Download or read book Emergent Strategy written by adrienne maree brown and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2017-03-20 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically. A resolutely materialist spirituality based equally on science and science fiction: a wild feminist and afro-futurist ride! adrienne maree brown, co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit.

Download or read book Emergent Actors in World Politics written by Lars-Erik Cederman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1997-06-12 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The disappearance and formation of states and nations after the end of the Cold War have proved puzzling to both theorists and policymakers. Lars-Erik Cederman argues that this lack of conceptual preparation stems from two tendencies in conventional theorizing. First, the dominant focus on cohesive nation-states as the only actors of world politics obscures crucial differences between the state and the nation. Second, traditional theory usually treats these units as fixed. Cederman offers a fresh way of analyzing world politics: complex adaptive systems modeling. He provides a new series of models--not ones that rely on rational-choice, but rather computerized thought-experiments--that separate the state from the nation and incorporate these as emergent rather than preconceived actors. This theory of the emergent actor shifts attention away from the exclusively behavioral focus of conventional international relations theory toward a truly dynamic perspective that treats the actors of world politics as dependent rather than independent variables. Cederman illustrates that while structural realist predictions about unit-level invariance hold up under certain circumstances, they are heavily dependent on fierce power competition, which can result in unipolarity instead of the balance of power. He provides a thorough examination of the processes of nationalist mobilization and coordination in multi-ethnic states. Cederman states that such states' efforts to instill loyalty in their ethnically diverse populations may backfire, and that, moreover, if the revolutionary movement is culturally split, its identity becomes more inclusive as the power gap in the imperial center's favor increases.

Download or read book The Emergent Multiverse written by David Wallace and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Emergent Multiverse presents a striking new account of the 'many worlds' approach to quantum theory. The point of science, it is generally accepted, is to tell us how the world works and what it is like. But quantum theory seems to fail to do this: taken literally as a theory of the world, it seems to make crazy claims: particles are in two places at once; cats are alive and dead at the same time. So physicists and philosophers have often been led either to give up on the idea that quantum theory describes reality, or to modify or augment the theory. The Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics takes the apparent craziness seriously, and asks, 'what would it be like if particles really were in two places at once, if cats really were alive and dead at the same time'? The answer, it turns out, is that if the world were like that—if it were as quantum theory claims—it would be a world that, at the macroscopic level, was constantly branching into copies—hence the more sensationalist name for the Everett interpretation, the 'many worlds theory'. But really, the interpretation is not sensationalist at all: it simply takes quantum theory seriously, literally, as a description of the world. Once dismissed as absurd, it is now accepted by many physicists as the best way to make coherent sense of quantum theory. David Wallace offers a clear and up-to-date survey of work on the Everett interpretation in physics and in philosophy of science, and at the same time provides a self-contained and thoroughly modern account of it—an account which is accessible to readers who have previously studied quantum theory at undergraduate level, and which will shape the future direction of research by leading experts in the field.

Download or read book Begin the World Over written by Kung Li Sun and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2022-08-23 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Begin the World Over is a counterfactual novel about the Founders’ greatest fear—that Black and Indigenous people might join forces to undo the newly formed United States of America—coming true. In 1793, as revolutionaries in the West Indies take up arms, James Hemings has little interest in joining the fight for liberté—talented and favored, he is careful to protect his relative comforts as Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved chef. But when he meets Denmark Vesey, James is immediately smitten. The formidable first mate persuades James to board his ship, on its way to the revolt in Saint-Domingue. There and on the mainland they join forces with a diverse cast of characters, including a gender nonconforming prophetess, a formerly enslaved jockey, and a Muskogee horse trader. The resulting adventure masterfully mixes real historical figures and events with a riotous retelling of a possible history in which James must decide whether to return to his constrained but composed former life, or join the coalition of Black revolutionaries and Muskogee resistance to fight the American slavers and settlers.

Download or read book Getting Out Of Control written by Neil Chilson and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-26 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an age of increasing complexity, our hope as leaders lies not in gaining control, but in relying on emergent order. Most leadership books promise to help you get control of your business, your career, and your life. In Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World, Neil Chilson flips this formula on its head. Emergent order-order with no single individual or entity in control-surrounds us. From ant colonies to our brains, cities, and economies, emergent order sustains powerful and complex systems that no one designed and no one controls. Awash in this complexity, we have less control than we imagine or wish. Chilson explains how this emergent order confounds managers who grasp for control but holds great promise for leaders willing to adopt an emergent mindset. Getting Out of Control explains why effective leaders seek to influence rather than to control. Chilson offers real-world examples of successful and failed leadership from Washington, D.C.'s halls to Silicon Valley's workstations. He distills six principles of the emergent mindset to help leaders in public, corporate, or private life maximize their influence and avoid the pointless pursuit of control in this complex, out-of-control world.

Download or read book Holding Change written by adrienne maree brown and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Facilitation and mediation are important skills in our highly organized world. Holding Change is a guide for attending to both in ways that align with nature, with pleasure, with our best imaginings of our future. It provides lessons for generating the ease necessary to move through life’s inevitable struggles and for practicing the art of holding others without losing ourselves. Black feminists have evolved this wisdom, but it can serve anyone working to create change, individually, interpersonally, and within our organizations. The majority of the book is sourced from brown’s twenty-plus years of facilitation and mediation work, with additional wisdom from a selection of living Black feminist facilitators and mediators.

Download or read book Communities of Play written by Celia Pearce and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The odyssey of a group of “refugees” from a closed-down online game and an exploration of emergent fan cultures in virtual worlds. Play communities existed long before massively multiplayer online games; they have ranged from bridge clubs to sports leagues, from tabletop role-playing games to Civil War reenactments. With the emergence of digital networks, however, new varieties of adult play communities have appeared, most notably within online games and virtual worlds. Players in these networked worlds sometimes develop a sense of community that transcends the game itself. In Communities of Play, game researcher and designer Celia Pearce explores emergent fan cultures in networked digital worlds—actions by players that do not coincide with the intentions of the game’s designers. Pearce looks in particular at the Uru Diaspora—a group of players whose game, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, closed. These players (primarily baby boomers) immigrated into other worlds, self-identifying as “refugees”; relocated in There.com, they created a hybrid culture integrating aspects of their old world. Ostracized at first, they became community leaders. Pearce analyzes the properties of virtual worlds and looks at the ways design affects emergent behavior. She discusses the methodologies for studying online games, including a personal account of the sometimes messy process of ethnography. Pearce considers the “play turn” in culture and the advent of a participatory global playground enabled by networked digital games every bit as communal as the global village Marshall McLuhan saw united by television. Countering the ludological definition of play as unproductive and pointing to the long history of pre-digital play practices, Pearce argues that play can be a prelude to creativity.

Download or read book Researching Virtual Worlds written by Louise Phillips and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-11 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a wide range of methodological strategies that are designed to take into account the complex, emergent, and continually shifting character of virtual worlds. It interrogates how virtual worlds emerge as objects of study through the development and application of various methodological strategies. Virtual worlds are not considered objects that exist as entities with fixed attributes independent of our continuous engagement with them and interpretation of them. Instead, they are conceived of as complex ensembles of technology, humans, symbols, discourses, and economic structures, ensembles that emerge in ongoing practices and specific situations. A broad spectrum of perspectives and methodologies is presented: Actor-Network-Theory and post-Actor-Network-Theory, performativity theory, ethnography, discourse analysis, Sense-Making Methodology, visual ethnography, multi-sited ethnography, and Social Network Analysis.

Download or read book Emergent Lingua Francas and World Orders written by Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an alternative paradigm in understanding and appreciating World Englishes (WEs) in the wake of globalization and its accompanying shifting priorities in many dimensions of modern life, including the emergence of the English language as the dominant lingua franca (ELF). Chew argues that history is a theatre for the realization of lingua francas, offering a model that shows the present as derived from the past and as a bearer of future possibility, the understanding of which is rooted in the understanding of World Englishes and ELF. The book will engage with some of the current theoretical debates in WEs and includes, as a means of fleshing out the model, sociolinguistic case studies of Arabia, China Fujian, and Singapore.

Download or read book Emergent Brazil written by Jeffrey D. Needell and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, scholars and journalists have hailed the enormous potential of Brazil, which has been one of the world's largest economies for the last twenty years. But its promise has too often been curtailed by dictatorship, racism, poverty, and violence. Offering an interdisciplinary approach to the critical issues facing Brazil, the contributors to this volume analyze the democratization of the country's media, its nuclear capabilities, changing crime rates, the spread of Pentecostalism and indigenous religions, the development of popular culture, the growth of Brazilian agribusiness, and the implementation of sustainable economic development, especially in the Amazon. The only member of the large, newly industrialized, fast-growing BRICS economies (along with Russia, China, India, and South Africa) in the Western hemisphere, Brazil plays a unique role regionally and throughout the world. Emergent Brazil is a comprehensive and timely collection of essays that explore the country's major domestic concerns and the impact of its trends, institutions, culture, and religion across the globe. Jeffrey D. Needell is professor of history at the University of Florida and former Latin American program associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the author of A Tropical Belle Epoque and The Party of Order.

Download or read book Emergent Information written by Wolfgang Hofkirchner and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the dawn of the information age, a proper understanding of information and how it relates to matter and energy is of utmost importance for the survival of civilisation. Yet, attempts to reconcile information concepts underlying science and technology with those en vogue in social science, humanities, and arts are rather rare. This book offers a new approach, departing from fragmented information concepts.Many academics refrain from undergoing unifications, as most undertakings are reductionistic. This book contends that it is the noble task of an as-yet-to-be-developed science of information to go one step in the direction of a unified theory of information without falling back into neither reduction nor anthropomorphisation.To be able to succeed in an ambitious task like this, the book advocates the application of complex systems theory and its philosophical underpinnings. Information needs to be interpreted in terms of self-organisation to do justice to the richness of its manifestations. The way the book does so will provide the reader with a deep insight into a basic feature of our world.The following are discussed in the volume: A Science of Information; A New Way of Thinking; Praxio-Onto-Epistemology; Evolutionary Systems Design; Evolutionary Systems Ontology; Evolutionary Systems Methodology; Capurro's Information Concept Trilemma; A Multi-Stage Model of Evolutionary Types of Information: Pattern Formation, Code-Making, and Constituting Sense; A Triple-C Model of Systemic Functions of Information: Cognising, Communicating, and Co-Operating; Nine Categories of Information Capabilities: Reflectivity (physical), Psyche (biotic), Consciousness (human); Connectivity (physical), Signalability (biotic), Languageability (human); Cohesiveness (physical), Coherency (biotic), Communitarity (human); Nine Categories of Information: Response (physical), Flexible Response (biotic), Reflexion (human); Correspondences (physical), Signals (biotic), Symbolic Acts (human); Assemblage (physical), Assignment (biotic), Association (human); A Unified Theory of Information for, about, and by means of the Information Society.

Download or read book Emergent Ecologies written by Eben Kirksey and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-27 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era of global warming, natural disasters, endangered species, and devastating pollution, contemporary writing on the environment largely focuses on doomsday scenarios. Eben Kirksey suggests we reject such apocalyptic thinking and instead find possibilities in the wreckage of ongoing disasters, as symbiotic associations of opportunistic plants, animals, and microbes are flourishing in unexpected places. Emergent Ecologies uses artwork and contemporary philosophy to illustrate hopeful opportunities and reframe key problems in conservation biology such as invasive species, extinction, environmental management, and reforestation. Following the flight of capital and nomadic forms of life—through fragmented landscapes of Panama, Costa Rica, and the United States—Kirksey explores how chance encounters, historical accidents, and parasitic invasions have shaped present and future multispecies communities. New generations of thinkers and tinkerers are learning how to care for emergent ecological assemblages—involving frogs, fungal pathogens, ants, monkeys, people, and plants—by seeding them, nurturing them, protecting them, and ultimately letting go.

Download or read book We Will Not Cancel Us written by adrienne maree brown and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2020-11-20 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cancel culture addresses real harm...and sometimes causes more. It’s time to think this through. “Cancel” or “call-out” culture is a source of much tension and debate in American society. The infamous “Harper’s Letter,” signed by public intellectuals of both the left and right, sought to settle the matter and only caused greater division. Originating as a way for marginalized and disempowered people to take down more powerful abusers, often with the help of social media, cancel culture is seen by some as having gone “too far.” Adrienne maree brown, a respected cultural voice and a professional mediator, reframes the discussion for us, in a way that points to possible ways beyond the impasse. Most critiques of cancel culture come from outside the milieus that produce it, sometimes from even from its targets. Brown explores the question from a Black, queer, and feminist viewpoint that gently asks, how well does this practice serve us? Does it prefigure the sort of world we want to live in? And, if it doesn’t, how do we seek accountability and redress for harm in a way that reflects our values?

Download or read book Institutional Dynamics written by Oran R. Young and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do Manhattan women remain so stunningly svelte, despite the fact that New York has more top restaurants than any other city on the planet, not to mention a bagel bar or pizzeria on nearly every corner? They eat out often, indulge in all types of cuisine and even sneak in junk food, but manage to stay trim and toned nonetheless. So what's their secret? Now you can learn to eat, lose weight and live your life the way chic New Yorkers do - and enjoy the same fabulous results. Manhattan insider Eileen Daspin reveals what real New York women - including celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker, Anna Wintour and Tina Fey - really think about dieting and how they shop for food, cook, order in restaurants, eat, cheat, and splurge. Discover their eating secrets and waist-trimming tips, plus a detailed weight-loss program and 28-day eating plan that will fit easily into your personal lifestyle. Along with wisdom from leading nutritionists, tips from celebrity trainers and recipes by New York's most celebrated chefs, The Manhattan Diet gives you everything you need for a slim and stylish life - wherever you live.

Download or read book Emergent Tokyo written by Jorge Almazan and published by . This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the urban fabric of contemporary Tokyo as a valuable demonstration of permeable, inclusive, and adaptive urban patterns that required neither extensive master planning nor corporate urbanism to develop. These urban patterns are emergent: that is, they are the combined result of numerous modifications and appropriations of space by small agents interacting within a broader socio-economic ecosystem. Together, they create a degree of urban intensity and liveliness that is the envy of the world's cities. This book examines five of these patterns that appear conspicuously throughout Tokyo: yokocho alleyways, multi-tenant zakkyo buildings, undertrack infills, low-rise dense neighborhoods, and the river-like ankyo streets. Unlike many of the discussions on Tokyo that emphasise cultural uniqueness, this book aims at transcultural validity, with a focus on empirical analysis of the spatial and social conditions that allow these patterns to emerge. The authors of Emergent Tokyo acknowledge the distinct character of Tokyo without essentialising or fetishising it, offering visitors, architects, and urban policy practitioners an unparalleled understanding of Tokyo's urban landscape.

Download or read book In The Post Urban World written by Tigran Haas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Regional Studies Association's Best Book Award 2018. In the last few decades, many global cities and towns have experienced unprecedented economic, social, and spatial structural change. Today, we find ourselves at the juncture between entering a post-urban and a post-political world, both presenting new challenges to our metropolitan regions, municipalities, and cities. Many megacities, declining regions and towns are experiencing an increase in the number of complex problems regarding internal relationships, governance, and external connections. In particular, a growing disparity exists between citizens that are socially excluded within declining physical and economic realms and those situated in thriving geographic areas. This book conveys how forces of structural change shape the urban landscape. In The Post-Urban World is divided into three main sections: Spatial Transformations and the New Geography of Cities and Regions; Urbanization, Knowledge Economies, and Social Structuration; and New Cultures in a Post-Political and Post-Resilient World. One important subject covered in this book, in addition to the spatial and economic forces that shape our regions, cities, and neighbourhoods, is the social, cultural, ecological, and psychological aspects which are also critically involved. Additionally, the urban transformation occurring throughout cities is thoroughly discussed. Written by today’s leading experts in urban studies, this book discusses subjects from different theoretical standpoints, as well as various methodological approaches and perspectives; this is alongside the challenges and new solutions for cities and regions in an interconnected world of global economies. This book is aimed at both academic researchers interested in regional development, economic geography and urban studies, as well as practitioners and policy makers in urban development.

Download or read book Truth and the World written by Jonathan Tallant and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we explain the truth of true propositions? Truthmaker theory is the branch of metaphysics that explores the relationships between what is true and what exists. It plays an important role in contemporary debates about the nature of metaphysics and metaphysical enquiry. In this book Jonathan Tallant argues, controversially, that we should reject truthmaker theory. In its place he argues for an 'explanationist' approach. Drawing on a deflationary theory of truth he shows that it allows us to explain the truth of true propositions and respond to recent arguments that purport to show otherwise. He augments this with a distinction between internally and externally quantified claims: externally quantified claims are claims that quantify over elements of our ontology that play an indispensable explanatory role; internally quantified claims do not. He deploys this union of deflationism and a distinction between kinds of quantification to pursue metaphysical inquiry, sketching the implications for a number of first-order debates, including those in the philosophy of time, modality and mathematics, and also shows how this explanationist model can be used to solve the key problems that afflicted truthmaker theory. Truth and the World is an important contribution to debates about truth and truthmaker theory as well as metametaphysics, the metaphysics of time and the metaphysics of mathematics, and is essential reading for students and scholars engaged in the study of these topics.