Multiple Visions Research Articles

What Fragility? Multiple Professional Visions in the Maintenance of French Public Roads

A growing body of work in STS has highlighted the ambiguousness of infrastructure maintenance, as an activity that contributes to reproducing sociomaterial order while bringing to light its very fragility. The case of local public roads in France is instructive in this respect: for about a decade, a variety of public and private actors have been raising concerns about the fragility of this abundant infrastructure, questioning the organization of knowledge production for its maintenance after the withdrawal of centralized state engineering. This article draws on a multi-sited inquiry to extract three ethnographic vignettes that suggest the coexistence of multiple knowledges in road maintenance, oriented toward contrasted forms of fragility. I analyze these knowledges as professional visions (Goodwin 1994), associated with different notions of the most relevant expertise to make infrastructures last. The coexistence of multiple visions of infrastructural fragilities thus gives rise to new uncertainties: as the case may be, these visions might either contribute to a stabilized division of labor, or challenge existing institutional frameworks. These remarks invite us to systematically question the plurality of modes of knowing that organize infrastructure maintenance, in order to further widen the analysis of the complex relationships between material and organizational fragilities.

Envisioning sustainability through (un)shared professional visions of the “visual” materials of a design situation: a CCO approach

PurposeCommunicating a clear, precise, interpretable and unambiguous visual message usually relies on a cross-disciplinary team of professionals. Their complementary visions can uncover which information matter and how it could be visually displayed to inform, sensitize and encourage people to act toward sustainability. While design studies generally claim that this team has to come to a shared vision, the authors question this assumption, which seems to contradict the benefits of cross-disciplinarity. The purpose of this study is to reveal how simple visual representations displayed in a PowerPoint actively participate in the expression of various and sometimes divergent visions. Recognizing the agency of visuals also leads this study to propose the notion of (un)shared professional vision, which shows that the richness of visual representations can only reveal itself through the capacity of professional visions to maintain their differences while confronting each other.Design/methodology/approachOver a 20-month ethnography, this study documented its own cross-disciplinary reflective design process, which aimed to design collectively an experimental environmental label, focusing on interactions occurring between professionals and visuals displayed on five key PowerPoint slides.FindingsThis study first demonstrates how, in practice, a cross-disciplinary reflective design conversation with visuals concretely unfolds through boundary-objects. This study shows how these visuals manage to ex-press themselves through the multiple visions represented in the discussions, revealing their complexity. Second, this study introduces the notion of (un)shared professional vision which underlines that unsharing a vision nurtures the team’s collective capacity to express the complexity of a design situation, while sharing a vision is also necessary to confront these respective expressions to allow the professional uncovering of what should be visually communicated.Originality/valueThe Communication as Constitutive of Organization lens the authors chose to understand the reflective design conversation illustrates that, even though each collaborator’s vision was “(un)shared,” their many voices expand the understanding of the situation and lead them to develop an unexpected and creative environmental information ecosystem that can positively transform society through visuals.

Eco-urbanism: new synergies between architecture, sustainable development, heritage and their multiple visions

Eco-urbanism: new synergies between architecture, sustainable development, heritage and their multiple visions

Imagining reef futures after mass coral bleaching events

Extreme climate events are dramatically changing social-ecological systems (SESs) and challenging long-standing environmental governance paradigms. How high level governance actors (e.g. decision-makers and those who advise them) imagine the future of SESs can shape what management approaches are pursued and how SESs change. Previous research on climate-induced shifts in governance suggests that: 1) crises can provide windows of opportunity to catalyze transitions, and 2) transitions require governance actors to revisit and reimagine possible management solutions and the underlying purposes and ultimate desired outcomes of resource management. Articulating the multiple visions of system futures that emerge in the wake of a crisis can encourage creative responses to change that can incorporate multiple perspectives and provide space for decision-makers to consider different options for management and potential conflicts therein. However, empirical research is needed to examine how governance actors actually envision future management in the context of a crisis. Here we explore governance actors’ perspectives on future pathways for reef management in the wake of an extreme climate event, and what actions are underway to pursue these pathways. We specifically investigate perspectives after recurrent mass coral bleaching events impacted the Great Barrier Reef through 36 semi-structured interviews with governance actors across the region. Drawing on climate adaptation frameworks and narrative policy analysis, we demonstrate that crises trigger changes in governance actors’ perspectives on the goals and approaches of reef management. However, rather than a single vision emerging in the wake of crisis, we find that multiple, and at times conflicting, visions for the role of management and plausible futures for the GBR are simultaneously shaping the trajectory of coral reef governance. Our findings suggest that transforming governance after crises involves negotiating multiple concurrent visions for social-ecological futures.

NCSA 2023 Presidential Address All Together Now: Sociology as a Liberal Art and a Liberating Practice

ABSTRACT In the curricula of colleges and universities in North America, the discipline of sociology is a relative newcomer. During scarcely more than a century since the founding of the first American degree programs in sociology, little agreement has emerged over what sociology actually is or does. Rather than regard this dizzying diversity as a source of confusion and consternation, though, might we ponder what would happen to us and our efforts if, instead, we were to view the many forms and aims of contemporary sociology as an irreplaceable advantage, and the practical pluralism that surrounds us in our work as a font of riches, embarrassing or not? Would not multiple visions thus be engaged at once? Could we not at last proceed, as the Beatles urged us, “all together now”?

Multiple visions of Combu Island EPA in Belém – Pará – Brazil

Unidades de conservação no Brasil, como as áreas de proteção ambiental de uso sustentável, estão presentes na Floresta Amazónica do Pará, como a Ilha Combu. O objetivo deste estudo foi buscar respostas sobre a situação socioambiental desta APA; qual é a visão futura dos seus insulares e em que medida a população está consciente das áreas sob a administração ambiental estatal. O método indutivo foi escolhido, com abrangências quantitativa e qualitativa, e natureza observativa. Os dados indicaram que a APA, estabelecida há 25 anos, a qualidade de vida da comunidade ainda não evoluiu no segmento educação, saúde, os transportes e o saneamento básico. Economicamente, a ilha tem mantido o estatuto extrativo, embora tenha um embrião industrial artesanal em direção ao produto da cultura do cacau: o chocolate. O turismo, seja o aquático ou ecoturismo, está ainda na sua fase inicial; os 33 restaurantes não conseguem distribuir equitativamente os rendimentos à população. No campo da educação formal, as taxas de abandono escolar ainda são um problema; a educação extrativista não faz parte do currículo escolar, especialmente sobre a produção e extração do açaí. A maioria dos habitantes desconhece o que é uma área de conservação ou sustentabilidade na área de proteção ambiental, nem fazem parte da gestão deste APA. As duas modalidades de turismo não são estimuladas como deveriam; os meios de transporte deficientes com baixos níveis de segurança para utilizadores e turistas. Por conseguinte, a evolução da qualidade de vida na APA da Ilha Combu, em 25 anos, é ainda incipiente.

Review: Selfie Aesthetics: Seeing Trans Feminist Futures in Self-Representational Art, by Nicole Erin Morse

Review: <i>Selfie Aesthetics: Seeing Trans Feminist Futures in Self-Representational Art</i>, by Nicole Erin Morse

A people power philosophy: republican ideology in opposition in Tanzania

ABSTRACT This article is about democratic political thought and African political parties. Studies judge that opposition speak about democracy, but rarely express democratic ideologies. This determination arises from democracy’s perceived hegemony. As democracy is accepted, opposition parties invoke democratic ideas without advocating them. I contest this line of argument. There are multiple visions of democracy. Therefore, whether or not democracy is hegemonic, not all arguments for and perspectives on it are. By omission, the literature on African parties has denied this variety in democratic thought and precluded the study of one variant of it in particular: republicanism. Republicanisms elevate domination and corruption as ills and advocate limiting state power and empowering citizens. I analyse the “people’s power philosophy” of leading Tanzanian opposition party, Chadema. It imagines a ruling party oligarchy which pursues its private interests through an interconnected system of domination and corruption. Chadema advocates a new constitution to undo that system: institutional reforms that limit state power and empower citizens. It claims that it can do so by overpowering the oligarchy in a popular struggle. It imagines struggle as the breaking of everyday dominance and therefore as emancipatory: a second liberation. I argue that this philosophy constitutes a republican-democratic ideology.

The Carrot or the Stick? Stakeholder Support for Mandatory Regulations towards a Circular Fashion System

In recent years, fast fashion has boosted global production and consumption, decreasing the lifespans of garments and increasing volumes of discarded textiles which are neither reusable or recyclable. Consequently, multiple visions and strategies regarding circular fashion have been developed, addressing a broad range of features pertaining to a potential circular fashion system. Most remain vague about concrete ambitions and policy measures. However, the design of transition pathways involves a good understanding of the policy instruments among stakeholders that operate in a globalized industry with complex value chains. In this study, we investigate stakeholder support for policy instruments that could contribute towards a circular and sustainable fashion system. We identify 30 aspects of a circular fashion system, based on a screening of visions and strategies published by supranational bodies, NGOs, and sectoral organizations. Then, we present survey and focus group results, displaying broad stakeholder support for government intervention, particularly mandatory regulations. A plausible explanation is the prisoner’s dilemma most stakeholders face regarding global value chains, indicating the need for a more level playing field. We identify and address the differences between stakeholder preferences and conclude that mandatory regulations appear to be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a transition towards a circular fashion system.

The ethics of food sovereignty: discourses for transformative social change and community development practices by peasant movements

Abstract The food sovereignty movement is a global alliance of peasants aiming to create democratic, sustainable, and decentralized food systems. The radical strategy of the movement, aimed at promoting a global peasant identity and collective action for food systems’ transformation, is a community development endeavour that encompasses processes of social learning, community building, and community organizing. The food sovereignty movement provides relevant insights about the ethical challenges involved in building and mobilizing transnational solidarity. This paper explores the global food sovereignty movement of La Vía Campesina and two cases of local, farmer-led movements in India, namely Navdanya and The Deccan Development Society, through a constructivist qualitative case study methodological design. The paper analyses the ethical challenges experienced and explores the roles and responsibilities that community development workers play in facilitating transformative social change in the food systems. This paper demonstrates that the main challenge of building solidarity involves reconciling multiple visions and practice frameworks, through the respect of diversity and democratic choice. Finally, the paper highlights ethical considerations (such as overcoming binary logics), the crafting of community-led discourses, and pedagogical practices (such as Wisdom Dialogues), as key elements to guide community development workers to aid the facilitation of processes for identity building, conscientization, and collective action.

Shifting terms: Development discourses and moral imaginaries in Indian state service provision

How are multiple visions of state–society relations accommodated within the daily practices of the post-liberalization Indian state? How does state service provision relate to these shifting normative framings of state duty and citizen responsibility? This article examines these questions through an ethnographic study of citizen–state encounters in rural north India. Focusing on the presentation of social services and programmes through a single village council, I trace how development discourses under the post-liberalization state oscillate between welfarist principles of distribution and neoliberal values of self-sufficiency. As the state is fashioned variously as a provider or a more distant facilitator of enterprising activity, I explore how citizens manage these shifting normative terms, negotiate the varied demands of bureaucratic claims-making, and engage with moral ideals of responsibility and care.

Surveying “Paradise’s only map”: Andrew Marvell and Early Modern Science

Andrew Marvell has rarely been studied in relation to early modern science, even though his poetry reveals his interest in the scientific and technological developments of his time. In this study, I make a claim that Marvell’s poetic innovation of the country house poetry results from his active engagement with the new insights of early modern science, articulated most famously by Francis Bacon. In his poetic innovation, Marvell draws upon the new empirical and analytic methodology of early modern science. My focus is the poet’s impersonation of an estate surveyor. By taking up the role of an analytic and yet poetic surveyor, the poet maps out the discursive field of multiple visions competing at the historical juncture, which used to be hidden behind the monolithic vision of a utopian community in earlier precedents of the genre. In this poetic map, the surveyor-poet manages to capture not only the ascending logic of land improvement, represented by his lord, Sir Thomas Fairfax, but also the alternative views, namely, Diggers’ proto-communist ideas and fenmen’s protest against agrarian modernization. The poetic map delineates the contours of the discursive conflict surrounding the land in mid-seventeenth century England, the locus of the birth of capitalism.

Stage performances as means for linking sociotechnical imaginaries and projective genres in the discourse around urban air mobility

Sociotechnical imaginaries play a crucial role in the context of urban air mobility. At the beginning of this article, I present the Pop.Up, commonly described as ‘air taxi’, as one such vision. Taking the analysis of multiple visions as an orientation, I show secondly, how other temporal figures such as projective genres fulfil different functions to establish specific visions as dominant ones. By examining a press release about the Pop.Up, I show how distant futures are constructed trough explicating the problem of congestion in metropolitan cities. With the analysis of the stage performance by stakeholders from Airbus and Italdesign during the Geneva Motor Show 2017, where the Pop.Up was unveiled for the first time, I thirdly show that different futures fulfill different functions. Sociotechnical imaginaries visualized by concept videos demonstrate necessity, whereas projective genres communicated on a stage as collaborative action plans demonstrate feasibility. Stage performances, such as the one at the motor show, where the concept video was shown, offer a framework to establish specific sociotechnical visions. This linking between different future dimensions can be described as performative discourse strategy to make an artifact, in this case the Pop.Up, communicatively connectable to political discourses. The analysis of futures such as sociotechnical imaginaries regarding the question of politicization processes is thus supplemented by a perspective that examines projective genres such as collaborative action plans.

A Transnational History of the Internet in Central America, 1985–2000: Networks, Integration, and Development by Ignacio Siles

Reviewed by: A Transnational History of the Internet in Central America, 1985–2000: Networks, Integration, and Development by Ignacio Siles Fabian Prieto-Ñañez (bio) A Transnational History of the Internet in Central America, 1985–2000: Networks, Integration, and Development By Ignacio Siles. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Pp. xvii + 148. Historical research on the internet has primarily addressed the most connected countries. However, as Janet Abbate and others have advocated, the histories of the vast global system of integrated computers demonstrate multiple visions around this socio-technical system. In Central America, nonprofit organizations and universities pushed the introduction of computer networks to integrate the region, paving the way to the internet's expansion there. A Transnational History examines how initiatives to connect to early computer networks "unfolded and were developed from the mid-1980s to the end of the 1990s" in a region that deserves more detailed studies on its role in the history of technology (p. 1). Consisting of seven independent nation-states, Central American countries have participated in transnational infrastructure projects, from the Pan-American highway to microwave networks connecting the region, revealing how integration and interconnection are central to "hemispheric imaginations." Ignacio Siles argues that a transnational perspective is indispensable for rethinking the internet's history (or histories) as a technology. Drawing on archival work and interviews with project leaders in Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras, A Transnational History tells multiple histories of connection projects. In seven chapters, Siles presents Central American ideas of integration as a political project, with early initiatives for connectivity centered on academic and nonprofit projects. The book points to science and technology study concepts to interpret the transnational circulation of people, knowledge, and technologies, including academic exchanges with Europe and the United States. While the first chapters provide the theoretical background to how technology serves political integration, the following ones show how computer networks in Central America emerged as development projects that supported the expansion and further commercialization of telecommunications privatization in the 1990s (chs. 1–2, 3–6). A Transnational History extends recent efforts studying the circulation of knowledge and expertise to decenter narratives of technology transfer. Siles presents his book as a description of "the creativity of a group of people from countries with few economic resources, in a region devastated by years of war and crisis" (p. 2). In many ways, it resembles Joy Lisi Rankin's people's history approach. Many of the cases presented exemplify the collaboration with the United States, especially between universities in Central America. They also highlight the repercussions of the 1980s civil wars [End Page 582] and crises, as in the case of Nicaraguan women engineers who took the lead in building internet access after men had to join the Nicaraguan revolution (p. 86). Another example is Nicarao, a node of PeaceNET that counterbalanced CIA involvement in Nicaragua's 1990 presidential election. For these reasons, the book serves as a starting point for considering the relationship between infrastructure and politics more closely, from ideas of regional integration to the violence surrounding the emergence of these infrastructures. A Transnational History presents many examples of locally specific designs, whereby university and NGO experiments paved the way for the commercialization of the internet in Central America. It also shows how many infrastructural projects succeeded but were no longer visible after privatization. Making the internet infrastructure invisible, says Janet Abbate, is a social and historical process that involves phenomena as diverse as protocol standards, trade secrets, and user interfaces. In many ways, this book unpacks the social and political consequences of such invisibility. A Transnational History is an attempt to detach the histories of the internet in Latin America from national narratives and early adopters. Siles's contribution interweaves local histories of technology, highlighting the common processes that made it possible to integrate the internet in Central America. Fabian Prieto-Ñañez Fabian Prieto-Ñañez is assistant professor in the Science, Technology, and Society Department at Virginia Tech. He is currently working on a book manuscript about satellite television, copyright, and informal media markets in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1980s. Copyright © 2022 The Society for the History of Technology...

The dialogue structure in the poetry of Bushra Al-Bustani (Eve’s Correspondence Poem) as a model

The areas of critical study have become very many and separate from each other, such as intertextuality, narrative structure, vision, dialogue structure, poetic, aesthetic, etc. of modern critical terms that can be studied in several fields such as painting, poetry, theatre, novel, story, and music. Therefore, this research deals with the dialogical structure in Bushra Al-Bustani’s poetry since the dialogue is a well-known technique in modern Arabic poetry, and Bushra Al-Bustani’s poetry is not devoid of this technique as we note with other poets. In Bushra Al-Bustani’s poetry, several modern techniques were employed because of the poet’s culture and artistic depth that made her use symbol, legend, dialogue, intertextuality, displacement and other critical visions that made the poet’s poetic language with an internal rhythm that addresses the feelings of the reader. So, we had to stand at the dialogue as a narrative technique in poetry Bushra Al-Bustani, and the poem (Eve’s Dialogue) will be a model for this technique so that Eve is evoked to be a conversational voice through which the image of Eve becomes apparent in a coherent artistic structure. A new language characterized by the poetic poems of Bushra Al-Bustani to form a bouquet of poetry in an artistic language with poetic techniques with multiple visions.

The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England

The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England

Political ideas of the network society: why digitalization research needs critical conceptual analysis

In this article, I argue for an interpretive approach to digitalization research that analyzes the concepts, narratives, and belief systems in digitalization debates. I illustrate this methodological proposal by assessing the spread of network ideas. Many political actors and digitalization researchers follow network ideas, e.g. by claiming that the rise of a network society must lead to network governance. In contrast to this narrative, I argue that there are multiple visions of the digital society, each of which follows a specific pattern of epistemology, social imaginary, and political proposals. These competing self-interpretations must be investigated by digitalization research in order to map and evaluate different pathways into a digital society. For doing so, critical conceptual analysis draws on political theory, critical conceptual history, and the sociology of knowledge. It offers two major benefits for digitalization research. Firstly, it provides a systematic overview of competing governance rationalities in the digital society, enabling a critical evaluation of their potentials and proposals. Secondly, it enhances the methodological rigor of digitalization research by reviewing the narratives researchers themselves tell. I substantiate these claims by analyzing and historicizing the above network narrative. Tracing it back to cybernetics, I show that it has been used multiple times in efforts to reshape the way we think about society and politics, including our concepts of subjectivity, power, and governance.

Visions: The Dance Most of All: Envisioning an Embodied Eighteenth-Century Studies

The editors introduce this special issue of ABO, highlighting the work of the authors included in the issue. The introduction draws on recent scholarship re-visioning the work of the long, “undisciplined” eighteenth century, arguing for an eighteenth-century studies that embodies our intersectional identities and honors the experiences of bodyminds surrounding texts and authors, as well as the bodyminds that interact with those texts in the present. Throughout the years, scholars have demonstrated that there is no single vision of what eighteenth-century scholarship is or should be, but rather multiple visions. This introduction urges scholars to consider how an eighteenth-century studies that focuses on embodied experience can and should respond to present-day issues of racial inequity, sexism, ableism, heteronormativity, and other forms of systemic oppression which remain deeply rooted in the structures of power of the long eighteenth century. Revising our ideas of what is possible, what is visible, what is required of us as teacher-scholars remains our foremost task.

Shii‐Kurd Relations in Post‐2003 Iraq: Visions of Nationalism

AbstractRegime change in Iraq provided a new opportunity for Shiis and Kurds to create a new power‐sharing system. These two persecuted communities embraced a democratic‐federal system based on a combined civic and ethnocultural model. Analyzing this new alliance, this article argues that there were prominent forces within both communities that did not uphold an essentialist sense of identity, thus providing a basis for mutual recognition, as reflected in the new constitution. However, while in theory there was room for mitigating sectarian and ethnic boundaries, in practice, the differences assumed a much larger place, as reflected in the power struggle between Baghdad and Erbil. The process of unifying Iraq lacked an in‐depth debate over the place of diverse national narratives, together with an effort toward people‐to‐people contact. Concurrently, the struggle against the jihadists enhanced Shii‐Kurdish interdependency, while the battle of Kirkuk led to greater pragmatism. Post‐2003 Iraq provides a challenging case of democratization and regime change, due to the need for a delicate balancing act between power and multiple visions of religion and ethnic identity while contemplating multiple visions of nationalism.

New visions of the soliton solutions to the modified nonlinear Schrodinger equation

In this article, we will study the modified nonlinear Schrödinger equation which represents the propagation of rogue waves in ocean engineering that occur in deep water, usually far out at sea, and are a threat even to capital ships and ocean liners. In related subject for all like waves which occurred at different branches of science which have the same behaviors such as fluid dynamics waveguides that have unexpected large displacements, long-wave limit of a breather (a pulsing mode), telecommunications engineering devices, etc. We will implement new multiple visions for the soliton solution to the modified nonlinear Schrödinger equation (MNLSE) that describes successfully these phenomenon. Studying this important model and its own behavior of the resulting solitons description will contribute effectively in marine safety and improvement the pulse devices which cooperate to protect human life effectively and technology for high-capacity optical communications through which the modern asocial media was built…etc. Three different techniques are invited for this purpose. The first technique is the Paul-Painlevé approach method (PPAM), while the second technique is the Ricatti-Bernolli Sub ODE method (RBSOM). In related subject, the variational iteration method VIM is implemented in the same vein and parallel to construct the numerical solutions corresponding to the achieved soliton solutions via each one of these two methods individually. A good comparison not only between these three visions of soliton solutions but also with that achieved previously by other authors has been demonstrated.