Acceptability and complexity : social scientist dilemma, and a ABSS methodology case example
Miguel Quesada, Francesc Josep (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Sociologia)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Grup de Investigación Sociologia Analítica y Diseño Institucional - GSADI

Date:	2009
Description:	15 pàg.
Abstract:	This paper considers the problem of trade-off between including theoretically required elements against excluding irrelevant levels of complexity, one difficult dilemma that all ABSS practitioners must cope with. Social scientists finds hard to code even the most simple artificial societies, while they are expected to consider all kind of social complexity. It is argued that there exists heterogeneity between ABSS communities and it is presented a general characterisation based on the ordered set of preferences for two main variants. Therefore, with a commitment to the "academic variant", some remarks are made about the acceptability of social simulation methodology among the social sciences scholars. Finally, it is presented a methodology to check the relevance of different levels of complexity, as candidates to be included into any ABSS -or as the core of a generic simulation builder-. This is made by means of some Netlogo simulation examples based on Fiske's theory about the sociality elementary forms, in a quasi-experimental way.
Grants:	Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia SEJ2006-00959
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Consumption ; Artificial Societies ; Simulation ; Sociology ; Netlogo ; Scientific Communities
Published in:	Inteligencia Artificial, Vol. 13 Núm. 42 (2009) , p. 21-35, ISSN 1137-3601

DOI: 10.4114/ia.v13i42.1043

15 p, 387.2 KB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Social and Legal Sciences > GSADI Analytical Sociology & Institutional Design
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles