Terrell DG, Bentley's Large Complex Societies
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Were Bentley's "Large, Complex Societies" Truly Complex?David G. Terrell
November 20, 2011
Bentley strives to avoid the word "civilization" in his 1997 Shapes of World History in
Twentieth-century Scholarship because of its "Western elitist connotations." Instead, he labels
societal groups of supra-national scope as "complex societies."1 Since the mid-1980s,
"complexity" has become a prominent concept in efforts to describe system interactions in the
social sciences, philosophy, chaos theory, ecology, computational methods, and organizational
psychology.2 Although Bentley does not explicitly tie his references to "complexity" to the
multidisciplinary literature on the subject, by comparing four principal characteristics of
complexity, discussed in a standard text, to the usage in his essay and its focus on civilizations
(or, rather, large-scale complex societies), Bentley indicates that he possessed a valid
understanding of complexity and properly applied the term in this essay.
The first criteria of complexity is the presence of many elements, agents or, in the case of
societies, people associated in a large, relationship-based network. The number of people in a
complex group must be large enough that the actions of most individuals rarely influence an
outsider's understanding of the group. There must, in a sense be a "heartland" relatively free from
contact with other groups.3 Bentley, while discussing Toynbee, focuses attention on that
historian's "pessimistic attitude towards cross-cultural encounters" that contributes to a society's
disintegration by undermining its traditions. He also acknowledges, while discussing world-
systems theory, the inability of simple, bi-modal models proposed by modernization theorists to
1 Bentley.2 Cilliers, 13.3 Cilliers, 14.
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Terrell DG - Were Bentley's "Large, Complex Societies" Truly Complex?
adequately describe world history. Finally, Bentley speaks approvingly of Abu-Lughod's
expansive applications of world-systems theory to pre-modern civilizations; and, of modern
historians' efforts to integrate the effects of technological diffusion with economic, ecological
and ecological processes.4
Second, the members of a complex group must also interact in sophisticated, difficult-to-
approximate, non-linear combinations. This characteristic sets the stage for occasional tipping-
point events, occurring when small causes generate great results, and, conversely, for the
occasional and unexpected resistance to the influence to large causes.5 Bentley acknowledges
that world historians, especially in the philosophical phases characterized by Spengler and
Toynbee, sought to find predictable patterns of causality whose linearity might provide a basis
for canonical principles one could apply to projections of future behaviors. He also takes pains to
discuss the criticism directed at these efforts, including dogmatism, superficiality,
pretentiousness and silliness. Nevertheless, Bentley praises the philosophers' efforts for
identifying the "political, social, economic, and cultural" networks that together, constitute
identifiable civilizations.6
Third, the sophistication of truly complex societies produces social networks whose members
receive most of their information from immediate acquaintances. This characteristic does not
preclude longer-range information sharing but, a rich network often includes links that span large
sections of the group, making the social distance between any two people relatively short.7
Complexity in a social group requires that its members dynamically interact with each other over
4 Bentley.5 Cilliers, 14.6 Bentley.7 Cilliers, 15.
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Terrell DG - Were Bentley's "Large, Complex Societies" Truly Complex?
time, exchanging information across well interconnected networks in which there are few
indispensible persons; making the society adaptable to death or other instability.8 Bentley, in his
discussion of Black and Bendix, two "social scientists" of world history, highlights those
historians' efforts to identify processes that turn traditional societies into modern ones, including
the social effects of industrialization, urbanization, democratic revolutions, the psychological
effects of an emphasis on individualism and competition.9 These processes are among those most
capable of spawning rich networks in a society, as more individuals are thrown into social
networks beyond those based on kinship ties.
Last, complex groups evolve as time passes and past events carry meaning and context for
present behaviors (e.g., "complex" societies will possess a history).10 At the beginning of his
essay, Bentley asserts the existence of historical writing from the earliest days of society. He
presents an expansive definition of history that includes the focused histories of Herodotus, Sima
Qian and Ban Gu and the quasi-historical texts associated with religious texts, creation myths
and ancient legends. These texts, he says, account for the experiences of particular human
groupings within the global human context.11
Bentley described the abandonment of efforts to identify historical templates or philosophical
maxims that might reduce the complexity of human history to predictable patterns; and the
redirecting their efforts to analyzing historical processes as they existed in a particular time and
place. He extols the multidisciplinary applications of anthropological, ethnohistorical and
gendered historical tools to understanding the development of civilizations and their evolution
8 Cilliers, 14.9 Bentley.10 Cilliers, 15.11 Bentley.
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Terrell DG - Were Bentley's "Large, Complex Societies" Truly Complex?
though cross-cultural interactions. Though Bentley does not explicitly define his usage of
"complex" with relation to large-scale societies, the examples presented clearly demonstrate that
when Bentley speaks of "the complex and interdependent world," his use of the word is in
keeping with its interdisciplinary sense.
David G TerrellHerndon, Virginia
Bibliography
Bentley, Jerry H. "Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship." American Historical Association. August 7, 2001. http://www.historians.org/pubs/free/BENTLEY.HTM (accessed November 10, 2010).
Cilliers, Paul. Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems. London: Routledge, 2002.
© David G. Terrell, 2009-2010, except where otherwise noted, content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. For permission to reprint under terms outside the license, contact [email protected].