Discourse Analysis and Complex Systems

This article is similar to my Discourse Analysis and Adaptive Structuration Theory
Margith A. Strand May 15 2010

Discourse analysis and complex adaptive systems:
Managing variables with attitude/s
Charl Walters & Roy Williams, w.w associates, Reading, U.K.
Charl.w.w@ntlworld.com, Roy.w.w@ntlworld.com
Abstract: There have been long-standing debates about the relative values of quantitative vs. qualitative research, and of
positivism vs. critical theory in management studies. In this paper we discuss the value of discourse theory and the tools of
discourse analysis in the context of complex adaptive systems theory, which can usefully be seen as a synthesis of the thesis of
modernism and the antithesis of post-modernism. Discourse’ has been developed and used in several disciplines, to interesting
effect. It is now time to systematise the notion of discourse, and the tools of discourse analysis, both theoretically and
practically, so that they can better be applied to management research, and to management practice.
Keywords: Discourse, modernism, post-modernism, complex adaptive systems, communities of practice
1. Introduction
Traditionally there have been debates on the
merits of positivism vs. critical theory,
quantitative vs. qualitative methodology, and
modernism vs. post-modernism. However, we
believe that these discussions can be
approached quite differently. Complex
adaptive systems theory can help us to
achieve a “synthesis of modernism and postmodernism”
(Byrne in Rihani, 2002:72).
Similarly, discourse theory and discourse
analysis can provide us with practical tools to
apply this ‘synthesis’ to current management
issues.
It is important to see the different modes of
social organisation from modernist, to postmodernist,
to Complex Adaptive Systems as,
by and large, cumulative modes of social
organisation, not as substitutive or oppositional
theories. The point about complex adaptive
systems theory, and discourse theory, is that
different modes of social organisation and
different epistemologies are applied in different
contexts, and for different purposes. The
cumulative development of these different
modes is outlined in Figure 1.
2. Variables
Variables are the basis of research. There
have been two fundamental developments in
epistemology and research methodology,
which share a strong common thread – their
radical scepticism. The first development, in
science, overturned the uncritical conservatism
of metaphysical and traditional practices, by its
insistence on the criteria of falsifiability and
replicability as the basis for rational truth and
knowledge. This resulted in a body objective
knowledge, which was stripped of context and
subjectivity, and which was highly
commodified, which is why much of it is
defined quantitatively. Like money, quantified
scientific results are highly exchangeable,
which is both a result of scientific method, and
a constituent part of it.
But science left culture largely undisturbed, by
confining scientific scrutiny to the ‘social
sciences’, which were not entirely successful in
producing the same kind of ‘objective’
knowledge that could be produced in the
natural sciences. The ‘individuals’ who were
the object of study in the social sciences were
not as amenable to the reductionist
quantifiability of the natural sciences, nor did
they perform very well on the other metrics of
the natural sciences – predictability and
determinism. ‘Social control’ and even ‘social
engineering’ were tried, but remained elusive.
This led to a long-standing, and still largely
unresolved debate in the social sciences, of
which management research is a part, on the
divide between the two “cultures”: ‘science’
and ‘culture’, or natural and social sciences.
Natural and social sciences are embedded in
language and social practices, much of which
has become ‘naturalised’. The second
development, the radical scepticism of postmodernism,
challenged the uncritical
conservatism of the epistemology of language
itself; thereby challenging culture and society,
and the notions of rationality, truth and the
individual, which had become ‘royal game’
within the research establishment. It brought
the radical scepticism of science under its own
radical scrutiny
2.1 Dispersed Subjects
The semiotics of post-modernism contested
the notion of the individual, particularly the
apparently ‘objective’ notions of gender, race
and class, and deconstructed the extent to
which these are socially constructed, and the
extent to which the notion of the individual is
also socially constructed. Post-modernists
replaced the ‘individual’ with the notion of the
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dispersed subject; no longer one ‘identity’ - the
individual - but ‘identities’: occupying various
subject positions, within different discourses
and discursive communities. Identity is no
longer seen as ‘individual’ but as a process
and a contestation within overlapping and even
contradictory discourses – i.e. an intersection
of the personal and the social.
Just as an ‘individual language’ is a non
sequitur, so too the notion of the ‘individual’
itself came to be seen as a non-sequitur (a
useful riposte to Margaret Thatcher’s claim that
there was “no such thing as ‘society’ ”). The
idea of people shifting their identities was
nothing new, except that it was now
underpinned by a radical and systematic
epistemological critique of language and
culture. It is of course now also enhanced by
the hardware and the architecture of postmodernism,
i.e. the networked society.
2.2 Variables with Attitude
The point that discourse theory and complex
adaptive systems theory make is that human
‘variables’, which are ubiquitous as the objects
of study of management research, are quite
simply not ‘objects’ but rather, subjects with
identities (in fact, changing subjects).
Moreover, this has specific methodological and
epistemological implications.
Rihani writes that:
The new discoveries [in physics] did not
prove Newton to have been in error.
Essentially, they revealed circumstances
where linear methods yielded excellent
results, and others where they did not.
More fundamentally, they established
beyond dispute that some phenomena,
now referred to as non-linear systems, are
essentially probabilistic. They do not
conform to the four golden rules associated
with linearity: order, reductionism,
predictability and determinism. Causes and
effects are not linked; the whole is not
simply the sum of the parts; emergent
properties often appear seemingly out of
the blue; taking the system apart does not
reveal much about its global behaviour;
and the related processes do not steer the
systems to inevitable and distinct ends
(2002: 68).
Snowden, writing on knowledge management,
comes to much the same conclusion. He
illustrates the difference between systems
which are not adaptive, and human systems
which are adaptive - precisely because they
are made up of humans who have identities, or
(what we refer to as) subject positions; people
who are “subjects”, rather than “objects”:
Human systems are complex; a complex
[adaptive] system comprises many
interacting agents, an agent being anything
that has identity. We all exist in many
identities; the author can be son, father or
brother in different contexts; similarly with
work group identities, both formal and
informal along with various social
groupings. As we fluidly move among
identities, we observe different rules,
rituals, and procedures unconsciously. In
such a complex system, the components
and their interactions are changing and can
never be quite pinned down. The system is
irreducible. Cause and effect cannot be
separated because they are intimately
intertwined Two examples make this
clearer: Consider what happens in an
organization when a rumour of reorganisation
surfaces: the complex human
system starts to mutate and change in
unknowable ways; new patterns form in
anticipation of the event. On the other
hand, if you walk up to an aircraft with a
box of tools in your hand, nothing changes.
A feature of a complex system is the
phenomenon of retrospective coherence in
which the current state of affairs always
makes logical sense, but only when we
look backwards. Organisations tend to
study past events to create predictive and
prescriptive models for future decisions
based on the assumption that they are
dealing with a complicated system in which
the components and associated
relationships are capable of discovery and
management. (Snowden 2002:17).
There are particular methodological
consequences of this. Human variables must
be regarded as variables with identities, which
are (particularly in a networked society)
dispersed subjects. They are capable of acting
powerfully and ‘changing the subject’ from time
to time, and context to context. In short, they
are ‘variables with attitude’, and are unlikely to
be amenable to behaving as predictable and
deterministic ‘objects’, no matter how complex
the researcher’s psychological description and
analysis of the subject is.
3. Complex Adaptive Systems
In complex adaptive systems it is not useful to
look for directly, and predictably linked, causes
and effects; instead, what one has to look for
are emergent properties, attractors, and fitness
landscapes. The solutions within complex
adaptive systems are those that allow for
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interaction between the ‘subjects’ with a
substantial amount of freedom, but within
supportive rules.
A large shift in mind-set is required
…from one suited to linear, highly
predictable, systems to an approach based
on non-linear, less predictable systems, in
which internal chaotic interactions between
local actors produce self-organised …
order (Rihani op cit: xv).
He goes on to say
for a system to exist in a state of selforganised
Complexity, its internal elements
should be capable of interacting at an
appropriate level of connectivity and in
accordance to suitable local rules (p9).
In other words, a network of communication
between the people within the system, and a
certain degree of freedom within a set of
mutually acceptable rules are pre-conditions
for ‘self-organised complexity’ to emerge. Selforganised
complexity is distinct from either
chaos or order, and the
management of complex adaptive systems
is therefore a reiterative process that relies
on slow, and uncertain evolution (ibid).
It is vital to note that this does not mean a
linear approach is never valid; this is not an
either/or approach. In the management of
objects rather than subjects, a linear systems
approach could be valid and appropriate.
It is also important to realise that complex
adaptive systems are not merely systems
which are complex, and which adapt –
because they are made up of people with
identities. They are particular systems, which
have to be managed to elicit self-organised
complexity (a fine balance somewhere
between order and chaos), and which share
four common traits:
• They have active internal elements
that furnish sufficient local variety to
enable the system to survive as it
adapts to unforeseen circumstances
• They systems’ element are lightly but
not sparsely connected
• The elements interact locally according
to simple rules to provide the energy to
maintain stable global patterns, as
opposed to rigid order or chaos
• Variations in prevailing conditions
result in many minor changes and a
few large mutations, but it is not
possible to predict the outcomes in
advance (Rihani, op cit: 81).
4. Discourse
We are concerned in this paper to outline, both
theoretically and practically, ways in which a
combination of discourse theory and complex
adaptive systems theory can indeed offer us a
dialectical synthesis of the thesis of
modernism/positivism and the antithesis of
post-modernism. In order to do so, we need to
build on the radical scepticism common to both
modernism and post-modernism, and to
extrapolate and build further on the notion of
the dispersed subject. To this effect, we need
to insert the dispersed subject back into the
social – to put post-modernism back into
sociology (without the linear and positivistic
reductionism), back into communities of
practice and discourse communities, but not
‘communities’ as they have been traditionally
defined.
Rihani and Snowden both view linear and nonlinear
systems as what we would call different
discourses - different ways of making sense of
particular contexts (or all contexts, if you wish
to be reductionist) and acting within them.
There is an overlap between this notion of
discourse, (and discourse communities that
support and maintain particular discourses)
and the concept of Communities of Practice
(CoP). CoPs, as used in the ICT world, refer to
groups of people who may be organised very
informally, and who do not necessarily
maintain, or seek to maintain, any integrated
and sustained discourse over any considerable
period of time. Although there may be
similarities between this (ICT) understanding of
a Community of Practice and the concept to
we refer, there are distinct differences in that
discourses are generally more structured and
more stable
Discourses can be characterised in the
following ways
1. Discourses in broad terms serve two
related purposes, to make sense of the
environment, and to order it accordingly. Or as
Ferguson says, discourse is an “interpretative
grid”, but it is also “a conceptual ‘apparatus’ …
that does something” (1994: xiv).
2. It is quite possible to approach the same
issue from the point of view of quite different
discourses.
3. The best intentions do not always work
out in practice. Discourse is first and foremost
about what actually happens. This might relate
only ironically or paradoxically to what was
intended.
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4. And in overall terms, a discourse can be
distinguished from other discourses by:
• Its primary concerned and /or focus
• How it identifies its key issues
• What kinds of solutions it advocates
and implements
• What assumptions it makes about the
desirability of and necessity for change
• How it changes and develops in terms
of participation and consultation.
• The people who constitute the
community of practice.
• How it relates to other discourses –
does it take precedence or not and, if
so, under what circumstances?
We need to return to point 3, i.e. that what
actually happens might relate only ironically or
paradoxically to what was intended.
Discourses are sustained and systematic ways
of articulating, making sense of the
environment, and ordering it accordingly:
discourse is an “interpretative grid”, but it is
also “a conceptual ‘apparatus’ …that does
something” (Ferguson, ibid). The group of
people who support and maintain particular
discourses are its discourse community. Other
groups may of course contest these
discourses.
4.1 Discourses of Economic
Development
A classic analysis of what actually happens
within a particular discourse is that of
economic development in Lesotho, in
Ferguson’s book The Anti-Politics Machine
(1994). He locates the
intelligibility of a series of events and
transformations not in the intentions of one
or more animating subjects, but in the
systematic nature of the social reality
which results from those actions (op. cit:18,
emphasis added)…
and, continues
the outcomes of planned social
interventions can end up coming together
into powerful constellations of control that
were never intended and in some cases
never even recognised, but are all the
more effective for being ‘subject-less’... It is
this emphasis on the ‘systematic nature of
the resultant social reality’ that is the core
of the notion of discourse here. It includes
a framework for making sense of the world
and for planning interventions, but it also
includes what the anthropologist knows full
well, namely “how easily structures can
take on lives of their own (op. cit: 17).
Ferguson is not just stating that these are
unintended outcomes. He says that it is often
the case in economic development that
…outcomes, that at first appear as mere
‘side effects’ of an unsuccessful attempt to
engineer an economic transformation,
become legible in another perspective as
unintended … elements in a resultant
constellation that has the effect of
expanding the exercise of a particular sort
of state power while simultaneously
exercising a powerful depoliticising effect”
(op. cit: 21)
- hence, the “anti-politics machine”. More
specifically, Ferguson says later on:
the ‘development’ apparatus in Lesotho is
not a machine for eliminating poverty, that
is incidentally involved with the state
bureaucracy; it is a machine for reinforcing
and expanding the exercise of bureaucratic
state power, which incidentally takes
‘poverty’ as its point of entry …
depoliticising both poverty and the state …
Such a result may be no part of the
planners’ intentions – indeed it almost
never is – but resultant systems have an
intelligibility of their own (op. cit: 255-6).
4.2 Discourses of Distance Education
Ferguson’s analysis of economic development
in Lesotho is similar to Yates and Orivel’s
analyses of the management of distance
education. They found that distance education
paradoxically often exacerbates inequity while
increasing access. (Yates 2000, Orivel 2000).
Distance and Open Learning generally aims to
provide access to quality education. The most
important factors are:
accessibility, cost, distance, equity of
opportunity, and interaction in a supportive
environment.
These are the stated aims of distance learning.
But what actually happens? Or to put it another
way, what is the effect of discourses of
distance education on educational practices
and provision, and what are the realities?
Perraton writes that research on distance
learning can be interpreted in two ways. On
the one hand, it has provided new forms and
levels of access, and therefore increased
equity in education, while on the other hand, it
is a second-rate system used to offer a
shadow of education while withholding its
substance
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…[and] an inefficient way of containing
educational demand without meeting it …
[that] helps insulate the elite system from
pressures that might otherwise threaten its
status or ways of working (in Yates
2000:230).
Yates continues
paradoxically, basic education Open and
Distance Education (ODE) systems which
are set up to provide extended educational
opportunity to underprivileged groups also
often exploit those who work for them,” and
he says that “there are situations where
distance learners are required to pay a
disproportionate part of the cost of their
education, compared with those who
attend more conventional institutions. This
represents a kind of double inequity for
those who cannot access conventional
provision (p236).
Yates also cites Oliveira and Orivel (1993):
The Brazilian teacher education project,
Logos II … can be seen as reinforcing
inequality… by a strange inequitable quirk
of policy, ODE learners may be said in
some instances to be subsidising the
inefficiencies of conventional education. In
such a case, ODE is masking, rather than
addressing, issues of social equity and
democracy” (op. cit: 237).
He quotes examples of the Malawi College of
Distance Education which provided education
for more than 50% of secondary education
students, on only 20% of the secondary
education budget, and the Papua New Guinea
College of Education which similarly provided
education for 50% of secondary school pupils,
on only 5% (five percent!) of the secondary
education budget (ibid). Not only does this
highlight the practice of providing cheap, and
often inferior quality education (as in the cases
discussed), but it also raises the question
seriously under-paid and /or inadequately
supported staff.
So we have to be very aware of not only how
distance education is, or is not, satisfying its
own internal, or intended outcomes, but also
how it functions within the broader provision of
education and social equity – what the
discourse does, as well as what it says it does,
and more importantly, what it begins to
represent.
Distance education can be analysed within
different management discourses: that of input
compliance, or administration, or that of
outcomes management. Interestingly in
Perraton’s comments above (ibid) he not only
says that distance learning can be interpreted
in two different ways, but that “the evidence will
fit either interpretation”. This is confusing and
unhelpful. It would be better to analyse the
different discourses that are at stake here,
examining who maintains, defends and uses
them, to what purpose, in which contexts and
who successfully or unsuccessfully challenges
them. Discourses at this level are not ‘equally
valid’ options. They are political and social
choices that have implications for what
happens, what works, and for whom it works.
Within a discourse of input compliance for
instance, one might use Perraton’s data to
conclude that ‘access’ had been successfully
provided. Then again, within an outcomes
discourse, one might conclude that access had
only been provided at the expense of equity
and quality, and that it also functioned as a
cross-subsidy from the poor to those who were
already privileged and already had inequitable
access to educational resources. Furthermore,
one might conclude that the discourse was
politically successful mainly in that it deceived
the socially excluded into believing that what
was being provided was part of welfare
provision and promoted equity, rather than
actually being a ‘dis-welfare’; in this case a
double dis-welfare in that the recipients of diswelfare
usually subsidise the beneficiaries of
welfare elsewhere in the system.
Orivel (2000) points out that:
The least developed countries have a
simple choice to make: either they
introduce new technologies in their schools
at the expense of expanding school
opportunities to currently excluded
children, or they concentrate their limited
resources on educational expansion, and
thus renounce the chance to develop new
technologies in their school systems. As
long as GDP per capita remains highly
unequal from one country to another, the
capacity of new technologies to reduce the
education gap will not constitute a viable
option (op. cit. 138).
He takes a traditional, linear, economic
approach to the discourse of Open and
Distance Learning. An Economic Discourse
looks for, and at, discrete variables that can be
reduced to numbers. In this case, ‘technology’
is one discrete variable, and ‘education’ the
other. ‘Technologies’ are further reduced to
NICT (“new information and communication
technologies”), which are further reduced to
CAI (computer aided instruction), which is
further simplified by saying
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the best assumption one can make is that
one hour of learning in both cases [face-toface
teaching vs. CAI] generates on
average the same educational outcome.
At this stage the content has been so oversimplified
that one wonders whether Orivel, is
talking about anything at all, apart from
numbers)
The only alternative for Orivel is the low-tech
approach of teachers’ talk-and-chalk. He
believes that there is, in effect, a ‘simple’
choice between low-tech and high-tech. And
goes on to argue that for as long as we have
large inequities in GDP per capita, virtually no
developing country should use ICT in
education. That might be a very long time, and
seems a rash statement, even though he later
qualifies this by specifying that the threshold
for the use of ICT in education is $7,300 per
capita GDP. Nevertheless, that too will be a
long time in coming in many countries. There
are many problems here, apart from the
extensive economic reductionism.
Technological change and the adoption and
implementation of new technologies doesn’t
happen in discrete variables – certainly not
that discrete.
What is needed is not the sudden
transformation of education through the use of
technology, but rather the step-wise addition of
features for communication and learning; not a
complete change of systems. Besides, CAI has
not been at the top of anyone’s priority a list
since the late 1980’s. What learners and
educationalists are exited about now are the
possibilities that ICT offers for interaction with
humans, not machines. CAI will continue to
have its place, if it can be justified in terms of
costs, but it’s only a drill-and-practice box, and
an interesting box to help you ask further
questions. The enthusiasm for ‘expert systems’
has also faded, and what is left are useful
simulation and modelling systems which are
best used to find better questions, rather than
better answers. What’s more, these simulation
and modelling systems are even more
specialised and more expensive than CAI, and
are only appropriate and feasible in a business
strategy environment, not a basic learning
environment.
Not every teacher needs to have a desktop
computer or a high-powered laptop. The issue
is that learners and teachers need to be
connected to humans and machines in a
network that as a whole will provide them with
incrementally better learning and teaching, and
personal knowledge management
opportunities, as well as support through a
carefully structured environment, which
includes materials that form a well-designed
and integrated package. Too often e-Learning
‘opportunities’ are planned as low-budget
ventures with little regard to the participants.
It’s not a numbers game to see if everyone can
master every skill that is available, nor should it
be seen as a purely economic venture,
although one clearly has to take account of
budgets and costs.
Within a network configuration approach to
learning-and-communication we are no longer
dealing with independent variables in the strict
sense of the term. Orivel’s approach assumes
independent (and discrete) variables: he
assumes that we are dealing with inputs such
as CAI/NICT from the outside, which are
applied to/inserted into a fenced-off domain
called ‘education’, much as an economist
would approach issues of production and
consumption. Orivel’s application of traditional
economic discourse to (N)ICT-enhanced
education is not an example of a ‘possible’ and
‘equally valid’ discourse, which one might
choose to analyse networked learning. It is
simply wrong. It’s not applicable at all. The
whole point about networked distance learning
is that it is a configuration within which learning
takes place, and where all of the learners
(consumers) are potentially contributors
(producers) as well. The learners and teachers
are part of a network (which extends to many
others, quite outside the education sector),
which as a whole makes up the networked
learning environment. They are no longer
consumers of externally produced goods and
services, in the way that the earlier
beneficiaries of mass education were, and if
they continue to be seen as such, networked
learning will never take off.
Orivel makes revealing comments about the
key factors that allow developing countries to
achieve some measure of mass education in
the current context. He cites the example of
China, to which Rihani also refers (op. cit:
chapter 3). China, says Orivel, is a “special
case, where the dependency ratio [the ratio of
people in the workforce to people not in
employment] has fallen dramatically, and
where unit costs are also very low. This
unusual combination of factors allows China to
allocate a lower percentage of GNP to
education without sacrificing the objective of
expanding education opportunities. In addition,
China is able to allocate more resources to
physical investment” (op. cit: 146). In other
words, because China has lowered the birth
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rate, the ‘dependency’ of young people - for
funds to pay for their education, on older
people - who are taxed to provide those funds,
is lower. In comparison to other developing
countries, more people are working and paying
taxes, and fewer people are at school. That,
combined with low ‘unit costs’ (i.e. low
teachers salaries) enables China to provide
mass education without eating too much into
GNP.
This is a sound argument, and a good
economic analysis. The answer would seem to
be plain. Education for All can be achieved;
you just need to reduce the birth rate, and
everything will fall into place. But then Orivel
ducks the issue, and defaults to the comfort
zone of a linear economic discourse. He says,
very tellingly, that although this argument
may have some policy relevance in terms
of priorities”, one must remember, “it is
easier to manipulate unit costs than
fertility rates” (ibid, emphasis added).
In other words we are back to the overriding
linear (modernist) discourse in which
‘education costs’ and ‘reproductive health’ are
regarded as discrete variables and domains,
an economic discourse in which such messy
(and unmanageable) variables as ‘fertility
rates’ are seen as ‘unsuitable’ for intervention,
especially given the reductionist / correct,
political environments of today. It’s a discourse
in which objectifiable, quantifiable, discrete,
independent variables are fore grounded, and
in which continuous, complex adaptive human
subjects and their behaviours are excluded
because they are ‘more difficult to manipulate’.
4.3 Primary Health Care Management
Discourse analysis can also assist in analysing
seemingly coherent management domains
such as Primary Health Care, where there are
in fact a number or disparate discourses in
operation. These can undermine the very
notion of a Primary Health Care system. One
only needs to think of the ‘subjects who make
up the communities of practice that intersect
across the sets of ‘sub-disciplines’ of primary
health care, all of whom may be intent on
doing their job well, but few if any of them
effectively contributing to the management of a
Primary Health Care system. The examples
from Distance Education and Development
Discourse call attention to areas of
contestation in the Health Care sector, and
foreground how theories of discourse and
Complex Adaptive Systems can inform the way
we manage the demands presented by
opposing subject positions, and ‘variables with
attitude’.
5. Conclusion
We have examined the development of
different modes of social organisation and
knowledge, and outlined the ways in which
modernism and post-modernism can be said to
share a fundamental characteristic – radical
scepticism. We have also argued that complex
adaptive systems can be seen to be a
synthesis of the thesis of modernism and the
antithesis of post-modernism. Finally, we’ve
touched on the how complex adaptive systems
theory can be used to systematise the use of
‘discourse’ in the management of development
economics and distance education. This
requires a shift in our thinking from linear to
non-linear systems, and from objective
variables to human ‘variables with attitude’ –
i.e. with identities as ‘dispersed subjects’. In
terms of both discourse and complex adaptive
systems, it is important to note that the
intelligibility of a series of events and
transformations [is to be found] not in the
intentions of one or more animating
subjects, but in the systematic nature of
the social reality which results from those
actions” (Ferguson 1994:18).
References
Ferguson, J. (1994) The Anti-Politics Machine.
University of Minnesota Press, USA.
Henriques, J et al, (1984) Changing the
Subject. Routledge, London
Orivel, F. (2000) Finance, costs and
economics, in: Yates and Bradley (ed):
Basic Education at a Distance.
Routledge, London.
Perraton, H. (2000). Open and Distance
Learning in the Developing World.
London: Routledge
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Pre-scientific Modernist Post-Modernist Complex Adaptive Systems
Threshold Criteria Language, tool-making
Culture & tradition
Radical Scepticism of Nature
“2 cultures”: culture and science
Radical Scepticism of Language,
Society, Culture (& Science)
Dispersed subjects
Virtual CoP.
Networked Society
Configurations of Discourses
Nature Nature Nature
Science
Ecology Ecology
Society Culture & Tradition Culture & Individual identity & choice Dispersed Subjects, contesting
agency and structure
Virtual Communities of Practice/
Configurations of Discourse
Communities.
Social ecologies
Person Pre-determined Individual Identity – “made” Subject positions constructed and
contested.
In & out of Subject Positions in
various CoP.
Basis of Information
System
Traditional Use Commodified Information (exchange) Pastiche Virtual Communities of Practice.
Capital Tradition & Craft Technology
Algorithms
Commodities – goods and objective,
procedural information – context and
subject stripped.
Algorithms, Objects, Contexts,
Commodities as Objects,
Deconstruction,
Decontextualisation.
Algorithms, Deconstructed and
Decontextualised Objects, BUT
subject to social ecolologies of virtual
CoP.
Cumulative MODES
(not “eras”)
Pre-scientific Modernist Post-Modernist Complex Adaptive Systems
Variables Metaphysics, within which
is Nature and Culture.
Nature and Society as Objects of Study,
with some cognisance of Individual
Identity, the unconscious, etc.
Highly constructivist notion of
variables as ‘socially constructed’.
‘Individuals’ replaced by ‘dispersed
subjects’.
Different types of variables, for which
different modes of discourse are
appropriate. ‘Subject positions’
within various CoP.
Epistemology Experience
Tradition
Metaphysics
Metaphysics & Truth
Reason
Falsifiablility
Commoditised, Objectified
knowledge/procedural information.
Rational Truth
Ironic Experience/ configurations
Just-in-context Strategic Knowledge
Useful algorithms & discourses
Virtual/immediate experience/
configurations.
Just-in-context Strategic Knowledge
Ecologies and Configuration of CoP
Management Tradition, Obedience Compliance, Administration
….. Executive Management
Executive Management of
Configurations
Ecologies and Configurations of CoP.
Chaos, Emergent Properties, Sticky
Events, Historical Accidents
Markets Local, barter + Commodities Globally transparent Virtual / CoP.
Entrepreneurs ? Preserving, expanding New algorithms New configurations New ecologies & configurations.
Methodology Preserving & defending
traditions
Positivism, anthropology Deconstruction, Discourse Theory,
ethnography.