The Emergence of Social Complexity

Note: This is the project formerly known as Globalization, Strategy, and Path Dependence.

Project Members

1. Aaron Frank
2. Paul Hooper

Project Description

Evolving Social Complexity: How Inequality Generates Social Structure

Introduction:

The study of international relations and domestic politics each often presume the existence of the state as a given, i.e. it maintains ontological primacy as a foundational element of the political system. Moreover, it is common for each field of study to treat the state as a single actor, or agent within the political system – either as the core unit of decision-making and action within the international system, or as an authority that manages distributional and symbolic conflicts within a polity. However, both perspectives fail to explain the emergence of the state itself, leaving researchers with few insights into the processes by which polities gain control over their domestic and international affairs, producing constitutional organizational structures that endure beyond the lifetimes of the individuals in positions of authority, or the mechanisms by which societies collapse and rely on older, non-state forms of social support and subsistence.

Questions of state formation and survival abound, and are evident in political systems ranging from the emergence of the first civilizations in the old and new worlds, the birth of the modern state in Europe, and in today’s ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and elsewhere. In all of these cases, societies struggled to coalesce into stable bureaucratic entities that could simultaneously maintain the polity’s international autonomy, and domestic legitimacy, leaving political power – economic, military, and moral – fragmented and diffuse. While most theories of state formation gravitate towards the role of coercion, violence, and scarcity as the stimulus for increasing social complexity, we believe that inequality in general – whether the result of the negative forces coercion or the positive imbalances created by the generation of new wealth – can stimulate increases in social complexity. Thus, increasingly social complexity may be considered a political outcome resulting from socially relevant gradients, whether in the form of material resources, coercive power, symbolic and idealistic values, etc., which are dissipated, or managed by humans, through the creation of increasingly robust and expansive institutions.

Emphasizing gradients of inequalities, over the specific acts of coercion or resource conscription, may provide new insights into political behavior, and why many political paradoxes continue to trouble policy-makers. For example, policy debates over Iran, Cuba, Sudan, and elsewhere emphasize the role of compellance and coercion, both military and economic, as the primary mechanisms for influencing political behavior and reforms. Likewise, incentives, the proverbial “carrots” that are alternative to the coercive “sticks” are conceptually little more than behavioral modification tools designed to appeal to the interests of specific leaders, rather than generate wholesale changes in the state’s constitutional structure. By focusing on the creation of gradients, a broader range of strategic options predicated on creating and exploiting inequalities within the targeted system can be identified and exploited. Such options include the traditional menu of coercive actions, military strikes, blockades, sanctions, etc., as well as a large array of cooperative or “generous” activities, including aid and investment, which can overwhelm the control capabilities of existing institutions and compel political reform. While the use of such mechanisms as transformative political tools has served as a cornerstone of the Bretton Woods international system, conceiving of their use as mechanisms for stimulating, rather than rewarding, increases in social complexity remains poorly understood.

What is Social Complexity?

The origins of social complexity date back to the work of anthropologists and archaeologists in the 1960s and 1970s. These scholars sought to understand how the earliest civilizations transitioned from bands of hunters and gatherers, into agricultural societies, and then into increasingly more sophisticated and stratified systems of economic production and social roles and functions. These scholars argued that with each transition, society because increasingly well-ordered or structured, allowing for increased economic output and more sophisticated belief and symbolic systems. They argued that the material and symbolic systems interacted, each one able to reinforce the legitimacy of the other – thus increased wealth could create distinct divisions of labor and class, while the classes of priests, nobility, and craftsmen legitimized and maintained systems of economic production and distribution. Better organized polities subsumed or displaced their less organized neighbors, gaining control over increasing quantities and diversity of resources, further enhancing their material and moral endowments. As their population and territory increased in size and diversity, specialized managerial institutions developed, culminating in bureaucratic administrations organized along spatial (regional) or functional (technical) lines. Finally, these institutions coalesced into stable, self-reinforcing structures whose roles, responsibilities, and organization transcended to the authority of the individuals who serving within them.

Of course, movements in social complexity are not unidirectional. Acute crises, such as the collapse the economy, environmental degradation, the loss of moral legitimacy, or the threat posed by rival groups could undermine fragile institutions and cause societies to collapse back onto less structured, socially complex, but proven forms of social organization. Thus, scholars noted that failed states would often rely on pre-existing social institutions that could fulfill and maintain important collective activities at lower levels of sophistication. Highly complex polities could depend on the functioning of previously dormant or invisible social institutions to maintain economic and social systems, albeit at a lower level of sophistication, rather than completely collapse into undifferentiated bands of hunters and gatherers. While categorizations of social complexity vary, certain thematic regularities exist. Among the most important agreement is that increasingly complex social systems correspond to increased specialization and Intragroup stratification. Thus, groups that lack social complexity are regarded as egalitarian, where each member of the group is capable of performing any necessary economic or social role. Small egalitarian groups often referred to as “bands,” lack the excess manpower or resources for elaborate rituals conducted on a regular basis, or the ability to acquire enduring sources of wealth. More complex, but largely egalitarian social groups include “tribes” that are larger than bands, often incorporating extended networks of kin. These groups may develop small degrees of economic or social differentiation, such as dividing labor along the lines of age and gender, and conducting rituals whose participation is confined to certain honored members of society. The larger size of these groups may allow for the collective ownership of land, increasing the diversity of sources of wealth, demands for labor, and symbolic systems of beliefs.

Still higher levels of social complexity increase the differentiation between society’s members. “Chiefdoms” or “Big Man” societies are regarded as a turning point in the transition between egalitarian and stratified societies, denoting the emergence of social class and hereditary rights, privileges, responsibilities, and obligations. Class distinctions also correspond to a wider array of economic specialization, further segmenting labor beyond age and gender, and incorporating family lineage and training. Additionally, elaborate belief systems that require the creation of formal institutions, fixed sites for performing rituals, and the full-time attention of priests appear and provide a mechanism for reinforcing the legitimacy of the stratified social order that distinguishes between “common” and “chiefly” or “noble” individuals. At the highest levels of social complexity exists “states.” State systems can be identified by a central government and bureaucracy that maintains physical control over a fixed territory, and maintains a monopoly over the use of violence within its domain. They possess highly stratified social systems, which may organize spatially according to specific economic or social tasks rather than by kinship. Their economic systems include redistribution and reciprocal mechanisms, as well as markets for facilitating exchange. Moreover, states expend significant resources on public works that serve functional needs, such as irrigation and defense, as well as spiritual and symbolic imperatives, such as the construction of temples that signify the power, wealth, and success of the social system and organization. Finally states develop elaborate systems of codified law concerning crimes against the state itself and the status of property rights. Such laws are enforced by the state, rather than enforced directly by aggrieved parties in less socially complex societies. Thus, the government has the power and the obligation to enforce its laws.

While specific details or categorizations of social complexity vary, the transition from social equality to specialization and stratification remains a stable element of its definition. Such transitions promote increasingly elaborate systems of economic production, human settlement, and symbolic systems of beliefs and rituals.

Modeling Social Complexity: The Emergence of Inequality

Resources

1. Aaron's Santa Fe Project Box Folder.

1. The Sugarscape Model implemented in NetLogo. A variant of this is also available in the NetLogo model library, under social science and wealth distribution. The web version is a true implementation of the original model. It is also available for download, but is not compatible with the beta version of NetLogo 4.