Social Change

This paper documents the initial process by which a San Diego middle
school, located in a low-income and predominantly Hispanic neighborhood and repeatedly failing to meet No Child Left Behind provisions, restructured into an academically rigorous, detracked charter school. The discussion of the political experience and working relationships between the charter organizers, the school district, and its superintendent illustrate the often contentious process of community mobilization and deliberation. The involvement of faculty from the University of California San Diego and community groups as contributing partners enhances our understanding of the creation of educational reforms or the transformation of passion into practice.

A humanist living amidst economic injustice, violence, discrimination, and oppression is in a situation ripe for transgression.  Whether hegemonic forces are advancing profits, national security, God’s word, self, or a combination of all of the above, those whose guiding vision is to realize equality and who are, therefore, deeply concerned about the fate of all others, are likely to be challenged, incessantly, to transgress that society’s social norms and laws.  In such a situation, I contend, humanists chose to assume an ever-vigilant transgressive posture given their sense of the omnipresent necessity to resist infusions of inhumane hegemonic forces into every cell of social life.  In exploring the nature of such an aptitude and how it evolves, this essay aims to advance development of a grounded theory of transgression by illuminating aspects of the ontology of transgression in everyday life.  Explorations of this larger project are presented through analysis of four autobiographical nano discourse exchanges that contributed to the maturing of the author’s transgressive posture when living as an engaged humanist academic-activist in Israel-Palestine (1983-2008; n. b., this presentation deals only with the early stages of the author’s academic career there).

In investigating museum interventions into climate change debates, I seek to provide a challenge to both museum practitioners and those who write about them. The research proceeded by way of an imaginative encounter between selected displays, strands of contemporary cultural theory and the experience and body of the researcher. This is figuratively evoked in the preface as ‘chasing Deleuze through the museum.’ This post-representationalist perspective provides the basis for an intervention in the new museology literature from an emphasis on museums as a site of regulation and authority towards a focus on their productive possibilities. The concern with affect in the humanities informs the investigation of how cultural displays represent change and imagine potential futures, and how they are implicated in such processes. Affect, here is a marker for approaches which take seriously the agency of spaces, times, contexts and objects. This perspective provides an understanding that museums exhibit (therefore shape) visions of the future and are inhibited (hence shaped) by processes of exhibiting change. Such an understanding is in opposition to accounts in the new museology literature which see change as something that is yet to come, or solely in the form of radical change.
Visions of the future are produced by often implicit models of change, which are explored through four case studies of recent displays in museums and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. The case studies draw out the complex interplay of the visible and invisible in the ‘thrown-together’ materiality of exhibition space. Close attention to the visual space of The Melbourne Story exhibition at the Melbourne Museum provides a way of intervening in the celebratory narratives in this exhibition structured by a linear chronology. Against agendas in museum planning and curatorial practice which seeks to transmit key messages, this analysis suggests a more productive engagement and consists of working through the inherently contradictory and not necessarily consistent figural space of museums. In contrast to a triumphant approach to change in that social history display, equally common discourses of change as threatening are explored in an analysis of displays in Surviving Australia at The Australian Museum and The Urban Planet Pavilion at the World Expo. In contrast to popular understandings which might try to separate science and affect the analysis of Surviving Australia explores the important role of affect both to the communication of science and to its interpretation. The specific form of curiosity promoted by this exhibition is one of (scientific) discovery which suggests an unveiling of an already existing world rather than opening up different possibilities from which to respond to such menacing change. A community arts project of crocheted coral reef displayed at the Powerhouse Museum, as well as the Coca-Cola and U.K. displays at the Shanghai Expo offer a more imaginative approach to change, as a non-teleological, non-linear process not reliant on first producing an accurate representation of the present. By providing multi-sensory experiences that enable a variety of emotions, museums and displays can promote the drive towards understanding (not as some fixed end point, but an always moving and evolving relation to issues). In this way museums may contribute to the forming of society and in doing so provide a space in which logic, rationality and quality information can be put to good use.
In exploring different forms of representation and their consequences for understanding change the thesis aims to provide responses to the displays that might provoke, disrupt and propel museum thinking, practices and work.

This chapter uses the Sydney production and exhibition of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef (HCCR) to discuss the agency of objects in social change. The Sydney Reef is considered primarily as an aesthetic figuration, of which two aspects of this form of figuration are examined. An aesthetic interpretation highlights the inventiveness of figures as they reconfigure and combine forces in new and different ways. This has important implications for the conceptualization of change. Critical responses have compared the HCCR to the AIDS Quilt for global warming. This provides an invitation to consider the HCCR through a queer lens and link it with recent discussions in queer theory around temporality to further clarify different approaches to social transformation.

Celem książki Adama Mrozowickiego jest pokazanie robotników jako aktywnych aktorów zarówno w czasie transformacji ustrojowej po 1989 roku, jak i zachodzących w jej konsekwencji przemian społecznych. Mrozowickiemu nie odpowiadają narracje dominujące w socjologicznym myśleniu o klasie robotniczej po socjalizmie. Krytycznie odnosi się do teoretyków konwergencji (takich jak Piotr Sztompka czy Henryk Domański), widzących w mentalności i samej egzystencji robotników przeszkodę na drodze do mitycznego „zjednoczenia z Zachodem”. Zachowuje również dystans wobec protekcjonalnego podejścia traktującego robotników jako „wielkich przegranych” transformacji ustrojowej (Leszek Gilejko, Kazimierz Słomczyński) oraz tezy, że dali się oni zmanipulować przez elity (David Ost). W centrum uwagi stawia same jednostki, nie związki zawodowe (w przeciwieństwie do Juliusza Gardawskiego). Znacznie bliżej mu do nurtu „new labor studies”, w którym kładzie się nacisk na sprawczość pracowników, ich refleksyjność oraz na złożone związki między codzienną praktyką jednostek a reprodukcją i zmianą systemów społeczno-gospodarczych.

Narrative media possess the power to influence audience attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour. This influence can and does manifest itself in both positive and negative ways. Identifying reliable pathways to influence and exploiting these for altruistic ends is a potentially high impact health intervention. This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on models of mass communication, considers the role of narrative media in movements of positive social change, and applies ethical considerations to the production and value of narrative media. It argues that while most concerns with the impacts of narrative media are sensationalized, of much greater concern should be the possibility that this content possesses the potential to do more good than many of us imagine. This oversight is largely due to the fallibility of common sense paradigms of moral and artistic value not rooted in cognitive science or moral philosophy.

واژگان خردگرایی یا تعقل ابزاری و خردگرایی یا تعقل جوهری در علم مدیریت واجد اهمیت بسیاری‌ هستند، زیرا این دو واژه به ‌عنوان محور بنای اصلی درنظریه‌های مدیریت نقش عمده‌ای را ایفا می‌کنند. دراعصارکهن«منطق عقلی» به قوهء دراکه و شعور فرد اطلاق می‌شد که او را قادر می‌ساخت تا میان خوب و بد، صحت و سقم ، درست و خطا، تمیز قائل شود و به ‌زندگی فردی و اجتماعی خود انتظام بخشد. همچنین‌ “منطق عقلی‌” در فرد به ‌عنوان واقعیت مستقلی در نظر گرفته می‌شد که قابل تحویل به پدیده‌ای اجتماعی یا تاریخی نبود. در آن زمان خردگرایی دارای جنبه اخلاقی ‌بود و ماورای ضرورت های مادی بیعتی با معیارهای ارزشی ‌داشت. این نوع خردگرایی همان است که ما آنرا خردگرایی جوهری، گوهری یا ارزشی می‌نامیم.

Momentum for Ethiopia is an excellence charity association established by volunteer individuals in Jimma University and Jimma town. The visions and missions of the association and the main idea of momentum for Ethiopia is fully described in the same named book "Momentum for Ethiopia". Any interested reader can contact the Author, Ayalew Talema (ayalewtalema@yahoo.com) for further information.

This essay is about how ethics were defined in the context of great empires, and in the modern world.  As such, it is what Polanyi called "The Great Transformation," and has themes adapted from my book The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture, Life Beneath the Level of the Marketplace.

Modern American rock climbing is characterized by (1) a motivation or reward structure that encourages the continual creation of new climbs, and (2) a finite and exhaustible medium in which to create them. These two characteristics provide a theoretical explanation for the pattern of deliberate normative change observed in climbing. The theory can be modeled by a simple differential equation, which is shown to be generally consistent with time series data for a number of American climbing areas. On the basis of the theory, predictions about future normative changes are suggested. It is possible that the theory may be generalized to other social activities sharing the two characteristics mentioned above, such as science.

Latin is labelled as an 'outmoded dead language with nothing to tell the modern world', a difficult subject to conquer and a 'bastion of anachronistic privilege and elitism' (Butterfield in Garner, 2013). At the same time, it has been hailed as 'one of the things that gives privately-educated children an edge' (Young, 2011). This presentation debates the unequal distribution of education opportunities. Using Bourdieu's theory of Cultural and Linguistic capital as a framework to discuss the 'speech currency' of Latin, existing perspectives and research on the benefits of learning Latin are explored. The presentation uses research on Latin lessons at a south London school to apply theories on L2 language acquisition such as Cummins' theory of Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) and Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS). The paper concludes by drawing on implications for education. It is argued that the current DofE needs to intensify efforts towards a fairer distribution of cultural and linguistic capital, detailing and recommending avenues for improvement. It is proposed that Latin as a subject creates a visible class divide at an early stage of student development. With this in mind, the future of Latin as a subject in the national curriculum is called into question.

Ethiopia is best understood as a country with multiple internal divides, but also endless interconnections which are constantly renegotiated. Contributing to the growing literature on the country‘s cultural diversity, this book gives special emphasis to contemporary dynamics of intra- and intergroup boundary formation and alteration. It also adds to the more general literature on identity change, boundary transgression of individuals and groups, and cultural contact and change. In eleven chapters experienced Ethiopian and international scholars provide perspectives on territorial, ethnic, class, caste and gender and age related boundaries in different parts of the country.