Cooperation and family networks (2014)

Michel Chapuisat (Biology, FBM)
Cooperation and conflict in insects: a family affair

Cooperation and conflict in insects In particular, we find exceptional levels of cooperation in the social groups of certain species such as ants, with reproductive altruism, i.e. individuals who do not reproduce in order to help other individuals. How can this apparent altruism be reconciled with Darwinian logic, which is based on maximising the transmission of copies of one's genes? We will see that the evolution of social behaviour in insects is strongly influenced by degrees of parenthood and parent selection, which generate both cooperation and conflict within families.

Laurent Lehmann (Population genetics, FBM) 
When parenting promotes cooperative interactions: an explanation using a mathematical model of evolution

Résumé: The recirculation of kinship ties in social interactions will be studied using evolutionary modelling, using mathematical tools developed in population genetics and game theory. This will be an opportunity to reflect on the transfer of knowledge from models to reality.

Giovanni Iacca (Robotics, EPFL)
Parenting and cooperation in evolutionary robotics (lecture in English)

Résumé: Evolutionary robotics is an example of artificial evolution originating from the application of evolutionary principles to robotics. Populations of robots can "evolve" by mutation, crossover, and selection, in such a way that the robot behaviour improves from generation to generation and only the fittest robots survive and reproduce. On one hand, we can use evolutionary robotics to validate mathematical models from theoretical biology; on the other, we can use it to optimise the robot performance for a given task, such as resource collection. Here we will see some examples where sociality, kinship and altruism can be applied to (and emerge from) various robotic experiments, both in simulation and in real-world cases.

Eric Widmer & Jean Kellerhals (Sociology, Université de Genève)
Strengths, limits  and ambivalences of solidarity in parenting;

Coming

Stephanie Ginalski (Economic History, SSP)
The role of families in Swiss business in the 20th century

Résumé: The aim of this paper is to show the rôle and place of kinship ties in corporate governance, particularly with regard to the transmission of positions of power within the company on the one hand, and at the level of the construction of the interfirm network on the other. To this end, we analyse the development of these two dimensions in the case of large companies in Switzerland's main industrial sector over the course of the 20th century. Our research allows us to decipher some of the assumptions and patterns commonly associated with family capitalism. Indeed, while family capitalism has long been associated with an idea of economic backwardness or conservatism and a form of governance destined to be overturned by a more efficient form of organisation, the family capitalist model has long been associated with an idea of economic backwardness or conservatism and a form of governance destined to be overturned by a more efficient form of organisation;In the case of Switzerland, we show that the largest companies developed largely under the control and management of families, which remained dominant until the 1980s. At the same time, these families played an active role in weaving a dense network of interconnections between the largest Swiss companies, formed by the common members of these companies (interlocks). Interlocks have often been seen as a structure that has supplanted family ties in the mechanisms of cooperation and coordination between economic entities. On the contrary, we show that, in the case of Switzerland, inter-firm and family ties have helped to strengthen this system of coordination for most of the century. The role of families was thus not limited to the internal governance of the company, and until the 1980s they played an important role in the Swiss capitalist system, which was characterised by a coordinated market economy, as opposed to the free-market model. In Switzerland, family capitalism has largely resisted the managerial revolution.                                                                  

The end of the twentieth century, however, was marked by several profound transformations. To begin with, there was a decline in family control in large companies, which can be partly explained by the affirmation of market mechanisms in the Swiss system of corporate governance and the partial transition to what is known as financial or shareholder capitalism. Added to this is the introduction of more competitive practices among firms and industrial units, as reflected in the sharp increase in inter-firm links. However, the persistence of family control of certain companies allows us to qualify the advent of so-called financial or shareholder capitalism, and to assert that family capitalism also remains an important form of governance at the end of the century.

Anne-Christine Tremon (Anthropology, SSP)
Contributing to the public good and perpetuating lineage: relations between a village of origin and its diaspora in the Pearl Delta, China

Representation: In the Pearl Delta, China, many single-lineage villages experienced strong migration from the last third of the nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century. On the basis of research carried out in one of the villages of origin of the Chinese diaspora, I will show how the lineage functioned as a channel for migration and how the moral obligations attached to the migrants and their families were not always respected;The moral obligations binding migrants and their descendants to their place of origin encourage them to contribute to the public good (gongyi shiye) and thus ensure the continued existence of the lineage. I will also discuss the changes that have taken place in recent decades in relations with the diaspora as a result of the socio-economic transformations in this region.

Eva Pibiri (History, Humanities)
Parenthood in the Middle Ages: a cooperating network. The examples of war and marriage

Résumé: The médiévale family has its own specific characteristics, which are manifested through the nobility's original discourse on its identity, whether this be in the form of the marriage of the nobility to the nobility or the marriage of the nobility to the nobility;it involves the transmission of names, the hereditary system and the preservation of its memory through nécropoles and généalogical constructions.

Within this discourse and these representations, it will be necessary first of all to define the networks set up by the various ties of kinship: consanguineous, cultural, spiritual or resulting from alliance, the latter being particularly interesting in the Middle Ages as it united groups of individuals rather than two individuals.

Secondly, we will look at how kinship ties were used in requests for cooperation, during military, political or territorial conflicts, but also how the feeling of belonging to a family network could change cultural and economic practices, particularly in terms of marriage alliances.

Karin Ingold (Public Policy Analysis, University of Bern)
Water management in the Swiss mountains: the rôle of political and kinship relations;

The involvement of local stakeholders has become an often formal or recommended principle in the management of natural resources and in public policy actions. What role do kinship relations play in this context? Are local stakeholders de facto involved in water management or climate change adaptation policies? A comparative study carried out in Swiss mountain regions attempts to answer these questions by applying a network analysis.