ТЕОРІЇ СКЛАДНОСТІ ТА ЇХ ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ В СОЦІАЛЬНИХ НАУКАХ

Abstract

This article examines complexity theories and their applicability for social studies. Once these theories revealed complex system of autopoietic self-organization, nonlinearity and far from equilibrium social theoretics were encouraged to apply complexity methodology to investigate social complexity in a frame of political studies, sociology, international relations and other social disciplines. As a particular case, the article studies John Urry’s profound contributions to complexity theoretical shifts in social science. He was not only one of the most important British sociologists, but also a scholar network builder and public intellectual who changed the face of British, and indeed global, social theory. Known as a creator of the new mobility paradigm associated with a ‘Lancaster School’, he stands in contrast to the empiricist traditions in American and British social sciences, while struggling for post-disciplinary approach against the hierarchies of academic departments, and their disciplinary closure. This also explains his critique of conventional sociology and its division from the natural sciences. J. Urry was primarily a macro-level thinker concerned with systems and global processes. Therefore, his project starts with complexity theory and its implications in terms of global complexity, complexity of social sciences in opposition to its previous linearity and structure/agent duality. J. Urry argues for breaking down the division between ‘natural’ and ‘social’ sciences, since both are characterized by complexity This complexity turn led Urry directly into his conceptualization of mobilities as a second theoretical turn, which deals with dynamic urban forms and automobility. Finally, a third theoretical turn in his thinking is geo-ecological. Here J. Urry is acting as a micro-level theorist of the body, leisure, consuming, tourism and nature. Tracing this trajectory of his theoretical evolution is more informative for it moves us from his early recognition of large-scaled complexity into reconsidered human-scaled problems of how we ought to live in the world. Key words: social and natural sciences, theory of complex systems, chaos theory, mobility, John Urry.