Embark on a riveting journey through the study of social complexity with The Atlas of Social Complexity. Over three decades of scientific exploration unfold, unravelling the enigmatic threads that compose the fabric of society. From the dance of bacteria, to human-machine interactions, to the ever-shifting dynamics of power in social networks, this Atlas maps the evolution of our understanding of social complexity.
Brian Castellani’s and Lasse Gerrits’ Atlas is not merely retrospective. It is a compass pointing to uncharted territories: new directions for research and intellectual debate. With wit and insight, they invite the reader to ponder unanswered questions, taking them on a quest for alternative ways to understand the intricate complexities of societies.
The Atlas of Social Complexity is a thrilling expedition into the heart of what makes us human: from cognition, emotion, consciousness, the dynamics of human psychology, to social networks, collective behaviour, politics and governance, technology and planning, and the practice of social interventions. The Atlas also visits cross-cutting themes such as intersectionality, configurational complexity, and research methods.
Organised around six transdisciplinary themes and twenty-four topics the Atlas is an invaluable resource for all social science and complexity science scholars and students interested in new ideas and new ways of working in social complexity. It paves the way for the next generation of research in the study of social complexity.
Acknowledgments vii
1 Theme 1: The Social Complexity Imagination 8
2 Origins of the Study of Social Complexity 23
3 Thirteen Situations 43
4 Cartography and Constructing the Atlas 63
5 Theme 2: Cognition, Emotion, and Consciousness 70
6 Autopoiesis and Cellular Cognition 77
7 Bacteria and the Brain 82
8 Immune System Cognition 88
9 Brain-based Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness 99
10 The Self 120
11 Human-machine 140
12 Theme 3: dynamics of human psychology 149
13 Human psychology as dynamical system 157
14 Psychopathology of Mental Disorders 173
15 Healing and the therapeutic process 192
16 Mindfulness, imagination, and creativity 205
17 Theme 4: living in global-ecological social systems 216
18 Complex social Psychology 232
19 Collective behaviour, social movements and mass psychology 243
20 Configurational Social Science 261
21 The local and the global: complexities of place 297
22 Socio-technological life 321
23 Governance, politics and technocracy 342
vi The atlas of social complexity
24 The challenges of applying complexity 358
25 Economics in an unstable world 372
26 Resilience and all that jazz 384
27 Theme 5: charting a new methods territory 396
28 Make love, not models 398
29 Revisiting complex causality 407
30 Mapping the new methodological terrain 425
31 Getting philosophically real 455
32 Theme 6: the unfinished space 464
Appendix 1: list of respondents 486
Appendix 2: speculative references 488
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