What if the problem with many social change efforts isn’t poor strategy, but flawed assumptions about how change actually happens? In this episode, we interrogate the limitations of linear causality in complex social systems. While logic models and strategic plans often rely on neat, input-output frameworks, real-world change is rarely so predictable. Social phenomena such as poverty, climate injustice, or gender-based violence are shaped by webs of intersecting forces — historical, institutional, relational, and psychological — which resist simplistic cause-and-effect explanations.We explore a more nuanced framework for understanding social change, grounded in the concept of multidimensional causal structure. This includes four interrelated dimensions: causal conditions (the contexts that enable change), causal mechanisms (the processes that drive it), causal powers (the latent potential within systems), and causal capacities (the realised ability to act).
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The views expressed in this podcast are those of Tiyana J and are not reflective of all members of the Humanitarian Changemakers Network.