Paper short abstract:

Largely unbeknownst to anthropology, ecologists and complexity theorists have been making steady progress in understanding human and natural systems. The paper suggests fruitful engagement is possible between anthropology and complexity and may be urgent at a time of critical global transformations.

Paper long abstract:

Debates in ecological anthropology have often pitted proponents of two distinct traditions, one scientific and one humanist. One the one hand we find practitioners of objectivist research strategies who seek to identify causal links and propose scientifically credible explanations for social and cultural facts, with the intention of approaching "truth." On the other hand are found researchers focused on faithful representation of local conceptions of reality, sensitive to political and globalized contexts of their subjects, but sceptical of anthropology's ability to define causal relations or propose truth claims. What is subjectively real to one side may not (or may) be objectively true to the other. While anthropologists struggle with this dichotomy, general ecology and complexity theorists are increasingly bridging it in their own way by increasingly incorporating social science and ethnographic data on human societies, economies and organizations within a unified framework, one that provides space for nonlinearity, uncertainty, and surprise, and where destabilizing forces are important in maintaining diversity, resilience and opportunity. The paper explores both promising and problematic issues with complexity thinking and the possibility of fruitful engagement by anthropology with some of its concepts, notably complex adaptive systems heuristics and critical transition theory. The paper further suggests a synthesis of the latter with the author's default approach (cultural materialism), a "complex materialism" that bolsters the argument that anthropology has continued relevance for the study of society and culture, particularly at this time of critical global transformations.