With this article, I explore the connections between blockchain technology, coloniality, and decolonial practices. Drawing on Sylvia Wynter’s thought on the interdependent systems of colonialism, capitalism, and knowledge, as well as more recent work on the coloniality of digital technologies, I argue that blockchain-based systems reproduce certain dynamics at work in historical colonialism. Additionally, Wynter’s decolonial propositions provide a generative framework to understand countercultural practices with. Inspired by Wynter, Patricia de Vries explores the notion of “plot work as artistic praxis” to ask how artistic work, implicated as it is in capitalist logics, can create space for relating dierently in the context of the exploitations of those dominant logics. I apply this notion to examine how Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) in the countercultural blockchain space might contribute to this praxis.
MULTIFILE
The present study aims to contribute to the body of knowledge on HRD in small businesses by providing a detailed investigation of the role that owner-managers play in enabling social learning and performance in small firms. The investigation focusses particularly on the specific relationships of the social-interdependence orientation and social competence of owner-managers with their social learning behaviour, as well as with the performance of their smallbusinesses within the pig-production sector in the Republic of Korea. A survey was conducted amongst nearly 200 Korean ownermanagers of pig farms. The results indicate that social interdependence orientations and social competencies have a significant relationship with social learning behaviour. Self-promotion and a cooperative orientation are especially important, with selfpromotion taking precedence for social learning behaviour of a more ‘internal’ nature, and a cooperative attitude being more important social learning behaviour of a more ‘external’ nature. Social competence and social interdependence did not have a significant relationship with performance, but social learning behaviour did. The results further highlight the importance of individual social characteristics to social learning behaviour occurring outside highly structured educational settings, in addition to demonstrating that the competence and attitudes required are determined by the type of interaction partner.
MULTIFILE
In January 2022 the new Dutch Civic Integration programme was launched together with promises of improvements it would bring in facilitating the ‘integration’ of newcomers to the Netherlands. This study presents a critical discourse analysis of texts intended for municipalities to take on their new coordinating role in this programme. The analysis aims to understand the discourse in the texts, which actors are mobilized by them, and the role these texts and these actors play in processes of governmental racialization. The analysis demonstrates shifting complex assemblages are brought into cascades of governance in which all actors are disciplined to accept the problem of integration as a problem of cultural difference and distance, and then furthermore disciplined to adopt new practices deemed necessary to identify and even ‘objectively’ measure the inherent traits contributing to this problematic. Lastly, the analysis displays that all actors are disciplined to accept the solution of ‘spontaneous compliance’; a series of practices and knowledges, which move the civic integration programme beyond an aim of responsibilization, into a programme of internalization, wherein newcomers are expected to own and address their problematic ‘nature’, making ‘modern’ values their own.
Human kind has a major impact on the state of life on Earth, mainly caused by habitat destruction, fragmentation and pollution related to agricultural land use and industrialization. Biodiversity is dominated by insects (~50%). Insects are vital for ecosystems through ecosystem engineering and controlling properties, such as soil formation and nutrient cycling, pollination, and in food webs as prey or controlling predator or parasite. Reducing insect diversity reduces resilience of ecosystems and increases risks of non-performance in soil fertility, pollination and pest suppression. Insects are under threat. Worldwide 41 % of insect species are in decline, 33% species threatened with extinction, and a co-occurring insect biomass loss of 2.5% per year. In Germany, insect biomass in natural areas surrounded by agriculture was reduced by 76% in 27 years. Nature inclusive agriculture and agri-environmental schemes aim to mitigate these kinds of effects. Protection measures need success indicators. Insects are excellent for biodiversity assessments, even with small landscape adaptations. Measuring insect biodiversity however is not easy. We aim to use new automated recognition techniques by machine learning with neural networks, to produce algorithms for fast and insightful insect diversity indexes. Biodiversity can be measured by indicative species (groups). We use three groups: 1) Carabid beetles (are top predators); 2) Moths (relation with host plants); 3) Flying insects (multiple functions in ecosystems, e.g. parasitism). The project wants to design user-friendly farmer/citizen science biodiversity measurements with machine learning, and use these in comparative research in 3 real life cases as proof of concept: 1) effects of agriculture on insects in hedgerows, 2) effects of different commercial crop production systems on insects, 3) effects of flower richness in crops and grassland on insects, all measured with natural reference situations
