Workshop on Transitions in Human Social Organization

Peter Whiteley博士（纽约美国自然历史博物馆人类学部）将在美国基金会（亚利桑那州Dragoon）召开一次高级研讨会，讨论亲属关系和婚姻制度跨文化研究的重大新进展。研讨会由Maurice Godelier教授（École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales，巴黎）共同主持，将汇集来自澳大利亚、巴西、欧洲和美国的研究人员。在国家出现之前，所有人类社会关系，包括经济和政治关系，都是建立在亲属关系和婚姻的基础上的。因此，解释社会如何组织这些关系对于理解人类社会形成、进化和适应的模式非常重要。研讨会的参与者包括亲属关系和社会理论的全球领导者。它们各自的区域集中包括北美本土、亚马逊低地、撒哈拉以南非洲、巴布亚新几内亚、澳大利亚、南亚和印度尼西亚。参与者将在五天内提交论文供评论和讨论。特别关注的将是克劳-奥马哈亲属系统，这显然是一种长期困扰人类学家的关键过渡类型。通过持续的、多方面的、协作的分析，研讨会试图解释这些重要系统的原因和后果。它们是在什么样的社会、政治和适应性环境下产生、持续存在和/或过渡到其他系统的？人口学、语言关系、地理的作用是什么？它们是否提供了相对于其他系统的适应性优势？它们对社会形态的其他方面有什么影响，如果有的话？互惠的目的还在于评估研究和分析亲属制度的不同方法（例如，语言学、形式主义、历史主义、实体主义）。这次研讨会的结果将由亚利桑那大学出版社出版，因此可以广泛获得，这将使科学家能够更好地解释亲属制度与其他行为现象的联系。这有望在跨越时间、跨越文化和语言的所有人类亲属制度的理解方面取得重大进展。研讨会还试图展示亲属制度分析对人类社会形态的比较解释的新价值。

Dr. Peter Whiteley (Anthropology Division, American Museum of Natural History, New York) will convene an Advanced Seminar Workshop at The Amerind Foundation (Dragoon, Arizona) on significant new advances in the cross-cultural study of kinship and marriage systems. Co-chaired by Prof. Maurice Godelier (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris), the workshop will bring together researchers from Australia, Brazil, Europe, and the United States. Prior to the emergence of the state, all human social ties, including economic and political connections, were based on kinship and marriage. Therefore, explaining how societies organized these relationships is important for understanding patterns of human social formation, evolution, and adaptation. Seminar participants include global leaders in kinship and social theory. Their respective regional concentrations include Native North America, Lowland Amazonia, sub-Saharan Africa, Papua New Guinea, Australia, South Asia, and Indonesia. Participants will present papers for critique and discussion over five days. A particular focus will be Crow-Omaha kinship systems, an apparently pivotal transitional type that has long puzzled anthropologists. By sustained, multi-faceted, collaborative analysis, the workshop seeks to explain the causes and consequences of these important systems. Under what social, political, and adaptive circumstances do they arise, persist, and/or transition into other systems? What is the role of demography, of linguistic relations, of geography? Do they provide comparative adaptive advantages over other systems? What are their effects, if any, on other aspects of societal form? The reciprocal aim is also to assess differing approaches (e.g., linguistic, formalist, historical, substantialist) to the study and analysis of kinship systems. The results of this workshop, which will be published by the University of Arizona Press and thus widely available, will enable scientists to better explain the associations of kinship systems with other behavioral phenomena. This promises significant advances in the understanding of all human kinship systems through time and across cultures and languages. The seminar also seeks to demonstrate the renewed value of kinship-system analysis for the comparative explanation of human social formations.