Visiting ties among families in San Juan Sur, Costa Rica, 1948

Post date: Dec 02, 2011 4:14:31 PM

Overview

Network Dataset

The dataset name is SanJuanSur, and includes the following:

• • SanJuanSur.net: 75 vertices (families), 199 arcs (visiting relations), line values (1 -ordinary visits, 2 - visits among kin, 3 - visits among ritual kin), no edges, no loops.

  • SanJuanSur_status.clu: ethnographic classification of the families in SanJuanSur.net into 14 social status groups indicating the average importance of the family's members (class numbers 1 to 14; higher classes represent higher status).

  • SanJuanSur_leaders.clu: identification of (the families containing) the prestige leaders, who were identified as those people who received more than 10 nominations within the community on the question: Which persons would you pick to represent you and the people of this place on a commission? (class 1 - prestige leaders, 0 - other).

  • SanJuanSur2.paj: Pajek project file containing the network and partitions listed above.

Background

In 1948, American sociologists executed a large field study in the Turrialba region, which is a rural area in Costa Rica (Latin America). They were interested in the impact of formal and informal social systems on social change. Among other things, they investigated visiting relations between families living in haciendas (farms) in a neighborhood called San Juan Sur. The network of visiting ties is a simple directed graph: each arc represents "frequent visits" from one family to another. The exact number of visits was not recorded. Line values classify the visiting relation as ordinary (value one), visits among kin (value two), and visits among ritual kin, i.e., between god-parent and god-child.

References

• • Charles P. Loomis, Julio O. Morales, Roy A. Clifford & Olen E. Leonard, Turrialba. Social Systems and the Introduction of Change (Glencoe (Ill.): The Free Press, 1953): p. 45 and 78.

  • W. de Nooy, A. Mrvar, & V. Batagelj, Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Chapter 9.

History

• • Original author: Charles Price Loomis (1905-1995).

  • Data compiled into Pajek data files by W. de Nooy, 2001.