EDITORS' INTRODUCTION Complexity: Researching alcohol and other drugs in a multiple world

摘要

In August 2013, Contemporary Drug Problems held its second conference entitled Complexity: Researching Alcohol and Other Drugs in a Multiple World in Aarhus, Denmark. The conference focused on the increasing interest in "complexity" in social science and epidemiological research over the last decade. (Kate Seear's review of the conference, originally published in the September 2013 newsletter of the Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs, appears as an Appendix to this special issue.) As social problems of all kinds prove less amenable to change than is sometimes suggested by the reductionist demands of orthodox positivist approaches, theory and method have turned to ways of articulating the elusive, uncertain and complex.