“Systems Change pursued without Deep Equity is, in our experience, dangerous and can cause harm, and in fact leaves some of the critical elements of systems unchanged. And ‘equity’ pursued without ‘Systems Change’ is not comprehensive at the level of effectiveness currently needed.”
Sheryl Petty
Transformative change towards love, dignity, and justice requires deeply embedding equity into all systems change efforts.
And yet, there are many ways a deep equity perspective has not been integrated into the systems change field and as a result, many systems change efforts have caused harm. We have learned in our work that systems change without equity is not systems change.
This monograph by Sheryl Petty, Movement Tapestries, and Mark Leach, Change Elemental, illuminates essential dimensions of approaches to Systems Change, which are intimately connected with Deep Equity. It also offers ideas about how to bring racial — and other intersecting aspects of equity — more deeply and centrally into your systems change work. The combination of the systems change and deep equity fields is critical work for the next phase of our human evolution, to become the societies we hope for in our deepest hearts.
We hope you will join us on our shared journey toward greater love, healing, and systems transformation.
*If you have trouble downloading the monograph using the download button below, please email cocreate@ChangeElemental.org.
The concept of resilience is one of the most important research topics in the context of achieving sustainability (Perrings et al. 1995, Kates et al. 2001, Foley et al. 2005). First introduced as a descriptive ecological term (Holling 1973), resilience has been frequently redefined and extended by heuristic, metaphorical, or normative dimensions (e.g., Holling 2001, Ott and Döring 2004, Pickett et al. 2004, Hughes et al. 2005). Meanwhile, the concept is used by various scientific disciplines as an approach to analyze ecological as well as social-ecological systems (Anderies et al. 2006, Folke 2006). As such, it promotes research efforts across disciplines and between science and policy.
However, both conceptual clarity and practical relevance are critically in danger. The original descriptive and ecological meaning of resilience is diluted as the term is used ambiguously and in a very wide extension. This is due to the blending of descriptive aspects, i.e., specifications of what is the case, and normative aspects, i.e., prescriptions what ought to be the case or is desirable as such. As a result, difficulties to operationalize and apply the concept of resilience within ecological science prevail. This, in turn, impedes progress and maturity of resilience theory (cf., Pickett et al. 1994:57). The success of the concept in stimulating research across disciplines on the one side and the dilution of the descriptive core on the other raises the fundamental question what conceptual structure we want resilience to have.
This article is divided into four parts. The first section offers a typology to structure the numerous definitions of resilience proposed within sustainability science. Using this typology as a background, the second section investigates in more detail a descriptive, ecological concept of resilience viewed from both a formal and an operational perspective. Subsequently, the third section examines the use of resilience as a rather vague boundary object and points to some chances and pitfalls. The fourth section concludes with final thoughts on the recent conceptual development and a fruitful conceptual structure of resilience.
continues in source: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol12/iss1/art23/
These are the ones I subscribe to – please add or improve in the comments!
Titles marked with a * indicate those which currently have no contemporary episodes published (as of 2021-01-07) – most of these of course are defunct (but have a back catalogue), but not all will be
(See https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/10/08/who-are-our-fellow-travellers/ for my definition of ‘fellow travellers’)
– My podcasts coming soon (which should sort of be a mix of all of these since these are the water I swim in)
Transduction: the systems, complexity, and cybernetics podcast __I have come to sing songs to your cat__
Joy and Work – leading (public)service transformation
Adler Looks Jorge in the American Cybernetics Society group on LinkedIn
We honor our memory of Mary Catherine Bateson, cultural anthropologist and friend to the ASC. 1938 – 2020
Mary Catherine Bateson: Living with Cybernetics
Mary Catherine Bateson: Living with Cybernetics
16 Dec 2018
As the guest speaker at the ASC dinner meeting at the 2014 Conference in Washington DC, Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, shared two stories about her mother orienting her to cybernetics as a young child. One story is about first-cybernetics when talking about analyzing systems, the second about second-cybernetics when focusing on observing one’s observing.
An Invitation to Dinner with the Family of Systems Disciplines
Systems are truly a family affair. As the concept of systems becomes more significant in the way we think and solve problems, it is increasingly apparent that there are several disciplines, which “specialize” in the study and design of systems. Each discipline views systems from its own perspective, which is related to its purpose and reason for existence. Just as family members gathered for dinner approach the topics of conversation differently given their interests and backgrounds, the systems disciplines consider aspects of systems concepts differently, and use them in different ways. Each of them individually and all of them together have things to offer us in advancing our knowledge and practice of thinking about systems.
Understanding the many facets and perspectives in considering systems will help today’s systems engineers as we wrangle complexity, confront wicked problems, and craft innovative answers to problems that span the socio-technical world. It is worthwhile to consider the variety of systems disciplines and what they have to offer.
A comparison: Wittgenstein’s Family Resemblance Theory vs. Ryle’s Polymorphism and Polymorphism in Computer Science/MathematicsAnd perhaps Kant’s notion of “schema”?
Each of the players is given a copy of the same standard dictionary;
The referee gives each a slip of paper with the same word (found in this dictionary) written on each slip—word chosen so that it has synonyms in its definition, but (preferably) the definition of any synonym does not (in that dictionary) list a synonym which is the originally assigned word;
At “Go!”, each looks up the assigned word, finds a synonym, looks that up, finds a synonym, etc.;
The first player to be led, by this synonymous process, back to the originally assigned word cries “Vish!” and wins the game (unless his opponent successfully challenges the procedure of the alleged winner).
During this year 2020, and for the first time in the history of the series of Conferences sponsored by the Complex Systems Society, the CCS series, the annual meeting was organized virtually in the period December 7-11, 2020 and the young researchers CCS2020 Warm Up sessions on December 4, 2020. This Conference is in line with the series of meetings previously held in Singapore (2019), Thessaloniki, Greece (2018), Cancun, Mexico (2017), Amsterdam, Netherlands (2016), Tempe, Arizona, USA (2015), Lucca, Italy (2014), and more meetings in previous years. All these past meetings have delivered the highest quality of presentations, the most up-to-date findings, have been attended by the pioneers in the field of Complex Systems, as well by young aspiring students, numbering an attendance of close to one thousand. Our purpose is to deliver a well-tailored and focused event of the highest scientific and organizational standards, and for the first time…
The work of the Russian revolutionary and polymath Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) is provoking significant interest in a variety of fields. Let’s consider his recent impact as a forerunner of critical systems thinking, a prophet of post-capitalism, and provider of a worldview consistent with quantum theory.
An opportunity to register for this if you’re interested in systems/complexity/cybernetics open space networking, hosted by me
“Afterwards in the bar” – SCiO UK 19:00-21:00 GMT 25 January 2021 | SCiO
https://bit.ly/38bnixm
…and I’m one of the speakers at this event (also free) – on ‘four quadrants of thinking threats’ – how to avoid being a naive optimist, oversimplifying populariser, gooroo or curmudgeon
SCiO UK Virtual Open Meeting – Mon 18 January 2021 18:30–20:30 GMT
https://bit.ly/3b5Bk5x
PsychologyThis paper explores the way in which we define and deal with social problems such as crime and proposes a new way of thinking about them. Criminality, poverty, illiteracy, addiction and child abuse are some of society’s most acute and intractable problems. Despite countless attempted remedies, these complex social problems have continued to grow around the world. Although we have developed systems to address these problems, their operation routinely increases problem severity and scope. They are, in effect, perfectly designed to grow the very pathologies which they were designed to eliminate. To confront these paradoxical outcomes, I took a trans-disciplinary approach to develop a new systemic view for designing systems to cope with the emergent meta-problems. Anchored in second-order cybernetics, and ethnography, this research re-contextualized the problem within a self-reproductive economy of interaction and meaning-making, drawing its boundaries on the basis of its systemic operations and conditions of connectivity across intersecting roles related to the problem-solver, the problem host and the identified problem itself. The result is a model of pathogenesis as nested interactions appearing iteratively from individual to societal levels, revealing a self-referential, recursive and paradoxical structure. Within the multitude of self-referential systems, both biological and social, this research provides a new framework which exposes those factors that initiate, reinforce, escalate and perpetuate unintended evolutionary consequences and identifies specific alterations required to systemically produce beneficial results. An ethnographic case study from the criminal justice system serves as the starting point for this research which provides the basis for an innovative systems methodology relevant to understanding the human condition, and a model for effective, sustainable decision-making processes.
Ross Ashby, one of the pioneers of Cybernetics, started an essay with the following question:
I would like to start not at: How can we make a model?, but at the even more primitive question: Why make a model at all?
He came up with the following answer:
I would like then to start from the basic fact that every model of a real system is in one sense second-rate. Nothing can exceed, or even equal, the truth and accuracy of the real system itself. Every model is inferior, a distortion, a lie. Why then do we bother with models? Ultimately, I propose. we make models for their convenience.
To go further on this idea, we make models to come up with a way to describe “how things work?” This is done for us to also answer the question – what happens when… If there is no predictive or explanatory…
NOTE: Images in this archived article have been removed.
In this section I want to explore on a more specific level why we living beings have mostly forgotten or marginalized the notion of life. To do this, I wish to draw attention to the astonishing interconnections and mutual support between the two guiding metaphysics of our culture. These are (Neo-)Darwinism, with its big idea of biological optimization, in which functional adaptations supposedly create biodiversity, and (Neo-)Liberalism, with its concept of economic efficiency, supposedly creating wealth and equal distribution.
For more than 150 years, both assumptions have become intertwined streams of one coherent pattern of thought that forms the basic matrix of our official understanding of reality. The premises of neo-Darwinism and neoliberalism constitute the tacit, taken-for-granted understanding of “how the world works”. Inside its deep and compact logical structure, the two currents of biological and economic optimization theory are so mutually reinforcing and normative that respectable thoughts considers them beyond question.1
It is not by chance that “eco-nomy” and “eco-logy” are nearly identical terms. Both build on the metaphor of housekeeping and the provisioning of existential goods and services (the Greek word “oikos” means “house”, “householding” or “family”). Both concepts have a particular and related manner of treating the organisation of this existential supply. Both start from the idea that keeping a house – or making a living, for that matter – is a theater of competition and contest whose object is an ever-more-optimal efficiency. In the neoDarwinian, neoliberal narrative, the household is not, however, a place where feeling agents pursue their individual good. The householding process is strangely conceived of as completely subject-less. Its logic does not need to take account of the actual presence of agents. Indeed, it does not need to take life into account at all.
Two Major Research Projects (MRPs) — they might be called master’s theses elsewhere — by Zaid Khan and David Akermanis reflect the Systemic Design agenda within the OCADU program on Strategic Foresight and Innovation (SFI). To graduate, all SFI students complete an MRP. With many subjects and techniques covered during SFI studies, only a few exercise Systemic Design at their core.
The September session of Systems Thinking Ontario came shortly after the defence of the two MRPs in August. As we had suspended convening in person during 2020, our monthly meeting was conducted online. This afforded recordings to be shared more widely.
The video file is also available on the Internet Archive, for those who prefer a downloadable option.
(1) A Systems-Oriented Approach to Strategic Communications — Zaid Khan
Systemic Design has emerged as both a theory and a practice that integrates design thinking and systems thinking to help designers cope with complex social systems.
In this Major Research Project, Zaid explores how strategic communications – the planned process of delivering a relevant message to a specific audience to achieve an objective – can be adapted to help organizations better respond to complex issues (wicked problems) and the variety contained within higher-order systems.
The MRP looks at this topic through a case study involving Canadian news media. The issues facing journalism and Canadian news media are complex in nature; multiple stakeholders, different organizations and industries, competing value systems, objectives, perspectives, and interests. This makes it an ideal case to examine the effects that a more systems-oriented approach to communications may have when responding to complexity.
The paper identifies the first set of learnings on: how the principles of Systemic Design can inform the development of “systems-oriented communications”, its potential value for value organizations, and future areas of research.
Biography:
With one foot coming out of the creative advertising world, and the other stepping into systemic design and systems changes, Zaid is exploring the ways people respond to complex issues.
(2) The Brand Stack: Using systems to diagnose and address barriers to organizational alignment and brand identity — David Akermanis
Most business leaders understand that brands are a reflection of cross-functional activity that spans well beyond the traditional scope of the marketing department. But, most don’t approach cross-functional management of their brands with a great deal of formality or intent. It often happens informally, or organically. Few seem to think about designing processes and structure to specifically promote brand outcomes.
In this Major Research Project, David explores how organizations might better diagnose and address systemic misalignments that prevent them from achieving brand-related outcomes. Its aim is to explore whether a “brand system” can serve a cybernetic role. One that helps management more deliberately pursue the integrative effects associated with brand orientation and the consideration of brand as a central managerial pursuit.
By employing a research through design (RtD) approach, the paper proposes that the “brand stack” might be an effective scaffold which can be used to better understand the artefacts, processes and structures that promote brand values across organizations. The brand stack conceptualizes the brand as a type of control system for the organization; one which can be deliberately designed to promote system viability.
Biography:
David has spent the last decade working in advertising, consulting and public relations, helping organizations build their brands, sharpen their strategies, and focus their marketing operations. His unique blend of experience allows him to not only help clients to carve out unique market positions and develop powerful brand expressions, but also to look inside the organisation to help design processes, roles and tools to help ensure brand success.
Akermanis, David (2020) The Brand Stack: Using brand systems to diagnose and address systemic barriers to organizational alignment and brand identity. [MRP] at http://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/3114/
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