International Conference
April 30-May 2, 2009
Hosted by the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

The emergence, development, and coherence of social groups and their internal structures and collective behaviors have become the focus of interdisciplinary research that brings together social scientists with biologists and computer scientists. The focus on this conference will be on revisiting old problems with new tools, especially questions of under what conditions can social groups be treated as individuals with respect to their collective behavior and interactions with other social groups. In order to address these issues, we will explore fundamental isomorphisms between social groups ranging from insect to human societies, and novel computational approaches for analyzing the complex dynamics of social systems.

For more information and to submit abstracts, go to http://www.asu.edu/clas/csdc/events/conference.html

We seek to initiate an ongoing conversation and collaboration among
natural, behavioral, and social scientists on the ways in which individual
entities organize themselves into groups that subsequently come to act
as higher-level entities. The processes of sociogenesis and the dynamics of
group sociality are areas of growing interest for research on human and
non-human systems, which cut across traditional disciplines.

We invite papers and posters that contribute to this emerging domain of
inquiry by advancing theoretical frameworks and showcasing cutting-edge
methods in empirical case studies on the origins, evolution, and dynamics
of groups as individuals.