scholarly journals Special Issue on New Trends in Agent-Based Simulation

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-165
Author(s):  
Keiki Takadama ◽  
Kiyoshi Izumi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Agent Based Simulation ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
The Social

Agent-Based Simulation (ABS), an interdisciplinary area embracing both the computer science and the social science, has attracted much attention and aided the understanding of socially complex phenomena. A current important issue in this research area is how to improve ABS effectiveness and comprehension, which makes further mutual influence between the computer science and the social sciences indispensable - e.g., (1) agent modeling involving learning mechanisms in the computer science and (2) social dynamics analysis needed in the social science. Such integration of these two areas would help fulfill the great potential of ABS, first in solving complex engineering problems using agent-based technology and second in developing and testing new theories on socially complex systems. This special issue features ABS papers from both of these important areas exploring new trends in ABS. The 10 papers composing this special issue start with papers by Nobutada Fujii and Hiroyasu Inoue analyzing the relationship between the network structure and system dynamics. In these papers, an agent-based computational economics approach has been active in applying agent-based technologies to financial and economic systems. Papers by Biliana Alexandrova-Kabadjova, Isamu Okada, TomokoOhi, and Nariaki Nishino cover consumer and financial markets using agent-based models. They test economic theory and examine market phenomena for market design. Agent-based simulation is increasingly used in application fields in the social sciences. Papers by Kiyoshi Izumi, Hideki Fujii, Hiromitsu Hattori, and Shigeo Sagai propose solutions for actual social problems such as injury prevention, traffic, and electrical power. Models are created based on behavior data, and the integration of an agent-based model and real data is a hot topic in this area. As the beginning of these technical papers, this issue starts by a position paper to give an ABS overview for understanding important issues in ABS from an overall viewpoint and for understanding state-of-the-art ABS. The information presented is invaluable in helping readers grasp the important features of ABS.

scholarly journals Editorial Foreword

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Giddens
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Southeast Asian Studies ◽  
Industrial Revolutions ◽  
Editorial Foreword

First of all, to begin with I would like to say how much I support this initiative to promote social science. This special issue of IKAT: the Indonesian Journal of Southeast Asian Studies is originated from the symposium held in September where I delivered my recorded speech through online media in September 4th, 2018. We should highlight that the social science is very crucial to understanding the contemporary world, therefore of core important to the trajectory of any country today. The social sciences were born out of transformation in the 17, 18, 19thcenturies in the west of course), firstly the origin of modern states and origin of politics, then the industrial revolutions, then the origin of economics, and in the 19thcentury, those things becoming more widespread to the world that create Sociology and Anthropology.

scholarly journals Doing things with description: practices, politics, and the art of attentiveness

2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412097597
Author(s):  
Nicole Vitellone ◽  
Michael Mair ◽  
Ciara Kierans
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
The Social

In a number of linked articles and monographs over the last decade (e.g. Love, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), literary scholar and critic Heather Love has called for a descriptive (re)turn in the humanities, repeatedly taking up examples of descriptive methods in the social sciences as exemplifying what that (re)turn might look like and achieve. Those of us working as sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars and researchers in allied social science fields thus find ourselves reflected back in Love’s work, encountering our own research practices in an unfamiliar light through it. In a period where our established methods and analytical priorities are subject to challenges on many fronts from within our own disciplines, it is hard not be struck by Love’s provocative invocation of the social sciences as interlocutors and see in it an invitation to contribute to the debate she has sought to initiate by revisiting our own approaches to the problem of description. Inspired by Love’s intervention, the eight papers that form this Special Issue demonstrate that by re-engaging with description we stand to learn a great deal. While the articles themselves are topically distinct and geographically varied, they are all based on empirical research and written to facilitate a reorientation to the role of description in our research practices. What exactly is going on when we describe an ancient papyrus as present or missing, a machine as intelligent, noise as music, a disease as undiagnosable, a death as good or bad, deserved or undeserved, care as appropriate or inappropriate, policies as failing or effective? As the papers show, these are important questions to ask. By asking them, we find ourselves in positions to better understand what goes into ‘indexing and making visible forms of material and social reality’ (Love, 2013: 412) as well as what is involved, more troublingly, in erasing, making invisible and dematerialising those realities or even, indeed, in uncovering those erasures and the means by which they were effected. As this special issue underlines, thinking with Love by thinking with descriptions is a rewarding exercise precisely because it opens these matters up to view. We hope others take up Love’s invitation to re-engage with description for that very reason.

Analysis and synthesis: multi-agent systems in the social sciences

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Marks
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Common Source ◽  
Multi Agent Systems ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Agent Systems ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
Computational Systems

AbstractAlthough they flow from a common source, the uses of multi-agent systems (or ‘agent-based computational systems’––ACE) vary between the social sciences and computer science. The distinction can be broadly summarized as analysis versus synthesis, or explanation versus design. I compare and contrast these uses, and discuss sufficiency and necessity in simulations in general and in multi-agent systems in particular, with a computer science audience in mind.

Social science as apologia

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102199096
Author(s):  
Federico Brandmayr
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Scientific

The social sciences are predominantly seen by their practitioners as critical endeavours, which should inform criticism of harmful institutions, beliefs and practices. Accordingly, political attacks on the social sciences are often interpreted as revealing an unwillingness to accept criticism and an acquiescence with the status quo. But this dominant view of the political implications of social scientific knowledge misses the fact that people can also be outraged by what they see as its apologetic potential, namely that it provides excuses or justifications for people doing bad things, preventing them from being rightfully blamed and punished. This introduction to the special issue sketches the long history of debates about the exculpatory and justificatory consequences of social science and lays the foundations for a theory of social scientific apologia by examining three main aspects: what social and cognitive processes motivate this type of accusation, how social theorists respond to it and whether different contexts of circulation of ideas affect how these controversies unfold.

Dynamics in Human and Primate Societies

2000 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Agent Based Modeling ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
The Social

As part of the SFI series, this book presents the most up-to-date research in the study of human and primate societies, presenting recent advances in software and algorithms for modeling societies. It also addresses case studies that have applied agent-based modeling approaches in archaeology, cultural anthropology, primatology, and sociology. Many things set this book apart from any other on modeling in the social sciences, including the emphasis on small-scale societies and the attempts to maximize realism in the modeling efforts applied to social problems and questions. It is an ideal book for professionals in archaeology or cultural anthropology as well as a valuable tool for those studying primatology or computer science.

Afterword: Struck Dumb? Marilyn Strathern and Social Science

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 283-288
Author(s):  
Nigel Thrift
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
Knowledge Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Spatial View

Marilyn Strathern has produced a remarkable body of work that not only demonstrates range and tenacity but also has produced a host of inspirations that have made their way into the world. This Afterword to the special issue ‘Social Theory After Strathern’ dwells on the subject of the modesty of what Strathern is proposing and how it relates to space, noting that her work enables us to forge new practico-theoretical combinations and works of diplomacy between incompatibles which show up the limitations of each party even as they forge new understandings – an approach that chimes with a move towards a more spatial view of knowledge. Theory, to echo Strathern’s gardening metaphor, needs to leave room not just to prune but to grow, the two being inter-related, as she points out. This Afterword also proposes that the extraordinary ability of anthropology to be inside and outside at once might serve as a model for what the social sciences need to become if they are to stay relevant in a world which cannot be reduced to a cipher for theory but still needs to learn from theory – theory which is precarious but spreadable, theory which establishes a rapport, but a rapport with friction built into it.

scholarly journals Foreword to the special issue of EJAM on crime modelling

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 271-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. BERESTYCKI ◽  
S. D. JOHNSON ◽  
R. OCKENDON ◽  
M. PRIMICERIO
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Shed Light

This special issue is one of the very first dedicated to crime modelling in a journal of applied mathematics. It emphasizes one of the new areas at the Social Science frontier, where modelling and mathematical tools are put to use with a view to shed light on phenomena previously thought to be outside of their reach. Pioneering research is increasingly being carried out in many different areas in the life sciences or social sciences, often under the heading of the study of complex systems. When addressing issues regarding society, individuals or the collective behaviours of humans, several questions naturally arise about the modelling enterprise. What is the nature and role of modelling in social sciences? What is one to expect from these new approaches? The case of economics, which has relied on mathematics for a very long time now, can serve as a paradigm for what is happening in other social sciences.

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