In this article, the author argues that complexity theories have limited use in the study of society, and that social processes are too complex and particular to be rigorously modeled in complexity terms. Theories of social complexity are shown to be inadequately developed, and typical weaknesses in the literature on social complexity are discussed. Two stronger analyses, of Luhmann and of Harvey and Reed, are also critically considered. New considerations regarding social complexity are advanced, on the lines that simplicity, complexity (...) that can be modeled, and incondensible complexity permeate society simultaneously. The difficulty of establishing complexity models for processes involving ongoing interpretation is discussed. It is argued that the notions of system and environment need recasting in social studies. Existing social studies and literature, it is argued, reflect a polymorphous, contextual, contingent, labyrinthine, dramatic and political face to social complexity. Students of social complexity must be literate in such studies. (shrink)

Poststructuralism and complexity are plural and diverse modes of thought that share a common subscription to the `anteriority of radical relationality'. They nonetheless subscribe to a different ethic of life because they address the anteriority of radical relationality in different ways. Complexity remains strategic in its bid to become a power-knowledge of the laws of becoming. It derives that strategic ethic from its scientific interest in the implicate order of non-linearity that is said to subvert Newtonian science. Poststructuralism is poetic. (...) It derives its poetic ethic from Heidegger and from the reworking of orphic and tragic sensibilities to radical relationality with the radically non-relational. Observing that all poetry is complexity avant la lettre, the article illustrates these points with the Odyssey and concludes that while complexity is ultimately concerned with fitness, poststructuralism is preoccupied with justice. (shrink)