Brazil: violence in (merged thread)

[TheCurmudgeon]

I sometimes wonder if the life cycles of insects may be an analog to illicit megaslum networks?

embryo
larvae
pupa
imago/maturity/legitimacy

Comparing the favela video above with the Vice series on Karachi found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgIl1vmIchA

It would superficially appear that Karachi's slums/ghettos are well into the transition to political machines

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Are developing world megaslums simply echoing our own western history of slum/ghetto development with two adjustments for sheer scale and the catalysing effects of technology?

IF that is the case, and while I am a big fan of David Kilcullen's book and derived great value from it(particularly his conflict entrepreneur and "city as biological system" perspective), I don't see enough emphasis on what I see as the life cycle of illicit networks on the journey from criminality to legitimacy.

Using Kilcullen's own biological system viewpoint, I wonder if the illicit networks can be viewed as a parasitic/symbiotic biological system within a system?

I had been hesitating on picking up Kilcullen's book but now you have sparked my interest.

However, I would seriously caution you or anyone else with using biological metaphors for sociological systems. It is true that, like a life form, a social system is a complex adaptive system. However, Life forms evolve to improve the survivability of the species where social systems evolve to improve the desires of the members of the system.

The most common error, and the one that most people still believe is true, is the comparison of “social evolution” to biological evolution. This creates the impression that the more complex, Western societies are more “evolved” and therefore “better” than any other system. It would also imply that the “social system” is the unit that is evolving, that humans are sub-units inside a system in which they have no control. They are simply cells in the social system. The social systems are what are reproducing and it is the social system that is surviving, not the people in it.

That is not true, social systems have adapted to meet the needs of the people in it, the people in it have not evolved to serve the social system.

The rub of this kind of thinking is that it makes Westerners believe that their system is more evolved and therefore “better” than everyone else’s system. That, since we are at the panicle of social evolution it is our responsibility to bring the rest of the world up to our level. It is one of the fundimental components of Modernization theroy. Ideas like this can cause poorly conceived foreign policy.

[flagg]

I had been hesitating on picking up Kilcullen's book but now you have sparked my interest.

However, I would seriously caution you or anyone else with using biological metaphors for sociological systems. It is true that, like a life form, a social system is a complex adaptive system. However, Life forms evolve to improve the survivability of the species where social systems evolve to improve the desires of the members of the system.

The most common error, and the one that most people still believe is true, is the comparison of “social evolution” to biological evolution. This creates the impression that the more complex, Western societies are more “evolved” and therefore “better” than any other system. It would also imply that the “social system” is the unit that is evolving, that humans are sub-units inside a system in which they have no control. They are simply cells in the social system. The social systems are what are reproducing and it is the social system that is surviving, not the people in it.

That is not true, social systems have adapted to meet the needs of the people in it, the people in it have not evolved to serve the social system.

The rub of this kind of thinking is that it makes Westerners believe that their system is more evolved and therefore “better” than everyone else’s system. That, since we are at the panicle of social evolution it is our responsibility to bring the rest of the world up to our level. It is one of the fundimental components of Modernization theroy. Ideas like this can cause poorly conceived foreign policy.

I would agree with your caution sign.

The analogies can be rough and imperfect....or even potentially hazardous if clung to rigidly.

But I do think there is a place for the use of the terms "evolved" and "better"(maybe more elegant/sophisticated might be a better choice in this case) when used in describing the TTPs and capabilities of networks as some of them attempt to shift from illicit criminal networks to legitimate political networks.

As a political science grad and infanteer I would think governance and light infantry combat both possess best practices that will in some cases have changed little in centuries(as in "it's all about the fundamentals"). But layered on top over the years are more complex capabilities that don't inherently make one better, just potentially more capable if well employed/deployed.

In terms of poorly conceived foreign policy, it's probably easy to imagine near future scenarios where a nation's diplomats are face with the conundrum of dealing directly with both the self-appointed representatives of ungoverned/self-governed megaslums via back channels as well as the government representatives of the sovereign state surrounding the ungoverned/self-governed space.