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 California-Riverside

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 SystemNested 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 Research–Time-Mapping 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

Core

Semiperiphery

Periphery

All these blobs are societies

A Core/Periphery Hierarchy

Rise and fall of large and powerful polities within regional interpolity systems

The Afroeurasian World-System: Teggart’s Map, 100 BCE

4000 BCE

2000 CE

Time

West East

Central PGN

Central PMN

East Asian PGN

Mongol Empire

East Asian PMN

East/West Pulsations and Merger

Core-Wide Empire vs. Modern Hegemony

Synchronization of East/West City and Empire Growth/Decline Phases

Local Climate Change

West Asia Central Asia East Asia

Local Climate ChangeLocal Climate Change Local Climate Change

Agriculture

Human Population Human

Population

Pasturage and Herds

Agriculture

Human Population

Empire Formation

Steppe Empire

Formation

Empire Formation

City Growth/Decline

City Growth/Decline(Trade, Epidemics)

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Warfare Warfare