Warwick, Friday 8 May 2015[spacer height=”1px”]12.45pm-5:15pm, followed by Drinks Reception[spacer height=”1px”]MS.05, Zeeman Building (Maths/Stats Building)[spacer height=”1px”]University of Warwick (Building no. 38 on the campus map)[spacer height=”1px”]Hosted by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick[spacer height=”4px”]
AGENDA – see below for slides[spacer height=”4px”]PHOTOS, thanks to Leo Caves[spacer height=”4px”]SKETCHES by José Raimundo
In this fifth seminar, we explore one of the issues that has already started to emerge across all the seminar so far: epistemology. In particular, this seminar aims to unpack some of the ways in which different kinds of epistemological positions that tend to be implicit in complexity discussions in general. One of the features that has become clear to the seminar series organisers series is the ways in which each seminar as so far tended to ‘divide’ the seminar participants, with particular members preferring certain seminars over others in a way that tends to also map on to their respective disciplinary backgrounds.[spacer height=”10px”]In spite of the different approaches to complexity that are so obviously present across the disciplines, one of the aims of this seminar series has been to prioritise the social and to explore what a complex social systems methodological approach might entail. With this in mind, we return to some fundamental concepts in social science as way of exploring how they may or may not be turned on their head from a complex systems perspective.[spacer height=”10px”]In doing so, this seminar focuses on two aspects of the social that we consider to be fundamental to a complex systems approach, namely agency and evaluation. Often these concepts tend to sit separately to one another and they also tend not to be key priorities within complexity approaches in general either. Here, therefore, we bring them together as a way of rethinking some of the key ways we might begin to formulate what an empirical complex systems approach look like, if it acknowledged the importance of agency and evaluation together.[spacer height=”7px”]This seminar will follow a slightly different format to previous seminars in that we have chosen to only have a small number of key speakers and a larger audience. This will, though, still allow us plenty of time for some good discussion.
The speakers:
PROF. MARGARET ARCHER [spacer height=”1px”]Sociology, University of Warwick University, Centre for Social Ontology [spacer height=”2px”]Title: Change, Complexity and Consiousness[spacer height=”5px”]
DR EDMUND CHATTOE-BROWN [spacer height=”1px”]Sociology, University of Leicester[spacer height=”2px”]Title: Has Agent-Based Modelling Already Solved the Problems of Complexity? An Analysis Based on Exemplar Models[spacer height=”5px”]
DR ANA TEIXEIRA DE MELO [spacer height=”1px”]Center for Social Studies, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Coimbra[spacer height=”2px”]Title: Exploring, Participating and Constructing Complexity: How a Complex Complexity Science looks like to a curious family psychologist[spacer height=”5px”]
PROF. MALCOLM WILLIAMS [spacer height=”1px”]School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University[spacer height=”2px”]Title: Necessity, Contingency and Social Reality[spacer height=”5px”]