230044 SE Selected Paradigms: Complexity of a Complex World (2016W)

This seminar deals with the complexity of an (ever-changing) social reality.

First, we will consider the question of what makes the social world so complex. What is the (ontological) basis of the social world's complexity?

Furthermore, we will look at the complex interdependencies between political, economic, cultural, historic, geographic,... processes and factors and ask how we can do justice to this complexity in our explanatory attempts.

To this end, 'Complexity of a Complex World' will also engage in the discussion of analytical controversies such as the structure-agency-debate and the materialism-idealism-debate. Much emphasis will also be on the key contribution of discourses, and ideas more generally, to the shaping of social structures and strategies in different contexts.

This seminar seeks to develop a broad post-disciplinary perspective for the analysis of complex social processes and provides students with a conceptual tool-kit that will allow them to reduce the complexity of social phenomena as much as necessary, but no more than necessary.