Virtual Fieldwork: Modeling Observer Bias in Kinship and Marriage Alliance Networks

Klaus Hamberger,Floriana Gargiulo

doi:10.18564/jasss.2495

Abstract

The morphological properties of genealogical and marriage alliance networks constitute a key to the understanding of matrimonial behavior and social norms, in particular where these norms have not been explicitly formalized. Their analysis, however, faces a major difficulty: the actual datasets which allow researchers to reconstruct kinship and alliance networks are generally subject to a marked observer bias, if only due to limitations of observer mobility and/or informant memory. This paper presents an agent based simulation method destined to evaluate the impact of this bias on some key indicators of kinship and alliance networks (such as matrimonial circuit frequencies). The method consists in explicitly simulating the exploration of a given network by a virtual observer, the bias being introduced by the observer's inclination for choosing informants who are more or less closely related to each other. The article presents the model for genealogical and for alliance networks, applies it to a series of artificial networks exhibiting some characteristic morphological patterns, and discusses the divergence of observed from real patterns for different kinds and degrees of observer bias. The methods presented have been implemented in the free software Puck 2.0.

Highlights

1.1 The morphological properties of social networks emerge from the interaction of local choices according to behavioral patterns that range from individual preferences to formalized social norms
The higher recall rates, the sooner this point will be reached where a further increase in agnatic observer inertia will result in redundant information
6.1 As our simulation experiments show, the morphological indicators of kinship and alliance networks most likely to be interpreted in terms of social structure – matrimonial circuit numbers – are never the sole product of agent behavior

Summary

Introduction

1.1 The morphological properties of social networks emerge from the interaction of local choices according to behavioral patterns that range from individual preferences to formalized social norms. 3.23 Let us first consider how agnatic cousin relations and marriages are explored for different combinations of informant memory and observer behavior (see Figure 3).

Results

Conclusion