Download 5 environmental forces

5 ENVIRONMENTAL FORCES
To understand fully the dynamics of SACS, including the unique goals and concerns of its community of scholars,
one needs a working knowledge of complexity science, as well as a general understanding of the current debate
surrounding sociology’s complexity. Because most sociologists do not possess this working knowledge, we begin
the second half of the book by reviewing the five environmental forces impacting SACS. If the reader recalls, the
first of these forces has to do with sociology’s complexity and the remaining four have to do with the intellectual
traditions, methods and key topics of complexity science. Let us rehearse these five forces.
Sociology’s Complexity: The first environmental force has to do with the increasing substantive, theoretical,
methodological and organizational complexity that confronts sociologists today. While sociology was born a
profession of complexity, the discipline needs a theoretical and methodological overhaul—or, at least, that is the
communicated viewpoint of scholars working within SACS and therefore one of the primary motivators for the
work being done in this town.
Systems Thinking: The second force is linked to an important intellectual lineage in both complexity science
and sociology, namely systems thinking. In terms of complexity science, systems thinking comes from the
intellectual traditions of systems science and cybernetics (See Map 1). In terms of sociology (as we discussed in our
introductory chapter) systems thinking comes from many of the scholars associated with the cannon of sociology—
Spencer, Comte, Weber, Marx, Durkheim—as well as more recent sociological figures as Talcott Parsons.
Complexity Science: The final three environmental forces have to do with the historical emergence of
complexity science over the past thirty or so years. Our third environmental force is the initial development of
complexity science and its earliest topics of inquiry, specifically the study of autopoiesis and self-organization
(Capra 1996). Our forth environmental force is the more recent development of complexity science, particularly the
last twenty years of methodological innovations in agent-based modeling, dynamical systems theory, fuzzy logic,
and data mining (Gilbert and Troitzsch 2005). The final environmental force is the popularization and academywide interest in the new science of networks by (Buchanan 2002).
To help readers gain a working knowledge of complexity science and sociology’s complexity, we will
provide a brief overview of each environmental force, including its major themes, scholars, literature, etc. Then,
with this working knowledge, we will explore how that force has impacted one or more of the five areas of research
in SACS. Later, in chapters six through eight, we will examine the impact these forces have had on SACS’s
previous, current and (where relevant) future trajectory. We begin with sociology’s complexity.