Complexity and Co-Evolution: Continuity and Change in Socio-Economic Systems

This book applies ideas and methods from the complexity perspective to key concerns in the social sciences, exploring co-evolutionary processes that have not yet been addressed in the technical or popular literature on complexity.

Authorities in a variety of fields - including evolutionary economics, innovation and regeneration studies, urban modelling and history - re-evaluate their disciplines within this framework. The book explores the complex dynamic processes that give rise to socio-economic change over space and time, with reference to empirical cases including the emergence of knowledge-intensive industries and decline of mature regions, the operation of innovative networks and the evolution of localities and cities. Sustainability is a persistent theme and the practicability of intervention is examined in the light of these perspectives.

Specialists in disciplines that include economics, evolutionary theory, innovation, industrial manufacturing, technology change, and archaeology will find much to interest them in this book. In addition, the strong interdisciplinary emphasis of the book will attract a non-specialist audience interested in keeping abreast of current theoretical and methodological approaches through evidence-based and practical examples.

Edited by Elizabeth Garnsey, former Reader in Innovation Studies and Fellow, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, UK and James McGlade, Senior Research Scientist, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain and Research Associate, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, UK