The emergence of open social systems

Using the social ecology approach to examine the black market reptile and amphibian trade.

Incentives“There is a black market for poison dart frogs. These had caused the extinction of local populations in Costa Rica. People from different places in Europe go to Costa Rica and they capture lots of frogs and they take them back to Europe in the worst conditions in small plastic bottles. Most of them don’t even make the trip. […]

I heard in the news that they had arrested some smugglers. So I started researching a little bit and found out in magazines that people in Europe and other places pay astronomical amounts of money for things that most of the people in Costa Rica wouldn’t even give a dime. I mean $500 ten to fifteen years ago for people in Costa Rica was an incredible amount of money. So that looked like an interesting possibility.”

[Neto, mid 40s, academic, previously an owner of an amphibian farm]

Overview• The proliferation of private trading online.

• Self directed networking and the internet.

• Social networks for exchange

• Mosaics of legislation facilitate reptile laundering.

• Digital dualism renders these activities invisible.

• An ecological approach to studying open social structures.

The home as hub

“To be honest, it hadn’t even really crossed my mind until I had an overseas reptile keeper stay with me. He brought with him videos of his collections and animals back home. And he put this video on telly and my jaw hit the ground.

The video starts, he walks into this room and flips the lid up on this box. A big black and white cobra rears up on her clutch of eggs. She’s hoodin’ out and there’s rattlesnakes going off and I just thought, ‘This stuff is amazing’.” [Dave, mid 30s, amateur herpetologist]

“The wildest 5 years of my life”During the early ’90s, as the Internet became more socially dispersed and adopted. Dave was hanging out with his herps and growing marijuana.

He spent his spare time online and meeting other herp people from around the world in the reptile forums.

Dave gains access to exotic reptiles by an online connection from Germany who came and stay with him.

He and his business associate go to Europe and visit private collections through the networks that they had established online.

They are approached many times to smuggle Australian reptiles into the European market.

Dave sets this up with animals he has bred and poached and they exchanged reptiles in and out of Australia through the post in a doll box.

Dave gets a visit from the police due to his business partner’s criminal connections. His collection of exotics at that time was extensive, the extent of which was a surprise to law enforcement.

early 90sforums

in-person travel

private collections

tradeconviction

Self-directed networking

Not introduced to interest by anyone 53% (N=822)

Median hours online 15 hrs *in the last 7 days (reptile related)

Know most people they talk to online 39.9% (N=627) 23 % (N=361) disagreed with this. Figures similar for being known by others online

Participation in voluntary organisations 37.7% (N=601) average of 1 herp soc membership

Median number of strong ties 5 A high number for a single portfolio of participation

Median number of weak ties 10 *higher numbers correlate with higher internet use

“That’s a small world. We all know each other, of course. In France, in Europe, in the world. When I started, I had friends in Togo rearing the ball pythons. I had friends in Canada, which was a famous Herper at that time. I had friends in the US also… I was a member of some association. It gave access to the information and magazines and newsletter and so on. That was helpful.”[Adrien, mid 30s, Reptile pet shop owner, a European hub]

Community boundaries

Text

These results suggest that, for the sample, the Herper network is experienced as an

open social structure that is mediated by strong and weak social ties rather than

traditional closed-group structures with distinct social boundaries

Finding networks of exchange

“The community has a lot of nodes, and each person in that community is like a spider with sort of eight legs linking up to other nodes. But you have to hit the right node because there’s a lot of empty space between the nodes, and you cannot…you just don’t make the right links if you don’t know the right people. And it can take a lot of time to find the right contact.”

[Daniel, late 40s, academic, talking about his mission to source crocodile embryos from Herpers]

Trust“In the reptile game, [amongst private keepers] there is so much backstabbing going on. That everybody’s got to know everybody else’s business and nobody wants everyone else to know your business. Everyone’s really, really untrusting of everybody else. Getting to know people is quite difficult. “[Darren, late 20s, private keeper]

Socio-legal boundaries“But perhaps there is more criminal herpetophiles in Norway, because if you are a normal person who loves reptiles and you have a job that requires that you have a clean criminal record, then you won’t risk your job over a few geckos. So you will refrain from keeping them. 4

If you follow this scale, you have people who care a lot for the law, people who respect a law, people who almost respect the law and keep geckos maybe, and people who don’t respect the law. In a normal country where reptiles are legal you’ve got all of these types keeping reptiles and most of them are just normal people. But in Norway, you have cut off people that respect the law and only people who follow ethical rules for example over government rules, perhaps they will keep geckos, or people who pretty much don’t care for the law.”[Sven, mid 30s, activist and amateur Herper, criminal record for keeping geckos and drug dealing]

reptile laundering

legal

grey zone

illegal

A cultural problem?

“We have a cultural problem that arose from the fact that for decades, from 1974 until the 1990s, it was illegal to keep reptiles. People who kept reptiles were rigorously pursued. There’s a whole generation of people who grew up equating keeping wildlife as bad for the environment. This is being exacerbated still because it’s a newsworthy situation when people are busted with [illegal] reptiles and drugs, usually together.”[Lionel, late 40s, owner of a reptile park]

Limits of digital dualism

• Privileging either in-person interaction (place based) or virtual interaction (CMC) in analysis reduces the ability to follow social activity in its synchronous and asynchronous formats.

• Global connectivity, while a small percentage of most interactions, has as substantial impact upon most Herpers as do local actions. Focusing on one or the other fades out of view the ability of the illicit pet trade to launder and locate its markets.

• Focusing on geographically fixed locations (locales and nations) limits understanding of the scope and reach of networks that operate over open social structures.

the social ecology approach

• Open social structures are identifiable through their foci of activity (Feld) and operate as digital formations (Latham & Sassen) that have an idiosyncratic communicative ecology (Hearn & Foth).

• Protoboundaries are generated through internal divisions (Abbott) & external boundaries are porous.

• Cohesion & continuity are created through overlapping values, social heterogeneity, a mediating culture and system retention.

• Social space is constituted through digital networks, organisational affiliations and the interconnectivity of physical locations.

• Circulation is facilitated by CMC, mobile reputations, strong and weak social ties, legislative mosaics, the spatiality of social networks, international mobility, network hubs and consumption cultures.