Relational Modeling of Societal Configurations Linked to Emergence Phenomena: An Example of Research in Contemporary Morocco
Social sciences, such as economics, sociology, history, anthropology as well as other disciplines, have attempted for centuries to explain how human societies live and develop (or collapse). Many theories have thus emerged through numerous controversies and many disappointments. For the purpose of this article, I divide these theories into two categories: economic development theories and sociological theories. The former tend to explain why certain human groups manage to generate growth and development, the latter attempt to show how societies live and change. This division is of course debatable but allows us to look at the two major objectives of the text, namely, on the one hand, to understand how human groups in contemporary Morocco have succeeded in developing and improving their levels and modes of life, on the other hand, to show that models different from those commonly practiced in the social sciences (based on the explanatory preeminence of individuals or structures) are possible and provide angles of view that allow us to understand more deeply and more effectively the social systems on which we want to intervene. The modeling described here is “relational” and was carried out using an analytical model constructed by the author, whose name RISE is the acronym for “Relation, Individual, System and Event”. This modeling made it possible to decipher the situation of three societal sites initially considered as emerging in contemporary Morocco.