Exchange process-based social mechanisms and social functions: an operational approach to the macro functional aspects of agent societies
Antônio Carlos Rocha Costa ()
Additional contact information
Antônio Carlos Rocha Costa: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Informática na Educação/UFRGS
Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 2018, vol. 24, issue 2, No 3, 188-223
Abstract:
Abstract This paper presents elements for an operational approach to the formal modeling of the macro functional aspects of agent societies. The concept of agent society used in the paper is summarized. The exchange process-based concept of elementary social function is reviewed and a corresponding concept of elementary social mechanism is introduced. Together, these concepts allow for the recursive definition of the concept of functional system, with which one can account for the general functions performed by the core organizational structure of agent societies. Two case studies are developed to illustrate the type of functional modeling of agent societies that is enabled by the concepts introduced in the paper. The first case study concerns the functional analysis of a simple motivating thought experiment. The second concerns the use of agent societies as formal models for natural societies: it sketches the formalization of Pierre Bourdieu’s functional analysis of the reproduction process of contemporary human societies.
Keywords: Agent societies; Social mechanisms; Social functions; Exchange processes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10588-017-9254-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:comaot:v:24:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s10588-017-9254-4
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10588
DOI: 10.1007/s10588-017-9254-4
Access Statistics for this article
Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory is currently edited by Terrill Frantz and Kathleen Carley
More articles in Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().