Bird’s Eye View to Indonesian Mass Conflict Revisiting the Fact of Self-Organized Criticality



among civilians regarding micro properties that driven the clashing individuals or social
groups and identities.

4. Closing Remarks

We show the scaling properties in the empirical data of social conflict occurred in
Indonesia, i.e.: series of social clashes in Maluku, Ambon that was probably one of the most
frightening social circumstances recently in the country. We also fit the distribution of the
sizes of the conflict measured by the numbers of the casualties in the recorded series of the
massive contacts between 1999 until 2004. The discussion has brought us to observe some
interesting statistical features depicted from the fitting process. As the power law
distribution reminds us to the classical work known today as Richardson’s Law, we review
the plausibility to see the social clashes in the terms of self-organized criticality.
Furthermore, the discussions distinguish the model that could be used to explain wars in the
world with those driven by social motives and organically spreading clashes leading to
massive violence.

The paper reviews the further the classic model of forest fire that can be used as an
intuitive analogy with the social clashes. However, it is worth to note and emphasize that
there is always a possibility that the underlying process is much more complex than the in
the forest fire model. The pioneered computational works incorporating agent based model
and the emergence of micro-macro linkage on this particular issue have also reviewed and
referred for more advanced and detailed description on explaining the social conflict and
civil violence altogether with the most important works on how to manage and thus inhibit
the spreading conflict or in the long term scientific endeavors for building the possible early
warning system for social clashes. Apparently this is left to the further challenging works in
computational sociology since this paper is modestly just giving glance of the bird’s eye view
of the social clashes occurred.

Acknowledgement

Both authors thank Surya Research International for the support.

Used Data are Compiled from:

Sala Wuku Foundation. URL: http://www.fica.org/hr

Tempo Magazine Online. URL: http:www.tempointeraktif.com

Lintas Peristiwa Kerusuhan di Maluku 1999 s/d 2001. Crisis Centre Keuskupan Ambonia. URL:
http:websitescrg.com/ambon/index.htm#/Articles

11



More intriguing information

1. Strategic Planning on the Local Level As a Factor of Rural Development in the Republic of Serbia
2. Strengthening civil society from the outside? Donor driven consultation and participation processes in Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSP): the Bolivian case
3. A Duality Approach to Testing the Economic Behaviour of Dairy-Marketing Co-operatives: The Case of Ireland
4. The name is absent
5. Crime as a Social Cost of Poverty and Inequality: A Review Focusing on Developing Countries
6. Density Estimation and Combination under Model Ambiguity
7. Are Public Investment Efficient in Creating Capital Stocks in Developing Countries?
8. Strategic Effects and Incentives in Multi-issue Bargaining Games
9. Dual Inflation Under the Currency Board: The Challenges of Bulgarian EU Accession
10. Towards a Strategy for Improving Agricultural Inputs Markets in Africa
11. The name is absent
12. The name is absent
13. For Whom is MAI? A theoretical Perspective on Multilateral Agreements on Investments
14. Determinants of U.S. Textile and Apparel Import Trade
15. The name is absent
16. Impact of Ethanol Production on U.S. and Regional Gasoline Prices and On the Profitability of U.S. Oil Refinery Industry
17. The name is absent
18. The Evolution
19. Short Term Memory May Be the Depletion of the Readily Releasable Pool of Presynaptic Neurotransmitter Vesicles
20. Modellgestützte Politikberatung im Naturschutz: Zur „optimalen“ Flächennutzung in der Agrarlandschaft des Biosphärenreservates „Mittlere Elbe“