In this research, the use of narrative accounts is investigated as the catalyst for the evolution of one coach's identity. Unable to sustain a coaching identity that was deemed to be appropriate by my coaching mentors, I disengaged from the swimming culture. This was due in part to the expression of power within the mentor–mentee relationship embedded in the coach development pathway, as well as within the wider sporting culture. By utilizing a narrative approach; writing and deconstructing my own narratives (...) in relation to coach identity development within the mentor–mentee relationship, I developed an alternative approach. I established a sustainable coaching identity that demonstrated evidence-based judgement and reflective consideration of actions rather than the obtuse reproduction of mentor coach practice. This research suggests that the use of narrative as an integral element in coach education can be powerful in terms of deconstructing cultural ideologies and in the construction of a sustainable coaching identity. The combination of these two components is powerful in terms of enabling a coaching identity to evolve. It is therefore suggested that the development of a sustainable mentor–mentee relationship is inextricably linked with the expression of narrative and the critical reflection on the same. (shrink)

This paper introduces an epistemic theory of religious fundamentalism. Binary Epistemic Theory locates fundamentalism as a relationally dualistic, literalistic, and absolutistic “way of knowing” within a cycle charaterised by the creation, emergence, opposition, convergence, and collapse of binaries. The theory foregrounds the complexity of epistemic encounters with relativity. Such encounters remain understated in traditional teleological or linear theories of development that privilege growth beyond relativism. Accordingly, BET engages linear and cyclic interpretations of epistemic trajectories in order to argue for a (...) “relational and contextual understanding” of fundamentalist ways of knowing. (shrink)

This paper introduces and illustrates Bi-relational Design as a general approach to solving wicked problems. BD theorises oppositional, equipositional and para-positional approaches to problem-specific dyads based on a general consensus of research on epistemological development. These epistemic positions are used to inform a design process that includes six iterative and emergent phases: identification, organisation, analysis, evaluation, synthesis and experimentation. The paper illustrates these phases with the design of an interactive rubric to support pre-service teachers’ academic literacy during the transition to (...) university. The paper concludes with a consideration of the applications of bi-relational design for problem solution and resource development in contested or complex spaces. (shrink)

Welfare practitioners are increasingly expected to engage with ethno-sensitive practice approaches. Increasing diversity makes their ethical application complex with subsequent challenges when interpreting and assisting other lives. Although contemporary family helping has depended upon generic capabilities for dealing with absolute rights, ethical practice must now be based on wisdom about culturally determined needs. When professional values favor absolutist positions on helping, insensitivities result and there is need for analysis. A relationist critique is applicable when popular absolutist views about child rights (...) in the Pacific confound personal needs. This case expands ideas about professional ethics in cross-cultural practice, positing that such practices must look broadly at the diversity of cultural activities for their protective and satisfying antecedents. From Melanesian cultural examples, ethics are enlightened by a better understanding of relationships. A relationist approach is applied to critical reflection regarding professional ethics and ethical practice. (shrink)

The research investigates the impacts of the 2008 GFC on the securities market supervision by identifying how securities regulators have responded to the GFC, adapted to the post-crisis market conditions, and developed a more responsive supervisory structure. Implications for emerging markets are drawn based on research finding analysis. Quantitative survey research and qualitative techniques with focus group interviews and documentary research are employed in a mixed-methodology under the paradigm of critical realism to generalize the crisis impacts on SMS. Findings of (...) the research include: the GFC has generated impacts on all areas of SMS framework. Discussion is focused on a paradigm shift in SMS philosophy, re-construction of SMS architecture, emerging of risk-based approach, involvement of securities regulators in macro-prudential supervision, disputable roles of self-regulatory organizations in market conduct oversight, and re-regulation of securities products, market intermediaries, market gatekeepers and SROs; post-crisis SMS responsiveness improvement was a result of post-crisis policy reform; and developed markets and emerging markets followed the same trend of post-crisis SMS reform but their ways diverged in some areas. Post-crisis SMS paradigm shift, prevalence of integration model, choices of developed and emerging markets between twin-peaks and integration, post-crisis diminishing roles of SROs, emergence of central banks, divergence of developed markets and emerging markets in policies are explained. Critical implications were developed for emerging markets, including: comprehending the post-crisis SMS paradigm shift and developing a new SMS philosophy; dealing with the dilemma of SMS restructuring post-crisis; identifying the tasks and challenges of applying risk-based approach; and, establishing a culture of responsive SMS. Contribution of this research is significant in terms of theory, body of knowledge, methodology and literature: the research is the first that describes a comprehensive theoretical framework of SMS, defines the concept of SMS responsiveness and develops a complete SMS framework. A new SMS philosophy is recommended through analysis of research findings; the research helps to reveal the actual impacts of the 2008 GFC on SMS, develops regulatory implications and recommends components of a responsive SMS framework.; the research outcomes justifies employment of mixed methodologies; and the research also provides qualitative and quantitative data that supplements the literature of the GFC and securities supervision. Empirical evidence of the research is theoretically justified, meaningful, realistic, and discrete and is capable of verification in any further research contexts. (shrink)

Over the last three decades, scientists have uncovered the extent of human impacts on the earth's operating systems with increasing clarity and precision. These findings have prompted scientific claims that we have transitioned out of the Holocene and into the Anthropocene epoch in the earth's geological history. At the same time, the traditional humanist underpinnings of the university have been eroded by the ongoing digitisation, massification, and decentralisation of higher education. This article argues that higher education has a crucial role (...) to play in responding to the Anthropocene thesis, which at the same time provides a powerful impetus for reimagining the university through posthumanist concepts. In developing this analysis, conceptual distinctions are drawn between visions of hope and disaster, the local and the regional, dwelling and construction, and emplacement and displacement in the context of university learning environments. The learning environment is specifically addressed throughout as a fluid and transitional space for experimenting with concepts and practices that operate outside of humanist constructs and disciplinary boundaries. As the very idea of ‘the university campus’ threatens to become an anachronism, the author concludes with a speculative proposition for the reimagining of the university in the Anthropocene era. (shrink)

This document is a story rather than an unedited and verbatim record of events. Saying it is a story doesn’t mean it’s not true, but that in fact it has been edited to better convey the truth we all experienced as we lived these events together. That is the purpose of story, is to create an opportunity by which a person who was not present during an event can experience and learn from it themselves instead of merely being told what (...) happened. The narrative of this story integrates emails, face-to-face conversations, and reflections in the voices of the different people who took part in what happened. Formatting has been used to try to indicate these different kinds of communication as well as the different voices. Modifications include editing for clarification and brevity, but more significantly include arrangements and rearrangements of timing and syntax to put the story in as traditional a narrative voice as possible. Indigenous stories frequently use repetition as key signifiers and a structure of circular loops within the overall linear sequence of events. That means things sometimes double back on themselves -- which of course is how we all experience life on a daily basis: as something happens in a given instant, we commonly reflect on previous events that now take on a new meaning in light of a present event, or we suddenly anticipate a direction things might go that we hadn’t foreseen. Resources and references that support and/or inform statements such as the one just made about traditional Indigenous narrative form are listed at the end of the document in the order they appeared in the story. The first one on that list provides supporting documentation for the information in this note. These resources are not footnoted in the text so as not to interrupt the flow of the story. Frontispiece and end-piece art tell the story in a different format. Shawn Wilson explains: “The words “text” and “textile” are both from the Latin textus for ‘woven.’ An online etymology dictionary says: ‘An ancient metaphor: thought is a thread, and the raconteur is a spinner of yarns -- but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver. The scribes made this old and audible abstraction into a new and visible fact. After long practice, their work took on such an even, flexible texture that they called the written page a textus, which means cloth. (shrink)

This paper presents a discussion of the methodology, theory and key findings from an arts-based inquiry into academic learning environments entitled Cubic Reflections. The Cubic Reflections project involved a series of twelve site-specific cubes that were installed within the outdoor environments of a university campus in regional Australia. The cubes were designed to form a network of objects that reflected the aesthetic and ecological dimensions of the university’s learning environments. Students and staff were invited to both activate and build on (...) this network by mapping and reflecting on their own movements within and between the twelve installations. This paper firstly describes the methodology of immersive cartography, drawing on a range of cartographic theories and practices from contemporary art, philosophy and anthropology. Following this, the concept of the ‘cartographic network’ is developed through the work of Deleuze and Guattari and Latour in relation to the Cubic Reflections project. The methodology of immersive cartography is then analysed at the level of lived experience in terms of environmental aesthetics, drawing on the aesthetics of engagement and ambient poetics. Lastly, several artifacts from the Cubic Reflections project are discussed in relation to the methodology of immersive cartography and the concept of the cartographic network. (shrink)

This study raises some theoretical issues about research methodologies and questions at what level research methods normalise power relations or make unproblematic various respondent accounts of the real. The paper is directed toward the epistemic level of transformation - towards the way we come to know the world. It describes an academic research project designed to elucidate the manner in which a group of executive understand the real, and had as its ultimate goal, the purpose of tracking social change. At (...) one level, that purpose may have been achieved. At a deeper level, however, it illustrates the inadequacy of accepted research methodologies in attempts to identify a single reality or to create alternative futures. It points to the value of causal layered analysis in overcoming some of the problems of methodology. (shrink)

This article explores the importance of strong epistemological and ontological links in nursing research by examining the design and process of a recent research project. The research topic concerns the relationship between self-concept and nursing practice. In this article, the authors demonstrate that commitment to a methodologically consistent process and the necessary associated epistemological and ontological positions provides a depth and structure to nursing research. It is the authors' belief that such consistency within research acts to strengthen the research process, (...) and consequently strengthens nursing's research base and knowledge. (shrink)

The overall aim of the composite thesis is the critical examination of the poetics and politics of memory, particularly in the extended role of the ekphrasis in literature. The creative work A Strange Chinese Tale draws on theoretical elements from Debord, Deleuze, Lefebvre, and Baudrillard, and provides a narrative for the post-modern political and cultural landscape of contemporary China, in relation to the individual’s search for a sense of belonging. The exegesis The Poetics, Politics and Writing of Memory argues for (...) the extension of the ekphrastic project into the domains of the photographic image and the ‘space of memory’. (shrink)

Opportunities for wealth creation, access to affordable housing, sense of security andbelonging, level of choice, self-esteem and self-determination are all linked to housing,and more specifically to tenure type with its resulting inequity. In thispaper I explore the impact of non-homeownership on a particularly significant anddisadvantaged social group, sole mother families who do not own their homes and whosubsequently privately rent their housing. I draw on some findings of a qualitative studywhich I undertook as part of my PhD research which adopted (...) a critical feminist approachand utilised in-depth interviews to ascertain and make visible the experiences andconcerns of 32 non-home-owning sole mothers living in Northern NSW. This approach ismarkedly different to many used in housing related research which often results in theparticular concerns of vulnerable social groups being indistinguishable from others thatare faring well within the ‘free market’ approach to housing. These women’s concernsare discussed against the backdrop of a decline in housing affordability, availability,choice and security of tenure. In addition, I reflexively draw on personal experience thatexplicitly positions myself in this paper to further highlight and make visible housingconcerns impacting on women. (shrink)

Within art therapy discourses there is a dearth of scholarly literature related to the dilemmas of voicing lesbianism and picturing lesbians. This is the result of sustained discrimination and censorship worldwide. In order to address this issue, a research study was designed to investigate this topic and its relationship to informing art therapy. There were two research methods and two research processes used in the project. Autobiography and art based research were the methods, and intertextuality and reflexivity were the research (...) processes. The methodology that underpinned the project was postmodern-feminism. Autobiographical material created through an art-based research method was reflexively viewed. The newly created visual texts stimulated intertextual links to past visual and written texts. These texts were used to map and track deeply held assumptions found embedded in essentialist, dualistic and modernist paradigms. By the use of postmodernfeminism deconstruction and reconstruction the investigation exposed and interrogated paradigm shifts resulting in subsequent personal transformations. The study revealed how past personal experiences of homophobia, lesbian invisibility and mental health treatment were deeply embedded in gender/sexuality norms, visual art discourse and social stigmatisation. These experiences impacted significantly on the ability to verbally and visually reveal both lesbian and lesbianism, and as such impacted on perceptual shaping of multiple selves within self. The study further demonstrated how the postmodern-feminist investigation destabilised dominant paradigms and subverted their location in “truth”, allowing for reconstruction of selves to be explicitly pictured. The significance of the findings for art therapy is three fold. Firstly, by offering a postmodern-feminist perspective through a lesbian lens, embedded modernist paradigms central to art therapy discourse are challenged. Secondly, the creative process of image making, within a postmodern-feminist frame is showcased. Within such a process change can be mobilised and self perceptions can be transformed. Thirdly, the study has advanced art therapy towards a more contemporary and critically informed discipline, one that can reflect on possible dilemmas encountered by lesbian clientele when verbally or visually self representing. The implications of the study have several intersections for the broader arts and health care sectors. (shrink)

By contrasting rational knowledge with relational knowledge, this paper discusses the forming of agreements as the pursuit of knowledge. Knowledge as agreement is thus discussed in this paper via research methods including ‘autoethnography’ . Pursuing knowledge by virtue of agreements is subsequently valued after positioning the author as a non-Indigenous ‘dagay’, positioning the paper itself as a dissertation, and after assuming an initial relationship between the reader and author. The paper occurs within the cultural context of ‘academia’. Once rational knowledge (...) has been contrasted with relational knowledge, the paper then highlights how agreements may be effectively pursued via ‘dialogue’ and affected by one’s topology . These pursuits, says the paper, are pursuits of knowledge as agreement. This paper is written from within ‘academia’ for the academic reader of a philosophical ilk. It is an attempt at the coherent valuing of relational knowledge and discussion of the possibility of knowledge through the pursuit of agreements. Philosophically, this is a paper about epistemology. As a creative discussion, author and reader share via this paper their mutual pursuit of fresh knowledge. Thus the paper is offered as an invitation for the reader to join the author in creating something that has not existed before – new knowledge. (shrink)

Contemporary learning-centred teaching and learning approaches are vital to help learners develop lifelong skills for employability in the digital age. This paper relates the knowledge and experiences gained from a study to enhance LC in a first-year core marketing curriculum undertaken in a blended learning environment by large, diverse groups of business students in an Australian tertiary educational institution. The study involved measuring the degree of presence of LC in the 2011 curriculum, identifying and exploring ways to enhance LC in (...) the 2011 curriculum and implementing selected new LC approaches to the 2012 curriculum and recording the outcomes of the new approach. A key LC technique introduced in line with the above process included an online collaborative writing using group blogs and wikis in a major, multi-part marketing plan assessment item. The findings of the research provide guidelines for enhancement of learning-centredness to reflective practice-oriented marketing/management educators committed to continuous improvement of their LC oriented curriculum for fostering students’ lifelong learning. (shrink)

This thesis situates recent tensions in debates about history over epistemology within their historical and social contexts. It explores the possibilities for developing historical understanding across epistemologies by considering the role ideas of justice can play in contemporary historical praxis. By considering historical praxis in relation to ideas of justice I have identified a nexus in which to explore different ways of knowing the past that is at once responsive to difference whilst also situating the ethical as an essential regulator (...) in determining meaningful, responsible and valid representations of the past. (shrink)

Fostering wisdom is often stated as the aim of nursing education, yet there is a great deal of uncertainty as to what is meant by wisdom. This thesis aimed to paint a collective picture of eighteen nurse's stories and insights into the nature of nursing wisdom. Grounded Theory was adopted to explore the nature of nursing wisdom. Nursing wisdom is seen as a journey and is depicted as an interconnected collection of character traits in wise nurses. The wise nurses' journey (...) has an emphasis on learning and sharing of what has been learnt. Wisdom in nursing comes out of wise nurses interacting with their environment including interacting with people, especially the recipients of nursing care. Wise nursing is in relation to an individual, a group of nurses or nursing as a whole. There are some core characteristics of wise nurses. Wisdom is of the whole being. Wise nurses have a love of other human beings and this is what fundamentally drives nurses to do good. Wise nurses have an open character and utilise reflection, see the multidimensional complexity, see the varied qualities in a situation and in light of these make judgements. The wise judgements include the appropriateness of love. Wise nurses choose three modes of being: a Seeing mode with an intent of understanding, a Doing mode with an intent of creating change and a Resting mode with an intent to recuperate. These three modes are like three notes in a chord where the wise nurse can choose to have any one of these modes dominant or all in harmony with each other. The wise nurses model is very useful as it gives an insight into the characteristics which can assist in giving direction to nursing education. The wise nurses model also powerfully facilitates the interconnection of seemingly disparate ideas and concepts. This is due to nursing wisdom being 'a whole greater than the sum of its parts'. Therefore when looking at a single aspect of the model one needs to consider all the other parts. For example the model interconnects learning, humour, ethics, love, problem solving, seeing varied qualities and seeing the multidimensional web and gives the insight that each aspect needs to be considered in light of all the other aspects. Valuable insights from these are interconnections that wise nurses, for example, see that in all problem solving there needs to be consideration of the means and the ends and to be ethical. (shrink)

The indeterminate precision of narrative is the culmination of multiple exhibitions that engage with the uncertain, unfixed and yet simultaneously accurate and truthful nature of story telling. There is no single narrative that explains our historic present. To tell a story is to re-tell stories from the past in order to create coherent narratives in the present. The narrative structures the exhibitions enquire into focus on images and objects that speak to the body in hybrid forms. The significance of the (...) research lies in its response to and engagement with contemporary theoretical debates that currently surround images of the body. By enacting the text of everyday life, the body becomes not a product but a processor of everyday life. The research conducted made use of traditional and contemporary image making tools such as oil painting interfaced with embedded plexiglass imagery sourced though digital means and includes the design and development of a website that publishes the research outcomes. The research advances our general knowledge in the innovative use of materials that speak to conventional and contemporary accounts of the body. Arts-practice-led research was the methodology identified for use in the research and involved a process of information gathering; including non-linear systems that are inclusive, chaotic, and holistic. Various visual and multi-media methods of selection, analysis, synthesis, presentation and communication including journals, digital photographs, proofs and drafts were engaged in. Arts-practice-led research is pluralistic in approach; uses multi-method techniques tailored to the individual project; reflexivity is acknowledged and the interaction of the researcher with research material is recognised. Within this field the researcher reflects-in-action and reflects-on-action and is adaptive. These systems explored how my ontological position and the methodologies outlined were catalysts for studio production. The aim of the research considers how this methodology impacts on the lived body that is determined and specific. The narrator of the stories I tell must be conceived not just as a personal presence but also as a form of action that operates at a level fundamentally contradictory to the action of the story. This action is identified as performative. The narrative act has a status independent not just of the content of the telling, but of any final meaning of the story. The association of the latter with "the author" is nowadays considered naive; but it is in fact no less naive to associate such meaning with "the narrator". What we have traditionally called the narrator is not a fixed entity capable of dictating a determinant meaning but is the discourse produced by the act of narrating, a discourse which makes meaning and cannot specify it. The narrator is not assigned an "author function" that separates itself from the text in order to force conformity on it. If this were the case, the progress of the multiplicity of discourse would come to a stop and in so doing assign to the story a non-performative status. The narrator is that multiplicity or act performed. This refers to both studio process and installation space. (shrink)

This three-part publication series presents the epistemological processes and outcomes of an international arts-based research project titled Big Blue Ball : Pictures, people, place. The project uses the creative function to investigate the nature of meaning-making. In particular, through collaborative engagement with adversity of cultures, it explores the significance of creativity and creative practice in setting up sites for shared understanding in a contemporary and globally interactive world. The project was developed and carried out by Donna Wright during her PhD (...) Candidature at Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia, between 2004 and 2007. Making use of practice-led research strategies, and drawing on creative arts practice, the project has exploited the inherent capacity of the creative function to support innovation. The project design offers a new model of intertextual processes of creativity that opens up spaces for intercultural negotiation, by linking spatial conceptions and processes for semiotic mediations, to multiple, interconnected mediums for the production and reception of new information. This in turn provides a context in which to support knowledge discovery that may facilitate intercultural awareness and understanding. (shrink)

Since the subordination of midwifery by medicine and nursing in the 19th and 20th centuries the standard approach to childbirth has been dominated by rationality. This approach proceeds by creating dichotomies and then prioritising one half of the dichotomy whilst rejecting the opposite term. Rationality itself is prioritised, for example, by contrasting it with the rejected opposite: irrationality. Expert clinical practice is, however, increasingly identified as being inclusive of more than merely rational ways of knowing and behaving. This paper is (...) based on a post-structural study concerning changes to women's embodied sense of self during childbearing. We expose the limitations of pure rationality in the context of childbirth and use the concept of safety to exemplify the limitations that pure rationality imposes. The paper draws on philosophical and spiritual theory to present an analysis of ideas about mind, body, soul and spirit. The standard rational/irrational dichotomy is critiqued and contrasted with the embodied reality of nonrational experiences that are individual, contextual and ‘in-the-moment’. Nonrational experiences are identified to be inclusive of power and knowledge that are both rational and nonrational. This revised conceptualisation provides a theoretical basis that allows for and promotes more possibilities and thus more holistic ways of knowing in midwifery. Our thesis is that midwives and women need to take conscious account of nonrational knowledge and power during the childbearing year. We argue that pure rational thinking limits possibilities by excluding the midwife's embodied ways of knowing along with the ways of knowing embodied by the woman. The inclusion of women's and midwives’ nonrational ways of knowing in childbearing situations opens us up to knowledge and power that provides for a more complete, and therefore a more optimal, decision-making process. (shrink)

Nietzsche writes that literary styles must be taken into account when determining meaning. To not do so vulgarizes language. The importance of style to meaning is best understood by examining the relationship between language and experience. Style requires readers to experience the particularity of texts if they are to understand their meaning, and style is experienced and evaluated in terms of the audience’s ethos. Through style’s ability to provide alternative perspectives on the audience’s linguistic norms, language is not limited to (...) reiterating common generalisations but expresses the unfamiliar, rare and evolving. (shrink)

Intentional communities are formed by a group of people who have voluntarily chosen to live together for a range of reasons in the creation of a shared lifestyle. They concern practical forms of living that may reflect diverse structures and distinct philosophies. The intentional community literature is both broad and unique in its representation of intentional community living. Intentional communities may also be considered sites that form the basis for resisting mainstream forms of living and representations of subjectivity. Through an (...) active process of self-constitution, participants engaged in communal forms of living may construct different identities and styles of life. Although the term ‘intentional community’ is fairly recent, notions of utopian living have a long history. Forms of utopian living can be found in early biblical times, while Foucault’s domain of ‘ethics’ is also derived from what the intentional community literature considers to be early utopian communities. Despite an extensive literature, very little research explicitly focuses on communal living as a form of ethics as praxis. This may be due to the characterisation of ethics as a form of rules, duties and consequences, rather than ethics as a relationship that a person cultivates with their ‘self’. Foucault’s domain of ethics provides a valuable context to explore whether intentional community living can be theorised as a Foucauldian form of ethics. Although there is contemporary interest in Foucault’s domain of ethics, relatively few texts have sought to use Foucault’s ethical conceptualisation as a qualitative methodology in the context of empirical research. Even fewer studies have drawn on Foucault’s theoretical framework in the context of empirical research on intentional communities. This is despite a number of themes that the literature shares concerning notions of resistance, identity as a form of selfconstitution and the potentially transformative effect of communal living. This research therefore seeks to make a significant contribution to a relatively underresearched and under-theorised area of the literature. Drawing on Foucault’s ethics as a theoretical framework, this thesis explores twenty-eight narratives of participants who live on five rural communities in northern NSW, Australia. Fieldwork was conducted over a nine-month period between 2004 and 2005, with periods of time spent on each community. One community was revisited for the purpose of collecting further empirical data. Foucault’s ethical analysis and Foucauldian constructionism are used in the analysis and interpretation of the interviews that resulted from this fieldwork. Where individual interviews were not undertaken, a document analysis of former empirical research serves to affirm participant observations. Ethical issues concerning confidentiality and representation were addressed through the attendance at communal or ‘tribal’ meetings where required. The findings suggest that intentional community living may be theorised as a Foucauldian form of ethics, with an analysis of the empirical research providing further insight into each of the four aspects of Foucault’s ethics: the ethical substance, the mode of subjection, the self-forming activities and the telos. The findings also indicate that communal, or co-operative, living may reflect the dominant form of ethics for intentional community members by the way it permeates all other aspects of ethics. In this light, it can be said that intentional community living is an ethics as praxis—a truly practical philosophy. The implications of these findings suggest that through their very practice of an ethics, intentional community participants may be ethical, or ‘individualising’, subjects. That is, through notions of personal choice, acts of resistance and the performance of practices on the self that effect transformation, participants may construct both a ‘self’ and ‘styles of life’ that they both like and affirm, thereby positioning themselves differently against mainstream representations of ‘suburbia’. (shrink)

A critical analysis of contemporary strategic management theory and practice suggests that modernist, linear thinking has facilitated the development of an abstracted reality which is misleading to managers and fundamentally flawed. It is argued that formulaic strategic tools such as those propounded by Porter fail to capture the reality of the complex environments that confront firms and falsely suggest that an answer can be derived from a predetermined toolbox. As an alternative to this dominant paradigm, the complexity of markets is (...) presented not as something to be feared and ignored, but rather as a truth to be embraced. As a basis of taking this step, current knowledge on how complex environments work, perspectives on how they can be better understood and how people and organizations can engage within them, is presented. Ultimately it is recognised that both theoretical and practical foundations need significant, further development. (shrink)

This thesis is about the contemporary challenges facing herbal medicine. Specifically it concerns the difficulties faced by Australian herbalists in their attempts to maintain authority over the knowledge base of their craft and a connection with traditional understandings of the uses of plant medicines, while at the same time engaging with biomedicine and the broader Australian healthcare system. It contributes to the study of the nascent field of qualitative studies in contemporary western herbal medicine by making three main arguments. Firstly, (...) Australian herbal medicine is characterised by its origins as a European colonial practice and its history of professional marginalisation during most of the 20th century. Secondly herbal practitioners have been unable to capitalise significantly on a surge of public popularity in the closing years of the 20th century which brought with it the interest of industry, the scrutiny of regulators and the renewed attention of biomedicine. Herbalists continue to struggle for recognition in the face of these more powerful interests. Thirdly it is argued that herbalists are attempting to gain legitimacy and acceptance as a healthcare profession through a process of underpinning their knowledge base with science, which is replacing their traditional philosophical basis. This has the effect of weakening the ability of herbalists to maintain their identity as an independent profession and makes its knowledge base vulnerable to appropriation by other healthcare professions. Gross’ model of the cultural location of traditions in contemporary societies is used to clarify the situation of herbalists and to identify problems consequent to the political choices they have made or which have been forced upon them. Gross suggests that traditions which place themselves close to power have difficulty in maintaining their own character and integrity, but that other cultural locations are also problematic and limit full participation in society. vi It is argued that there are compelling reasons to move beyond Gross’ analysis and to find ways to strengthen the independence of the herbal profession. Given the financial problems facing the current healthcare system in Australia and the looming ecological challenges, radical changes to the current system are required. The central concepts of herbal practice, in particular vitalism and holism, lead to approaches to healthcare which are potentially both costeffective and ecologically sustainable. A robust and independent profession of western herbalists, with their philosophy articulated and restored, could provide a valuable and sustainable contribution to Australian healthcare. (shrink)

In his book The Philosophy of Nature, Ellis presents "the new essentialism" as resting on the notions of a property, an intrinsic property, an essential property, natural necessity and possibility, a natural kind, a fixed natural kind, and a natural law. The present paper argues that the central notions in this group are susceptible of a logical analysis, Ellis's notion of natural possibility has a historical precedent in the work of Abéelard, the notion of natural possibility contains both de re (...) and de dicto elements, and Ellis's essentialist claims, when joined to any plausible definition of natural possibility, lead to inconsistency. (shrink)