This paper focuses on evaluating Odera Oruka’s role as an expert witness in customary law for the Luo community during the Nairobi, Kenya-based trial in 1987 to decide on the place of the burial of S.M. Otieno. During that trial, an understanding of Luo burial and widow guardianship (ter) practices was essential. Odera Oruka described the practices carefully and defended them against misunderstanding and stereotype. He revisited related topics in several delivered papers, published articles, and even interviews and columns in (...) the Kenyan newspapers. The paper will raise the questions: How does Odera Oruka’s role as expert on Luo customs fit in with his sage philosophy project? In his testimony at the trial and subsequent public addresses and published work, does he accomplish two important goals, the first being defending African traditions against prejudice and anti-African bias, and secondly, does he champion reform of traditions when reform is needed? And, can Odera Oruka’s participation in the famous trial avoid seeming ethnic chauvinism and marginalization of women? My conclusion is that he achieves the first goal, but some problems remain in the achievement of the other goals. While he often asserted the need to evaluate traditions and to jettison those that have become unhelpful, in this context he evaluated traditions so strongly that the need for evaluation and possible change was muted. (shrink)

Autopoiesis is normally considered to be the systems theory in law. In this paper complexity theory is presented as an alternative systems approach. In order to position complexity theory as a plausible alternative to autopoiesis I discuss the differing understanding of boundary within each theory, and use this as a vehicle to critique autopoiesis. My critique is situated within systems theory thinking but is external to both autopoiesis and complexity theory. Because both approaches possess an understanding of boundary it provides (...) an effective tool to contrast their differences, while permitting each to be described in its own language. It is argued that complexity theory offers an approach to boundaries as contingent, emergent interfaces, which the autopoietic construction of boundary can learn from in several ways. More generally it is suggested that the complexity approach to boundaries offers lawyers engaging with systems theory a new critical perspective to assess legal constructions. (shrink)

The main objective of this article is to reflect on the way in which a certain neoliberal logic and rationality have become common-sense and to contemplate the possibility of a different aesthetic. The tone or mood of this piece draws on recent work on atmosphere, affect and complexity, which will be used to explore the theme of neoliberalism within the context of the university. In the course of this discussion, I will consider questions such as: how could a different aesthetic (...) influence the university as public space; the curriculum and academic community and friendship? How could a different aesthetic respond to epistemic, ontological and, inherently tied to them, spatial injustice? (shrink)

Responding to Kunneman’s argument that the notion of ‘ethical complexity’ introduces an existential and ethical turn in the field of complexity thinking, it is argued that Kunneman’s concept of ‘diapoiesis’ corresponds to a critical interpretation of ‘complexity thinking’. By applying critical complexity thinking to the notion of voluntary work, Kunneman explores the possibility of rearticulating the notion of voluntary work outside the boundaries of the static economic paradigm of consumption and production of labor. He redefines voluntary work in terms of (...) the many tensions that emerge as a result of belonging to a number of spheres simultaneously. Reconfigured by what can be called a ‘dialogical hermeneutics of complexity thinking’ Kunneman exposes the moral narrative that underpins the ethical imperative that is inextricably linked to ‘civic meaningfulness’. (shrink)

The main objective of this article is to reflect on the way in which a certain neoliberal logic and rationality have become common-sense and to contemplate the possibility of a different aesthetic. The tone or mood of this piece draws on recent work on atmosphere, affect and complexity, which will be used to explore the theme of neoliberalism within the context of the university. In the course of this discussion, I will consider questions such as: how could a different aesthetic (...) influence the university as public space; the curriculum and academic community and friendship? How could a different aesthetic respond to epistemic, ontological and, inherently tied to them, spatial injustice? (shrink)

En stor del av dagens forskningsaktivitet er knyttet til utvikling av ny teknologi. Teknologiutvikling anses gjerne som et gode, fordi den bidrar til økt eller ny bruk av naturlige ressurser til beste for menneskers generelle levekår og helse, samt miljøet og samfunnet som helhet. Bruk av ny teknologi innebærer imidlertid også risiko for uønskede effekter. Risikovurderinger er ofte preget av vitenskapelig usikkerhet, spesielt med hensyn til effekter som oppstår over tid. Denne usikkerheten reiser nye etiske dilemmaer og gjør det nødvendig (...) med en kritisk vurdering av kunnskapsgrunnlaget. I denne artikkelen fokuserer vi på hvilke etiske utfordringer vitenskapelig usikkerhet har for forskning og forvaltning, og vi vil se nærmere på bruk av DNA-vaksiner i oppdrettsnæring. Vi argumenterer for at det er viktig å anerkjenne kvalitative former for vitenskapelig usikkerhet, som går utover det som uttrykkes i statistiske termer. Walker & Harremoeës usikkerhetsanalyse presenteres som en metode for å identifisere og systematisere vitenskapelig usikkerhet av kvalitativ karakter. En slik analyse kan øke forskeres evne til å reflektere over og kommunisere usikkerhet knyttet til eget arbeid. Vi argumenterer videre for at kommunikasjon av vitenskapelig usikkerhet bør være en del av forskerens etiske ansvar, blant annet for å stimulere føre-var-basert forskning og forvaltning. En helhetsvurdering av nytte, risikomomenter og usikkerhet kan best oppnås gjennom en tverrfaglig tilnærming. Det vil bidra til at de implisitte verdiene som er assosiert til bruk av ny teknologi blir bedre belyst. (shrink)

Many methods are used in research on complexity. One of these is qualitative comparative analysis. Although many authors allude to the relationships between complexity and QCA, these links are rarely made explicit. We propose that one way of doing so is by using critical realism as a meta-framework. This article discusses the viability of this approach by examining the extent to which QCA is a complexity-informed method. This question is answered in three steps. First, we discuss the nature of complexity (...) and its epistemological implications. Second, we focus on Bhaskar’s perspective on critical realism and show how it can be used as a framework for understanding social complexity. Third, we examine the ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying QCA and synthesize these with our critical realist approach to complexity. We argue that complex reality is non-decomposable, contingent, non-compressible and time-asymmetric. We conclude that, although QCA is inevitably reductive and partial, its core premises are built upon the notions of contingency and time-asymmetry. Therefore, it is not only a powerful method for doing complexity-informed research, but is also a complexity-informed method by itself. (shrink)

This paper explores the ethical dilemma of conflicting loyalties found in whistleblowing. Central to this dilemma is the internal/external disclosure dichotomy; disclosure of organisational wrongdoing to an external recipient is seen as disloyal, whilst disclosure to an internal recipient is seen as loyal. Understanding how the organisation and society have dealt with these problems over the last 30 years is undertaken through an analysis of Vandekerckhove’s project, which seeks to place the normative legitimisations of whistleblowing legislation and organisational whistleblowing policies (...) within a globalisation semantic able to contain this conflict between society and the organisation. This project fails, it is argued, because of Vandekerckhove’s particular understanding of the organisation as an autopoietic system, i.e. an operationally closed system. A case is made to understand organisations as complex systems, i.e. operationally open systems. Critical Complexity theory sees the identities of systems and components as coterminous. In the context of the organisation, this means that the identities of the corporation and its corporate members arise and die together. The whistleblower’s disclosure reconfigures the organisation by forcing the organisation to open up and make its boundaries flexible, making the designation ‘internal’ or ‘external’ to the organisation, and, therefore, who qualifies as a recipient of a disclosure of wrongdoing, flexible. The organisation is restrained from retailing against the whistleblower, because its identities are coterminous. Furthermore, as the disclosure cannot be categorically defined as either internal or external, the question of whether an external disclosure can qualify as an act of organisational loyalty becomes moot. (shrink)

Crossing the road within the traffic system is an example of an action human agents perform successfully day-to-day in complex systems. How do they perform such successful actions given that the behaviour of complex systems is often difficult to predict? The contemporary literature contains two contrasting approaches to the epistemology of complex systems: an analytic and a post-modern approach. We argue that neither approach adequately accounts for how successful action is possible in complex systems. Agents regularly perform successful actions without (...) obeying (explicit or implicit) algorithmic rules (as the analytic approach suggests) and without an existential leap to action (as the post-modern approach suggests). We offer an alternative: A common-sense pragmatist epistemology, one that focuses on the kind of actions making up most agents’ successful moment-to-moment actions in complex systems. Successful actions obtain when agents apply ceteris paribus rules-of-thumb during predictive and decisional practices while achieving some desired goal. (shrink)

Complexity theory has become a major influence in discussions about the theory and practice of education. This book focuses on a question which so far has received relatively little attention in such discussions, which is the question of the politics of complexity. The chapters in this book engage with this question in a range of different ways. Whereas some contributions make a case for the promotion of complexity in education, others focus more explicitly on questions concerning the reduction of complexity (...) in and through education. The chapters do so using theoretical, historical and empirical arguments, paying attention to a range of different educational settings (including early childhood education, school education, post-compulsory education, lifelong learning and work-based education), and focusing on different aspects of these practices (such as curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, architecture, and management). Taken together the chapters not only reveal the potential of complexity for engaging with questions about the politics of education in new and different ways. They also provide examples of a more reflexive engagement with the politics of complexity in education itself. The book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of education studies, curriculum studies, curriculum theory, educational theory, educational policy, and philosophy of education. It should also be of interest to practitioners in more specialised fields such as early childhood education, school education, post-compulsory education, work-based education and lifelong learning. (shrink)

Context: Society is faced with “wicked” problems of environmental sustainability, which are inherently multiperspectival, and there is a need for explicitly constructivist and perspectivist theories to address them. Problem: However, different constructivist theories construe the environment in different ways. The aim of this paper is to clarify the conceptions of environment in constructivist approaches, and thereby to assist the sciences of complex systems and complex environmental problems. Method: We describe the terms used for “the environment” in von Uexküll, Maturana & (...) Varela, and Luhmann, and analyse how their conceptions of environment are connected to differences of perspective and observation. Results: We show the need to distinguish between inside and outside perspectives on the environment, and identify two very different and complementary logics of observation, the logic of distinction and the logic of representation, in the three constructivist theories. Implications: Luhmann’s theory of social systems can be a helpful perspective on the wicked environmental problems of society if we consider carefully the theory’s own blind spots: that it confines itself to systems of communication, and that it is based fully on the conception of observation as indication by means of distinction. (shrink)

Since the transition to a constitutional order, in what respects have cultures in higher education institutions in South Africa become Africanised, and, going forward, how should they be? In this chapter I provide an overview of the major different forms that Africanisation of institutional culture could take, and I then indicate the respects in which South African universities have or have not taken them on board over the past 20 years. In addition, I provide the first comprehensive critical discussion of (...) the major reasons that have been given for Africanising. Specifically, I distinguish between five rationales for Africanising institutional culture, namely, those appealing to relativism, democracy, redress, civilisation and identity, bring out their different implications for the forms that Africanisation should take, and argue that some of these rationales are philosophically much more promising than others. I conclude that the rationales of redress, civilisation and identity together make a compelling case for a moderate form of Africanising the institutional culture of public universities, one that would be much more robust than what has appeared so far on the democratic landscape in South Africa. (shrink)

Reprint of a chapter first published in Being at Home (2015).

When we deal with complex things, like human subjects or organizations, we deal with identity – that which makes a person or an organization what it is and distinguishes him/her/it from other persons or organizations, a kind of “self”. Our identity determines how we think about and interact with others. It will be argued in this chapter that the self is constituted relationally. Moreover, when we are in the realm of the self, we are always already in the realm of (...) engaging with and mediating differences – the realm of ethics. The position which will be developed argues that approaching identity as a complex system allows us to resist thinking of identity as an easily identifiable and static entity. Identity is always being constituted within a complex and contingent world, where we have to make choices based on contingent values rather than on universal knowledge or the outcome of rational calculations. As a result, we have to keep in mind that our daily practices always already have an ethical component, and our decisions need to be continually evaluated and re-evaluated in the light of our (and others’) varying identities. (shrink)

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is a philosophical exposition of violence informed by two theoretical positions which confront complexity as a phenomenon. These positions are complexity theory and deconstruction. Both develop systemsbased understandings of complex phenomena in which relations of difference are constitutive of the meaning of those phenomena. There has been no focused investigation of the implications of complexity for the conceptualisation of violence thus far. In response to this theoretical gap, this thesis begins by distinguishing complexity theory as a (...) general, trans-disciplinary field of study from critical complexity theory. The latter is used to develop a critique and criticism of epistemological foundationalism, emphasising the limits to knowledge and the normative and ethical dimension of knowledge and understanding. The epistemological break implied by this critique reiterates the epistemological shift permeating the work of, among others, Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida. In this context, critical complexity theory begins to articulate the idea of violence on two levels: first, as an empirical, ethical problem in the system; and, secondly, as asymmetry and antagonism. Violence in this second sense is implicated in the dynamic relations of difference through which structure and meaning are generated in complex organisation. The sensitivity to difference and violence shared by critical complexity theory and deconstruction allows for the parallel reading of these philosophical perspectives; and for the supplementation and opening of critical complexity theory by deconstruction within the architecture of this thesis. This supplementation seeks to preserve the singularity of each perspective, while exploring the potential of their points of affinity and tension in the production of a coherent philosophical analysis of violence. Deconstruction offers a more developed understanding of violence and a wealth of related motifs: différance, framing, law, singularity, aesthetics and others. These motifs necessitate the inclusion of other philosophical voices, notably, that of Nietzsche, Arendt, Kant, Levinas, and Benjamin. In conversation with these authors, this thesis links violence to meaning, to its possibility, to its production and to the process by which meaning comes to change. Given these links, violence is conceptualised in relation to the notion of difference on three distinct levels. The first is the difference between elements in a complex system of meaning; the second is the notion of difference between systems or texts around which boundaries or frames can be drawn; and the third is the notion of difference between meaning and the absence of meaning. This discussion examines the relationship between this violence implicated in the constitution of meaning and the more colloquial understanding of violence as atrocity, as rape, murder and other socially, politically and ethically problematic expressions thereof. It is to empirical violence, following Derrida and Levinas, that we are called to respond and to intervene in the suffering of the other. The ethical and political necessity of response anchors this discussion of violence. And, it is towards the possibility of an adequate response – the possibility of an ethics sensitive to its own violence and a politics that is directed at the eradication of empirical violence – which this discussion navigates. (shrink)

The science of complexity is based on a new way of thinking that stands in sharp contrast to the philosophy underlying Newtonian science, which is based on reductionism, determinism, and objective knowledge. This paper reviews the historical development of this new world view, focusing on its philosophical foundations. Determinism was challenged by quantum mechanics and chaos theory. Systems theory replaced reductionism by a scientifically based holism. Cybernetics and postmodern social science showed that knowledge is intrinsically subjective. These developments are being (...) integrated under the header of “complexity science”. Its central paradigm is the multi-agent system. Agents are intrinsically subjective and uncertain about their environment and future, but out of their local interactions, a global organization emerges. Although different philosophers, and in particular the postmodernists, have voiced similar ideas, the paradigm of complexity still needs to be fully assimilated by philosophy. This will throw a new light on old philosophical issues such as relativism, ethics and the role of the subject. (shrink)