IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mts/wpaper/201302.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A measure of technological level for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample

Author

Listed:
  • E. Anthon Eff
  • Abhradeep Maiti

Abstract

Technology differs from other features of culture in that the Boasian stance of cultural relativism seems less binding: one can argue that the technology of one society is superior or inferior to the technology of another. This comparison is possible because technological change—as described by S.C. Gilfillan, Clarence Ayres, and Jane Jacobs—operates through the process of combining existing elements of technology to create new elements. Technology is therefore cumulative, so that a more advanced technology contains more elements than a less advanced. We exploit this cumulative nature of technology to create a measure of technological level for the 186 ethnographically known societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.

Suggested Citation

  • E. Anthon Eff & Abhradeep Maiti, 2013. "A measure of technological level for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample," Working Papers 201302, Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Economics and Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:mts:wpaper:201302
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://capone.mtsu.edu/berc/working/SCCStechnology.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anastasia Litina & Èric Roca Fernández, 2020. "Celestial enlightenment: eclipses, curiosity and economic development among pre-modern ethnic groups [Working Papers / Documents de travail]," Working Papers halshs-03044843, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    technology; Standard Cross-Cultural Sample;

    JEL classification:

    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General
    • P52 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Studies of Particular Economies
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification
    • B52 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Modern Monetary Theory;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mts:wpaper:201302. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benjamin Jansen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/efmtsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.