For the past two decades, ‘complexity’ has informed
a range of work across the social sciences. There are
diverse schools of complexity thinking, and authors have
used these ideas in a multiplicity of ways, from health
inequalities to the organization of large scale firms.
Some understand complexity as emergence from the
rule-based interactions of simple agents and explore it
through agent-based modelling. Others argue against such
‘restricted complexity’ and for the development of
case-based narratives deploying a much wider set of
approaches and techniques. Major social theorists have
been reinterpreted through a complexity lens and the
whole methodological programme of the social sciences
has been recast in complexity terms.
In four parts,
this book seeks to establish ‘the state of the art’ of
complexity-informed social science as it stands now,
examining:
- the key issues in complexity theory
- the implications of complexity theory for social
theory
- the methodology and methods of complexity theory
- complexity within disciplines and
fields.
It also points ways forward towards
a complexity-informed social science for the
twenty-first century, investigating the argument for a
post-disciplinary, ‘open’ social science. Byrne and
Callaghan consider how this might be developed as a
programme of teaching and research within social
science. This book will be particularly relevant for,
and interesting to, students and scholars of social
research methods, social theory, business and
organization studies, health, education, urban studies
and development studies.
