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plexities of the Global
John Urry
I think the next century will be the century plexity. (Stephen Hawking,
cited in Sanders and McCabe, 2003: 5)
Where small-world ideas will lead us in five or ten years is anyone’s guess,
but they may reveal something about the way our ideas link up with one
another, how discoveries in biology, computer science, sociology and physics
can be so intimately connected. (Buchanan, 2002: 208)
The protestors are winning. They are winning on the streets. Before too long
they will be winning the arguments. Globalisation is fast ing a cause
without credible arguments. (Financial Times, 17 August 2001, cited in
Aingers et al., 2003: 503)
plexity
Various analysts at the beginning of the 21st century are developing and
applying the physics plexity to contemporary social science. This
article anized around this emergent literature and examines overlaps
and interplays between analyses of physical and social worlds. This litera-
ture is seeking to found what we might term a 21st-century social physics.
Physicists and mathematicians seeking to analyse especially the mathemat-
ics works are turning to the sociology of works (see physi-
cist-turned-sociologist Watts, 1999, 2003; Barabási, 2002; Buchanan,
2002). While sociological and more general social science analyses of global
processes increasingly deploy the physics and mathematics plex,
non-linear adaptive systems (see Capra, 2002, for an interesting crossover).
Various social analysts of modernity and globalization implicitly draw
upon ‘complexity’ concepts and ideas even where these are not explicitly
articulated. Giddens (1990) characterizes the modern world as being like a
driverless out-of-control ‘juggernaut’ system that has set in motion irre-
versible processes stretching across the globe and generating various
■ Theory, Culture & Society 2005 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New D