Social Construtionism - Pilurality and Complexity

" the idea that chaos and self-organization limit each other, 

we think, is under-explored. The challenge of exploring the relationship 

consists in the former being formally designated, while the latter demands 

qualitative inquiry. "

After the ‘complexity turn’ it appears that sociology may instead be a

specialist branch of a general ontology of eco- auto-organization. 

This has enormous bearing on the ethical responsibilities 

of sociology itself. Where social construction through language is 

stressed, the ethical outcome is the demand for pluralism since there is no 

reasonable cause for constraint. The rise of fundamentalism showed us how 

narrow that view was: pluralism is easily recognized by othersas prescrip- 

tive. 

Now there is the combined effect of global warming, the shortage of 

water and the depletion of fossil fuels. Is the sociology of pluralism appro- 

priate here or are we faced with different kinds of ethical choices? Has soci- 

ology rediscovered imperatives? Imperatives will not square with sui generic 

social phenomena, however, unless we agree that ‘they’ generate their own 

limits – by which we clearly mean ecological viability. Sui generic

phenom- 

ena suddenly look like everything else that is auto-eco-organizational. Their 

previously separated status seems to rest in our view on the ability to 

construct ‘without reference to’. In what ways does complexity theory differ 

from this? The answer again lies with Prigogine. Complexity cannot arise 

from individual particles or even, in this case, from a class of phenomena 

that can operate ‘without reference to’. The requirements are large-scale 

macroscopic interactions in which all parties are ‘real’ contributors; 

crucially, chance is only one of those contributors. Only on this basis is ‘the 

complexity turn’ properly grounded. Otherwise it is a needless elaboration. 

Another way to say this is that complexity theory becomes necessary only 

when ‘eco’ is added to auto-organization. 

A great deal of extremely interesting work (as well as Luhmann’s) is founded on 

operational closure. However it remains riddled by the problems of previous 

phenomenology where everything is ‘constructed’ by cognitive processes. See for 

example Petito et al. (1999) or Lakoff and Núñez (2000). 

Smith and Jenks (2005)