Addendum: geographical clustering and functional explanations of in-law avoidances: an analysis of comparative method

Current Anthropology • Vol/Iss. 7 • . • • Published In • Pages: 161-169 •
By Jorgensen, Joseph G.

Abstract

Jorgensen revisits Driver’s 1974 study of the various explanations for kin avoidances which mainly focused on North America, and broadens the scope to include a world-wide sample. In his work he brings up what he believes to be flaws in the comparative method, arguing that Driver’s work did not properly test for the independence of the correlations. Jorgensen revisits over 50 different variables in order to test for ‘all relationships among all categories.’ Overall, the results that he found agreed with Driver’s work, but presented a more transparent overview. See the article for the individual clusterings of Phi Coefficients for the set of 21 variables set as well as the set of 50 variables.
Documents and Hypotheses Filed By: mas  abbe.mccarter