Modelling Social Care Provision in An Agent-Based Framework with Kinship Networks

Current demographic trends in the UK include a fast-growing elderly population and dropping birth rates, and demand for social care amongst the aged is rising. The UK depends on informal social care -- family members or friends providing care -- for some 50\% of care provision. However, lower birth rates and a graying population mean that care availability is becoming a significant problem, causing concern amongst policy-makers that substantial public investment in formal care will be required in decades to come. In this paper we present an agent-based simulation of care provision in the UK, in which individual agents can decide to provide informal care, or pay for private care, for their loved ones. Agents base these decisions on factors including their own health, employment status, financial resources, relationship to the individual in need, and geographical location. Results demonstrate that the model can produce similar patterns of care need and availability as is observed in the real world, despite the model containing minimal empirical data. We propose that our model better captures the complexities of social care provision than other methods, due to the socioeconomic details present and the use of kinship networks to distribute care amongst family members.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figure

Empiricism in artificial life

Strong artificial life research is often thought to rely on Alife systems as sources of novel empirical data. It is hoped that by augmenting our observations of natural life, this novel data can help settle empirical questions, and thereby separate fundamental properties of living systems from those aspects that are merely contingent on the idiosyncrasies of terrestrial evolution. Some authors have questioned whether this approach can be pursued soundly in the absence of a prior, agreed-upon definition of life. Here we compare Alife’s position to that of more orthodox empirical tools that nevertheless suffer from strong theory-dependence. Drawing on these examples, we consider what kind of justification might be needed to underwrite artificial life as empirical enquiry. In the title of the first international artificial life conference

After Cannibal Tours: Cargoism and Marginality in a Post-touristic Sepik River Society

This article challenges the ethical allegory of the widely hailed film Cannibal Tours, drawing on two decades of ethnographic research in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, most recently in 2010. First, I sketch the contemporary plight of a middle Sepik, Iatmul-speaking community that yearns for a “road” to modernity and tourism but increasingly sees itself as “going backwards.” Second, I argue that tourism allows middle Sepik inhabitants to express artistically subtle messages about contemporary gender, identity, and sociality in the Melanesian postcolony. Third, I demonstrate what happens when the tourists go home. And almost all of them have done so, especially after the sale of the tourist ship, th

Methodological Investigations in Agent-Based Modelling: With Applications for the Social Sciences

This open access book examines the methodological complications of using complexity science concepts within the social science domain. The opening chapters take the reader on a tour through the development of simulation methodologies in the fields of artificial life and population biology, then demonstrates the growing popularity and relevance of these methods in the social sciences. Following an in-depth analysis of the potential impact of these methods on social science and social theory, the text provides substantive examples of the application of agent-based models in the field of demography. This work offers a unique combination of applied simulation work and substantive, in-depth philosophical analysis, and as such has potential appeal for specialist social scientists, complex systems scientists, and philosophers of science interested in the methodology of simulation and the practice of interdisciplinary computing research.

Bringing ALife and complex systems science to population health research

Despite tremendous advancements in population health in recent history, human society currently faces significant challenges from wicked health problems. These are problems where the causal mechanisms at play are obscured and difficult to address, and consequently they have defied efforts to develop effective interventions and policy solutions using traditional population health methods. Systems-based perspectives are vital to the development of effective policy solutions to seemingly intractable health problems like obesity and population aging. ALife in particular is well placed to bring interdisciplinary modeling and simulation approaches to bear on these challenges. This article summarizes the current status of systems-based approaches in population health, and outlines the opportunities that are available for ALife to make a significant contribution to these critical issues

Convolutional Neural Networks for Cellular Automata Classification

Wolfram famously developed a four-way classification of CA behaviour, with Class IV containing CAs that generate complex, localised structures. However, finding Class IV rules is far from straightforward, and can require extensive, time-consuming searches. This work presents a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) that was trained on visual examples of CA behaviour, and learned to classify CA images with a high degree of accuracy. I propose that a refinement of this system could serve as a useful aid to CA research, automatically identifying possible candidates for Class IV behaviour and universality, and significantly reducing the time required to find interesting CA rules

From Cannibal Tours to cargo cult: On the aftermath of tourism in the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea

This article challenges the moral parable of the film Cannibal Tours by drawing on long-term ethnographic research in a Iatmul-speaking village along the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea—one of the very communities featured in the film. In this article, first, I argue that Cannibal Tours silences indigenous agency and thus contributes to the very symbolic violence the film-maker aims to critique. Second, I interpret Sepik River tourist art not as meaningless trinkets, as the film implies, but as complex aesthetic expressions of postcolonial identity. Finally, I discuss the recent emergence of cargo cult ideation in a Sepik society as a response to heightened fiscal marginalization after the sale of the tourist ship in 2006. The moral force of Cannibal Tours leads most viewers to wish that the tourists would simply leave. And they have. Local villagers, however, desperately yearn for the return of tourism—and now enlist the dead in this effort

Moni, Marginality, and Modernization in Postcolonial Papua New Guinea (Final Report)

The project explores individual, family, household, and kin-group sources of income and expenditures as well as commodity aspirations, experiences with monetary institutions, and local notions of budgeting in Papua New Guinea. It maps networks of monetary relationships to see the relationships and tensions between money, traditional kinship and morality, changing notions of the family, and modern individualism. Additionally, the project investigates the symbolism of money, and the ways that Eastern latmul correlate money with traditional magic and esoterica. The study probes patterns of gender differences in the use, sharing, and perception of money as well as financial literacy and the utilization of banks. Most uniquely, the project explores local perceptions of the cost of parenting and childhood