Complexity Analysis

Bammer, Gabriele (2005) “Integration and Implementation Sciences: Building a New Specialization,” Ecology and Society 10(2) worries that there are several competing approaches to complexity analysis. She argues convincingly that these might well be integrated themselves into a coherent set of strategies. Integration is in part possible because different approaches deal with different kinds of complexity: some emphasize equilibria, others stress cycles, still others focus on change in some direction, and many speak of stochastic outcomes (these are, notably, the different sorts of time-path that every theory should specify as identified in Classifying Theories). It should thus be possible to develop a menu of complexity theories and methods that are applied to different situations. Yet integration is also possible because many similar elements appear in quite different approaches to complexity: concerns with hierarchy of phenomena, boundaries between phenomena, networks and flows, and feedback loops among phenomena. Complexity analysis thus benefits from Mapping Interdisciplinary Connections Note that several case studies in Repko Newell and Szostak, eds., Case Studies in Interdisciplinary Research (2012), but most explicitly those of Szostak and Keestra, show how mapping the relationships between variables can be invaluable; those two chapters also address issues of hierarchy.