Transition of Social Organisations Driven by Gift Relationship

TL;DR

This paper models how gift exchanges influence the evolution of social organizations, demonstrating that interaction frequency can lead to disparities and diverse social structures, aligning with empirical observations.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation model showing how gift interactions drive transitions in social organization types, linking theoretical modeling with empirical data.

Findings

Emergence of social disparities based on gift frequency

Different social organization types arise from interaction dynamics

Simulation results align with observed social structures

Abstract

Anthropologists have observed gift relationships that establish social relations as well as the transference of goods in many human societies. The totality of such social relations constitutes the network. Social scientists have analysed different types of social organisations with their characteristic networks. However, the factors and mechanisms that cause the transition between these types have hardly been explained. Here, we focus on the gift as the driving force for such changes. We build the model by idealising gift interactions and simulating the consequent social change due to long-term massive interactions. We demonstrate the emergence of disparities and various social organisations depending on the frequency of the gift, consistent with the empirical data. The constructive simulation study, as presented here, explains how people's interactions shape various social structures in response to environmental conditions. Combined with empirical studies, this could contribute to the formulation of a general theory in the social sciences.