What is planning without property? Relational practices of being and belonging

What is planning without property? This question was recently posed to me following a conference presentation. In this paper, I argue that taking this question seriously reveals unchallenged assumptions about the relationship between planning and property. Focusing on Canada as a settler colonial liberal democracy, I respond to this question by looking at the Indian Act which has supported colonial dispossession and assimilation in Canada for almost 200 years and rely on Brenna Bhandar’s conceptualization of “racial regimes of property” as a means of examining how racial subjects and private property are co-produced. I then look to the practices reflected in the creation of Nadia Myre's artwork Indian Act to show how Indigenous epistemologies can aid in the conceptualization of planning without property. I argue that planning without property would be an approach to planning that would be focused on identifying, making, and strengthening the human and more-than-human relationships the flourishing of life requires. Thus, planning without property would support practices of being and belonging rather than practices of exclusion and domination.

Religion and Relationality in Punk: Musicking and Ordinary Ethics

Engaging with Christopher Small’s notion of musicking and Veena Das and Michael Lambek’s notion of ordinary ethics, this article analyzes research on religion in punk from religion studies, sociology, and theology to offer a (self) critique of the representation of religious belief and relationships in punk. Focusing on the presence of evangelical Christianity in contemporary punk, and emphasizing relationships as central to the activity of musicking, this article draws attention to exclusions and essentializations in research in this field. Focusing on the ordinary ethics enacted through punk musicking, rather than the normative ethics located in sometimes polemical punk statements and scholarship, it is argued that a more accurate understanding of the place of religion in punk becomes apparent by focusing on quotidian relational practices.

How counter-fate relational practices mitigate resource acquisition challenges during project nascence

Research shows that embedded relations can facilitate the resource acquisition process in entrepreneurship. Yet, as relations are dynamic and subject to change, it remains unclear how entrepreneurs can acquire necessary resources when pre-existing ties may not yet or no longer be relevant, sufficient or accessible. Under these circumstances, acquiring necessary resources is a challenge and one that novice entrepreneurs in project-based enterprises face repeatedly as they seek to sustain their businesses. Evidence from 123 projects developed by six newly formed independent television production companies in the UK shows that new entrepreneurs can manoeuvre around constraints by engaging in one of four counter-fate relational practices: posturing (i.e. exaggerating interest from key ties), status sequencing (i.e. developing key relations in sequence based on status), geographic sequencing (i.e. attaining key ties in sequence based on location), and opportunistic manoeuvring (i.e. manipulating the opportunism of potential resource-holders). We contribute to entrepreneurship research by showing how resources can be acquired despite a lack of key embedded ties, and highlight enabling conditions; and to project studies by illustrating how projects progress past nascence to launch and acquire new clients or repeat commissions.

Technology Standardization for Innovation: How Google Leverages an Open Digital Platform

The aim of this study is to investigate firms’ strategies for developing and diffusing technology standards while maintaining a consensus with competitors in their industry. We conducted a case study of information technology (IT) standardization and analysed how Google drives the development and diffusion of HTML5 standards. Accordingly, this study sheds light on two strategic initiatives and two relational practices of standard development and diffusion. Adopting the technologies developed by other firms and forming alliances with other browser vendors are key to influencing the standardization process. Additionally, by building partnerships with developer communities, Google has accelerated the development and diffusion of the HTML5 standards. The mechanisms behind Google’s standardization strategies are also discussed.

Co-sensing and co-shaping as shared and relational practices in bringing about relational leaders in higher education

The aim of this article is to investigate how and what kinds of relational and shared practices were co-created within a multicultural team in a higher education collaborative learning environment. The students interacted while working towards the shared goal of co-constructing knowledge. The study provides insight into how student teams can actively build collaboration in learning spaces through manifesting relational leadership. Shared and relational practices refer broadly to all the knowledge, attitudes and skills that emerge from team interaction. A compound theoretical framework combining relational leadership and leadership trichotomy was adapted to study what particular factors enable shared and relational practices. The qualitative study drew data from students’ reflections and group discussions in an intervention which served as a space for experimentation in collaboration and dialogue. The results showed that the students practised Co-sensing and Co-shaping to effectively allow knowledge co-construction. A broadening perception of diversity and the perception that barriers were a doorway to new relational possibilities enabled Co-sensing and Co-shaping to work in collaboration. The results of the study could provide new insights for other kinds of higher education learning environments.

Making Trouble With Ontogenesis: Collaborative Writing, Becoming, and Concept Forming as Event

Through the authors’ continuing creative encounters with practices of collaborative writing, this article offers a troubling of approaches to ontology that inform a construction of simply human selves and a constitution of Being. The article seeks instead to foster processual movements toward always becoming and the creative-relational practices of concept forming as event. In their speculative experimentations with the concept of “ontogenesis,” the authors offer exemplifications of the capaciousness of collaborating writing bodies, always on the move, always folding and unfolding, always opening in active movements of inquiry, curiosity, and wonder. In the eventful potentiality of “notyetness” that each passage of writing affords, immanent sensings of becoming are imbricated in the intensification of fragile, prehensive, and ontogenetic emergence.

Weathering fluctuations in teacher commitment: leaders relational failures, with improvement prospects

PurposeStudies demonstrate the central role of principals in developing and sustaining teacher commitment to their school. Teachers' commitment to their school impacts teaching, learning, innovation and school climate and manifests job satisfaction. Commitment strongly relates to teacher attrition. Attrition is important in the study of school success and failure given its strong predictive link to student learning.Design/methodology/approachThis study thus identifies relational practices of principals who successfully develop and maintain high levels of commitment among their teaching staff compared to those principals who fail to maintain high commitment or fail to raise low commitment among their teachers during the school year. To investigate this process, this study uses longitudinal, within-year school network and climate data for teachers and principals in 15 American charter schools. With these data and theories offered by social-psychology and organizational studies, the interpersonal leadership and school climate conditions set forth by the principal link to the fluctuating levels of commitment among teachers.FindingsDespite the consistently established link between employee commitment and organizational success and failure, this operationalization of changing levels of staff commitment is a novel contribution to the discussion of organizational principal leadership failure. This study clearly tests the questions: Which emotional responses prove volatile to teachers' repeated exchanges with their principals? How do principals' relational practices impact teachers' commitment to teaching? Among the strongest findings is the key practice of principals to maintain trust—interpersonal and schoolwide—to improve commitment among teachers and avoid loss of commitment by the end of the school year.Practical implicationsRelational practices of principals can promote quality relationships that uphold trust and sustain environments conducive to maintaining high organizational commitment. When leaders fail to establish and maintain quality relationships, challenges experienced during a school year become more difficult to overcome.Originality/valueThe opportunity arises to test the time-varying aspect of interpersonal relations in organizations and the subsequent idea about how organizational leaders maintain strong relationships, strengthen poor ones or repair injured relationships. These results evidence teacher commitment is prone to decline at the end of the school year yet the chance and magnitude of the fluctuation directly responds to changes in principals' relational practices. With relational practices, principals can induce affective responses from teachers at the interpersonal and organizational level that improve commitment among teachers and reduce drops in commitment.

Relational Communication and Consensual Nonmonogamy

Consensually nonmonogamous (CNM) relationships include a variety of relational types that allow for multiple sexual or romantic partners. Although many CNM dynamics occur, the most commonly addressed by both research and popular media include swinging relationships, open relationships, and polyamorous relationships. Many people practice some form of CNM at some point in time, with some estimates suggesting approximately one in five people will be involved in some kind of CNM relational dynamic at some point in their lifetime. At the core of their relational practices, many CNM relationships center communication, openness, and honesty. Despite this, CNM relationships have received less attention from communication researchers comparative to other social science disciplines. CNM relational practices are independent of other relational identities, but may intersect with other identities such as sexual orientation or those who practice kink or bondage, domination, and sadomasochism. The interdisciplinary research literature on relational communication and CNM examines relational maintenance behaviors in CNM relationships, primarily polyamorous relationships, relational communication and jealousy in multiple partner dynamics, polyamorous identity disclosure, and intercultural communication in polyamorous communities. CNM relational communication practices emphasize relational maintenance behavior in multiple-partner dynamics and how jealousy may be communicatively managed in CNM relationships.