Global Problematique Research Articles

Navigating the polycrisis—governing for transformation: The 2024 agenda for the systems community

AbstractThe challenges of the Anthropocene were pre‐empted by systems scholars in the exposition of the ‘global problematique’ and are now made manifest in what systems scholars called the polycrisis. These framings alert us to our human circumstances but to date, have done little to transform our manners of being and doing, as the polycrisis is an outcome of a profound governance crisis. Ongoing reflections, building on the framing offered by the global problematique, in the IFSR Conversations in 2023 addressed these issues. Advocating for more epistemological transparency in systems research was a major theme to emerge. Widening the gaze and embracing the full capacity of the cybersystemic perspective of systems research seeks to allow IFSR members, and cybersystemic scholars more generally, to harness their understandings and praxes to bring fresh momentum to navigating the polycrisis and governing for transformation.

Rethinking agency—The 2022 agenda for the systems community

AbstractFive clusters of concern arising from IFSR‐facilitated conversations with its organisational members are used to invite the broader systems community to rethink agency. It is argued that by addressing the cluster elements, potential will be co‐created for the systems community as a whole to help citizens venture beyond failing responses to the global problematique and the Anthropocene‐creating thinking in which we humans are trapped. The five clusters are as follows: Exploring the in‐between: Growing a shared understanding is going beyond a competition of ideas or a clash of concepts. It is a joint exploration of the unknown in‐between. Including the excluded: Systems research happens in open research ecosystems, not in disciplinary silos. It is transdisciplinary and constitutes a global discourse. Living questions: Questions shape paradigms. Transcending paradigms starts from allowing the questions to have their own life, to grow and to dissolve, to improve and to transform. Going beyond systems literacy: Learning to speak systems is one thing, proficiency in systems thinking, systems doing and systems being another. There is a difference between knowing and understanding that we may address as systems wisdom. Rethinking agency: Agency goes from ego to eco, from me to we. Yet, it is not an either–or; it is ego and eco, me and we. To understand agency, we need to understand the ‘and’.

A Transdisciplinary World Model

The complexities and non‐linearities of the world system are increasing the mismatch between the way we think about the world and the actual behaviour of the world. In systems science, this is summarized by expressions like unintended consequences, counter‐intuitive outcomes, emergent properties, synchronous failures and unpredictable knock‐on effects. This whole field has been summed up as the global problematique. Increasing the match between our espoused world models and the behaviour of the real world in policies, strategies and decisions requires a major shift to holistic transdisciplinary approaches.This paper will describe the innovation and pilot testing of a transdisciplinary approach to stimulating systemic interconnected thinking about complex issues from the global level (for example climate change) to the local level (for example increasing resilience in a village community). The approach is based on a world system model that is designed to promote holistic and transdisciplinary conversations across 12 key dimensions of sustainable communities. The model serves several purposes ranging from a ‘World Game’ that groups of people can play to strategic workshops that challenge decision making beyond conventional scenario planning methods, to ways of mapping global impacts of climate change.The paper will describe some of the main foundations from systems thinking that underpin the model. These include multi‐factor modelling, variety engineering, feedback coupling and non‐linear behaviour. Some indications of application are also given. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Understanding and resolving the global problematique: assessing the balance between progressive and socially conservative foresight

PurposeThis paper draws on research undertaken for the State of Play in the Futures Field (SoPiFF) project and aims to explore the contribution of futures work to understanding and resolving aspects of the global problematique and to examine the social interests evident in futures work.Design/methodology/approachThe project used an integral meta‐scanning framework to review publicly available futures material. The framework categorizes futures work according to organizational type, social interests, methods, domains and geographic location (details of the methodology are outlined in the accompanying introductory paper as well as on the web site created for the project).FindingsThe futures field has made a series of significant contributions to understanding the global problematique and has contributed to the pre‐conditions for its resolution. However, the bulk of mainstream futures work does little to improve the preparedness of humanity for looming future crises. More innovative futures work remains marginalized and largely ignored by the powerful and the wider public. There is a strong case for more effective political engagement than has occurred hitherto.Research limitations/implicationsFurther research is needed on shared definitions for the field, interactions with the media, public and other fields of enquiry and action, measurement of individual foresight capacity, strategies for achieving influence – particularly in the political sphere, the role of subcultures within the futures field and suitable publishing strategies.Practical implicationsThe paper recommends specific actions to promote and publicize good work, provide annual digests of futures‐related information, develop and use focused briefings, provide support for “cutting‐edge” futures work, further develop advanced futures methods, create new alliances, build the social capacity for foresight and strengthen the nexus between foresight and philanthropy.Originality/valueThe paper uses an integral meta‐scanning framework to provide a novel analysis of the futures field. The findings will be of value to all futures and foresight practitioners that are interested in the future success of the field.

Cosmopolitan Universalism

This paper looks into the recent trends leading towards a renewed world order and proposes some distinct ways to promote it. The contemporary global problematique is symptomatic of a revolutionary period of transition from the modern to the post-modern era. During this thne of upheaval and instabiUty, many outdated structures are being dismantled and various innovative systems are being attempted. Only when the winners have been determined and the major choices made, will the new social system settle down into a relative peace once again.

Book Reviews

Book reviews in this article: Vintage Wine James M . Buchanan, Liberty, Market and State: New Trade Outlook James J. Emery, Norman A. Graham, and Michael F. Oppenheimer An Interdisciplinary Approach Allan Schnaiberg, Nicolas Watts, and Klaus Zimmermann, eds. Small‐Scale Farming Gerald G. Marten, ed. Traditional Agriculture in Southeast Asia: A Human Ecology Perspective. Technological Advancement Nathan Rosenberg and Claudio Frischtak, eds. Dividing up the Oil Walter J. Mead, Asbjorn Moseidjord, Dennis D. Muraoka, and Philip E. Sorensen A Substantial Work Herman Van der Wee, Prosperity and Upheaval: The World Economy 1945‐1980. Development: Red, Blue, or Green? Herb Addo, et al. eds., Development as Social Transformation: Reflections on the Global Problematique. The European Experience Graham Hall, ed., European Industrial Policy. Urban Homesteading David P. Varady, Neighborhood Upgrading Assessment and Future Directions Martin Fransman, Technology and Economic Development. Technology, Economics, Energy Norman K. Whittlesey, ed., Energy and Water Management in Western Irrigated Agriculture. Israeli Enigma S.N. Eisenstadt, The Transformation of Israeli Society: An Essay in Interpretation.

SYSTEMS STUDIES AND ORGANIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE

The integration processes in science stimulate the emergence of knowledge tools that in special areas could provide for the formation of an integrative view of a complex object (or a problem) to be studied in order to facilitate its practical application. The interdisciplinary synthesis requires organization of knowledge. Of late the solution of this problem is increasingly associated with the cognitive ability of the systems approach. In a number of new tasks including research into global problematique the systems methodology may serve as a vehicle of organization of various types of knowledge—empirical and theoretical, formalize and nonformalized. as well as of those fragments of knowledge reflecting researchers' personal attitudes and value orientations. The knowledge organized in this way does not necessarily lake the form of theory. Despite this, it can effectively perform the function of an instrument in the solution of a specific problem or a complex of problems.

A Global Salvage Operation

We seem reluctant to accept a simple fact. The structures of thought and implementation, whether in the imaginary area of concepts and creativity, or within the more rigid and defined disciplines of scientific and technological application, must of necessity undergo major transformation when attempting to overcome persistent crises and failures. If we are agreed, as I believe we are, that our world can no longer progress along the accepted pathways, then we have to evolve new and very different frameworks for tackling the global problematique.

Global Violence and a Just World Order

Conceptualizing a just and humane world order in terms of the minimization of violence in both a narrow (direct/physical) and broad (indirect/structural) sense, this paper suggests an 'epidemiological approach' to the study of the global security problematique. Based on a broad and integrated notion of 'social health', as found in the Constitution of the World Health Organization, the paper argues that war/peace needs to be more broadly understood in terms of the domestic and international structures and processes at work. Specifically, the paper (1) examines the dynamics of global violence in both ideological and structural dimensions, (2) evaluates the consequences of global violence in terms of its life-destroying, life-diminishing, life-devaluing, and life-degrading effects in four world order value domains, and (3) explains the global security problematique as a cluster of interwoven and interacting conceptual, normaltive, psychological, and structural variables that together sustain the maladaptive elite behavior of pursuing 'peace' by preparing for war. By way of conclusion, the paper briefly assesses the prospect of a relevant utopia (a demilitarized world order) and suggests five 'principled processes' that should guide our journey from here to there, the world order transition to a more peaceful, humane, just, and safe future.

On the Problem of ‘the Global Problematique’: What Roles for International Organizations?

Finding that the connotation of the term ‘the global problematique’ is vague and amorphous, the paper puts forth a working definition that takes into account the indivisibly related complex of processes and problems within the world system that is generated by the increasing scale of human activity, viewed in the context of planetary life-support systems. It then examines the pattern of activities of international organizations in response to ‘the global problematique’, as also their significance for, and impact on, the broader pattern of global governance. It notes that international organizations play significant roles in developing holistic perspectives of the global problematique, institutionalizing new areas of concern and new constituencies, defining the issues that constitute the collective policy agenda, and expanding the collective knowledge base to facilitate appropriate decisions. Yet the existing structure of the world system conditions and shapes the character, and circumscribes the limits, of this intervention in such a way as to produce rule-governed change within rather than transformation of the intergovernmental political system.

The Global Contract

This essay on international economic order and foreign policy theory takes its departure from the observation that foreign policy theory and action are today confronted with a global economic problematique of revolutionary proportions, and therefore need to be re-examined. It finds that the classical concepts of sovereignty, national interest, and power, though still valid, are too narrowly defined by the Realist school to be of much use. It holds that the principle of politico-military ‘balance of power’ must be applied in conjunction with the principle of ‘optimal interdependence’. Using a cognitive map which identifies the principal actors and cleavages (global apartheid being judged to be the most dominant), and learning from socialist and capitalist theoreticians about possible solutions, it elaborates the meaning of ‘optimal interdependence’. It then presents an alternative theory of foreign policy and makes six strategic suggestions from that principle.