A processual account of social reality and its application to a corporate change case study

This research project started as an inquiry into the relationship between organisations and the ideas they assimilate. How do ideas get noticed, developed and implemented? Why do certain ideas appear and then disappear without lasting impact? The project was based on a conception of organisations and ideas that was ecological: organisations provide an environment in which ideas can grow, compete, achieve dominance, find a niche or simply fade away. This ecological metaphor began to surface critical problems that questioned its viability. After reviewing the notion of ideas, from Plato through Descartes, Locke, Lovejoy and Whitehead to Rogers, Czarniawska and Latour, the concept of ideas-as-things is seen as problematic, and a better way is proposed, conceiving of ideas as processes: as human-material interactions. This hypothesis repositions the inquiry towards conceiving of organisations as idea- and therefore process-complexes. If ideas are processes and organisations are processes then the distinction between the two becomes difficult to make. If the concept of ideas retains meaning it is as a perspective for interpreting process-complexes that focuses on the way processes develop from the imaginary towards the material. This leads to exploring the nature of the world-as-process. Our conception of reality appears to be framed within a substantive, as opposed to processual, world-view whereby the processes of perception, recognition and verbalisation constitute the means by which the underlying continuum of experience is translated into the discrete components of the world-of-things. It seems that we cannot intellectualise process without simultaneously alienating ourselves from it. How can we conceive of the world-as-process without obscuring it behind the world-of-things? Contemporary process theories can be divided into two broad groups: those that deal with process as specific phenomena within a substantive organisation (exogenous); and those that treat organisation-as-process (endogenous). Those theories in the former group avoid the problems of process altogether while those in the latter largely focus on discursive and intellectual processes, leaving the world of materiality as a secondary phenomenon. There is one field of study, however, where materiality is treated as a primary part of social processes: in Actor Network Theory. Here, however, materiality is granted equal status to human actors, de-centring the importance of human-material interactions. This thesis attempts to develop a novel position on process that centres on human-material interactions. It starts with a simple scheme that envisages social processes to be autonomous from but dependent upon biological processes, that are themselves autonomous from but dependent on underlying physical processes. By considering how each of these processes emerged from its predecessor it proposes a model of process genesis. This model is used to develop a speculative account of how social processes emerged from the biological, identifying the critical role of technology as autocatalytic and durable, and of language in providing variety to enable the social processes to develop autonomously from the biological. The resulting model is of a complex-conjugate process that integrates materiality with intellection. This model incorporates elements of existing process theories: processes of sensemaking and communication entwined around material processes involving technologies. Both technology and intellection provide potentiality that is actualised through the human body, creating further potentiality. Technology stores and mobilising potentiality while intellection provides creativity. Methodology remains problematic for processual research. It is intellectually-intensive and therefore constrained by the substantive nature of all description. A processual approach can limit the “thickness” of this descriptive layer and stay as close to the processual as possible. The author proposes a tool box of process-sympathetic methods, drawing on the discipline of archaeology for inspiration. Archaeologists place a primacy in materiality, being the only remaining component of the social processes they study. The processual archaeologist pieces together extinct processes from this materiality. This improvised methodology is explored through the medium of a case study concerning the fate and fortune of one particular idea within one particular organisations. The idea was Value Based Management and the organisation; a large international company in the late 1990's. This research project provides a tentative proposal for a processual model that could be useful in studying organisation. It suggests that whilst most “process studies” are carried out from a largely substantive world-view, and others are largely concerned with intellectual or discursive processes, there may be an approach that integrates the importance of the technological with the intellectual while remaining focused on central role of the human body. It is very much an unfinished project that requires development in many directions before its own potentiality can be properly tested

‘Performative refugeeness’: voice, recognition, and participation in creative mediation

This thesis is focused on the ways in which refugees express their voices in the context of participatory creative projects in the UK. Its major contribution is an expansion of theories of voice, through the possibilities voice presents in the context of such creative mediation. Through its engagement with refugee creative, mediated self-representations, the thesis reflects on and expands normative theorisations of voice, recognition and participation. While voice has been widely discussed within media and communications scholarship, refugees have remained marginal in many of the debates around the concept. But refugees both raise questions about the politics of self-representation and reveal the complex fluidity between what it means to have, and not have, voice. Refugees are ordinarily excluded from the mainstream; at the same time, they regularly initiate rights claims and bids for asylum, thus seeking democratic inclusion. Given the wholesale exclusion of refugee voices from normative publics, despite the normative democratic arguments against this, I argue that conceptualisations of voice in liberal democratic systems need to go beyond rational-critical definitions that are centred on the individual rights of citizens; further, that voice should be considered more widely as performative, relational, creative as well as a mediated expression of being and becoming a refugee. My argument is that opportunities to understand voices within and beyond the norms of liberal democratic participation—voices which are also messy, collective, or interrupted, for example—are worthy of consideration. This study will examine such voices by tracing different formations of refugee voices in publicness; that is, in and as processes of becoming public locally, regionally, and nationally. I argue that creative refugee mediation, an umbrella term encompassing all participatory creative practices within institutional community spaces, is a possible outlet or promise for refugee voice—through what I refer to as ‘performative refugeeness’. Using a multimethod approach of participant observation and participatory creative mediation workshops with refugee communities at two sites in the UK—Cardiff in Wales and Tyneside in North East England—I explore the facilitation and regulation of refugee voice, recognition and participation across different forms of publicness through such creative mediation processes

The surface of Mars 4. South polar cap

The south polar cap of Mars occupies a region of cratered terrain. Immediately outside the shrinking cap craters appear no more modified than those in areas farther north that are not annually frost covered. Craters showing through the frost mantle are locally as abundant as elsewhere on Mars. Only in a central region close to the pole are craters sparse. Both far- and near-encounter views reveal a highly irregular pole-cap edge. Photos of the same sector taken six days apart are near duplicates, suggesting that the irregularity is primarily ground controlled. No evidence of the classical polar collar is seen. Within the marginal zone, frost is preserved largely in crater bottoms and on slopes inclined away from the sun. Preferential retention in low spots supports the earlier suggestion that the Mountains of Mitchel may actually be depressions. An argument based on insolation as the prime factor in frost wastage and the narrow width of the marginal zone suggests that slopes of topographic features therein are mostly gentle, on the order of a few degrees. The frost cover of the pole-cap interior may range widely in thickness, obscuring parts of some craters and seemingly enhancing topographic visibility elsewhere, possibly through variations in thickness and reflectivity. Unusually bright areas on the cap surface, and differences in luminance between bright rims and the more somber floors of craters and other depressions, may be due in large part to differences in related frost textures and to the local history of evaporation and sublimation. Irregularly angular depressions within the polecap frost termed ‘etch pits’ may be the product of differential ablation or the undermining by wind of a slabby surficial crust. Encircling the south pole is a region of subdued relief with a paucity of craters, which displays enigmatic quasi-linear markings believed to be ground features. Although no satisfactory explanation of these markings has been formulated, it seems likely that this region has been occupied repeatedly by perennial masses of CO_2 ice, formed and maintained during those phases of the martian precessional cycle that resulted in short cool summers in the southern hemisphere. Such ice masses may play a role in producing the unusual features of the central polar region. Physical relationships suggest a local maximum frost thickness as great as tens of meters. The possibility should be kept in mind that remnants of perennial CO_2 ice of still greater thickness may exist locally, for example, in the ‘etch pit’ area

The surface of Mars 1. Cratered terrains

Mariner 6 and 7 pictures show that craters are the dominant landform on Mars and that their occurrence is not correlated uniquely with latitude, elevation, or albedo markings. Two distinct morphological classes are recognized: small bowl-shaped and large flat-bottomed. The former show little evidence of modifications, whereas the latter appear generally more modified than lunar upland craters of comparable size. A regional maria/uplands dichotomy like the moon has not yet been recognized on Mars. Crater modification on Mars has involved much greater horizontal redistribution of material than in the lunar uplands. It is possible that there are erosional processes only infrequently active. Analysis of the natures and fluxes of bodies that have probably impacted the moon and Mars leads to the likelihood that most of the large flat-bottomed craters on Mars have survived from the final phases of planetary accretion. Significant crater modification, however, has taken place more recently on Mars. Inasmuch as the present small bowl-shaped craters evidence little modification, the postaccretion crater-modification process on Mars may have been primarily episodic rather than continuous. The size-frequency distribution of impacting bodies that produced the present small Martian bowl-shaped craters differs from that responsible for post-mare primary impacts on the moon by a marked deficiency of large bodies. Survival of crater topography from the end of planetary accretion would make any hypothetical earthlike phase with primitive oceans there unlikely. The traditional view of Mars as an earthlike planetary neighbor in terms of its surface history is not supported by the picture data

The surface of Mars 2. Uncratered terrains

Mariner 6 and 7 photographs reveal two types of uncratered terrain on Mars. These are descriptively termed chaotic and featureless. Chaotic terrain is younger than cratered terrain and displays features strongly suggestive of slump and collapse. The speculation is offered that it may be an expression of geothermal developments within Mars that only recently have begun to affect the surface. Featureless terrain, identified only within the large circular area Hellas, is devoid of any discernible topographic forms larger than the limit of resolution, about 500 meters. Manner 7 data indicate that Hellas is a topographically low and structurally old basin. Smoothness of its floor could be the product of a recent event or of continuous processes that obliterate craters. Local processes of high efficacy, unusual surface materials, or both, are probably involved. Through its chaotic terrain the martian surface displays a development that does not seem to be recorded, at least in the form of preserved recognizable evidence, on the moon or earth

Infrared Remote Sensing Using Low Noise Avalanche Photodiode Detector

For a remote sensing optical payload to achieve a Ground Sampling Distance of ~ 10-30 m, a critical problem is platform-induced motion blur. While forward motion compensation can reduce this transit speed, it comes at the expense of a more challenging satellite attitude control system and induces a variable observation/illumination angle. This relative motion can be frozen out by simply reading the sensor system at a frame rate that matches the ground resolution element's pixel crossing time. To achieve high resolution using this Time-Delay Integration (TDI)-like approach requires high speed and hence near "zero" readout noise detector arrays to avoid swamping the observed signal. This requires associated control electronics for fast frame readout and direct interface with smart- Artificial Intelligence (AI) onboard processing. With this technique, the platform freezes out its movement concerning the ground, reducing the demands placed on the attitude control systems, which can otherwise be difficult to implement on a small satellite platform. Here we report the Australian National University's OzFuel mission which applies this technical solution to deliver high ground resolution via high frame rate imaging. OzFuel is built around the Leonardo SAPHIRA Mercury Cadmium Telluride linear mode electron avalanche photodiode (LMeAPD) detector and the in-house developed Rosella electronics control system. The mission will deliver an integrated sensor system in a suite of Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) passbands dedicated to monitoring the flammability of Eucalypt trees. The OzFuel mission concept focuses on the application of SWIR remote sensing data to deliver a strategic evaluation of fuel loads and moisture content in the bushfire-prone Australian environment.Comment: 73rd International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Paris, France, September 202

The surface of Mars 3. Light and dark markings

The Mariner 6 and 7 pictures have provided significant clues to the nature of the light and dark markings on Mars, but do not yet provide an adequate foundation for any complete explanation of the phenomena. They display detail never before seen or photographed and demonstrate that there is no network of dark lines (i.e. canals) on the planet. A variety of shapes and of boundaries between major markings are recorded in the pictures. No substantial correlation of albedo markings with cratered or chaotic terrain has been recognized; featureless terrain conceivably may be genetically related to light areas. Within and surrounding the dark area Meridiani Sinus there is evidence of local topographic control of albedo markings; light material is found in locally low areas. Also, characteristic patterns of local albedo markings are exhibited by craters there. Aeolian transportation of light material with deposition locally in low areas is suggested as an explanation of these markings and may be useful as a working hypothesis for subsequent exploration. Across some light/dark boundaries crater morphologies are unchanged; across others craters in the light area appear smoother. If there is a relationship between cratered terrain modification and surface albedo it is an indirect one

Intensity-dependent thresholding and switching in the photorefractive bridge mutually pumped phase conjugator

Beam-intensity-ratio-dependent effects have previously been observed in several photorefractive mixing configurations. Here we report the observation of total input-intensity-dependent effects in the bridge mutually pumped phase conjugator, which results in optical thresholding and switching behavior. The cause of these effects is attributed to competition between bridge conjugation and self-pumped phase conjugation that results from different exponents in their measured intensity-dependent response times (10-90%), namely, τbridge is proportional to I-0.79 and τSPPC is proportional to I-0.38