp, and Michael Schnegg relate the new research perspective on networked governance to network governance research as it has developed over the last decades. The authors present a classification of networks as institutions and discuss the relations between actors and networks. They sum up the major results of the contributions in this volume and advance networked governance as a more general research paradigm that focuses on the processes of coordinating, reaching, and implementing decisions that take place in network(ed) (social) structures.