An Empirical Test of Bott's Network Hypotheses, Based on Analysis of Ethnographic Atlas Data

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Abstract
Elizabeth Bott's Family and Social Network (1957) has stimulated much research in the area of kinship networks and network analysis in general. Her hypotheses have been tested and criticized, refined and modified. And still they remain provocative and controversial. Thepresentpaper is an attempt to test Bott, using the international data on 1,170 societies gathered by fieldworkers over the years and summarized in the Ethnographic Atlas materials (Murdock 1967). While there are no direct measures of Bott's key variables, it ispossible tofind useful indicators to represent them. This being the case, Bott's model can be tested, indirectly, on a far larger body of data than has ever been tested before. The data analysis supports Bott's linkages in the main, if only weakly. Network connectedness is related to sex-role segregation. Various factors, includingphysical mobility, economic interdependence, and the opportunity to make contacts outside the local area are related to network connected ness. In Bott'sfull model, network connectedness is an intervening variable; whereas this data analysis finds network connectedness to be a conditional variable, at the societal level of analysis.

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