Social complexity: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:39, 26 December 2022

Latest revision as of 19:02, 28 July 2024

(2 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown)

Line 7:

Early [[sociological theory|theoreticians of sociology]], such as [[Ferdinand Tönnies]], [[Émile Durkheim]], and [[Max Weber]], [[Vilfredo Pareto]] and [[Georg Simmel]], examined the exponential growth and interrelatedness of social encounters and [[Social exchange theory|social exchanges]]. The emphases on the [[interconnectivity]] among social relationships, and the emergence of new properties within society, is found in the [[social theory]] produced in the [[subfields of sociology]].<ref name="AGid-79">Giddens, Anthony (1979). ''Central problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis.'' London: Macmillan.</ref> Social complexity is a basis for the connection of the phenomena reported in [[microsociology]] and [[macrosociology]], and thus provides an intellectual [[Middle range theory (sociology)|middle-range]] for sociologists to formulate and develop hypotheses.<ref>Freese, Lee (1980). "Formal Theorizing." ''Annual Review of Sociology'', 6: 187–212 (August 1980).</ref><ref>Cohen, B. P. (1989). ''Developing sociological knowledge: theory and method'' (2nd ed.). Chicago: Nelson–Hall.</ref> [[Research methods#Research methods|Methodologically]], social complexity is theory-neutral, and includes the phenomena studied in microsociology and the phenomena studied in macrosociology.<ref name="CCS-MMT" />

==Theoretic background==

{{Sociology}}

In 1937, the sociologist [[Talcott Parsons]] continued the work of the early theoreticians of sociology with his work on [[Action theory (sociology)|action theory]].;<ref name="Parsons-a">Parsons, Talcott (1937) and (1949). ''The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of European Writers''. New York, NY: The Free Press.</ref> Byand by 1951, Parson had developed action theory into formal [[systems theory]] in ''The Social System'' (1951).<ref name="Parsons-b">Parsons, Talcott (1951). ''The Social System''. New York, NY: The Free Press</ref> Afterwards, inIn the following decades, the synergy between general [[systems thinking]] and the development of [[social system]] theories is carried forward by [[Robert K. Merton]] in discussions of theories of the [[Middle range theory (sociology)|middle-range]] and [[Structure and agency|social structure and agency]]. From the late 1970s until the early 1990s, sociological investigation concerned the properties of systems in which the strong correlation of sub-parts leads to the observation of [[autopoiesis|autopoetic]], [[self-organization|self-organizing]], [[Dynamical system|dynamical]], [[turbulent]], and [[Chaotic system|chaotic]] behaviours that arise from mathematical [[Complexity science|complexity]], such as the work of [[Niklas Luhmann]].<ref>Luhmann, Niklas (1990.) ''Essays on Self-Reference'', New York: Columbia University Press.</ref>

One of the earliest usages of the term "complexity", in the [[Social science|social]] and [[behavioral sciences]], to refer specifically to a [[complex system]] is found in the study of [[Complexity theory and organizations|modern organizations]] and [[management studies]].<ref>Kiel, L. Douglas (1994). ''Managing Chaos and Complexity in Government: A New Paradigm for Managing Change, Innovation and Organizational Renewal.'' Jossey-Bass: San Francisco.</ref> However, particularly in management studies, the term often has been used in a [[metaphor]]ical rather than in a [[Qualitative property|qualitative]] or [[quantitative property|quantitative]] theoretical manner.<ref name="CCS-MMT" /> By the mid-1990s, the "complexity turn"<ref name=Urry>Urry, John (2005). "The Complexity Turn." ''Theory, Culture and Society'', 22(5): 1–14.</ref> in social sciences begins as some of the same tools generally used in [[complexity science]] are incorporated into the social sciences. By 1998, the international, electronic periodical, ''[[Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation]]'', had been created. In the last several years, many publications have presented overviews of complexity theory within the field of sociology. Within this body of work, connections also are drawn to yet other theoretical traditions, including [[constructivist epistemology]] and the philosophical positions of [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]], [[postmodernism]] and [[critical realism (philosophy of the social sciences)|critical realism]].

Line 31 ⟶ 30:

The development of [[computational sociology]] involves such scholars as [[Nigel Gilbert]], [[Klaus G. Troitzsch]], [[Joshua M. Epstein]], and others. The foci of methods in this field include [[social simulation]] and [[data-mining]], both of which are sub-areas of computational sociology. Social simulation uses computers to create an artificial laboratory for the study of complex social systems; [[Data mining|data-mining]] uses machine intelligence to search for non-trivial patterns of relations in large, complex, real-world databases. The emerging methods of [[socionics]] are a variant of computational sociology.<ref>Gilbert, Nigel and Klaus G. Troitzsch (2005). ''Simulation for Social Scientists'', 2nd Edition. New York, NY: Open University Press.</ref><ref name=epstein07>Epstein, Joshua M. (2007). ''Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.</ref>

Computational sociology is influenced by a number of micro-sociological areas as well as the macro-level traditions of systems science and systems thinking. The micro-level influences of [[symbolic interactionism|symbolic interaction]], [[exchange theory|exchange]], and [[rational choice theory|rational choice]], along with the micro-level focus of computational political scientists, such as [[Robert Axelrod (political scientist)|Robert Axelrod]], helped to develop computational sociology's [[:wikt:bottom-up|bottom-up]], [[agent-based]] approach to modeling complex systems. This is what [[Joshua M. Epstein]] calls [[generative science]].<ref name=epstein07 /> Other important areas of influence include [[statistics]], [[mathematical modeling]] and computer [[simulation]].

===Sociocybernetics===