Social Complexity An Introduction

Understanding Society as a Complex System

4.40 (13 reviews)
Udemy
platform
English
language
Social Science
category
Social Complexity An Introduction
162
students
4.5 hours
content
Feb 2016
last update
$34.99
regular price

What you will learn

The aim of this course is to give you a solid grasp of the core concepts within the domain of social complexity

By the end of the course you should be familiar with and be able to apply the most important models from social complexity

Why take this course?

Overview

This course is an accessible introduction to the application of complexity theory to the social sciences, the course will be primarily focused upon the domain of sociology, but we will touch upon elements of psychology, anthropology, political science and economics. The aim of the course is to introduce you to the variety of models from complex systems and illustrate how they apply to these different domains. This course is a first of its kind and somewhat experimental in nature, where we will be drawing upon research from many different areas and using complexity theory to contextualize it into a coherent paradigm, giving us a fresh perspective with which to interpret some of the core questions within the social sciences.

Content

The course is broken down into four main sections, in each section we will apply one of the major modelling frameworks from complexity theory to interpreting social phenomena. We will firstly give an overview to this area of social complexity before starting our first section on systems theory as we lay down a basic model of a social system, we will go on to use this model in helping us understand, social structure and institutions.

Next we will take an overview to nonlinear social science, as we discuss the process of self-organization, feedback loops, chaos theory and self-organized criticality. The third section to the course is dedicated to social network analysis, we will cover the main topics in this new area as we talk about the basics of social graphs, clustering, network structure and the process of diffusion. Finally we will be looking through the lens of complex adaptive systems theory, exploring the model of a fitness landscape, talking about adaptive capacity, social resilience and the process of evolution.

Screenshots

Social Complexity An Introduction - Screenshot_01Social Complexity An Introduction - Screenshot_02Social Complexity An Introduction - Screenshot_03Social Complexity An Introduction - Screenshot_04

Reviews

Zhanna
July 8, 2020
Obviously the course is very general (it lasts 4.5 hrs) but it is an enjoyable introduction to social complexity. The course is very well structured. It covers all the necessary topics and it is easy to understand! But I think it would be better if they offered different references and resources from where to keep learning about the topics. And maybe general quiz questions after each lesson.
Martin
December 9, 2018
The voice used is not natural and can be annoying. Most of what was said I would already know. Would have liked something different like a story on how reductionist techniques failed us and empirical method resolved the problem.
Gabriel
August 10, 2017
A heavy reliance on clip art and bland scripted narration makes it a chore to get through these lectures, even though the topic is interesting.

Charts

Price

Social Complexity An Introduction - Price chart

Rating

Social Complexity An Introduction - Ratings chart

Enrollment distribution

Social Complexity An Introduction - Distribution chart
745844
udemy ID
1/29/2016
course created date
2/8/2020
course indexed date
Bot
course submited by