A framework for simulation in interpretive research*: Growing criminal culture

Agent-based social simulation is well known for generative explanations by growing the phenomenon of study during interactions of individual agents in a simulation run. In the debate between explanatory and interpretative accounts in the social sciences, the generative paradigm is a contribution to the explanatory account. We extend the generative paradigm to interpretative research in cultural studies. In the example of qualitative data about criminal culture, the chapter describes a research process that assists interpretative research by growing artificial cultures, following the theory of thick description. While the previous chapter has set out the methodological foundations for deriving agent rules for interpretive agent-based modelling, this chapter will pick up this issue from a more technical angle and extends the illustration of the research process to the simulation phase. Relying on qualitative data for the development of agent rules, the research process combines several steps: qualitative data analysis enables concept identification, resulting in the development of a conceptual model of the concept relations. The software tool CCD is used in conceptual modelling which assists in semi-automatic transformation in a simulation model developed in the simulation platform DRAMS. Both tools preserve traceability to the empirical evidence throughout the research process. Traceability enables the interpretation of simulations by generating a narrative storyline of the simulation. The whole process generates a thick description of the subject of study, in our example criminal culture. The simulation is characterized by a socio-cognitive coupling of agents reasoning on the state of the mind of other agents. This reveals a thick description of how participants make sense of the phenomenology of a situation from the perspective of their worldview.