Murray J. Leaf

Actions, Norms, and Representations: Foundations of Anthropological Inquiry.

Preface Introduction 1. Anthropological data and social reality 2. Notions and actions 3. The notional domain of phenomena 4. The inference of notions 5. Normative notions 6. Representational notions 7. Actions, norms and representations References Index.

Experimental-formal analysis of kinship

The experimental method, in its most important sense, is a prescription for conducting a system of experiments, each answering questions raised by others until the analysis seems complete. I previously published an experimental method for the field elicitation of kinship terminologies, but did not demonstrate the chain of experimental procedures by which the elicitation and final results are connected. These analyses show the logical structure of kinship terminologies and how kinship systems are built on them. This article describes that chain and those developed by colleagues that deepen the analysis. It is the most complete and accurate account of the field data of kinship. It applies equally well to other cultural systems, and in showing the fundamental conceptual structures of kinship, it allows us to see how the power of conceptual systems like kinship rest in the rational basis of culture and, conversely, the cultural basis of rationality.

THE MESSAGE IS THE MEDIUM: LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND INFORMATICS

ABSTRACT This article restates Shannon and Weavers (1963) diagrammatic representation of the communication process in order to relate the fundamental conceptions of information it embodies to naturally occurring communication in the open air.ABSTRACT This article restates Shannon and Weavers (1963) diagrammatic representation of the communication process in order to relate the fundamental conceptions of information it embodies to naturally occurring communication in the open air.

CULTURAL SYSTEMS AND ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESSES: OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONFERENCE PAPERS

All of these papers share a concern with producing analyses of culture that are comprehensive and internally coherent. All agree with van der Leeuw that formalization can be used to achieve this. All argue that such analyses will be more than mere categorizations or remote analogies. Rather, they will help expose the inner dynamics of culture. Not surprisingly, however, this common commitment to formalization as a basis for descriptive precision exposes some disagreement over what is being described. Over the past century most ethnologists have assumed that the most basic empirical question regarding culture is: What is it? These papers ask an even more basic question. Is culture one thing or system, or is it or several things or systems of different kinds? Some of the papers assume that culture is one kind of thing that makes up one system which can be represented by one kind of formalization. Others assume that culture consists of several different kinds of things and different systems that must be represented by distinct formalizations.

What Are Kinship Terminologies, and Why Do We Care? A Computational Approach to Analyzing Symbolic Domains

Kinship is a fundamental feature and basis of human societies. We describe a set of computational tools and services, and the logic that underlies these, developed to improve how we understand both the fundamental facts of kinship and how people use kinship as a resource in their lives. Mathematical formalism applied to cultural concepts is more than an exercise in model building, as it provides a way to represent and explore their logical consistency and implications. Not surprisingly, kinship terminologies are particularly amenable to formal representation. Researchers throughout the history of kinship studies have noted the logicality of kinship terminology systems. The logic is explored here through the kin term computations made by users of a terminology when computing the kinship relation one person has to another by referring to a third person for whom each has a kin term relationship. Kinship Algebra Modeler provides a set of tools, services, and an architecture to explore kinship terminologies and their properties in an accessible manner.

WHAT IS “FORMAL” ANALYSIS?

There are two main traditions in Western philosophy: a line of dualistic arguments resting on the form–matter dichotomy and the long historical accumulation of ideas related to it, and a line of skeptical arguments resting on an expanding idea of experience and an accumulation of ways to produce and reproduce it. The idea of “formal analysis” has mainly been associated with the former, in which formal analysis is substantially the same thing as imposing the conceptual framework of the analyst. The argument here is that it can be much more fruitfully framed in the latter. Form is not something that one must impose—it can be found. The form of a thing or system is that which holds its parts together. This always devolves into a set of mutual relationships. Such relationships can be observed and characterized and, because they usually involve simple, repeated elements such characterizations commonly take on a schematic or mathematical character.

The Theory of Organizations

This chapter gives the major elements of the current theory and indicates where readers can find more extended discussions. The theory can be described as pragmatic social constructionism. It does not purport to say how “culture,” “society,” or organizations control behavior. It explains how people create organizations in order to control each other. The theory describes the key elements in the process. They are groups of individuals, social idea systems describing reciprocal relations, technical idea systems describing technologies, social charters, symbolic instantiation, and rational thought. For institutions of higher education, the most distinctive and critical social idea system is the definition of a university as a community of scholars and students, but it is not the only one.

The University in America

The implications of an idea are its associations. These include other ideas as well as actions. The implications of the idea of a university as a community of scholars and students have been built up over 900 years. This chapter describes the way this happened in Europe, culminating in the idea of a research university represented by the University of Berlin. This was then transported to the United States. In this new context, specific strengths and weaknesses emerged that were peculiar to the American situation. The political attacks have exploited these weaknesses. The present problem is to preserve the strengths, turn back the attacks, and repair the weaknesses.

Governing Boards and Faculty in Texas

The direct attack on higher education governance was first articulated openly at the national level by Margaret Spellings’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education under President G. W. Bush. This was defeated in Congress. Since then, it has been primarily mounted at the state level by Republican governors through appointees on governing boards. Beginning in 2008, Governor Rick Perry made Texas Ground Zero in this effort. This chapter describes how it was organized, how certain regents attempted to carry it out at the University of Texas and Texas A&M, how they were defeated at the University of Texas, and the role of faculty governance in the process. It also includes a brief comparison with the current attacks in Wisconsin.

Governing Boards and Faculty in California

The University of California has also had problems with the regents overstepping their appropriate authority, but these actions have no connection with the national network behind the attacks in Texas and Wisconsin. This independence indicates the full depth of the problem. In California, the university is constitutionally protected from legislative interference, board authority is more fully specified in law, and faculty authority is more clearly specified in the regents’ Standing Orders. Board overreaching did not encroach on faculty authority but rather on that of the system administration, and the remedy was also entirely different than in Texas. Yet it still involved affirming the definition of the university as a community of scholars and students.