Search results

The aim of this paper is to elaborate the connection between the evolution of cybernetics and the development of scientific rationality (classical, non-classical, post-non-classical) and to emphasize the relevance of the formation of post-non-classical cybernetics for self-developing reflexive-active environment (the third-order cybernetics).

This paper includes interdisciplinary analysis of the evolution of cybernetics and possible directions of its development.

A connection between the types of scientific rationality (classical, non-classical and post-non-classical) and the stages of the development cybernetics is presented. Classical rationality is first-order cybernetics dealing with observed systems (an external observer). Non-classical rationality is second-order cybernetics dealing with observing systems (built-in observer). Post-non-classical rationality is third-order cybernetics dealing with the self-developing reflexive-active environment (distributed observer).

This is an initial theoretical conceptualization, which needs a broader assessment and case studies.

This proposed direction for the analysis of cybernetics opens new approaches to social control on the basis of the subject-focused models and integration of traditional cybernetic tools.

Third-order cybernetics will promote the development of civil society. Direct democracy receives new tools for development.

The value of this research is in the interdisciplinary analysis of the cybernetics evolution and in new possible directions for its development.

This chapter brings to the forefront various challenges of engaging in both critical and participatory forms of knowledge building, in particular with queer and trans migrants with precarious status. Two scholars trace their previous experiences of engaging in participatory and critical research as well as their shift toward reflexive ways of knowing. This shift elicits the ways in which Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) may be used to build reflexive knowledge with and about queer and trans migrant communities, and in particular, LGBTQ refugees and MSM Latino migrants.

How does one classify instructional videos uploaded by musicians of different caliber and mastery on video‐sharing sites? What kinds of communities are forming around these content sources? How does one address the different perception and understanding of what music means to a diverse audience? How does one identify and address the needs of new kinds of users, who learn how to play music by using primarily online resources? While this paper does not seek to directly address all these questions, it aims to raise them with the aim of contextualizing the discussion as a necessary foundation to effectively address the more practical questions above.

This paper presents a knowledge organization model of music knowledge based on the concept of musicianship as used in music education. A balanced and holistic approach is sought, especially in light of the interdisciplinary nature of the challenge being addressed. Drawing on Hjørland's work on domain analysis, and Hennion's concept of the user of music, this paper discusses music as a domain, music as information, and music as knowledge.

In particular, the concept of listening and genre are considered important ways through which one mediates one's understanding of music as knowledge. There are four “layers” in the model: Vocabulary of Music; Structures and Patterns of Music; Appreciation of Music; and Cultural‐Historical Contexts.

The model addresses knowledge organization challenges specific to the domain of music.

As a fountainhead of postcolonial scholarship, Edward Said has profoundly impacted multiple disciplines. This chapter makes a case for why sociologists should (re)read Edward Said, paying specific attention to his warning about the inevitably violent interactions between knowledge and power in historic and current imperial contexts. Drawing on Said and other postcolonial theorists, we propose a threefold typology of potential violence associated with the production of knowledge: (1) the violence of essentialization, (2) epistemic violence, and (3) the violence of apprehension. While postcolonial theory and sociological and anthropological writing on reflexivity have highlighted the former two dangers, we urge social scientists to also remain wary of the last. We examine the formation of structures of authoritative knowledge during the French Empire in North Africa, the British Empire in India, and the American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan during the “Global War on Terror,” paying close attention to how synchronic instances of apprehension (more or less accurate perception or recognition of the “other”) and essentialization interact in the production of diachronic essentialist and epistemic violence. We conclude by calling for a post-orientalist form of reflexivity, namely that sociologists, whether they engage as public intellectuals or not, remain sensitive to the fact that the production and consumption of sociological knowledge within a still palpable imperial framework makes all three violences possible, or even likely.

This chapter critically considers two conceptions of sociological labor as they have recently been articulated in two competing visions for public sociology. I use the contrast between Ben Agger's and Michael Burawoy's recent professions of public sociology as a lens through which to critically understand the way in which the narratives produced by sociological labor govern the emergence of knowledge, which would be the basis of transformation.

Managers at the company attempt to implement a knowledge management information system in an attempt to avoid loss of expertise while improving control and efficiency. The paper seeks to explore the implications of the technological solution to employees within the company.

The paper reports qualitative research conducted in a single organization. Evidence is presented in the form of interview extracts.

The case section of the paper presents the accounts of organizational participants. The accounts reveal the workers' reactions to the technology‐based system and something of their strategies of resistance to the system. These accounts also provide glimpses of the identity construction engaged in by these knowledge workers. The setting for the research is in a knowledge‐intensive primary industry. Research was conducted through observation and interviews.

The issues identified are explored in a single case‐study setting. Future research could look at the relevance of the findings to other settings.

The case evidence presented indicates some of the complexity of implementation of information systems in organizations. This could certainly be seen as more evidence of the uncertainty associated with organizational change and of the need for managers not to expect an easy adoption of intrusive IT solutions.

This paper adds empirical insight to a largely conceptual literature.

This chapter explores two business and innovation strategies to increase sustainability in a small-medium enterprise. The two strategies, one addressing the improved sustainability of an existing product line and the other addressing the development and implementation of a new product line, employ different supply chain sustainable practices and utilize different dynamic capabilities.

The chapter describes how sustainable supply chain management practices, sustainable new product development processes, and theories of dynamic capabilities interact to support a sustainable and differentiated strategy in the Alcass organization.

The models of sustainable supply chain management and sustainable new product development are applied to “more sustainable” products and “new sustainable” products, by raising different relevant practices as well as different supporting dynamic capabilities.

The purpose of this article is to explore Maggie Kuhn's theoretical and analytical contributions to social gerontology and more broadly to the advancement of critical and public sociology.

This paper is an theoretical exploration of ageing. Maggie Kuhn's and the Gray Panthers theoretical contributions include analyses of, and related to: identity politics, intersectionality, cultural and media studies and the cognitive sciences, the forces and factors in the developing political economy of ageing including critiques of the ageing enterprise and the medical industrial complex, the sociology of knowledge of gerontology and globalization and world imperialism. The concluding section argues that the post‐retirement career of Maggie Kuhn was one of a Public Sociologist.

Maggie Kuhn fulfils the promise of the Project of Public Sociology, which “is to make visible the invisible, to make the private public, to validate these organic connections as part of our sociological life”. Maggie Kuhn's example moved forward the work of multiple generations of scholars. She lived and produced critical social analyses in pursuit of emancipatory knowledges. Her work is one of the earliest forms, if not the first, of critical pedagogy in gerontology; she promoted and advanced discourses of resistance. Maggie Kuhn was an engaged and outraged, practicing organic intellectual – the epitome of what bell hooks means by “teaching to transgress” and “education as the practice of freedom”. In the 24 years after her involuntary retirement, this was Maggie Kuhn's full‐time transformational agenda.

The paper looks at how the biography of Maggie Kuhn helped to engender the rise of radical social gerontology.

A reinvigorated social theory based on the social philosophy of John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, William James, and others has begun to make significant contributions to the study of human societies. The so-called “Pragmatic Turn” in philosophy and social theory, associated especially with Richard Rorty and Hans Joas, has drawn our attention to the role of habit and creativity in social action. This chapter reviews some of these trends, but argues that the modern revival of neopragmatism sidesteps many of the core insights of the classical pragmatists. Relating the issue to Michael Burawoy's call for “public sociology,” and drawing on the pragmatism of C. Wright Mills, a critical public pragmatism would seek to provide the preconditions for democracy via the cultivation of a public that valued what Dewey called “creative intelligence,” and what Mills called “the sociological imagination.”