Morality and Absolute Certainty Mayor

Understood Complexity: Ibsen’s ‘An Enemy of the People’
E:CO Issue Vol. 11 No. 3 2009 pp. 1-15

Academic

Understood Complexity: Ibsen’s ‘An Enemy of the People’—On Complexity, Sense-Making,
Understanding, and Exit/Voice/Loyalty
Tom Eide

Diakonhjemmet University College, NOR

‘Understood complexity’ is a term of Albert Hirschman (1976) whose economicpolitical theory of ‘exit’ (‘vote with your feet’) versus ‘voice’ (feedback or use your influence for change) (1970), has often been used to (try to) understand whistleblowing (Alford, 2001; Maclagen, 1998).
Real complexity is not linear and cannot be adequately studied an model of ‘A causes
B’. Complexity entails ‘A causes B’ in a situation wherein ‘B causes A’. Bateson in his ‘ecology of the mind’ understood the circularity of the hermeneutic of complexity; while Weick did not in his theory of sense-making. I argue in this article, via an examination of a play of Ibsen, that circular thinking spiraling towards new insight(s) is much more a possibility of literature (studies) than of social science.
Social complexity theory needs (at least partially) I believe to methodologically merge with literary studies.

Introduction: An Enemy of the People:
A Drama on Whistleblowing

L

iterature is an indirect phenomenon. On the one hand, it is a product of the author’s artistic imagination; on the other, it represents aspects of our lives and the world in which we live. I will explore Ibsen’s representation of complexity in his realistic drama
An enemy of the people (1882).
The plot takes its point of departure in the discovery that the water at a Spa is polluted and in a concerned employee’s unsuccessful attempt to make the management take action to stop the pollution. The plot develops as a case of whistleblowing. Ibsen exposes the organizational response to the whistleblower, resulting in the whistleblower’s persecution and in retaliation against him. To my knowledge,
the

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