Jul 8, 2014

A note on Violence: A Complexity-Frame Approach

I did this figure using Inkscape. It tells the complexity of violence in some Latin American countries. I wrote a note on that, and this is the abstract:
Complexity sciences study the interconnection of many different elements that affect each other simultaneously to create emergent outcomes in the physical, biological, or social spheres. In the book Complexity and The Art of Public Policy: Solving Society Problems From the Bottom (2014), David Colander and Ronald Kupers propose that to face the complexity of contemporary social problems states should adopt a ``laissez-faire activism'' to facilitate the emergence of bottom-up solutions. They call this the ``complexity frame.'' My purpose in this paper is to describe and evaluate the frame and to apply it to homicidal violence to determine if we can profit from the utilisation of that approach. More specifically, I want to determine if by using the complexity frame as a guide for policy formulation we can obtain a broader landscape of solutions for violence.
The complete note is here.  
When I look at that graph I think about the quantity of instrumental variables needed to understand that phenomenon, and the instrumental variables for the instrumental variables. Social sciences move very slowly indeed. 

No comments:

Post a Comment