Christopher Newman Midwest Political Science Association 2004
Elgin Community College Dark Tobacco Patch War—Revolution Analysis
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This paper proposes to utilize agent-based modeling (ABM) and Spreadsheet
Modeling
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of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps
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(Spreadsheet FCMs) to analyze the Night Riders
in the Dark Patch Tobacco War as revolutionaries. It is possible to use Spreadsheet-
FCMs as well as the NetLogo
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ABM modeling system to vary the characteristics and
investigate the operation of the process. Use of these two methodologies provides a
useful check of one against the other, as Spreadsheet-FCM concentrates on the operation
of macro-level forces and NetLogo ABM evaluates the results of interactions of many
individual agents, allowing a situation to play itself out once agents have been given
characteristics expressed as simple rules of behavior. Each method thus compensates for
the implicit assumptions (and potential omissions and oversights) of the other.
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43
L. Douglas Kiel and Euel Elliott, "Exploring Nonlinear Chaos With A Spreadsheet: A
Graphical View of Chaos for Beginners." [hereinafter "Spreadsheet Chaos for
Beginners"]. In Chaos Theory in the Social Sciences: Foundations and Applications. eds.
L. Douglas Kiel and Euel Elliott, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997)
19.
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Bart Kosko, Fuzzy Thinking. (New York: Hyperion Press, 1993) [hereinafter “Fuzzy
Thinking”] 172-177. Daniel McNeill and Paul Freiberger. Fuzzy Logic: The
Revolutionary Computer Technology That Is Changing the World. (New York: Simon &
Schuster, Inc. 1993) [hereinafter "McNeill and Freiberger Fuzzy Logic"], 237-240.
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Uri Wilensky, 1999. NetLogo.
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/
. Center for
Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern University. Evanston,
IL. [hereinafter “NetLogo Home”.] The site has excellent explanations and tutorials as
well as a free download of the entire set of NetLogo models available.
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The pitfalls of unexamined individualistic bias implicit in agent-based modeling are
discussed in David O’Sullivan and Mordechai Haklay, “Agent-based models and
individualism: is the world agent-based?” Environment and Planning A 32, No.8
(August, 2000) 1409-1425. O’Sullivan and Haklay caution against sole reliance on ABM
methods which carry the assumption that social structures have no reality aside from
patterns of individual behaviors—the danger of discounting any influence which social
practices and structures may have in shaping the schemata (and thus behavior) of
individuals. Spreadsheet FCM, by focusing on groups and structures, avoids this error.
On the other hand, Spreadsheet FCM, being limited to preset nodes of activity and levels
of interaction, could (in the absence of ABM modeling) fail to take into account
unexpected emergent qualities of a system—qualities which the ABM process enables
the modeler to observe.
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