Family Values

In his paper Tribes Institutions Markets Networks RAND’s David Ronfeldt lays the foundation for further discussion on the dynamics of conflict extended in his and John Arquilla’s paper on Networks and Netwars which is also the title of an anthology they edited that considers the implications of how civil society networks can effectively contain, curb, or overcome the criminal and anti-democratic behaviors of other social actors.

Perhaps of further interest are questions of how the moral and ethical lessons learned within the structures of family, clan, tribe, and (ethnic) nation can be applied in negotiating such remedies as autonomy, sovereignty, and power-sharing within the modern state and multi-state institutions. Dr. Rudolph Ryser’s paper Toward the Coexistence of Nations and States is probably the most enlightening in that regard.

~ by tbarj on April 2, 2007.