On network analysis: the potential for understanding (and misunderstanding) !Kung Hxaro

Schweizer's social network analysis (CA 38: 739-52) of gift giving among the !Kung San (Ju/'hoansi) demonstrates most elegantly how individual strategies, guided by basic cultural rules, coalesce to form a regional system. Complex connections in the network that defied description with simpler anaytical techniques are brought within reach. Hours upon hours of sitting in the sand and recording the sources of possessions- from arrows to underpants-are projected into a grand finale in Lothar Krempel 's multidimensional diagrams. The publication of such tools in a journal that reaches out to a broad audience is most we come.