328 research outputs found
Rhetorical Analysis: George Wallace
First-place winner in the Short Essay category of the 2019 Emerging Writers Contest. This essay is a rhetorical analysis of George Wallace\u27s speech Segregation Today, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever
Newspaper Coverage of the Woman\u27s Suffrage Movement in South Dakota at the Time of Statehood
This thesis will examine coverage by selected newspapers of the first and last campaign to secure the vote for women in South Dakota -- 1989-1890 and 1917-1918
The next wave of sustainability transitions: Elucidating and invigorating transformations in the welfare state
Transforming universities:Mobilizing research and education for sustainability transitions at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The dominant model of universities, especially in the social sciences, is often based upon academic disciplines, objectivity, and a linear knowledge-transfer model. It facilitates competition between academics, educating students for specific professions from an objective, descriptive, and neutral position. This paper argues that this institutional model of universities is inadequate to contribute effectively to societal transitions towards just and sustainable futures. Taking the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), the Netherlands, as an example, this paper illustrates the problems with the dominant (twentieth century) model of universities in the social sciences and explores what strategies universities can develop to transform. It introduces the notions of transformative research and transformative education: transdisciplinary, collaborative, and action-oriented academic work that explicitly aims to support societal transitions. It presents the design impact transition (DIT) platform as an ‘institutional experiment’ at the EUR and a concerted and strategic effort that lays bare current lock-ins of the dominant university model and the kind of institutional work needed to transform universities.</p
Monitoring on-going vision development in system change programmes
Visions are considered to be of vital importance for programmes aimed at sustainable systems change. Vision development is a programme management instrument, a programme output, and at the heart of programme learning processes. This article addresses the question what constitutes an appropriate monitoring strategy for vision development activities within system change programmes. Based on action research and literature review on monitoring, evaluation and vision development a monitoring framework is proposed. It is suggested to monitor the programme vision against project visions, societal visions and a set of basic criteria. The monitoring activities themselves are context-sensitive and frequently renegotiated between monitors, programme managers and other stakeholders. The framework is illustrated with a national systems change programme on sustainable agriculture in the Netherlands. </jats:p
Introduction::Action Research, Policy and Politics
The underpinning rationale of this special issue is that the societal challenges we are facing require fundamental, long-term societal transformations that need to be co-produced by all relevant stakeholders
Pluralising the European energy landscape: Collective renewable energy prosumers and the EU's clean energy vision
To fulfil the European Union's (EU) goal of providing ‘Clean Energy for All Europeans', a transformative shift from centralised, fossil-fuel based systems to decentralised systems based on renewable energy sources (RES) is envisaged. Keen to lead the clean energy transition while embedding technological innovation and elements of justice and equitability into the envisioned ‘Energy Union’, EU Member States need their citizens on board as active participants. Prosumerism or self-consumption is an important part of this citizen involvement. While the new EU regulatory framework for energy now recognises civic-inspired prosumer initiatives such as energy communities, little is known about the full range and diversity of collective actors in renewable energy self-consumption as well as how they engage with the changing energy system. This paper presents an exploratory categorisation of the different collective social actors that produce and consume energy from renewable sources, referred to as ‘collective RES prosumers’, aiming to clarify their participation in the energy landscape. We find six categories with different engagement and needs, which we relate to the EU's current framing of collective energy actors. We recommend fine-tuning policies to the different actors to support a true-to-vision transposition of the recently completed Clean Energy Package (CEP).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Detecting Social Innovation agency:Methodological reflections on units of analysis in dispersed transformation processes
Considering that it is important for the social innovation research field to confront its methodological challenges, this contribution addresses the challenge of choosing appropriate units of analysis. In processes of transformative social innovation, the agency is distributed and therefore fundamentally difficult to detect and ascribe. This contribution addresses the challenge to develop methodologies that are consistent with this relational ontology, critically evaluating the three main unit of analysis choices that guided an international comparison of 20 transnational SI networks and their local manifestations. Methodological lessons are drawn on the actors that SI can be ascribed to, on the transnational agency through which it spreads and on the relevant transformation contexts involved. This provides SI research with methodological tools to handle the elusiveness of SI agency, a methodological challenge that becomes particularly pressing in attempts towards systematic comparison of cases.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe
Transition Management, Action Research and Actor Roles: Understanding local sustainability transitions
This thesis is about the local scale of urban neighbourhoods, towns and cities and its interaction with global problems and sustainability questions. At this scale, we most notably interact with these problems and thereby question current role understandings, actor relations and activities that come with them. One of these role understandings is that of the researcher: what are suitable approaches and methods for studying and supporting sustainability transitions at that local scale. Set in the context of a Dutch neighbourhood (Rotterdam-Carnisse) and the issues it is facing as well as based on transition thinking and inspired by action-oriented research, this thesis addresses the following question: __How can we increase our understanding of sustainability transitions and their governance at the local scale, the changing role of actors therein, and in particular, the role of research and researchers?__.
The main contributions can be summarized as follows:
1) It contributes to sustainability transition research by clarifying the concept of actor roles in local sustainability transitions;
2) It contextualise transition management as a governance approach for the local context as well as for addressing socio-economic dynamics, and
3) contributes to the development of action-oriented and transformative research approaches in sustainability transition research
Contributing to sustainable and just energy systems? The mainstreaming of renewable energy prosumerism within and across institutional logics
Renewable energy (RE) prosumerism comes with promises and expectations of contributing to sustainable and
just energy systems. In its current process of becoming mainstream, numerous challenges and doubts have arisen whether it will live up to these. Building on insights from sustainability transitions research and institutional
theory, this article unpacks the mainstreaming by considering the range of institutional arrangements and logics through which these contributions might be secured. Taking a Multi-actor Perspective, it analyses the differences, combinations, and tensions between institutional logics, associated actor roles and power relations.
Firstly, it unpacks how mainstreaming occurs through mechanisms of bureaucratisation and standardisation
(state logic), marketisation and commodification (market logic), as well as socialisation and communalisation
(community logic). Secondly, it highlights the concomitant hybridisation of institutional logics and actor roles.
Such hybrid institutional arrangements try to reconcile not only the more known trade-offs and tensions between for-profit/non-profit logics (regarding the distribution of benefits for energy activities and resources), but also between formal/informal logics (gaining recognition) and public/private logics (delineating access). This institutional concreteness moves the scholarly discussion and policy debate beyond idealistic discussions of ethical principles and abstract discussions about power: Simplistic framings of ‘prosumerism vs incumbents’ are dropped in favour of a critical discussion of hybrid institutional arrangements and their capacity to safeguard particular transformative ideals and normative commitments.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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