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Exchange process-based social mechanisms and social functions: an operational approach to the macro functional aspects of agent societies

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Abstract

This paper presents elements for an operational approach to the formal modeling of the macro functional aspects of agent societies. The concept of agent society used in the paper is summarized. The exchange process-based concept of elementary social function is reviewed and a corresponding concept of elementary social mechanism is introduced. Together, these concepts allow for the recursive definition of the concept of functional system, with which one can account for the general functions performed by the core organizational structure of agent societies. Two case studies are developed to illustrate the type of functional modeling of agent societies that is enabled by the concepts introduced in the paper. The first case study concerns the functional analysis of a simple motivating thought experiment. The second concerns the use of agent societies as formal models for natural societies: it sketches the formalization of Pierre Bourdieu’s functional analysis of the reproduction process of contemporary human societies.

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Notes

  1. See Costa (2017)   for an application to ecosystems and ecological landscapes, and Sect. 8 for an example of application to human societies.

  2. We are not concerned with interoperability in the present paper, see  for a way to treat this issue.

  3. See, e.g., Costa and Dimuro (2009), Costa (2014) for more complete definitions.

  4. Universal sets, valid for all agent societies, are denoted in a bold typeface.

  5. For any set X, we denote the power-set of X by \(\wp (X)\).

  6. See Costa (2017a, b) for the introduction of the concept of interface in organizational units, considered as modular components of agent societies, and in agent societies, considered as modular components of inter-societal agent systems.

  7. We let \(\bot\) denote an undefined structure.

  8. Informally, we may also say that \(aSM\) is the social mechanism of the implemented organizational unit \(iSM\).

  9. Which is a particular condition in this example. That is, there is no general need that every EP-based social mechanism identified in an agent society be an organizational unit of that society.

  10. Thus, no need to mention here the difference between a systemic function, an activity, and a mathematical function, a mapping between two sets.

  11. Elementary systemic functions were called simply systemic functions, in our previous work. We introduce, here, the qualifier “elementary” to distinguish the elementary from the compound systemic functions, which we define below.

  12. Here, we leave open the details of this notion of composition of exchange processes.

  13. Given that both components are assumed operate independent of the demand of each other, it is often required that a buffer be available between them, for the temporary storage of the exchanged goods.

  14. Notice that a complete characterization of the way the social function of the school systems is performed, even in the summary form just presented, would require the consideration of the internal cognitive processes of the agents that constitute and personify the social structures where the school systems operate (which, of course, is out of the scope of the present paper).

  15. |X| is the cardinality of the set X.

  16. The account is schematic, since a full presentation of school systems, in the generality treated by Bourieu and Passeron, would require a too extensive treatment of the issue.

  17. Which, e.g., includes families as another important type of components.

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Acknowledgements

The author is very grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their highly useful comments and suggestions. The work was partially supported by a CNPq DT-2 Grant (Proc. 310423/2014-7).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Informática na Educação/UFRGS, Porto Alegre, Brazil

    Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa

  2. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Computação/FURG, Rio Grande, Brazil

    Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa

  3. R. João Alfredo Schneider, 77/211, 95.670-000, Gramado, RS, Brazil

    Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa

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da Rocha Costa, A.C. Exchange process-based social mechanisms and social functions: an operational approach to the macro functional aspects of agent societies. Comput Math Organ Theory 24, 188–223 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10588-017-9254-4

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