Suchergebnisse

This paper discusses the concept spacetime in the context of some traditional notions of space and time in sociological and anthropological literature. The paper argues that the concept of spacetime, together with other post‐Newtonian insights, can provide a useful metaphor with which to interpret societal phenomena. The paper concludes by illustrating the argument with a brief review of the ethnohistory of a Caribbean territory.

This article reexamines, in historical context, the "problem of order" and change in sociological theory in the light of the findings of Chaos Theory. The value of this new perspective is that order and disorder, order and change, are no longer presented as irreconcilable opposites but as dimensions of the same process. Order generates chaos, and chaos generates order. These ideas are linked into a holistic perspective in which "centriphery" is seen as an attractor that accounts for order and change in human social life and entropy as an equal partner to information/energy in the creative thrust of human social life.