Concepts and categories: how they influence where we look and what we see

With society not adequately reduced to some representative or average agent, it is necessary to explore how we can examine our object of interest in a useful manner. Our ability to generate fruitful analytical avenues depends on the helpfulness of the concepts and categories we bring to our analysis because these shape where we look and what we see. Equilibrium theories stipulate simple models that yield definitive systemic outcomes. By contrast, this book embraces ideas about complexity and emergence where social systems entail open-ended interaction among participants. Internally-generated change is a feature of all societies because there always people and organizations that are seeking to import novelty into society, sometimes succeeding and sometimes not, and changing society in any event. This recognition shifts the analytical focus from the revelation of individual preferences to the ways in which the social organization of power influences societal evolution.