Obscure academic paper on social instability from successive shocks
September 19, 2020 1:15 AM   Subscribe

I read an abstract / short news article about ten years ago on the concept of successive shocks to any social system (marriage, village, church/group, town, the nation-state) leading to collapse of that system. The main context was societal instability arising from several shocks. I've 'searched high and low for and come up with nothing useful. TW: This uncovers some nasty stuff so unless your area is war / conflict proceed with caution as my question goes down the conflict wormhole. I have three links below to military, terrorism and crisis events studies.


Tweed 2000 From doughnuts to toffee apples a new model of war and peace
is evocative as the article contains similar phrasing "All of these factors concern a threat to security, either of a nation, state, group or individual..." but the tone lacks force, also the paper has not been cited in the area of social conflict.

Freier's 2008 Known Unknowns: Unconventional “strategic Shocks” In Defense Strategy Development has the right wording but I don't recall the context being the US military, not that this isn't a completely fascinating paper but it's not on-topic.

Frith and Glenn's 2015 paper
Fragile States and the Evolution of Risk Governance:
Intervention, Prevention and Extension
although more recent does explore some of the issues
"..."the responses to the events of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks that followed, although significant, do not constitute a Beckian reflexive watershed. Beck has argued that such shocks can serve as ‘an unprecedented resource for consensus and legitimation, nationally and internationally’ "

I've tried searching forward from Ulrich Beck circa 2001 but I doubt he is the one, although it looks like a right direction.
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