Download or read book The Reality of Symbols written by Jan Baptist Bedaux and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bedaux brings the discussion of meaning in northern painting back to the basics: the description of real objects, the evocation of everyday associations, the employment of standard visual metaphors, symbols and allegories. With the first publication of an eighteenth-century iconographical program drawn up by the Hague painter Mattheus Verheyden, he demonstrates the continued importance of allegory, that stepchild of iconography." -- Cover page 4.

Download or read book Sustainability Science written by Harald Heinrichs and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-11-26 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This textbook provides a comprehensive compilation of conceptual perspectives, methodological approaches and empirical insights of inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability science. Written by an international team of authors from leading sustainability institutions, the textbook covers key perspectives and topics of the scientific discourse on sustainable development. More than two decades after conceptualizing sustainability as societal guiding vision and regulative idea the necessity of concretizing and realizing sustainability in societal praxis is bigger than ever. Sharply improved individual and societal sustainable decision-making and action is necessary for a better future of humankind and the planet. On that account problem- and solution-oriented perspectives and competencies are crucial. The different chapters assemble an encompassing view of essential foundations and specific areas of research and action in sustainability science and practice. The textbook aims at fostering the further establishment of sustainability science in higher education and to enable the next generation of sustainability experts to tackle the challenging and exciting topic of sustainable development.

Download or read book Urban Living Labs written by Simon Marvin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All cities face a pressing challenge – how can they provide economic prosperity and social cohesion while achieving environmental sustainability? In response, new collaborations are emerging in the form of urban living labs – sites devised to design, test and learn from social and technical innovation in real time. The aim of this volume is to examine, inform and advance the governance of sustainability transitions through urban living labs. Notably, urban living labs are proliferating rapidly across the globe as a means through which public and private actors are testing innovations in buildings, transport and energy systems. Yet despite the experimentation taking place on the ground, we lack systematic learning and international comparison across urban and national contexts about their impacts and effectiveness. We have limited knowledge on how good practice can be scaled up to achieve the transformative change required. This book brings together leading international researchers within a systematic comparative framework for evaluating the design, practices and processes of urban living labs to enable the comparative analysis of their potential and limits. It provides new insights into the governance of urban sustainability and how to improve the design and implementation of urban living labs in order to realise their potential.

Download or read book Resourcing an Agroecological Urbanism written by Chiara Tornaghi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-07 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foregrounding an innovative and radical perspective on food planning, this book makes the case for an agroecological urbanism in which food is a key component in the reinvention of new and just social arrangements and ecological practices. Building on state-of-the-art and participatory research on farming, urbanism, food policy and advocacy in the field of food system transformation, this book changes the way food planning has been conceptualised to date and invites the reader to fully embrace the transformative potential of an agroecological perspective. Bringing in dialogue from both the rural and urban, the producer and consumer, this book challenges conventional approaches that see them as separate spheres, whose problems can only be solved by a reconnection. Instead, it argues for moving away from a ‘food-in-the-city’ approach towards an ‘urbanism’ perspective, in which the economic and spatial processes that currently drive urbanisation will be unpacked and dissected, and new strategies for changing those processes into more equal and just ones are put forward. Drawing on the nascent field of urban political agroecology, this text brings together: i) theoretical re-conceptualisations of urbanism in relation to food planning and the emergence of new agrarian questions, ii) critical analysis of experimental methodologies and performing arts for public dialogue, reflexivity and food sovereignty research, iii) experiences of resourceful land management, including urban land use and land tenure change, and iv) theoretical and practical exploration of post-capitalist economics that bring consumers and producers together to make the case for an agroecological urbanism. Aimed at advanced students and academics in agroecology, sustainable food planning, urban geography, urban planning and critical food studies, this book will also be of interest to professionals and activists working with food systems in both the Global North and the Global South.

Download or read book The Routledge Research Companion to Heritage and Identity written by Peter Howard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heritage represents the meanings and representations conveyed in the present day upon artifacts, landscapes, mythologies, memories and traditions from the past. It is a key element in the shaping of identities, particularly in the context of increasingly multicultural societies. This Research Companion brings together an international team of authors to discuss the concepts, ideas and practices that inform the entwining of heritage and identity. They have assembled a wide geographical range of examples and interpret them through a number of disciplinary lenses that include geography, history, museum and heritage studies, archaeology, art history, history, anthropology and media studies. This outstanding companion offers scholars and graduate students a thoroughly up-to-date guide to current thinking and a comprehensive reference to this growing field.

Download or read book Grassroots Innovation Movements written by Adrian Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists, and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. Unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries, policy silos, or institutional logics, these ‘grassroots innovation movements’ identify issues and questions neglected by formal science, technology and innovation organizations. Grassroots solutions arise in unconventional settings through unusual combinations of people, ideas and tools. This book examines six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts. Analysis explains why each movement frames innovation and development differently, resulting in a variety of strategies. The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have grown, or attempted to do so. It critically examines the pathways they have developed for grassroots innovation and the challenges and limitations confronting their approaches. With mounting pressure for social justice in an increasingly unequal world, policy makers are exploring how to foster more inclusive innovation. In this context grassroots experiences take on added significance. This book provides timely and relevant ideas, analysis and recommendations for activists, policy-makers, students and scholars interested in encounters between innovation, development and social movements.

Download or read book Introduction to Action Research written by Davydd James Greenwood and published by SAGE Publications, Incorporated. This book was released on 1998-09-25 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do social researchers know how to select the action research (AR) approach most appropriate for their study? This book provides an overview of the different approaches. The authors introduce the history, philosophy, social change agenda, methodologies, ethical arguments for, and fieldwork tools of AR. They present an extensive range of cases, some from their own experience and, untypically, they rehearse failures as well as successes. The book will prove invaluable for both newcomers and experienced researchers and practitioners.

Download or read book Interpretive Research Design written by Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Research design is fundamentally central to all scientific endeavors, at all levels and in all institutional settings. This book is a practical, short, simple, and authoritative examination of the concepts and issues in interpretive research design, looking across this approach's methods of generating and analyzing data. It is meant to set the stage for the more "how-to" volumes that will come later in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, which will look at specific methods and the designs that they require. It will, however, engage some very practical issues, such as ethical considerations and the structure of research proposals. Interpretive research design requires a high degree of flexibility, where the researcher is more likely to think of "hunches" to follow than formal hypotheses to test. Yanow and Schwartz-Shea address what research design is and why it is important, what interpretive research is and how it differs from quantitative and qualitative research in the positivist traditions, how to design interpretive research, and the sections of a research proposal and report"--

Download or read book Challenge Social Innovation written by Hans-Werner Franz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-13 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, social innovation has experienced a steep career. Numerous national governments and large organisations like the OECD, the European Commission and UNESCO have adopted the term. Social innovation basically means that people adopt new social practices in order to meet social needs in a different or more effective way. Prominent examples of the past are the Red Cross and the social welfare state or, at present, the internet 2.0 transforming our communication and cooperation schemes, requiring new management concepts, even empowering social revolutions. The traditional concept of innovation as successful new technological products needs fundamental rethinking in a society marked by knowledge and services, leading to a new and enriched paradigm of innovation. There is multiple evidence that social innovation will become of growing importance not only concerning social integration, equal opportunities and dealing with the greenhouse effects but also with regard to preserving and expanding the innovative capacity of companies and societies. While political authorities stress the social facets of social innovation, this book also encompasses its societal and systemic dimensions, collecting the scientific expertise of renowned experts and scholars from all over the world. Based on the contributions of the first world-wide science convention on social innovation from September 2011 in Vienna, the book provides an overview of scientific approaches to this still relatively new field. Forewords by Agnès HUBERT (Member of the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) of the European Commission) and Antonella Noya (Senior Policy Analyst at OECD, manager of the OECD LEED Forum on Social Innovations)

Download or read book Real Social Science written by Bent Flyvbjerg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new, hands-on approach to social inquiry for social scientists who wish to make a difference to policy and practice.

Download or read book The Experimental City written by James Evans and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how the concept or urban experimentation is being used to reshape practices of knowledge production in urban debates about resilience, climate change governance, and socio-technical transitions. With contributions from leading scholars, and case studies from the Global North and South, from small to large scale cities, this book suggests that urban experiments offer novel modes of engagement, governance, and politics that both challenge and complement conventional strategies. The book is organized around three cross-cutting themes. Part I explores the logics of urban experimentation, different approaches, and how and why they are deployed. Part II considers how experiments are being staged within cities, by whom, and with what effects? Part III examines how entire cities or groups of cities are constructed as experiments. This book seeks to contribute a deeper and more socially and politically nuanced understanding of how urban experiments shape cities and drive wider changes in society, providing a framework to examine the phenomenon of urban experimentation in conceptual and empirical detail.

Download or read book Digital Participation through Social Living Labs written by Michael Dezuanni and published by Chandos Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital Participation through Social Living Labs connects two largely separate debates: On the one hand, high speed internet access and associated technologies are often heralded as a means to bring about not only connectivity, but also innovation, economic development, new jobs, and regional prosperity. On the other hand, community development research has established that access by itself is necessary but not sufficient to foster digital participation for the broadest possible range of individuals. Edited by leading scholars from the fields of education, youth studies, urban informatics, librarianship, communication technology, and digital media studies, this book is positioned as a link to connect these debates. It brings together an international collection of empirically grounded case studies by researchers and practitioners from diverse backgrounds. They advance knowledge that fosters digital participation by identifying the specific digital needs, issues and practices of different types of communities as they seek to take advantage of access to digital technologies. Collectively, these cases propose new ways for enabling residents to develop their digital confidence and skills both at home and in their local community, particularly through a 'social living labs' approach. The book is organised around key focus areas: digital skills enhancement, youth entrepreneurship, connected learning, community digital storytelling, community-led digital initiatives and policy development.

Download or read book Leading Change toward Sustainability written by Bob Doppelt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the world struggles to cope with the growing threat of a global carbon crisis, Doppelt has revised one of the best books ever written about change management, leadership and sustainability to focus on de-carbonisation. Doppelt's research, presented in this hugely readable book, demystify the sustainability-change process by providing a theoretical framework and a methodology that managers can use to successfully transform their organisations to embrace sustainable development. Filled with case examples, interviews and checklists on how to move corporate and governmental cultures toward sustainability, the book argues that the key factors that facilitate change appear in the successful efforts at companies such as AstraZeneca, Nike, Starbucks, IKEA, Chiquita, Interface, Swisscom and Norm Thompson and in governmental efforts such as those in the Netherlands and Santa Monica in California. For these and other cutting-edge organisations, leading change is a philosophy for success. Leading Change toward Sustainability has been used by change leaders around the world to guide their internal global warming and sustainability organisational change initiatives. This new edition is essential reading for leaders from all types of organisations.

Download or read book Principles for Designing Transdisciplinary Research written by Christian Pohl and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the information or knowledge society, there is a need for transdisciplinary research, i.e. research that deals with complex life-world problems. Transdisciplinary projects aim to come up with practice-oriented solutions that serve what is perceived to be the common good. In order to achieve this, they transcend disciplinary boundaries and include the perspectives of public agencies, the business community and civil society in the research process. This process is therefore particularly challenging for those involved. This book is proposed by the transdisciplinarity-net, which is a project supported by the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. It offers a means of designing transdisciplinary research. The tools presented here help structure the research process, in particular with a view to: o adequately reducing the complexity of a problem field, o taking into account the multiplicity of perspectives, o embedding research into the social context, and o adapting concepts and methods in the course of the research process. This publication shows how these tools can be used in the three phases of a transdisciplinary research process: identifying and structuring the problem, analyzing the problem and bringing results to fruition.

Download or read book Improvising Theory written by Allaine Cerwonka and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have long recognized that ethnographic method is bound up with the construction of theory in ways that are difficult to teach. The reason, Allaine Cerwonka and Liisa H. Malkki argue, is that ethnographic theorization is essentially improvisatory in nature, conducted in real time and in necessarily unpredictable social situations. In a unique account of, and critical reflection on, the process of theoretical improvisation in ethnographic research, they demonstrate how both objects of analysis, and our ways of knowing and explaining them, are created and discovered in the give and take of real life, in all its unpredictability and immediacy. Improvising Theory centers on the year-long correspondence between Cerwonka, then a graduate student in political science conducting research in Australia, and her anthropologist mentor, Malkki. Through regular e-mail exchanges, Malkki attempted to teach Cerwonka, then new to the discipline, the basic tools and subtle intuition needed for anthropological fieldwork. The result is a strikingly original dissection of the processual ethics and politics of method in ethnography.

Download or read book Sustainability Assessment written by Bob Gibson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work tackles the complexities of sustainability assessment and provides practical solutions and comprehensive analysis, guidance and criteria for impact assessment professionals and policy makers at all levels and in all circumstances.

Download or read book Frankenstein Urbanism written by Federico Cugurullo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-16 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of visionary urban experiments, shedding light on the theories that preceded their development and on the monsters that followed and might be the end of our cities. The narrative is threefold and delves first into the eco-city, second the smart city and third the autonomous city intended as a place where existing smart technologies are evolving into artificial intelligences that are taking the management of the city out of the hands of humans. The book empirically explores Masdar City in Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong to provide a critical analysis of eco and smart city experiments and their sustainability, and it draws on numerous real-life examples to illustrate the rise of urban artificial intelligences across different geographical spaces and scales. Theoretically, the book traverses philosophy, urban studies and planning theory to explain the passage from eco and smart cities to the autonomous city, and to reflect on the meaning and purpose of cities in a time when human and non-biological intelligences are irreversibly colliding in the built environment. Iconoclastic and prophetic, Frankenstein Urbanism is both an examination of the evolution of urban experimentation through the lens of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and a warning about an urbanism whose product resembles Frankenstein’s monster: a fragmented entity which escapes human control and human understanding. Academics, students and practitioners will find in this book the knowledge that is necessary to comprehend and engage with the many urban experiments that are now alive, ready to leave the laboratory and enter our cities.