Modeling context in Punjabi conflict resolution : social organizations as context agents.

Abstract

This paper suggests that multiagent model design can be a useful device for researchers in the social sciences. Focusing on the pluralistic competing venues and strategies for conflict resolution in Punjab, Pakistan, I argue that the social context must be rendered more dynamic and interactive in our analytical models. By representing social context as agents in the formal description of particular cases of conflict resolution, certain recursive properties of different social contexts become apparent. In modification to my argument in an earlier paper (Cybernetics and Systems Research, vol. 1, pp. 383-388, 2002), I argue that the complexity of agents representing social context may usefully be reduced by creating libraries of core social contexts from which instantiations, such as those discussed here, inherit all the common attributes.