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You are hereby invited to a seminar in our fourth interdisciplinary series on *Evolution, Complexity and Cognition* <http://ecco.vub.ac.be/> *When?* Exceptionally next Wednesday, June 25, 2008, 2-4 pm. *Where?* The seminar room is exceptionally at the IES premises on Pleinlaan 15, 5th floor, just next to the VUB Campus Etterbeek. (see: http://www.ies.be/files/new%20campus.jpg) Free entrance: everybody welcome! The emergent European military-industrial complex as co-evolutionary self-organization *Mehmet Y. Tezcan* (Institute for European Studies, VUB) * * *ABSTRACT*: As the scientific study of macro-social phenomena, International Relations (IR) is now at pains to capture and map complex causal mechanisms in these 'big, slow-moving, and invisible processes'. Complexity Theory (CT), the scientific study of organization, change and evolution in complex systems, has already made several inroads into IR. In this respect, applications of CT in IR promise much. This presentation aims to discuss to what extent and how IR scholars can benefit from CT's methodological and theoretical toolkit. It attempts to refine and employ two of the complex causal mechanisms already in use in CT in general and in evolutionary developmental biology in particular. The presentation starts with the introduction and elaboration of co-evolution and self-organization. It then takes on the case of the emergent European Military-Industrial Complex as its empirical focus. The latter represents a recent and emergent form of organization between two distinct yet closely connected sub-systems of transnational European social formation, the political and the economic. The presentation gives an historical account of, first, these two sub-systems' Europe-wide emergence separately and second, of their material and semiotic interlinking and restructuring. *About the speaker:* See more information at: http://www.ies.be/user/18 * More information about the ECCO seminars:* See http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/28 for the full program. Best regards, Clément Vidal. ________________________________________ http://clement.vidal.philosophons.com Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium Tel: +32 2 640 67 37 | Fax: +32 2 644 07 44
