devise systems that can absorb and accommodate future events in whatever unexpected form they may take”.


The ecological system was too complex to intervene without the possibility of catastrophic damage; the triggers of change were almost limitless and often random. Holling believed that human governance was putting life systems at risk. The solution was to support the existing resilience of an environment to human and natural inputs as opposed to trying to stabilise the existing system.


One year later, Friedrich von Hayek won the Nobel prize for economics, projecting his ideas of self-regulating economic systems to the fore. Hayek’s followers believed that less government intervention and greater political priority to private or individual profit making countered the economic stagnation and decline of freedoms which came with socialist-styled politics. The maintenance of economic stability by central government had failed, the private sector needed the freedom to be fluid.


By 1982, the Reagan and Thatcher administrations were pioneering ways to implement these ideas and within a generation the ideas had been adopted by nations across the globe. The contemporary turn to this neo-liberal global economic governance reflected much of Holling’s analysis – rupture and shock will happen, prepare for it; develop a sufficiently stable system architecture that also allows for fluid changes. The role of governance had changed. Based on debated ideas about ecology and economy, we were moving towards an age of resilience.


random but this instability reduced the chances of extinction in the ecosystem, that is, instability built long term resilience.


Ecology was fluid, ideas of stable homoeostasis as natural and beneficial were wrong; stability, or elasticity, impacted on the system itself, moreover, it could be in tension with the survival of all or parts of the ecosystem. The more an ecological system had sufficient stability and a capacity to change itself rather than rapidly return to the original status quo, the more resilient the system. He showed that planned interventions in the environment to maintain a system countered an ecological system’s own ability to sustain itself. What was needed was “…a qualitative capacity to


© CI TY S ECURI TY MAGAZ INE – WINT ER 2016 /17


This was the latest performance (in a show going back to the works of Adam Smith and John Locke) of the latest ideas about the naturalism of the capitalist market merging with the latest theories about nature. The interpretation, ordering and movements of our material world (i.e. economy) was aligned with the interpretation, ordering and movements of nature and our place in that nature; a powerful synthesis that redefines core understandings of who and what we are in the world. The pursuit of profit as a (naturalised) key to solve the problems of governing complexity has brought with it a new type of governance and a new societal ethos too.


Those that adhered to these new ideas believed that the way to reduce the dangers of government controls was to devolve the responsibility of central governance to the ecology of economy through a private sector pursuing sustainable profits. Private companies, slowly took up functions previously held by the state. The security sector, like health, education and criminal justice sectors, has witnessed this very transformation. For example, private companies support security by doing roles previously done by police and military. National security is no longer secured just by


www. c i t y s e cu r i t yma g a z i n e . c om


the nation. Moreover, this securing of resources, infrastructures, technologies and people has to conform to an economic competitive sustainability.


Meanwhile, a new morality was developing in the global business sphere. In response to pressures to respect human and environmental rights at a corporate and ethical level, the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) opened up. Businesses had to balance what was profitable against what was ethically acceptable for their investors and customers. Models like Fairtrade sought to make the ethical a profitable feature, and big business followed, marketing philanthropy, happy workers and green credentials.


For some, CSR was sugarcoating a toxic pill. A resilient economy meant that, like the fir trees in an ecological system, parts of populations and environment that appeared to be collapsing could be abandoned in order to allow fluid adaptation and a more resilient future.


The success of neo-liberalism to meet its own objectives accelerated the speed of communications and trade in an ever smaller world. The movement of goods, services and people expanded geographically and quantitatively. Our material culture, values and identities are in rapid flux. Social change appears to be moving faster than ever before. Competitive economic claims to resources and markets mediate with political processes. The competition and abandonment fuel a violent ethos.


Resilience and Competitive Security


The logics of competition that drive the market are remarkably similar to violent conflict. While a business seeks to “take advantage of gaps in the market and exploit competitors’ strength and weaknesses for business advantage”, the security sector “combats terrorists and other criminals always ready to exploit weaknesses in our defences”. (Incidentally, both quotes are from security sector magazines.) Competition or violent competition – we appear to be engaged in a similar intent to exploit or destroy the “Other” in order to gain. As we become fluid to change and build our own resilience, so too do terrorist and criminal groups. “We” are someone else’s “Other”.


Those that threaten “our” or “their” way of life, sometimes in the most disgusting inhumane ways, are navigating life on the terrain available to them. The seduction to rectify violent injustice through further violent injustice (while marching with banners of righteousness) will inhabit any suitable ideological vehicle that provides meaning. It does not seem to matter which side you are on, violence begets violence and around we all go.


Continued on next page > 11


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