Cultural studies,complexity studies and the transformation of the structures of knowledge

Abstract

The structures of knowledge of the modern world, those patterns of what can and cannot be thought that determine what actions can and cannot be deemed feasible in the material world, are undergoing a transformation. Two knowledge movements, cultural studies with roots in the humanities and complexity studies in the sciences, have challenged the separation of the sciences, social sciences and the humanities by upsetting the epistemological underpinnings of the mutually exclusive epistemologies based on the separation of truth and values in knowledge production. For the future, social analysts may shift from fabricating and verifying theories to imagining and evaluating the multiple possible consequences of diverse interpretative accounts of human reality and the actions they entail.