Recent imbs_socdyn_wp items

Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends

Mon, 9 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

We consider what effects could be produced by the long-term interaction of millennial macrotrends of the World System development and shorter-term cyclical dynamics. Among other things this will make it possible for us to demonstrate how even rather simple mathematical models of pre-industrial political-demographic cycles could help us to account for a paradox that has been encountered recently by political anthropologists.

Our research confirms that, notwithstanding recent arguments to the contrary, population density was a major determinant of warfare frequency in pre-industrial societies. However, the relationship between the two variables is dynamic, and could only be adequately described by nonlinear dynamic mod-els. Hence, we confront a rather paradoxical situation. On the one hand, we observe a millennial trend leading to the growth of both population density and warfare frequency. As a result, from a long-term perspective, we observe a very strong positive correlation...

Collaborative Long-Term Ethnography and Longitudinal Social Analysis of a Nomadic Clan In Southeastern Turkey

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Longitudinal network analysis is coupled in this study to a systematic analysis of the results of long-term ethnography of a nomadic group. Data collection using genealogical, interview and observational methods is complemented by analytic methods using graph theoretic concepts and dynamical as well as structural methods to assess various cross-cutting and hierarchical levels of social cohesion (nuclear and extended families, lineages, clans, tribal groups, and village or nationality affiliations as found within the nomad group) to formulate and test hypotheses about social mobility and political leadership. Predictive hypotheses about the inverse relation between out-mobility and social cohesion versus the direct relation between cultural transmission and marital relinking as a form of cohesion are thought to validate the basic approach. The model of distributed cohesion developed from these data provides a new understanding of processes supporting the emergence of leaders...

To Contrast and Compare

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Necessity, purpose, distancing the over-familiar, familiarizing the distant, making absences visible, and testing answers provide a framework for considering comparison in sociocultural anthropology. The methods reviewed include intrasocietal, dyadic, triadic, controlled, and broad comparison; units of comparison, necessary precautions about what is comparable; the operations of comparison and contrast and their respective productivity; differences, similarities and concomitance; polarity and dimensionality of comparison; comparison of norms, of behaviors, of processes; comparisons in time and issues of comparison in historical time; dynamics and models.

The paper concludes with a short history of methods of contrast and comparison.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________ Reprinted with permission of the author from Methodology and Fieldwork, pp. 94-111, 2004, edited by Vinay Kumar Srivastava. Delhi: Oxford University...

Standard Cross-Cultural Sample: on-line edition

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The Standard Cross-Cultural Sample contains the best-described society in each of 186 cultural provinces of the world, chosen so that cultural independence of each unit in terms of historical origin and cultural diffusion could be considered maximal with respect to the others societies in the sample. Often the time period chosen is that of the earliest high quality ethnographic description. Hence the SCCS is primarily a sample of preindustrial societies.

The original paper, published in the journal Ethnology in 1969, presented the first research results of the Cross-Cultural Cumulative Coding Center (CCCCC), a unit established in 1968 by Murdock and White at the University of Pittsburgh, with support from the National Science Foundation. The center was organized to offer to scholars a representative sample of the world's known and well described cultures, each "pinpointed" to the smallest identifiable subgroup of the society in question at a specific point in time, and...

A Theory of Demographic Cycles and the Social Evolution of Ancient and Medieval Oriental Societies (translation)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

A theory of demographic cycles is developed by the author out of the contributions of many sciences. F. Braudel named these cycles as "secular trends," and R. Cameron used the concept of "logistics cycles." The author constructs a mathematical model of a demographic cycle. With the help of this model the cycle is divided into phases for which the author is able to determine about 40 qualitative attributes of the cycle. These attributes allow a demographic cycle to be identified in the real course of a history even in the absence of quantitative data about a population. With the help of this method 57 demographic cycles are identified in the history of the various countries of the East. In particular, it is shown that the increase of demographic pressure at the end of a cycle results in establishment of étatist monarchy.

Co-evolution in Epistemic Networks: Reconstructing Social Complex Systems - A Summary Presentation

Mon, 5 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Agents producing and exchanging knowledge are forming as a whole a socio-semantic complex system. Studying such knowledge communities offers theoretical challenges, with the perspective of naturalizing further social science, as well as practical challenges, with potential applications enabling agents to know the dynamics of the system they are participating in. The present thesis lies within the framework of this research program. Alongside and more broadly, we address the question of reconstruction in social science. Reconstruction is a reverse problem consisting of two issues: (i) deduce a given high-level observation for a considered system from low-level phenomena; and (ii) reconstruct the evolution of high-level observations from the dynamics of lower-level objects. In this respect, we argue that several significant aspects of the structure of a knowledge community are primarily produced by the co-evolution between agents and concepts. In particular, we address the first...

A generative model for feedback networks - A Natasa Kejzar presentation, Applied Statistics conference, 2005

Sun, 18 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

We investigate a simple generative model for network formation. The model is designed to describe the growth of networks of kinship, trading, corporate alliances, or autocatalytic chemical reactions, where feedback is an essential element of network growth. The underlying graphs in these situations grow via a competition between cycle formation and node addition. After choosing a given node, a search is made for another node at a suitable distance. If such a node is found, a link is added connecting this to the original node, and increasing the number of cycles in the graph; if such a node cannot be found, a new node is added, which is linked to the original node. We simulate this algorithm and find that we cannot reject the hypothesis that the empirical degree distribution is a q-exponential function, which has been used to model long-range processes in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics.

A generative model for feedback networks

Fri, 5 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000