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Curating complexity: An artful approach for real-world system transitions
Abstract
This paper puts forward a 'curatorial approach' to systems transitions, which is a novel, practical and transparent way to deal with participation in complex and conflictual contexts. We argue that the complexity of transitions cannot be adequately addressed through traditional analytical tools. Alternatively, we propose an approach that can engage with multiple ways of knowing and expression, sustaining and developing a sense of 'meaning' in the planning process. We situate this within a systems perspective that combines individual and structural actions for vision creation. This is explored in the case study of a large peri-urban asset in Rome.
... Over the years, significant efforts have been made to understand and engage with the complexity of agricultural and food challenges by applying a complex adaptive system perspective and related framings (Hall and Clark, 2010;Kampelmann et al., 2018). For instance, from the 1970s onwards, research organisations such as the CGIAR adopted a farming system framing for agronomy research (Collinson, 2000;Greenland, 1997;Pingali, 2001). ...
CONTEXT
Complexity has long been recognised as a key feature of agri-food systems. Yet, it remains largely theoretical or poorly addressed in practice, hampering the potential of international development projects to address agriculture and food-related challenges in the Global South.
OBJECTIVE
The paper identifies and examines six sources of complexity that can manifest in projects, namely: unpredictability; path dependencies; context-specific dynamics; power relations; multiple temporal and spatial scales. It then proposes and tests six agri-food system principles that could be drawn upon to more successfully navigate this complexity. The aim of the paper is to illustrate how these principles could help projects respond to the changing circumstances and unpredictable turns of agri-food systems contexts in a different way, which flexibly embraces complexity. This flexibility is essential in an age of uncertainty and transformation.
METHODS
Comparative case study analysis of six projects implemented by the CGIAR: aflatoxin control in groundnuts in Malawi (1), pigeonpea in Eastern and Southern Africa (2), sorghum beer in Kenya (3), sweet sorghum for biofuel in India (4), precooked beans in Uganda and Kenya (5), Smart Foods in India and Eastern Africa (6). The projects aimed to either increasing smallholder farmers' incomes or addressing food and nutrition security, or both. They were specifically selected as all they were affected by some of the sources of complexity, which hampered the projects to different extents. This makes the cases relevant for not only illustrating manifestations of complexity, but also help reflect on alternative strategies to tackle it.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
The analysis of the case studies reveals how complexity can frustrate objectives of development interventions under several aspects. It also serves to discuss how complexity can be more successfully navigated (within but also beyond the selected cases) by applying the set of proposed agri-food system principles. The principles are also presented as ways future interventions could avoid clinging to what is “known to work” and instead venture into more powerful pathways of change.
SIGNIFICANCE
The following complexity-aware principle are proposed: Welcome surprises and openly discuss trade-offs; Shun orthodoxies; Engage with context-specificity; Expose patterns of power; Embrace the lengthy nature of change; Understand the multi-scale (in terms of space and time) nature of agri-food systems contexts. These principles could be used by project designers and implementors to cope with the complexity and uncertainty that will inevitably be encountered in agri-food system interventions, and can no longer be ignored.
... Transitions studies consider understanding actors and their relations to be an important prerequisite for the development and diffusion of sustainable technologies [1][2][3] as well as for managing and governing transitions [4]. Concurrently, the underlying problematization of sustainability transitions is characterized by wickedness, which implies a lack of clarity on where the actual problem lies, the ambiguity of available information, and the conflicting nature of the involved decision-makers' values [5]. Addressing such wicked problems requires actors to adopt flexible and dynamic approaches. ...
This paper explores individual and collective agenda-setting processes in demonstration projects. It contributes to transition studies by showing how multi-actor collaboration in demonstrations and the resulting alignment of agendas aid social embedding of new technologies. The research questions address, first, the extent to which individual actors can dominate shared agenda-setting, and second, how the experience of participating in demonstrations influences actors' individual agendas. An analytical model operationalizes agendas based on an adjusted multiple streams approach of problems, solutions, and institutional contexts. The model is applied in a comparative analysis of two electrified distribution truck demonstrations. All data presented were collected in 25 semi-structured interviews and an online workshop. The analysis shows how leading actors may dominate agenda-setting dynamics by imposing considerable influence on the selection of problems and specification of solutions. However, it also illustrates how other involved actors can influence the configuration of technological solutions during the demonstration project. The analysis results highlight how collaborative agenda-setting can lead to the creation of coherent packages between multiple streams, leading to changes in the individual agendas of the involved actors.
... Inclusive transdisciplinary approaches underlying experimentation and co-creation for sustainable transformation are rapidly gaining ground in academic and policy environments Norström et al. 2020) and form an integral part of transition studies Fazey et al. 2018). An overview by Köhler et al. (2019: 19, drawing on Schneidewind et al. 2016Luederitz et al. 2017;Kampelmann et al. 2018) points to an "increasing commitment to research that not only describes societal transformation processes, but initiates and catalyzes them". ...
Transdisciplinary research and innovation (R&I) efforts have emerged as a means to address challenges to sustainable transformation. One of the main elements of transdisciplinary efforts is the ‘inclusion’ of different stakeholders, values and perspectives in participatory R&I processes. In practice, however, ‘doing inclusion’ raises a number of challenges. In this article, we aim to contribute to re-politicizing inclusion in transdisciplinarity for transformation, by (1) empirically unraveling four key challenges that emerge in the political practice of ‘doing inclusion’, (2) illustrating how facilitators of inclusion processes perform balancing acts when confronted with these challenges, and (3) reflecting on what the unfolding dynamics suggests about the politics of stakeholder inclusion for societal transformation. In doing so, we analyze the transdisciplinary FIT4FOOD2030 project (2017–2020)—an EU-funded project that aimed to contribute to fostering EU R&I systems’ ability to catalyze food system transformation through stakeholder engagement in 25 Living Labs. Based on 3 years of action-research (including interviews, workshops and field observations), we identified four inherent political challenges to ‘doing inclusion’ in FIT4FOOD2030: (1) the challenge to meaningfully bring together powerful and marginalized stakeholders; (2) combining representation and deliberation of different stakeholder groups; (3) balancing diversities of inclusion with directionalities implied by transformative efforts; and (4) navigating the complexities of establishing boundaries of inclusion processes. We argue that by understanding ‘doing inclusion’ as a political practice, necessitating specificity about the (normative) ambitions in different inclusion settings, facilitators may better grasp and address challenges in transdisciplinarity for transformation.
... For example, the interaction between multiple systems (e.g. electricity, heating and transport) have been recognised to be an important research direction in the evolving research agenda of sustainability transitions (Jonathan Köhler et al., 2019) and the increasing complexity of interconnected systems is amplified in transition management contexts (Kampelmann et al., 2018;Grin and Avelino, 2016). ...
This article examines energy related experiments suggested and outlined in a co-creative Energy Transition Arena in Finland in 2017 with participating experts from various spheres of society. A transition arena is a process for engaging stakeholders in systemic transitions, and experiments are an important measure for enhancing transition and mechanisms of change. We apply network analysis and use the Theories of Change evaluation framework to reveal the implicit expectations and change theories of the arena participants. In the analysis, we first deconstruct the experiments into their key elements and then reconstruct them in the form of visual networks, which helps us to identify what the examined experiments have in common and how their elements connect. The data visualisations of the networks further help to examine how the arena participants construct transitions in the Finnish energy sector.
... Transitions research has in this regard been positioned as a transdisciplinary "mode-2′ science (Rotmans, 2005) and subsequent work in transition management has further developed intervention repertoires and action research methods through which to co-create transitions knowledge (van den Bosch, 2010). More broadly there is an increasing commitment to research that not only describes societal transformation processes, but initiates and catalyzes them (Schneidewind et al., 2016;Luederitz et al., 2017;Kampelmann et al., 2018). Building on the "experimental turnß in the social sciences, various methodological approaches of real-world experimentation and participatory action research are being developed that make the commitments to knowledge co-production operational. ...
Research on sustainability transitions has expanded rapidly in the last ten years, diversified in terms of topics and geographical applications, and deepened with respect to theories and methods. This article provides an extensive review and an updated research agenda for the field, classified into nine main themes: understanding transitions; power, agency and politics; governing transitions; civil society, culture and social movements; businesses and industries; transitions in practice and everyday life; geography of transitions; ethical aspects; and methodologies.
The review shows that the scope of sustainability transitions research has broadened and connections to established disciplines have grown stronger. At the same time, we see that the grand challenges related to sustainability remain unsolved, calling for continued efforts and an acceleration of ongoing transitions. Transition studies can play a key role in this regard by creating new perspectives, approaches and understanding and helping to move society in the direction of sustainability.
... Knowledge embedded in stakeholders and participatory processes can significantly help bridge knowledge gaps in transition studies ( Kampelmann et al., 2018). Fuzzy cognitive mapping is a quasi-quantitative modelling technique, aiming to model and represent stakeholders' knowledge of a particular issue in diagrammatic form, thus allowing for ad-hoc structure and flexibility to add the desired level of detail and complexity (Kosko, 1986). ...
In Poland, coal has been a key driver of energy security and, despite its declining role, still accounts for most of the country's power generation mix. Transition potential for the fossil fuel-based power sector can be reflected in a heated debate between a coal-oriented, evolutionary process of slowly reducing emissions; and a more ambitious renewable energy-driven pathway. Both pathways feature barriers; some are evident in standard economic analyses, while others are not. Here, we use a bottom-up energy model to identify the optimal energy mix for the two pathways, and a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium macroeconomic model to assess their socioeconomic implications. We then employ fuzzy cognitive maps to explore which agenda appears to be favoured by stakeholders, and identify omitted risk channels associated with both pathways. Finally, based on these insights, we reiterate the modelling analyses and assess the socioeconomic implications of some of the identified risk channels.
Despite a broad consensus on the necessity of fundamental change, endeavors to transform food systems appear to have reached an impasse. Greater engagement with the uncertainty of food systems could open up new ways of triggering transformation directed towards achieving more sustainable and inclusive outcomes. As a way of reorienting current food system change efforts to better embrace uncertainty, we propose a framework for a transformative learning system that serves two aims. First, the framework highlights the importance of locally led action, experimentation, and learning, providing a way of focusing on the core capacities and skills needed to act in the face of uncertainty. Second, it outlines the different types of learning functions that need to operate at different scales of food systems to trigger disruptive, coordinated, and more democratic change processes. The operationalization of this framework necessitates shifts in roles and ways of working across the landscape of food system interventions. The discussion will address the who and how of this potential change, as well as its subsequent impact on the operational modalities of individuals, the process of change itself, and the structures and institutions involved in the process. We argue that embracing uncertainty and the focus on learning has the potential to facilitate a more agile and locally relevant change process. This would allow actors to learn from decentrally pursued food systems reforms, leading to the emergence of diverse pathways that complement on-going efforts and potentially accelerate transformation efforts.
Religions play an important yet poorly understood part in how social movements motivate societies to respond to environmental crises and the rapidly changing climate. Indonesia sits on the global frontline of environmental crises, with a rich history of religious diversity and environmental activism. Using framework synthesis, we analyzed 244 empirical studies (English and Indonesian) on 208 environmental social movements operating in local communities in Indonesia from 1990 through 2022. We developed a conceptual model showing how grassroots movements used lived religion to create new environmental practices and motivate environmental behavioral changes in diverse local communities. Our study inventoried 571 examples of lived religious concepts, practices, rituals and systems that movements used to create environmental concepts and practices. We found three patterns in the creative process: 1) conceptual hybridization, meaning that movements often blended official religions, Indigenous religions, and local knowledges and traditions (often called cultural practices), and they fused these aspects of lived religion with economic, legal and scientific concepts; 2) contextual imagination, meaning that movements adopted multiple religious and other strategies to respond to local economic, environmental, political, and religio-cultural contexts; and, 3) contestation-driven improvisation, meaning that movements faced intense opposition, and this dynamic both motivated improvisation and increased the vulnerability of movements and of local communities adapting to rapid environmental change. We propose that future studies on adaptation and sustainable transitions could include lived eco-religion as a meeting point for critical partnerships between environmental scholars in the sciences and the humanities.
As resilient cities rely on leveraging people’s voices, promoting active
participation to encounter socio-spatial vulnerability is pivotal. This paper
provides methodological reflections on a participatory research
intervention in Amman and reports on the lessons learnt from this very
process. The city’s resilience strategy emphasised the sudden increase of
population and thus suggested inclusive approaches to resilience. Hence,
the conducted intervention aimed to create and sustain partnerships
between various stakeholders, and engage them in spatial modes of thought
towards supporting vulnerable communities’ involvement in public life and
improving their access to public spaces. The research (which combined
interdisciplinary workshops and outdoor excursions) involved partners in a
collaborative process of investigation, action, and education. Each of the
workshops was tailored to the attending participants, and included creating
collages, creative writing, basic cartography, storytelling games, and
collecting objects from nature. The paper raises questions, first, about how
the collaborative nature of this intervention expanded civically, linking
theory with practice and decision-making with sociocultural needs. Second,
it addresses the dynamics of sustaining existing collaborations while
creating new ones between the researcher, local, and refugee communities,
authority figures, local community centres, and international non-
governmental organisations. Third, it examines the researcher’s role as a
mediator with multiple positionalities. Finally, this paper reports on the
extent to which the complex synergies connecting different agencies can
support the process of addressing socio-spatial vulnerability, amplifying the
voice of the ordinary citizen, and creating exceptional venues for knowledge
exchange in a context that currently lacks such practices.
In recent years, the international commons movement has increasingly joined forces with the global movement of municipalities, putting common ideas on the political agenda in many western countries. Commons have been widely discussed in literature. Broadly understood, commons refers to the practices for collective development, ownership, management, and fair access to resources and artifacts (social, cultural, economic, political, environmental, and technological). However, the concept remains vague, complex, and unclear, especially when it comes to different contexts in which new definitions are needed to better understand the societal and cultural dimensions of urban commons. Decolonizing the notion of urban commons brings into visibility the unseen cultures, infrastructural systems, and communities showing where de-growth and separation can take place. Therefore, this analysis can provide new insights, opportunities, and the need for new theoretical, methodological, and shared approaches. There is a gap in transnational research and cultural understanding within the field of urban commons. This research opens new lines of inquiry relating to the definitions of commons in non-European countries. This may include longitudinal research on the decolonization and potential fragmenting of the commons and in particular 'commoning' mindset, more detailed empirical evidence of the cultural and communal concepts, and how these cultural diversities and new interpretations can be implemented in collaborative governance in a wider variety of non-western contexts. By challenging existing frameworks, this study facilitates the emergence of differentiated, dynamic, and non-linear forms of social and political subjectivity within various sociospatial domains.
El libro se sitúa en el contexto de la adaptación a los grandes cambios en el Nuevo orden Mundial, un campo cada vez más caracterizado por el discurso transdisciplinar y la experimentación metodológica. Una adaptación que tiene lugar tanto en lo local como en lo global, por lo que la integración del conocimiento y la producción de soluciones relevantes para los desafíos se deben considerar especialmente urgentes. Es decir, las complejidades de la adaptación a la Nueva Era exigen conocimientos pertinentes, que proceden desde una serie de disciplinas y perspectivas, y una aplicación que salve la brecha en la ciencia disciplinar. Como se evidencia en este libro, la ciencia transdisciplinar es posible, y el lector encontrará factores y patrones comunes que la convierten en un modelo atractivo para que los científicos, los investigadores y los académicos busquen la adaptación social, a pesar de los desafíos prácticos y epistemológicos a los que se enfrenta la humanidad en este siglo.
La producción del café está compuesta por procesos que generan residuos contaminantes que afectan el entorno natural, porque en el procesamiento del grano, fase del beneficio, se vierten residuos de pulpa y mucílago a ecosistemas aledaños, alterando el medio ambiente. Dado que el café ocupa un renglón importante en la economía regional y nacional, las afectaciones a los recursos naturales son constantes, por lo tanto, es necesario establecer herramientas con buenas prácticas que permitan mitigar y conservar el paisaje cafetero y contribuir a la sostenibilidad agroambiental. Este estudio se desarrolló en dos etapas: 1) un diagnóstico de la situación agroambiental de una zona cafetera con alta productividad mediante los siguientes dos componentes: a) identificación y evaluación de impactos ambientales a través de encuesta, lista de chequeo y matriz de impactos, y b) caracterización fisicoquímica del suelo post beneficio del café en dos sitios de muestreo; y 2) generación de estrategias agroambientales con la inclusión de medidas de manejo ajustadas al diagnóstico registrado. En las 30 fincas productivas visitadas se halló baja conectividad ecosistémica con presencia de especies tradicionales del paisaje cafetero colombiano, por otra parte, se registró vertimiento de aguas residuales a la fuente hídrica más cercana y contaminación puntual al suelo con residuos del despulpado del café. Se evidenciaron aspectos ambientales como consumo de agua, emisión de malos olores, generación de residuos aprovechables y vertimiento de aguas residuales. Se identificaron 12 impactos ambientales, nueve negativos, siendo el de mayor significancia la contaminación de aguas superficiales y subterráneas, y tres impactos positivos, siendo la generación de empleo el más significativo. En cuanto al análisis de suelo, en el sitio de muestreo cercano al beneficiadero todos los parámetros se encontraron en muy alta concentración; en el segundo sitio los parámetros materia orgánica, nitrógeno y manganeso fluctuaron en niveles medio y bajo. A partir de estos resultados se diseñaron cinco estrategias agroambientales: educación ambiental, beneficio del café eco-amigable, aprovechamiento de subproductos, manejo de vertimientos y conservación de sistemas agroambientales; entre las acciones a desarrollar se encuentran capacitaciones, talleres, biosistemas y uso de tecnologías. La recirculación y aprovechamiento de los residuos generados en el proceso del beneficio del café planteados en las estrategias permitirá la elaboración de subproductos y disminuir la contaminación ambiental en el paisaje cafetero.
La economía circular (EC) y los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible (ODS) son iniciativas sostenibles que están siendo promovidas a nivel mundial en el sector público, privado y no gubernamental, pero su interacción ha sido escasamente estudiada. En el presente estudio se determinó el impacto de estrategias de EC sobre el desarrollo de los 17 ODS y sobre las metas de los ODS más representativos. Mediante un enfoque metodológico mixto de carácter cualitativo y cuantitativo, se utilizaron encuestas como instrumento de evaluación que fueron aplicadas a una lista de expertos. Los resultados mostraron que la EC impacta diferenciadamente las tres dimensiones de la sostenibilidad. La mayor contribución directa la recibe la dimensión ambiental con 64%, seguida de la dimensión económica con 62% y de la social con 40%. A nivel general de los ODS, la EC contribuye positiva y directamente en 51% a su cumplimiento, positiva e indirectamente en 32%, neutralmente en 16%, y negativamente en 1%. Las 5 estrategias de EC presentan una tendencia similar en su aporte a los ODS con una contribución positiva y directa entre 48% y 57%, destacándose la gestión de recursos y la gestión de clientes y comunidades. Los ODS que reciben mayor efecto positivo por parte de la EC son los ODS 9 (industria, innovación e infraestructura), ODS 12 (consumo y producción sostenible) y ODS 13 (acción por el clima). Específicamente, la EC tiene un impacto alto del 46% sobre el avance de las metas de los ODS representativos, principalmente en la meta 9,2 (industria inclusiva y sostenible), 9,4 (infraestructura sostenible y resiliente), 12,5 (reducción, reciclado y reutilización de desechos) y 13,2 (políticas, estrategias y planes nacionales).
This article describes a didactic strategy for teaching a miniaturized solid-phase extraction method in the context of laboratory practical training [LPT]. It is based on the students' previous imaginaries in order to generate conceptual changes and promote meaningful learning through a few laboratory sessions. This article will report on the experience of combining the use of a sample preparation technique-PT-SPE-with a didactic intervention exercise for the improvement of procedural skills. We present the results of the application of LPT in the multi-determination of three steroids in urine samples using HPLC-DAD-PT-C18-SPE, which show adequate recovery rates and validation parameters. The results of the intervention show improvement of skills related to solid-phase extraction methods. It is concluded that there were conceptual changes in analytical processes, an adequate familiarization with new sample preparation methodologies, a significant increase in chemical vocabulary, and understanding of concepts, along with the application of lower-order cognitive processes to the enhancement of higher-order cognitive skills.
In this paper, a curatorial perspective is developed to draw attention to the notion that smart cities are assembled within a field of relations and thus inevitably connected to constellations of actors, histories, materialities and ideas. In this way, a curatorial perspective informed by diverse disciplines such as art history, critical theory and institutional critique, can be used to reveal the struggles through which fragmented, entangled and shifting constellations of technologies, places and policy ideas are purposely cultivated to prefigure new ways of living in smart cities. Drawing on an in-depth longitudinal case study of Milton Keynes (MK), an English new town founded in 1967, this paper examines how concepts of a smart city were used to draw together, catalyze and possibly (re)configure pre-existing policies, narratives and materialities, i.e. to curate smart city developments. Urban curation, understood as the selection, organization and care for a constellation of elements and their relation to place, is revealed to be profoundly political. Actors with local remits curate urban constellations to render them receptive to smart city agendas while pursuing their contextually defined goals and often resisting those imposed from elsewhere.
The challenges that are associated with the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals are wickedly complex and interconnected in nature. Because they require transformational changes at the systems level, the pace of change has, so far, been nowhere near fast enough to meet the goals by 2030. In this paper, we analyze the catalytic actions of a novel form of organizing that could potentially facilitate the timely achievement of transformational aspirations such as the SDGs: the transformation catalyst (TC). By identifying 27 TCs and analyzing their vision, mission, values, and their practices represented on their websites, we elaborate the following four key ways that TCs are distinctive from other entities, and therefore potentially more capable of facilitating transformational changes at the systems level: (1) TCs have transformation agendas that target systems-level solutions to bring about large-scale and fundamental changes in the relevant system(s), as opposed to more incremental or fragmented approaches; (2) TCs engage in catalytic actions, such as connecting, cohering, and amplifying the work of partners and collaborators; (3) TCs clearly acknowledge the current status quo, attributions, and urgency (i.e., sensemaking) of the issues on which they focus; and finally, (4) TCs embody systems orientation. In exploring how TCs work, we hope to build a solid conceptual framework for understanding the nature of transformative catalytic action on societal issues, and consolidate our understanding of what elements are needed if TCs are to work, providing a starting point for future research.
This chapter provides an overview on relevant concepts, such as ecosystem services, sustainability, multifunctionality and social-ecological systems/frameworks applied in land use sciences. Current discussions, political debates and challenges in terms of methodological aspects, actor enrolment or project design are raised. Future research topics particularly related to the often non-coherent UN Sustainable Development Goals and their mutual trade-offs are raised and challenges in how to advance land use science are provided. An outlook is provided how co-development of knowledge and co-design of land use system research could be conceived in the future.
Engaging appropriately with sustainability transformations requires adopting an integral perspective on related system dynamics. This view underpins the sustainable development goals. Informing policy and decision making from a consistently integral perspective, however, remains a key challenge. To some extent, the leverage points approach has proved useful in doing so in terms of providing an encompassing view on related options for intervening in systems. There are, however, a number of points in which it needs to be complemented by other approaches to better address the need for an integral perspective on sustainability transformations as well as to better address the need for being able to articulate normative perspectives on transformation processes and outcomes. We argue that the theory of modal aspects is a good candidate for doing so. To illustrate its potential, we explore its characteristics, we illustrate its application opportunities in the analysis of sustainability in food systems transitions, we systematically compare leverage points and modal aspects, and close with an exploration of ways in which the leverage points approach and theory of modal aspects can be considered complementary perspectives. The authors conclude that the theory of modal aspects offers opportunities for enriching both the leverage points approach and wider approaches in sustainability transformations by offering a consistently integral perspective across scale levels, and by offering a number of ways of engaging with normativity in related processes without resorting to fixed political views. This articulates its potential for playing a useful role in related multi-stakeholder processes and sustainability governance.
For planners, processes of complex spatial transformations today are comparable to uncharted land and an uncertain voyage. Many possible role images overlap and contrast to traditional and established ways of thinking and acting. The focus here is on navigating instead of controlling, about supporting instead of enforcing. Planning lacks tools to think and act when facing uncertainty. This paper proposes role-reflexive planning as an educational and experimental approach to thinking through different potentialities. It offers groundwork from the boundary between planning and transition studies, using role-based ideas as a bridge. It offers an overview about different roles that are relevant to working towards transformations as spatial planners. It develops an account of role-reflexive planning that connects between contexts, actions and back to individual modes of behaviour in planning processes. As a basis, this paper condenses experiences of a role-playing pilot workshop and discussions about potential elements of a transition towards 'post-growth planning'. It outlines how role-playing challenges the individual roles of actors beyond the game situations themselves. Conceptual ideas foster a renewed role-based debate on thinking and acting in the face of uncertainty and ways to navigate through the stormy waters of transformation.
The concept of “wicked problems” has attracted increasing focus in policy research, but the implications for public organizations have received less attention. This article examines the main organizational and cognitive dimensions emerging from the research literature on wicked problems. We identify several recent approaches to addressing problem complexity and stakeholder divergence based on the literatures on systems thinking, collaboration and coordination, and the adaptive leadership roles of public leaders and managers. We raise some challenges for public management in some key functional areas of government—strategy making, organizational design, people management, and performance measurement. We argue that provisional solutions can be developed, despite the difficulties of reforming governance processes to address wicked problems more effectively.
This paper is an investigation into processes of becoming-stakeholder. It specifically focuses on strategic spatial planning where the stakeholder concept has become one of the linchpins of much contemporary theory and practice. Through drawing upon the sociology of attachments and scholarship on subjectification it is argued that the enactment of stakeholders in strategic planning processes can be gainfully understood as the production of stakeholder subjectivities by way of practices of ontological choreography which can generate territorial attachments and re-articulate existing attachments into a specifically territorial format. From this perspective, stakeholderness is never an ontologically pre-given property that is to be uncovered by diligent analysis. Rather, we might come to see that stakeholder subjectification is a process through which actors learn to be affected, and where these affections further come to be articulated as territorial attachments engendering or at least prompting a 'caring for place'. Still, as relational effects, subjectivities are always potentially precarious achievements and it is important not to take for granted that the subjectivities enacted in a specific situation or setting will be easily transposable to other contexts.
The goal of this paper is to contribute to the development of methods of social innovation in participatory urban design. Based on the ‘Synoikos scenario Workshop’, an adapted methodology was applied to and evaluated within the (participatory action) research context of the European ‘Thought for Food’ (T4F) landscape enhancement project concerning the agro-industrial area surrounding Roeselare in West-Flanders, Belgium. Within this complex spatial and social context, design-based scenarios served as a tool for stimulating participants to discuss their discordant views and to understand the consequences of their activities for others.
Spatial quality is a central tenet and, at the same time, a highly contentious issue in the urban design and planning field. This is the case for practitioners, academics and researchers alike. Underpinning the canonical texts and even some major recent contributions in defining the theoretical foundations of the field, is a broad consensus on the importance of spatial quality as a normative quest that runs through the theories, principles and methods of the field. Yet, different users, professional and research communities tend to have very different views on what makes a particular organization of space ‘qualitative’ or not. A universal understanding of the concept ‘spatial quality’ does not exist, except as shorthand for either the intention to invest some ‘extra’ (talent, care, aesthetics, money, etc.), or to stress a ‘normative’ attitude and endeavour. Yet when addressing spatial quality within theoretical elaborations or professional operations, different spatial quality preferences cannot just be ‘added up’ when mobilizing this notion.
In the study of spatial quality, therefore, it is important to give the concept a relational and integrative character, with a diversity of spatial quality dimensions and enhancing practices cohering into it. While mobilizing the integrative potential of spatial quality for urban design and planning through a relational understanding—linking ‘quality’ to uses and users within a multi-dimensional context—the aim of this themed issue is to lay out in a coherent way the theoretical foundations of the field..........
In this special issue, we start from the proposition that space, its uses and transformations are multi-significant and that their study requires an interdisciplinary approach. However, the elaborate division of labour in the sciences has also led to the compartmentalization of knowledge about space in different disciplinary fields with their associated, often idiosyncratic concepts, methods, and theoretical approaches. As a result, there is no shared conceptual system of space and different disciplines mobilize very different conceptions, perceptions, and experiences of space, often leading to mutual misunderstandings and incomprehension, also on the same terms (e.g. social space, urbanism). The development of a shared and interdisciplinary platform for the analysis of space, its use, and transformation is a way to address conceptual confusion. This special issue on the ‘Epistemology of space: exploring relational perspectives in planning, urbanism and architecture’ aims to contribute to the creation of such platform where relevant questions, concepts, theories, and methods will meet and ultimately synergize into an interdisciplinary relational understanding and analysis of space, its uses, and transformations.
In this article, we consider the aesthetic, political and pedagogical strengths of a verbatim theatre performance, The Middle Place by Project: Humanity, a play that explores the experiences of shelter youth in Toronto, Canada. This ethnographic study moved from drama classrooms into theatres and charted audience responses to the production, its pre- and post-show programming and the company's curation of the theatre space. Using data from post-performance interviews with youth, we analyse how young people articulate the impact of socially engaged theatre. And pulling from ethnographic fieldnotes and researcher email correspondence, we further illustrate how the mere presence of youth and shelter youth at the theatre altered the ways in which audiences interacted with the play and the extended programming, disrupting the usual social contract of theatre-going. Project: Humanity's intentional mix of social classes and ages among the audience created encounters that have much to teach us about theatre's ability to unleash the ‘unruly’ and to artistically re-create a world highly recognisable to those who inhabit it.
There is growing evidence that the problems, challenges and opportunities that our cities, city-regions and regions are facing cannot be tackled adequately by traditional spatial planning. One of the key challenges for planning in this respect is to analyse critically what type of planning is suited as an approach to deal – in an innovative/emancipatory and transformative way – with the problems and challenges developing and developed societies are facing. An expanding literature and an increasing number of practices all over the world seem to suggest that strategic spatial planning may be looked upon as a possible approach. But at the same time critical comments and reactions are raised on the theory and the practices of strategic spatial planning. This paper uses the theory and practices of coproduction to reframe strategic spatial planning. It first looks for a deeper understanding of the meaning(s) of coproduction as it emerged in different contexts and different intellectual traditions and then introduces coproduction as an immanent characteristic of a more radical type of strategic planning. Coproduction combines the provision of public goods/services needed with the building of a strong, resilient and mutually supportive community that could assure its members their needs would be met. This implies changing the perceptions and the approach of many professionals (public and private) about how plans, policies and public services are conceived and delivered, with the objective of enabling the (structural) change needed in an open and equitable way. The paper relies on a selective review of critical planning literature and the author’s experience in practice.
Conceptualising, exploring and operationalising different meanings of social cohesion to make them useful for studying the dynamics of `cities and social cohesion in urban Europe: that is what this Special Issue aims at. It is based on research on `Social Cohesion in European Cities within the FP7-SSHProject Social Polis, the first social platform funded by the EC SSH programme
Abstract Only critical distancing let Godard value the premonitory potential of film, and at the same time, point out the incapacity to register the realness that it generated. The filmmaker has always believed that “film is prophetic, it predicts and announces things”, and that this condition corresponds to its essence as a record. Rancière in a lucid reading of Film History says that for Godard: “film is responsible for not filming fields in their time; great for filming them before their time and guilty for not knowing how to recognize them”. This article begins with these clear political propositions, as well as proposing some variations.
This paper reviews the use of co-production — with state and citizens working together — as a grassroots strategy to secure political influence and access resources and services. To date, the literature on social movements has concentrated on more explicitly political strategies used by such movements to contest for power and influence. Co-production, when considered, is viewed as a strategy used by citizens and the state to extend access to basic services with relatively little consideration given to its wider political ramifications. However, co-production is used increasingly by grassroots organizations and federations as part of an explicit political strategy. This paper examines the use of co-productive strategies by citizen groups and social movement organizations to enable individual members and their associations to secure effective relations with state institutions that address both immediate basic needs and enable them to negotiate for greater benefits.
Organizational knowing is fundamentally a collective endeavour through which heterogeneous materials and entities, such as ideas, concepts, artifacts, texts, persons, norms, and traditions are mobilized, modified, translated, distorted, exposed, used, ignored or hidden in view of some practical accomplishment, such as safety in a construction site. Safety as a form of organizational expertise is therefore situated in the system of ongoing practices, has both explicit and tacit dimensions, is relational and mediated by artifacts, that is, it is material as well as mental and representational. Using examples derived from the observation data we will discuss how safety-related knowledge is constituted, institutionalized, and continually redefined and renegotiated within the organizing process through the interplay between action and reflexivity.
This paper focuses on the fifth dimension of social innovation—i.e. political governance. Although largely neglected in the mainstream 'innovation' literature, innovative governance arrangements are increasingly recognised as potentially significant terrains for fostering inclusive development processes. International organisations like the EU and the World Bank, as well as leading grass-roots movements, have pioneered new and more participatory governance arrangements as a pathway towards greater inclusiveness. Indeed, over the past two decades or so, a range of new and often innovative institutional arrangements has emerged, at a variety of geographical scales. These new institutional 'fixes' have begun to challenge traditional state-centred forms of policy-making and have generated new forms of governance-beyond-the-state. Drawing on Foucault's notion of governmentality, the paper argues that the emerging innovative horizontal and networked arrangements of governance-beyond-the-state are decidedly Janus-faced. While enabling new forms of participation and articulating the state – civil society relationships in potentially democratising ways, there is also a flip side to the process. To the extent that new governance arrangements rearticulate the state-civil society relationship, they also redefine and reposition the meaning of (political) citizenship and, consequently, the nature of democracy itself. The first part of the paper outlines the contours of governance-beyond-the-state. The second part addresses the thorny issues of the state –civil society relationship in the context of the emergence of the new governmentality associated with governance-beyond-the-state. The third part teases out the contradictory way in which new arrangements of governance have created new institutions and empowered new actors, while disempowering others. It is argued that this shift from 'government' to 'governance' is associated with the consolidation of new technologies of government, on the one hand, and with profound restructuring of the parameters of political democracy on the other, leading to a substantial democratic deficit. The paper concludes by suggesting that socially innovative arrangements of governance-beyond-the-state are fundamentally Janus-faced, particularly under conditions in which the democratic character of the political sphere is increasingly eroded by the encroaching imposition of market forces that set the 'rules of the game'.
The relationship of economic growth and environmental impact has spurred fierce debates between growth optimists referring to the phenomenon of the environmental Kuznets curve, and pessimists referring to the limits to growth. However, no operational set of simple criteria has been developed so far to assess the sustainability of a given growth pattern. This is all the more true for measures combining environmental and social criteria. The paper undertakes to sketch out such criteria, and to assess them by applying them to transdiciplinary sustainability scenarios and model simulations with PANTA RHEI, one of the most complex models of the German economy. Theoretical considerations, as well as the empirical work with the model, demonstrate that there are indeed trade offs between economic growth and environmental impacts, and a positive correlation of growth and employment. Nonetheless, it is still possible to develop carefully orchestrated strategies that combine economic competitiveness, low unemployment rates and an easing of the pressure on the environment. Social and technical innovation, reduced working time, a modernised social security system, green taxes and salary increases proportional to labour productivity growth are essential parts of any such strategy. The triple effectiveness of such strategies regarding environmental, social and economic sustainability is demonstrated by the model runs.
The innate immune response is the first line of defence against invading pathogens and is regulated by complex signalling and transcriptional networks. Systems biology approaches promise to shed new light on the regulation of innate immunity through the analysis and modelling of these networks. A key initial step in this process is the contextual cataloguing of the components of this system and the molecular interactions that comprise these networks. InnateDB (http://www.innatedb.com) is a molecular interaction and pathway database developed to facilitate systems-level analyses of innate immunity.
Here, we describe the InnateDB curation project, which is manually annotating the human and mouse innate immunity interactome in rich contextual detail, and present our novel curation software system, which has been developed to ensure interactions are curated in a highly accurate and data-standards compliant manner. To date, over 13,000 interactions (protein, DNA and RNA) have been curated from the biomedical literature. Here, we present data, illustrating how InnateDB curation of the innate immunity interactome has greatly enhanced network and pathway annotation available for systems-level analysis and discuss the challenges that face such curation efforts. Significantly, we provide several lines of evidence that analysis of the innate immunity interactome has the potential to identify novel signalling, transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulators of innate immunity. Additionally, these analyses also provide insight into the cross-talk between innate immunity pathways and other biological processes, such as adaptive immunity, cancer and diabetes, and intriguingly, suggests links to other pathways, which as yet, have not been implicated in the innate immune response.
In summary, curation of the InnateDB interactome provides a wealth of information to enable systems-level analysis of innate immunity.
Background:
The wealth of phenotypic descriptions documented in the published articles, monographs, and dissertations of phylogenetic systematics is traditionally reported in a free-text format, and it is therefore largely inaccessible for linkage to biological databases for genetics, development, and phenotypes, and difficult to manage for large-scale integrative work. The Phenoscape project aims to represent these complex and detailed descriptions with rich and formal semantics that are amenable to computation and integration with phenotype data from other fields of biology. This entails reconceptualizing the traditional free-text characters into the computable Entity-Quality (EQ) formalism using ontologies.
Methodology/principal findings:
We used ontologies and the EQ formalism to curate a collection of 47 phylogenetic studies on ostariophysan fishes (including catfishes, characins, minnows, knifefishes) and their relatives with the goal of integrating these complex phenotype descriptions with information from an existing model organism database (zebrafish, http://zfin.org). We developed a curation workflow for the collection of character, taxonomic and specimen data from these publications. A total of 4,617 phenotypic characters (10,512 states) for 3,449 taxa, primarily species, were curated into EQ formalism (for a total of 12,861 EQ statements) using anatomical and taxonomic terms from teleost-specific ontologies (Teleost Anatomy Ontology and Teleost Taxonomy Ontology) in combination with terms from a quality ontology (Phenotype and Trait Ontology). Standards and guidelines for consistently and accurately representing phenotypes were developed in response to the challenges that were evident from two annotation experiments and from feedback from curators.
Conclusions/significance:
The challenges we encountered and many of the curation standards and methods for improving consistency that we developed are generally applicable to any effort to represent phenotypes using ontologies. This is because an ontological representation of the detailed variations in phenotype, whether between mutant or wildtype, among individual humans, or across the diversity of species, requires a process by which a precise combination of terms from domain ontologies are selected and organized according to logical relations. The efficiencies that we have developed in this process will be useful for any attempt to annotate complex phenotypic descriptions using ontologies. We also discuss some ramifications of EQ representation for the domain of systematics.
"This article creates a meeting ground between two distinct and fairly elaborate research traditions dealing with social 'transitions': the Dutch societal transitions management approach, and the Viennese sociometabolic transitions approach. Sharing a similar understanding of sustainability transitions —namely as major transformational changes of system characteristics—and a background epistemology of complex systems, autopoeisis, and evolutionary mechanisms, they address the subject from different angles: one approach asks how transformative changes happen and what they look like, and the other approach tries answer the question of how to bring them about. The Viennese approach is almost exclusively analytical and deals with a macro ('landscape') level of human history with a time scale of decades to centuries; the Dutch approach is based on intervention experiences and deals with a shorter time frame (decades) of micro–meso–macro levels of industrial societies. From both their respective angles, they contribute to some of the key questions of sustainability research, namely: how can a transformative change toward sustainability be distinguished from other types of social change? By which mechanisms can obstacles, path dependencies, and adverse interests be overcome? And what are the key persistent problems that call for such a transition?"
This paper presents a brief literature review and then introduces the methods, design, and construction of the Data Curation Profile, an instrument that can be used to provide detailed information on particular data forms that might be curated by an academic library. These data forms are presented in the context of the related sub-disciplinary research area, and they provide the flow of the research process from which these data are generated. The profiles also represent the needs for data curation from the perspective of the data producers, using their own language. As such, they support the exploration of data curation across different research domains in real and practical terms. With the sponsorship of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, investigators from Purdue University and the University of Illinois interviewed 19 faculty subjects to identify needs for discovery, access, preservation, and reuse of their research data. For each subject, a profile was constructed that includes information about his or her general research, data forms and stages, value of data, data ingest, intellectual property, organization and description of data, tools, interoperability, impact and prestige, data management, and preservation. Each profile also presents a specific dataset supplied by the subject to serve as a concrete example. The Data Curation Profiles are being published to a public wiki for questions and discussion, and a blank template will be disseminated with guidelines for others to create and share their own profiles. This study was conducted primarily from the viewpoint of librarians interacting with faculty researchers; however, it is expected that these findings will complement a wide variety of data curation research and practice outside of librarianship and the university environment.
ASAP is a comprehensive web-based system for community genome annotation and analysis. ASAP is being used for a large-scale
effort to augment and curate annotations for genomes of enterobacterial pathogens and for additional genome sequences. New
tools, such as the genome alignment program Mauve, have been incorporated into ASAP in order to improve display and analysis
of related genomes. Recent improvements to the database and challenges for future development of the system are discussed.
ASAP is available on the web at https://asap.ahabs.wisc.edu/asap/logon.php.
The radiology community has recognized the need to create a standard terminology to improve the clarity of reports, to reduce radiologist variation, to enable access to imaging information, and to improve the quality of practice. This need has recently led to the development of RadLex, a controlled terminology for radiology. The creation of RadLex has proved challenging in several respects: It has been difficult for users to peruse the large RadLex taxonomies and for curators to navigate the complex terminology structure to check it for errors and omissions. In this work, we demonstrate that the RadLex terminology can be translated into an ontology, a representation of terminologies that is both human-browsable and machine-processable. We also show that creating this ontology permits computational analysis of RadLex and enables its use in a variety of computer applications. We believe that adopting an ontology representation of RadLex will permit more widespread use of the terminology and make it easier to collect feedback from the community that will ultimately lead to improving RadLex.
This edited collection of essays explore the difference between curating as the activity of staging a (visual) event and the curatorial, this event of knowledge taking place on that stage. Authors include: Raqs Media Collective, Irit Rogoff, Stefan Nowotny, Suzana Milevska, Ariella Azoulay, Stefano Harney, Helmut Draxler, Bridget Crone, and Charles Esche.
"We live in an age of sticky problems, whether it's climate change or the decline of the welfare state. With conventional solutions failing, a new culture of decision-making is called for. Strategic design is about applying the principles of traditional design to "big picture" systemic challenges such as healthcare, education and the environment. It redefines how problems are approached and aims to deliver more resilient solutions. In this short book, Dan Hill outlines a new vocabulary of design, one that needs to be smuggled into the upper echelons of power. He asserts that, increasingly, effective design means engaging with the messy politics - the "dark matter"- taking place above the designer's head. And that may mean redesigning the organization that hires you."
For some years now, interactions between societies and the biosphere have been the subject of socio-ecological studies (SESs), which analyse socio-ecological regimes, trajectories and transitions. This article follows the approach, and seeks to contribute to the analysis of socio-ecological urban trajectories since the Industrial Revolution. It draws on some key notions which are tested and applied to Paris. The urban socio-ecological regime of the industrial era has three major characteristics: i) the near-total externalisation of a more intensive urban metabolism, associated with the breakup of supply areas and the deepening, urban footprint on the environment; ii) the importance of infrastructure to this metabolism, which fits into a process of generalised networking led by engineers and leads to urban technical inter-dependencies; and iii) the urbanisation of landscapes associated with the proliferation of extra-territorial urban influences, despite the loss of certain skills available to the French capital.
Reflection, interpretation, and curation play key roles in learning, creativity, and problem solving. Reflection means looking back and forward among building blocks constituting a space of ideas, contextualizing with processes including tasks, activities, and one's internal thinking and meditating, and deriving new understandings, known as interpretations. Curation, in the digital age, means searching, gathering, collecting, organizing, designing, reflecting on, and interpreting information.
We introduce rich bookmarks, representations of key ideas from documents as navigable links that integrate visual clippings and rich semantic metadata. We support curating rich bookmarks as information composition. In this holistic visual form, curators express relationships among curated elements through implicit visual features, such as spatial position, color, and translucence.
We investigated the situated context of a university course, engaging educators in iterative co-design. Rich bookmarks emerged in the process, motivating changes in pedagogy and software. Changes provoked students to collect more novel and varied ideas. They reported that curating rich bookmarks as information composition helped them reflect, transforming prior ideas into new ones. The visual component of rich bookmarks was found to support multiple interpretations; the semantic to support associational exploration of related ideas.
This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.
Building on the main results from the TSER reports reviewed in the VALICORES project, this survey article focuses on the Knowledge Infrastructure (KI) and on the institutional-spatial dynamics that characterize innovation and knowledge creation/accumulation/diffusion processes within the developing knowledge-based economy and society. Its aim is threefold. Firstly, the paper seeks to disentangle some crucial issues linked to the nature of the KI and the various agents it involves, their patterns of behaviour and forms of interaction, and their roles in knowledge and innovation processes. The second aim is to determine the extent to which institutional and spatial configurations shape knowledge and innovation dynamics in the European context. Finally, the article advances an analytical framework which could help the understanding of the dynamic interplay of institutions, strategies and spatial scales in the structuring and the deployment of the KI.
While the recent focus on knowledge has undoubtedly benefited organizational studies, the literature still presents a sharply contrasting and even contradictory view of knowledge, which at times is described as "sticky" and at other times "leaky." This paper is written on the premise that there is more than a problem with metaphors at issue here, and more than accounts of different types of knowledge (such as "tacit" and "explicit") can readily explain. Rather, these contrary descriptions of knowledge reflect different, partial, and sometimes "balkanized" perspectives from which knowledge and organization are viewed. Taking the community of practice as a unifying unit of analysis for understanding knowledge in the firm, the paper suggests that often too much attention is paid to the idea of community, too little to the implications of practice. Practice, we suggest, creates epistemic differences among the communities within a firm, and the firm's advantage over the market lies in dynamically coordinating the knowledge produced by these communities despite such differences. In making this argument, we argue that analyses of systemic innovation should be extended to embrace all firms in a knowledge economy, not just the classically innovative. This extension will call for a transformation of conventional ideas coordination and of the trade-off between exploration and exploitation.
Transitions are transformation processes in which society changes in a fundamental way over a generation or more. Although the goals of a transition are ultimately chosen by society, governments can play a role in bringing about structural change in a stepwise manner. Their management involves sensitivity to existing dynamics and regular adjustment of goals to overcome the conflict between long-term ambition and short-term concerns. This article uses the example of a transition to a low emission energy supply in the Netherlands to argue that transition management provides a basis for coherence and consistency in public policy and can be the spur to sustainable development.
Networks have assumed a place of prominence in the literature on public and private governing structures. The many positive attributes of networks are often featured—the capacity to solve problems, govern shared resources, create learning opportunities, and address shared goals—and a literature focused on the challenges networks pose for managers seeking to realize these network attributes is developing. The authors share an interest in understanding the potential of networks to govern complex public, or “wicked,” problems. A fundamental challenge to effectively managing any public problem in a networked setting is the transfer, receipt and integration of knowledge across participants. When knowledge is viewed pragmatically, the challenge is particularly acute. This perspective, the authors argue, presents a challenge to the network literature to consider the mind-set of the managers—or collaborative capacity-builders—who are working to achieve solutions to wicked problems. This mind-set guides network managers as they apply their skills, strategies, and tools in order to foster the transfer, receipt, and integration of knowledge across the network and, ultimately, to build long-term collaborative problem-solving capacity.
In contemporary art, the curator plays an important role in the production of artistic meaning through exhibition-making.
Although sociology has tended to see this work as the exercise of tacit or embodied knowledge, curatorial knowledge and plans
may be elaborated and altered by the situated actions of exhibition installation. While curators know a successful installation
“when they see it,” this depends on the indexical particularities of artworks and environments which cannot be predicted in
advance. In demonstrating the practical ways in which culture is mobilized in situations of object (inter)action, this paper
emphasizes the “making” in artistic meaning-making.
KeywordsCultural sociology-Distributed cognition-Actor-network theory-Object-interaction
The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, becuase of the nature of these problems. They are wicked problems, whereas science has developed to deal with tame problems. Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about optimal solutions to social problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first. Even worse, there are no solutions in the sense of definitive and objective answers.
Relatively little study has been performed on knowledge management and knowledge transfer in the public sector, and even less in the developing countries. This paper investigates the relationship between organizational elements and the performance of knowledge transfer. Five main independent variables were identified – organizational culture, organizational structure, technology, people/human resources and political directives – and these were tested against creation of knowledge assets and knowledge transfer performance using the Spearman rank test. Tacit and explicit knowledge were also tested against knowledge transfer performance. To achieve an in-depth empirical study, the Ministry of Entrepreneur Development of Malaysia was chosen for a case study. The findings are based on replies to a questionnaire survey done from September to December 2001. The results reveal that there are significant relationships between some of the variables and either the creation of knowledge assets or the performance of knowledge transfer. Therefore, it is necessary for organizations to consider some of the elements that show a relationship between the tested variables in implementing a knowledge management strategy in an organization. However, certain variables that did not show any relationship should not be ignored totally, as they are still very important for some organizations.
Assisted reproductive technology (ART) makes babies and parents at once. Drawing on science and technology studies, feminist theory, and historical and ethnographic analyses of ART clinics, Charis Thompson explores the intertwining of biological reproduction with the personal, political, and technological meanings of reproduction. She analyzes the "ontological choreography" at ART clinics—the dynamics by which technical, scientific, kinship, gender, emotional, legal, political, financial, and other matters are coordinated—using ethnographic data to address questions usually treated in the abstract. Reproductive technologies, says Thompson, are part of the increasing tendency to turn social problems into biomedical questions and can be used as a lens through which to see the resulting changes in the relations between science and society.
After giving an account of the book's disciplinary roots in science and technology studies and in feminist scholarship on reproduction, Thompson comes to the ethnographic heart of her study. She develops her concept of ontological choreography by examining ART's normalization of "miraculous" technology (including the etiquette of technological sex); gender identity in the assigned roles of mother and father and the conservative nature of gender relations in the clinic; the naturalization of technologically assisted kinship and procreative intent; and patients' pursuit of agency through objectification and technology. Finally, Thompson explores the economies of reproductive technologies, concluding with a speculative and polemical look at the "biomedical mode of reproduction" as a predictor of future relations between science and society.
Participatory action research (PAR) is a rapidly growing approach in human geography. PAR has diverse origins in different parts of the world over the last 70 years and it takes many forms depending on the particular context and issues involved. Broadly speaking, it is research by, with, and for people affected by a particular problem, which takes places in collaboration with academic researchers. It seeks to democratize knowledge production and foster opportunities for empowerment by those involved. Within human geography, it offers a politically engaged means of exploring materialities, emotionalities, and aspects of nonrepresentational experience to inform progressive change. Participatory approaches are not without their critics who argue that these can verge on the tyrannical, reproducing the inequalities they seek to overcome. Yet, PAR has exciting synergies with feminist, post-structural, and postcolonial geographies. These enable engagements with both productive and negative effects of power through attention to language, representation, and subjectivity. The ongoing development and experimentation with a range of participatory methods and techniques continue to inspire new understandings and possibilities for action-oriented research within and beyond the academy.
Human institutions—ways of organizing activities—affect the resilience of the environment. Locally evolved institutional arrangements
governed by stable communities and buffered from outside forces have sustained resources successfully for centuries, although
they often fail when rapid change occurs. Ideal conditions for governance are increasingly rare. Critical problems, such as
transboundary pollution, tropical deforestation, and climate change, are at larger scales and involve nonlocal influences.
Promising strategies for addressing these problems include dialogue among interested parties, officials, and scientists; complex,
redundant, and layered institutions; a mix of institutional types; and designs that facilitate experimentation, learning,
and change.
Despite many approaches of neoclassical and endogenous growth theory, economists still face problems in explaining the reasons for income differences between countries. Institutional economics and the deep determinants of growth literature try to depart from pure economic facts to examine economic development. Therefore, this article analyzes the impact of institutions, geography, and integration on per capita income. Concerning theoretical reasoning, emphasis is on the emergence of institutions and their effect on economic growth. However, institutions can appear in different shapes since political, legal, and economic restrictions are not the only constraints on human behaviour. Norms and values also limit possible actions. Therefore, a differentiation between formal and informal institutions is made. Informal institutions are defined as beliefs, attitudes, moral, conventions, and codes of conduct. Property rights are assumed to be the basic formal institutional feature for economic success. Despite their direct impact on growth through individual utility maximization, property rights also make a statement concerning the political and legal environment of a country. Regarding the regression analysis, different religious affiliations are used as instrumental variables for formal and informal institutions. The regression results affirm a crucial role of informal and formal institutions concerning economic development. However, a high proportion of Protestant citizens encourage informal institutions that support economic growth, while a high Muslim proportion of the population is negatively correlated with growth-supporting formal institutions. --
Teacher as curator: learning to talk about literature
- M Eeds
- R Peterson
Eeds, M., Peterson, R., 1991. Teacher as curator: learning to talk about literature. Reading Teacher 45 (2), 118-126.
THE CURATORIAL navigating knowledge boundaries. Mediations: Art and Design Agency and Participation in Public Space
- M Kaethler
Kaethler, M., 2016. THE CURATORIAL navigating knowledge boundaries. Mediations: Art and Design Agency and Participation in Public Space. RCA, London
(November).