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Over the last 30 years, a range of different complementary currency models have been developed and diffused across the world. Such currency systems have been researched from a variety of different perspectives, such as policy tools (Williams et al., 2001) and social movements (North, 2006). Many of these have explicit links to sustainability objectives and the green movement (Helleiner, 2000; Longhurst & Seyfang, 2011; North, 2010a; Seyfang, 2009), and some environmental writers argue that monetary reform and the development of multiple currency systems are critical factors in achieving environmental sustainability (Douthwaite, 1999). This chapter explains how such a ‘green’ currency emerged from within the environmentally focused Transition Town social movement. This movement has given rise to a range of locally based grassroots enterprises that deliver local services and goods. However, it is argued here that such enterprises can also act as instigators of radical innovations, such as complementary currencies. As such it conceptualises currencies as a form of technology and uses the empirical case of the Totnes Pound currency as an example of a technology that has emerged from civil society. Adopting this framing, the chapter draws on theory relating to the formation of innovative technological ‘niches’ to provide insights into the challenges that they have to overcome in order to survive and flourish. The chapter therefore argues that exploring complementary currencies through the lens of innovation theory can provide valuable insights into their development, and that such an approach may prove useful where grassroots enterprises are engaged in other forms of innovative activity.

Early in one’s career in psychology, certainly starting in graduate school, if not sooner as a psych major in college, a choice point gradually emerges between seeking a career as a scholar, a scientist, and perhaps as an academic versus pursuing the life of a practitioner, one who applies the work of the former, the scholar. We faculty will often cast this choice in the form of a “tension” between science and practice. Ironically, I have never felt such tension. The purpose of this chapter is to explore choices we make in life and career, the consequences of these choices, and what we can learn in the process, that is, along the way and the implications for organization change and development.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has arguably exposed the failures of neoliberalism and its political agenda over the past generation. The response has seen governments resurrect neo-Keynesian policies in order to address the weaknesses in the current market system and to mitigate the worst economic downturn since the Second World War (1939–1945). This chapter contextualizes the Australian perspective and the policy responses to the economic challenges posed by COVID-19. The authors contrast that with the experience of the USA and UK with whom the country shares common institutions and culture, including a generation of neoliberal economic reforms.

By closing large sections of the economy, the Australian COVID-19 response provided extensive social welfare support and bailed out several sectors and industries. Previously unacceptable and unthinkable levels of budget deficit and country debt were incurred. This systemic state intervention into the economy raises the question of whether the pandemic signals the end of the neoliberal era and its ramifications – or whether this neo-Keynesian pause was a kneejerk response to ensure and protect its legacy.

Prior to the first session I was asked about my view of rent seeking, mentioned in passing in the document of mine distributed earlier. I replied that my view had three parts. First, I agreed that rent seeking, however defined, was ubiquitous. Second, I argued that rent seeking is not bad per se. Third, I argued that I found particularly disgraceful treatments of the allocation of resources to efforts to change the law as bad rent seeking. Both this person and Jim Buchanan (later in the conference) insisted that rent seeking was objectionable when it involved a transfer without a gain in efficiency, i.e. the creation of something productive. I responded that this view substituted the analyst’s definition of productive for that of the economic agent – who obviously believed that hiring a lawyer, etc. to help bring about a potential change in the law was a desirable, hence productive, use of his or her resources. I further insisted that this definition, especially when it was used in a blanket, indiscriminate way, functioned to privilege existing law and those benefiting from existing law and to deny people access to their government, and that it did so by manipulating the definition of rent seeking to give effect to selective antecedent normative premises hidden within the use of the term “productive” (in at least one discussion the term “artificial” was used). I pointed to this as a problem in the use of language. Further aspects of the terminology of rent seeking will be dealt with below.

Leadership is basically about influence and ability to cultivate followership. This chapter examined the nature of indigenous socio-political leadership in Africa using Zimbabwe, Sudan and Nigeria as caselets and compared this with the post-colonial or modern-day leadership realities. A survey was conducted among senior executives at Lagos Business School, Nigeria, with a sample size of 200 persons, to find out their perception of the African indigenous leadership system. An overwhelming 90% believe that culture plays a big role in shaping African leadership style. However, two-thirds of the respondents agreed that Africa lacks proper institutional structures to support good leadership, thus encouraging corruption (97% of the respondents) and non-accountability among the leaders. Also, only 5% thought cultural orientation was the reason why the African followers do not hold their leaders accountable. In other words, it is not in the African culture not to hold leaders accountable for their actions. So, what went wrong? We attempted a deeper look at the effect of colonial rule and the attendant militarisation of the African continent. Our conclusion is that the colonisation of the continent by Europe brought significant distortion to the traditional African indigenous leadership institutions and the psyche of the African leader and the followers alike. Post-colonial Africa has witnessed 133 recorded coups d’etat between 1952 and 2016. This chapter is recommended to all those who seek a deeper understanding of the nature of the African indigenous leadership practices and the factors that have shaped these over the years.

Undergraduate legal studies classrooms are ideal places in which to engage discourses on judging, and to invite students to analyze and understand contemporary cultural and political representations of the proper roles of judges and judging in democracies. This chapter examines undergraduate understandings of judicial independence and judicial activism, via class discussions surrounding the judicial retention election in Iowa in 2010. The election was occasioned by the groundbreaking state supreme court case Varnum et al. v. Brien (2009), legalizing same-sex marriage in the state. Drawing on participant–observation research as a professor in these courses, and examining student dialogue, class discussion, and web-board postings on the topic, I find that legal studies students are able to articulate a complex range of views regarding the judiciary, judicial activism, and same-sex marriage. Their ability to engage in (mostly) civil discourse on the topic of judging is of particular societal importance, given the limitations of contemporary public discourses about judging. These findings point, as well, to the potential role for engaged academics in expanding and contextualizing public conversations about judicial independence, judicial activism, and rights. The chapter also highlights, however, limits in that educational experience, in particular students' lionization of legal processes, simultaneous to their cynicism about, and lack of engagement in, electoral/political processes. This points to the development of interdisciplinary legal studies curricula as a means toward effective education for democracy.

Consecration is the process by which producers in creative fields become canonized as “greats.” However, is this the end of the story? Research on consecration focuses on the drivers of consecration but pays little attention to the post-consecration period. Furthermore, the research ignores the dynamics of consecration. To address these gaps, we examine the changing fortunes of a consecrated artist – the musician Phil Collins. We identify the ways in which three actors (fans, critics, and peers) assemble for consecration, disassemble for deconsecration, and reassemble for reconsecration. Examining the changing public image and commercial fortunes of Collins as a solo artist between 1980 and 2020, we identify an N-shaped process of rise-fall-rise that we call the Phil Collins Effect. This effect offers a new way of thinking about how cultural producers gain, lose and regain status in their fields.