June 23, 2009 by fourcultures
Service designer Nick Marsh has created a nice visual summary (of Matthew Taylor’s summary) of grid-group cultural theory
Nick writes:
The really interesting thing about this way of looking at culture is that it provides us with an off balance, high tension way of thinking about competing agendas and arguments in situations where there is no ‘right’ solution, only better or worse outcomes for different groups (sometimes referred to as Wicked Problems within the design community.)…
Cultural Theory is thus a tool to be used when tackling problems, more than a theory to explain a situation, and this is the appeal for me as a service designer – I’m always looking for ways to frame the often complex and contradictory problems I come across during my work, and Cultural Theory is an inspiring, thought provoking method of viewing these issues. I’m looking forward to reading more about it…
Tags: cultural theory, Grid-Group, Matthew Taylor, Nick Marsh
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June 21, 2009 by fourcultures
Much of the supposed conflict between science and religion may well be imaginary, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any conflict.
How then should this conflict be characterised?
Gregory Bateson once noted the distinction in playful animals between the nip (playful) and the bite (serious). It’s clear that animals, including ourselves, can tell the difference, but how? How do they (we) make the transition between ‘this is play’ and ‘is this play?’?
Bateson famously summed up his observation of monkeys at the San Francisco zoo as follows:
“the playful nip denotes the bite, but it does not denote what would be denoted by the bite” (p.180).
This has a great deal to tell us about the science and religion debate. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: atheism, belief, Gregory Bateson, religion, science
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June 20, 2009 by fourcultures
A thoughtful review by Graham Strouts of David Holmgren’s new book, Future Scenarios appears at his website, Zone 5.
This provides an interesting angle on the predeliction of Egalitarian thinkers to foreground the need for a ‘reorientation of spiritual values’ or a ‘fundamental change of paradigm’. Note that while Holmgren himself is clear that under certain scenarios such social changes are essential, not every Egalitarian is in agreement. One of the issues with advocating a return to spirituality is the question, Which spirituality? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: atheism, religion, Grid-Group, Global warming, Peak Oil, cultural theory
Posted in Grid-Group, Peak Oil, cultural theory, religion | 1 Comment »
June 19, 2009 by fourcultures
Grid-Group Cultural Theory is an uncomfortable thing to live with. It claims that our rationality is partial rather than complete. Instead of one version of common sense, which sensible people have and stupid people ignore, there are actually four competing versions of rationality, four different takes on the way the world actually is. Although we are quite flexible, we spend much of our time stuck inside one or other of these four boxes, unable or unwilling to see anything beyond the walls of the box.
In The Meaning of Culture (1929) John Cowper Powys wrote:
Culture is what is left over after you have forgotten all you have definitely set out to learn…One always feels that a merely educated man holds his philosophical views as if they were so many pennies in his pocket. They are separate from his life. Whereas with a cultured man there is no gap or lacuna between his opinions and his life. Both are dominated by the same organic, inevitable fatality. They are what he is.
Technology publisher Tim O’Reilly sees this as a strength, since it’s part of what gives an individual or an organisation a personality.
“Great companies always have this sense of authenticity, while “me too” companies have a culture made up of the latest management fashions.”
But it can also be a great weakness. Having matched one’s opinions to one’s life and one’s life to one’s opinions it then becomes next to impossible to see the life that exists beyond the opinions, or the opinions that exist beyond the life.
Powys nicely put his finger on exactly the point that Cultural theory seeks to expose: the point at which we abandon our ideas of opinion or philosophy and resort to the claim that ‘this is how the world really is’.
Cultural theory might therefore be regarded as an antidote to cultural inevitability, because it claims that no matter how comprehensive a particular cultural milieu appears to those on the inside, three quarters of the world is always on the outside, waiting to be discovered. Furthermore, it provides a map for navigating this expansive, meta-cultural territory. And like all maps it confronts us with a crucial question: is this organic or is it constructed?
Now read:
A way of trying not to fool yourself
Tags: books, cultural theory, culture, Grid-Group, John Cowper Powys, Tim O'Reilly
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June 18, 2009 by fourcultures
Just as I reach the end of reading Rebel Code by Glyn Moody , a riveting (to my mind) early history of GNU/Linux (subtitled Linux and the Open Source Revolution), Kevin Kelly’s article in Wired mag comes to my attention. Kelly claims the open source movement is ‘the new socialism’.
No, it isn’t.
For example, there is no way on God’s earth that Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Eric Raymond, Glyn Moody, Kevin Kelly, Linux, open source, Richard Stallman, Socialism, technology, trends, Wired
Posted in Grid-Group, cultural theory, technology | Leave a Comment »
May 31, 2009 by fourcultures
In this series about planning in Palestine we’ve looked at three alternative ‘plans’. The first, thankfully, will never be built (although, chillingly, it’s really just a vision of present segregated reality). The second may well be built (though it would take a dramatic turnaround in political will). The third offers a glimpse of a progress-free future where nothing gets built (which is wholly unrealistic, given large population increases in the next 20 years).
These three visions of a future Palestine raise some important political questions and they show how spatial planning can focus the political process on actually getting things done. Here are some of the issues: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Isreal, Palestine, Patrick Geddes, Planning, The Arc, urbanism
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May 31, 2009 by fourcultures
What future can be planned for Palestine?
So far in this series we’ve looked at a nightmare sci-fi segregationalism generated merely from revealing the implications of the Oslo Accords as architectural impressions. We’ve also looked at a much more positive spatial plan to develop a central north-south transit corridor, linking most of the main settlements and directing future urban growth without sprawl. The architectural student, the leading planner, what, thirdly, would an artist have to offer in terms of a vision for Palestine? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: art, enclaves, Israel, Palestine, Planning, Qalandia 2067, Qalandiya, urbanism, Wafa Hourani
Posted in art, urbanism | 1 Comment »
May 31, 2009 by fourcultures
I’m examining three very different visions of a planned future for Palestine in a week when the issue has been very much in the news. Of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Desmond Tutu said this week:
“you can give up on all other problems. You can give up on nuclear disarmament, you can give up on ever winning a war against terror, you can give it up. You can give up any hope of our faiths ever working really amicably and in a friendly way together. This, this, this is the problem, and it is in our hands”.
And US President Obama said: “I think it is important not to assume the worst but to assume the best.”
The first part of this series looked at a very dark vision for the future of the West Bank. The second plan I’m examining here certainly ‘assumes the best’ as Obama puts it. Read the rest of this entry »
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May 31, 2009 by fourcultures
New article : A Cultural Analysis of Administrative Justice
This chapter from an upcoming book is a thoughtful take on the mismatch between contemporary concepts of public management and the theories of administrative justice that they intersect with.
It’s a good example of the usefulness of Grid-Group Cultural Theory to make sense of the social. The authors are specific: in their view Cultural Theory “promises two significant advances to the theory of administrative justice. First, Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: administrative justice, books, Fatalism, Grid-Group
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