Michael L Burton
Biographic Data
| ID | 103428 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael L Burton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael L |
| FAMILY NAME | Burton |
| SIGNATURE | BURTON M L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6094-0964 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 504 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
A Guttman-Based Approach to Identifying Cumulativeness Applied to Chimpanzee Culture
Human culture appears to build on itself—that is, to be to some extent cumulative. Whether this property is shared by culture in the common chimpanzee is controversial. The question previously has been approached, qualitatively (and inconclusively), by debating whether any chimpanzee culture traits have resulted from individuals building on one another’s work (“ratcheting”). The fact that the chimpanzees at different sites have distinctive repert…
Mapping the Ethnic Landscape
Brewer and Campbell showed that stereotypes fall along dimensions of achievement and evaluation. This study examines individuals’ personal beliefs about their own and other ethnic groups, along with indicators of in-group bias. Three hundred fifty-one college students who were members of six ethnic groups selected 4 traits from a list of 30 traits that best described each group. The six ethnic identities and the traits were represented in two dim…
Sampling from the United States Census Archives
This article demonstrates the use of stratified and cluster sampling to draw an efficient sample from the United States Census Archives for California in 1880. This is a useful exercise for courses in research design and also provides an efficient method to take samples for historical research. With relatively small effort spent on data collection and data entry, useful knowledge about California in 1880 was acquired pertaining to marriage patter…
Too Many Questions? The Uses of Incomplete Cyclic Designs for Paired Comparisons
The author describes a method for constructing incomplete designs for paired comparisons data, using cyclic designs that place each item in the same number of pairings. He tests the reliability of the method using judged similarity data on twenty-one animal names and finds that designs that use 30% of the data have an acceptable level of reliability. The method has great potential value in field research as a means of reducing the number of quest…
Who Can Belong to a Micronesian Household
Household typologies and the developmental cycle of the household have been widely used to characterize household composition. However, neither method can adequately account for the entire range of variation in household composition. The authors describe two new methods for representation of household composition: household frequencies diagrams and correspondence analysis of the kinship relationships pertaining within households. The authors appl…
The Circulation of Children through Households in Yap and Kosrae
We describe a gendered pattern of circulation of youth through households in two Micronesian societies. Yapese girls and female teens shift into vertically extended households, where elders reside, between ages 11 and 17. The opposite pattern pertains in Kosrae, where females shift between ages 11 and 14 into two-generation households. The opposing patterns are explained by opposite divisions of labor, with Yap having a female farming system and …
The Measurement of Cultural Evolution in the Non-literate World
Language and Region Codes for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample
New language and region codes are developed for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. The region codes were developed previously with a different sample and tested against social structure data. The language codes incorporate information from recent publications on language history and are presented at multiple levels, providing information about the taxonomic relationships among languages
Constructing a Scale of Female Contributions to Agriculture
Five methods are described for estimating missing data in cross-cultural codes. The reliability of these alternative methods is assessed in the context of constructing a scale of total female contributions to agriculture. Simulations are used to explore the potential effects on scale reliability of larger amounts of missing data in the same data set. The imputed scales show surprisingly high reliability, even when more than half of the original d…
Regions Based on Social Structure
Boas argued that anthropologists should make historical comparisons within well-defined regional contexts. A century later, we have many improvements in the statistical methodologies for comparative research, yet most of our regional constructs remain without a valid empirical basis. We present a new method for developing and testing regions. The method takes into account older anthropological concerns with relationships between culture history a…
The Content of Culture
Summary Report on the Academic Employment of Women in Anthropology
Problems of Measurement in Cross-Cultural Research Using Secondary Data
Regional Comparisons, Replications, and Historical Network Analysis
Behavior Science Research Volume 25, Nos. 1-4 REGIONAL COMPARISONS, REPLICATIONS, AND HISTORICAL NETWORK ANALYSIS Michael L. Burton and Douglas R. White* One of the oldest cross-cultural traditions is the use of regional samples. Despite the historical importance of regional studies, most recent cross-cultural research has used worldwide samples, and regional studies have received less attention than worldwide comparisons in the recent cross-cult…
A Cross-Cultural Historical Analysis of Subsistence Change
Candidate for Secretary -Treasurer
Causes of Polygyny
We discuss and test competing explanations for polygyny based on household economics, malecentered kin groups, warfare, and environmental characteristics. Data consist of codes for 142 societies from the Standard Cross‐Cultural Sample, including new codes for polygyny and environmental characteristics. An explanatory model is tested for the worldwide sample using regression analysis, and then replicated with regional samples. We obtain convergent…
The Multiplication of Labor
A Reanalysis of Murdock's Model for Social Structure Based On Optimal Scaling
A REANALYSIS OF MURDOCK'S MODEL FOR SOCIAL STRUCTURE BASED ON OPTIMAL SCALING John W. M. Whiting, * M. L. Burton, A. K. C. C. Moore, and D. R. White** Romney, Murdock's Social Structure (1949) is widely regarded as his most important work, the masterpiece exemplifying his approach to cross- cultural research. Often considered to be a modern classic-chosen by Barnes (1971), for example, as one of three important approaches to the study of kinship-…
Cross-Cultural Surveys Today
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Galton's Problem as network autocorrelation
Classical statistical inference procedures usually assume the independence of sample units. However, the assumption of independence is often unrealistic in cross-cultural research because societies in neighboring or historically related regions tend to be duplicates of one another across a wide variety of traits that are spread by historical fission, diffusion, or migration of peoples. A recent generalization of the usual regression model explici…
Sexual Division of Labor in Agriculture
Female agricultural contributions decline with agricultural intensification. We formulate and test a theory of the processes of agricultural intensification that explains a high proportion of the variance in female contributions to agriculture. Five variables show replicable effects across two or more regions of the world. These are number of dry months, importance of domesticated animals to subsistence, use of the plow, crop type, and population…
Network autocorrelation
Multivariate Modeling with Interdependent Network Data
In the recent comparative literature the problem of simultaneously modeling func tional and diffusional effects is being penetrated from two directions. One approach emphasizes the similar problem which arises in regression-based time series analysis. A second approach focuses on the difficulties of constructing more realistic formal representations of sample unit interdependencies. Both approaches have yielded important and complementary, but di…
Sexual Division of Labor in African Agriculture
A model of causes and consequences of sexual division of labor in agriculture is tested using a sample of African societies. Crop type and the presence or absence of slavery are shown to be effective predictors of the degree of female contribution to agricultural subsistence, and the degree of polygyny is shown to be affected by female agricultural contribution and the form of residence. Autocorrelation effects are found and are shown to be a con…
Sexual Division of Labor in African Agriculture
A model of causes and consequences of sexual division of labor in agriculture is tested using a sample of African societies. Crop type and the presence or absence of slavery are shown to be effective predictors of the degree of female contribution to agricultural subsistence, and the degree of polygyny is shown to be affected by female agricultural contribution and the form of residence. Autocorrelation effects are found and are shown to be a con…
Sexual Division of Labor in Agriculture
Female agricultural contributions decline with agricultural intensification. We formulate and test a theory of the processes of agricultural intensification that explains a high proportion of the variance in female contributions to agriculture. Five variables show replicable effects across two or more regions of the world. These are number of dry months, importance of domesticated animals to subsistence, use of the plow, crop type, and population…
Regions Based on Social Structure
Boas argued that anthropologists should make historical comparisons within well-defined regional contexts. A century later, we have many improvements in the statistical methodologies for comparative research, yet most of our regional constructs remain without a valid empirical basis. We present a new method for developing and testing regions. The method takes into account older anthropological concerns with relationships between culture history a…
Galton's Problem as network autocorrelation
Classical statistical inference procedures usually assume the independence of sample units. However, the assumption of independence is often unrealistic in cross-cultural research because societies in neighboring or historically related regions tend to be duplicates of one another across a wide variety of traits that are spread by historical fission, diffusion, or migration of peoples. A recent generalization of the usual regression model explici…
A Model of the Sexual Division of Labor
Assumptions about economies of effort in performance of tasks in the same production sequence and assumptions about constraints on women's geographic mobility due to nursing and child care are used to derive hypotheses about the allocation of tasks in the sexual division of labor in preindustrial societies. The hypotheses constitute a locational model of the division of labor by sex that makes predictions in the form of entailments: for one sex, …
Entailment Theory and Method
The purpose of this paper is to explore a more precise form for theoretical propositions in certain types of cross-cultural problems and to develop and explicate an accompanying statistical method. An inductive application of the method of entailment analysis has led us to formulate a new and power ful theory of the sexual division of labor
The Multiplication of Labor
Balanced designs for triads tests
A Cross-Cultural Historical Analysis of Subsistence Change
A Multidimensional Representation of Role Terms
This article discusses a sorting task which has wide applications in anthropology. The task is illustrated with a study of English role terms. Several interesting dimensions emerge through multidimensional and hierarchical analyses of the sorting data
Problems of Measurement in Cross-Cultural Research Using Secondary Data
Regional Comparisons, Replications, and Historical Network Analysis
Behavior Science Research Volume 25, Nos. 1-4 REGIONAL COMPARISONS, REPLICATIONS, AND HISTORICAL NETWORK ANALYSIS Michael L. Burton and Douglas R. White* One of the oldest cross-cultural traditions is the use of regional samples. Despite the historical importance of regional studies, most recent cross-cultural research has used worldwide samples, and regional studies have received less attention than worldwide comparisons in the recent cross-cult…
Multivariate Modeling with Interdependent Network Data
In the recent comparative literature the problem of simultaneously modeling func tional and diffusional effects is being penetrated from two directions. One approach emphasizes the similar problem which arises in regression-based time series analysis. A second approach focuses on the difficulties of constructing more realistic formal representations of sample unit interdependencies. Both approaches have yielded important and complementary, but di…
A Reanalysis of Murdock's Model for Social Structure Based On Optimal Scaling
A REANALYSIS OF MURDOCK'S MODEL FOR SOCIAL STRUCTURE BASED ON OPTIMAL SCALING John W. M. Whiting, * M. L. Burton, A. K. C. C. Moore, and D. R. White** Romney, Murdock's Social Structure (1949) is widely regarded as his most important work, the masterpiece exemplifying his approach to cross- cultural research. Often considered to be a modern classic-chosen by Barnes (1971), for example, as one of three important approaches to the study of kinship-…
Language and Region Codes for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample
New language and region codes are developed for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. The region codes were developed previously with a different sample and tested against social structure data. The language codes incorporate information from recent publications on language history and are presented at multiple levels, providing information about the taxonomic relationships among languages
A Further Examination of Cognitive Aspects of English Kin Terms1
This study presents a further test of the componential structure of American-English kinship terminology proposed by Romney and D'Andrade (1964). It includes more terms and sheds light upon the structural (or cognitive) locations of the female kin terms as well as the male terms. Collaterality emerges as the most important dimension
Constructing a Scale of Female Contributions to Agriculture
Five methods are described for estimating missing data in cross-cultural codes. The reliability of these alternative methods is assessed in the context of constructing a scale of total female contributions to agriculture. Simulations are used to explore the potential effects on scale reliability of larger amounts of missing data in the same data set. The imputed scales show surprisingly high reliability, even when more than half of the original d…
Mapping the Ethnic Landscape
Brewer and Campbell showed that stereotypes fall along dimensions of achievement and evaluation. This study examines individuals’ personal beliefs about their own and other ethnic groups, along with indicators of in-group bias. Three hundred fifty-one college students who were members of six ethnic groups selected 4 traits from a list of 30 traits that best described each group. The six ethnic identities and the traits were represented in two dim…
Summary Report on the Academic Employment of Women in Anthropology
Who Can Belong to a Micronesian Household
Household typologies and the developmental cycle of the household have been widely used to characterize household composition. However, neither method can adequately account for the entire range of variation in household composition. The authors describe two new methods for representation of household composition: household frequencies diagrams and correspondence analysis of the kinship relationships pertaining within households. The authors appl…
The Circulation of Children through Households in Yap and Kosrae
We describe a gendered pattern of circulation of youth through households in two Micronesian societies. Yapese girls and female teens shift into vertically extended households, where elders reside, between ages 11 and 17. The opposite pattern pertains in Kosrae, where females shift between ages 11 and 14 into two-generation households. The opposing patterns are explained by opposite divisions of labor, with Yap having a female farming system and …
A Further Examination of Cognitive Aspects of English Kin Terms1
This study presents a further test of the componential structure of American-English kinship terminology proposed by Romney and D'Andrade (1964). It includes more terms and sheds light upon the structural (or cognitive) locations of the female kin terms as well as the male terms. Collaterality emerges as the most important dimension
Mathematical Anthropology
This review is written at a time of great activity in mathematical anthropology, including the recent publication of edited volumes by Kay on mathematical anthropology (35), by Romney, Shepard & Nerlove on multidimensional scaling (50), and by Buchler & Nutini on game theory (8). In addition there have been recent reviews of the field by White (63) and Holfman (31). Space does not permit a complete discussion of all instances where mathematics ma…
Dissimilarity Measures For Unconstrained Sorting Data
In this article, three dissimilarity measures for the unconstrained sorting task are investigated. All three measures are metrics, but they differ in the kind of compensation which they make for differences in the sizes of cells within sortings. Empirical tests of the three measures are done with sorting data for occupations names and the names of behaviors, using the multidimensional scaling method
A Multidimensional Representation of Role Terms
This article discusses a sorting task which has wide applications in anthropology. The task is illustrated with a study of English role terms. Several interesting dimensions emerge through multidimensional and hierarchical analyses of the sorting data
Balanced designs for triads tests
Entailment Theory and Method
The purpose of this paper is to explore a more precise form for theoretical propositions in certain types of cross-cultural problems and to develop and explicate an accompanying statistical method. An inductive application of the method of entailment analysis has led us to formulate a new and power ful theory of the sexual division of labor
A Model of the Sexual Division of Labor
Assumptions about economies of effort in performance of tasks in the same production sequence and assumptions about constraints on women's geographic mobility due to nursing and child care are used to derive hypotheses about the allocation of tasks in the sexual division of labor in preindustrial societies. The hypotheses constitute a locational model of the division of labor by sex that makes predictions in the form of entailments: for one sex, …
Sexual Division of Labor in African Agriculture
A model of causes and consequences of sexual division of labor in agriculture is tested using a sample of African societies. Crop type and the presence or absence of slavery are shown to be effective predictors of the degree of female contribution to agricultural subsistence, and the degree of polygyny is shown to be affected by female agricultural contribution and the form of residence. Autocorrelation effects are found and are shown to be a con…
Network autocorrelation
Multivariate Modeling with Interdependent Network Data
In the recent comparative literature the problem of simultaneously modeling func tional and diffusional effects is being penetrated from two directions. One approach emphasizes the similar problem which arises in regression-based time series analysis. A second approach focuses on the difficulties of constructing more realistic formal representations of sample unit interdependencies. Both approaches have yielded important and complementary, but di…
Galton's Problem as network autocorrelation
Classical statistical inference procedures usually assume the independence of sample units. However, the assumption of independence is often unrealistic in cross-cultural research because societies in neighboring or historically related regions tend to be duplicates of one another across a wide variety of traits that are spread by historical fission, diffusion, or migration of peoples. A recent generalization of the usual regression model explici…
Sexual Division of Labor in Agriculture
Female agricultural contributions decline with agricultural intensification. We formulate and test a theory of the processes of agricultural intensification that explains a high proportion of the variance in female contributions to agriculture. Five variables show replicable effects across two or more regions of the world. These are number of dry months, importance of domesticated animals to subsistence, use of the plow, crop type, and population…
Cross-Cultural Surveys Today
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Causes of Polygyny
We discuss and test competing explanations for polygyny based on household economics, malecentered kin groups, warfare, and environmental characteristics. Data consist of codes for 142 societies from the Standard Cross‐Cultural Sample, including new codes for polygyny and environmental characteristics. An explanatory model is tested for the worldwide sample using regression analysis, and then replicated with regional samples. We obtain convergent…
The Multiplication of Labor
A Reanalysis of Murdock's Model for Social Structure Based On Optimal Scaling
A REANALYSIS OF MURDOCK'S MODEL FOR SOCIAL STRUCTURE BASED ON OPTIMAL SCALING John W. M. Whiting, * M. L. Burton, A. K. C. C. Moore, and D. R. White** Romney, Murdock's Social Structure (1949) is widely regarded as his most important work, the masterpiece exemplifying his approach to cross- cultural research. Often considered to be a modern classic-chosen by Barnes (1971), for example, as one of three important approaches to the study of kinship-…
Candidate for Secretary -Treasurer
A Cross-Cultural Historical Analysis of Subsistence Change
Problems of Measurement in Cross-Cultural Research Using Secondary Data
Regional Comparisons, Replications, and Historical Network Analysis
Behavior Science Research Volume 25, Nos. 1-4 REGIONAL COMPARISONS, REPLICATIONS, AND HISTORICAL NETWORK ANALYSIS Michael L. Burton and Douglas R. White* One of the oldest cross-cultural traditions is the use of regional samples. Despite the historical importance of regional studies, most recent cross-cultural research has used worldwide samples, and regional studies have received less attention than worldwide comparisons in the recent cross-cult…
Summary Report on the Academic Employment of Women in Anthropology
The Content of Culture
Constructing a Scale of Female Contributions to Agriculture
Five methods are described for estimating missing data in cross-cultural codes. The reliability of these alternative methods is assessed in the context of constructing a scale of total female contributions to agriculture. Simulations are used to explore the potential effects on scale reliability of larger amounts of missing data in the same data set. The imputed scales show surprisingly high reliability, even when more than half of the original d…
Regions Based on Social Structure
Boas argued that anthropologists should make historical comparisons within well-defined regional contexts. A century later, we have many improvements in the statistical methodologies for comparative research, yet most of our regional constructs remain without a valid empirical basis. We present a new method for developing and testing regions. The method takes into account older anthropological concerns with relationships between culture history a…
Language and Region Codes for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample
New language and region codes are developed for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. The region codes were developed previously with a different sample and tested against social structure data. The language codes incorporate information from recent publications on language history and are presented at multiple levels, providing information about the taxonomic relationships among languages
Sociology (21 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Mathematics (16 works) · Anthropology (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Statistics (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Demography (7 works) · Artificial Intelligence (6 works) · Data mining (6 works)