Co-designing for common values:creating hybrid spaces to nurture autonomous cooperation

This paper concerns the development of digitally-mediated technologies that value social cooperation as a common good rather than as a source of revenue and accumulation. The paper discusses the activities that shaped a European participatory design project which aims to develop a digital space that promotes and facilitates the ‘Commonfare’, a complementary approach to social welfare. The paper provides and discusses concrete examples of design artifacts to address a key question about the role of co- and participatory design in developing hybrid spaces that nurture sharing and autonomous cooperation: how can co-design practices promote alternatives to the commodification of digitally-mediated cooperation? The paper argues for a need to focus on relational, social, political and ethical values, and highlights the potential power of co- and participatory design processes to achieve this. In summary, the paper proposes that only by re-asserting the centrality of shared values and capacities, rather than individual needs or problems, co-design can reposition itself thereby encouraging autonomous cooperation

Decision Making for Sustainable Development: How Assessment Can Help

Despite recent progress in developing a political consensus that policy changes are needed at both the domestic and international level to address climate change, the required political and public will is still insufficient to overcome a number of political barriers limiting progress.This essay discusses the importance of raising public awareness of environmental issues and the role that assessment processes can have in this regard. Awareness of the environmental dimension of economic activities can be increased in numerous ways such as through education and training, public-service campaigns, product labelling, product marketing, and consumer activism. This essay, however, focuses on the role of environmental assessments; they provide a more formal and scientific way for information to be incorporated into policy decisions and the planning process.Climate change, global warming, environmental assessment

Researching for Change in a Globalising Asymmetric World

The field of research on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the service of social development (ICTD) is ripe for reframing. The asymmetries of the world are currently mirrored in the aims, practice and outcomes of too much ICTD research. The consequence is that people who might benefit from creative use of current and emerging technologies all over the world are excluded from the social processes and benefits of innovation and knowledge production. The ICTD research community’s widespread dissatisfaction with this situation haunts ICTD gatherings. In this workshop we want to explore critical alternatives to the current practice. We intend drafting and articulating critical alternatives for future research that is emancipatory, inclusive and oriented towards globally sustainable futures. To achieve this we first want to acknowledge and expose the vastly different knowledge interests and agendas of the various stakeholders. By examining a series of questions we shall then strive for a responsive reformulation of our approaches in a way that will not easily settle into a new orthodoxy. This will mean that we need to examine not only research and action agendas, transformation, inclusiveness, and power relations, but also our own personal growth and care for ourselves as actors in transformation. It is fortuitous that the 5th decennial Aarhus conference comes on the target date for the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. What next? We want to ensure that after 2015, the research approaches that are adopted and promoted in ICTD are actually structured in the service of development. An ICT that is for Development cannot be realised by blindly replicating global asymmetries where aims and approaches are defined by the powerful and imposed on those at the margins.

A holistic multi-methodology for sustainable renovation

A review of the barriers for building renovation has revealed a lack of methodologies, which can promote sustainability objectives and assist various stakeholders during the design stage of building renovation/retrofitting projects. The purpose of this paper is to develop a Holistic Multi-methodology for Sustainable Renovation, which aims to deal with complexity of renovation projects. It provides a framework through which to involve the different stakeholders in the design process to improve group learning and group decision-making, and hence make the building renovation design process more robust and efficient. Therefore, the paper discusses the essence of multifaceted barriers in building renovation regarding cultural changes and technological/physical changes. The outcome is a proposal for a multi-methodology framework, which is developed by introducing, evaluating and mixing methods from Soft Systems Methodologies (SSM) with Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). The potential of applying the proposed methodology in renovation projects is demonstrated through a case study

Another Theory is Possible: Dissident Voices in Theorising Europe

The article argues that dissident voices which attempt to theorise Europe differently and advocate another European trajectory have been largely excluded and left unheard in mainstream discussions over the past decade of scholarship and analysis. Dissident voices in European Union studies are those that seek to actively challenge the mainstream of the study of Europe. As all the contributors to the special issue make clear, there is a rich diversity of alternatives to mainstream thinking and theorising the EU on which to draw for different ways of theorising Europe. The introductory article briefly examines the discipline of mainstreaming, then surveys extent of polyphonic engagement in EU studies before setting out how the special issue contributors move beyond the mainstream. The article will argue the merits of more polyphonic engagement with dissident voices and differing disciplinary approach for the health and vitality of EU studies and the EU policy field itself. The article sets out the wide range of contributions which the special issue articles make to theorising the EU. It summarises the special issue argument that by allowing for dissident voices in theorising Europe another Europe, and another theory, is possible indeed probable

ICROFS news 2/2012. Newsletter from ICROFS

International organic research theme: - Organic farming in Canada - Linking organic knowledge - Organic greenhouse production research in Canada - Researhing a limiting and limited nutrient - Prodctivity and growth in organic value chains (ProGrOV) - Root carbon input in arable cropping systems - Green veal is not dark red - Brief new