Introduction: Sustainability-oriented innovation systems in China and India

See on Scoop.it – Knowledge Economy

(2012). Introduction to the special issue. Innovation and Development: Vol. 2, Sustainability-oriented innovation systems in China and India, pp. 1-4.

Global economic growth, recently fuelled by Asia’s emerging economies, has greatly accelerated the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and boosted demand for scarce natural resources, including energy, food and mineral raw materials. These developments are pushing the planet close to its ecological boundaries. Transforming the world economy towards sustainability, while ensuring decent levels of resource use for all global citizens, is the greatest challenge of our time. This year, the Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development marks a renewed effort to embark on ways of ‘greening’ the global economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication. Greening the economy entails a techno-economic paradigm shift that needs to be:• radical, as unsustainable technological trajectories need to be disrupted and replaced by new generations of technologies in order to decouple economic development from resource consumption and carbon emissions;

• rapid, because this decoupling has to take place within the next decade or two – a failure to take immediate action will overstrain the carrying capacity of critical global ecosystems and lead to much higher costs in the future; and

• systemic, as it implies changing technological regimes and combining industrial and institutional sub-systems in innovative ways.

Read More at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2157930X.2012.667910

See on www.tandfonline.com

http://knowledgepolicy.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/introduction-sustainability-oriented-innovation-systems-in-china-and-india/ Introduction: Sustainability-oriented innovation systems in China and India

Buzzwords and fuzzwords: deconstructing development discourse

See on Scoop.it – Knowledge Economy

Poverty is, of all the buzzwords analysed in this collection, perhaps the most compelling in its normative appeal; as John Toye notes, ‘the idea of poverty reduction itself has a luminous obviousness to it, defying mere mortals to challenge its status as a moral imperative’. The moral unassailability of the development enterprise is secured by copious references to that nebulous, but emotive, category ‘the poor and marginalised’ (Cornwall and Brock 2005). Elizabeth Harrison draws attention to the ‘righteous virtue’ of anti-corruption talk, which she argues makes it virtually immoral to question what is being labelled ‘corrupt’, and by whom.

Many of the words that describe the worlds-in-the-making that development would create have all the ‘warmly persuasive’ qualities that Raymond Williams described for community in his memorable 1976 book Keywords. Among them can be found words that admit no negatives, words that evoke Good Things that no-one could possibly disagree with. Some evoke futures possible, like rights-based and poverty eradication (Uvin, Toye). Others carry with them traces of worlds past: participation and good governance (Leal, Mkwandawire), with their echoes of colonial reformers like Lord Lugard, the architect of indirect rule; poverty, whose power to stir the do-gooding Western middle-classes is at least in part due to its distinctly nineteenth-century feel; and development itself, for all that it has become a word that Gilbert Rist suggests might be as readily abandoned as recast to do the work that it was never able to do to make a better world.

See on www.tandfonline.com

http://knowledgepolicy.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/buzzwords-and-fuzzwords-deconstructing-development-discourse/ Buzzwords and fuzzwords: deconstructing development discourse

Participation: the ascendancy of a buzzword in the neo-liberal era

See on Scoop.it – Knowledge Economy

Somewhere in the mid-1980s, participation ascended to the pantheon of development buzzwords, catchphrases, and euphemisms. From that moment on, and throughout the greater part of the 1990s, the new buzzword would stand side by side with such giants as ‘sustainable development’, ‘basic needs’, ‘capacity building’, and ‘results based’. Participation entered the exclusive world of dominant development discourse; it had gained currency and trade value in the competitive market struggle for development project contracts, an indispensable ingredient of the replies to requests for proposals that issued from multilateral aid agencies everywhere. Development professionals and consultants rushed to attend workshops on how to employ a multiplicity of methodological packages such as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), Participatory Learning and Action (PLA), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Community Based Needs Assessment (CBNA), and Stakeholder Analysis. Other professionals rushed to lead these workshops, given the growing market for them. There was no doubt: participation was hot, it was in, and it was here to stay – or at least, until it was displaced by another, newer buzzword.

That this happened should be of no surprise to anyone, since the development industry has made an art of reinventing itself in the face of its failure to reduce or alleviate poverty, social and economic inequity, and environmental degradation after more than five glorious development decades. What is striking is the time and manner in which it came upon the institutional development scene, and this article seeks to explore this particular issue.

The historic and systemic failure of the development industry to ‘fix’ chronic underdevelopment puts it in the challenging position of having both to renew and reinvent its discourse and practice enough to make people believe that a change has, in fact, taken place and to make these adjustments while maintaining intact the basic structure of the status quo on which the development industry depends. This explains why we have seen, over the past 50 years, a rich parade of successive development trends: ‘community development’ in the post-colonial period, ‘modernisation’ in the Cold War period, and ‘basic human needs’ and ‘integrated rural development’ throughout the 1970s. The neo-liberal period (1980s to the present day) witnessed a pageant of such trends as ‘sustainable development’ and ‘participatory development’ from the late 1980s and all through the 1990s; ‘capacity building’, ‘human rights’, and ‘good governance’ throughout most of the 1990s; and, we must not forget, ‘poverty reduction/alleviation’ in the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Available: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09614520701469518#tabModule

See on www.tandfonline.com

http://knowledgepolicy.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/participation-the-ascendancy-of-a-buzzword-in-the-neo-liberal-era/ Participation: the ascendancy of a buzzword in the neo-liberal era

INGOs and policy shaping / News / Future Calling / Themes / Hivos Knowledge Programme / Home – Ontwikkelingsorganisatie Hivos

See on Scoop.it – Knowledge Economy

Discussing the future of INGOs is more relevant than ever at this moment, not least because over the global financial system looms a resilient question mark (the crisis), and because simultaneously we are undergoing a redefinition of the sovereignty of the nation-state. This puts a double strain on the availability of development funds; the future of INGOs is intimately correlated with the shifting structure of states, both donors and recipients of aid.

INGOs are usually active in countries that most would characterize as being ‘failed states and/or ‘renter states’. This is not surprising. Failed states are called failed because they do not control domains of life (or even territories), cannot or would not involve themselves in building the framework for the wellbeing of their citizens (starting with education and health), etc. These are interstitial spaces that INGOs, up to now, predominantly moved into to supplement the absence or the strategic retreat of the state.

See on www.hivos.net

http://knowledgepolicy.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/ingos-and-policy-shaping-news-future-calling-themes-hivos-knowledge-programme-home-ontwikkelingsorganisatie-hivos/ INGOs and policy shaping / News / Future Calling / Themes / Hivos Knowledge Programme / Home – Ontwikkelingsorganisatie Hivos

Why Systemic Reform: OECD on the Risk of America’s Long-Term Unemployment Problems | Dropout Nation: Coverage of the Reform of American Public Education Edited by RiShawn Biddle

See on Scoop.it – Knowledge Economy

Dropout Nation: Coverage of the Reform of American Public Education Edited by RiShawn Biddle. Magazine dedicated to solving the nation\’s education and high school dropout crisis, and improving education for all children. Certainly the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s report yesterday on America’s economic trends didn’t get as much coverage as, say, the wildfires out near Colorado Springs, or the latest mutterings of Rielle Hunter, the onetime lover of writer Bret Easton Ellis whose affair with former U.S. Senator John Edwards precipitated the onetime presidential aspirants much-deserved fall from grace. But the economic organization’s observations on the nation’s long-term prospects after this current economic malaise passes offers more reasons why we must continue the much-needed transformation of American public education.

As Dropout Nation reported earlier this month from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment levels still remain above eight percent, with plenty of Americans remaining on the unemployment lines. But according to the OECD’s analysis, the time spend searching for work is longer than ever. The average American spends 20 weeks searching for a job, according to OECD, double the amount of time seeking work in 1984, at the tail end of the recession of early 1980s. Meanwhile more than 35 percent of all unemployed workers have been out of work for a year or longer; the United States’ own long-term unemployment rate has now reached the levels of countries such as Japan, France and Spain, whose governments have mismanaged economic policy to the point of turning slowing down long-term competitiveness on the global front (and in the case of Spain, has helped contribute to the fiscal and economic collapse besetting all of Europe). As a result, OECD declares that there is a “significant risk that long term unemployment could evolve into chronic problems that persist long after” the nation’s current economic doldrums.

See on dropoutnation.net

http://knowledgepolicy.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/why-systemic-reform-oecd-on-the-risk-of-americas-long-term-unemployment-problems-dropout-nation-coverage-of-the-reform-of-american-public-education-edited-by-rishawn-biddle/ Why Systemic Reform: OECD on the Risk of America’s Long-Term Unemployment Problems | Dropout Nation: Coverage of the Reform of American Public Education Edited by RiShawn Biddle

Seeds of change in 21st-century education | SmartBlogs

Learning and connectedness to information happens anywhere and anytime. If the 21st century were a pizza pie, we have already eaten the first slice. More than a decade in, educators are still struggling to define the quintessential “21st-century skill set” that will make up a “21st-century education.”

The problem with defining what 21st-century education will look like is that anyone who says they don’t know can easily be perceived a complacent relic with no vision for change, while anyone who professes to have the answer is seen as a pompous and shortsighted fool. I will take the middle ground: While I can’t say with certainty what the next 87-plus years will look like, I feel confident that certain important shifts have begun and will continue so that learners of today are making the most of their educational experiences and the society in which they live.

It is likely that if you are reading this, you are doing so on some sort of screen. The likelihood that this was printed out, photocopied and distributed into a small, metal slot in a main office is (hopefully) small. I would wager that many are reading it on a portable device away and not sitting in your classroom or school. You could be reading this on a train, a plane or — hopefully not — while driving. The point is that you’re learning, and connectedness to information happens anywhere and any time you want.

The true 21st-century education needs to be based on that.

See it on Scoop.it, via Knowledge Economy

http://www.scoop.it/t/knowledge-economy/p/2052521095/seeds-of-change-in-21st-century-education-smartblogs Seeds of change in 21st-century education | SmartBlogs

Forbidden Knowledge? - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education

A piece in The New York Times raises a dilemma about which I have been thinking much recently. Is some knowledge too dangerous to be released? Is some knowledge so dangerous that people (usually scientists) should not even be allowed to pursue it?

We philosophers are pretty good at thinking up examples that muddy the waters. Suppose you have a friend who is suicidal and he asks you if you have twenty bucks he could borrow and do you know the address of the nearest store where he could buy a large bottle of acetaminophen? I take it that knowledge in this case would not be a good thing—even though Kant would jump all over you if you told a lie (Plato would be on your side)—but what about generally?

It turns out that a couple of research groups have discovered how to make the lethal H5N1 bird flu virus. Naturally, pleased with their work, they wanted to publish in prominent places. They have now done so, one paper in Nature and the other in Science. The publications were delayed, however, when—on the grounds that criminal or other badly disposed groups might use the information for evil ends—the National Science Advisory Board for Bioscience Security asked that details be suppressed. Later, the World Health Organization ruled otherwise and so the papers have been published. Read More

See it on Scoop.it, via Knowledge Economy

http://www.scoop.it/t/knowledge-economy/p/2052481597/forbidden-knowledge-brainstorm-the-chronicle-of-higher-education Forbidden Knowledge? - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Spinuzzi: Reading :: The Learning Challenge of the Knowledge Economy

David Guile, who teaches at the Institute of Education at the University of London, takes on the question of how the knowledge economy challenges education. Grounding his arguments in cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and related thought, Guile carefully examines the assumptions behind the knowledge economy literature, particularly assumptions about scientific and tacit knowledge, then develops an account of CHAT that both challenges these assumptions and provides a firmer basis for education going forward.

See it on Scoop.it, via Knowledge Economy

http://www.scoop.it/t/knowledge-economy/p/2047576080/spinuzzi-reading-the-learning-challenge-of-the-knowledge-economy Spinuzzi: Reading :: The Learning Challenge of the Knowledge Economy

Korea's Information Society - Smartphone usage in Korea: a new snapshot

Neilsen has released a summary of key findings from the Asia-Pacific region of its Smartphone Insights Study, providing some empirical data to back up my impressions about the extent and characteristics of smart phone usage here. As shown in Chart 1 from the study (click to see a full-size version), only Singapore has a higher proportion of mobile phone users who use smart phones versus feature phones, and Singapore as we all know is nowhere near as large, geographically or in population terms,as Korea.

From: http://www.koreainformationsociety.com/2012/06/smartphone-usage-in-korea-new-snapshot.html

See it on Scoop.it, via Knowledge Economy

http://www.scoop.it/t/knowledge-economy/p/2047555222/korea-s-information-society-smartphone-usage-in-korea-a-new-snapshot Korea's Information Society - Smartphone usage in Korea: a new snapshot

Richard Florida - The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited

The following is an abridged version of the preface to The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited, out this month from Basic Books.

It’s been ten years since I published – and a bit longer than that since I wrote – The Rise of the Creative Class. It would be an understatement to say that a lot has changed since then. We’ve see a whole series of world-shattering events—from the collapse of the tech bubble and 9/11, to the economic and financial meltdown of 2008, any one of which might have been sufficient to derail or reverse the changes in America’s class structure and the economic cultural and social trends I described in that book.

Scooped from: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/06/rise-creative-class-revisited/2220/

See it on Scoop.it, via Knowledge Economy

http://www.scoop.it/t/knowledge-economy/p/2047451418/richard-florida-the-rise-of-the-creative-class-revisited Richard Florida - The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited