R. Keith Sawyer.
Social Emergence: societies as complex systems.
CUP. 2005
Can we understand important social issues by studying individual personalities and decisions?
Or are societies somehow more than the people in them?
Sociologists have long believed that the study of individual decisions and behaviors
cannot fully explain the complex modern phenomena which emerge
when people interact in organizations, institutions, and societies.
In contrast, most psychologists and economists tend to treat social phenomena
as if they were reducible to the actions of individuals, whose independent
choices can simply be added together to explain complex social processes.
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 these 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. This book makes a unique contribution not only to complex systems research but also to social theory.