dynamics of urban, regional and
ecosystem networks Since the Iron age
Christopher Chase-Dunn and Robert Hanneman
Sociology, University of California-Riverside
Bai-Lian Li
Botany and Plant Sciences, University of CaliforniaRiverside
Peter Turchin
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of
Connecticut
Douglas R. White
Social Dynamics and Evolution, University of
California, Irvine
city lights
To be submitted to the National Science Foundation’s
Human and Social Dynamics initiative
A 4 year research project. Start date: January 1, 2005.
Topical areas = "agents of change" and "dynamics of
human behavior"
Resource-related emphasis areas: spatial social science,
modeling human and social dynamics, and instrumentation
and data resource development.
This will be one sub-proposal module within a
coordinated larger infrastructural proposal with
CSISS(UCSB), IMBS(UCI), IROWS(UCR) ESRI and
SFI.
This project will model urban growth/decline phases and the
centralization/decentralization phases of interstate systems in the
preindustrial and modern regional systems, and will test propositions
about how the emergence and eventual predominance of commodity
production and markets may have altered the dynamics of urban
growth and rise and fall.
The data resource development will focus on city and state sizes,
trade routes and amounts, warfare, climate change, and epidemic
diseases, and the classification of states and nomadic peoples as to
their position in intersocietal hierarchies (core, periphery and
semiperiphery). The project will develop multiple indicator
measurement error models to construct many of the quantitative
estimates. Data resource development will include the publication of a
raw data compendium on the web as well as our final estimates. This
will be a spatio-temporal data archive on all the large cities and states
since 1000 BCE as well as data on climate change, trade, migration
and incursions, warfare and population size estimates.
The theoretical approach will employ Peter Turchin's model of the
dynamics of agrarian state growth and decline, network theory and the
population pressure iteration model. The "agents of change" focus will
test the hypothesis of “semiperipheral development” - that it is
semiperipheral societies that expand systems, make larger states,
innovate and implement new techniques of power and new productive
technologies that transform the logic of social change.
We will develop dynamic nonlinear models of regional systems. These
models will explain synchrony among distant regions, and we can test
our models with the database that we will produce.
The spatial and temporal focus will be: four regions in Afroeurasia from
1000 BCE to 1500 CE and then global to the present. The analyses will
use GIS, spatio-temporal statistical methods, network analyses and
structural equations modeling to test our theoretical models.
The comparative world-systems perspective: The
best unit of analysis for explaining social
evolution is world-systems.
What is a World-System?:
A System of Societies – Intersocietal System
Nested Interaction Networks
Core/Periphery Relations
Agency: The Iteration Model of Hierarchy Formation and
Technological Development: Semiperipheral
Development
The Rise and Fall of Large Polities in interpolity systems
Urbanization
–Time-Mapping
Research
Cities, Empires and
States Since 1000 BCE
–The Central System
–Pulsations of Integration of the
Afroeurasian World Island
–Synchrony of East/West City and Empire
Growth/Decline Phases
–The New Chandler: improving our
knowledge of the population sizes of the
largest cities in East Asia, South Asia, and
the West Asian/Mediterranean regions since
1000 BCE
Interstate system and world economy
A Core/Periphery Hierarchy
Core
All these blobs
are societies
Semiperiphery
Periphery
Rise and fall of large and powerful polities within
regional interpolity systems
The Afroeurasian World-System:
Teggart’s Map, 100 BCE
East/West Pulsations and Merger
4000
Central PGN
BCE
East Asian PGN
Time
Central PMN
Mongol Empire
East Asian PMN
2000
CE
West
East
Core-Wide Empire vs. Modern
Hegemony
Synchronization of East/West City and Empire Growth/Decline Phases
West Asia
East Asia
Central Asia
Local Climate Change
Local Climate Change
Local Climate Change
?
Agriculture
Human
Population
Human
Population
Warfare
Empire
Formation
Agriculture
Pasturage
and Herds
City
Growth/
Decline
Steppe
Empire
Formation
?
Human
Population
Warfare
(Trade, Epidemics)
Empire
Formation
City
Growth/
Decline