Agent-Based Models and Ethnography: Combining Qualitative and Computational Techniques with Complexity Theory

Abstract

Increased interaction, adaptability, diversity, and emergence are all hallmarks of complexity (Miller and Page 2007; see Simon 1996). While anthropologists may not use these specific complexity theory terms, they have long been interested in how diverse people interact and adapt in their negotiation of identity and society and what sorts of social phenomena emerge from these interactions. A complexity theory perspective can interpret culture or cultural practices as either the base rules from which identity emerges (consider Appadurai 1996) or the emergent system itself, the "webs of significance" in which humans are embedded (see Geertz 1973).

The Grandest Challenge of All: The Role of Environmental Engineering to Achieve Sustainability in the World's Developing Regions

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Consciousness as an intelligent complex adaptive system: A neuroanthropological perspective

“…Complexity theory (a.k.a. “complexity science”; Gribbin, 2004; Waldrop, 1992) is an advanced form of general systems theory (Von Bertalanffy, 1972; Warren et al, 1998) and since the 1990s has had a significant impact upon social science (see Berry et al, 2002; Buckley, 2008; Byrne, 2002; Fieguth, 2017), including sociology (Alexander, 2009; Frenken, 2006), psychoanalysis (Piers et al, 2007), and anthropology (Ingham, 2007; Mosko & Damon, 2005), the latter including archeology (Bentley & Maschner, 2003; Maschner, 1991), dynamics of organizations (Brown, 2012; Bruun, 2013; Dooley, 1997; Letiche & Boje, 2001), culture change (Bergendorff, 2009; Dean, 2000; Mason, 2008; Renfrew, 1973), ecological anthropology (Abel, 1998), and ethnographic fieldwork (Agar, 1999, 2005; Andrei & Kennedy, 2013; Atkinson et al, 2008, Chap. 2; Güney, 2010; Hoffer, 2013).…”