Abstract
To address the question of whether ideology or technology has been the more powerful force shaping societies and their development, log-linear models are used to assess the association of typologies based on religious beliefs and on subsistence technology with indicators of: (1) community size, (2) political complexity, (3) stratification, (4) marital patterns, and (5) premarital sex norms. Using data derived from Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas, the analysis suggests that, although ideology is significantly associated with a number of important societal variables, the effects of technology are generally more powerful, more widespread, and more robust.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
