Forthcoming in Complexity We Have Met the Other and We’re All Nonlinear Ethnography as a Nonlinear Dynamic System

Just as complexity changes notions of what “science” is, ethnography offers an alternative model for “social science.” Particularly striking for ethnography is the family resemblance between its social research tradition and complex adaptive systems. In fact, if ethnography is seen as a CAS, several key issues appear in a new light. In this article, ethnographic research is looked at in terms of its algorithmic complexity, its sensitivity to initial conditions, the presence of an ethnographic agent, the fractal structure of method and results, and the problem of representation. In the end CAS concepts show how critiques of ethnography in fact represent the differences between outmoded views of social research and a more flexible and realistic approach that reflects normal CAS assumptions about how complex systems work.