In anthropology and archaeology, a complex society is a social formation that is otherwise described as a formative or developed state.^{[citation needed]} The main criteria of complexity are:^{[citation needed]}

Social complexity in this sense thus refers typically to political complexity, specifically the presence of a hierarchy in the form of a ruling elite supported by bureaucrats, with associated paraphernalia such as administrative buildings and elite residences in urban or proto-urban population centres.

Complex societies under this definition are also agricultural to provide the surplus required to support a social (non-food producing) elite. Explaining the origins of these types of social formations, which appear in many areas of the world, is one of the tasks of archaeology (see, e.g., History & Mathematics: Historical Dynamics and Development of Complex Societies).

There are, however, problems with the term "complexity" when used in this manner. It has been argued that using political organisation (or technological sophistication, or subsistence strategy) as the measure of complexity reinforces concepts of western superiority over other forms of social complexity. For example, any given society may be more or less complex than any other given society in one or more aspects (for example, western society can be characterised as extremely simple from the perspective of kinship structures when compared to, for instance, Indigenous Australian societies). In this sense, Indigenous Australian societies are highly complex societies. The term "social complexity" is thus not without problems, and qualifiers are typically applied by anthropologists and archaeologists when using this term to define more precisely the phenomenon that is being described as complex.

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification and/or dominance patterns in subgroups.

Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members to benefit in ways that would not otherwise be possible on an individual basis; both individual and social (common) benefits can thus be distinguished, or in many cases found to overlap.

A society can also consist of like-minded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, larger society. This is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within criminology.

Joseph A. Tainter (born December 8, 1949) is an American anthropologist and historian.

Joseph Tainter was born on December 8, 1949. He was married to Sarah Tainter and they had four children. Two of the children were Elizabeth and Jacob.

Tainter studied anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and Northwestern University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1975. He is currently a professor in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University. His previous positions include Project Leader of Cultural Heritage Research, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Albuquerque, New Mexico and professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico.

Tainter is the author or editor of many articles and monographs. His best-known work is The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), which examines the collapse of Maya and Chacoan civilizations, and the Roman Empire, in terms of network theory, energy economics and complexity theory. Tainter argues that sustainability or collapse of societies follow from the success or failure of problem-solving institutions and that societies collapse when their investments in social complexity and their "energy subsidies" reach a point of diminishing marginal returns. He recognizes collapse when a society rapidly sheds a significant portion of its complexity.

Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, author, and war correspondent specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies. His most recent book is The World As It Is (2011).

Hedges is also known as the best-selling author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. A quotation from the book was used as the opening title quotation in the film The Hurt Locker (2009). The quotation reads: "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug."

Chris Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times, where he was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005).

Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American politician who has been the U.S. Representative for Texas's 14th congressional district, which includes Galveston, since 1997, and a three-time candidate for President of the United States, as a Libertarian in 1988 and as a Republican in 2008 and currently 2012. He is an outspoken critic of American foreign and monetary policies, including the Military–industrial complex and the Federal Reserve, and is known for his libertarian-leaning views, often differing from his own party on certain issues.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Paul is a graduate of Gettysburg College and Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree. He served as a medical officer in the United States Air Force from 1963 until 1968. He worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist from the 1960s to the 1980s, delivering more than 4,000 babies. He became the first Representative in history to serve concurrently with a child in the Senate when his son Rand Paul was elected to the United States Senate for Kentucky in 2010.