Reconciling cultural order and individual agency: Complexity theory and the Mekeo case

Abstract

This article argues that complexity theory offers concepts that could fruitfully be used as inspiration to solve the long-standing debate between methodological holism versus individualism. The article illustrates this by looking at the case of the Mekeo of PNG and suggests that when complexity theory is transferred to society, we have to look at the nature of local and individual interaction and the way this is linked to energy intake from the environment, which for human communities to a large extent is based on some form of exchange with other groups, and the way this form of interaction creates emergent properties — or what we could call a cultural order. Complexity theory would also suggest that change in the intake of energy (exchange possibilities) can at certain points lead to phase shifts, or, as it is called in complexity theory, bifurcations, as when a gas changes into a solid or water into ice. Seen in this light, Mekeo society seems presently to be in the middle of a bifurcation.