The complexity of social systems: Could hegemony emerge from the micro-politics of the individual?

Research output: Chapter in Book or Conference Publication/ProceedingChapterpeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

What if there were a suitably Gramscian totalizing - and scientific - approach to understanding social systems, which nonetheless escaped all the reductionist, scientistic pitfalls a deconstructive and poststructuralist Foucauldian would be wont to point out? What if there was a science that could speak coherently about the macro-level of social structures without denying the radical uncertainty at the micro-level of the individual, a theory which supported the tension between radical contingency and free choice at the level of the individual yet was able simultaneously to discern and predict robust and reliable patterns at the level of the collective? What if, in a non-mystical sense, the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts that a complex whole can exhibit collective properties, emergent features that are lawful in their own right? (Kaufmann 1995: viii). Would this science of complexity not grant us a context in which the ideas of both Foucault and Gramsci could sit, no longer conflicting because both contextualized by their new situation? Could not Foucaults micro-politics in society indeed add up to and constitute the central figure of a State that exhibited patterns not dissimilar to Gramscis descriptions of the hegemonic reach of that centre out into the minutiae of social relations?
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationGramsci and Foucault
Subtitle of host publicationA Reassessment
PublisherAshgate Publishing Ltd
Pages171-181
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)9781409460879
ISBN (Print)9781409460862
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2015
Externally publishedYes

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