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This is a conceptual paper about 'affordances'. It is inspired by Gregory Bateson (1972) who argued that consciousness is a person/environment interactive process; we will focus on how relationships between environments and organisms lead to perceived possibilities, actions, and cognition. Both the relationships between environments and persons, and the relationships between persons and environments count. The connection between world and consciousness is dynamic. There is a mutual causal link between circumstances and organisms. We argue that the world via affordances presents itself to consciousness. Emergent possibilities afford; complexity affords. Scott Kelso's 'complementary relating of contrarieties' affords. Affordances are the dynamic reciprocal relationships between animate persons and their environments. Affordances are in-between-their cognition is situated and contextual. Affordances are the a next frontier for organization studies.
Introduction
Profoundly influenced by Micheal Foucault and Jacques Derrida, most social complexity theory has focused on the knowing languaged-based subject (Cilliers, 1998). In Foucault's terms, (social) cognition is grounded in the historically specific episteme. Complexity scholars have asserted that the contemporary episteme is complexthat is, it is emergent, dynamic and resembles a strange attractor. The episteme characterizes the dominant way of seeing, and operates as a very socially and economically powerful hermeneutic. The contemporary episteme, Foucault argued in the mid -twentieth century, has centered on 'discipline' and 'power' - i.e., it focused on the ways of structuring physical and mental existence prerequisite to the development of technology and industrialization, physical and social science, bureaucracy and globalization, material wealth and post-Fordist capitalism. Derrida focused specifically on how texts emerge from one another, refer and defer to one another, and form complex webs of signification. Text-based consciousness (which includes art, music, mathematics, etcetera - i.e., a great variety of forms of text) - it is asserted, is the only form of consciousness that we (can) know. Text is emergent, dynamic and operates in webs of relationship and preassumptions. While a social complexity theory grounded in Foucault and Derrida is revelatory; it is very perception and consciousness directed. The danger is that 'world' gets lost in some sort of consciousness studies. Without wanting to trash the Foucault-Derrida interpretation of complexity theory, in this article we focus on 'affordances' - i.e., not on language, but persons and circumstances. It is our conviction,...