Can we predict where ethnic and/or cultural violence will next break out? Our friend, Yaneer Bar-Yam, a complexity scientist and founder of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), is co-author of Global Pattern Formation and Ethic/Cultural Violence in the Sept 14, 2007, issue of Science, the pub of AAAS. The abstract of the article by Yaneer, May Lim, and Richard Metzler reads:
Violence arises at boundaries between regions that are not sufficiently well defined. We model cultural differentiation as a separation of groups whose members prefer similar neighbors, with a characteristic group size at which violence occurs. Application of this model to the area of the former Yygoslavia and to India accurately predicts the locations of reported conflict. This model also points to imposed mixing or boundary clarification as mechanisms for promoting peace.
And you can listen to Yaneer's Science podcast about the article here. Congrats to Yaneer!
NECSI is hosting the week-long International Conference on Complex Systems (Oct 28-Nov 2). We're among the keynoters for the special day on networks.
