When constructing multiagent systems, the designer may approach the system as a collection of individuals or may view the entire system as a whole. In addition to these approaches, it may be beneficial to consider the interactions between the individuals and the whole. Borrowing ideas from the notion of social construction and building on previous work in synthetic social construction, this paper presents a framework wherein autonomous agents engage in a dialectic relationship with the society of agents around them. In this framework, agents recognize patterns of social activity in their societies, group such patterns into institutions, and form computational representations of those institutions. The paper presents a design framework describing this method of institutionalization, some implementation suggestions, and a discussion of possible applications.

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