Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos

This book fuses two key concerns of contemporary sociology: globalization and its discontents and the "complexity turn" in social theory. The authors utilize complexity theory to analyze the shifting constellation of social movement networks that constitute opposition to neo-liberal globalization. They explore how seemingly chaotic and highly differentiated social actors interacting globally through computer mediated communications, face to face gatherings and protests constitute a "multitude" not easily grasped through established models of social and political change. Drawing upon extensive empirical research and utilizing concepts drawn from the natural and social sciences this book suggests a framework for understanding mobilization, identity formation and information flows in global social movements operating within complex societies. It suggests that this "movement of movements" exhibits an emergent order on the edge of chaos, a turbulence that is recasting political agency in the 21stcentury.

Ian Welsh is based in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Cardiff. Graeme Chesters is based in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford.