1,721,003 research outputs found
Lancaster SPRG/ARCC water survey
No full textFull text of a domestic water use survey commissioned by the University of Lancaster under the ESRC SPRG project. For more information see https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/359514
Erratum to: Developing Novel Approaches to Tracking Domestic Water Demand Under Uncertainty-A Reflection on the "Up Scaling" of Social Science Approaches in the United Kingdom (Water Resour Manage, 10.1007/s11269-012-0117-y): Erratum to
No full textA systems-theoretical, relational approach to the role of third sector in welfare governance via local partnerships
No full textThe potential of governance through partnerships and the third sector to solve state and market failures has been taken up internationally. Yet this solution poses theoretical and practical challenges because these instruments further complicate an already complex field of action concerned with social problems.
While the third sector and governance are much studied, approaches that connect their roles in welfare governance to broader theoretical issues are underdeveloped. This thesis seeks to fill this gap by developing a systems-theoretical, relational approach that adopts the complexity and cultural turns and that was developed in a dialogue between ethnography and theoretical inquiry. The case study involved a Local Strategic Partnership in an English district in a period dominated by Third Way policies. The theoretical inquiry draws on Luhmannian systems theory and Jessop’s strategic-relational approach. Overall, the thesis explores, empirically and theoretically, discourses and semantics, descriptions and self-descriptions, policies, network and organisational features, decisions and undecidabilities, paradoxes and contingencies and the self-potentiating complexity of selections. In particular, it considers the variety of first- and second-order observations of failure and their role as a stimulus to continuing attempts at governance despite the recurrent experience of failure.
In this way, the thesis explores the inevitably complex unfolding dialectic between two sides of a fractally structured part-whole paradox in societies characterized by functional differentiation and network governance. This paradox has two sides. The state is but one institutional ensemble in a complex society that is nonetheless charged with governing the whole society; and the third sector is expected to represent the side of ‘society’ to the state and to deliver state objectives. Each side has its own fractal complexities, reinforced through their interaction. The thesis concludes by highlighting the analytical potential of this approach to understanding the complexities of governance in and through the third sector.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia; Universidade de Coimbr
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Method as intervention: intervening in practise through quantitative and mixed methodologies
No full textAs Law and Urry ( 2004 ) reflect, methods matter. The enactment of methodology is inherently one of performance – we make (multiple) realities, we make those realities real or less real, and as such intervene in political and social worlds. This chapter reflects on how expanding the range of methods used to actualise theories of practice can be a form of interference and intervention. By using new methods to disturb the relatively unexamined way that ‘consumers’ and their resource consumption is represented in policy worlds, research methods not only disturb what is ‘known’, but also reveal new political realities and possibilities. This process of revealing the multiplicity of ways of representing social phenomena, and then enacting different ways of knowing into a political space, is what is referred to as ontological politics (Mol 1999 ). In this chapter we argue that the use of quantitative and mixed methodologies that reflect practices (as performance, and as entities) disturbs the dominant way that the resource industries and related political spaces represent the consumer. However, we also argue that such a use of research methods creates an alternative politics about, and instrumentation of, processes of consumption as represented through theories of practice
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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