Self-organizing Networks and GIS Tools Cases of Use for the Study of Trading Cooperation (1400-1800)

  Self-organizing Networks and GIS Tools Cases of Use for the Study of Trading Cooperation (1400-1800) (14.8 MiB, 11,067 hits)

The collected essays comprised in this work are the result of the first years of research by the scientists who make up the DynCoopNet work team. In the framework of the EUROCORES Programme as part of the TECT call – The Evolution of Cooperation and Trading – of the European Science Foundation, this was one of five projects approved by this ambitious, interdisciplinary scientific programme. The aim of this programme has been the study of the emergence of and evolutionary processes of exchange and cooperation that occur in nature, including human societies. This programme was based on a series of common ideas. The phenomenon of cooperation essentially has, at various organisational levels, the same roots and raison d’être in all evolutionary processes whether genetic or historic-cultural. Scientists know that these processes emerge in various social contexts or ecosystems, where bacteria or human societies in multinational alliances have been elements involved. However, in most cases, Science is still unable to determine and define cooperation and why it takes place. Despite a relative lack of research, the study of cooperation has had numerous, convergent developments in various fields, such as Economics, Biology and Sociology. It can be said, in practice, that there is a common theory which explains biological and cultural evolution. This theory highlights features of interactions between agents or entities, which have developed even more in relation to economic behaviour than Social and Human Sciences. In this case, our project has been greatly enriched by an excellent bibliographical base. Generally speaking, theories relating to the emergence of cooperation mechanisms have been applied in various fields, from Neuroscience (especially with regards to Cognitive Theory) to Economic History (Game Theory).

Within this broad research framework, “Dynamic Cooperation Networks” is an interdisciplinary project with historians, mathematicians, cartographers and GIS engineers from the USA, Portugal, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, India, Sweden, Mozambique and other countries. This collaborative research team has focused on how cooperation was significant within self-organising networks in the so-called First Global Age (1400-1800).

Ana Crespo Solana (Coord.) PhD in Geography and History Prof. at the Centre for Humanities and Social Science in the CSIC (Spanish Council of Research)

David Alonso García (Coord.) Ph. D. for the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain – Department of Modern History

Other authors:

J. B. Owens, Ph.D. – Research Professor of History and Director of the Geographically-Integrated History Laboratory at Idaho State University (USA)

Monica Wachowicz, Professor – University of New Brunswick, Canada

Miguel Ángel Bernabé Poveda, Ph.D. – Professor in Cartography at Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and Head of the Mercator Research Group

María José García Rodríguez, Ph.D. – Associate professor in Cartography and GIS at Alcala University

Adolfo Urrutia Zambrana – Ph.D. Student at Technical University of Madrid, Spain

Amélia Polónia – Associate professor of History at the Department of History, Political and International Studies at the University of Porto

Amândio J.M. Barros – specialized in maritime and in economic history. Ph.D. degree in History in the University of Porto (Faculty of Arts), Post-doctoral graduate in the University of Porto and University of Valladolid

Esther Pérez Asensio – member of the GIS laboratory of the Center for Humanities and Social Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

Roberto Maestre – Ph.D. Student in the fields of Logic and Algebra models

Isabel Del-Bosque – Member of the Spanish SDI Working Group and the National Technical Committee for Standardization (AENOR) of digital geographic information

Juan Manuel Sánchez-Crespo Camacho – Degree in History for the Autonoma University of Madrid, Spain

Antoni Picazo – Associate Professor at the University of Balearic Islands

Rila Mukherjee – Professor of History at University of Hyderabad, India

Marta Guerrero Nieto, Ph.D. – investigator in the Knowledge Engineering Research Institute (IIC) at UAM

Willington Siabato – Teaching Fellow at the Department of Surveying Engineering and Cartography, and Research Assistant at the Laboratory of Geographical Information Technologies from the Technical University of Madrid (UPM)

Alberto Fernández Wyttenbach – Market Innovation Officer at the European GNSS Agency (GSA) belonging to the European Commission

Werner Scheltjens – Post-doctoral fellow at the University of Groningen, on a project about the Dutch maritime transport sector in the early modern period