Identity and Autonomy in a Human Complex System

The work presented here is centred on the notions of language, of code as well as the interactions that allow to take into account the complex relations between different types of entities, actors, ... corresponding to the embedded cognitive networks . At this level, questions about the identity and the heterogeneity of actors particularly important to the globalisation phenomena can be examined through the negotiation mechanisms and collective decisions. The multiplicity of cognitive shortcuts used, related to the autonomy of actors and institutions or to their interactions, makes it possible to take into account the complexity of human systems.autonomy; cognitive shortcut; complex mediation; embeddeness; identity

Socio-cultural design and interactive governance

The aim here is to address the questions corresponding to the emergence and the evolution of groups, of communities within a population of heterogeneous agents so as to describe the overcoding processes (as manipulation of the codes themselves, translation procedures) which characterize the creative behaviours that can be attributed to agents in the framework of complex mediations issuing from an interdisciplinary approach relevant to negotiation through the identification of the heuristics that they use. At this level the notions of cognitive or cultural shortcut and strategic shortcut as well that of the autonomy turn out to be particularly of interest since while taking into account the socio-cultural context to design the complex relations built inside the population, they enable us to set the foundations relative to the mechanisms that characterize the procedures of interactive governance in regard to the criteria of sustainability.cognitive, cultural and strategic shortcuts, complexity, heuristics, proximity, interactive governance, sustainability

Balance in Tristram Shandy: Laurence Sterne through Friedrich Schiller’s Eyes

Many critics of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy see the novel’s narrative elements and structure as a form of narrative play, which reject Enlightenment systems of understanding. In this paper, through the philosophy of Friedrich Schiller, I will argue that the novel’s narrative structure is best understood as a balance of aesthetic impulses. For most scholars, to understand the narrative form, digressions, philosophy of knowledge, and/or history in Tristram Shandy, one must understand how the novel subverts the categorization and systematization of Enlightenment thinking. The patterns of subversion in the text lend themselves to arguments that characterize the novel as one of narrative play. This is understandable, but it ultimately does not do justice to the complexity of the novel. To address this complexity, I turn to Friedrich Schiller, a German poet and philosopher. I argue that the text enacts Schiller’s aesthetic framework by synthesizing the competing impulses he describes in his aesthetic philosophy. Tristram Shandy does not seek the order and systems of Locke and the Enlightenment, nor the overwhelming feeling of the Romantics’ sublimity; instead, Tristram Shandy, setting a precedent for Schiller’s philosophy, seeks the most beautiful aesthetic goal, balance

The Invention of History: Baudrillard in Lacan vol 1 (1st simulation stage: the classic age)

Jean Baudrillard's first simulation stage re-interpreted in the light of architectural theory (linear perspetive) and psychoanalysis (Jaques Lacan's mirror stage

Understanding media publics and the antimicrobial resistance crisis

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) imperils health for people across the world. This enormous challenge is being met with the rationalisation of prescription, dispensing and consumption of antimicrobials in clinical settings and in the everyday lives of members of the general population. Individuals need to be reached outside clinical settings to prepare them for the necessary changes to the pharmaceutical management of infections; efforts that depend on media and communications and, therefore, how the AMR message is mediated, received and applied. In 2016, the UK Review on Antimicrobial Resistance called on governments to support intense, worldwide media activity to promote public awareness and to further efforts to rationalise the use of antimicrobial pharmaceuticals. In this article, we consider this communications challenge in light of contemporary currents of thought on media publics, including: the tendency of health communications to cast experts and lay individuals in opposition; the blaming of individuals who appear to ‘resist’ expert advice; the challenges presented by negative stories of AMR and their circulation in public life, and; the problems of public trust tied to the construction and mediation of expert knowledge on the effective management of AMR

Mediation, translation and local ecologies: understanding the impact of policy levers on FE colleges

This article reports the views of managers and tutors on the role of policy ‘levers’ on teaching, learning, and inclusion in colleges of Further Education (FE) in our research project, ‘The impact of policy on learning and inclusion in the Learning and Skills Sector (LSS)’.i Using data from five research visits conducted over two years in eight FE learning sites, we explore the processes by which colleges ‘mediate’ and ‘translate’ national policy levers and how this affects their ability to respond to local need. The paper tentatively develops three related concepts/metaphors to explain the complexity of the policy/college interface – ‘the process of mediation’, ‘acts of translation’ and ‘local ecologies’. We found that policy levers interacted with a complex set of national, local and institutional factors as colleges responded to pressures from the external environment and turned these into internal plans, systems and practices. We conclude by suggesting that national policy-makers, who design national policy levers, may not be fully aware of these complexities and we make the case for the benefits of greater local control over policy levers, where these interactions are better understood

Psychoanalysis, socialization and society: the psychoanalytical thought and interpretation of Alfred Lorenzer

"Alfred Lorenzer belongs to those few psychoanalysts, who did understand psychoanalysis not only in clinical therapy, clinical thinking and research but also as a social science. In the perspective of Lorenzer the individual fundamentally could not be taken out of his social contexts. The therapeutic setting of psychoanalysis insofar is an artificial undertaking, a psychological experiment of a special kind. Lorenzer did understand society not only as an environment outside of the individual, how it is studied through most of the psychological paradigms. In the sense of Lorenzer society penetrates and mediates the Jeep individual structures. He describes this process as a socialization of the individual. In the following essay the author discusses the perspective of Lorenzer's research in the fields of mother-child-relationship, of the child's learning of language, of work-relationships, and of religious and ideological attitudes. The research interest is directed on the complex mediation of familial and social interaction forms. The center of the analyses is the concept of the unconsciousness, which Lorenzer has developed in a close relation to Sigmund Freud." (author's abstract

Media transformation and new practices of citizenship: the example of environmental activism in South Durban

South African media and telecommunications have been fundamentally restructured in the last decade. Corporate unbundling and black economic empowerment have transformed the ownership of broadcasting, print media, publishing, and telecommunications; new radio and television services have been set up; the SABC has been restructured as an independent public service broadcaster; and a new independent regulatory authority for broadcasting and telecommunications has been established. However, a once vibrant alternative press, closely associated with the mass mobilisation against apartheid of the 1980s and 1990s, has suffered severe decline. New technologies, such as satellite television, the Internet, mobile telephony, and digital media have all rapidly established a foothold in South African communications markets. All of these processes have gone hand in hand with a re-scaling of South African media economies and media cultures. Inward foreign investment in South African media and communications industries has been matched by a 'continental drift' of South African capital into African media and communications markets (Barnett 1999b, Tomaselli and Dunn2001)