Structural endogamy and the network

Abstract

This article, one of a series, approaches the topics of marriage and kinship through a revitalized kinetic structural approach that shifts the primary focus from abstract models of rules, terminologies, attitudes and norms to exploration of concrete relations in a population, analyzed graph-theoretically in their full complexity as networks. Network representation using the graphe de parenté (see below) serves as the basis for examining marriage alliance theory, population structure (such as endogamy and exogamy, inbreeding, subgroups), as well as other possible concepts of general sociological interest, including social formations such as classes, strata, ethnicity, and elites (Schweizer and White 1997). This type of potentially multi-layered structural approach extends to the study of structures and processes of actual marriage and kinship practices and other forms of social linkage that build off of them. Identification of structure and processes which occur in such networks is enhanced by mapping attributes or dynamic variables onto the armature of the kinship graph. Any number of theoretical questions concerning kinship and marriage may be posed or restated to address questions of the structure of kinship networks, and thus depend upon such analysis for deeper critical insights. The focus in this discussion is specifically on the connections between graph-theoretic analysis and various substantive theoretical questions concerning kinship and marriage networks.