Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology turns to complex systems thinking in search of a suitable framework to explore social complexity in Archaeology. Social complexity in archaeology is commonly related to properties of complex societies such as states, as opposed to so-called simple societies such as tribes or chiefdoms. These conceptualisations of complexity are ultimately rooted in Eurocentric perspectives with problematic implications for the field of archaeology. This book provides an in-depth conceptualisation of social complexity as the core concept in archaeological and interdisciplinary studies of the past, integrating approaches from complex systems thinking, archaeological theory, social practice theory, and sustainability and resilience science. The book covers a long-term perspective of social change and stability, tracing the full cycle of complexity trajectories, from emergence and development to collapse, regeneration and transformation of communities and societies. It offers a broad vision on social complexity as a core concept for the present and future development of archaeology. This book is intended to be a valuable resource for students and scholars in the field of archaeology and related disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, as well as the natural sciences studying human-environment interactions in the past.

Individuals experience a variety of different events throughout their life-course - birth, marriage, change of employment, school graduation, etc. - which sometimes occur in rapid succession, and whose timing and definition may seem unclear. Now that survey questionnaires are able to record individual trajectories in greater depth, changes of status can no longer be viewed simply as separate events, but involve a transition process of variable duration. The observation, modelling and interpretation of these fuzzy thresholds between two situations constitute a dynamic field of research in the social sciences. The authors of this manual have pooled their experience of event-history data collection to address the questions of "focus", i.e. finding the right observation distance to grasp the complexity of life histories, and of time, i.e. choosing the right timescale of detailed information collection. After analysing the links between quantitative and qualitative data, addressing the distinction between facts and perceptions, and deconstructing analysis data categories, they offer a number of conceptual and methodological solutions. This study extends beyond the scope of specific examples to develop a major empirical approach in a still largely unexplored area. This book targets a much broader audience than the community of demographers alone. It concerns everyone in the field of social sciences who, at one moment or another, is required to organize data collection in the field, either for research or practical purposes. The Groupe de réflexion sur l'approche biographique (GRAB) brings together researchers and academics from a range of institutions (INED, IRD, CNRS, etc.) working in a variety of disciplines: demography, geography, sociology, economics, etc. It is building on the experience acquired through 25 event-history surveys conducted to date in France, Africa and Latin America.

This ground-breaking Handbook presents a state-of-the-art exploration of entropy, complexity and spatial dynamics from fundamental theoretical, empirical and methodological perspectives. It considers how foundational theories can contribute to new advances, including novel modeling and empirical insights at different sectoral, spatial and temporal scales.

In Complexity and Postmodernism, Paul Cilliers explores the idea of complexity in the light of contemporary perspectives from philosophy and science. Cilliers offers us a unique approach to understanding complexity and computational theory by integrating postmodern theory (like that of Derrida and Lyotard) into his discussion. Complexity and Postmodernism is an exciting and an original book that should be read by anyone interested in gaining a fresh understanding of complexity, postmodernism and connectionism.

This book builds on Marais’s innovative A (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation to explore the implications of this conceptualization of translation as the semiotic work from which social-cultural reality emerges and chart the way forward for applications in empirical research. The volume brings together some of the latest developments in biosemiotics, social semiotics and Peircean semiotics with emergent work in translation studies towards better understanding the emergence of trajectories in society-culture through semiotic processes. The book further develops lines of thinking around thermodynamics in the work of Terrence Deacon to consider the ways in which ideas emerge from matter, creating meaning, and its opposites, namely the ways in which ideas constrain matter. Marais links these theoretical strands to empirical case studies in the final three chapters towards operationalizing these concepts for further empirical work. This book is aimed at academics in the fields of translation studies, semiotics, multimodal/multimedial studies, cultural studies and development studies. It will also be applicable to postgraduate students in these fields.

This book explores how we may overcome categorizations and opposites in how we explain all existence. It places such ideas into the context of existing complexity paradigms. Research into complex systems has revolutionized virtually all areas of inquiry over the past half century. The algorithms of non-linear systems research have enabled us to unify descriptions of the world that were distinct under traditional, reductionist explorations. It is the beauty of complexity that it brings together various scientific fields that, in the past, were treated as separate entities under specialized study. They are now found to be governed by the same laws of non-linearity. However, this achievement comes at the price of abstraction and open-endedness. The book is motivated by the philosophical desire to eliminate categorizations and opposites in the sciences and arrive at a unified description of nature and society. To the reader, it offers innovative philosophical insights derived from complexity research.

Given that a representational system's phenomenal experience must be intrinsic to it and must therefore arise from its own temporal dynamics, consciousness is best understood — indeed, can only be understood — as being in time. Despite that, it is still acceptable for theories of consciousness to be summarily exempted from addressing the temporality of phenomenal experience. The chapters comprising this book represent a collective attempt on the part of their authors to redress this aberration. The diverse treatments of phenomenal consciousness range in their methodology from philosophy, through surveys and synthesis of behavioral and neuroscientific findings, to computational analysis. This collection's broad scope and integrative approach, characterized by the view of the brain as a dynamical system that computes the mind's representation space, will be of interest to researchers, instructors, and students in the cognitive sciences wishing to acquaint themselves with the current thinking in consciousness research. Series B.