Complex Causality: Climate Change Essay -- multidisciplinary perspecti

Complex events are incidents that challenge pre-existing ideas through not meeting standard expectations or solutions. Equally, due to their ‘complex’ nature they should be able to be analysed from a multidisciplinary perspective. A multidisciplinary perspective is the drawing together of methodologies from different social science disciplines (such as economics, international relations, history and political science) to analyse an event and consequently reach a single conclusion. Overall, the use of a multidisciplinary perspective (in comparison to a singular disciplinary perspective) will provide the fullest and most accurate analysis of complex events, however this can create a trade off with the complexity and time taken to reach a conclusion. Firstly, this advantage will be argued through implying complex events have complex causality that can only truly be seen through a multidisciplinary perspective. Secondly, it can be seen that all social sciences lie on a spec trum with lots of overlap and interdependence between disciplines, and therefore it is an intrinsic feature of the social sciences to view complex events through a multidisciplinary perspective. Finally, it can also be seen that each discipline has respective areas of strength as well as areas of weakness and consequently a multidisciplinary approach allows for the most accurate and broadest analysis of a respective event. This can be shown through examples of complex events such as the current problem posed by Climate Change and the unforeseen end to the Cold War in 1991. However, it is important to keep in mind that while there may be many advantages of using a multidisciplinary perspective to analysis, the ultimate purpose of this analysis is to lead to a fina... ...AEBB275/1989%20for%20posting.pdf] Gaskel, G. (2014) Thinking like a social scientist: Why methodology matters LSE100 Lecture Capture retrieved 26th March 2014 [http://moodle.lse.ac.uk] Harrison, M. (1993) â€Å"Soviet Economic Growth Since 1928: The Alternative Statistics of G. T. Khanin† from Europe-Asia Studies Retrieved 26th March 2014 [http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/Harrison/public/eas93.pdf] Hoffman, M. (2013) â€Å"Global Climate Change† in The Handbook of Global Climate and Environmental Policy Memorandum of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1989) Excerpt from ‘The Political Processes in the European Socialist Countries and the Proposals for Our Practical Steps Considering the Situation Which Has Arisin in Them’. (Cold War International Project) Sandler, T. (2004) Global Collective Action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press