Browse by Tags: social change

Professor Ioan Fazey, Director of the Centre for Environmental Change and Human Resilience (CECHR), Dundee University, delivers the second lecture in this Seminar Series. This presentation sought to examine issues around change, and how people respond to change using a case study from the Solomon Islands. The case study highlighted the need for improving our understanding of change and how desired change can be brought about. Towards the end, the presentation briefly touched on the kinds of things that might need to be considered if we are to facilitate transformative shifts that assist societies to work within the new normal of rapid and extensive change.

In this lecture, Prof Devine argued that over the past twenty five years Scotland has undergone a remarkable series of changes in economy, society and culture. While they are similar in scope and scale to those of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, they have largely been unnoticed or ignored. Prof Devine asked the questions 'how did we arrive here?' and 'how does this view sit with the more usual view of Scotland as a downtrodden underperforming underdog?'.

Jerry Sternin argued that traditional expert-driven models for individual, social and organisational change often don't work. The Positive Deviance approach builds on successful but "deviant" (different) practices and strategies that are identified from within the community or institution. Positive Deviance is based on the belief that in every community, organisation, business or group, there are individuals or entities whose uncommon, but demonstrably successful behaviours or strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their neighbours or colleagues who have access to exactly the same resources. How does this happen? What can we learn from it? Could it work in Glasgow?

Adam Kahane delivered the last seminar from this series. His lecture was based on his assertion that the two methods most frequently employed to solved our toughest social problems - relying on violence and aggression, or submitting to endless negotiation and compromise - are fundamentally flawed and that the seemingly contradictory drives behind these two approaches - power, the desire to achieve one's purpose, and love, the urge to unite with others are actually complimentary.

It was Plato who first observed that human beings naturally integrate the true, the good and the beautiful. We still observe this in our own lives when we are allowed to do so. Yet, the true (as manifested in the ideologies of scientism and economism) has been elevated in our work and professional lives to a position where 'evidence' and 'cost effectiveness' trumps all other considerations. The result is that we feel brutalised and not 'fully human'.