From Punk to Peer: Leaders?
In reading Paul B Hartzog’s paper, 21ST CENTURY GOVERNANCE AS A COMPLEX
ADAPTIVE SYSTEM, from his Panarchy website, I extracted the following excerpt to further elaborate (either to contextualize or problematize…) one the arguments on which my research hinges:
As Steven Johnson describes in “The Myth of the Queen Ant,”
humans have traditionally looked for “rulers” in ordered
systems, “pacemakers” that are responsible for the maintenance
of order. In addition, we look for such primary causers in other
systems, from terrorist networks to fads to mass demonstrations
to peer-to-peer file-sharing. However, “we know now that
systems like ant colonies don’t have real leaders, that the very
idea of an ant ‘queen’ is misleading. But the desire to find
pacemakers in such systems has always been powerful….”[6].
In complex adaptive systems, though, organizers are entirely
unnecessary when the structure of the system follows certain
parameters. These parameters determine whether a system will
self-organize or not, into a state which Per Bak calls “selforganized
criticality”[7]. In highly interconnected systems,
when conditions permit, order can emerge spontaneously, what
Stuart Kauffman calls “‘order for free.’ – self-organization that
arises naturally”[8]. Indeed, what Complexity reveals is that
sometimes the system itself is the organizer of order.
humans have traditionally looked for “rulers” in ordered
systems, “pacemakers” that are responsible for the maintenance
of order. In addition, we look for such primary causers in other
systems, from terrorist networks to fads to mass demonstrations
to peer-to-peer file-sharing. However, “we know now that
systems like ant colonies don’t have real leaders, that the very
idea of an ant ‘queen’ is misleading. But the desire to find
pacemakers in such systems has always been powerful….”[6].
In complex adaptive systems, though, organizers are entirely
unnecessary when the structure of the system follows certain
parameters. These parameters determine whether a system will
self-organize or not, into a state which Per Bak calls “selforganized
criticality”[7]. In highly interconnected systems,
when conditions permit, order can emerge spontaneously, what
Stuart Kauffman calls “‘order for free.’ – self-organization that
arises naturally”[8]. Indeed, what Complexity reveals is that
sometimes the system itself is the organizer of order.
In the social formation of subcultural non-mainstream activity, I specifically argue that figures such as Dirk Dirksen were central to the proliferation of this activity. When thinking of the post-’77 scene, how does Hartzog’s analysis play into – say – the magnanimous increase of zine production in the ’80s? …
Blogged with the Flock Browser
