Grantee: Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, USA
Project Lead: Erica Jen, Ph.D.Co-PIs: John H. Holland, Kenneth J. Arrow, Stephen J. Lansing, Elinor Olstrom
Grant Title: A Founding Program on Robustness of Social Processes
Program Area: Studying Complex Systems
Grant Type: Collaborative Activity Award
Year Awarded: 2002
Project Summary:
This collaborative will explore how complex systems research might be extended from the biological to the social and behavioral sciences. The effort will focus on the issues of the robustness of social processes. In the past few years, the concept of robustness has been the subject of growing interest in the natural and engineering sciences. Studies of robustness in these fields have focused on the ability of a system to maintain specified features when subject to either internal or external perturbations. Researchers have made progress in understanding general principles of robustness in the contexts of evolutionary and developmental biology, ecology, and computer network design. To date, however, this research has not extended to the study of social systems, where better understanding of “social robustness” might contribute to new methods and approaches in the social and behavioral sciences. The collaborative will support study groups on social robustness in five areas: robust decision making under conditions of uncertainty; robustness of organizational structures, focusing initially on business organizations; robustness of political agreements, states, and regimes; the social dynamics of robust institutions; social processes that contribute to robust economies; and the robustness of cultural traditions.