Gary Metcalf, "Social Systems and Design" (Springer Verlag, 2014)

New Books in Sociology · Feb 4, 2019 · 1h 4m

In the opening chapter of his edited volume, Social Systems and Design, out from Springer in 2014, Gary Metcalf asks if it is possible to establish ethical “first principles” for the design of social systems. Inspired by his mentor, Bela Banathy (a giant of the systems field), and pondering the potential levels of influence we might actually have over the evolutionary development of the social systems in which we are all embedded, Metcalf provocatively asks what sorts of goals should we set for ourselves and what sorts of means should we use to achieve them. In the subsequent eight chapters…