Chaos Complexity And Sociology

Provides a collection of articles which examine the emerging myths and theories surrounding the study of chaos and complexity. Useful to sociologists and others interested in chaos and complexity theory, this title focuses on methodological matters, and also presents conceptual models and applications.

What Newton′s Principia was to his natural science colleagues, Russ Marion′s The Edge of Organization is to today′s social scientists. This book clearly elucidates the arrival of the social sciences at the end of the alley of modernism but then presents us with the tools and ideas to climb out of a dead end, rise above old limitations, and take flight for new horizons bright with promise for advancing both theory and praxis. . . . For social scientists, it is both the most relevant and most easily apprehended treatment to date of the totality of chaos and complexity theory and technique. --Raymond A. Eve, Editor, Chaos, Complexity, and Sociology The Edge of Organization offers a readable, comprehensive, and integrated overview of the new sciences of chaos and complexity. Author Russ Marion describes formal and social organizations from the perspective of chaos and complexity theories. His multidisciplinary approach will appeal to students and scholars across a wide range of social sciences. This book is generously illustrated and includes comprehensive references plus an annotated bibliography of useful books and articles. The Edge of Organization will appeal to students and professionals in sociology, management/ organization studies, management studies, marketing, political science, public administration, and psychology.

Chaos and complexity are the new buzz words in both science and contemporary society. The ideas they represent have enormous implications for the way we understand and engage with the world. Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences introduces students to the central ideas which surround the chaos/complexity theories. It discusses key concepts before using them as a way of investigating the nature of social research. By applying them to such familiar topics as urban studies, education and health, David Byrne allows readers new to the subject to appreciate the contribution which complexity theory can make to social research and to illuminating the crucial social issues of our day.

Fusing two key concerns of contemporary sociology: globalization and its discontents, and the 'complexity turn' in social theory, authors Chesters and Welsh utilize complexity theory to analyze the shifting constellation of social movement networks that constitute opposition to neo-liberal globalization. They explore how seemingly chaotic and highly differentiated social actors interacting globally through computer mediated communications, face-to-face gatherings and protests constitute a 'multitude' not easily grasped through established models of social and political change. Drawing upon extensive empirical research and utilizing concepts drawn from the natural and social sciences this book suggests a framework for understanding mobilization, identity formation and information flows in global social movements operating within complex societies. It suggests that this 'movement of movements' exhibits an emergent order on the edge of chaos, a turbulence that is recasting political agency in the twenty-first century.

By now, most academics have heard something about the new science of complexity. In a manner reminiscent of Einstein and the last hundred years of physics, complexity science has captured the public imagination. ® One can go to Amazon. com and purchase books on complexification (Casti 1994), emergence (Holland 1998), small worlds (Barabási 2003), the web of life (Capra 1996), fuzzy thinking (Kosko 1993), global c- plexity (Urry 2003) and the business of long-tails (Anderson 2006). Even television has incorporated the topics of complexity science. Crime shows ® ® such as 24 or CSI typically feature investigators using the latest advances in computational modeling to “simulate scenarios” or “data mine” all p- sible suspects—all of which is done before the crime takes place. The ® World Wide Web is another example. A simple search on Google. Com using the phrase “complexity science” gets close to a million hits! C- plexity science is ubiquitous. What most scholars do not realize, however, is the remarkable role sociologists are playing in this new science. C- sider the following examples. 0. 1 Sociologists in Complexity Science The first example comes from the new science of networks (Barabási 2003). By now, most readers are familiar with the phenomena known as six-degrees of separation—the idea that, because most large networks are comprised of a significant number of non-random weak-ties, the nodes (e. g. , people, companies, etc.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Chaos, Complexity and Leadership (ICCLS). Written by interdisciplinary researchers and students from the fields of mathematics, physics, education, economics, political science, statistics, the management sciences and social sciences, the peer-reviewed contributions explore chaotic and complex systems, as well as chaos and complexity theory in the context of their applicability to management and leadership. The book discusses current topics, such as complexity leadership in the healthcare fields and tourism industry, conflict management and organization intelligence, and presents practical applications of theoretical concepts, making it a valuable resource for managers and leaders.

This publication reflects on the discussion on using chaos theory for the study of society. It explores the interface between chaos theory and the social sciences. A broad variety of fields (including Sociology, Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, Management, Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences) is represented in the book. The leading themes are: Conceptual and Methodological Issues, Social Connectionism and the Connectionist Mind, Social Institutions and Public Policy, and Social Simulations. The book includes the following topics: the relevance of the complexity-chaos paradigm for analyzing social systems, the usefulness of nonlinear dynamics for studying the formation and sustainability of social groups, the comparison between spontaneous social orders and spontaneous biological/natural orders, the building of Artificial Societies, and the contribution of the chaos paradigm to a better understanding and formulation of public policies.

The concept of “chaos”, and chaos theory, though it is a field of study specifically in the field of mathematics with applications in physics, engineering, economics, management, and education, has also recently taken root in the social sciences. As a method of analyzing the way in which the digital age has connected society more than ever, chaos and complexity theory serves as a tactic to tie world events and cope with the information overload that is associated with heightened social connectivity. The Handbook of Research on Chaos and Complexity Theory in the Social Sciences explores the theories of chaos and complexity as applied to a variety of disciplines including political science, organizational and management science, economics, and education. Presenting diverse research-based perspectives on mathematical patterns in the world system, this publication is an essential reference source for scholars, researchers, mathematicians, social theorists, and graduate-level students in a variety of disciplines.