Sociology and complexity science
Encyclopedia
Sociology and complexity science (acronym SACS) is the term used to describe a growing network of research taking place at the intersection of sociology
and complexity science.
The cross disciplinary and interstitial nature of SACS does not meet the traditional academic definitions of discipline, field of study, or school of thought. SACS is not simply the application of sociology to yet another topic or domain of inquiry it is just as much about physicists using the tools of complexity science to study sociological topics as it is about sociologists studying complex systems.
John Urry
dates the formal emergence of SACS to around 1998, when researchers in the social sciences began to make what he calls the complexity turn. Urry defines the complexity turn as the critical incorporation of the tools of the complexity sciences into the social sciences. Examples of this “turn” in sociology include: (1) Nigel Gilbert
’s creation, in 1998, of the international, electronic periodical, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
; (2) David Byrne’s publication, in 1998, of Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences; and (3) the formal recognition of sociocybernetics
as a research committee (RC51) at the 1998 World Congress of Sociology in Montreal. However, scholars such as Niklas Luhmann
and Edgar Morin
have been working on these problems for quite some time, developing altogether new ways of thinking about sociological inquiry based on their epistemological theorization of complexity and complex systems.
While the substantive topics addressed by the scholars of SACS are numerous, there is a common focus. In one way or another, the overarching substantive concern is social complexity and the structure and dynamics of complex social systems. In the SACS literature, complex social systems are alternatively referred to as social systems
, complex systems
or complex adaptive systems.
and Robert Merton; and (3) the complexity turn era (1990s to present).
been and continues to be a profession of complexity. The primary basis for this challenge is western society. To study society is, by definition, to study complexity. Starting with the industrial and “industrious” revolutions of the middle 18th to early 20th centuries western society transitioned—teleology
not implied—into a type of complexity that, in many ways, did not previously exist. Furthermore, as industrialization evolved into its later stages (i.e., Taylorism, Fordism, post-Fordism
, etc), the complexity of western society evolved as well (See Arnold J. Toynbee
). The latest developments in this complexity are post-industrialism and, most recently, across societies throughout the world, globalization
.
Of the numerous scholars writing during the middle 19th to early 20th centuries, perhaps the best known systems thinkers were Auguste Comte
, Herbert Spencer
, Karl Marx
, Max Weber
, Emile Durkheim
and Vilfredo Pareto
. While not all of these scholars were sociologists, their systems thinking had a tremendous impact on organized sociology. Three characteristics identify these scholars as systems thinkers: (1) They conceptualized their work as a direct response to the increasing complexity of western society; (2) they conceptualized the changes taking place in western society in systems terms; and (3) their failure and successes provide scholars today with examples of how best to think about social complexity in systems terms. Failures include treating social systems in strictly biological terms, such as homeostasis. Successes include Pareto's 80/20 rule and Durkheim's notion of system differentiation (sociology)
.
' action theory
and, to a lesser extent, by the work of Robert Merton
. Parsons developed a theory of society and social evolution through a volunataristic methodology and is known for his theory of systems, structural functionalism
. Parsons’ work foreshadows the development of complexity science and, more specifically, SACS, in two important ways: First, it integrated sociological inquiry with systems science. Parsons grounded his theory in a synthesis of classical sociology, cybernetics, and the cognitive and biological sciences. Second, through his development of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, Parsons foreshadowed the trans-disciplinary, center-based orientation of complexity science—from the Santa Fe Institute
to the Centre for Research in Social Simulation.
(2005) calls the complexity turn in the social sciences. As Urry explains, most of the work being done within the SACS community got its start in the late 1990s, around the same time that complexity science was finally gaining international recognition; thanks, in large measure, to the growing prestige of the
Santa Fe Institute (Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA), the birthplace of complexity science. During the late 1990s, the scholars of SACS were spread out across Western Europe and North America, working (for the most part) in intellectual and geographical isolation from one another, pursuing diverse areas of study that, at the time, seemed hardly related. Over the last ten years, however, the complexity turn work has begun to coalesce into several distinct areas of study—some of which are reviewed below. These areas not only draw upon systems thinking, systems science and cybernetics, but they also pull from a variety of rich disciplines, traditions and areas of research. Again, that is why this area is called SACS—sociology AND complexity science.
), global diseases, and corporate interactions. Through the usage of key concepts and methods in social network analysis, agent-based modeling, theoretical physics, and modern mathematics (particularly graph theory
and fractal geometry), this field of inquiry has made some significant insights into the dynamics and structure of social systems (i.e., small-world phenomenon, scale-free networks, etc.). This area of research comprises two dominant sub-clusters: the new science of networks and global network society. The former primarily emerges out of the work of Duncan Watts, Albert-László Barabási
, Nicholas A. Christakis
and colleagues, while the latter (which overlaps with the British-based School of Complexity) primarily emerges out of the work of John Urry
and the sociological study of globalization. The latter is linked to the work of Manuel Castells and the later work of Immanuel Wallerstein which, since 1998, increasingly makes use of complexity science, particularly the work of Ilya Prigogine.
In terms of historical lineage, complex social network analysis is linked to a variety of intellectual traditions, above and beyond systems thinking, including graph theory
, social network
analysis in sociology, and mathematical sociology
. It even has links to chaos theory
and dynamical systems theory
through the work of Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz
, as well as fractal geometry through Albert-László Barabási
and his work on scale-free networks. Also, through its work on globalization, it has links to political sociology
, globalization
research, global studies
and Marxism
.
involving such scholars as Nigel Gilbert
, Klaus Troitzsch, Scott Page, Joshua Epstein and Jürgen Klüver—see Map 2 for information on these scholars. The focus of researchers in this field, amount to two: social simulation
and data-mining, both of which are subclusters within computational sociology. Social simulation uses the computer to create an artificial laboratory for the study of complex social systems, and data-mining uses machine intelligence to search for non-trivial patterns of relations in large, complex, real-world databases. A variant of computational sociology is socionics.
In terms of historical lineage, computational sociology is just as heavily influenced by a number of micro-sociological areas as it is the macro-level traditions of systems science and systems thinking. In fact, it is the micro-level influences of symbolic interactionism
, exchange theory, and rational choice theory
, along with the micro-level focus of compuational political scientists, such as Robert Axelrod
, that helped to develop computational sociology's bottom-up
, agent-based approach to modeling complex systems—what Joshua M. Epstein
calls generative science. Other important areas of inf[luence include statistics
, mathematical modeling and simulation
.
. The main goal of sociocybernetics is to integrate sociology with second-order cybernetics and the work of Niklas Luhmann, along with the latest advances in complexity science. In terms of scholarly work, the focus of sociocybernetics has been primarily conceptual and only slightly methodological or empirical.
Of the five major areas outlined here, sociocybernetics is the most directly tied to the systems tradition inside and outside of sociology, specifically second-order cybernetics
. However, even this area draws upon other traditions, including constructivist epistemology
and the philosophical positions of phenomenology, postmodernism
and critical realism
.
School of Complexity (LSC). Based primarily upon the work of Niklas Luhmann
, the goal of this school of thought (particularly in Germany) is to reinvigorate the study of society as a complex social system. In a general way, this area of research attempts to succeed where Parsons failed, primarily by relying upon the latest advances in systems science and cybernetics, which are the same two fields Parsons drew upon to do his work.
The intellectual lineage of the LSC is, like sociocybernetics, grounded strongly in the systems tradition inside and outside of sociology, specifically the cybernetic work of the theoretical biologists, Humberto Maturana
and Francisco Varela
and their concept of autopoiesis. Other influences include the Marxian and Weberian traditions within sociology.
, simulation
, complex networks, qualitative comparative analysis
, statistics
, post-structuralism
and historical method
.
); (2) web science; (3) e-social science (see, for example, e-science
); (4) computational economics; (5) some of the recent trends in postmodernism (See, for example, Cilliers’ work on complexity theory and postmodernism); (6) qualitative complexity science (see, for example, Charles Ragin’s work on qualitative comparative analysis); and (7) complexity in health and health care (see, for example, Tim Blackman’s work on communities as complex systems).
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and complexity science.
The cross disciplinary and interstitial nature of SACS does not meet the traditional academic definitions of discipline, field of study, or school of thought. SACS is not simply the application of sociology to yet another topic or domain of inquiry it is just as much about physicists using the tools of complexity science to study sociological topics as it is about sociologists studying complex systems.
John Urry
John Urry (sociologist)
John Urry is a British sociologist, Professor at Lancaster University. He is noted for work in the fields of the sociology of tourism and mobility....
dates the formal emergence of SACS to around 1998, when researchers in the social sciences began to make what he calls the complexity turn. Urry defines the complexity turn as the critical incorporation of the tools of the complexity sciences into the social sciences. Examples of this “turn” in sociology include: (1) Nigel Gilbert
Nigel Gilbert
Nigel Gilbert is a British sociologist and a pioneer in the use of agent-based models in the social sciences. He is the founder and director of the Centre for Research in Social Simulation , author of several books on computational social sciences, social simulation and social research and editor...
’s creation, in 1998, of the international, electronic periodical, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal created and edited by Nigel Gilbert . The journal publishes articles in computational sociology, social simulation, complexity science, and artificial societies. Its approach is...
; (2) David Byrne’s publication, in 1998, of Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences; and (3) the formal recognition of sociocybernetics
Sociocybernetics
Sociocybernetics is an independent chapter of science in sociology based upon the General Systems Theory and cybernetics.It also has a basis in Organizational Development consultancy practice and in Theories of Communication, theories of psychotherapies and computer sciences...
as a research committee (RC51) at the 1998 World Congress of Sociology in Montreal. However, scholars such as Niklas Luhmann
Niklas Luhmann
Niklas Luhmann was a German sociologist, and a prominent thinker in sociological systems theory.-Biography:...
and Edgar Morin
Edgar Morin
Edgar Morin is a French philosopher and sociologist born Edgar Nahoum in Paris on July 8, 1921. He is of Judeo-Spanish origin. He is known for the transdisciplinarity of his works.- Biography :...
have been working on these problems for quite some time, developing altogether new ways of thinking about sociological inquiry based on their epistemological theorization of complexity and complex systems.
While the substantive topics addressed by the scholars of SACS are numerous, there is a common focus. In one way or another, the overarching substantive concern is social complexity and the structure and dynamics of complex social systems. In the SACS literature, complex social systems are alternatively referred to as social systems
Social systems
Social system is a central term in sociological systems theory. The term draws a line to ecosystem, biological organisms, psychical systems and technical systems. They all form the environment of social systems. Minimum requirements for a social system is interaction of at least two personal...
, complex systems
Complex systems
Complex systems present problems in mathematical modelling.The equations from which complex system models are developed generally derive from statistical physics, information theory and non-linear dynamics, and represent organized but unpredictable behaviors of systems of nature that are considered...
or complex adaptive systems.
Historical background
The dominant intellectual lineage of SACS is the systems tradition inside and outside of sociology. The systems tradition is so important to SACS because it was the major framework through which complexity was sociologically addressed. The systems tradition is not, however, the only lineage for SACS. For example, Eve, Horsfall and Lee's Chaos, Complexity and Sociology: Myth Models and Theories (1997) grounds SACS in the intellectual traditions of postmodernism, post-structuralism and continental philosophy. Similarly, Jenks and Smith’s recent book, Qualitative Complexity, grounds SACS in post-structuralism and continental philosophy as much as it does systems thinking. Paul Cilliers, who, in his highly cited work, Complexity and Postmodernism (see reference above), grounds complexity science in the work of Derrida and Lyotard. Even Castellani and Hafferty, while drawing on the systems tradition, ground their own research in the post-structuralism of Michel Foucault and the symbolic interactionismm of Anselm Strauss.The systems tradition within sociology
The systems tradition in sociology, out of which SACS partly emerges, can be divided into three major phases: (1) the classical era (late 19th century to 1920s), which included such scholars as Karl Marx, Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto, Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkheim; (2) the Parsonian era (1940s to 1960s), which revolved around the work of Talcott ParsonsTalcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons was an American sociologist who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1927 to 1973....
and Robert Merton; and (3) the complexity turn era (1990s to present).
Classical era
An argument can be made that western sociology (including its various smaller, national sociologies) hasbeen and continues to be a profession of complexity. The primary basis for this challenge is western society. To study society is, by definition, to study complexity. Starting with the industrial and “industrious” revolutions of the middle 18th to early 20th centuries western society transitioned—teleology
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
not implied—into a type of complexity that, in many ways, did not previously exist. Furthermore, as industrialization evolved into its later stages (i.e., Taylorism, Fordism, post-Fordism
Post-Fordism
Post-Fordism is the name given to the dominant system of economic production, consumption and associated socio-economic phenomena, in most industrialized countries since the late 20th century...
, etc), the complexity of western society evolved as well (See Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global...
). The latest developments in this complexity are post-industrialism and, most recently, across societies throughout the world, globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
.
Of the numerous scholars writing during the middle 19th to early 20th centuries, perhaps the best known systems thinkers were Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
, Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
, Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
, Emile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...
and Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto , born Wilfried Fritz Pareto, was an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist and philosopher. He made several important contributions to economics, particularly in the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals' choices....
. While not all of these scholars were sociologists, their systems thinking had a tremendous impact on organized sociology. Three characteristics identify these scholars as systems thinkers: (1) They conceptualized their work as a direct response to the increasing complexity of western society; (2) they conceptualized the changes taking place in western society in systems terms; and (3) their failure and successes provide scholars today with examples of how best to think about social complexity in systems terms. Failures include treating social systems in strictly biological terms, such as homeostasis. Successes include Pareto's 80/20 rule and Durkheim's notion of system differentiation (sociology)
Differentiation (sociology)
Differentiation is a term in system theory From the viewpoint of this theory, the principal feature of modern society is the increased process of system differentiation as a way of dealing with the complexity of its environment. This is accomplished through the creation of subsystems in an effort...
.
The Parsonian era
The Parsonian era in sociological systems thinking was influenced by Talcott ParsonsTalcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons was an American sociologist who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1927 to 1973....
' action theory
Action theory (sociology)
In sociology, action theory refers to the theory of social action presented by the American theorist Talcott Parsons.Parsons established action theory in order to integrate the study of social order with the structural and voluntaristic aspects of macro and micro factors...
and, to a lesser extent, by the work of Robert Merton
Robert K. Merton
Robert King Merton was a distinguished American sociologist. He spent most of his career teaching at Columbia University, where he attained the rank of University Professor...
. Parsons developed a theory of society and social evolution through a volunataristic methodology and is known for his theory of systems, structural functionalism
Structural functionalism
Structural functionalism is a broad perspective in sociology and anthropology which sets out to interpret society as a structure with interrelated parts. Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements; namely norms, customs, traditions and institutions...
. Parsons’ work foreshadows the development of complexity science and, more specifically, SACS, in two important ways: First, it integrated sociological inquiry with systems science. Parsons grounded his theory in a synthesis of classical sociology, cybernetics, and the cognitive and biological sciences. Second, through his development of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, Parsons foreshadowed the trans-disciplinary, center-based orientation of complexity science—from the Santa Fe Institute
Santa Fe Institute
The Santa Fe Institute is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, including physical, computational, biological, and social systems.The Institute houses a...
to the Centre for Research in Social Simulation.
Complexity turn era
The community of SACS is part of what John UrryJohn Urry (sociologist)
John Urry is a British sociologist, Professor at Lancaster University. He is noted for work in the fields of the sociology of tourism and mobility....
(2005) calls the complexity turn in the social sciences. As Urry explains, most of the work being done within the SACS community got its start in the late 1990s, around the same time that complexity science was finally gaining international recognition; thanks, in large measure, to the growing prestige of the
Santa Fe Institute (Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA), the birthplace of complexity science. During the late 1990s, the scholars of SACS were spread out across Western Europe and North America, working (for the most part) in intellectual and geographical isolation from one another, pursuing diverse areas of study that, at the time, seemed hardly related. Over the last ten years, however, the complexity turn work has begun to coalesce into several distinct areas of study—some of which are reviewed below. These areas not only draw upon systems thinking, systems science and cybernetics, but they also pull from a variety of rich disciplines, traditions and areas of research. Again, that is why this area is called SACS—sociology AND complexity science.
Research in SACS
Focusing on the scholarship between the late 1990s (when SACS first emerged) and 2009, Castellani and Hafferty identify five major areas of research in SACS. The first two areas are substantive topics: complex social network analysis and computational sociology. The third is a society known as sociocybernetics. The last two are schools of thought (a school of thought is a defined way of doing scholarly work, based on the teachings or instructions of a particular group of scholars): the Luhmann school of complexity and the British-based school of complexity.Complex social network analysis
The goal of complex social network analysis (CSNA) is to study the dynamics of large, complex networks such as the internet (web scienceWeb science
The Web Science Trust is a joint effort originally started between MIT and University of Southampton to bridge and formalize the social and technical aspects of the World Wide Web...
), global diseases, and corporate interactions. Through the usage of key concepts and methods in social network analysis, agent-based modeling, theoretical physics, and modern mathematics (particularly graph theory
Graph theory
In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of graphs, mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects from a certain collection. A "graph" in this context refers to a collection of vertices or 'nodes' and a collection of edges that connect pairs of...
and fractal geometry), this field of inquiry has made some significant insights into the dynamics and structure of social systems (i.e., small-world phenomenon, scale-free networks, etc.). This area of research comprises two dominant sub-clusters: the new science of networks and global network society. The former primarily emerges out of the work of Duncan Watts, Albert-László Barabási
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
Albert-László Barabási is a physicist, best known for his work in the research of network theory. He is the former Emil T...
, Nicholas A. Christakis
Nicholas A. Christakis
Nicholas A. Christakis is a Greek American physician and sociologist known for his research on social networks and on the socioeconomic and biosocial determinants of health, longevity, and behavior...
and colleagues, while the latter (which overlaps with the British-based School of Complexity) primarily emerges out of the work of John Urry
John Urry (sociologist)
John Urry is a British sociologist, Professor at Lancaster University. He is noted for work in the fields of the sociology of tourism and mobility....
and the sociological study of globalization. The latter is linked to the work of Manuel Castells and the later work of Immanuel Wallerstein which, since 1998, increasingly makes use of complexity science, particularly the work of Ilya Prigogine.
In terms of historical lineage, complex social network analysis is linked to a variety of intellectual traditions, above and beyond systems thinking, including graph theory
Graph theory
In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of graphs, mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects from a certain collection. A "graph" in this context refers to a collection of vertices or 'nodes' and a collection of edges that connect pairs of...
, social network
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
analysis in sociology, and mathematical sociology
Mathematical sociology
Mathematical sociology is the usage of mathematics to construct social theories. Mathematical sociology aims to take sociological theory, which is strong in intuitive content but weak from a formal point of view, and to express it in formal terms...
. It even has links to chaos theory
Chaos theory
Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...
and dynamical systems theory
Dynamical systems theory
Dynamical systems theory is an area of applied mathematics used to describe the behavior of complex dynamical systems, usually by employing differential equations or difference equations. When differential equations are employed, the theory is called continuous dynamical systems. When difference...
through the work of Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz
Steven Strogatz
Steven Henry Strogatz is an American mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University...
, as well as fractal geometry through Albert-László Barabási
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
Albert-László Barabási is a physicist, best known for his work in the research of network theory. He is the former Emil T...
and his work on scale-free networks. Also, through its work on globalization, it has links to political sociology
Political sociology
Contemporary political sociology involves much more than the study of the relations between state and society . Where a typical research question in political sociology might have been: "Why do so few American citizens choose to vote?" or even, "What difference does it make if women get elected?" ...
, globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
research, global studies
Global Studies
Global studies, in its broadest definition is the academic study of political, economic, social and cultural relationships of the world. Furthermore, it can also include the study of political and cultural processes, the impacts of globalisation, markets and communications. Global Studies...
and Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
.
Computational Sociology
The second area of research is computational sociologyComputational sociology
Computational sociology is a branch of sociology that uses computationally intensive methods to analyze and model social phenomena. Using computer simulations, artificial intelligence, complex statistical methods, and new analytic approaches like social network analysis, computational sociology...
involving such scholars as Nigel Gilbert
Nigel Gilbert
Nigel Gilbert is a British sociologist and a pioneer in the use of agent-based models in the social sciences. He is the founder and director of the Centre for Research in Social Simulation , author of several books on computational social sciences, social simulation and social research and editor...
, Klaus Troitzsch, Scott Page, Joshua Epstein and Jürgen Klüver—see Map 2 for information on these scholars. The focus of researchers in this field, amount to two: social simulation
Social simulation
Social simulation is a research field that applies computational methods to study issues in the social sciences. The issues explored include problems in sociology, political science, economics, anthropology, geography, archaeology and linguistics ....
and data-mining, both of which are subclusters within computational sociology. Social simulation uses the computer to create an artificial laboratory for the study of complex social systems, and data-mining uses machine intelligence to search for non-trivial patterns of relations in large, complex, real-world databases. A variant of computational sociology is socionics.
In terms of historical lineage, computational sociology is just as heavily influenced by a number of micro-sociological areas as it is the macro-level traditions of systems science and systems thinking. In fact, it is the micro-level influences of symbolic interactionism
Symbolic interactionism
Symbolic Interaction, also known as interactionism, is a sociological theory that places emphasis on micro-scale social interaction to provide subjective meaning in human behavior, the social process and pragmatism.-History:...
, exchange theory, and rational choice theory
Rational choice theory
Rational choice theory, also known as choice theory or rational action theory, is a framework for understanding and often formally modeling social and economic behavior. It is the main theoretical paradigm in the currently-dominant school of microeconomics...
, along with the micro-level focus of compuational political scientists, such as Robert Axelrod
Robert Axelrod
Robert M. Axelrod is an American political scientist. He is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Michigan where he has been since 1974. He is best known for his interdisciplinary work on the evolution of cooperation, which has been cited in numerous articles...
, that helped to develop computational sociology's bottom-up
Bottom-up
Bottom-up may refer to:* In business development, a bottom-up approach means that the adviser takes the needs and wishes of the would-be entrepreneur as the starting point, rather than a market opportunity ....
, agent-based approach to modeling complex systems—what Joshua M. Epstein
Joshua M. Epstein
Joshua M. Epstein is Professor of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, and a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute.- Early life and Education:Epstein was born in New York City and grew up in Amherst....
calls generative science. Other important areas of inf[luence include statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
, mathematical modeling and simulation
Simulation
Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....
.
Sociocybernetics
The third major area of research is sociocyberneticsSociocybernetics
Sociocybernetics is an independent chapter of science in sociology based upon the General Systems Theory and cybernetics.It also has a basis in Organizational Development consultancy practice and in Theories of Communication, theories of psychotherapies and computer sciences...
. The main goal of sociocybernetics is to integrate sociology with second-order cybernetics and the work of Niklas Luhmann, along with the latest advances in complexity science. In terms of scholarly work, the focus of sociocybernetics has been primarily conceptual and only slightly methodological or empirical.
Of the five major areas outlined here, sociocybernetics is the most directly tied to the systems tradition inside and outside of sociology, specifically second-order cybernetics
Second-order cybernetics
Second-order cybernetics, also known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, investigates the construction of models of cybernetic systems. It investigates cybernetics with awareness that the investigators are part of the system, and of the importance of self-referentiality, self-organizing, the...
. However, even this area draws upon other traditions, including constructivist epistemology
Constructivist epistemology
Constructivist epistemology is an epistemological perspective in philosophy about the nature of scientific knowledge. Constructivists maintain that scientific knowledge is constructed by scientists and not discovered from the world. Constructivists claim that the concepts of science are mental...
and the philosophical positions of phenomenology, postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
and critical realism
Critical realism
In the philosophy of perception, critical realism is the theory that some of our sense-data can and do accurately represent external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense-data do not accurately represent any external objects, properties, and events...
.
Luhmann school of complexity
The fourth major area of research, and the one most different from the first two in terms of epistemology and method, is the LuhmannLuhmann
Luhmann is the surname of the following people:* Heinrich Luhmann , German pedagogue and regional poet* Niklas Luhmann , German sociologist...
School of Complexity (LSC). Based primarily upon the work of Niklas Luhmann
Niklas Luhmann
Niklas Luhmann was a German sociologist, and a prominent thinker in sociological systems theory.-Biography:...
, the goal of this school of thought (particularly in Germany) is to reinvigorate the study of society as a complex social system. In a general way, this area of research attempts to succeed where Parsons failed, primarily by relying upon the latest advances in systems science and cybernetics, which are the same two fields Parsons drew upon to do his work.
The intellectual lineage of the LSC is, like sociocybernetics, grounded strongly in the systems tradition inside and outside of sociology, specifically the cybernetic work of the theoretical biologists, Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana is a Chilean biologist and philosopher. He is considered a member of the second wave of cybernetics, known for developing a theory of autopoiesis about the nature of reflexive feedback control in living systems.- Biography :After completing secondary school at the Liceo Manuel de...
and Francisco Varela
Francisco Varela
Francisco Javier Varela García , was a Chilean biologist, philosopher and neuroscientist who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology.-Biography:...
and their concept of autopoiesis. Other influences include the Marxian and Weberian traditions within sociology.
British-based school of complexity
The final area of research (and the most controversial, according to McLennan, in terms of the legitimacy of its existence) is the emergent British-based School of Complexity (BBC). This school seek to reformulate the theories, concepts, methods and organizational arrangements of sociology through the employment of complexity science. drawing upon a variety of methodological traditions, including agent-based modeling, mathematical sociologyMathematical sociology
Mathematical sociology is the usage of mathematics to construct social theories. Mathematical sociology aims to take sociological theory, which is strong in intuitive content but weak from a formal point of view, and to express it in formal terms...
, simulation
Simulation
Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....
, complex networks, qualitative comparative analysis
Qualitative comparative analysis
Qualitative Comparative Analysis is a technique, developed by Charles Ragin in 1987, for solving the problems that are caused by making causal inferences on the basis of only a small number of cases...
, statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
, post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
and historical method
Historical method
Historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write histories in the form of accounts of the past. The question of the nature, and even the possibility, of a sound historical method is raised in the...
.
Other areas of research
Other emerging areas of research include: (1) complexity and managerial science (see, for example, complexity theory and organizationsComplexity theory and organizations
Complexity theory and organizations, also called complexity strategy or complex adaptive organization, is the use of Complexity theory in the field of strategic management and organizational studies.- Overview :...
); (2) web science; (3) e-social science (see, for example, e-science
E-Science
E-Science is computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments, or science that uses immense data sets that require grid computing; the term sometimes includes technologies that enable distributed collaboration, such as the Access Grid...
); (4) computational economics; (5) some of the recent trends in postmodernism (See, for example, Cilliers’ work on complexity theory and postmodernism); (6) qualitative complexity science (see, for example, Charles Ragin’s work on qualitative comparative analysis); and (7) complexity in health and health care (see, for example, Tim Blackman’s work on communities as complex systems).
Mainstream acceptance
While the five areas of research in SACS are widely recognized within the larger field of complexity science , they are only beginning to receive the attention within mainstream sociology. A few reasons for this have been suggested. One is that sociologists lack training in the methods of complexity science and therefore steer clear of the work. Another is that, in the aftermath of Parsons and other systems theorists, sociologists remain theoretically suspect of systems thinking.See also
- Complex adaptive systemComplex adaptive systemComplex adaptive systems are special cases of complex systems. They are complex in that they are dynamic networks of interactions and relationships not aggregations of static entities...
- ComplexityComplexityIn general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. The study of these complex linkages is the main goal of complex systems theory. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are...
- Complexity economicsComplexity economicsComplexity economics is the application of complexity science to the problems of economics. It studies computer simulations to gain insight into economic dynamics, and avoids the assumption that the economy is a system in equilibrium.- Models :...
- Computational sociologyComputational sociologyComputational sociology is a branch of sociology that uses computationally intensive methods to analyze and model social phenomena. Using computer simulations, artificial intelligence, complex statistical methods, and new analytic approaches like social network analysis, computational sociology...
- Generative sciencesGenerative sciencesThe generative science is a interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary science that explores the natural world and its complex behaviours as a generative process...
- Multi-agent systemMulti-agent systemA multi-agent system is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems that are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or a monolithic system to solve...
- Social network analysis
- SociocyberneticsSociocyberneticsSociocybernetics is an independent chapter of science in sociology based upon the General Systems Theory and cybernetics.It also has a basis in Organizational Development consultancy practice and in Theories of Communication, theories of psychotherapies and computer sciences...
- Systems theorySystems theorySystems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
- SystemographySystemographySystemography or SGR is a process where phenomena regarded as complex are purposefully represented as a constructed model of a general system. It maybe used in three different roles: conceptualization, analysis, and simulation...
External links
- Sociology and Complexity Science Website
- Castellani and Hafferty (2009) Sociology and Complexity Science: A New Area of Inquiry
- SOCIOLOGY AND COMPLEXITY SCIENCE BLOG: An Educational Tool for Researchers and Students
- On-line book "Simulation for the Social Scientist" by Nigel Gilbert and Klaus G. Troitzsch, 1999, second edition 2005
- Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
- From Factors to Actors: Computational Sociology and Agent-based Modeling - Review by Michael Macy and Robert Willer