The grey zone: the 'ordinary' violence of extraordinary times

The article analyses the 'ordinary' violence of revolutionary politics, particularly acts of gendered and sexual violence that tend to be neglected in the face of the 'extraordinariness' of political terror. Focusing on the extreme left Naxalbari movement of West Bengal, it points to those morally ambiguous 'grey zones' that confound the rigid distinctions between victim and victimizer in insurrectionary politics. Public and private recollections of sexual and gender-based injuries by women activists point to the complex intermeshing of different forms of violence (everyday, political, structural, symbolic) across 'safe' and 'unsafe' spaces, 'public' and 'private' worlds, and communities of trust and those of betrayal. In making sense of these memories and their largely secret or 'untellable' nature, the article places sexual violence on a continuum of multiple and interrelated forces that are both overt and symbolic, and include a society's ways of mourning some forms of violence and silencing others. The idea of a continuum explores the 'greyness' of violence as the very object of anthropological inquiry.

Human Behavious Modelling for Discrete Event and Agent Based Simulation: A Case Study

This study is about the comparison of simulation techniques between Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and Agent Based Simulation (ABS). DES is one of the best-known types of simulation techniques in Operational Research. Recently, there has been an emergence of another technique, namely ABS. One of the qualities of ABS is that it helps to gain a better understanding of complex systems that involve the interaction of people with their environment as it allows to model concepts like autonomy and pro-activeness which are important attributes to consider. Although there is a lot of literature relating to DES and ABS, we have found none that focuses on exploring the capability of both in tackling the human behaviour issues which relates to queuing time and customer satisfaction in the retail sector. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify empirically the differences between these simulation techniques by stimulating the potential economic benefits of introducing new policies in a department store. To apply the new strategy, the behaviour of consumers in a retail store will be modelled using the DES and ABS approach and the results will be compared. We aim to understand which simulation technique is better suited to human behaviour modelling by investigating the capability of both techniques in predicting the best solution for an organisation in using management practices. Our main concern is to maximise customer satisfaction, for example by minimising their waiting times for the different services provided.

Modelling and analysing human behaviour in a department store using discrete event and agent based simulation

Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is a very popular simulation technique in Operational Research. Recently, there has been the emergence of another technique, namely Agent Based Simulation (ABS). Although there is a lot of literature relating to DES and ABS, we have found less that focuses on exploring the capabilities of both in tackling human behaviour issues. In order to understand the gap between these two simulation techniques, therefore, our aim is to understand the distinctions between DES and ABS models with the real world phenomenon in modelling and simulating human behaviour. In achieving the aim, we have carried out a case study at a department store. Both DES and ABS models will be compared using the same problem domain which is concerning on management policy in a fitting room. The behaviour of staffs while working and customers’ satisfaction will be modelled for both models behaviour understanding.

Comparing simulation output accuracy of discrete event and agent based models: a quantitative approach

In our research we investigate the output accuracy of discrete event simulation models and agent based simulation models when studying human centric complex systems. In this paper we focus on human reactive behaviour as it is possible in both modelling approaches to implement human reactive behaviour in the model by using standard methods. As a case study we have chosen the retail sector, and here in particular the operations of the fitting room in the women wear department of a large UK department store. In our case study we looked at ways of determining the efficiency of implementing new management policies for the fitting room operation through modelling the reactive behaviour of staff and customers of the department. First, we have carried out a validation experiment in which we compared the results from our models to the performance of the real system. This experiment also allowed us to establish differences in output accuracy between the two modelling methods. In a second step a multi-scenario experiment was carried out to study the behaviour of the models when they are used for the purpose of operational improvement. Overall we have found that for our case study example both, discrete event simulation and agent based simulation have the same potential to support the investigation into the efficiency of implementing new management policies.