Modelling Norms

ISBN-13: 9789401785143 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 213 str.

Corinna Elsenbroich; Nigel Gilbert

Opis

Crime is wrong, wrong in the sense of morally wrong. How come that none of the current models of criminal behaviour makes use of the concept of morality? We discuss the major classes of models of criminal behaviour focusing in particular on the new methodology of Agent Based Modelling. We argue that as long as any form of moral reasoning is ignored models will fall short of capturing important features for the understanding of criminal behaviour and crime prevention. This book is a contribution to the methodology of the social sciences as it provides the first systematical assessment of the contribution of Agent Based Modelling to the analysis of norms and deviance. It is also an extension of the methodology as it provides a cognitive enrichment to the largely behavioural simulation models by formalizing and implementing a moral form of reasoning. Any social scientist, from postgraduate onwards, interested in computational social science applied to normative and deviant behaviour will have an interest in reading this book.

Recenzje

From the reviews:

"It serves as a very nice introduction to the literature on modeling social norms ... . The book ... does a nice job balancing between discussing the theory of norms and the particular challenges brought on by modeling social phenomena. ... the book is both a pleasant read and a very nice introduction to the literature." (Ryan Muldoon, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Vol. 17 (1), 2014)

Spis treści

Introduction.- Theorising Norms.- Theorising Crime.- Agent-based Modelling.- The Environment and Social Norms.- Punishment and Social Norms.- Imitation and Social Norms.- Socially Situated Social Norms.- Internalisation and Social Norms.- Modelling Norms.- Delinquent Networks.- Social Construction of Knowledge.- Morality.- We-Intentionality.- Conclusion.- Index.

O autorze

Corinna Elsenbroich is a Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Surrey. Her research background is in philosophy of science and computer science. Her research interests are the methodology of simulation in the social sciences and the interrelations between reasoning, decision making and action which will here be applied to the theory of crime and morality.

Nigel Gilbert is Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey. He is the author or editor of some 18 books and numerous papers. His main interests are in the application of agent-basedmodels to a wide range of social and ecological problem areas, and the methodology of computational social science.

Blurb

The book focusses on questions of individual and collective action, the emergence and dynamics of social norms and the feedback between individual behaviour and social phenomena. It discusses traditional modelling approaches to social norms and shows the usefulness of agent-based modelling for the study of these micro-macro interactions. Existing agent-based models of social norms are discussed and it is shown that so far too much priority has been given to parsimonious models and questions of the emergence of norms, with many aspects of social norms, such as norm-change, not being modelled.  Juvenile delinquency, group radicalisation and moral decision making are used as case studies for agent-based models of collective action extending existing models by providing an embedding into social networks, social influence via argumentation and a causal action theory of moral decision making. The major contribution of the book is to highlight the multifaceted nature of the dynamics of social norms, consisting not only of emergence, and the importance of embedding of agent-based models into existing theory.