Complexity in Social Science – serie

Emotions, Embodied Cognition and the Adaptive Unconscious argues for the need to consider many other factors, drawn from disciplines such as socio-biology, evolutionary psychology, the study of the emotions, the adaptive unconscious, the senses and conscious deliberation in analysing the complex topography of social action and the making of things.These factors are taken as ecological conditions that shape the contemporary expression of complex societies, not as constraints on human plasticity. Without ‘foundations’, complex society cannot exist nor less evolve. This is the familiar pairing from complexity theory: path dependency and dynamic emergence. Inter-disciplinary and complexity perspectives need to be incorporated into the social sciences. Routinely, sociologists think of social phenomena as a distinct field, expressed in the term: the ‘social construction of’ without apparent need to refer to other material, biological, psychological, material or ecological conditions or agents.This book shows how the familiar sociological dynamics of identity, solidarity, differentiation and communication are shaped through the persistent interaction of unconscious and affective processing with conscious deliberation in newly emergent contexts. It is this re-expression, not the surpassing, of human characteristics in contemporary social action that needs to re-inform a complex, ecological approach to the theory and methodologies of the social sciences. The book is intended for a postgraduate/research audience and doctoral students to introduce and synthesise inter-disciplinary contributions to research into complexity theory in the social sciences.

Governing Complexity in the 21st Century surveys the ways in which social systems are becoming more complex. It shows how this complexity impacts every aspect of life for individuals, governments and societies in most social systems at individual, regional, national and global scales and explores how embracing ‘complexity thinking’ can greatly improve the art of governance in all policy areas. The book clearly explains the ideas and methods of complexity science—widely accepted in both the natural and social sciences—then demonstrates how ‘complexity thinking’ can be applied to improve our understanding of governance and policy actions. Providing a deep analysis of many governance challenges, including economic development and technological innovation, environment management, climate change and development in the Middle East, the book also compares national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Clear and jargon-free, this book is accessible to undergraduates and scholars alike. It is essential reading for policymakers everywhere, showcasing methods for governing effectively and efficiently in our increasingly complex world. It brings together the broad range of social and environmental science fields and will be useful for those studying or working in policy, politics and international relations, environmental issues, business management, philosophy, history and sociology.

Governing Complexity in the 21st Century surveys the ways in which social systems are becoming more complex. It shows how this complexity impacts every aspect of life for individuals, governments and societies in most social systems at individual, regional, national and global scales and explores how embracing ‘complexity thinking’ can greatly improve the art of governance in all policy areas. The book clearly explains the ideas and methods of complexity science—widely accepted in both the natural and social sciences—then demonstrates how ‘complexity thinking’ can be applied to improve our understanding of governance and policy actions. Providing a deep analysis of many governance challenges, including economic development and technological innovation, environment management, climate change and development in the Middle East, the book also compares national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Clear and jargon-free, this book is accessible to undergraduates and scholars alike. It is essential reading for policymakers everywhere, showcasing methods for governing effectively and efficiently in our increasingly complex world. It brings together the broad range of social and environmental science fields and will be useful for those studying or working in policy, politics and international relations, environmental issues, business management, philosophy, history and sociology.

How is it possible to understand society and the problems it faces? What sense can be made of the behaviour of markets and government interventions? How can citizens understand the course that their lives take and the opportunities available to them?There has been much debate surrounding what methodology and methods are appropriate for social science research. In a larger sense, there have been differences in quantitative and qualitative approaches and some attempts to combine them. In addition, there have also been questions of the influence of competing values on all social activities versus the need to find an objective understanding. Thus, this aptly named volume strives to develop new methods through the practice of ‘social synthesis’, describing a methodology that perceives societies and economies as manifestations of highly dynamic, interactive and emergent complex systems. Furthermore, helping us to understand that an analysis of parts alone does not always lead to an informed understanding, Haynes presents to the contemporary researcher an original tool called Dynamic Pattern Synthesis (DPS) – a rigorous method that informs us about how specific complex social and economic systems adapt over time.A timely and significant monograph, Social Synthesis will appeal to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, research professionals and academic researchers informed by sociology, economics, politics, public policy, social policy and social psychology.

Traditionally, Sociology has identified its subject matter as a distinct set – social phenomena – that can be taken as quite different and largely disconnected from potentially relevant disciplines such as Psychology, Economics or Planetary Ecology.Within Sociology and Human Ecology, Smith and Jenks argue that this position is no longer sustainable. Indeed, exhorting the reader to confront human ecology and its relation to the physical and biological environments, Smith and Jenks suggest that the development of understanding with regards to the position occupied by the social requires, in turn, an extension of the component disciplines and methodologies of a ‘new’ human socio-ecology. Aiming to evoke critical change to the possibility, status and range of the social sciences whilst also offering essential grounding for inter-disciplinary engagement, Sociology and Human Ecology will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Social Theory, Socio-Biology and Ecological Economics.

The Brexit vote; the election of Trump; the upsurge of European nationalism; the devolution of the Arab Spring; global violence; Chinese expansionism; disruptive climate change; the riotous instabilities of the world capitalist system…While diverse in nature, these events share a common denominator: they are less a failure of policy, and more a complex social psychological reaction to globalization, the result of which presently threatens our survival on Earth.Based on a critical reading of Freud’s Civilization and its discontents, The defiance of global commitment constructs a complex social psychology of how people all over the world are addressing globalization. Drawing on the latest advances in the cognitive, social, and complexity sciences, this timely volume presents a global model of defiance and the triangular tensions between nostalgic retreat, global aggression, and civil society, as manifested in forms ranging from nostalgic resentment and LGBTQI issues to racism and ecological aggression. Revealing how globalization and its discontents manifest the darker reaches of the human psyche and its conflicted relations with others, this insightful monograph will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as globalization studies, complexity sciences and social psychology.

Inequality in a Context of Climate Crisis after COVID uses a complex realist approach to examine the crisis of three interconnected problems: economic inequality, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic.Widely acknowledged as the key driver of political discontent and social instability, economic inequality across high and middle-income countries is profoundly interconnected with climate change. Both of these issues are now set within the particularly acute context of COVID-19 and its aftermath. Confronting the crisis of these inherently interwoven issues is now the major problem for all political and governance systems. This book uses a complex realist frame of reference to understand the character of social-cultural-economic-political-ecological systems. It gives us a vocabulary and modes of thinking to confront these societal challenges and inform future action.Contributing to our thinking about dynamic social systems, this text deploys complex realism to understand our trajectory towards increasing inequality. It puts complexity to work in addressing fundamental social issues in a context of climate crisis after COVID-19. This book will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences, in particular to those studying social inequality, climate change, heterodox economics, complex systems, and Master's students in prgrammes with an applied focus. It will be of use to policymakers and practitioners.

Inequality in a Context of Climate Crisis after COVID uses a complex realist approach to examine the crisis of three interconnected problems: economic inequality, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic.Widely acknowledged as the key driver of political discontent and social instability, economic inequality across high and middle-income countries is profoundly interconnected with climate change. Both of these issues are now set within the particularly acute context of COVID-19 and its aftermath. Confronting the crisis of these inherently interwoven issues is now the major problem for all political and governance systems. This book uses a complex realist frame of reference to understand the character of social-cultural-economic-political-ecological systems. It gives us a vocabulary and modes of thinking to confront these societal challenges and inform future action.Contributing to our thinking about dynamic social systems, this text deploys complex realism to understand our trajectory towards increasing inequality. It puts complexity to work in addressing fundamental social issues in a context of climate crisis after COVID-19. This book will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences, in particular to those studying social inequality, climate change, heterodox economics, complex systems, and Master's students in prgrammes with an applied focus. It will be of use to policymakers and practitioners.

Emotions, Embodied Cognition and the Adaptive Unconscious argues for the need to consider many other factors, drawn from disciplines such as socio-biology, evolutionary psychology, the study of the emotions, the adaptive unconscious, the senses and conscious deliberation in analysing the complex topography of social action and the making of things.These factors are taken as ecological conditions that shape the contemporary expression of complex societies, not as constraints on human plasticity. Without ‘foundations’, complex society cannot exist nor less evolve. This is the familiar pairing from complexity theory: path dependency and dynamic emergence. Inter-disciplinary and complexity perspectives need to be incorporated into the social sciences. Routinely, sociologists think of social phenomena as a distinct field, expressed in the term: the ‘social construction of’ without apparent need to refer to other material, biological, psychological, material or ecological conditions or agents.This book shows how the familiar sociological dynamics of identity, solidarity, differentiation and communication are shaped through the persistent interaction of unconscious and affective processing with conscious deliberation in newly emergent contexts. It is this re-expression, not the surpassing, of human characteristics in contemporary social action that needs to re-inform a complex, ecological approach to the theory and methodologies of the social sciences. The book is intended for a postgraduate/research audience and doctoral students to introduce and synthesise inter-disciplinary contributions to research into complexity theory in the social sciences.

The Brexit vote; the election of Trump; the upsurge of European nationalism; the devolution of the Arab Spring; global violence; Chinese expansionism; disruptive climate change; the riotous instabilities of the world capitalist system…While diverse in nature, these events share a common denominator: they are less a failure of policy, and more a complex social psychological reaction to globalization, the result of which presently threatens our survival on Earth.Based on a critical reading of Freud’s Civilization and its discontents, The defiance of global commitment constructs a complex social psychology of how people all over the world are addressing globalization. Drawing on the latest advances in the cognitive, social, and complexity sciences, this timely volume presents a global model of defiance and the triangular tensions between nostalgic retreat, global aggression, and civil society, as manifested in forms ranging from nostalgic resentment and LGBTQI issues to racism and ecological aggression. Revealing how globalization and its discontents manifest the darker reaches of the human psyche and its conflicted relations with others, this insightful monograph will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as globalization studies, complexity sciences and social psychology.

Power needs abstraction, to make the unwieldy complexity of the social world legible and manageable. The proposition at the heart of Seeing Like a Platform is that digital technology brings new metaphors through which power operates. While industrial modernity saw society as a machinery to be designed according to detailed blueprints, digital modernity views society as organic and alive, to be herded and nudged through digital infrastructures, AI, and algorithms.Seeing Like a Platform explores the history, meaning, and far-reaching consequences of this epistemological shift. From social movements to Wikipedia, from digital platforms to city planning, from social science to media, society is being redefined by ideas from complexity science. While complexity offers a vision of a self-organized society freed from hierarchies and overbearing bureaucracies, it simultaneously enables new forms of domination and control.Through theoretical reflections and case studies, Seeing Like a Platform offers an inquiry into digital modernity. Accessibly written and broad ranging, it is an essential reading for scholars, students, and practitioners in fields such as sociology, political science, urban studies, and technology studies. It will also interest anyone keen to understand the profound impact of digital technologies on governance, social organization, and everyday life.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Power needs abstraction, to make the unwieldy complexity of the social world legible and manageable. The proposition at the heart of Seeing Like a Platform is that digital technology brings new metaphors through which power operates. While industrial modernity saw society as a machinery to be designed according to detailed blueprints, digital modernity views society as organic and alive, to be herded and nudged through digital infrastructures, AI, and algorithms.Seeing Like a Platform explores the history, meaning, and far-reaching consequences of this epistemological shift. From social movements to Wikipedia, from digital platforms to city planning, from social science to media, society is being redefined by ideas from complexity science. While complexity offers a vision of a self-organized society freed from hierarchies and overbearing bureaucracies, it simultaneously enables new forms of domination and control.Through theoretical reflections and case studies, Seeing Like a Platform offers an inquiry into digital modernity. Accessibly written and broad ranging, it is an essential reading for scholars, students, and practitioners in fields such as sociology, political science, urban studies, and technology studies. It will also interest anyone keen to understand the profound impact of digital technologies on governance, social organization, and everyday life.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

This book is the first attempt to provide a general theory of self-destruction in complex systems applicable to natural, social and cultural phenomena.The contributors work collaboratively to prove that many of the nondistributed complex systems in nature and society sooner or later experience critical development leading to unintended and irreversible self-annihilation. The individual chapters also show that the relations of such systems to their own distinctiveness and other systems may result in specific communicative pathologies (such as redundancy, inflation and noisy signalling) which tend to mitigate or reinforce each other, depending on circumstances. Finally, the volume updates some popular models of systemic self-destruction—from autoimmunity and self-organized criticality to imperial overstretch—and discusses some prominent cases (from supernova explosions to the civil war following the Russian Revolution of 1917).The interdisciplinary style of narration ensures the accessibility of the materials and theories presented for the specialists and students from different fields. As such, it will appeal to those interested in complexity studies from the areas of sociology, history, media and communication studies, immunology, computer science, literary criticism, cultural studies, political science and international relations.

This book is the first attempt to provide a general theory of self-destruction in complex systems applicable to natural, social and cultural phenomena.The contributors work collaboratively to prove that many of the nondistributed complex systems in nature and society sooner or later experience critical development leading to unintended and irreversible self-annihilation. The individual chapters also show that the relations of such systems to their own distinctiveness and other systems may result in specific communicative pathologies (such as redundancy, inflation and noisy signalling) which tend to mitigate or reinforce each other, depending on circumstances. Finally, the volume updates some popular models of systemic self-destruction—from autoimmunity and self-organized criticality to imperial overstretch—and discusses some prominent cases (from supernova explosions to the civil war following the Russian Revolution of 1917).The interdisciplinary style of narration ensures the accessibility of the materials and theories presented for the specialists and students from different fields. As such, it will appeal to those interested in complexity studies from the areas of sociology, history, media and communication studies, immunology, computer science, literary criticism, cultural studies, political science and international relations.

This book presents an innovative framework for conceptualising families as complex systems and for understanding and supporting positive change, adaptation and resilience. The development of this framework was based on a qualitative and abductive research process targeting change and resilience processes in multi-challenged families.The theoretical novelty of this book is mostly expressed in the notion of Love-Force: a relational force emerging from the coupling processes between individuals with potential transformative effects on them, their interactions and environments. This book introduces a new vocabulary for understanding the complexity of families as complex systems and their change and resilience processes. Love-Force is presented as a supreme expression of the complexity of families and human bonds. It elaborates on the complexity of the family bonds, on the relation of Love-Force to change and resilience and its contributions to the conceptualisation of the Potential for Family Change.Raising important theoretical and methodological challenges and questions, it presents a guide for future interdisciplinary research in the domains of complexity and family sciences and advances in practice. As such, it will be of interest to anyone interested in the complexity of human relations and to complexity scientists as much as family theorists, researchers and practitioners.

How is it possible to understand society and the problems it faces? What sense can be made of the behaviour of markets and government interventions? How can citizens understand the course that their lives take and the opportunities available to them?There has been much debate surrounding what methodology and methods are appropriate for social science research. In a larger sense, there have been differences in quantitative and qualitative approaches and some attempts to combine them. In addition, there have also been questions of the influence of competing values on all social activities versus the need to find an objective understanding. Thus, this aptly named volume strives to develop new methods through the practice of ‘social synthesis’, describing a methodology that perceives societies and economies as manifestations of highly dynamic, interactive and emergent complex systems. Furthermore, helping us to understand that an analysis of parts alone does not always lead to an informed understanding, Haynes presents to the contemporary researcher an original tool called Dynamic Pattern Synthesis (DPS) – a rigorous method that informs us about how specific complex social and economic systems adapt over time.A timely and significant monograph, Social Synthesis will appeal to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, research professionals and academic researchers informed by sociology, economics, politics, public policy, social policy and social psychology.

Traditionally, Sociology has identified its subject matter as a distinct set – social phenomena – that can be taken as quite different and largely disconnected from potentially relevant disciplines such as Psychology, Economics or Planetary Ecology.Within Sociology and Human Ecology, Smith and Jenks argue that this position is no longer sustainable. Indeed, exhorting the reader to confront human ecology and its relation to the physical and biological environments, Smith and Jenks suggest that the development of understanding with regards to the position occupied by the social requires, in turn, an extension of the component disciplines and methodologies of a ‘new’ human socio-ecology. Aiming to evoke critical change to the possibility, status and range of the social sciences whilst also offering essential grounding for inter-disciplinary engagement, Sociology and Human Ecology will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Social Theory, Socio-Biology and Ecological Economics.

This book assesses the value and relevance of the literature on complex systems to policy-making, contributing to both social theory and policy analysis. For this purpose it develops two key ideas: agile action and transformative realism. The book takes some major themes from complexity science, presents them in a clear and accessible manner and applies them to core problems in sociological theory and policy analysis. Combining complexity science with perspectives from institutionalism and political economy, this book is the first to integrate these fields conceptually, methodologically and in terms of the implications for policy analysis and practice.Room shows how the models and methods of social and complexity science can be jointly deployed and applied to empirical areas of public policy. He demonstrates how complexity science can provide insight into the nonlinear dynamics of the social world, but why these need to be understood by reference to the unequal distribution of power and advantage. Among the sociological debates with which the book engages are those concerned with causation and explanation, rational action and positional competition, and the place of evolutionary concepts in accounts of social change. Among the policy debates are those concerned with evidence and policy, the dynamics of inequality, and libertarian paternalism. The book will appeal to final year undergraduates and postgraduate students in social sciences; scholars in social and policy studies broadly defined; policy-makers who want to go beyond conventional discussions of evidence-based policy-making and cross-national lesson-drawing, and consider how to approach complex and turbulent policy terrains; and a wider range of scholars in other disciplines where complexity science is already well developed.

Realism and Complexity in Social Science is an argument for a new approach to investigating the social world, that of complex realism. Complex realism brings together a number of strands of thought, in scientific realism, complexity science, probability theory and social research methodology. It proposes that the reality of the social world is that it is probabilistic, yet there exists enough invariance to make the discovery and explanation of social objects and causal mechanisms possible. This forms the basis for the development of a complex realist foundation for social research, that utilises a number of new and novel approaches to investigation, alongside the more traditional corpus of quantitative and qualitative methods. Research examples are drawn from research in sociology, epidemiology, criminology, social policy and human geography. The book assumes no prior knowledge of realism, probability or complexity and in the early chapters, the reader is introduced to these concepts and the arguments against them. Although the book is grounded in philosophical reasoning, this is in a direct and accessible style that will appeal both to social researchers with a methodological interest and philosophers with an interest in social investigation.

Realism and Complexity in Social Science is an argument for a new approach to investigating the social world, that of complex realism. Complex realism brings together a number of strands of thought, in scientific realism, complexity science, probability theory and social research methodology. It proposes that the reality of the social world is that it is probabilistic, yet there exists enough invariance to make the discovery and explanation of social objects and causal mechanisms possible. This forms the basis for the development of a complex realist foundation for social research, that utilises a number of new and novel approaches to investigation, alongside the more traditional corpus of quantitative and qualitative methods. Research examples are drawn from research in sociology, epidemiology, criminology, social policy and human geography. The book assumes no prior knowledge of realism, probability or complexity and in the early chapters, the reader is introduced to these concepts and the arguments against them. Although the book is grounded in philosophical reasoning, this is in a direct and accessible style that will appeal both to social researchers with a methodological interest and philosophers with an interest in social investigation.

This book presents an innovative framework for conceptualising families as complex systems and for understanding and supporting positive change, adaptation and resilience. The development of this framework was based on a qualitative and abductive research process targeting change and resilience processes in multi-challenged families.The theoretical novelty of this book is mostly expressed in the notion of Love-Force: a relational force emerging from the coupling processes between individuals with potential transformative effects on them, their interactions and environments. This book introduces a new vocabulary for understanding the complexity of families as complex systems and their change and resilience processes. Love-Force is presented as a supreme expression of the complexity of families and human bonds. It elaborates on the complexity of the family bonds, on the relation of Love-Force to change and resilience and its contributions to the conceptualisation of the Potential for Family Change.Raising important theoretical and methodological challenges and questions, it presents a guide for future interdisciplinary research in the domains of complexity and family sciences and advances in practice. As such, it will be of interest to anyone interested in the complexity of human relations and to complexity scientists as much as family theorists, researchers and practitioners.