The Good Life and Climate Adaptation

The need to adapt to climate change brings about moral concerns that according to ‘eco-centric’ critiques cannot be resolved by modernist ethics, as this takes humans as the only beings capable of intentionality and rationality. However, if intentionality and rationality are reconsidered as ‘counterfactual hypotheses’ it becomes possible to align modernist ethics with the eco-centric approaches. These counterfactual hypotheses guide the development of institutions, so as to allow the pursuit of a ‘good life’. This mean that society should be organized as if humans are intentional and, following Habermas’s idea of ‘communicative rationality’, as if humans are capable of collective deliberation. Given the ecological challenges, the question becomes how to give ecological concerns a voice in deliberative processes.

How Social Science Got Better

Social science research is facing mounting criticism, as canonical studies fail to replicate, questionable research practices abound, and researcher social and political biases come under fire. Far from being in crisis, however, social science is undergoing an unparalleled renaissance of ever-broader and deeper understanding and application—made possible by close attention to criticism of our biases and open public engagement. Wars between scientists and their humanist critics, methodological disputes over statistical practice and qualitative research, and disciplinary battles over grand theories of human nature have all quietly died down as new generations of scholars have integrated the insights of multiple sides. Rather than deny that researcher biases affect results, scholars now closely analyze how our racial, gender, geographic, methodological, political, and ideological differences impact our research questions; how the incentives of academia influence our research practices; and how universal human desires to avoid uncomfortable truths and easily solve problems affect our conclusions. To be sure, misaligned incentive structures remain, but a messy, collective deliberation across the research community is boosting self-knowledge and improving practice. Ours is an unprecedented age of theoretical diversity, open and connected data, and public scholarship. How Social Science Got Better documents and explains recent transformations, crediting both internal and public critics for strengthening social science. Applying insights from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science and providing new data on trends in social science research and scholarly views, it demonstrates that social science has never been more relevant, rigorous, or self-reflective.

Folkways Lonto Leok Budaya Manggarai dalam Terang Pemikiran William Sumner Tentang Masyarakat Sebagai Kerjasama Antagonistic

As a large nation consisting of various regional cultures, Indonesia has various folkways, which are the skills and local wisdom of the Indonesian people. In Manggarai culture, one folkway that is most famous is lonto leok. Lonto leok is the life principle of the Manggarai community which expresses a sense of unity and oneness as a group of people. Therefore, this study aims to reveal the value of togetherness contained in folkways lonto leok. The methodology used is an interpretive method of the phenomenon of living with the Manggarai community in a comparative study with William Graham Sumner's thinking about society as an antagonistic collaboration. This study reveals that the Manggarai community was born from the antagonistic collaboration between tribes who fought each other in the past, which then united to form the Manggarai community as it is today. These historical traces are clearly revealed in the folkways lonto leok, which means collective deliberation. This study contributes to understanding the history of the unity of the Republic of Indonesia and how this unity is maintained.

Co-Housing to Ease and Share Household Chores? Spatial Visibility and Collective Deliberation as Levers for Gender Equality

Dwelling is very much related to time. A home shields the dweller from outsiders yet, provides an opportunity to engage with the outside world. However, the time required for household chores tends to hinder this engagement, especially for women. Interestingly, co-housing projects tend to rationalise housing and mutualise time-consuming tasks, freeing up time to and thus emancipating and empowering inhabitants. This argument was put to the test in a field study in Brussels. Through a gendered perspective, the research questions and tries to identify which levers ease domestic drudgery in co-housing projects. Spatial analyses coupled with qualitative observations and interviews were carried out in two co-housing projects. The issue of freeing up time through co-housing seems particularly relevant to various categories of people. First, it addresses gender inequalities regarding an egalitarian sharing of household chores. Second, individual (divorced, elderly, or single) households could also benefit from these time savings. Understanding co-housing within this emancipating perspective could be a lever to influence future policy making and incentives.

Generalization through Comparison

This final chapter examines the generalizability of our findings by considering other East Asian developmental state (DS) countries, including Japan, Taiwan, and China. Theoretical implication of this book mainly includes organizational adaptability and institutional changes through elite competition. First, this book claims that the reason why East Asian developmental states, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China, could sustain economic development over quite a long period is not due to some fixed institutional elements such as centralized, cohesive, and strong states. Contrary to the DS literature, elite competition can be beneficial to economic success through collective deliberation and flexible adaptation if they are properly coordinated into collaboration for shared goals like economic development and national competitiveness. In addition, this book concludes that unlike the institutionalist DS literature, this book emphasizes changes by competition to better account for endogenous changes.

The Characteristics of Locally Led Development in the Pacific

There is a growing recognition of the effectiveness of locally led processes of social change and development. However, most of the case studies that have been discussed in the literature are focused on <em>programs</em> run by international development agencies. This article examines three locally led <em>processes</em> of change in the Pacific. These include the Simbo for Change Initiative in the Solomon Islands, the Voice in Papua New Guinea and a regional process led by the Green Growth Coalition. We explore how local understandings of leadership, preferences for informal ways of working, holistic ways of thinking, the importance placed upon maintaining good relationships and collective deliberation fundamentally shaped each of the cases. We note how these preferences and ways of working are often seen, or felt, to be at odds with western modes of thought and the practice of development agencies. Finally, we conclude by exploring how these initiatives were supported by external agencies, and suggest further research of this type might provide benchmarks by which Pacific citizens can hold their governments and development agencies to account.

An Experiment in Feminist Technology in Local Governance: Revisiting the Question of ‘Invited Spaces’ of Participation in Kerala

In this article, we foreground the potential for a space for collective deliberation and political subjectivities building among women leaders in local governance. We interrogate the Gramamukhya portal, which was initiated in 2011 and continued until 2015, as a democratic space to politicise the invited spaces of governance. Revisiting the question of women’s engagement in panchayati raj institutions in Kerala, we suggest that the practice of citizenship can become politically effective for women in governance if they use a platform that facilitates critical engagement from within and without the invited spaces of participation. This reflection becomes all the more significant given the contemporary political context of Kerala, where the women’s question is caught between developmentalist intentions of the state and right-wing political mobilisations at the grass-roots level.

Deliberation and University Governance

In the United States, historical oppression and discrimination have barred certain groups based on their gender, race, religion, sexuality, and socioeconomic class from full participation in higher education. While there has been a long history of protest and pressure to diversify, progress has been mixed. After a recent wave of protests at Brown University, Richard M. Locke faced the task of developing a realistic and coherent university plan for addressing concerns and demands. Implementing insights from Joshua Cohen’s work on deliberation, Locke led a process that resulted in one of the most ambitious university diversity and inclusion action plans in the country. In this chapter, Locke describes the process undertaken and seeks to generalize from the experience at Brown to argue that collective deliberation can be an effective model for how universities can address an array of complex issues faced today.