Resolving complex community problems: Applying collective leadership and Kotter's change model to wicked problems within social system networks

How does collective leadership within social networks resolve chronic and complex problems common to communities? Unfortunately, sometimes it does not, but when it does, the outcome may be truly extraordinary. We use a case study approach to explain how one Midwest community within the USA applied collective leadership within a community network to reduce teen births. It took ten years of what many identified as provocative media campaigns and comprehensive sex education programs to reduce teen births by 65%, significantly exceeding the stated goal. Using Kotter's change model as a backdrop, powerful strategies and provocative creativity reveal courageous leadership within a social network of diverse people and organizations focused on improving the social well being of their community.     

Young people and the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of ‘enterprise’: stories from a ‘Rust Belt’ city

ABSTRACT

In the ‘Rust Belt’ city of Geelong in Victoria, Australia, discourses of young people’s enterprise and innovation provide a counter-narrative to the prevailing material and symbolic consequences of industrial decline, job losses, and the growing insecurity of employment and income. GT Magazine is a weekly, large circulation magazine in Geelong with a significant focus on the activities and aspirations of enterprising young people. In this paper, we examine, by utilising techniques of content analysis and discourse analysis, the particular ways in which young people’s innovation and enterprise are framed and enacted in GT Magazine. Our analysis reveals that ‘youth’ and ‘enterprise’ are, in GT Magazine, given an embodied form that is powerfully marked by aestheticised, normalised enactments of gender, class and race. In doing this work, we make productive contributions to three key themes in contemporary youth studies: new work orders and the youthful self as enterprise; the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of affective labour in these new work orders; and the emerging spatial turn to examine young people's embodied, place-based experiences of employment and enterprise. We seek to make problematic the sense that solutions to multiple disruptions and crises in capitalism and the environment are to be found in young people’s enterprise. Particularly when that enterprise is given form in ways that are aestheticised, gendered, classed, individualised and responsibilised.     

Returning to YTS: the long-term impact of youth training scheme participation

ABSTRACT

Shortly after leaving Leicester for Scotland Andy Furlong began to wrestle with the complexities of school to work transitions as captured by the 1986 sweep of the British Cohort Study (BCS). His analysis was published as Schooling for Jobs. Although a relatively short text, this book was vitally important as it documented in detail, for the first time, the changes to career preparations of British secondary school children at the mid-point of a decade where the impact of deindustrialising processes, coupled with the neo-liberal policies of the political right, had ravaged the UK economy and decimated the youth labour market. The mid 1980s were a turning point that marked a shift to ‘individuals’ having responsibility for future career successes and the blaming of young people themselves for any perceived labour market failings. Central to this process was the Youth Training Scheme (YTS). Based on recent collaborations with Andy exploring YTS we have two main aims here. First, we revisit the BCS data to update the story and answer three interrelated questions: (i) what happened to the YTS participants from Furlong’s analysis?; (ii) what were the long-term career and life ‘impacts’ for those who participated in YTS during the 1980s?; and (iii) were these job substitution schemes or gateways to real and meaningful work? Second, we conclude by reflecting upon this aspect of Andy’s legacy and the shape of future research on youth training schemes.     

Fiddling while the planet burns? COP25 in perspective

ABSTRACT

With fires, storms, social protests, and climate strikes sweeping the world, 2019 should have been a tipping point in how the world responds to global heating. This was the backdrop to the COP25 climate change summit which took place in Madrid in December 2019. This paper assesses the outcomes of the meeting and the path towards the critically important meeting in Glasgow at the end of 2020. It analyses and explains the key points of contention over levels of ambition, the rules which should govern global carbon markets and sensitive issues such as loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change. The analysis is situated within a broader geopolitical and economic context of right-wing populism, deepening forms of marketization and financialization of responses to climate change and against a background of a world increasingly feeling the effects of the climate crisis.     

网络标点符号使用现状探析

网络空间形式开放、 内容博杂, 网络语言中标点符号出现随意减省、 泛化使用、 错位使用、 乱用变体等现象,同时也呈现功能扩展、 超出标准、 空格替代以及与其他标示符号搭配使用的新变化、 新发展. 网络标点符号的现状与网络文化特征有密切关系, 使用者应把握网络标点符号的使用原则和特性.     

从造字到造形：汉字形体结构与书法艺术

汉字作为一种书写形体，笔画组合的丰富多样和间架结构的灵活多变，而使其“字形”成为复杂的美学构成，“书写”成为“书法”，并完成从造字到造形的转变。书法是汉字书写艺术，书法艺术深藏于汉字独特的形体结构之中。三位一体的整体架构、二维方块结体、平衡对称等汉字在形体构造上的诗性特征，既是人们对文字形体的一种审美预期，也是书法学家在书法创作时努力追求的美感。     

PCA likelihood ratio test approach for attributed social networks monitoring

Abstract

One of the most important factors in building and changing communication mechanisms in social networks is considering features of the members of social networks. Most of the existing methods in network monitoring don’t consider effects of features in network formation mechanisms and others don’t lead to reliable results when the features abound or when there are correlations among them. In this article, we combined two methods principal component analysis (PCA) and likelihood method to monitor the underlying network model when the features of individuals abound and when some of them have high correlations with each other.     

趋向动词“过来”、“过去”的语义分析与意象图式建构

使用归纳法、演绎法、对比分析法、图像法等对趋向动词“过来”、“过去”单独做谓语的情况展开认知分析。通过对“过来”、“过去”的语义分析与意象图式建构最终得出以下结论：“过来”、“过去”的语义并非完全对称，“过来”包括空间位移语义、时间位移语义和状态位移语义，而“过去”包括空间位移语义一、空间位移语义二、时间位移语义、状态位移语义和事件位移语义。     

Stages of change and engagement in a family intervention

Prochaska and DiClemente's stages of change model facilitate understanding of engagement difficulties in psychosocial intervention processes. We assessed the link between stages of family change and intervention dropout in a sample of 141 families with relational conflicts between parents and adolescent children. Each family member's stage of change was defined according to three criteria: seeing the conflict as a relational problem, assuming part of the responsibility for the dysfunctional relationship, and understanding one's own mental and emotional states and those of the other family members involved in the conflict (mentalization). Our dropout rate for the sample was 41.8% and was higher for immigrant families. We found a strong association between engagement and the contemplation stage of change, particularly the mother's. In family conflict interventions, participation of all the family members is essential so as raise awareness of the relational aspects of the conflict and the shared responsibility for the conflict and its resolution.     

Farmers’ Risk‐Based Decision Making Under Pervasive Uncertainty: Cognitive Thresholds and Hazy Hedging

Researchers in judgment and decision making have long debunked the idea that we are economically rational optimizers. However, problematic assumptions of rationality remain common in studies of agricultural economics and climate change adaptation, especially those that involve quantitative models. Recent movement toward more complex agent‐based modeling provides an opportunity to reconsider the empirical basis for farmer decision making. Here, we reconceptualize farmer decision making from the ground up, using an in situ mental models approach to analyze weather and climate risk management. We assess how large‐scale commercial grain farmers in South Africa (n = 90) coordinate decisions about weather, climate variability, and climate change with those around other environmental, agronomic, economic, political, and personal risks that they manage every day. Contrary to common simplifying assumptions, we show that these farmers tend to satisfice rather than optimize as they face intractable and multifaceted uncertainty; they make imperfect use of limited information; they are differently averse to different risks; they make decisions on multiple time horizons; they are cautious in responding to changing conditions; and their diverse risk perceptions contribute to important differences in individual behaviors. We find that they use two important nonoptimizing strategies, which we call cognitive thresholds and hazy hedging, to make practical decisions under pervasive uncertainty. These strategies, evident in farmers' simultaneous use of conservation agriculture and livestock to manage weather risks, are the messy in situ performance of naturalistic decision‐making techniques. These results may inform continued research on such behavioral tendencies in narrower lab‐ and modeling‐based studies.