Hage and Harary present a comprehensive introduction to the use of graph
theory in social and cultural anthropology. Using a wide range of
empirical examples, the authors illustrate how graph theory can provide
a language for expressing in a more exact fashion concepts and notions
that can only be imperfectly rendered verbally. They show how graphs,
digraphs and networks, together with their associated matrices and
duality laws, facilitate the study of such diverse topics as mediation
and power in exchange systems, reachability in social networks,
efficiency in cognitive schemata, logic in kinship relations, and
productivity in subsistence modes. The interaction between graphs and
groups provides further means for the analysis of transformations in
myths and permutations in symbolic systems. The totality of these
structural models aids in the collection as well as the interpretation
of field data. The presentation is clear, precise and readily accessible
to the nonmathematical reader. It emphasizes the implicit presence of
graph theory in much of anthropological thinking.