The Viability of Societies

The book is about explaining and understanding the twin processes of cohesion and fragmentation in contemporary societies and the challenges to both governance and identity posed by these antinomic processes. It does this by demonstrating that a new way of thinking and a new set of concepts drawn the realms of cybernetics and communication can build a more effective sociological theory than has been possible up to now. It sets out to explain why this is so and what must happen to change it for the better. To this end it also constructs a narrative about human society as the ongoing outcome of control attempts by people at varying levels of social complexity, attempts which produce a recursive hierarchy of nested levels of social organisation, from the individual up through social networks, groups and organisations through to the nation state and beyond. The key themes of the book are: identity, governance, identity, communication & control in complex societies and the future of human society.