Anarchaos Theory and Order: On the emergence of social Justice

Source: (2001) Theoretical Criminology. 5(2): 223-252

In this article, the authors explore aspects of anarchism and of chaos theory, suggesting that recent insights advanced by the latter shed new light on the former. The former conceptually explains the importance of natural order as a human process that questions and ultimately subverts the artifice of state-imposed authoritative order. The latter examies, both theoretically and empirically, the role of order, disorder, and ‘chaotic’ social dynamics in the transitions that society faces (I.e. order to chaos and chaos to order). Thus, we contend that these perspectives are assimilable: anarchism describes an organic means of reconfiguring social dynamics and chaology shows us how this process of reconfiguration is a naturally occuring element in all physical and social systems. To situate the sustained conceptual analysis, we describe how the proposed assimilation impacts law, crime, and especially social justice in society.