Islands of order : a guide to complexity modeling for the social sciences / J. Stephen Lansing and Murray P. Cox.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lansing, John Stephen.

Series:

Princeton studies in complexity

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociology--Mathematical models.

Sociology.

Social structure--Malay Archipelago.

Social structure.

Anthropology--Malay Archipelago--Methodology.

Anthropology.

Methodology.

Islands of the Pacific.

Pacific Ocean--Islands of the Pacific.

Physical Description:

xxix, 205 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2019]

Summary:

Over the past two decades, anthropologist J. Stephen Lansing and geneticist Murray Cox have explored dozens of villages on the islands of the Malay Archipelago, combining ethnographic research with research into genetic and linguistic markers to shed light on how these societies change over time. Islands of Order draws on their pioneering fieldwork to show how the science of complexity can be used to better understand unstable dynamics in culture, language, cooperation, and the emergence of hierarchies. Complexity science has opened exciting new vistas in physics and biology, but poses challenges for social scientists. What triggers fundamental, discontinuous social change? And what brings stable patterns-islands of order-into existence? Lansing and Cox begin with an incisive and accessible introduction to models of change, from simple random drift to coupled interactions, phase transitions, co-phylogenies, and adaptive landscapes. Then they take readers on a series of journeys to the islands of the Indo-Pacific to demonstrate how social scientists can harness these powerful tools to discover out-of-equilibrium social dynamics. Lansing and Cox address empirical questions surrounding the colonization of the Pacific, the relationship of language to culture, the emergence and disappearance of male and female hierarchies, and more. Unlocking new possibilities for the social sciences, Islands of Order is accompanied by an interactive companion website that enables readers to explore the models described in the book.

Contents:

1 Models of Change p. 1

A point of departure p. 1

The origins of order p. 4

A clock that keeps good time p. 5

Neutral drift p. 6

Nonlinear systems p. 7

Triggers for nonlinear transitions p. 10

Complex adaptive systems p. 11

Discovering islands of order p. 14

2 Discovering Austronesia p. 22

Dubois' remarkable discovery p. 23

The first migration of modern humans p. 26

The second migration: Austronesians p. 27

Surprises in the data p. 29

The toolkits: Population genetics and kinship p. 32

The implications of matrilocality p. 35

First model: Sex bias and language replacement p. 37

Why the barrier in Wallacea? p. 39

Second model: Demographic skew p. 40

Generations of butterfly effects p. 41

3 Dominance, Selection, and Neutrality p. 46

Selection for dominance? p. 48

The meek shall inherit... p. 54

Neutral tests and the neutral theory: From genetics to ecology p. 56

Transience and time scales: Baby names p. 59

Transience and time scales: Potsherds and archaeology p. 64

4 Language and Kinship in Deep Time p. 68

Return to Wehali p. 73

Cophyhgenies of languages and genes p. 77

The implications of host switching p. 84

Kinship and language transmission p. 88

Language and kinship in deep time p. 90

Zooming in to the community scale p. 91

5 Islands of Cooperation p. 97

Prelude: How Bali became Bali p. 97

Terracing volcanoes p. 100

Ecology of the rice terraces p. 102

A cooperation game p. 104

Testing the game-theoretical model p. 109

An agent-based model of the coupled system p. 111

6 Adaptive Self-Organized Criticality p. 118

Mosaics and power laws p. 119

Universal Bali: A lattice model p. 120

Results of the lattice model p. 124

Comparison with satellite imagery p. 126

Why power laws? p. 128

7 Transition Paths p. 136

Does age matter? p. 138

A pilot study of cooperation p. 141

Results of the pilot study p. 143

Exploring differences in regimes p. 145

8 From the Other Shore p. 154

Revisiting the Austronesian expansion p. 156

The protosystem and the structural core p. 159

Phase portraits p. 162

Sex and power, revisited p. 165

Reflections on stone boats p. 171

Emergence of a new synchronic whole in Bali p. 175.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0691192944

9780691192949

0691192936

9780691192932

OCLC:

1089491888