Past and future adaptation pathways

Adaptation pathways are increasingly being used as a foresight tool to help guide the implementation of climate change adaptation and deliberate transformation. This paper applies a pathways lens as a hindsight tool to provide new understanding about past change and adaptation relevant for improving future adaptation pathways approaches. Four case studies of past adaptations to change are examined: Solomon Islands Communities, Canadian forest-dependent communities, a Transylvanian village, and responses to climate adaptation policies in Australia. The results highlight that responses to change in these diverse case studies involve complex transitions that gradually create new conditions and trajectories; manifest as multiple but inter-related pathways of change and response at different social or spatial scales (e.g. different paths for different households or communities); have legacies and continuities across time that affect future pathways of change; are affected by power in complex ways; and can create further change and need for adaptation. Analyses also highlight that when working with prospective adaptation approaches as a response to climate change there is a need to consider: (1) underlying assumptions, values and principles associated with the future; (2) the existence of inter-connected multiple pathways and their implications for reinforcing existing social inequalities; and (3) how understanding past change provides inspiration for new and transformative futures. Overall, the paper concludes that shifts towards analyses for change rather than simply about change, such as adaptation pathways, will require more careful consideration of underlying ontological assumptions about the relationships between past, present and future

Epistemic and methodological aspects of network analysis

In this article I present a synthesis of some fundamental works in the field of social networks and try to highlight key concepts, propositions and methodological elements that make up the foundation of this approach to social realities. In the first part I present the main propositions of the relational paradigm as a distinct paradigm in sociology. In the second part I show which were the first attempts to study the society in relational terms. The last part of the paper highlights the operational concepts most frequently used in social network analysis. The main reason for writing this article comes from poor use of this approach in the Romanian sociology

Using the story-telling technique in the qualitative research of national identity

This paper contains the main results of a qualitative research onRomanians national identity. The research proposes a new approach to the national identity based on two methodological elements: the patriotic songs as a stimulus for reflection on national identity and the presentation of data in the form of story-telling. The theoretical background integrates the social identity theory and the theory of social representations. The main conclusionof the research is that Romanians have nowadays a negative social identity in relation with their own country and the political class is seen as the main culprit for the country’s bad situation