This project pursues a novel direction in cultural analysis. The investigator proposes to build a computer model of a Polynesian social system, and then apply it to an ethnographic problem concerning the historical articulation of gender, warfare, and stratification. It is an exploratory approach that seeks to specify the rules by which a Polynesian chiefdom (Tonga) operates, including its conventions concerning marriage, production, redistribution, tribute, expansion, warfare, etc., and then to simulate them over time so that system dynamics and relationships can be observed and recorded. The outcomes of simulations produce a `virtual history` that can then be used to trace the effects of changing warfare and stratification patterns on customary institutions related to gender. The significance of this project is not in `replaying` real history but rather in being able to explore the logical constraints and implications of social dynamics. In so doing, computer simulations can be used to develop fruitful hypotheses about how social forces and institutions articulate and therefore what impels or impedes their change. In this project, computer modeling and simulation are used to assist the ethnographer in building and testing middle-level anthropological theory about how gender, warfare, and stratification operated and interacted over time in the Tongan social system. Results will directly contribute to important debates in the literature concerning how gender relates to the reproduction and transformation of chiefdoms. In its broader application, this project is a step in the development of an agent-based computer modeling approach to the study of culture, and promises to offer a powerful descriptive tool for the study of social process and change. The investigator is a traditional ethnographer who is moving, in mid-career, toward combining computer modeling approaches to represent culture with descriptive ethnography. This POWRE award affords her the opportunity to build significantly on her preliminary modeling work, bringing three years of exploratory work to fruition. Her ultimate goal is to develop the potential of simulation research in anthropology in order to enable more powerful analyses of social change, namely one that combines a commitment to the rich tradition of narrative ethnography with the precision and scope that computer analysis can offer. This is both a new career direction and new venue for anthropology.
