Suchergebnisse

Essay über die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung Israels seit der Staatsgründung und den Wandel der Wirtschaftsphilosophie. (DÜI-Hns)

I am recently back from the Transformations Community gathering in Prague in the Czech Republic and still savoring and making sense of the time. That trip capped a flurry of work travel that began in May and took me from Jackson, Mississippi (Food Policy Council Network COLP) to New York City (Ford Foundation Global Leadership... Read More
The post Transformation Teachings appeared first on Interaction Institute for Social Change.

Transformation as an adaptive response to climate change opens a range of novel policy options. Used to describe responses that produce non-linear changes in systems or their host social and ecological environments, transformation also raises distinct ethical and procedural questions for decision-makers. Expanding adaptation to include transformation foregrounds questions of power and preference that have so far been underdeveloped in adaptation theory and practice. We build on David Harvey's notion of activity space to derive a framework and research agenda for climate change adaptation seen as a political decisionpoint and as an opportunity for transformation, incremental adjustment or resistance to change in development pathway. Decision-making is unpacked through the notion of the activity space into seven coevolving sites: the individual, technology, livelihoods, discourse, behaviour, the environment and institutions. The framework is tested against practitioner priorities to define an agenda that can make coherent advances in research and practice on climate change adaptation.

Reviews and discusses: Shifting Contexts: Transformations in Anthropological Knowledge, M. Strathern (ed.), (London 1995); The Pursuit of Certainty: Religious and Cultural Formulations, W. James (ed.), (London, 1995); and Worlds Apart: Modernity through the Prism of the Local, D. Miller (ed.), (London, 1995). (Original abstract-amended)

AbstractThis article explores the extent to which (if at all) the concept of a constitution is undergoing change in the conditions of globalization that characterize the early decades of the twenty-first century, to an extent that might be described as transformation. The question is prompted both by familiar manifestations of the interdependence of domestic constitutional and international law and practice, and by the interpretation placed on them by some of the literature on global constitutionalism. Some – although by no means all – of the literature and the experience on which it draws relate to the extent of transnational influence on the way in which constitutions now are made or changed: constitution transformation in the narrow, or more particular, sense. The article seeks to answer this question with reference to global constitutional experience, including – critically – experience in Asia, as one of the largest and most diverse regions of the world, too often omitted from studies of this kind. To this end, the article considers whether the concept of a constitution can be regarded as having been globally shared in any event; examines the phenomena associated with globalization that might suggest a paradigm change; and considers the arguments that mitigate against change, at least on a global scale. In exploring these factors, it necessarily considers the extent to which states in different regions of the world diverge in their experiences of the internationalization of constitutional law. The article concludes that, on balance, it is not plausible to argue that the generic concept of a constitution has changed, with global effect. It does, however, acknowledge that current conditions of globalization present a series of challenges for national constitutions. Responding to them might itself be regarded as an exercise in global constitutionalism.