Do Conceptual Innovations Facilitate Transformative Change? The Case of Biodiversity Governance

This paper explores to what extent and in what ways conceptual innovations matter for biodiversity governance. A three-step analysis is employed, starting with identifying theoretical insights on how concepts matter for transformative change. These insights provide a lens for examining the academic debate on the Ecosystem Services concept and for identifying critical conceptual challenges related to transformative change. Finally, how the concept is used and valued in policy practice is explored through an empirical study of policy practitioners in Sweden. Based on this investigation we conclude that the ES concept holds important but restricted properties for transformative change. The ES concept provides new meanings in the form of economic valuation of nature, but these remain highly contested and difficult to practice; ES function as a boundary object, but poorly integrates social analysis and, in practice engages professionals, rather than resulting in more inclusive public participation; and ES function performatively by reflecting a technocratic ideal and raising awareness rather than targeting fundamental political challenges. Finally, the paper returns to the general questions of how conceptual innovations can generate transformative change and argues that in the continued work of conceptually developing the Nature's Contribution to People, researchers and practitioners need to pay close attention to interpretive frames, political dimensions, and institutional structures, necessitating a strong role for social analysis in this process of conceptual innovation.

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Cultural Diplomacy 2.0: Challenges and Opportunities in Museum International Practices

Museum and Society ◽

10.29311/mas.v11i1.221 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 39-49 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Natalia Grincheva

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Cultural Diplomacy ◽

Cultural Exchange ◽

International Communication ◽

Diplomatic Relations ◽

Cultural Encounter ◽

Institutional Structures ◽

Challenges And Opportunities ◽

Political Dimensions ◽

Collaborative Activities

This study discusses several issues that museums face when utilizing social media in their international communication. This discussion is framed within the discourse of the new cultural diplomacy and this paper proposes a specific role for museums in cross-cultural diplomatic relations. This new model for contemporary museums as vehicles for a ‘trans-cultural encounter’, or a ‘forum’ is based on the shift within museum institutional structures across communication, educational and political dimensions. Drawing on empirical materials, this study identifies three specific ways in which museums can use social media in their international diplomatic endeavours. The first section discusses how social technology can aid museums in responding to issues and concerns originating from foreign communities. This is followed by a discussion of how social media can connect foreign audiences to the cultural content of museums through direct participation activities. Finally, social media can enhance cultural exchange among people from different cultural communities by bringing them together online for collaborative activities.

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Why Anti-Bias Interventions (Need Not) Fail

10.31234/osf.io/5rxk8 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Toni Schmader ◽

Tara C. Dennehy ◽

Andrew Scott Baron

Keyword(s):

Implicit Bias ◽

Psychological Research ◽

Public Understanding ◽

Situational Variables ◽

Psychological Science ◽

Raising Awareness ◽

Entry Points ◽

Institutional Structures ◽

Different Types ◽

Conceptual Confusion

This manuscript was accepted for publication in Perspectives on Psychological Science on September 26, 2021. There is a critical disconnect between scientific knowledge about the nature of bias and how this knowledge gets translated into organizational de-biasing efforts. Conceptual confusion around what implicit bias is contributes to misunderstanding. Bridging these gaps is the key to understanding when and why anti-bias interventions will succeed or fail. Notably, there are multiple distinct pathways to biased behavior, each of which require different types of interventions. To bridge the gap between public understanding and psychological research, we introduce a visual typology of bias that summarizes the process by which group-relevant cognitions are expressed as biased behavior. Our typology spotlights cognitive, motivational, and situational variables impacting the expression and inhibition of biases while aiming to reduce the ambiguity of what constitutes implicit bias. We also address how norms modulate how biases unfold and are perceived by targets. Using this typology as a framework, we identify theoretically distinct entry points for anti-bias interventions. A key insight is that changing associations, increasing motivation, raising awareness, and changing norms are distinct goals, which require different types of interventions targeting individual, interpersonal, and institutional structures. We close with recommendations for anti-bias training grounded in the science of prejudice and stereotyping.

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Modeling with Stakeholders for Transformative Change

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su11030825 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (3) ◽

pp. 825 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Anne van Bruggen ◽

Igor Nikolic ◽

Jan Kwakkel

Keyword(s):

Model Building ◽

Simulation Models ◽

Environmental Modeling ◽

Boundary Object ◽

Extensive Literature ◽

Group Model ◽

Transformative Change ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Group Model Building

Coherent responses to important problems such as climate change require involving a multitude of stakeholders in a transformative process leading to development of policy pathways. The process of coming to an agreement on policy pathways requires critical reflection on underlying system conceptualizations and commitment to building capacity in all stakeholders engaged in a social learning process. Simulation models can support such processes by providing a boundary object or negotiating artifact that allows stakeholders to deliberate through a multi-interpretable, consistent, transparent, and verifiable representation of reality. The challenge is how to structure the transdisciplinary process of involving stakeholders in simulation modeling and how to know when such a process can be labeled as transformative. There is a proliferation of approaches for this across disciplines, of which this article identifies Group Model Building, Companion Modeling, Challenge-and-Reconstruct Learning, and generic environmental modeling as the most prominent. This article systematically reviews relevant theories, terminology, principles, and methodologies across these four approaches to build a framework that can facilitate further learning. The article also provides a typology of approaches to modeling with stakeholders. It distinguishes transformative approaches that involve stakeholders from representative, instrumental and nominal forms. It is based on an extensive literature review, supported by twenty-three semi-structured interviews with participatory and non-participatory modelers. The article brings order into the abundance of conceptions of transformation, the role of simulation models in transformative change processes, the role of participation of stakeholders, and what type of approaches to modeling with stakeholders are befitting in the development of policy pathways.

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Pathways, targets and temporalities: Analysing English agriculture's net zero futures

Environment and Planning E Nature and Space ◽

10.1177/25148486211064962 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 251484862110649

Author(s):

Rob Booth

Keyword(s):

Critical Discourse Analysis ◽

Environmental Governance ◽

Food System ◽

Grey Literature ◽

Transformative Change ◽

State Institutions ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Net Zero ◽

Agricultural Emissions ◽

Political Dimensions

Net zero emissions targets are of growing international relevance given their increasing uptake by governments across the world. This article analyses net zero targets as a distinctly future-oriented approach to environmental governance. It does so from a critical perspective, examining whether net zero targets serve to reproduce the existing temporalities of environmental policymaking or whether they represent a break with current practices and, in turn, develop new temporalities and novel ways of engaging with the future. In order to do this, this article focuses on efforts to reduce agricultural emissions in England to net zero. In 2019 the United Kingdom introduced legislation requiring a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. This, in turn, has encouraged actors in the food system to produce various imagined pathways to net-zero agriculture. This article critically analyses how these imagined pathways are discursively produced by influential actors within this sphere through a critical discourse analysis of recent grey literature produced by Defra, the Climate Change Committee and the National Farmers’ Union. It asserts that, to an extent, the net zero and target oriented approaches enshrined in current environmental policymaking represent the ongoing reproduction of both an ‘empty’ modernist future with some post-political dimensions. This assessment is, however, nuanced by recognising the tensions that emerge within and between the state and non-state institutions producing these discourses. Ultimately, however, the net zero transition draws actors together around a techno-optimistic vision of an agricultural future defined by sustainable intensification and negative emissions technologies. In doing so, it serves to suppress calls for transformative change in agriculture based on social as well as material change.

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“Plugging In” Epistemology: A Theoretical and Methodological Manoeuvre in Qualitative Research

The Qualitative Report ◽

10.46743/2160-3715/2015.2179 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Genine Hook

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Qualitative Research ◽

Critical Incidents ◽

Research Work ◽

Academic Research ◽

Postgraduate Education ◽

Research Process ◽

Research Practice ◽

Institutional Structures ◽

New Meanings

In this paper I aim to illustrate how an epistemological three-way manoeuvre I propose may work in qualitative academic research. Epistemology is critical to my research because I live the topic that I research and in this paper I chart a three-way manoeuvre between and through an articulation of my researcher self, theoretical framing and the intent of the research project. This paper is my response to Jackson and Mazzei’s (2013) work “Plugging One Text into Another: Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research.” I have included the paper title here to introduce the reader to Jackson & Mazzei’s work earlier in my paper in which they advocate a “plugging in” of ceaseless variations of ideas and theories. I suggest that a “plugging in” of forthright epistemology in academic research is an important text that can “plug into” theory and data for rich explorations in qualitative research. Articulations of epistemological foundations of research allow researchers to be explicit about their worldview and acknowledge that it is integral to their researcher self and therefore impossible to separate from research practice. In this paper I demonstrate a methodological move through epistemology, drawing on the epistemology section in my own research work which details my researcher positioning and is able to examine how my experiences of sole parenting in higher education has influenced and informed this study. I consider three critical incidents; my initial assumptions and judgement about sole parents, regulatory exchanges I experienced as un-helpful as I transitioned into postgraduate education and the institutional structures of postgraduate timetabling as regulatory and potentially exclusionary. Articulating one’s research positionality infuses research with context and embeds a “thinking with theory” which can open up new meanings in research by foregrounding the epistemological pathway that is fundamental to the research process.

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Discrimination

Psychology ◽

10.1093/obo/9780199828340-0233 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

John Dovidio ◽

Elif Ikizer

Keyword(s):

Cultural Beliefs ◽

Social Psychological ◽

Individual Level ◽

Policy Practice ◽

Institutional Structures ◽

Positive Treatment ◽

Overall Evaluation ◽

Psychological Influences ◽

The Individual ◽

The Impact

Discrimination refers to an act, policy, practice, or social structure that creates, maintains, or reinforces an advantage for some groups and their members over other groups and their members. Discrimination, which can occur at the individual, institutional, and cultural levels, represents unfair treatment and can be distinguished from two other forms of bias: (i) prejudice, which is an attitude reflecting an overall evaluation of a group, and (ii) stereotypes, which are associations and attributions of specific characteristics to a group. Although prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination at the individual level are generally positively associated empirically, prejudice and stereotypes do not necessarily lead to discrimination, and discrimination can occur in the absence of conscious prejudice and stereotypes. Classic contributions on this topic characterized discrimination mainly in terms of negative actions by individuals—ranging from verbal comments to physical injury—directed to harm of another group and its members. However, in addition to blatant and direct forms of discrimination, discrimination may be displayed as unjustified positive treatment of members of one’s own group relative to members of another group, or it may represent actions toward members of another group that initially appear favorable but ultimately disadvantage the other group in the longer term (e.g., patronizing behavior, such as chivalry). Discrimination is often represented in terms of the behavior of individuals directed toward members, but these acts are not necessarily consciously motivated. Moreover, individual bias expressed by individuals is not necessary for discrimination to be experienced by members of some groups. Instead, discrimination may be enacted broadly through institutional structures and policies or embedded in cultural beliefs and representations that value various groups differently. Thus, individual-, institutional-, and cultural-level processes may operate in concert to provide some groups systematic advantages and/or to impose disadvantages on other groups. Often these influences are cloaked in justifications or ideologies that obscure the unfairness of the influences and thus allow the discriminatory nature of the treatment to go undetected and unaddressed. The remainder of this examination of discrimination considers (i) personality and individual differences related to behaving in a discriminatory way, (ii) social psychological influences that promote discrimination, (iii) subtle manifestations of discrimination, (iv) institutional and cultural forms of bias; (v) the impact of discrimination psychologically and physically, and (vi) ways of combating discrimination.

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Policy, Practice and Education: supplementary and pharmacist prescribing : Reaping the benefits of supplementary prescribing

Nurse Prescriber ◽

10.1017/s146711580524155x ◽

2005 ◽

Keyword(s):

Pharmacist Prescribing ◽

Policy Practice ◽

Supplementary Prescribing

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Students Involvement in Multilingual and Multicultural Community Services

Perspectives on Communication Disorders and Sciences in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations ◽

10.1044/cds22.2.77 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 22 (2) ◽

pp. 77-89 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Ying-Chiao Tsao

Keyword(s):

Service Learning ◽

Cultural Competence ◽

Linguistically Diverse ◽

Community Services ◽

Cultural Humility ◽

Self Assessment ◽

Multicultural Community ◽

Raising Awareness ◽

Hands On ◽

Teaching Learning

Promoting cultural competence in serving diverse clients has become critically important across disciplines. Yet, progress has been limited in raising awareness and sensitivity. Tervalon and Murray-Garcia (1998) believed that cultural competence can only be truly achieved through critical self-assessment, recognition of limits, and ongoing acquisition of knowledge (known as “cultural humility”). Teaching cultural humility, and the value associated with it remains a challenging task for many educators. Challenges inherent in such instruction stem from lack of resources/known strategies as well as learner and instructor readiness. Kirk (2007) further indicates that providing feedback on one's integrity could be threatening. In current study, both traditional classroom-based teaching pedagogy and hands-on community engagement were reviewed. To bridge a gap between academic teaching/learning and real world situations, the author proposed service learning as a means to teach cultural humility and empower students with confidence in serving clients from culturally/linguistically diverse backgrounds. To provide a class of 51 students with multicultural and multilingual community service experience, the author partnered with the Tzu-Chi Foundation (an international nonprofit organization). In this article, the results, strengths, and limitations of this service learning project are discussed.

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