This open access book states that the endemic societal faultlines of our times are deeply intertwined and that they confront us with challenges affecting the security and sustainability of our societies. It states that new ways of inhabiting and cultivating our planet are needed to keep it healthy for future generations. This requires a fundamental shift from the current anthropocentric and economic growth-oriented social contract to a more ecocentric and regenerative natural social contract. The author posits that in a natural social contract, society cannot rely on the market or state alone for solutions to grand societal challenges, nor leave them to individual responsibility. Rather, these problems need to be solved through transformative social-ecological innovation (TSEI), which involves systemic changes that affect sustainability, health and justice. The TSEI framework presented in this book helps to diagnose and advance innovation and change across sectors and disciplines, and at different levels of governance. It identifies intervention points and helps formulate sustainable solutions for policymakers, administrators, concerned citizens and professionals in moving towards a more just and equitable society.
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The use of the word “social” in the context of information technology goes back to the very beginnings of cybernetics. It later pops up in the 1980s context of “groupware.” The recent materialist school of Friedrich Kittler and others dismissed the use of the word “social” as irrelevant fluff – what computers do is calculate, they do not interfere in human relations. Holistic hippies, on the other hand, have ignored this cynical machine knowledge and have advanced a positive, humanistic view that emphasizes computers as tools for personal liberation. This individualistic emphasis on interface design, usability, and so on was initially matched with an interest in the community aspect of computer networking. Before the “dot-com” venture capitalist takeover of the field in the second half of the 1990s, progressive computing was primarily seen as a tool for collaboration among people.
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Article about social work and social policy in the Netherlands. It gives information about the background, history, the meaning of the profession and the different types of professional areas in which the profession is divided. Other subjects are: social work curricula, the European dimension of social work an current challenges for social professionals in the Netherlands.
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