Sawyer: Social Emergence

Sawyer, R. Keith. (2005). Social emergence : societies as complex systems. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.

This account examines the history of sociological thought relating to micro-macro issues and presents the concept of emergence as the third-wave of sociology. Additionally, this account attempts to map out the place that emergence plays in both psychology and sociology. Also, there is an examination of the ability to model emergent behavior using agent-based models.

The first distinction that is made examines the descriptions of societies that have existed throughout history. For example, early in the study of sociology, there was what Sawyer terms a mechanistic interpretation of history. Later on, there developed an organic view of social interaction that, “…compared the various institutions of society to the organs of the human body” (1). Later, there appeared a structural-functional approach which was based on studies of cybernetics and that was promoted by Talcott Parsons. “Common to all of these approaches is the basic insight that societies are complex configurations of many people engaged in overlapping and interlocking patterns of relationships with one another” (1).

Sawyer argues that there is a third-wave of sociological approaches that goes a long way to resolve long-standing debates in the field. For example, this new approach takes an agent based computer simulation to create artificial societies. These can be used to explore emergent phenomena. Later in the book, he refers to this third-wave as providing a synthesis of the first two waves.

The concept of emergence is contentious for Sawyer. He explores how it has been used in sociology and psychology and finds usages to be contradictory. He attempts to correct this problem in the later chapters of his book by exploring a concept of social emergence. Emergence is typically understood as being phenomena that exist as “higher level properties” (2) that emerge from lower level properties. Emergence also refers to “complex phenomena are those that reside between simplicity and randomness” (3). Some theorists (Kauffman 1993) refer to this as being at the “edge of randomness (3). “In complex systems so conceived, relatively simple higher-level order ‘emerges’ from relatively complex lower-level processes” (3).

Emergent phenomena are seen by many as necessarily being unpredictable, irreducible to regular laws and novel (4). Typically, this paradigm is associated with complexity theory. Complexity theory is seen as being the opposite of reductionist theories. In terms of the relative preponderance of emergent phenomena, the nature of the system is important. Four characteristics have been identified that make emergent phenomena more likely: many components in density, global functions are distributed not to individuals but broadly, global system is impossible to fully decompose into smaller systems, and that communication plays a crucial role (4-5).

There has been a traditional divide between atomism and holism. Emergentism bridges this divide. It, “…is a form of nonreductionism that accepts the ontological position of materialism…[it] accepts that nothing exists except the component parts and their interactions, and thus avoids the ontological problem of holism [how can holist features have an ontology if they are merely the sum of lower-level interactions?]. However, the emergentist also rejects atomism and argues that reductionism, physicalism, mechanism, and epiphenomenalism are not necessary consequences of materialism. Some complex natural phenomena cannot be studied with reductionism methods; these phenomena are complex systems in which more comple4x and differentiated ‘higher-level’ structures emerge from the organization and interaction of simpler, ‘lower-level’ component parts” (29).

Sawyer also touches on the study of economics and argues that it holds the position as the core of social science approaches because it deals with emergent phenomena. He briefly mentions Hayek, Arrow and Menger. They all explain emergent phenomena and believe that, while it can not be reduced to the agency of individual actors, it can be explained by looking at individual action. Sawyer would like sociology to take the place as the zenith discipline in the social sciences. By deploying a theory of social emergence, Sawyer believes that this will become possible.

In the 10th chapter, our author becomes very explicit about his long-term goals for the study of emergence in the social sciences. “Social emergence is the central phenomenon of the social sciences” (189). “In th4e second half of the twentieth century, economics has made the best case for being the foundational social science, by making social emergence central to its theory and practice” (189). Sociology can play this role, if it develops the emergence paradigm.

He explores the three waves of sociology, once again, and finds that the first wave was too rigid and simple, the second wave built on the first wave by highlighting the interaction between structure and agent (and Sawyer considers Luhmann to be a second-wave sociological theorist). Sawyer has three problems with second-wave theories: they do not theorize between social structure and interaction, between individual and interaction and they have not conceptualization of social emergence (206-7).

The emergence paradigm is then launched. It involves five stages of development between the micro and macro levels. The stages proceed in the following order: individual (agency, etc.), interaction (communication, etc.), ephemeral emergents (things that emerge from agent and communication that are unlikely to remain), stable emergents (subcultures, slang, social practices, etc.) and then social structure (laws, infrastructure, etc.).

Sociology should be considered with the “circle of emergence” (220). This circle cuts through all five levels of the emergence paradigm, but does not dive as deeply down into the first level or as high into the fifth level. The implication is that sociology can be the theory that links together all of the social sciences: it does not do psychology (bottom of the first level) nor does it do law (top of the fifth level). However, it does link these schools together by providing a framework for understanding how phenomena move between the bottom and top levels. It is, in essence, the tool that mitigates the levels of analysis problem.