From the traditional and pragmatic perspective on European cooperation shared by the Dutch political establishment, the French initiative for the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) was initially met with scepticism. Yet, during the experiment, the Dutch government and parliament translated their initial reluctance into assertive involvement. Rapporteurs from the bicameral parliament of the Netherlands became actively involved in CoFoE. They used it as an opportunity structure to pursue their political interests, which came down to watering down too-ambitious text proposals and stressing that the active participation of the citizens should be taken seriously. This chapter shows how both Houses used a wide range of parliamentary instruments – rapporteurs, delegations, plenary debates, committee hearings, questions, and a parliamentary citizens’ consultation – to debate, scrutinise and influence the CoFoE. Representatives and staff actively engaged in inter-parliamentary information exchange. In preparation for the plenaries, a sense of ‘esprit de corps’ developed between Dutch government representatives, members of parliament (MPs), Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), and supporting staff. This resulted in a remarkably coherent all-Dutch positioning up until the closure of the Conference and shared disappointment on the lack of a follow-up.
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At the end of the 20th century, hacking was bleeding edge. When the ideas, practices and pranks of this experimental niche of technophiles attracted the attention of a handful of activists in Italy, they understood that information and communication were what would give shape and voice to social, political, and cultural processes in the near future.+KAOS is a cut and paste of interviews, like a documentary film transposed on paper. It describes the peculiar relationship between hacktivism and activism, in Italy and beyond, highlighting the importance of maintaining digital infrastructures. While this may not sound as glamorous as sneaking into a server and leaking data, it is a fundamental topic: not even the most emblematic group of hacktivists can operate without the services of radical server collectives.
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Acknowledging the roles and responsibilities of business in society and the importance of realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), contemporary management education is characterized by the integration of a rich palette of initiatives in the field of Responsible Management Education (RME). It is important though to recognize that these initiatives, however laudable, so far represent rather basic, and thus insufficient, ways of truly integrating sustainability into management education. This Provocation to Debate essay therefore identifies three perspectives for bolstering RME through the SDGs: (1) addressing the fact that SDGs incorporate trade-offs, tensions, and paradoxes; (2) realizing the SGDs implies engaging in systemic activism; and (3) embracing the SDGs comes with emotional affect. As such, this essay is an invitation to critically reflect on the roles and contents of management education in spurring sustainable development and to engage in a meaningful discussion about the value and the limitations of the SDGs for advancing the RME agenda.
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By supporting creation of protected areas, conservation projects are known to bring economic prosperity to the local communities, but also incite criticism. A common theme in the critique of conservation organizations is the proximity to neoliberal agencies seeking to capitalize on environment, which disadvantage the local communities. Community participation has been proposed as a panacea for neoliberal conservation. However, conservation efficacy is not always contingent on the community involvement and reliance on ‘traditional’ practices in protected areas has not always benefitted biodiversity. Simultaneously, critique of conservation ignores evidence of indigenous activism as well as alternative forms of environmentalism which provide a broader ethical support base for conservation. This article highlights the challenges and contradictions, as well as offers hopeful directions in order to more effectively ground compassionate conservation. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2015.1048765 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Welcome to the fourth special issue of the Pervasive Labour Union zine, Urgent Publishing Debris. In May 2019, the Making Public: Urgent Publishing Conference took place. Among others, it asked the following questions:-"How to realize sustainable, high-quality alternatives within this domain of post-digital publishing?"-"How can designers, developers, artists, writers and publishers intervene in the public debate and counter misinformation in a meaningful and relevant way?"-"What are new publishing strategies for our current media landscape?"-"How to design for urgency without succumbing to an accelerated hype cycle?"The presentations, debates and conversations have all been officially documented in blogposts on the Institute of Network Cultures website, videos and pictures. But what about the notes, the pictures, the recordings and the tweets of the conference's visitors? What do they have to tell us about how each person experienced the conference? This special issue aims to provide new readings of the event by creating remixes of the official archival sources with the 'unofficial' debris circulating around it.In order to facilitate the navigation between articles, making connections visible where they might have only been implicit, the editors have decided to define eleven overarching topics (Social/Community, Activism, Post-truth, New forms, Authorship/Makers, Speed, Positioning, Locality, Relationality, Authoritarianism, Parasite). Each of the topics was attributed a colour and the source material is highlighted accordingly.Furthermore, each remix has a dispersed editors' note, wherein each editor reflects in more detail on the program, how it connects to the conference's topic and how it might answer any of the aforementioned questions.
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Hoewel de klimaat- en ecologische crisis de grootste bedreiging voor de volksgezondheid is, krijgt deze in geen van de Nederlandse zorginstellingen de hoogste prioriteit. Steeds meer zorgprofessionals doen vanuit hun beroepseed aan klimaatactivisme, ook als dit vreedzame burgerlijke ongehoorzaamheid omvat. Ze ondervinden vaak weerstand omdat dit als onprofessioneel wordt gezien. Dit betekent echter niet dat activistische zorgprofessionals onprofessioneel zijn, maar dat het idee van wat professionaliteit is moet worden aangepast aan het beroep dat wetenschap en wereld in tijden van klimaat- en ecologische crisis op de zorgprofessional doen. Zorginstellingen zouden klimaatactivisme daarom moeten faciliteren of zelfs toejuichen.
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Being an artist in Post-Fordist Times, sketches a provocative impression of the manner in which prominent artists, theorests and art intermediaries relate to economic, political, social and ecological issues. It presents an instructive narrative about power and impotence, cyniscism and utopia, nihilism and engagement aimed at all those who presently dare themselves to call themselves artists and everyone who wants to understand and defend the importance of the role of the arts in society
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This article presents and discusses student assignments reflecting on the documentary film If a Tree Falls, written as part of the Business Ethics and Sustainability course at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. This article follows two lines of inquiry. First, it challenges mainstream environmental education, supporting critical pedagogy and ecopedagogy. These pedagogies, which advocate pedagogy for radical change, offer a distinct and valuable contribution to sustainability education, enabling students to critically examine normative assumptions, and learn about ethical relativity, and citizenship engagement from environmentalists. The discussion of “lessons of radical environmentalism” is pertinent to the question of what types of actions are likely to achieve the widely acceptable long-term societal change. While this article focuses on student reflection on a film about radical environmentalism, this article also discusses many forms of activism and raises the question of what can be considered effective activism and active citizenship in the context of the philosophy of (environmental or sustainability) education in connection didactics and curriculum studies. Second, this article argues for the need for reformed democracy and inclusive pluralism that recognizes the needs of nonhuman species, ecocentrism, and deep ecology. The connection between these two purposes is expressed in the design of the student assignment: It is described as a case study, which employs critical pedagogy and ecopedagogy. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci9040284 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Art sociologist Pascal Gielen defends the hypothesis that global art scene is an ideal production entity for economic exploitation. These days the workethic of the art world with its ever-present young dynamic, flexible working hours, thematic approach, short-term contracts or lack of contracts and its unlimited energetic freedom is capitalized within the cultural industry and has been converted into a standard production model. In the glow of the creative cities and the creative industry governmetns embrace this post-Henry Ford work model and seamlessly link it to the globally-dominant neo-liberal market economy.
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