A brilliant event - the "2nd PhDs in Transitions Conference: Theory and Practice" - took place in Switzerland, last week. Organised by four enterprising PhD students, it was a 48 hour space for students at different stages of the process (from touching naive enthusiasm all the way through to night-sweat panic) to exchange ideas and... Continue Reading →
A transformational change in Australia’s assessment of cumulative impacts is required, including the comprehensive assessment of the direct and indirect impacts of coal mining, if the Reef is not to suffer from the “tyranny of small decisions.” As described by Odum (1982), this phenomenon involves a big decision arising post hoc from an accretion of... Continue Reading →
This one started life as a "Conversation" article (never published) and was expanded into a perspectives piece for the journal Energy Research & Social Science. Many thanks to the editor, the peer reviewer and to Sarah "The Wife" Irving and Joe Blakey for their careful proof-reading. Whoop!! "Wind beneath their contempt: Why Australian policymakers oppose... Continue Reading →
Then again. So, one of the pleasures of being a PhD student is that you get - occasionally - to sit around and talk about stuff you've read (it's less pleasurable when it's something you've written [i.e. supervisions]. But I digress). As part of the cities/urban sustainability reading group, we were getting our thinking gear... Continue Reading →
Somewhere in the pile of things-read-awaiting-bookmarking-on-t'website is a recent article on the what the authors called "memory work" - (corporate) work of suppressing past mis-behaviour. It does not use R.D. Laing, but it could. This below is the epigram from Joanna Russ's amazing book 'The Female Man' [my review here] If Jack succeeds in forgetting... Continue Reading →
Our wetware has missed quite a few upgrades, hasn't it? It left the factory all buggy and in beta, shaped by encounters - over millennia - with sabre-tooth tigers etc that saw us as easy meat. We have cognitive biases up the wazoo, and often lack even the awareness of that [Dunning-Kruger etc etc]. It's... Continue Reading →
High culture? "In his cultural studies, DiMaggio's historical research documented the self-conscious creation of "high culture" in the late 19th-century America. DiMaggio argues that, unsettled by the weak class distinctions in growing industrial cities, local elites created a "sophisticated" culture (via the arts,universities, social clubs, and the like) that would separate commoners from those of high standing. DiMaggio says that "high culture" models... Continue Reading →
A few years ago I organised a one-off training session on research for activists. It went well and had ... no discernible impact on how anyone did anything. So it goes. I reflected on this - and other training I have been part of as a punter. And I came to the conclusion that unless... Continue Reading →
So, that last post, about the last two and a half years of my life being like stepping on rakes that then smack you in the face? #selfpitying #melodramatic #firstworldproblems And also a bit unproductive. Instead, surely it's better to think of it like breaking into Baruch Spinoza's shop (he was a lens grinder) and... Continue Reading →
The last two and a half years of my life have been like that scene in Cape Feare where Sideshow Bob keeps stepping on rakes and getting hit in the face and never learning to look down/up/wherever he is supposed to look, whatever he is supposed to do. It's a scene they deliberately hold for... Continue Reading →
marchudson.net 