Island networks
Subtitle: communication, kinship, and classification structures in Oceania
By: Per Hage, Frank Harary.
Contributors: Harary, Frank.
Series: Structural analysis in the social sciences ;; [11]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 296
Subjects: Ethnology -- Oceania -- Mathematical models.; Structural anthropology -- Oceania.; Graph theory.; Kinship -- Oceania -- Mathematical models.; Social networks -- Oceania -- Mathematical models.; Oceania -- Social life and customs -- Mathematical models.
Description: In their previous book, Exchange in Oceania, anthropologist Per Hage and mathematician Frank Harary demonstrated that models from graph theory, a branch of pure mathematics, provide the essential basis for analyzing the great variety of exchange systems in Micronesian, Melanesian, and Polynesian societies.

In this new book the authors extend these models and apply them to the analysis of communication, kinship, and classification structures in the island societies of Oceania, presenting the relevant topics from graph theory in a form accessible to the nonmathematical reader.

The research problems include the formation of island empires, the social basis of dialect groups, the emergence of trade and political centers, the evolution and devolution of social stratification, the transformations of marriage and descent systems, the historical development of kinship terminologies, and the reconstruction of protosocieties.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-288) and index.