Social Emergence: Societies As Complex Systems [Paperback]

R. Keith Sawyer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521606373 | ISBN-13: 978-0521606370 | Publication Date: November 28, 2005

Sociologists have long believed that psychology alone can't explain what happens when people work together in complex modern societies. In contrast, most psychologists and economists believe that we can explain much about social life with an accurate theory of how individuals make choices and act on them. R. Keith Sawyer argues, however, that societies are complex dynamical systems, and that the best way to resolve these debates is by developing the concept of emergence, paying attention to multiple levels of analysis--individuals, interactions, and groups--with a dynamic focus on how social group phenomena emerge from communication processes among individual members.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Following many other contemporary social scientists K. Sawyer presents a theoretical discussion of a recurrent and important question in the social sciences: How should we explain the relations between individuals and social structures?" -François Dépelteau, Canadian Journal of Sociology Online

Book Description

Can we understand important social issues by studying individual personalities and decisions? Or are societies somehow more than the people in them? Social Emergence takes a new approach to these longstanding questions. Sawyer argues that societies are complex dynamical systems, and that the best way to resolve the debates is by developing the concept of emergence, focusing on multiple levels of analysis--individuals, interactions, and groups - and with a dynamic focus on how social group phenomena emerge from communication processes among individual members.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (November 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521606373
• ISBN-13: 978-0521606370
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #160,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Keith Sawyer, a professor of education, psychology, and business at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of the country's leading scientific experts on creativity and innovation. After receiving his computer science degree from MIT in 1982, Dr. Sawyer began his career with a two-year stint designing videogames for Atari. He then worked for 6 years as a management consultant in Boston and New York, advising large corporations on the strategic use of information technology. Dr. Sawyer entered doctoral study at the University of Chicago in 1990 and attained his PhD in psychology in 1994. He is best known for his studies of jazz and improvisational theater groups. His twelve books include GROUP GENIUS and EXPLAINING CREATIVITY, and he has published over 80 scientific articles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful Contribution to Complex Systems Theory, July 7, 2007

By 

Herbert Gintis (Northampton, MA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Social Emergence: Societies As Complex Systems (Paperback)

Human society is a prime candidate for analysis as a complex dynamical system, since societies consist in large numbers of very similar agents engaged in overlapping and interdependent interactions. Despite the power of methodologically individualist approaches in understanding human behavior, they cannot go beyond a certain point, because complex dynamical systems have emergent properties that govern the joint behavior of the individuals who constitute society. Such emergent properties cannot be properly modeled within the confines of the existing behavioral disciplines, because some disciplines (e.g., economics) are thoroughly committed to methodological individualism, and others (e.g., sociology) do not study the precise mechanisms whereby emergent properties result from the interaction of micro-level agents. Sawyer's book focuses on the requirements for a consistent approach to emergent social properties.

Sawyer argues that the agent-based modeling and complexity techniques now used form a "third wave" of social systems theory, the first being Talcott Parsons' structural-functionalism, and the second being Bertalanffy' work general systems theory. Sawyer's personal emphasis is on the role of communication in constituting complex group intentionality.

The book does a nice job of outline the history of the concept of emergence in social theory, arguing that Durkheim's work is best understood as a systematic alternative to methodological individualism. Much of the analysis difficult to deal with because it depends on a high level of abstraction from analytical and behavioral models, so lacks focus. It is difficult to have much patience with transcendental realism, critical realism, and other philosophical and sociological doctrines that pontificate on the abstract nature of social systems.

Sawyer stresses the importance of agent-based modeling of complex dynamical systems. This stress is well-founded, but the book's emphasis on the level of emergent properties leads to a slighting of the analytical modeling of human individuals. This is, of course, typical of a sociological approach to social theory, but it belies the author's earlier insistence on the cross-disciplinary nature of the task of explaining social emergence. There is neither biology nor economics here, and the analysis suffers as a result. It is incorrect to believe that a groups of computer scientists can model human communication, for instance, without knowing the empirical data on the social role of communication, the evolutionary dynamics of human language, and the conditions under which communication is veridical. In particular, it is incorrect to think one can understand communication without problematizing the conditions under which people can assume that message are truthful.

Despite erring on the side of slighting the micro components of society---the individuals who compose society in their strategic and communicative interactions---this is a valuable contribution for those interested in developing social theory beyond methodological individualism

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Overview of Complex Social Systems, January 3, 2007

By 

vanderwal (Bethesda, MD, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Social Emergence: Societies As Complex Systems (Paperback)

This book is a great overview of the state of understanding and research in and around complex social systems. I found this a good foundation for deeper digging, particularly understanding what happens in some of the social networks on the web as they scale. As it is academic in nature (although rather accessible for non-accademics) it is well footnoted and annotated, making it easy to dig deeper on a variety of subjects.

2 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Regarding CAM's Essential Science-Ejected Vitalism, 2005:, January 26, 2008

By 

Robert J. Cullen "'Dr. Bob Ironic'" (Bridgeport, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Social Emergence: Societies As Complex Systems (Hardcover)

Vitalism is a profoundly science-ejected concept, though many CAM or 'natural health' cabals falsely claim that vitalism survives scientific scrutiny.

I quote:

"from the late nineteenth century through the 1920s, many holists rejected materialism and held to dualist ontologies such as vitalism and organicism. Vitalism holds that living organisms contain a 'vital' force or substance in addition to physical matter [...] as science became more firmly detached from metaphysics, nonmaterialist holisms -- including vitalism, dualism, spiritualism, and idealism -- became increasingly difficult for serious scientists to maintain, although metaphysical philosophers continued to make such arguments through the 1920s. Today, dualist ontologies such as vitalism are rejected as unscientific by the mainstream of all scientific disciplines; all science is now materialist and is based on the metaphysical position [until empirical evidence warrants otherwise] that all existence is material in character and there are no entities that exist independently of matter [p.029]."

-r.c.