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  1. Home
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  3. Social Emergence
  • Cited by 571
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
May 2010
Print publication year:
2005
Online ISBN:
9780511734892
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511734892
Subjects:
Social Theory, Philosophy, Sociology, Political Philosophy
Information

Book description

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 psychology can't explain what happens when people work together in complex modern societies. In contrast, most psychologists and economists believe that if we have an accurate theory of how individuals make choices and act on them, we can explain pretty much everything about social life. 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.

Reviews

'… I enjoyed reading this book. It is clearly written and describes challenging theories in an accessible way. I also found it thought provoking for my own research.'

Source: Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation

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