Santa Fe Institute

Workshop

February 01, 2013 - February 03, 2013
Noyce Conference Room

This workshop, co-organized by Samuel Bowles and Paul Hooper, to be held at the Santa Fe Institute February 1-3, 2013, will bring together leading contributors to the theoretical literature on social networks, anthropologists and other field researchers using network techniques to study the social structure of small-scale societies. The objectives are: (a) to enrich network theory by deploying it in a large set of data in an attempt to answer central social science questions of political hierarchy and economic inequality; (b) to enhance the theoretical, statistical and computational capacity of field workers in the quantitative study of networks; and (c) to provide the basis of one or more synthetic comparative papers, as well as papers on the individual populations involved.

The workshop aims to provide the basis of one or more synthetic papers, as well as papers on the individual populations involved, informed by the theoretical and methodological tools introduced and developed in the workshop. On a broader level, the workshop will extend participants' education in this increasingly important but technical area of research. Previous papers by the Dynamics of Wealth Inequality project and the related projects mentioned above have generated a significant amount of comment by other scholars.

This is a new research group whose participants have been selected on the basis of their unique access to quantitative data on social networks in traditional small-scale human societies and/or expertise in relevant network theory and methods. Participants will be encouraged to nominate current doctoral candidates, with an emphasis on the recruitment of members of underrepresented groups (i.e., women and minorities).  The individuals in the following table have expressed interest in participating and appear to have data sufficient to estimate the measures of network structure that are suggested by our preliminary modeling.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1258489.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

SFI Host: Sam Bowles & Paul Hooper

• * SFI community lectures are free, open, & accessible to the public.
• * Seminars & colloquia are geared for scientists but free & open to the interested public.
• * All other SFI events are by invitation only.
• * Note: We are unable to accommodate members of the public for SFI's limited lunch service; you're welcome to bring your own.