In a recent (2018) paper, Rubin and O’Connor employ an agent-based model from evolutionary game theory to study how norms and networks of scientific collaborations may evolve to discriminate against members of marginalized social groups, merely based on differences in group size. Their findings concur with a previous study using replicator dynamics (see O’Connor and Bruner), where the authors conclude “these disadvantaged outcomes for minority groups may help explain why some groups, including women and racial minorities, tend to cluster into subdisciplines in academia.” (O’Connor and Bruner 2019, p. 102). However, the dynamics of social groups are rarely as simple as two cleanly separated social identities interacting, which is why “[t]heories of intersectionality highlight the complex, interconnected, and cross-cutting relationships between diverse modes of domination, including (but not limited to) sexism, racism, class oppression, and heterosexism.” (Allen 2022). These complexities motivate the question of whether intersectionality, too, impacts the norms and networks of scientific collaborations.
This repo contains an extension of the base model from Rubin and O’Connor 2018 to include the notion of strong intersectionality adopted from another replicator-based study, namely O’Connor, Bright, and Bruner 2019. My model (written for a term paper at the MCMP) features four groups of agents given by the intersections of two social identity features, playing simple Nash-demand games. It can be used to show that between the largest and smallest of these groups, fixed networks lead to a strong cultural Red King effect where bigger social groups end up discriminating against smaller ones; that intersectionally marginalizing norms of collaboration induce homophily when networks are subject to change; and that if both evolve simultaneously, the model tends to produce homophilic and discriminatory scientific collaboration that disadvantages those with intersectional identities. This indeed shows that intersectionality has the potential to impact scientific collaboration in multiple, negative ways.
- Amy Allen (2022) “Feminist Perspectives on Power.”
- Justin P. Bruner (2019) “Minority (dis) advantage in population games.”
- Cailin O’Connor (2019) “The origins of unfairness: Social categories and cultural evolution.”
- Cailin O’Connor, Liam Kofi Bright & Justin P. Bruner (2019) “The emergence of intersectional disadvantage.”
- Cailin O’Connor & Justin P. Bruner (2019) “Dynamics and diversity in epistemic communities.”
- Hannah Rubin & Cailin O’Connor (2018) “Discrimination and collaboration in science.”