Maybe Bacon Had a Point: The Politics of Interpretation in Collective Sensemaking 1

Despite major contributions to theories of organizational knowledge from socially situated, practice‐based approaches, there remains a blind‐spot in this literature concerning power and politics. This paper makes some initial attempts to address this absence by thinking about how far alternative theories of power/knowledge can strengthen and extend practice‐based approaches to knowledge. The need for a detailed analytic of the multiple techniques, strategies, and expressions of power/knowledge in concrete social situations and the different ways in which they come together through specific episodes of enactment is highlighted. To illustrate this, we draw on an ethnographic study of an inter‐organizational collaboration in the telecommunications sector. This illustration focuses on struggles over meaning during a problem‐solving encounter during the later stages of a project for developing and implementing new software for telephone exchanges.     

Variation in breeding parameters of the Australian magpie Gymnorhina tibicen in suburban and rural environments

The breeding ecology of the Australian magpie Gymnorhina tibicen in suburban and rural areas was compared as part of a study into the synanthropy of the species in southeast Queensland, Australia. During the two years of the study suburban magpies were found to have significantly advanced breeding dates compared to rural magpies. Suburban magpies typically re-nested when an initial nest failed, although this did not result in greater productivity than that of the rural magpies. Suburban magpies had similar mean numbers of young per breeding pair; they also showed higher mortality between fledging and a final count in February. This study suggests that introduced predators and deaths due to motor vehicles may account for this mortality in suburban areas. Anthropogenic factors present within suburban areas such as the watering of lawns and the widespread provision of food for wildlife are likely to play an important role in the differences in the timing of breeding. In addition, temperature may also have an inhibitory effect on the onset of breeding, an influence lessened in the suburban areas due to higher temperatures.