Society as a complex adaptive system

E:CO Emergence: Complexity and Organization

Volumn 10, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 86-112

  Buckley, Walter ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 65649084523     PISSN: 15213250     EISSN: 15217000     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (73)

1. Sociology and Modern Systems theory (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.; Prentice-Hall, 1967).
2. See Pringle, Chapter 33; and Donald T. Campbell, "Methodological Suggestionss from a Comparative Psychology of Knowledge Processes," Inquiry, 2 (1959), 152-67.
3. See, for example, Rapport and MacKay selections, Chapters 16 and 24.
4. For an excellent recent overview of this transition, see A. Irving Hallowell, "Personality, Culture, and Society in Behavioral Evolution," in Sigmund Koch (Ed), Psychology: A Study of a Science, Volume 6: Investigations of Man as Socius (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1693), 429-509.
5. Herbert A. Thelen, "Emotionality and Work in Groups," in Leonard D. White (Ed.), The State of the Social Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 184-86.
6. See Cannon selection, Chapter 3.
7. Or perhaps we might take Cadwallader's suggestion (Chapter 52) and use Ashby's term "ultrastability," I dislike, however, the cannotative overemphasis on "stability," which is sure to be misunderstood by many I prefer the term "morphogenesis" as best expressing the characteristic feature of the adaptive system. (See, for one, Maruyama's usage in Chapter 36) Thus, we might say that physical systems are typically equilibrial, physiological systems are typically homeostatic, and psychological, sociocultural, or ecological systems are typically morphogenic. From this view, our paradigm of the mechanisms underlying the complex system becomes a basic paradigm of the special cases even the process, perhaps embracing as special cases even the structuring process below the complex adaptive sustem level.
8. C. A. Mace, "Homeostasis, Needs and Values," British Journal of Pychology, 44 (1953), 204-205.
9. Gordon Allport reinforces this view for personality (but note his terminology); "Some theories correctly emphasize the tendency of human personality to go beyond steady-states and to elaborate their internal order, even at the cost of disequilibrium. Theories of changing energies ... and of functional autonomy ... do so. These conceptions allow for a continual increase of men's purposes in life and for their morphogenic effect upon the system as a whole, Although homeostasis is a useful conception for short-run 'target orientating tonus involved in 'goal orientation.' ... Although these formulations differ among themselves, they all find the "go" of personality in some dynamic thrust that exceeds the pale function of homeostasis balance. They recognize increasing order over time, and not as abatement, of tension," Gordon W. Allport, Pattern and Growth in Personality (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1961), p. 569.
10. See Chapter 34 and 35.
11. Jules Henry, "Culture, Personality, and Evolution." American Anthropologist, 61 (1959) 221-22.
12. Karl W. Deutsch, "Some Notes on Research on The Role of Models in Natural and Social Science," Synthese, (1948-49), 532-33.
13. See Campbell, op. cit., and Pringle, Chapter 33.
14. Recall Osgood's interpretation in Chapter 23. Also, see Charles E. Osgood's "Psycholinguistics," in S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology, op. cit., pp. 244-316;
15. O. Hobart Mowerer, Learning Theory and the Symbolic Processes (New York: John Wiley, 1960),
16. esp. Chapter 7; "Learning Theory, Cybernetics, and the Concept of Consciousness," For less behavioristic and more genetic and emergent views see, for example, George H. Mead, Mind, Sell and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934),
17. and more recently, Heinz Werner and Bernard Kaplan, Symbol Formation (New York: John Wiley, 1963).
18. See, for example Marshall D. Sahlins, "Culture and Environment: The Study of Cultural Ecology," in Sol Tax (Ed.), Horizons of Anthropology (Chicago: Aldine, 1964), pp. 132-47.
19. See especially the selections above from Nett (Chapter 48), Deutsch (Chapter 46), Hardin (Chapter 55) and Vickers (Chapter 56).
20. However, we should not deemphasize the important structuring role of concrete artifacts, for example, the structure of physical communication nets, road net, cities, interior layouts of building, etc., as limiting and channeling factors for sociocultural action and interaction.
21. Albion W. Small, General Sociology Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1905), p. ix.
22. Charles H. Cooley, Social Process (New York: Scribner's 1918).
23. Florian Znaniecki, Cultural Sciences (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1952).
24. Consider the explicit "feedback" and "self-regulation" conceptions in the following statements of G. H. Mead in Mind, Self and Society,"... the central nevous sytem ha an almost infinite number of elements in it, and they can be organized not only in spatial connection with each other, but also from a temporal standpoint. In virtue of this last fact, our conduct is made up of a series of steps which follow each other, and the later steps may be already started and influence the earlier ones. The thing we are going to do is playing back on what we are doing now" p. 71).
25. As we advance from one set of reponses to another we find ourselves picking out the environment which answers to this next set of reponses. To finish one response is to put ourselves in a position where we see other things...Our world is definitely mapped out for us by the responses which are going to take place ... The structure of the enviroment as a mapping out of organic responses to nature; any environment, whether social or idividual, is a mapping our of the logical structure of the act to which a answers, an act seeking overt expresion" (pp. 128-29, and footnote 32, p. 129).
26. " It is through taking this role of the that [the person] is able to come back on himself and so direct his own process of communication. This taking the role of the other, an expression 1 have so often used, is not simply of passing importance. It is not something that just happens as an incidental result of the gesture, but it is importance in the development of cooperative activity. The immediate effect of such role-taking lies in the control which the individual is able to exercise over his own reponse ... From the standpoint of social evolution, it is this bringing of any given social act, of of the total social process in which that act is a constituent, directly and as an organized whole into the experience of each of the individual organisms implicated in that act with reference to which he may consequently regulate and govern his individual conduct, that constitutes the peculiar value and significance of self-consciousness in those individual organisms" (p. 254, including part of footnote 7).
27. See also the extended discussion based on Mead's essentially cybernetic perspective in Shibutani, Chapter 39.
28. Melvin Seeman, review of Arnold Rose (Ed.), Human Bahavior and Social Processes, in American Sociological Review, 27 (August 1962), 557.
29. George P. Musdock, "Changing Emphasis in Social Structure," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 11 (1955), 366.
30. Raymond Firth, "Some Principles of Social Organization," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 85 (1955), 1.
31. S. F. Nadel, The Theory of Social Structure (New York: The Free Press of Giencoe, 1957), pp. 54-55.
32. Ibid., p. 28.
33. Ibid., p. 153.
34. Exon Z. Vogt, "On the Concept of Structure and Process in Cultural Anthropology," American Anthropologist, 62 (1960), 18-33.
35. Herbert Blumer, "Psychological Import of the Human Group," in Muzafer Sherif and M. O. Wilson (Eds.), Group Relations at the Crossroads (New York: Harper, 1953), pp. 199-201, Emphasis added.
36. Gordon W. Allport, Pattern and Growth in Personality (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1961), p. 567. Also recall his discussion in Chapter 41.
37. For exmple, see Alvin W. Gouldner, "Some Observations on Systematic Theory, 1945-55," in Hans L. Zetterberg (Ed.), Sociology in the United States of America (Paris: INESCO, 1956), pp. 39-40.
38. See also Barrington Moore, Jr., "Sociological Theory and Contemporary Politics," American Journal of Sociology, 61 (September, 1955), 111-15.
39. Recall, for example, the excellent treatment of "decision theory" in Robert M. MacIver, Social Causation (New York: Ginn & Co., 1942), esp. pp. 291 ff.
40. Philip Selznick, "Review Article: The Social Theories of Talcott Parsons," American Sociological Review, 26 (December, 1961), 934.
41. Kenneth E. Boulding, The Image (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956).
42. Recall Maruyama's discussion in Chapter 36.
43. William J. Goode, "A Theory of Role Strain," American Sociological Review, 25 (August, 1960), 483.
44. Ibid., 495.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 494
47. Charles E. Osgood, "Osgood, "Cognitive Dynamics in the Conduct of Human Affairs," Public Opinion Quaterly, 24 (1960), 347.
48. Ibid., 347-48.
49. Ibid., 351.
50. Ibid., 363.
51. Robert R. Sears, "A Theoretical Framework for Personality and Social Behavior," American Psychologist, 6 (1951), 478-79.
52. Ibid., 478.
53. Paul F. Secord and Carl W. Backman, "Personality Theory and the Problem of Stability and Change in Individual Behavior: An Interpersonal Approach," Pschological Review, 68 (1961), 22.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., 26.
56. Ibid., 28.
57. Ibid.
58. Ralph H. Turner, "Role-Taking: Process Versus Conformity," in Arnold M. Rose (Ed.), Human Behavior and Social Processes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1962), Chapter 2.
59. Ibid., 26.
60. Neal Gross et al., Explorations in Role Analysis (New York: John Wiley, 1958), p. 53.
61. Turner, loc. cit., p. 32.
62. Ibid., p. 38.
63. Anselm Strauss et al., "The Hospital and Its Negotiated Order," in Eliot Freidson (Ed.), The Hospital in Modern Society (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), p. 148.
64. Ibid., p. 162.
65. Neal Gross et al., op. cit., p. 321.
66. Also see Robert L. Kahn et al., Organizational Stress: Studies in Role Conflict and Ambiguity (New York: John Wiley, 1964).
67. Amitai Etzioni, A compurative Analysis of Complex Organizations (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961).
68. Ronald Cohen, "Conflict and Change in a Northern Nigerian Emirate," in George K. Zollschan and Walter Hirsch (Ed.), Explorations in Social Change (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1964). Chapter 19.
69. A. G. Frank, "Goal Ambiguity and Conflicting Standards: An Approach to the Study of Organization," Human Organization, 17 (1959), 8-13.
70. Op. Cit., 519. Emphasis supplied.
71. Edward Sapir, "Social Communication," Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1931), Vol. 4, p. 78.
72. This still remains primarily a potential, however; perusal of the general systems literature shows treatment of the sociocultural level systems to be sparse compared to that of biological, psychological and other systems. Part of the reason for this is the failure of sociologists to participate and to make what could be significant contributions to a field rapidly leaving us behind.
73. Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 2d ed., rev., 1954), p. 34.