SASci 2007 Annual Meeting
(San Antonio, Texas, February 21-24)
Panel Proposal
Panel title: Sociocultural and Political Evolution: patterns, trends, mechanisms, and mathematical models.
Panel conveners:
Prof. Andrey Korotayev, Director, Anthropology of the East Center, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow (akorotayev@mail.ru).
Prof. Leonid Grinin, Senior Research Fellow, Volgograd Center for Social Research, Volgograd (lgrinin@mail.ru).
Annotation: The recent decade has evidenced the transition from verbal theories of social and historical dynamics to the empirically testable mathematical models of these processes. The standard scientific methods have been shown to be applicable to their study. The panel is aimed at discussion of both the further ways of the introduction of scientific methods into the study of historical anthropology and the concrete results achieved within this direction by the moment. The panel addresses the issues of general theory of social evolution as well as its applied aspects. A special attention is paid to the mathematical models of historical processes; however, the papers not applying such models are also welcomed.
Participants:
1) Robert L. Carneiro (American Museum of Natural History) POPULATION PRESSURE AS A DRIVING FORCE IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION
2) Leonid Grinin (Volgograd Center for Social Research). PERIODIZATION OF HISTORY: A THEORETIC-MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS
3) Peter N. Peregrine (Lawrence University). EXPLORING CULTURAL EVOLUTION USING CAUSAL MODELING
4) Artemy S. Malkov (Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow). A MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF THE SILK ROUTE TRADE DYNAMICS
5) Andrey Korotayev (Russian State University for the Humanities). THE WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY PERIODIZATION AND MATHEMATICAL MODELS OF SOCIO-HISTORICAL PROCESSES
6) David Small (Lehigh University) DIGGING FOR DEEP STRUCTURE: WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOES NOT WORK IN USING CULTURAL COMPARISONS
7) Douglas R. White (University of California, Irvine) DISCOVERING CITY-CURVE OSCILLATIONS: HISTORICAL DYNAMICS AS A REACTIVE SYSTEM FOR CHINA, 900 CE TO THE PRESENT
Other participants will be most welcomed!