A GALLERY OF SOCIAL STRUCTURES

Morphing Physical Space with Social Ties
- visualizing the social institution of hxaro

How can we access the special meaning of social ties among a set of actors for whom the locations of their residence are known ?

The visualizations below try to answer the theoretical question, how the reciprocal gift exchange (hxaro) among the !Kung gives rise to a social institution and what it looks like. Information about exchanges which are used as a basic information are understood as a mean to establish long-term relationships of social and economic support in a hunter and gatherer society lacking central authorites and life insurance.

The visualizations are achieved in two steps: first different sets of locations have been specified as constraints, which reflect the camp affiliations of the !kung and their spatial distances to each other. A permutation procedure has worked on each of the circles minimize the overall length of exchange ties in the first image: the result is a visualization where actors which are mainly oriented to their own camp move to the periphery of the total system, while actors with strong affiliations to other camps are take positions which are oriented towards the center of all camps into the direction of their main affiliations.

• Kung Locations
  ! click small visualization for large image (80 Kb);
  
  Kung Exchange, and individual camp affiliations
  

The second step tries to relax the locality constraints of the first solution. Here we use the information of the ongoing exchanges and their frequencies to put strain on the constraints of locality (shown above). Depending on to whom an actor is linked by exchanges he will move to a new location. His new location will be inside the original circles if he has exchanges in his own camp only, The new location will be outside of his camp somewhere in the center when his exchange relationships involve mainly actors from other camps.
• Result of Morphing the Kung Spatial Structure with Social Ties
  ! click small visualization for large image (80 Kb);
  
  Social exchange relations put strain on the original camp affiliations: actors are moved into the direction of the locactions of their main exchange partners.
  

The morphing process itself depends on the decision to which degree we allow the locations of the spatial configuration to enter into the new solution. If you are interested to see how the new solution gradually emerges you can look at a series of frames taken from an animation of the gravity procedure.