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Outside of humanitarian work, I have a passing interest in complexity theory, particularly around ideas of emergence. As a result, I’m deeply envious of Ben Ramalingam at ODI, who shares this interest but has actually found the time to write something substantial about it. The Working Paper that he has written with Harry Jones, Toussaint Reba and John Young – Exploring the science of complexity: Ideas and implications for development and humanitarian efforts has just been published by the ODI RAPID programme.

This line of research is one of the most important developments in humanitarian and development studies in many years, a potentially critical addition to the ideological foundations of our work (such as the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership), the technocratic scaffolding (such as Human Development Indicators) and the technical ornamentation (such as the Sphere Project).

I don’t agree with everything that Ben and his co-authors have written; in particular I share concerns that applying this framework to what is essentially a social science field has many, many pitfalls. In the paper’s terms, I’m a champion of complexity theory in general – but a pragmatist in the specifics of how we apply it to our work, simply because the stakes are so high. If we’re going to hijack a theory from the domain of pure science, we need to make sure that we are rigorous and open about how that works out in the real world.

So, now I just need to get around to applying for that PhD in the role of complexity theory in humanitarian crises. Someday.

(Full disclosure: I contributed to the peer review for the paper, along with some other people whose names will be more familiar to anybody else working in the sector.)