Complexity and its Discontents

Subadevan Boyd-Devan, Brown University

In recent decades, complexity theory has been embraced in the social sciences of both quantitative and qualitative stripe. Emphasizing the emergent properties formed out of the scaling up of local dynamics, complexity theory offered a resolute end to uncertainties caused by the idea of an agency-structure dichotomy. Its deployments, have, however, been interesting in their divergences. How, for instance, can the same framework, borne out of the natural sciences, be applied to understand rice production in Bali, economic development in China, the emergent nature of government institutions in low state-capacity contexts, while also lending itself to prescriptive pronouncements about the infrastructural requirements livable cities? I argue that complexity theory’s wide appeal must be understood via: its i) proximity to notions of objectivity and social naturalism; ii) relative flexibility that allows incorporating elements of other frameworks; iii) ambivalence to the importance of politics in shaping social relations and outcomes; and iv) its ability to fill a theoretical void in accounts of functional order following the steep post-1970s of structural functional perspectives on the patterning of social order and inequalities.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 178. On History and Historical Sociology