The Making of Repertoire, Survival and Success under Heterogeneity

Abstract

This paper suggests that

• 1. The concept of complex, otherwise heterogeneous and dynamic open systems, is a useful framework for dealing with both change and perseverance of human groups.

• 2. The making of new repertoires, enabled only by heterogeneity, creates at any time, but especially in times of intensive involvement with socio-political change, socio-cultural motion.

• 3. This motion in turn creates an energy that allows devising options for new ways of doing things in life. These options may, through their proliferation, if the state of »energy« continues, enable growing cultural and economic success.

• 4. However, such a state of affairs is subject to a tolerable volume of conflicting repertoires. Beyond a certain limit, a socio-cultural entity may collapse rather than succeed. Unfortunately, that limit is not known, and it is doubtful whether it can be known in the current state of research.

Dieser Beitrag basiert auf einem Vortrag, den der Verfasser auf dem siebten internationalen Kongress der International Association for Semiotic Studies (LASS) am 08.10.1999 in Dresden gehalten hat [G. Z.].