THE FOUNDATIONS OF INEQUALITY WITHIN A SIMULATED SHAN COMMUNITY

A computer simulation based on household economic data from a Shan pea sant community is constructed to examine the interrelationships among subsistence farming, demographic developmental cycles, and household d ecision making. The results include the identification of marked asymm etries between households that occasionally surface within the simulat ed community over time. These simulated patterns provide the basis for inferring that social inequality can emerge over time within subsiste nce economies under similar social conditions. (C) 1996 Academic Press , Inc.