This study asserts that the structure of work organizations is affected more by production techniques than societal complexity. Empirical analysis suggests two trends: 1) production techniques that increase the importance of workers will influence rationality in work organizations, and 2) production techniques that increase the importance of workers and societal complexity will affect the bureaucratic elements of work organizations approximately equally. These findings challenge Udy’s (1970) thesis that complex peasant societies face more challenges than less complex societies in transitioning to modern industrial work forms.

This dissertation discusses the divided theoretical approach to how reincarnation, animism, spirits, and general religious beliefs occur within societies cross-culturally. Matlock offers evidence to support Tyler, contradicting the generally accepted Durkheimian approach, arguing that the belief about souls and spirits may originate in dreams and other empirical experiences, in turn informing and shaping social organization. Durkheim argued the opposite, claiming that religious beliefs reflect social organization such as the clan and kinship. The author states 33 quantitative hypotheses to be tested using 30 of the first 60 sample societies available in the HRAF Probability Sample.

This article tests the assumption that foragers are more likely to experience regular and severe food shortages than sedentary agriculturalists. The results indicate that there is no statistical difference in the quantity of available food or the frequency or extent of food shortages between preindustrial foragers, recent foragers, and agriculturalists.

This study retests data on sexual dimorphism of body size from the Wolfe and Gray (1982) study. The authors challenge previous explanations for variation in sexual dimorphism across cultures. They find that there is a consistent level of sexual dimorphism across cultures, regardless of cultural traits or average body size.

This article examines the relationship between social structures and sexual jealousy. Results suggest that social structures that emphasize the importance of pair-bonding, progeny, personal property, and exclusive marital sex relations are associated with sexual jealousy in males.

This study tests two models that predict the presence of dowry cross-culturally: the female competition model and the labor-value model. Results suggest that both models are predictive of dowry, however discriminant analysis finds the female competition model to be superior.

The researchers operationalize new measures of Socially Imposed Monogamy (SIM) and Ecologically Imposed Monogamy (EIM) using scores from Murdock's (1986) Ethnographic Atlas in order to reevaluate Alexander et al.'s (1979) findings that sexual stature dimorphism is higher in SIM (monogamous and highly stratified) and polygynous societies compared to EIM (monogamous and egalitarian) ones. The expected associations between marriage system and sexual dimorphism are not robustly significant; however, an interaction effect is discovered between marriage system and stratification with regard to dimorphism.

This article investigates commonly accepted theories that purport to explain political centralization and investigate their relevance to sub-Saharan Africa. The leading ideas for the formation of political centralization using a worldwide sample include population density, inter-state warfare, and trade. However, the authors reported these factors are not predictive of the sub-Saharan Africa sample. The authors suggest that the lack of agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa may have stunted population density therefore inhibiting political centralization and that Africa’s poor economic performance is, in part, due to lack of political centralization.

The author analyzes 440 Sub-Saharan African societies to test whether trade across ecologically diverse zones is predictive of degree of state centralization (state capacity or strength of state) in pre-colonial Africa. The author finds that diverse ecology is predictive of state capacity and that trade supports class stratification. The author also emphasizes the importance of historical contingency and ethnographic data consultation in understanding mechanisms in individual cases.

In this article, the author departs from previous research on common vs. private property ownership predictors to understand why ocean property rights often play out differently than land. As opposed to the dominant hypothesis that common property regimes will change to private property when resources are scarce and population increases, the author proposes economic defendability (the relationship between the value of the property and the cost to defend it) as a better predictor of property regime type.