868 research outputs found
Utopian Discourses Across Cultures
The term Utopia, coined by Thomas More in 1516, contains an inherent semantic ambiguity: it could be read as eu topos (good place) or ou topos (no place). The authors of this volume analyze this polysemous notion and its fascination for scholars across the centuries, who have developed a variety of visions and ways to explain the «realization» of utopian discourses. The experts in the fields of sociology, political science, economics, computer science, literature and linguistics offer extensive studies about how utopian scenarios are realized in different cultural contexts
Open education as a 'heterotopia of desire'
The movement towards âopennessâ in education has tended to position itself as inherently democratising, radical, egalitarian and critical of powerful gatekeepers to learning. While âopennessâ is often positioned as a critique, I will argue that its mainstream discourses â while appearing to oppose large-scale operations of power â in fact reinforce a fantasy of an all-powerful, panoptic institutional apparatus. The human subject is idealised as capable of generating higher order knowledge without recourse to expertise, a canon of knowledge or scaffolded development. This highlights an inherent contradiction between this movement and critical educational theory which opposes narratives of potential utopian futures, offering theoretical counterpositions and data which reveal diversity and complexity and resisting attempts at definition, typology and fixity. This argument will be advanced by referring to Gourlay and Oliver's one-year longitudinal qualitative multimodal journaling and interview study of student day-to-day entanglements with technologies in higher education, which was combined with a shorter study focused on academic staff engagement (see article for full text reference). Drawing on sociomaterial perspectives, I will conclude that allegedly âradicalâ claims of the âopennessâ movement in education may in fact serve to reinforce rather than challenge utopic thinking, fantasies of the human, and monolithic social categories, fixity and power, and as such may be seen as indicative of a âheterotopia of desireâ
Cyborg ontologies and the lecturer's voice : A posthuman reading of the 'face-to-face'
The lecture is often posited as the prototypical âface-to-faceâ educational encounter, seen as embodying key features of the pre-networked academy. These are implicitly characterised as forms of boundedness or impermeability, in terms of both the physical and temporal context, and the ontological status of the participants and the nature of the event in terms of rhetorical structure. However, the increased ubiquity of digital technologies such as virtual learning environments and networked mobile devices has altered the nature of the lecture in profound ways. Drawing on posthuman theory, this paper will argue that both overt and covert uses of digital media in âface-to-faceâ educational encounters such as lectures have served to undermine several taken-for-granted binaries, such as: material/virtual, digital/analogue, then/now and here/not here. It will conclude that this breakdown of dualisms â in terms of social and representational practices â repositions lecturers and students as hybridised âcyborgâ subjects
Concrete utopianism in integrated assessment models: Discovering the philosophy of the shared socioeconomic pathways
The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are at the forefront of climate change science today. As an influential methodology and method, the SSPs guide the framing of numerous climate change research questions and how these are investigated. Although the SSPs were developed by an interdisciplinary group of scientists in a well-documented process, there is no apparent consensus in the literature that answers the question, "What is the philosophy of science behind the SSPs?" To investigate, the paper applies a systematic thematic qualitative content analysis to the dataset of published papers that establish the rules and expectations for using the SSPs. The research determines that there is no obvious and concise statement on the epistemological and ontological foundation of the SSPs. However, based on the evidence identified in the dataset, SSPs are implicitly, though not explicitly, consistent with a critical realist and concrete utopian philosophy as coined by Roy Bhaskar. This is the first paper to discuss the philosophical underpinning of the SSPs
Social research for our times: Thomas Coram Research Unit past, present and future
For 50 years, researchers at UCLâs Thomas Coram Research Unit have been undertaking ground-breaking policy-relevant social research. Their main focus has been social issues affecting children, young people and families, and the services provided for them. Social Research for our Times brings together different generations of researchers from the Unit to share some of the most important results of their studies. Two sections focus on the main findings and conclusions from research into children and children services, and on family life, minoritised groups and gender. A third is then devoted to the innovative methods that have been developed and used to undertake research in these complex areas. Running through the book is a key strategic question: what should be the relationship between research and policy? Or put another way, what does âpolicy relevant researchâ mean? This perennial question has gained new importance in the post-Covid, post-Brexit world that we have entered, making this text a timely intervention for sharing decades of experience. Taking a unique opportunity to reflect on research context as well as research findings, this book will be of interest to researchers, teachers, students and those involved in policy making both in and beyond dedicated research units, and can be read as a whole or sampled for individual standalone chapters
Creative Frictions
Creative Frictions explores the relationship between visionary aspects of practice and policy. Despite over 30 years of arts and cultural policy attention, there remains a widespread view among the general public and artists alike that creative production does not reflect Australia's culturally diverse population. Australiaâs increasingly complex society can no longer be confined to 'essentialisedâ or traditional definitions of ethnic communities. While this diversity and its emerging complexity can be âcelebratedâ as a source of creativity and innovation, it can also give rise to social, political and creative challenges. A key challenge that remains for the arts sector is its ability to support the creative expression of cultural difference. One measure of inclusive creative production is to look at the participation of artists of nonâEnglish speaking backgrounds (NESBs)âa problematic term discussed in the book. There are half as many NESB artists compared to those of other professions participating in the workforce, and while under-representation is an issue for management in the arts sector, the question of representation also benefits from being understood more broadly beyond the narrow sense of multiculturalism as a tool to manage cultural difference. This book explores the crucial role of creative leaders and how they work with the âmainstreamâ while maintaining their creative integrity and independence to generate a âvirtuousâ circle of change. Creative Frictions argues that it is the NESB artists who lead change in the arts sector and that creative and organisational leadership working in partnership make creative use of âfrictionâ and develop the necessary âtrustâ to generate the âtractionâ for a supportive multicultural arts milieu
Designing an incubator of public spaces platform: Applying cybernetic principles to the co-creation of spaces
The paper is based on the experience of creating and piloting a functioning âIncubatorâ crowdsourcing platform for designing public spaces in an estate regeneration project in South London. The paper uses a cybernetics framework to analyse and present the way the platform itself was created and how issues of effectiveness, efficiency and equity were dealt with. It explores the generic qualities of interface and reviews applications of variety reduction in established crowdsourcing CS) models. It briefly presents the legal and socio-spatial parameters (like property rights) associated with the creation of the Incubators platform as well as the generic rules applicable to human-spatial relationships, based on studies exploring human-spatial interactions. Practical constraints including costs, catchments, life-span and meaningful feedback are looked into, followed by a discussion on social and political limitations associated with this form of public participation. The paper explains how those constraints where taken into account when establishing the operational parameters of the software platform and the experiences gained from the operation of the platform. Challenges and complications, such as the exclusion of actors, are identified together with the responses encountered in practice. While the Incubators platform succeeded in attracting younger planning participation demographics, older demographics were marginalised by the platformâs graphical user interface and social networking features. These findings highlight why, in spite of what it promises, âcrowdsourced urbanismâ is prone to similar traits with those of analogue participation. In that sense, creating a CS platform which could convey the grass-roots ideas of actors and users of urban spaces in an efficient way that could be applied to a broad range of planning systems, appears to be a challenge
Complexity and creative capacity : reformulating the problem of knowledge transfer in environmental management
The Ningaloo Reef is Australiaâs largest fringing coral reef and an iconic tourist destination; however tourism development in Ningaloo has been ad hoc and the area is challenged by human pressure on numerous fronts. In response to these challenges a number of research agencies brought together a range of scientists to study the effects of human interaction on the reef. Moving from research to practice has been understood to depend on the adaptive capacity of the institutions responsible for governing human activities, in this case in the Ningaloo area. Knowledge transfer describes the suite of strategies used to try to bridge the gap between research and management. Knowledge transfer efforts, however, seldom have the desired impact of seeing research applied to decision-making. The ubiquity of knowledge transfer difficulties across disciplines suggests a common root to the problem, based in our shared cultural assumptions. This study pairs a multidisciplinary theoretical investigation with action research to shed light on why knowledge transfer efforts so often fall short in terms of seeing research applied to practice.
Recent environmental management perspectives on knowledge transfer illustrate the shift towards stakeholder participation as a means of improving knowledge transfer success. As such, the action research study involved the researcher embedding herself in the Ningaloo community for 18 months, adopting the role of a knowledge broker and engaging and collaborating with modelling researchers and local stakeholders on knowledge transfer efforts. However, despite intensive stakeholder engagement, evaluation interviews at the end of the process indicated that although the knowledge transfer process had the effect of catalysing relationships between stakeholder groups in the region, and between regional stakeholders and scientists, it appeared to have relatively little effect on the representational knowledge of local stakeholders or the actual application of research in practice. This led to the question of whether knowledge transfer is itself is part of the research uptake problem, as per the principles of problem formulation, which specify that resolving seemingly intractable problems requires examining the assumptions that underpin our thinking about the problem situation.
On this basis, the theoretical component of this study explored the Newtonian assumptions that inform our understanding of knowledge transfer. An alternative complexity-based ontology is proposed, unifying the metaphysics of materialism and idealism, based on a synthesis of process philosophy, mathematical logic, quantum theory, general systems theory and the complexity sciences. The phenomena of cognition, learning, knowledge and organising are compared in relation to how theyâve been understood within the Newtonian paradigm, and how they are now being explained from the perspective of a complexity-based paradigm. By reframing the action research results from a complexity perspective, the Ningaloo knowledge transfer process does not constitute a failure in terms of enhancing the capacity of the Ningaloo system to make more sustainable decisions. Rather, the increased connectivity between stakeholder groups and scientists can be viewed as more importantly enhancing the creative capacity of Ningalooâs governance system. It is posited that the research uptake problem should be reformulated from the basis of complexity paradigm, and the notions of knowledge transfer and adaptive capacity reconceptualised accordingly. Instead of devising rational objective arguments for someone else to improve the âadaptive capacityâ of human systems, scientists should focus instead on improving their own creative capacity in their local interactions
Open access to health and education research outside academia: perspectives of research users, research intermediaries and researchers
The thesis investigates how publics outside academia engage with ideas of open access (OA) to research publications. To do this, it analyses data from interviews with users of health and education research in two non-academic contexts, as well as with researchers interested in communicating their work to wider audiences. It draws on constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) and situational analysis (Clarke, 2005).
The literature review highlighted a need to empirically explore OA outside academia. The study focused on the ways in which publications were accessed and used outside academia and the factors enabling and preventing access. It also explored perceptions of OA within a wider context of communicating research to non- academic audiences, and identified areas of contestation.
The study found that there was a demand for OA, although the demand was perceived to be limited. There were significant sources of friction in accessing research publications, including paywalls, which could be circumvented through file/password sharing and drawing on contacts. Conceptual access (e.g. understandability) was also found to prevent engagement with research publications in some cases, although this varied according to levels of expertise.
The study identified research intermediaries as playing an important dual role, as they accessed research in order to make it accessible to a wider audience.
The study found a disconnect between some OA advocacy and research-user perceptions. and a disconnect between researchersâ commitment to communicating their work outside the academy and their support of OA. Attitudes towards OA were influenced by bureaucratic mandates, high APCs and belief that there would be little demand for their research. Findings indicated however, that OA could complement other forms of research communication in specific contexts. Finally, the study suggested that a narrow focus on âtangible outcomesâ for non- academic publics (Moore, 2019) risked obscuring attempts to develop a more equitable scholarly communications system
Towards Intercultural Documentary
âTowards Intercultural Documentaryâ is a PhD by Published Work that is comprised of
four documentary films, an exhibition catalogue essay and an academic book chapter
to form a collective body of work in film and text focused on what Rughani proposes
as âintercultural documentary practiceâ. This body of work configures âintercultural
documentary practiceâ as a space or arena in which people of radically different
perspectives encounter the other.1 Intercultural documentary aspires to create
pluralised spaces of exchange by engaging difference within and between
communities. In this work, voices traditionally overlooked, excluded or edged to the
cultural margins are re-framed to find a new centrality in a broader encounter, more
accurately reflecting the diverse influences that comprise polyglot societies. In the
United Kingdom (UK) context, three submitted films, broadcast to peak-time
audiences on BBC 2 and Channel 4, stood in contradistinction to mainstream
narratives that typically portrayed British experience as largely monocultural and
homogeneous.
The contribution to knowledge of this thesis is in deepening and extending the
dynamics of documentary practice to embrace intercultural communication and to
weld this to the ethics of documentary making. In so doing, this body of work situates
ethics as central to the documentary encounter and offers new practice-based insights
into navigating tensions in the process of making such work and its methodologies.
âTowards Intercultural Documentaryâ presents a case for the coherence of the body of
work that makes a contribution to knowledge at the inter-disciplinary confluence of:
documentary studies and practice, ethics and intercultural communication. The
submission comprises: Islam and the Temple ofâ âIlmâ (BBC 2, 1990); One of the
Family (Channel 4, 2000); Playing Model Soldiers (Channel 4, 2000); Glass Houses
(British Council, 2004); the exhibition catalogue essay British Homeland in Home
(British Council, 2004) and the book chapter âAre You a Vulture? Reflecting on the
ethics and aesthetics of coverage of atrocity and its aftermath, in Peace Journalism
(Peter Lang, 2010)
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