scholarly journals From the world of wearable grasses: Vetiver (The use of local place-based knowledge to develop a scalable circular economy that enables positive social impact within the textile industry)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ananya Khare

<p>Progress is the first instinct for humans, with innovation and problem-solving driving forces within every generation. Sadly, as a part of this process, there has been a lack of recognition or interest in age-old, indigenous, local or place-based knowledge. In contrast to this belief of globalisation, this thesis advocates Indigenous Wisdom as a bridge to solving ‘wicked problems’ of our modern society. Horst Rittel describes wicked problems as interconnected and networked by nature, existing on multiple scales. This research identifies one such a wicked problem of textile pollution. One of the factors contributing to textile pollution is the resulting landfill. Connected to, contributing to or more abruptly put, causing this problem is fast fashion. In 2011 the United Nation Environment Program estimated that without intervention, the rate of consumption for fast fashion would continue to grow up to three-fold by the year 2050. The research explores the need for a durable, economical and more sustainable textile option that can both minimise production waste and is affordable for consumers. Paralleling Transition Design with local placed -based knowledge this research identifies a raw material that is the vetiver grass, a sustainable and straightforward production method, a community that is the inmates of Bhopal Central Jail, and a scalable circular economic model and connect them to make fabric based items for their use or sale and trade beyond their community.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ananya Khare

<p>Progress is the first instinct for humans, with innovation and problem-solving driving forces within every generation. Sadly, as a part of this process, there has been a lack of recognition or interest in age-old, indigenous, local or place-based knowledge. In contrast to this belief of globalisation, this thesis advocates Indigenous Wisdom as a bridge to solving ‘wicked problems’ of our modern society. Horst Rittel describes wicked problems as interconnected and networked by nature, existing on multiple scales. This research identifies one such a wicked problem of textile pollution. One of the factors contributing to textile pollution is the resulting landfill. Connected to, contributing to or more abruptly put, causing this problem is fast fashion. In 2011 the United Nation Environment Program estimated that without intervention, the rate of consumption for fast fashion would continue to grow up to three-fold by the year 2050. The research explores the need for a durable, economical and more sustainable textile option that can both minimise production waste and is affordable for consumers. Paralleling Transition Design with local placed -based knowledge this research identifies a raw material that is the vetiver grass, a sustainable and straightforward production method, a community that is the inmates of Bhopal Central Jail, and a scalable circular economic model and connect them to make fabric based items for their use or sale and trade beyond their community.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Maree Duffy ◽  
Gavin Northey ◽  
Patrick van Esch

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to extend the macro-social marketing approach by detailing a framework to better understand the driving forces of wicked problems. Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that uses the financial crisis in Iceland as a demonstrative example to show how social mechanism theory can help social marketers and policy makers overcome complexity and strive for the social transformation they seek. FindingsThis paper suggests the utility of social mechanism theory for understanding wicked problems, how they came to be and how social marketing practices can be applied to resolve market complexities. Research limitations/implicationsSocial marketers need to identify what is driving what, to plan and implement interventions that will lead to the social change desired. This paper presents a framework that guides the analyst through this social change process. Originality/valueThis work provides social marketers with the means to understand the “moving parts” of a wicked problem to identify where an intervention is required to achieve the social change sought.


foresight ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Reza Fathi ◽  
Seyed Mohammad Sobhani ◽  
Mohammad Hasan Maleki ◽  
Gholamreza Jandaghi

Purpose This study aims to formulate exploratory scenarios of the textile industry in Iran based on MICMAC and soft operational research methods. Design/methodology/approach In this study, to formulate plausible scenarios, literature reviews and external experts’ opinions of this field have been gathered through the Delphi approach and uncertainty questionnaires. After the utilization of the most important uncertainties, the textile industry’s plausible scenarios have been mapped with the help of experts through co-thinking workshops. Results show that two factors, including the business atmosphere and membership in World Trade Organization (WTO), play a more important role than the other factors. These two factors were considered for the formulation of the scenario. To formulate plausible scenarios, soft systems methodology, which is a kind of soft operational research methods, is applied. Findings Based on the results, four scenarios are presented. These scenarios include the Elysium scenario, Hades scenario, Tatarus scenario and Sisyphus scenario. In the Elysium scenario, the business atmosphere has improved and Iran has been granted membership of the WTO. In Hades scenario, Iran has joined the WTO, but due to the government’s weakness and inactivity and key decision-makers, the required preparations have not been made. In the Tatarus scenario, Iran is not a WTO member and the business atmosphere is disastrous. In the Sisyphus scenario, the government takes reasonable actions toward a better business environment. Originality/value Formulating plausible scenarios of the textile industry is an excellent contribution to the key beneficiaries and actors of this industry so they can present flexible preparation-based programs in the face of circumstances. Future study of the textile industry familiarizes the actors and beneficiaries of this industry with the procedures and the driving forces that influence this industry’s future and it will ascertain various scenarios for the actors of this field.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1032
Author(s):  
Susanne Fredholm ◽  
Maitri Dore ◽  
Sara Brorström

Heritage management in infrastructure planning is in this paper regarded as a ‘wicked problem’—a multidimensional and unpredictable activity infused with conflicting stakeholder perspectives. By focusing on the West Link and drawing on theoretical notions of strategy-as-practice, the aim is to identify the circumstances in which paradoxes and dilemmas of wicked problems emerge and examine the professional micro-level strategizing applied to navigate and overcome them. The railway construction was deemed to be a threat to the 17th century fortifications, historical parks and former agricultural properties, today located in the city center. The Swedish government appointed representatives from the Swedish Transport Administration and heritage professionals from national, regional and local levels of government to negotiate how best to deal with these challenges. By means of primary data from interviews and workshops with stakeholders, and document- and correspondence analysis, the results showed how three main challenges hampered a fruitful dialogue and outcome: the inherent complexity of the task, different approaches to heritage and lack of adequate coordination within and between the parties. Strategic responses included action plans, delegation of tasks in reference and working groups, the signing of agreements, reorganization and financing of additional personnel. We discuss the main factors underlining the wickedness of heritage management in infrastructure planning as both processual and collaborative, and the implications of this for practice regarding bringing about more operative and sustainable approaches.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Auld ◽  
Steven Bernstein ◽  
Benjamin Cashore ◽  
Kelly Levin

AbstractCOVID-19 has caused 100s of millions of infections and millions of deaths worldwide, overwhelming health and economic capacities in many countries and at multiple scales. The immediacy and magnitude of this crisis has resulted in government officials, practitioners and applied scholars turning to reflexive learning exercises to generate insights for managing the reverberating effects of this disease as well as the next inevitable pandemic. We contribute to both tasks by assessing COVID-19 as a “super wicked” problem denoted by four features we originally formulated to describe the climate crisis: time is running out, no central authority, those causing the problem also want to solve it, and policies irrationally discount the future (Levin et al. in Playing it forward: path dependency, progressive incrementalism, and the “super wicked” problem of global climate change, 2007; Levin et al. in Playing it forward: Path dependency, progressive incrementalism, and the "super wicked" problem of global climate change, 2009; Levin et al. in Policy Sci 45(2):123–152, 2012). Doing so leads us to identify three overarching imperatives critical for pandemic management. First, similar to requirements to address the climate crisis, policy makers must establish and maintain durable policy objectives. Second, in contrast to climate, management responses must always allow for swift changes in policy settings and calibrations given rapid and evolving knowledge about a particular disease’s epidemiology. Third, analogous to, but with swifter effects than climate, wide-ranging global efforts, if well designed, will dramatically reduce domestic costs and resource requirements by curbing the spread of the disease and/or fostering relevant knowledge for managing containment and eradication. Accomplishing these tasks requires building the analytic capacity for engaging in reflexive anticipatory policy design exercises aimed at maintaining, or building, life-saving thermostatic institutions at the global and domestic levels.


Author(s):  
Raymon R. Bruce

This chapter traces the origin of the concept of work in five staged sections. The first section examines the question, what is work? Work originally referred to “doing,” that is, work organization, synergy, and energy. The second section develops the Greek word family for work into a dynamic model of doing. The third section shows how nature guides working change through energy exchange. It examines how a work as re-organization model would function in nature's jurisdictional domain of guiding energy exchanges. Nature's laws provide guidance for self-governing latitude to energy jurisdictional domains' evolutionary change. The fourth section examines policymaking as human guidance imitating nature. Policymaking limits individual self-governance to guide a specified social community of people (polis) doing work. Policymaking is explored to see how humans use policymaking to govern themselves and their cultural social groups including governments by using nature's use of laws as guidance. Policymaking is also a form of laying down basic parameters of work as re-organization through energy exchanges in the ambient environment. Policies are human artifacts designed help a social group work well together. Part five presents an issue analysis as an invited Organization Development consultant to help find ways for the Sri Lankan government, the University of Moratuwa, and the apparel and textile industry to work together in their extreme makeover of human resource development of their apparel and textile industry. Action training and research, stakeholder management, and wicked problem issue analysis are the organization development methods used to demonstrate this field theory of work re-organization through energy exchange.


Author(s):  
Leslie P. Hitch

In 1973, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber put forth the term ‘wicked problems' to define situations where there was no concrete solution and where any attempt to ‘solve' the problem often resulted in the spiraling of additional wicked problems. John C. Camillus (2008) expands upon this concept and applied it to what he considered the near-impossibility to design coherent organizational strategy. Further exploration into the literature of wicked problems indicates the budding of new configurations of leadership to address wicked problems. As organizational strategy, in most industries, is inherently connected to leadership, this chapter suggests that the teaching of leadership, described often as one person in control or seen as the primary guide, needs to be revitalized, renewed and redirected as a process. Leadership may no longer be a person or hierarchy in order to contend with the wicked problems mounting in many industries, organizations, governments and society. The chapter concludes with suggestions on ways to teach leadership that are based upon Rittel and Webber's 10 characteristics of wicked problems.


Author(s):  
Kelvin McQueen

As a research paradigm, Marx's insights can be used to grapple with the ‘wicked problem' of the Anthropocene: to explain the current crisis; judge the various scholarly representations of it; and point towards a transcendence of the ‘problem'. In the same vein, this chapter seeks to provide a Marxist paradigm for educational research in the era of the Anthropocene. The chapter thus identifies two ‘wicked problems' and suggests solutions: firstly, the urgent need for a robust and plausible paradigm for programs of educational research seeking to discover, analyse and understand the dynamics of the Anthropocene from the micro-political to the macro-political, which Marx's paradigm provides; secondly, a guide to the type of action needed to make educational institutions democratic and sustainable and part of the solution to the ‘wicked problem' of the Anthropocene, rather than sites that reproduce a workforce ready to be exploited and oppressed, which Marx's paradigm also provides.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 2760
Author(s):  
Laila Hossain ◽  
Mohidus Samad Khan

Bangladesh is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, primarily driven by its textile industries. A high amount of water is consumed and polluted in the production and processing of raw material to the final product in the textile industry. Therefore, water footprint assessment is important for textile products. In this study, the water footprint of cotton cultivation, transportation and textile industry was calculated by analyzing the amount of imported cotton, production and processing capacity of cotton yarn and cotton fabrics, wastewater volume, number of workers and pollution load database, for 2012–2016. For the textile industry, the annual water footprint was found to be 1.8 billion m3. This high amount of water footprint and water pollution may result in depletion of groundwater level and can lead to major health problems for the local people, respectively. Total water footprint for ready-made garment product is found to be 27.56 billion m3, whereas considering proper water treatment and water reuse facilities can reduce the grey water footprint to around 1.26 billion m3. This study shows the extent of water pollution, groundwater depletion and economic impact of groundwater extraction, and possible means to reduce water footprint in cotton cultivation and textile industries.


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