1,720,986 research outputs found
ΤΟ ΕΝΕΡΓΕΙΑΚΟ ΜΕΛΛΟΝ ΤΩΝ ΜΗ ΔΙΑΣΥΝΔΕΔΕΜΕΝΩΝ ΝΗΣΙΩΝ:Συμμετοχική πολυκριτηριακή αξιολόγηση σεναρίων
Full text linkCrisis community currencies and the challenge of making alternative economies possible
Full text linkThe ongoing economic crisis has turned Greece into the epitome of unsustainable degrowth. Yet, busting the myth that there-are-no-alternatives to austerity for escaping enforced unsustainable degrowth, rousing manifestos, popular unrest and the rise of radical community currency movements suggest that the time is now ripe to challenge the mainstream economy. Nonetheless, such assertions currently remain under-researched – with emerging accounts of crisis community currency movements not paying much critical attention to everyday activist experiences on the ground. Against this backdrop, this paper seeks to provide a timely quality check of the potential of these movements – posing the timely question of whether crisis community currency movements enable the realisation of alternative practices and livelihoods outside the mainstream market. To this end, it applies the insights of social practice theory to new empirical findings from the first in-depth ethnographic study of a select sample of Athenian community currency movements. For in contrast to conventional, descriptive accounts and evaluations of community currencies, social practice theory provides a more holistic and grounded perspective – over and above individuals’ motivations and values – that focuses on the real experiences and concrete praxis of the in-situ introduction and use of community currencies. In so doing, this approach informs a unique exploration of community currency movements that accounts for the intrinsic role of context in shaping the course and outcomes of interventions motivated by the desire to enact alterative economies. At the same time, however, it reveals the immense difficulties encountered in attempts to enact more sustainable practices through the use of community currencies. For alongside being undermined by a hostile capitalist mainstream and an under-developed alternative economic field, community currency practitioners persistently clash with their capitalist selves and habits when attempting to materialise on their otherwise radical sustainability visions emerging in the wake of the crisis. Hence, these findings open-up timely debates on both the moment of crisis as an opportunity for social change, and on whether we can maintain faith in community currencies
Book Review: Lee Gregory (2015), Trading Time: Can Exchange Lead to Social Change? Bristol: Policy Press, £75.00, pp. 212, hbk.
No full textCrisis as opportunity? an ethnographic case-study of the post-capitalist possibilities of crisis community currency movements
Full text linkA growing body of scholarship suggests that capitalism is not inevitable and that moments of crisis provide an opportunity for critique and social transformation. Yet literature on social movements employing direct-action tactics to unmake capitalism and challenge austerity is still lacking. It has neither adequately dealt with non-capitalist practices, nor has it substantiated claims of efficacy in social change.
This thesis uses a novel research approach and presents new empirical evidence to deal with these shortcomings. It addresses the timely questions of whether and how these social movements support life despite-yet-beyond the recession. It thinks with, yet beyond, a practice-turn in social movement scholarship to break new ground for literature on non-capitalist practices, alternative economies and social movements. Specifically, the thesis provides a multi-sited ethnographic case-study of three Athenian crisis community currency movements. This informs the first study of community currencies dealing with the nitty-gritty of practicing the alternative economy. In so doing, it outlines what happens when emancipatory ideas of using alternative currencies to support everyday practices come into contact with the realities of modern-day Athens. It details a process of experimentation, learning-in-practice and contestation that both underlies and undermines the emergence of non-capitalist practices.
This approach enables an enlightened response on whether – and how – living despite-yet-beyond austerity is possible. The findings suggest that community currencies are only partly successful in enabling non-capitalist practices. And yet, the research uncovers a side of Athens as a crucible of creative resistance that would otherwise go unnoticed. If this is accepted, the thesis concludes with a novel conceptual model and an agenda for future research on non-capitalism. This will play-out both to the benefit of scholarship and society alike, as it promises to conceptually advance the field and to further corroborate the non-capitalist imaginary – enhancing faith in alternatives to austerity and capitalism
TILOS Project Deliverable D8.8 - Report on geographical studies
Full text linkRenewable and smart grid technologies promise to transform the Aegean into a “green” archipelago – with members of the internationally acclaimed TILOS-Horizon 2020 project seeking to transfer emerging knowledge beyond the island of Tilos itself. Nonetheless, research on public acceptability of green energy technologies suggests that local community opposition might undermine such ambitious plans. Hence, a crucial starting point for the research presented in this deliverable (D8.8) is the realisation of the timely need for an early stage upstream’ exploration of whether islanders from across the Aegean are likely to accept prospective green energy interventions in order to minimize the problems and maximize the expected results of the anticipated transfers of technology. In this research, we draw on primary data from two questionnaire surveys (involving a representative sample of locals from across the Aegean Archipelago), and from a Deliberative Mapping exercise exploring possible energy futures for the region (involving a number of expert stakeholders and the lay public), to uncover the widespread acceptability of the green energy solutions put forth by the TILOS research consortium – especially in small and very small islands of the Aegean Archipelago. Simultaneously, though, we uncover how broad acceptability does not always translate into actual acceptance of specific proposals, especially when these affect the end-user. For three distinct energy user profiles that are variably supportive of local sustainable energy developments have been identified; namely the Potential Green Prosumers, the Potential Green Consumers, and a non-negligible quarter of locals opposing such developments altogether (i.e. the Opposers). In turn, we argue that these findings should inform future interventions in the region with the ultimate aim of securing public support to “green” the Aegean. Of particular importance is our key conclusion that we can no longer afford to ignore energy publics and their diverse attitudes, values and sensitivities; future interventions in the region should, first and foremost, include locals in decision-making. Islanders need innovative energy technologies, but innovative energy technologies also need islanders and, thus, every effort should be made to empower them when planning for the sustainable energy transition of the region
Mapping Participation for Democratic Innovations:An experiment in evaluating a citizens’ panel on home energy decarbonisation
No full textThe Public Engagement Observatory is actively exploring how new approaches to mapping diverse forms of public engagement across systems can make a difference in practice to energy and climate-related decisions, innovations and new forms of participation. This briefing reports on one such experiment that explored how the Observatory’s approach might contribute to new democratic innovations. Members of the Observatory team collaborated with partners from the Climate Citizens project at Lancaster University, the Climate Change Committee, and Shared Future, who were undertaking a citizens’ panel on home energy decarbonisation. The collaborative experiment is one of the first attempts to explore how emerging approaches to mapping public engagement can shape democratic innovations in practice. In addition, it involved exploring new ways of considering the quality of public participation processes like citizens’ panels and citizens’ assemblies. This included asking how these discrete forms of participation are situated in wider systems of public engagement, focusing on questions of exclusion in addition to the usual emphasis on inclusion in evaluations of participation, and adopting a more formative, reflexive and anticipatory approach to evaluation
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
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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