Publication Date:
2007-09-18
Description:
We identify a process of global pattern formation that causes regions to differentiate by culture. Violence arises at boundaries between regions that are not sufficiently well defined. We model cultural differentiation as a separation of groups whose members prefer similar neighbors, with a characteristic group size at which violence occurs. Application of this model to the area of the former Yugoslavia and to India accurately predicts the locations of reported conflict. This model also points to imposed mixing or boundary clarification as mechanisms for promoting peace.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Lim, May -- Metzler, Richard -- Bar-Yam, Yaneer -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2007 Sep 14;317(5844):1540-4.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉New England Complex Systems Institute, 24 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17872443" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Bosnia and Herzegovina
;
Conflict (Psychology)
;
Croatia
;
*Culture
;
Demography
;
*Ethnic Groups
;
Humans
;
India
;
Models, Statistical
;
Monte Carlo Method
;
Population Dynamics
;
*Violence/prevention & control/statistics & numerical data
;
Yugoslavia
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
