James Shilts Boster

Curriculum Vita

• Education
• B.A. (Anthropology)       1973 Harvard College
• Honors Thesis: K'ekchi Maya Disease Concepts and Curing Practices.
• M.A. (Anthropology)      1976 University of California, Berkeley
• Ph.D. (Anthropology)     1981 University of California, Berkeley
• Dissertation: How the Exceptions Prove the Rule: an Analysis of Informant Disagreement in Aguaruna Manioc Identification.

• Professional History
• Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley (1981)
• Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky (1981-1985, on leave 1984-1985)
• Andrew Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh (1984-1985)
• Assistant Professor, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1985-1986)
• Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh (1986-1988)
• Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh (1988-1990)
• Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine (1990-1997)
• Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine (1997-1998, on leave 1997-1998)
• Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut (1997-present)

• Research Interests
• Cognitive anthropology, Intracultural variation, Quantitative methods, Ethnopsychology, Ethnobiology, Social Networks, Human ecology, Ethnology of South America

• External Grants
• 1987 - 1988 A Program to Increase the Demand for Underutilized Species among Recreational Fishermen in the North Atlantic and Mid- Atlantic Regions. A Grant from the National Marine Fisheries Service. (with David Griffith, Jeffrey Johnson, James Murray, and Michael Voiland)
• 1990 - 1992 Global Climate Change: Folk Models and Intracultural Variation. National Science Foundation. (with Willett Kempton)
• 1991 - 1995 Social Structure, Agreement, and Conflict in Groups in Extreme and Isolated Environments. National Science Foundation. (with Jeffrey Johnson and Larry Palinkas)
• 1996 - 2000 Social Structure, Agreement, and Conflict in Groups in Extreme and Isolated Environments: A Cross-Cultural Comparison. National Science Foundation. (with Jeffrey Johnson and Larry Palinkas)

• 2000 – 2003 Reproduction, Kinship and Coalitional Violence. National Science Foundation. (with Stephen Beckerman)

• Books
• Kempton, Willett M., James S. Boster, and Jennifer Hartley. 1995. Environmental Values in American Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press.

• Edited Volumes
• Boster, James S. 1987c. (ed.) Intracultural Variation. Special Issue of the American Behavioral Scientist 31(2).

• Journal Articles
• Berlin, Brent, James S. Boster & John P. O'Neill. 1981. The Perceptual Bases of Ethnobiological Classification: Evidence from Aguaruna Jivaro Ornithology. Journal of Ethnobiology 1(1):95-108.
• Boster, James S. 1983. A Comparison of the Diversity of Jivaroan Gardens with that of the Tropical Forest. Human Ecology 11(1):47-68.
• Boster, James S. 1984a. Classification, Cultivation, and Selection of Aguaruna Cultivars of Manihot esculenta (Euphorbiaceae). In Ethnobotany in the Neo-Tropics. Ghillean Prance and Jacquelyn Kallunki (eds.) Advances in Economic Botany 1(1):34-47.
• Boster, James S. 1984b. Inferring Decision Making from Preferences and Behavior: An Analysis of Aguaruna Jivaro Manioc Selection. Human Ecology 12(4):343-358.
• Schuldberg, David & James S. Boster. 1985. Back to Topeka: Two Types of Distance in Rapaport's Original Rorschach Thought Disorder Categories. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 94(2):205-215.
• Boster, James S. 1985b. Selection for Perceptual Distinctiveness: Evidence from Aguaruna Cultivars of Manihot esculenta. Economic Botany 239(3):310-325.
• Sailer, Lee, Steven J. C. Gaulin, James S. Boster, & Jeffrey Kurland. 1985. Measuring the relationship between dietary quality and body size in primates. Primates 26(1):14-27.
• Gaulin, Steven J. C. & James S. Boster. 1985. Cross Cultural Differences in Sexual Dimorphism: Is There Any Variance to be Explained? Ethology and Sociobiology 6:193-199.
• Boster, James S. 1986a. Can Individuals Recapitulate the Evolutionary Development of Color Lexicons? Ethnology 25(1):61-74.
• Boster, James S. 1986b. Exchange of Varieties and Information between Aguaruna Manioc Cultivators. American Anthropologist 88(2):429-436.
• Boster, James S., Brent Berlin, & John P. O'Neill. 1986. The Correspondence of Jivaroan to Scientific Ornithology. American Anthropologist 88(3):569-583.
• Bernard, H. Russell, Pertti Pelto, Oswald Werner, James Boster, A. Kimball Romney, Allen Johnson, Carol Ember, and Alice Kasakoff. 1986. The Construction of Primary Data in Cultural Anthropology. Current Anthropology 27(4):382-396.
• Boster, James S. 1987a. Agreement between Biological Classification Systems is Not Dependent on Cultural Transmission. American Anthropologist. 89(4):914-919.
• Boster, James S. 1987b. Introduction. In Intracultural Variation. James S. Boster (ed.) Special Issue of the American Behavioral Scientist 31(2):150-162.
• Boster, James S., Jeffrey C. Johnson, and Susan C. Weller. 1987. Social Position and Shared Knowledge: Actor's Perceptions of Status, Role, and Social Structure. Social Networks 9:375-387.
• Boster, James S. 1988. Natural Sources of Internal Category Structure: Typicality, Familiarity, and Similarity of Birds. Memory and Cognition 16(3):258-270.
• Boster, James S. and Roy D'Andrade. 1989. Natural and Human Sources of Cross-Cultural Agreement in Ornithological Classification. American Anthropologist 91(1):132-142.
• Johnson, Jeffrey C., James S. Boster, and Donald Holbert. 1989. Estimating relational attributes from snowball samples through simulation. Social Networks 11:135-158.
• Boster, James S. and Jeffrey C. Johnson. 1989. Form or Function: A Comparison of Expert and Novice Judgments of Similarity among Fish. American Anthropologist 91(4)866-889.
• Boster, James S. and Susan C. Weller. 1990. Cognitive and Contextual Variation in Hot-Cold Classification. American Anthropologist 92(1):171-178.
• Fabrega, Horacio, Chul Ahn, James S. Boster, and Juan Mezzich. 1990. DSM III as a Systemic Culture Pattern: Studying Intracultural Variation among Psychiatrists. Journal of Psychiatric Research 24(2):139-154.7
• Gaulin, Steven J. C. and James S. Boster. 1990. Dowry as Female Competition. American Anthropologist 92(4):994-1005. [Reprinted In Evolution and Human Behavior: A Critical Reader. Laura Betzig (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.]
• Johnson, Kathy, Carolyn Mervis, and James S. Boster. 1992. Developmental Changes in the Structure of the Mammal Domain. Developmental Psychology 28(1):74-83.
• Gaulin, Steven J. C. and James S. Boster. 1992. Human marriage systems and sexual dimorphism in stature. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 89:467-475.
• Boster, James S. and Horacio Fabrega. 1993. Semantic Structures and Psychiatric Diagnosis. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 181:54-58.

• Boster, James S. 1994. The Successive Pile Sort. Cultural Anthropology Methods 6(2):7-8.

• Palinkas, Lawrence, Jeffrey C. Johnson, James S. Boster, and Matthew Houseal. 1998. Longitudinal Studies of Behavior and Performance during a Winter at the South Pole. Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine 69(1):73-77.

• Boster, James S., Richard R. Hudson, and Steven J. C. Gaulin. 1998. High paternity certainties of Jewish priests. American Anthropologist 100(4):967-971

• Johnson, Jeffrey C., James S. Boster and Lawrence Palinkas. 2003. The Evolution of Networks in Extreme and Isolated Environments. Journal of Mathematical Sociology 27(2-3): 89 - 121.

• Boster, James S., James Yost, and Catherine Peeke. 2003. Rage, Revenge, and Religion: Honest Signaling of Aggression and Non-aggression in Waorani Coalitional Violence. Ethos 31(4):1-24.

• Palinkas, Lawrence A., Jeffrey C. Johnson, and James S. Boster. 2004. Social Support and Depressed Moods in Isolated and Confined Environments. Acta Astronautica. 54(9):639-47.

• Boster, James S. 2003. Blood Feud and Table Manners: A Neo-Hobbesian Approach to Jivaroan Warfare. Antropológica 99-100:153-164.

• Boster, James S. 2003. Arutam and Cultural Change. Antropológica 99-100:165-185.

• Boster, James S. and Katja Maltseva. 2006. A Crystal Seen From Each of Its Vertices: European Views of European National Characters. Cross-Cultural Research. 40(1):47-64.

• Majid, Asifa Melissa Bowerman, Miriam Van Staden, and James S. Boster. 2007. The semantic categories of cutting and breaking events: A crosslinguistic perspective. Cognitive Linguistics 18(2):133-152.

• Sosis, Richard, Howard C. Kress, and James S. Boster. 2007. Scars for war: evaluating alternative signaling explanations for cross-cultural variance in ritual costs. Evolution and Human Behavior 28:234-247.

• Srinivasan-Shipman, Asha and James S. Boster. (In Press). Recall, Similarity Judgment, and Identification of Trees: A Comparison of Experts and Novices. Ethos.

• Majid, Asifa, James S. Boster, and Melissa Bowerman. (under review). The cross-linguistic categorization of everyday events: A study of “cutting and breaking

• D’Andrade, Roy, James S. Boster, and Phoebe Ellsworth. (under review). The Structure of Feelings. Ethos.

• Book Chapters
• Boster, James S. 1985a. 'Requiem for the Omniscient Informant': There's Life in the Old Girl Yet. In Directions in Cognitive Anthropology. Janet Dougherty (ed.). University of Illlinois Press. pp. 177-197.
• Boster, James S. 1991. The Information Economy Model Applied to Biological Similarity Judgment. In Socially Shared Cognition. Lauren Resnick, John Levine, and Stephanie Teasley (eds.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. pp. 203-225.
• Boster, James S. 1996. Human Cognition as a Product and Agent of Evolution. In Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture, and Domestication. Roy Ellen and Katsuyoshi Fukui (eds.). Oxford: Berg.
• Gaulin, Steven J. C. and James S. Boster 1996. When are husbands worth fighting over?" In Evolution and Human Behavior: A Critical Reader. Laura Betzig (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Boster, James 1999. Cultural Variation. In: M.I.T. Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences. Rob Wilson and Frank Keil (eds.) Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.

• Lutters, Wayne, Mark S. Ackerman, James Boster, and David W. McDonald. 2000. Mapping Knowledge Networks in Organizations: Creating a Knowledge Mapping Instrument. In: Proceedings of the American Information Systems Conference (AIS'2000).

• Palinkas, Lawrence, Jeffrey C. Johnson, and James S. Boster. 2001. Social Support and Depressed Moods in Isolated and Confined Environments. In: The proceedings of the 52 nd International Astronautical Congress, IAF/IAA-010G3.b.01.

• Peluso, Daniela M.and James S. Boster 2002. Partible Parentage and Social Networks among the Ese Eja. In: Cultures of Multiple Fathers: The Theory and Practice of Partible Paternity in Lowland South America. Stephen Beckerman and Paul Valentine (eds.) Gainesville: University of Florida Press.

• Palinkas, L. A., Johnson, J. C., Boster, J. S., Rakusa-Suszczewski, S., Klopov, V.P., Xue, Q.F., Sachdeva, U. 2002. Effect of culture on social dynamics and individual performance in Antarctica. In: Proceedings of the Second Italian Workshop on Human Adaptation in Antarctica and Extreme Environments. Peri A, ed. Rome: Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide, Area Tematica di Biologia Umana e Medicina: 92-98.

• Ackerman, Mark S., James S. Boster, Wayne Lutters, David W. McDonald 2002. Who's There? The Knowledge Mapping Approximation Project. In: Beyond Knowledge Management: Sharing Expertise. Mark S Ackerman, Volkmar Pipek, and Volker Wulf (eds.) Cambridge: MIT Press.

• Boster, James S. In Press. Venganzas Sangrientas y Modales de la Mesa: Un Acercamiento Neo-Hobbesiano a la Guerra Jíbara. In Numero Monografico de Pueblos Indígenas y Educación. José Juncosa (Ed.) Proyecto de Educación Bilingüe Ecuador y Ediciones Abyayala.

• Johnson, Jeffrey C., Lawrence A. Palinkas, and James S. Boster. 2003. Informal Social Roles and the Evolution and Stability of Social Networks.In Dynamic Social Network Modeling and Analysis: Workshop Summary and Papers. Ronald Breiger, Kathleen Carley, and Philippa Pattison (eds.) Committee on Human Factors, National Research Council. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.

• Majid, Asifa, Miriam van Staden, James S. Boster, and Melissa Bowerman. 2004. Event Categorization: A Cross-linguistic Perspective. In: Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Chicago, Il: Cognitive Science Society.

• Boster, J. S. 2005. Emotion Categories across Languages. In C. LeFebvre and H. Cohen (eds.) Categorization in the Cognitive Sciences. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

• Boster, J. S. 2005. Categories and Cognitive Anthropology. In C. LeFebvre and H. Cohen (eds.) Categorization in the Cognitive Sciences. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

• Technical Reports
• Boster, James S., Mitchell Seligson, Katherine Terrell, and Jose Zevallos. 1989. Land Tenure Security in Ecuador: A Preliminary Study of Cayambe and Pedro Moncayo. Center for Latin American Studies. Prepared for El Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonizacion and The United States Agency for International Development.
• Boster, James S., David Griffith, Jeffrey Johnson, James Murray, and Michael Voiland. 1989. A Program to Increase the Demand for Underutilized Species among Recreational Fishermen in the North Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic Regions. Report to the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA.

• Reviews and Commentary
• James S. Boster. 1982. Review of Numerical Techniques in Social Anthropology. J. C. Mitchell (ed.) Contemporary Sociology 11(6):732
• James S. Boster. 1984. Technical Advice. In Computer Assisted Anthropology, Lee Sailer (ed.) Practicing Anthropology 6(2):17.
• James S. Boster. 1985. Review of Roots of the Earth: Crops in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Paul Sillitoe. Economic Botany
• James S. Boster. 1986. Comments on "The Growth of Ethnobiological Nomenclature" Cecil Brown. Current Anthropology 27(1):13-14.
• James S. Boster. 1986. Review of Ethnographic Research: A Guide to General Conduct. Roy Ellen (ed.) American Anthropologist 88(2):457-458.
• Gaulin, Steven J. C. and James S. Boster. 1991. Dowry and Female Competition: A Reply to Dickemann. American Anthropologist 93(4):946-948.
• Gaulin, Steven J. C. and James S. Boster. 1993. Testing Explanatory Models of Dowry: A Reply to Schlegel. American Anthropologist 95:157-159.