Cultural change

Following the Herds: Rhythms of Tibetan Pastoral Life in A mdo is an ethnographic exploration of traditional ecological knowledge in a Tibetan pastoralist community. This editorial introduction explains how and why the book came about, and how I worked together with the author, Chos bstan rgyal, to produce the book. For those interested in  seeing the final product, the open access book can be downloaded here: http://plateauculture.org/writing/following-herds-rhythms-tibetan-pastoral-life-mdo. 

Abstract:
Organizational change involves the modifying of present conditions and behaviors to bring about change. This change forces the organization to be adaptive and be flexible to the demands of organizational clientele (Rothwell, Sullivan & McLean, 1995). Additionally, the major objective of the change process is to improve the overall environment or behaviors (Powell, 2002). This paper explores six change models developed by well-known theorists that are applicable for implementing change within organizational structures. These models address three basic change approaches: Developmental, Transitional, and Transformational, with a comparative analysis of each model.

This paper aims at reviewing the content of Buen vivir as an emergent discourse within the “gravitational field” of sustainable development: its genesis, its foundations and its singularity. First, we consider the criticisms to the development discourse and to its direct descendant: sustainable development. Next, we review the position of Latin America in the global discursive field of sustainable development and the situation of Buen vivir facing the debates therein. Drawing on the traditional repository of the aboriginal cultures of the continent, this new discourse has been theorized in the academic sphere and translated into normative principles that have permeated the political sphere, which is especially visible in the cases of Ecuador and Bolivia. In this article we refer to “Buen vivir” as the contemporary reelaboration of the quechua concept Sumak Kawsay, and other similar concepts from other indigenous nations. It includes both the idea of interdependence between society and its natural environment, as well as a conception of the universal as plural. Lastly, beyond its implications for environmental debate, Buen vivir also involves an imperative for the redefinition of relations between the citizenry, the state and the market.

What is Buen vivir, why is it interesting, and what makes it relevant beyond its birth-land in the Andean-Amazonian region of the Americas? Is it aything new at all, or is it just a rehashed and overrated discourse? What prospects are there for Buen vivir as the organizing principle of a cultural model for global sustainability? In the limited space of the article that follows, we intend to explore these and similar questions around an idea that has unexpectedly popped-up in global academic and political debates in recent years.

The article introduces this special issue on tourism and transformation. After offering a brief review of the place and significance of ‘transformation’ in social sciences studies of tourism – from ‘impact studies’ to ethnographies of tourists and, more recently, ‘tourist media studies’ – we propose to take one step further and focus our attention on the performativity and reflexivity of ‘transformation’. Our main argument is that much may be gained analytically by considering how notions and experiences of transformation are addressed, negotiated and purposefully deployed in tourism contexts. We conclude with an outline of each of the contributions to this special issue, stressing that the collection re-opens the issue of transformation in tourism and provides new insights into how experiences-turned-metaphors and metaphors-turned-experiences influence both the travel experience and the development of theory.

Material Connections eschews outdated theory, tainted by colonialist attitudes, and develops a new cultural and historical understanding of how factors such as mobility, materiality, conflict and co-presence impacted on the formation of identity in the ancient Mediterranean. Fighting against ‘hyper-specialisation’ within the subject area, it explores the multiple ways that material culture was used to establish, maintain and alter identities, especially during periods of transition, culture encounter and change. A new perspective is adopted, one that perceives the use of material culture by prehistoric and historic Mediterranean peoples in formulating and changing their identities. It considers how objects and social identities are entangled in various cultural encounters and interconnections.

The movement of people as well as objects has always stood at the heart of attempts to understand the courses and process of human history. The Mediterranean offers a wealth of such information and Material Connections, expanding on this base, offers a dynamic, new subject of enquiry – the social identify of prehistoric and historic Mediterranean people – and considers how migration, colonial encounters, and connectivity or insularity influence social identities. The volume includes a series of innovative, closely related case studies that examine the contacts amongst various Mediterranean islands – Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, the Balearics – and the nearby shores of Italy, Greece, North Africa, Spain and the Levant to explore the social and cultural impact of migratory, colonial and exchange encounters. Material Connections forges a new path in understanding the material culture of the Mediterranean and will be essential for those wishing to develop their understanding of material culture and identity in the Mediterranean.

Contents
1. Material connections: mobility, materiality and Mediterranean identities A. Bernard Knapp and Peter van Dommelen
2.Classifying an oxymoron. On black boxes, materiality and identity in the scientific representation of the Mediterranean Carlos Cañete
3.Reproducing difference: mimesis and colonialism in Roman Hispania Alicia Jiménez
4.From colonisation to habitation: early cultural adaptations in the Balearic Bronze Age Damià Ramis
5.Social identities, materiality and connectivity in Early Bronze Age Crete Marina Gkiasta
6.Foreign materials, islander mobility and elite identity in Late Bronze Age Sardinia Anthony Russell
7.Negotiating island interactions: Cyprus, the Aegean and the Levant in the Late Bronze to Early Iron Ages Sarah Janes
8.Entangled identities on Iron Age Sardinia? Jeremy Hayne
9.Iron, connectivity and local identities in the Iron Age to Classical Mediterranean Maria Kostoglou
10.Mobility, materiality and identities in Iron Age east Iberia: on the appropriation of material culture and the question of judgement Jaime Vives-Ferrándiz
11.Trading settlements and the materiality of wine consumption in the north Tyrrhenian Sea region Corinna Riva
12. Concluding thoughts Michael Rowlands