%A Rodrick Wallace
%T Selection pressure and organizational cognition: implications for the social determinants of health
%X We model the effects of Schumperterian 'selecton pressures' -- in particular Apartheid and the neoliberal 'market economy' -- on organizational cognition in minority communities, given the special role of culture in human biology.  Our focus is on the dual-function social networks by which culture is imposed and maintained on individuals and by which immediate patterns of opportunity and threat are recognized and given response.  A mathematical model based on recent advances in complexity theory displays a joint cross-scale linkage of social, individual central nervous system, and immune cognition with external selection pressure through mixed and synergistic punctuated 'learning plateaus.'  This provides a natural mechanism for addressing the social determinants of health at the individual level.  The implications of the model, particularly the predictions of synergistic punctuation, appear to be empirically testable.
%D 2001
%K evolutionary punctuation, health, inequality, information theory, phase transition, renormalization, social networks
%L cogprints1526

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