Sociology and Complexity Science: A New Field of Inquiry

This book is the first to identify and review the new field of study, sociology and complexity science—or SACS for short. SACS is comprised of five cutting-edge areas of research: computational sociology, the British-based School of Complexity (BBC), complex social network analysis (CSNA), sociocybernetics and the Luhmann School of Complexity (LSC). Together, these five areas represent the latest development in complexity science and sociological systems thinking, offering researchers a powerful, new set of tools for addressing the growing complexity of sociological inquiry.

This book also showcases a new method for modeling social systems, called the SACS Toolkit. The SACS Toolkit comes with a theoretical framework (social complexity theory), procedural algorithm (assemblage) and recommended toolset for modeling social systems (qualitatively, historically or numerically) from the ground-up. In fact, this book uses the SACS Toolkit to review the new field of SACS. The third feature of this book is its compendium of maps, graphs and figures—all located in one chapter. Demonstrating the visual ingenuity of complexity science method, this compendium provides a picture-book tour of the new field of SACS. Finally, this book comes with a companion website—an internet resource for exploring the new science of complexity and its intersection with sociology; and for downloading the maps (in color) used in this book. Useful for teachers, students and researchers, this book articulates a possible future for social scientific inquiry in the 21st century.