Showing papers on "Culture change published in 1971"

Explorations in Mathematical Anthropology

Abstract: Precise discussion of human phenomena has developed to some-extent in all of the social sciences, and it is no surprise to find the trend increasing rapidly in anthropological discourse. This book contains the best available sampling of mathematical, statistical, and computer techniques currently used by anthropologists to tackle a wide range of substantive problems. Paul Kay notes that if mathematics is to serve anthropology, mathematical training for anthropology students, should be made available and credited toward the degree, while students with undergraduate training in technical fields should be encouraged to study anthropology. The sort of formal training that will prove useful, he observes, coincides with the major themes discussed in the book: abstract algebra (including, for example, set theory, mathematical logic, and axiomatic logic); computer technology; probability and statistics with emphasis on derivation of pattern; and probability statistics with emphasis on stochastic processes. As anthropologists become more familiar with formal techniques, Kay points out, they place less importance on statistical tests of significance and more on determining functional expressions of the relationships among variables. What direction will such formalization take? The editor hopes that it will be not toward a school of mathematical anthropology but a continuing development of mathematics and mathematically based techniques as tools of anthropological research. The scope of topics considered in this volume is so wide and various as to be an impressive indication of a strong future for mathematics in anthropology. Briefly, such topics include interinformant reliability, cultural distinctiveness in conceptual areas, cultural systems as mental systems of identification, classification, evaluation, and action, diffusional versus functional explanations, general interaction theory, kinship terminologies as logical systems, folklore, cultural systems as systems of knowledge and belief, systemic culture patterns, endogamy/exogamy, genealogy, relation of social structure to relational terminology, cultural continuity, and culture change.

Cultural Aspects of Water Resource Development Past, Present, and Future

Abstract: Attitudes toward the development of the American West have undergone important changes over the past century just as the nature of water resources as factors in development have changed. Viewing these changes processually, stages for water resources definition and use can be identified in the total process of western cultural development. The first stage involves the value of water resource development as a stimulus to population and economic growth in the West. The second stage, still in process', adopts a dominant cultural norm which sees water resource development as inevitable if not necessary to keep up with growth. A third stage to this evolutionary process is incipient. Future cultural values and thinking with respect to water resource development will be to look at development as a means for controlling or managing both the location and quantity of population and economic growth. To this end planners will have to become concerned with the questions of human adaptation. Concern will have to be given to the problems of getting a living which enables individuals to meet the subsistence needs of self and family, to establishing community which provides for cooperation among individuals and the management of conflict, to establishing improved communication which promotes interpersonal interaction, and for fostering innovation which provides the new ideas necessary to adapt to new environmental situations.,