Knowledge Centre

Pulling together resources exploring how social sector organisations are engaging with complexity

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Wikipedia

Always a good place to start from, Wikipedia has a range of pages exploring various aspects of network theory: An overarching page on network {...}

In Our Time on Complexity

‘In Our Time’ with Melvyn Bragg had a studio discussion on complexity on Radio 4 on the 19th December 2013. It’s easy listening, for complexity {...}

In social networks, group boundaries promote the spread of ideas

Summary of a new study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Damon Centola that explores how boundaried groups spread ideas more successfully than diffuse groups {...}

Moore’s Law and Metcalf’s Law

Two pieces essential to the foundations of network theory and complexity theory are Moore’s Law and Metcalf’s Law, both related to the world of {...}

Dunbar’s Number

Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in {...}

Bob Jessop: The Governance of Complexity and the Complexity of Governance

This chapter by Bob Jessop, professor of sociology at Lancaster university, is a great place to start thinking about how old governance structures collapse {...}

Actor-Network Theory

A good place to start with Actor-Network Theory is Wikipedia, which explains a central thesis of ANT as the treating of objects (both material and {...}

Assemblage Theory

Developed by theorists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the University of Texas has a very accessible article on Assemblage theory that describes it as “an approach {...}

Fritjof Capra’s The Web of Life

“In The Web of Life, Capra looks at the shift from linear thinking to systems thinking in science, showing how recent advances in a {...}

Resources from the Peer to Peer Foundation

At the centre of much of the cutting edge thinking around peer to peer structures, distributed structures and common ownership in the digital age {...}

The Complexity of Severe and Multiple Disadvantage

A paper commissioned by the Lankelly Chase Foundation on The Complexity of Severe and Multiple Disadvantage. I won’t explain it – just read it. It’s {...}

Running a fluid and democratic volunteer-run organisation

Written by Hera Hussain, founder of Chayn, this paper looks at how Chayn manages its 100 or so volunteers in a distributed and democratic {...}

David Chandler’s Beyond neoliberalism: resilience, the new art of governing complexity

“Resilience, as a framework informing governance, relies on an ontology of emergent complexity. This article analyses how complexity operates not only as a critique {...}

The IPPR’s The Relational State Report

While very much a political policy paper exploring what’s gone wrong with the centre left in the UK, The Relational State looks at how human {...}

The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology

This article explains how sociological methods have fallen behind commercial data analysis in terms of building an understanding of society. The article is relevant {...}