Full Description
This expanded and updated edition of Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: The State of the Art revisits the use of complexity theory across the social sciences and demonstrates how complexity informs approaches to various contemporary issues in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, widening social inequality, and impending social and ecological catastrophe wrought by global warming.
The book reviews complexity theory in the practice of the social sciences and at their interface with ecological science. It outlines how social theory can be reconciled with complexity thinking and presents a review of the way research can be done using complexity theory. The book suggests how complexity theory can be used to understand and evaluate governance processes, particularly with regard to social inequality and the climate crisis. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is also examined through a complexity lens, reviewing how complexity thinking has been employed in relation to the pandemic and how implementing a complexity framework can transform health and social care. The book concludes with a call to action and the use of complexity theory to inform critical thinking in the education system.
This textbook will be immensely useful to students and researchers interested in social research methods, social theory, business and organization studies, health, education, urban studies, and development studies.
Contents
Introduction, 1. A manifesto for interdisciplinarity founded on the complexity frame of reference, 2. The complexity frame of reference and action, 3. Doing complexity science, 4. Evolutionary social theory, 5. Structure and agency, 6. Time and place, 7. Social theory and macro system transformation, 8. Complexity theory and the qualitative research programme, 9. Quantitative methods for exploring, understanding, and possibly predicting complex social systems and their intersection with natural systems, 10. Complexity and mixed methods, 11. Modes of governance, 12. Evaluation in a complexity frame, 13. Explicit complexity evaluation, 14. Shaping research and policy, 15. Beyond disciplines and fields: COVID and a world in crisis, Conclusion
