Stonking paper, that has helped me understand the various theoretical options available for understanding/describing transitions, (evolutionary, relational and durational), and some of their strengths and weaknesses. Yes, the paper does underplay that the MLP is shot through with durational perspective to make a cleaner (if not clearer) distinction, but nonetheless, hugely impressive and useful. Garud,... Continue Reading →
“Powerpoint and Strategy” #afterthethesis
So, gonna use this site to bookmark stuff I will read After The Thesis. First up, this Kaplan, S. 2011. Strategy and PowerPoint: An Inquiry into the Epistemic Culture and Machinery of Strategy Making. Organization Science, Vol. 22 (2), pp.320-46. PowerPoint has come to dominate organizational life in general and strategy making in particular. The... 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 →
Crash test dummies and movement building
Do you ever feel you're strapped into a car that almost deliberately, wilfully, crashes into a wall? Sort of a Groundhog Day/Source Code mash-up, with Camus ruefully driving a Facel Vega and getting hit by a boulder that some clown had let roll down a hill? I do. It's like we in the 'social movement... Continue Reading →
Turnbull, #climate and the National Press Club #auspol
On February 1st Malcolm Turnbull will make a major speech on the Coalition’s climate and energy policy at the National Press Club.In his last public utterance on the topic, at the Sydney fish market in December last year, he spilt coffee , perhaps trying to douse the flames caused by Josh Frydenberg’s declaration that carbon pricing would... Continue Reading →
Narrative, schmarratives – on telling plausible stories
So, getting to the pointy end of this PhD thesis. Reading too much and writing too little (but the balance is shifting in the right direction). Stumbling on methodology stuff that makes things clearer (or less murky). These are from Geels, F. and Schot, J. 2010. The Dynamics of Transitions: A Socio-technical perspective. in Grin,... Continue Reading →
marchudson.net 