Comparative Method Development within Anthropology

这项持续的研究将通过发展和应用涉及共时性（跨社会的变化）和历时性（跨时间的变化）变化的新方法来推进人类学的比较方法。使用基于树和矩阵的方法来控制“高尔顿问题”（相邻社会的独立性），并使用布尔逻辑对案例进行整体比较，该项目将开发使用历史和当今人种学信息来检查特征组合如何协同变化的方法；将这些方法与其他共时性方法和比较历史社会学中新发展的方法进行比较；并将这些方法应用于使用比较数据来检验假设。该项目将使用过去100年来东非的民族志文献（38个社会的120个变量的编码）来测试一组关于跨文化差异的假设（主要关注婚姻和新娘财富）。这项研究将促进我们对东非社会的认识，将有助于重建比较跨文化研究作为人类学的核心部分，并将有助于将定性和定量研究传统联系起来。

This continued research will advance the comparative method in anthropology through development and application of new methods involving synchronic (variation across societies) and diachronic (variation across time) change. Using tree- and matrix-based methods to control for "Galton's Problem" (the independence of adjacent societies), and Boolean logic for holistic comparison of cases, the project will develop methods that examine how suites of characteristics covary using historical and present-day ethnographic information; evaluate these methods in relation both to other synchronic methods and to newly developed approaches in comparative historical sociology; and apply these methods to test hypotheses using comparative data. The project will test a set of hypotheses (mainly focusing on marriage and bridewealth) about cross-cultural variability using the ethnographic literature (codings of 120 variables for 38 societies) from East Africa over the past 100 years. This research will advance our knowledge of East African societies, will help re-establish comparative cross-cultural research as a central part of anthropology, and will help link qualitative and quantitative research traditions.