Interview with Professor Clive Hamilton on the "Anthropocene", in the startlingly noisy cafe at the John Rylands Library (the first few minutes are the worst - it gets easier to hear as time goes on).
Of oil companies and #climate – let’s party like it’s 1997…
Some not-yet-jaded climate activists are getting quite excited that six European Oil companies recently wrote a letter to the United Nations requesting a carbon price and emissions trading scheme. Ever-so-kindly,they even offered to help design it… This is part of the general flurry of activity in the lead up to the Paris climate change talks... Continue Reading →
And yet it moves: Social movements for/against institutional change
So, the latest symposium is almost here. The three papers under discussion are – Schneiberg, M. and Lounsbury, M., 2008, Social movements and institutional analysis, in: Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Andersen, S.K. and Suddaby, R. (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, CA: Sage, 650-672 Lounsbury, M., Ventresca, M., and Hirsch, P.M., 2003, 'Social movements,... Continue Reading →
Medical hubris and arrogance leads to “iatrogenic” agony…
“There was a period of about three years (1987-1990), however, when it became fashionable for physicians to reduce the rather long MR imaging times by using anisotropically shaped (i.e., non-square) imaging pixels in studies of the spine. As it turned out, this resulted in a prominent dark line appearing within the spinal cord. The dark line was a Gibbs... Continue Reading →
Methodology (process tracing), empirics (Kyoto) and theory (corporate power)
My academic background is, um, interesting. I have the lumpy landscape of the autodidact who has fossicked here and there, but never built a proper opencast mine, with draglines and dumptrucks and so on. For my thesis (and possible future career?) I am going to need more methodology (how do we find out reliable and... Continue Reading →
Of dinosaurs, Gramsci, Aussie polluters and #climate change: 5 easy pieces
I appear to be Learning. Instead of 13 articles to synthesise, this one only goes up to five. They’re listed below, and I’ll take them in the order I read them, which is mostly chronological. Dobel, A., Westberg, K. Steel, M. and Flowers, K. (2014) An Examination of Corporate Social responsibility Implementation and Stakeholder Engagement: A... Continue Reading →
Misognynist pop lyrics, no comment required
It ain't rappers who invented misogyny in popular music, is all I'm saying- Who wants yesterday's papers Who wants yesterday's girl Who wants yesterday's papers Nobody in the world Rolling Stones “Yesterdays News” and that "happy" In the Summertime - You got women, you got women on your mind Have a drink, have a drive... Continue Reading →
13 academic articles on corporate political strategy and … #climate change
[Update: I got it down to five papers for the next one, and four for the one after that!] Hmm, let this be a lesson to me. Nobody, probably even me, is going to read all of this. I need to do write-ups every three or four articles (which, given the amount I read, means... Continue Reading →
Remington Steele and Carbon Capture and Storage. No, honestly.
There was an episode of the 80s guilty-pleasure private eye show "Remington Steele" (starring Pierce Brosnan avant la 007) that has something to say about neo-institutional theory and economic sociology. Sort of. The episode, called "Steele Knuckles, Glass Jaws" (the titles always had a pun on steel/still) has a boxer is trying to stay in... Continue Reading →
For “success”? Timing and conformity as key. Barry Jones, #Keynes and #climate
Barry Jones was the Australian Science Minister between 1983 and 1990, and a key figure in the coming of climate awareness to that country. He is also a pretty smart guy (didn't help him as a politician, naturlich). Keynes said something different but similar - We needed to be transruptive [another of my shoddy neologisms],... Continue Reading →
