Cooperation Science
Fifteen years ago, I gave a TED Talk about a new narrative about how humans get things done and called for an interdisciplinary study of cooperation. At that time, it didn't appear that many scientists in different fields -- psychology, sociology, biology, computer science, political science, economics -- understood that their research was converging on the complex collective phenomenon of human cooperation. So in the mid-2000s, I worked with Institute for the Future on catalyzing a discipline. We published a report and a map of "Technologies of Cooperation." (See all my posts about cooperation in my Cooperation Theory collection)
Which is why I am happy to see the emergence of The Cooperation Science Network: "a group of scholars spanning many disciplines who come together to understand the fundamental principles driving cooperation and the forces that can compromise it." (And happy that fellow Reedie Athena Aktipis appears to be driving it).
They convene online discussions that resemble the online courses I presented a decade ago:
Join scholars for a live discussion of cooperation theory classics
From Hamilton's work on kin selection to Ostrom's classic work on managing the commons, our Foundations of Cooperation Livestream brings modern cooperation researchers together to discuss new books and papers and the historical context and roots of their work. Join us on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for livestreams and ask your questions in real time.
They offer a winter school:
An interdisciplinary winter school
At the ASU Interdisciplinary Study of Cooperation Winter School, students discover the fundamental processes underlying cooperation in diverse systems. The lectures and seminars are taught by leading cooperation researchers from diverse disciplines including Psychology, Evolutionary Biology, Anthropology, Sociology and Computational Modeling. Through lectures, seminars and small tutorial sessions, students in the Winter School have the opportunity to learn from leading cooperation researchers, build new skills and develop projects.
And they convene symposia:
Cooperation and Conflict Symposia
Answering the big questions in cooperation theory
The biannual Cooperation & Conflict Symposium hosted at ASU invites diverse scholars from around the world to come together to address the most pressing questions in cooperation theory through interdisciplinary dialogue. The first symposium was held in 2017 on the question How do large-scale systems solve the problem of detecting, controlling and eliminating cheating? And the second was held in 2019, looking at how we tell Tell fact from Fiction in the Age of Information.