On the order of chaos

"Several of the world's leading anthropologists have drawn upon particular elements of chaos theory for their inspiration, but as yet, there is no focused and comprehensive treatment of the applicability of chaos theory to anthropology's distinctive ethnographic and cross-cultural materials. This volume fills that gap. Bridging the divide between the sciences and the humanities that has fragmented much recent anthropological discussion, the contributors track between chaos theory models and those derived from anthropology's intensive consideration of the problem of order (and its absence) across time and space in human social organization. The essays in this volume collectively transform perspectives previously experienced as divergent, conflicting, and inconsistent into a common and complex orientation to problems central to the natural and social sciences involving transitions between order and disorder."--Jacket.