Neoliberalism, eh? That handy catch-all insult that helps mainstream liberals not say "capitalism", that helps radicals not have to think very hard about how to think or communicate. Nota bene, I am not saying it is not real, that it does not matter, that there is not a usefulness to the term. Just that we tend... Continue Reading →
The tyranny of small decisions…
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 →
Doomed, I tell you – 2014 video
Deliberately ranty (!) and necessarily short presentation to second year geography students at University of Manchester on Thurs 27th November 2014
Thinking institutionally, dialectically, iteratively, recursively #noteasy
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 →
“Entrench warfare” or “why I don’t bother with one-off trainings” #smugosphere #inertia
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 →
Coal, snow and the desert of the real #auspol
Scott Morrison, Australian Treasurer, brought a lump of coal to the show-and-tell at school today. Sorry, I mean, to the House of Representatives. It was a big lump of coal, metaphorically if not literally in the shape of a wedge. Because this was about trying to make the Labor Party look weak/green/out-of-touch. Meanwhile, in the... Continue Reading →
Emergent, emergency, urgency. “Properties for sale…”
Hmm, am puzzling over the distinction between synergy and emergent properties. I found this - “Today, unfortunately, the term emergence is used in a bewildering variety of ways, often as a synonym for synergy. However, I side with the early theorists; emergence should properly be confined to those forms of synergy in which different parts... Continue Reading →
Sokal so good; on targets, reports, fantasies…
The "keeping anthropogenic global warming (global average) to less than 1.5 degrees above pre-Industrial levels" at COP21 was never a serious proposal, surely? I mean, you'd have to be totally fricking scientifically illiterate to... oh, wait. But look, even if the policy-makers put it in there to keep the AOSIS (fn1) crowd from vetoing... Continue Reading →
(Wind) Power to the People – Denmark, Tvind and bricolage
So, two years ago I read this Hendry, C. and Harborne, P. 2011. Changing the view of wind power development: More than “bricolage.” Research Policy 40,, pp. 778-789. and wrote this about it - This was mentioned in a reading group/symposium yesterday by one of my supervisors. It’s a response/elaboration to a paper by Garud and... Continue Reading →
Bloody compassion and the bloody smugosphere
We talk about “carbon capital”, “fossil fuel historical bloc”, ‘technological lock-in’. Yep, them corporations and states sure are sclerotic, ain't they? But, aside from talking about foundations and how NGOs take their money and sell a fake rebellion, we don’t talk about social movement hegemonies and blocks or ‘social lock-in’. This bores me. Descriptions of how... Continue Reading →
marchudson.net 