Comparison, Diversity and Complexity

Abstract

Informed by a critical realist position, the method of Qualitative Comparative Analysis could be enriched when focusing on differences amongst complex systems as source of causality, instead of focusing on objects that seem to have similar properties. When the seemingly similar objects are looked at from a participatory position (e.g. action research), one learns that objects that seem similar from an objective point of view, are actually rather different when viewed from a subjective (or objective-subjective) point of view. When this is acknowledged, one can no longer speak of an object's (or community’s/society’s) properties. Based on the view from complexity, such complex objects/communities should be categorised according to their shared combination of characteristics rather than by any single characteristic and entities become "traces of systems" interacting with one another in non-linear ways. When observed in such a way the control parameters (or model by which the community is measured) become the generators of difference. These differences in turn become the source of causality. Engaging with action research enables one to become aware of the internal parameters (parameters established from inside the system or the emic description, apposed to parameters foced upon the system from outside the system/etic description) that generate difference. Comparing complex systems with one another from a position within the various systems thus become the best practice in terms of social research methodology. Such results might have information that could lead to actual social change and suggests a more ethical way of doing research. The argument is illuminated by an actual case study done on schools in North England and their success levels for pupils in public examinations and extended by a discussion of how we might think about comparison and causality in relation to old and now post-industrial city regions.