In their previous book, Structural Models in Anthropology, anthropologist Per Hage and mathematician Frank Harary used graph theory, a branch of pure mathematics, to develop a family of models for the study of social, symbolic, and cognitive relations.
In this book the authors extend these models and apply them to the analysis of exchange structures in Oceania, presenting graph theory in a form accessible to the non-mathematical reader. Using ethnographic data from Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, they demonstrate that the language, techniques, and theorems of graph theory provide the essential basis for the description, quantification, simulation, enumeration, and notation of the great variety of exchange forms actually found in Oceanic societies.
- ISBN10 0198277601
- ISBN13 9780198277606
- Publish Date 29 August 1991
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 334
- Language English