ABSTRACT
Modern society is complex. Conceptually, it is a manifestation of ‘modernity’, implying a dynamic process of change that began in Europe during the 16th century, giving rise to institutions such as science, industrial production, market economy and democracy, and to processes of urbanization and globalization. Two essential features of modernity are the differentiation of institutions and the division of labour. In this respect, modern industrialized society significantly differs from pre-modern agrarian modes of society. 1 The institutions and agents that comprise modern societies are, in other words, highly specialized and are assigned very specific tasks in all areas of the social system. Institutions and agents can thus interact and interrelate in infinite ways. 2 To characterize such specialization as ‘complex’ can simply mean that the system is composed of many interacting components, the behaviour or structure of which is difficult to grasp (Casti, 1997). Analytically, however, the interaction is not only difficult to grasp – in the sense of being highly complicated. That a system is complex refers to the fact that it is counter-intuitive and that the outcome of the process is unpredictable (Casti, 1997). The difference between a complicated and a complex system is that whereas the former can be completely described in terms of its individual components, the latter cannot be fully understood from simply analysing each of its elements (Cilliers, 1998, pviii).
