Mapping the public sector diaspora: towards a model of inter-sectoral cultural hybridity using evidence from the English healthcare reforms

Public service reforms increasingly blur the boundaries between public and private sectors, involving hybrid modes of service organization. With growing numbers of public services being transferred to private or mutual ownership, the article interprets reform as a public sector diaspora. Drawing upon the diaspora studies literature, the article proposes a model of hybridization that centres on the possibilities for cultural dislocation, adaptation, and hybridity. Focusing on reforms within the English National Health Service, the article presents an ethnographic study of the transfer or diaspora of doctors, nurses, clinical practitioners, and healthcare assistants from a public hospital to a private healthcare provider, exploring their experiences of migration, resettlement, and cultural hybridity. The model addresses a conceptual gap within the public policy and management literature by elaborating the antecedents, processes, and forms of cultural hybridization

‘The uses of ethnography in the science of cultural evolution’. Commentary on Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A. and K. Laland ‘Toward a unified science of cultural evolution’

There is considerable scope for developing a more explicit role for ethnography within the research program proposed in the article. Ethnographic studies of cultural micro-evolution would complement experimental approaches by providing insights into the “natural” settings in which cultural behaviours occur. Ethnography can also contribute to the study of cultural macro-evolution by shedding light on the conditions that generate and maintain cultural lineages

Accommodating migration to promote adaptation to climate change

This paper explains how climate change may increase future migration, and which risks are associated with such migration. It also examines how some of this migration may enhance the capacity of communities to adapt to climate change. Climate change is likely to result in some increase above baseline rates of migration in the next 40 years. Most of this migration will occur within developing countries. There is little reason to think that such migration will increase the risk of violent conflict. Not all movements in response to climate change will have negative outcomes for the people that move, or the places they come from and go to. Migration, a proven development strategy, can increase the capacity of communities to adapt to climate change. The fewer choices people have about moving, however, the less likely it is that the outcomes of that movement will be positive. Involuntary resettlement should be a last resort. Many of the most dire risks arising from climate-motivated migration can be avoided through careful policy. Policy responses to minimize the risks associated with migration in response to climate change, and to maximize migration’s contribution to adaptive capacity include: ensuring that migrants have the same rights and opportunities as host communities; reducing the costs of moving money and people between areas of origin and destination; facilitating mutual understanding among migrants and host communities; clarifying property rights where they are contested; ensuring that efforts to assist migrants include host communities; and strengthening regional and international emergency response systems.Population Policies,Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Climate Change Economics,Voluntary and Involuntary Resettlement

The Naturalisation of Architecture

Sustainability is gaining a firm presence within the discipline of architecture in spite of the number of obstacles with which it has been challenged: either confronting detractors, sceptics, and the discredit resulting from the abusive use of the term as a marketing tactic, or dealing with the actual practicalities inherent to its implementation. This heightened environmental consciousness increasingly engrained within the profession is solidly supported by a growing social, political and media interest, which has impelled new regulations and the involvement of new experts like physicists, engineers, and ecologists in the design process. This phenomenon is transforming architectural practice and design techniques, moving the focus from a mechanical perspective of architecture (tectonics, construction, materiality, structure) to a biotechnical approach which attempts to equip the architect with instruments to regard buildings as living structures permanently exchanging energy with their environment. Using the environment as a creative generator for design has prompted the emergence of new aesthetic models in current architectural design. The access to new tools, together with new concerns and ways of thinking, have opened new lines of intervention that seem to affect the profession in a more fundamental way. The focus of this paper is to provide an account of these cultural constructs as experimental aesthetic systems, with the intention of not only clarifying their principles and objectives, but also reflecting on the design techniques associated to them. Ultimately, this paper provides a reflection on the role of aesthetics in sustainable design, and on the critical question: is sustainability finally becoming an intrinsic part of architecture

Agency and Organisation: The Dialectics of Nature and Life

In recent decades, there have been major theoretical changes within evolutionary biology. In this dissertation, I critically reconstruct these developments through philosophy to assess how it may inform these debates. The overall aim is to show the mutual relevance between current trends in biology and the dialectical approach to nature. I argue that the repetition of the neglected tradition of organicism is anticipated both by a dialectical tradition within science and by Hegel’s philosophy – and that these theories may together inform the ongoing shift within evolutionary biology called the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). I stage the discussion by outlining the tenets and history of the modern synthesis (MS) and the alternative: the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). It takes us into topics such as autonomy, organisation, reduction, and autopoiesis. Based on these discussions, I make the case that the most promising alternative to the MS is the so-called organisational approach formulated within theoretical biology and apply dialectics to strengthen this claim. In my view, they share a fundamental premise: Biology must surpass the physical worldview and adopt a more complex model to comprehend life as an ongoing regeneration of organisation and an expression of self-determination. To bring out the philosophical stakes of this shift, I take on Hegel’s writings on nature, life, and purposiveness and relate them to contemporary thinkers. The main contribution of this work lies not in a particularly novel reading of any of the theories I examine but in bringing them together – both within philosophy and biology and between them – and systematically mapping how philosophy and the humanities should deal with the natural sciences. The new kind of naturalism suggested here, which places life at its core, also calls for another scientific ideal which strives for unification without subsumption or eradication of differences

An holistic approach to architectural theory and structuralism

The author's interest in this subject emerges from seeing the environment as a whole, consisting of entities which are systems for transformation and which are responsible for the evolution of society.The approach comes from the mutual interaction of man and the environment. This interaction is expressed in many cases by building concepts, rules and theories. Architecture is considered one of the obvious means of this type of interaction by which man, over time, tried to clarify this interaction by building his shelter to accommodate his different life activities. This led to the creation and establishment of rules, constraints, and then theories in architecture that control this interaction.Architecture cannot be seen as a synchronic phenomenon but it is diachronic and in a continous evolution and development. There is a distinction between what one can see in the environment as surface structure and the embedded meaning and symbolism of deep structure. In order to analyse this distinction, the research adopts structuralism as an holistic tool to address this relationship within the environment.For this reason, architectural theories and structuralism are the two pillars to build and test the statement of the study that leads to the provision of an holistic approach to architectural theory based on structuralism.The study takes an empirical approach to test and confirm the holistic approach, hence, it adopts a methodology to analyse and interpret the case study entities. This methodology follows two main approaches to fulfil these objectives:Deductive: A theoretical investigation of the ideas of the interaction between man and the environment which leads to emphasising environmental entities as systems for transformation. This premise leads to the ji adoption of structuralism as an holistic method and as a tool for the better understanding and analysis of these entities.nductive: An empirical approach takes Salt city in Jordan as a case study area. This part represents a real field of information and application. The empirical work supports the propositions that architectural phenomena are an embodiment of cultural values and the social structure. The empirical work collected and elicited people's opinions and preferences through an open -ended questionnaire and drawings of cognitive maps.This study helps architects and designers to understand and then analyse the deep structure of the society as a base to design, after taking into consideration the mechanism that connects the surface structure to the underlying cultural values and meanings that are responding to people's needs and requirements. This may be achieved in architecture and urban planning through holistic thinking that is based on structuralism

Youth Solutions Report - First Edition

This first edition of the Youth Solutions Report bears the fruits of a year-long process in which the Sustainable Development Solutions Network - Youth (SDSN Youth) and its partners sourced youthled solutions across all countries and regions to showcase the innovative approach that young people are taking in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Report builds upon one of three key pillars of the activity of SDSN Youth, which mandates an operational focus on "supporting young people in the creation and scaling of innovative solutions for the SDGs".The yearly Youth Solutions Report is envisaged as the first step in a long-term process through which SDSN Youth, in collaboration with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) at large, will aim at directly supporting youth-led projects through funding, expertise, and visibility. In this context, the dissemination and exploitation strategies which will characterize the follow-up to its release will be as important as the Report itself, and will be carried out at the international, national, and local level through a series of online and offline activities including conferences and events, webinars, a dedicated investment readiness programme, and a platform for investors and supporters.SDSN Youth remains committed to working with partners at all relevant levels, including UN agencies, governments, universities, NGOs and the private sector to overcome the challenges that youth are facing in developing their solutions, establishing young people not only as a key demographics in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, but also as a main contributor to its success

Who Learns What? A Conceptual Description of Capability and Learning in Technological Systems

In terms both of individual units and of groups or organizations, the evolution of technological systems has structural similarities to the evolution of biological systems. This paper thus makes use of Bonner's description of biological development: the law of growth of the constructive processes, the internal and external constraints on this growth, the resulting changes of form, differentiation, specialization of function, and increased complexity are all features common to developments in the biological and technological fields. Examples from several industries illustrate technological developments. The pursuit of economies of scale exemplifies the parallelism with biological development. The evolution of technological capability is seen as a learning process in which information is acquired, stored, and transmitted. Information can be stored in people, stored on paper (or its equivalent), or embodied in physical plant. These specifically human capabilities differentiate learning in technological fields from biological evolution by natural selection and open up more rapid and efficient means of information or technology transfer; in fact, the shift is from Darwinian to Lamarckian evolution. However, theoretical knowledge is important only when translated into practice, and learning itself originates in and depends on practice: there are limits to the effective "storability" of know-how, and similarly to its transmission. A distinction is drawn between "primary" (direct) and "secondary" (derivative, indirectly transmitted) learning. The terms introduced underlie the phenomenon known as cumulative experience, manifest in the "learning curve." Learning, however, is a multilevel process, and levels are described as a basis for distinguishing the type of learning or information transfer characteristic of each level, answering the question "Who learns what?" The intrinsically discrete nature of the learning process -- a step-function rather than a curve -- is illustrated by Waddington's data on aircraft-submarine attack performance. An organization's capability is described in terms of a network of capabilities. The final section discusses policy implications of the conceptual framework developed in the report