856
Socio-Economic Inequality and Complexity of Social Systems

Friday, 20 July 2018: 17:30-19:20
Location: 802A (MTCC SOUTH BUILDING)
RC51 Sociocybernetics (host committee)

Language: English

The challenges of social and economic inequality have been known since the onset of civilizations. Already in the 20th Century several major works on that topic were published by Amartya Sen but a new significant impulse has been given to the discussion on that topic after the publication of research by Thomas Piketty and co-authors. Those publications were followed by other works of Joseph Stiglitz and Branko Milanovic. They were accompanied by more or less “shocking” reports and results of empirical research papers illustrating dramatic discrepancies in distribution of income and wealth in the world society (OECD, UNDP, UNU/WIDER, World Bank), The discussion on inequality includes two major approaches. The first one embodies narrow empirical approaches, often without a deeper explanation of causes. In the second approach, inequality is analyzed within a framework of broad ideological and political considerations. There exists a research gap, in which the middle-range theoretical discourse based on systems thinking, and complex systems studies, in particular, can be placed. Analogies, metaphors and mathematical models deriving from complex systems studies can be helpful in a better understanding of causes as effects of socio-economic inequality. Applications of the following ideas can be considered: consequences of Pareto distribution, Lorenz distribution, Zipf’s Law, scale-free networks, thermodynamic models and analogies, hierarchical structure of systems, holarchy, heterarchy, functional differentiation of systems and other formal models. Parallely, qualitative ideas of complexity such as the Luhmann’s concept and others can be applied. The collection of proposed ideas is obviously not limited.
Session Organizer:
Czeslaw MESJASZ, Cracow University of Economics, Poland
Chair:
Bernd HORNUNG, University Hospital Giessen and Marburg, Germany
Oral Presentations
Was That Capitalism? a Culturomic Analysis of the English Language Area in 19th and 20th Century
Steffen ROTH, Yerevan State University, Armenia; Vladislav VALENTINOV, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe, Germany; Arunas AUGUSTINAITIS, Kazimiero Simonaviciaus University, Lithuania; Artur MKRTICHYAN, Yerevan State University, Armenia
E-Commerce from Regional Communities
Bruno DOMINGUEZ, IPN-UPIICSA, Mexico
Critical Evolutionary Systems Theory: Social Movements As System Attractors
Shaun BARTONE, U. New Brunswick, Fredericton NB Canada, USA
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