The Fragility and the resilience of complex systems 221

1
The Fragility and the resilience of complex
systems 2/21

• Watts Small Worlds
• Anderson the Code of the street
• Harris the sacred cow of India.

2
Complex systems

• Social structures illustrate a dynamic that is
  currently under intense exploration
• A structure of mutually reinforcing and mutually
  inhibiting components has a discontinuous dynamic
  of expansions and extinctions.
• Sometimes it is extremely resilient to stress,
  and sometimes it goes through a catastrophic
  collapse from an apparently minor stress.
• Finding the Achilles heel of Al Quaeda is like
  that of destroying KOS in 187.
• Destroying the head will probably not do it.
• Driving others into alliance with it will not
  either.
• We need to understand its roots and change its
  environment.

3
Small Worlds as Complex systems

• Duncan Watts analyzes social networks, power
  grids, the WWW, epidemics, the Melissa virus, the
  stock market, biological systems, the brain, etc.
  as small worlds, clusters in netwrorks.
• Small Worlds (1999), Structure and Dynamics of
  Networks (2002), Six Degrees (2003)
• Looking at the architecture by which they are
  connected
• And the dynamics that result.
• Model Milgrams small world experiment

4
An example of small world dynamics

• We saw that the entire Western portion of the US
  power grid went down in 1996 when one power line
  hit one tree.
• That happens all the time.
• To deal with that the system searches for
  alternate routes, searches for alternate sources,
  and shuts down systems and lines that are
  overloading.
• It was those control systems that caused collapse

5
The dynamic of biological extinctions punctuated
equilibria
Note that the ecological pattern is one of
alternation of periods of relative stability with
massive extinctions of different sizes. The
particular causes vary the extinction of the
dinosaurs may have been due to a meteor but that
extinction was not even one of the larger ones.
6
Analyzing the dynamic

• The dynamics of the system would be simple to
  analyze if
• There were few connections so that changing one
  thing did not affect everything.
• All the feedbacks were positive, so that any
  change just proliferated.
• All the feedbacks were negative, so that the
  system was a fixed, functional control system
• But most dynamic systems are complex,
• like the structure of an authority dealing with
  several subordinates who do not want to obey.

7
The relations between ideas and social structure

• Anderson and Harris each show that ideas and
  culture do not hang in mid air.
• Both use anthropological participant observation
• Culture is created and sustained by social
  relationships.
• Culture neither changes nor persists by itself.
• It depends on the persistence or change of the
  structure on which it is based.

8
The dynamics of culture

• If the problem is not replacing a person in the
  role, but getting rid of the role, you need to
  understand the social roots of culture.
• Sometimes culture changes very fast and
  sometimes it resists change every powerfully.
• Culture is usually a set of small worlds.
• E.g. the sacred cow
• E.g. the code of the streets.

9
Elijah Anderson

• Vice president of ASA 2002
• Streetwise Race, Class and Change in an Urban
  Community (1990)
• Code of the Streets Decency, Violence and Moral
  Life in the Inner City (1999).
• Topic of symposium American Journal of Sociology
  May 2002
• (Entry to the methodological and substantive
  findings of urban ethnography as possible paper
  topics)

10
Groups and Norms along Germantown Ave.

• The head of Germantown Ave. (Chestnut Hill) is
  very upper class and the foot is very lower
  class.
• pp. 366-7 shows the same structure of Lancaster
  Ave. from ghetto poverty to the main line.
• The head is characterized by a norm of civic
  politeness the foot by rep or juice.
• The head is white the foot is black.
• Is this an example of institutional racism?

11
Structures that make the code of the streets
crazy in Chestnut Hill

• Some Chestnut Hill residents see most blacks from
  down town as very rude.
• Where does that behavior come from?
• Anderson argues that down town, showing that you
  are bad and that anyone who messes with you
  is asking for trouble is adaptive.
• If you behave that way in Chestnut Hill, people
  will look at you as though you are crazy, and you
  may be arrested.
• Anderson argues it is like a language, a code.

12
Situations and structures making resisting the
code of the streets hard at the foot of
Germantown Ave.

• Similarly, if you behave, downtown, in a way that
  would work and would be appropriate in Chestnut
  Hill, people will look at you as though you are a
  turkey, and take advantage of you.
• But in Chestnut Hill being nicey-nicey signals
  status, class, kindness and character.

13
e.g. 1 The Story of Robert Small business and
Old Heads

• When I was dealing, I was treated as a king, and
  no one messed with me.
• When I follow the rules, I am in a dead end,
  everyone steals from me and every petty
  bureaucrat dumps on me.
• The view of the old heads in Mantua is that
  they are suckers and pathetic Toms.
• Why?

14
Old Heads

• In Streetwise Anderson argued that the social
  disorganization of Mantua stemmed from the loss
  of status of the old heads.
• i.e. those people who had played by the rules and
  who had been able to get good jobs in the period
  1969-1973,
• were the last hired (in 1969-73) and so they
  were first fired (in 1972-81).
• Anderson argues that this was not just tough luck
  for them, but a catastrophe for the community and
  a disaster for the society.
• Similar debates concern whether street venders
  are a crucial role model and escape hatch for
  urban youth.

15
Why Does the city discourage venders?

• In the overall structure of power and influence,
  people like Robert are at the bottom.
• The city department that issues and enforces
  vendor licenses is mainly responsive to
  storeowners that regard Robert as a nuisance.
• What are the main priorities of the police?
• Anderson suggests that no one with any power or
  influences is particularly interested in having
  Robert succeed but his success is key to who
  wins the battle between the street and decency

16
Example 2 the story of Tyree

• Tyrees Grandmother - decent folk.
• The bols
• Tyrees situation.
• Tyrees solution.
• The Outcome of Tyrees solution He is now in a
  gang, fighting in the street and hanging around
  with the worst people.

17
Why doesnt he Just Say No

• The structure does not insure that every person
  joins a gang certainly not with commitment, but
  
• It insures that enough do so that the structure
  is reproduced.
• Those not in a gang, get it from all sides.
• Not an option? Well, not quite. But there is
  a special role for those who have no group.
• They are losers they are bullied they are
  cowards they are turkeys.
• The structure of alternatives means that the
  constrained choices reproduce the structure.

18
How do group and institutional structures get
inside ones head?

• If you lived at the foot of Germantown Ave. would
  you join a gang? Why? Or why not?
• If you were Hindu, would you feel real loathing
  for cow-killers. Why? or Why not?
• If you worked at Auschwitz would you gas Jews?
  Why? or why not?

19
The Persistence of Culture a third
anthropological example

• Do ideas and cultural systems persist, out of
  inertia.
• What are the dynamic structures of persistence?
• What groups, activities and rewards come into
  play?

20
Harris Cultural Materialism

• Marvin Harris Cows Wars, Pigs and Witches.
• Thesis no element of culture persists without
  reasons
• These reasons usually have to do with class,
  economic and ecological structures.
• Food (pigs, dogs, cows, people) are exceptionally
  clear examples.

21
The sacred cow of India

• The cow has been sacred for 2,000 yrs.
• Only untouchables butcher or eat cows
  cow-killing produces an even more powerful
  reaction than murder.
• Most Indian food is cooked in butter-fat
• Nearly 100,000,000 foraging cows are everywhere.
• Even cow dung is used and is treated as pure.

22
Is the sacred cow a sacred cow?
In the West a sacred cow is usually used as an
archetype of irrational, hidebound, superstitious
traditionalism.
23
The Rockerfeller view

• Millions of people starve while millions of cows
  are protected by religious superstition.
• Avoiding cow-killing is
• Inefficient,
• Wasteful,
• Superstitious,
• Traditionalism
• India needs capitalist agriculture like the US

24
Problems with that explanation, according to
Harris

• Millions of Indian villages have destroyed their
  livelihood.
• A sustainable economy must preserve the land and
  the population,
• unlike the commercial farming that created the
  dust bowl.
• Killing a cow creates one feast for one family in
  the short run, and disaster for the community in
  the not very long run.
• Even when a cow is too old to calf and is past
  milking, it is crucial to the ecology.

25
Harris explanation

• 700,000,000 tons of cow manure per year are
  crucial to preventing ecological disaster.
• The non-cow-owners have a particularly strong
  motive for saving even an old cow.
• Unless we look at the social and ecological long
  run dynamics, we cannot understand present
  arrangements or suggest reasonable changes.
• Mixture of functionalism and conflict theory

26
But why make the cow sacred?

• The cultural rules that preserve the society as a
  whole particularly those that require that
  people act in the public interest usually take
  this form.
• Bargaining over when to kill which cows could
  never preserve the society.
• For all cows to be sacred for all Hindus can and
  did preserve the society.
• For Harris maintaining the sacred cow is crucial
  to avoiding famine, ecological disaster and
  social collapse