‘Butterflies, networks, and golems’ – an introduction to ‘The powers and pathologies of networks’ by Hayward R. Alker
| Author | James Der Derian |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066110396977a |
| Published date | 01 June 2011 |
| Date | 01 June 2011 |
E
JR
I
European Journal of
International Relations
17(2) 351–378
© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066110396977
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Article
The powers and pathologies
of networks: Insights from
the political cybernetics
of Karl W. Deutsch
and Norbert Wiener1
Hayward R. Alker
University of Southern California and Brown University, USA
Editorial note
This article was in review when Hayward Alker sadly passed away in 2007. The previ-
ous and current editorial teams greatly appreciate the willingness of Thomas Biersteker
and J. Ann Tickner to revise the article in light of the referee reports. We are also
thankful to James Der Derian for providing an introduction and contextualization to
the article.
Note from Thomas Biersteker
The article was edited to respond to the reviewers’ comments and delete some asides.
There were places where I had to clarify the prose and correct for stylistic inconsisten-
cies and a few typos. However, the edit was fairly light and I was able to leave the final
four pages untouched. One of the most significant additions I made was to construct an
Appendix of the interpretive hypotheses that Hayward Alker invoked and then repeat-
edly referred to in a shorthand manner throughout the text. The Appendix is almost
entirely compose d of Hayward Alker’s prose copied and pasted fr om passages in the
main text. J. Ann Tickner went over the version I revised and made a few additional
corrections.
352 European Journal of International Relations 17(2)
‘Butterflies, networks, and golems’ – an
introduction to ‘The powers and pathologies
of networks’ by Hayward R. Alker
James Der Derian
Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, USA
In 1961, Edward Lorenz was using a numerical computer model to rerun a weather prediction,
when, as a shortcut on a number in the sequence, he entered the decimal .506 instead of entering
the full .506127 the computer would hold. The result was a completely different weather
scenario. (‘Butterfly effect’, Wikipedia)
Serious scholars do not quote Wikipedia. But I can think of no better open network to
instantiate how a sensitive dependence on initial conditions — the so-called ‘butterfly
effect’ of chaos theory — might trigger not only strange weather but a remarkable essay by
one of the most complex thinkers in International Relations, Hayward Alker. Alker was,
avant la lettre, a walking, talking, living embodiment of the virtues of Wikipedia, accumu-
lating, revising and always generously disseminating an impossibly vast body of knowl-
edge through an open-source network of friends, students, and colleagues. Alker displayed
in his relentless effort to understand the world not only an unusual sensitivity to ‘initial
conditions’ but also an intense self-reflexivity about the function of one’s own interpreta-
tions and actions. Together these qualities made him not only a highly effective but also
deeply ethical scholar. They are also eminently evident in the article which follows.
The initial condition of the article can be traced back to Alker’s early exposure at MIT to
two of the most profound thinkers of the Cold War era, the political scientist Karl Deutsch
and the physicist Norbert Wiener. Friends and colleagues, Deutsch and Wiener were among
the first to explore the impact of new social, economic, and technological networks on
complex organizations and governmental polities. According to Deutsch’s daughter, Mary
Edsall, all through the 1940s and 1950s they would regularly gather at the Deutsch’s home
to discuss everything from physics to metaphysics (personal email to Hayward Alker, 26
February 2005). Although their work would eventually have a profound influence on the
study of IR, this was largely through an appropriation of their more ‘timeless’ concepts, like
‘pluralistic security community’ and ‘cybernetics’, rather than through a critical engage-
ment of their ideas and normative concerns about networks in historical context.
This is where the triggering event, the beat of the butterfly’s wing, comes into play. In
2004 I organized a conference at the Watson Institute for International Studies on ‘The
Power and Pathology of Networks’. The purpose of the conference and accompanying
exhibition was to investigate the global risks and opportunities emerging from the inter-
connectivity, vulnerability, and heteropolarity of a networked world. The event gathered
pre-eminent scholars in organizational and network theory, like Charles Perrow and
Saskia Sassen, as well as the ‘young turks’ of new media studies, like Chris Csikszentmihalyi
and Natalie Jeremijenko. The conference was long on questions: how do we assess the
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