Social-Behavioral Modeling for Complex Systems

6 Toward Generative Narrative Models of the Course and Resolution of Conflict

Steven R. Corman¹, Scott W. Ruston² and Hanghang Tong³

¹ Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

² Global Security Initiative, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

³ School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering (CIDSE), Arizona State University, Los Angeles, CA, USA

All cultures tell stories – or, more accurately, no cultures have yet been discovered that do not tell stories. In common usage, the word story implies a rather limited episode, for instance, grandpa telling a story about his childhood or that big battle in World War II. But in fact, most stories depend on larger narratives for meaning and context. Stories of the American Revolution take on their meaning of democratic empowerment only in the context of stories about British imperial rule in the pre‐revolution colonies. Contemporary stories like those surrounding the US Tea Party movement are meaningful, in part because of the context of stories of the American Revolution. Understanding the narrative of Al‐Qaeda requires knowledge of stories about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as well as the US response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and subsequent stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia (Wright 2006). Thus, stories rarely stand alone, but instead form narrative systems that both constrain and potentiate possibilities for meaning and are a key tool ...