Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2xdlg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T14:05:46.581Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Segregation That No One Seeks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Ryan Muldoon ,
Tony Smith  and
Michael Weisberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines a series of Schelling-like models of residential segregation, in which agents prefer to be in the minority. We demonstrate that as long as agents care about the characteristics of their wider community, they tend to end up in a segregated state. We then investigate the process that causes this and conclude that the result hinges on the similarity of informational states among agents of the same type. This is quite different from Schelling-like behavior and suggests (in his terms) that segregation is an instance of macrobehavior that can arise from a wide variety of micromotives.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 38 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

The authors would like to thank Frank Keil, Scott E. Page, Thomas Schelling, and Daniel J. Singer for their helpful feedback and suggestions. Michael Weisberg would like to acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation grant SES-0957189.

References

Bruch, E., and Mare, R.. 2006. “Neighborhood Choice and Neighborhood Change.” American Journal of Sociology 112 (3): 667–709.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cressie, N. 1993. Statistics for Spatial Data. Rev. ed. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Fossett, M., and Dietrich, D.. 2009. “Effects of City Size, Shape, and Form, and Neighborhood Size and Shape in Agent-Based Models of Residential Segregation: Are Schelling-Style Preference Effects Robust?” Environment and Planning B 36 (1): 149–69.Google Scholar
Hanisch, K.-H., and Stoyan, D.. 1979. “Formulas for the Second-Order Analysis of Marked Point Processes.” Mathematische Operationsforshung und Statistik Series Statistics 10:555–60.Google Scholar
Levins, R. 1966. “The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology.” In Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 1st ed., ed. E. Sober, 18–27. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lotwick, H. W., and Silverman, B. W.. 1982. “Methods for Analysing Spatial Processes of Several Types of Points.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B 44:406–13.Google Scholar
Muldoon, R. 2007. “Robust Simulations.” Philosophy of Science 74:873–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pancs, R., and Vriend, N.. 2007. “Schelling's Spatial Proximity Model of Segregation Revisited.” Journal of Public Economics 91 (1–2): 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ripley, B. D. 1976. “The Second-Order Analysis of Stationary Point Processes.” Journal of Applied Probability 13:255–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schelling, T. 1971. “Dynamic Models of Segregation.” Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1:143–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, H. A. 1957. Models of Man: Social and Rational. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Weisberg, M. 2006. “Robustness Analysis.” Philosophy of Science 73:730–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weisberg, M., and Reisman, K.. 2008. “The Robust Volterra Principle.” Philosophy of Science 75:106–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimsatt, W. 1981. “Robustness, Reliability, and Overdetermination.” In Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences, ed. Brewer, M., 124–63. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Zhang, J. 2004. “Residential Segregation in an All-Integrationist World.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 54 (4): 533–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar