What Complexity Science Teaches Us About Social Change

In this article, the traditional frameworks for measurement of social change and development intervention outcomes are questioned. The author, Virginia Lacayo asserts that, "[s]eldom do such methods and indicators reveal the multilevel mechanisms through which social change occurs." Using her work with the Nicaraguan organisation Puntos de Encuentro as a case study, Lacayo challenges traditional development planning and research methods based on behaviour change communication theories and used by scholars and grantors, resulting in a hegemonic, linear model. She describes her search for a nonlinear, complex, and holistic model that legitimately captures the process of social change in ways that lead to "revamped field-based interventions."

Lacayo looks to complexity literature, which has a framework used to analyse interactions between various actors in systems, such as stock markets, human bodies, forest ecosystems, manufacturing businesses, and hospitals, as complex adaptive systems (CAS). She describes complexity science as seeking to understand how complex adaptive systems work the patterns of relationships within them, how they are sustained, how they self-organise and how outcomes emerge. She reviews these principles through a case study lens:

1. Complexity science argues that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In the example of the organisation Puntos de Encuentro, it combined multimedia and multi-method strategies in formulating the social soap opera Somos Diferentes, Somos Iguales. Puntos expands the soap opera's impact using strategies combining entertainment-education outcomes, youth leadership training, alliances between partners and strengthening on-the-ground social movements to promote change in Nicaraguan society. Puntos has both individual and social change catalysts operating simultaneously and over time because it recognises the effectiveness of interpersonal and organising activities at the local level as essential to promote individual-level changes and organisational capacities of communities. Simultaneously and at the more macro level, it recognises the mass media as playing an important role to shape public opinion, and as creating a supporting environment for structural changes to occur,
2. Complexity theory describes order as being emergent and self-organising. Lacayo's example here is the distribution network of Puntos, which grew from handling 500 copies to 26,000 copies, of La Boletina, the organisatio'’s national feminist magazine. According to her observation, "The distribution network of La Boletina is a unique phenomenon of self-organisation. It works on the principle of solidarity and is sustained by mutually supportive relationships among women’s groups." In short, Puntos didn’t plan the distribution strategy, and has no direct control over it. The system, which emerged on its own, makes demonstration of impact difficult by current project/donor assessment standards, but conforms to complexity theory's standards of a healthy system in lacking centralised control.
3. Complexity science claims that "the system changes when it chooses to be disturbed." The author's example is the way in which Puntos recognises that personal choice to change comes out of what is personally "meaningful," e.g., behaviour choices demonstrated in its soap opera need to be widely diverse rather than stereotypical and values-driven, but have outcomes and interrelated actions attached. This conforms to the principle that the system becomes different because it understands the world differently, an understanding grounded in choice and based on how personally meaningful the message is.
4. Complexity science values both diversity and participation as shown in its principle that free flow of diverse information is essential for the system to evolve. In the case of Puntos, the organisation is described as dealing with multiple societal issues, including those considered taboo, by promoting dialogue and debate between and among diverse groups, stimulated by presentations of characters with complex and contradictory behaviours.
5. The next principle describes "planning the unpredictable". Here Lacayo analyses the disconnection between working in a social reality while having to plan in the traditional development frameworks available to organisations and expected by donors. She problematises the current thinking that quantitative outcomes are the most acceptable representation of measurable outcomes. According to Lacayo, this kind of measurement measures how much was done, and not the quality of the processes and the relationships. It lends itself to linear planning. In contrast, complexity science favours these characteristics of planning:
   
   • Minimum specifications and a generalised sense of direction;
   • flexibility of multiple approaches by trying several small experiments, reflecting, and shifting toward what works the best; and
   • organisational leadership allowing autonomy for individuals to self-organise and adapt to a continually changing context.
6. The final principle is: complex adaptive systems are history and context-dependent. According to Lacayo, positive, measurable results in traditional development frameworks indicate the direction for replication, which can "privilege" the importance of “outside experts and re-enforce beliefs that local organisations and communities need them to find the 'right' solutions." The result may be pressure to "succeed" in traditional terms, which in the case of Puntos, may have also prevented innovation, both in terms of project design and implementation, as well as in terms of evaluation.

In her conclusions, Lacayo questions the interdependency of history and context, saying that what has worked to promote social change can inform other interventions, but is a risky basis for scaling up or replicating because environments and communities are constantly changing. She states, "Social change is complex and incoherent, [yet] it is not at all unintelligible." She recommends focusing on the processes that lead to effective interventions rather than replication of interventions.

In summary, as a tool for understanding the processes of social change and effective interventions, the author claims that "complexity science provides the language, the metaphors, the conceptual frameworks, the models and the theories that help make the idiosyncrasies non-idiosyncratic and the illogical logical. It also provides a rigorous approach to study some of the key dimensions of organisational life."

This article for MAZI was written from Lacayo's master's thesis which is available at Ohio University's Department of Communication and Development Studies website or Puntos de Encuentro's website.