Emergence

Emergence is a social process that results in global system properties that are based in individuals and their interactions but cannot be explained or predicted from a full and complete knowledge of these individuals and their interactions.

The bird flock is a classic example of emergence. When we see the “V” shape overhead, we typically assume that one bird is the leader and the other birds have taken position behind the leader, intentionally forming a “V” shape. However, ornithologists have recently discovered this is not the case: Each bird is only aware of the immediately contiguous birds, and each bird follows a simple set of rules, adjusting his flight based on the movements of the nearby birds. No bird is the leader, and no bird is aware that a “V” shape exists. The “V” shape emerges out of the local decisions of each bird. The bird flock is self-organizing, with control distributed throughout the system. This simple phenomenon demonstrates the key features of emergence: Higher-level phenomena emerge at the group level; interaction among individual components is a central factor in this emergence; and multiple levels of analysis must be taken into account, including a component level and a system level.

Emergence is a contemporary approach to one of the most fundamental issues in sociological theory: the relationship between the individual and the collective. This relationship was a central element in the theorizing of the nineteenth-century founders of sociology, including Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, and Marx, and was central, if implicit, in many twentieth-century sociological paradigms, including [Page 246]structural functionalism, exchange theory, and rational choice theory.

Emergence is a new theoretical approach; it has many manifestations and is still developing. For example, emergence has been used in contradictory ways by collectivists and individualists. Collectivists use theories of emergence to argue that social systems are collaboratively created by individuals yet have properties that are not reducible to individual action. In contrast, methodological individualists accept the existence of emergent social properties yet claim that such properties can be reduced to explanations in terms of individuals and their relationships.

In the 1990s, complex dynamical systems researchers began to develop theories of emergence that help to provide some clarity to these competing accounts. Several contemporary studies of complex systems have explored emergence, including cognitive science, artificial life, and computational modeling of societies. These studies are beginning to provide new perspectives on important unresolved issues facing sociology: the relations between individuals and groups, the emergence of unintended effects from collective action, and the relation between the disciplines of economics and sociology.

Complex systems researchers outside of sociology have found that the emergent higher level may have autonomous laws and properties that cannot be easily reduced to lower-level, more basic sciences. For example, cognitive scientists generally agree that mental properties may not be easily reduced to neurobiological properties, due to the complex dynamical nature of the brain. In an analogous fashion, some sociologists use complex dynamical systems theory to argue against attempts to explain societies in terms of individuals.

Classic examples of social emergence include traffic jams and residential segregation patterns. Most complex social groups have emergent properties. For example, the property “being a church” is an emergent property of a group; it is emergent and irreducible in part because it is found in groups with a wide range of individual beliefs and dispositions. The same is true of properties such as “being a family” and “being a collective movement.” Small groups often possess emergent microsocial properties; the properties of “being an argument,” “being a conversation,” and “being an act of discrimination” are emergent from symbolic interaction. In fact, most social properties of interest to sociologists seem to be emergent.

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