Over many years we’ve been looking at the emergence of “organized networks” as an alternative concept that could counter the social media platform a priori of gathering (and then exploiting) “weak links.”[1] Organized networks invent new institutional forms whose dynamics, properties, and practices are internal to the operational logic of communication media and digital technologies. Their emergence is prompted, in part, by a wider social fatigue with and increasing distrust of traditional and modern institutions such as the church, political party, firm, and labour union, which maintain hierarchical modes of organization. While not without hierarchical tendencies (founders, technical architectures, centralized infrastructures, personality cults), organized networks tend to gravitate more strongly toward horizontal modes of communication, practice, and planning.
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A core element of Schema Therapy (ST) is ‘schema modes’ or fluctuating emotional states. ST assumes that particular personality pathology consists of specific combinations of maladaptive schema modes. There is confirmatory evidence for the modes hypothesized to be central to borderline and narcissistic personality disorder (PD) in non-forensic patients. In this study, we tested three aspects of the construct validity of schema modes in cluster-B personality disordered offenders, examining its factorial validity, and the relations among personality disorders and violence risk.
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In this episode two activities from the mathematics teacher training programme are described. Both of them are based on the so-called “expert-method” in Dutch terminology, or “jigsaw technique” in American educational literature. It relies on dependability between students. It breaks classes into groups and breaks assignments into pieces that the group assembles to complete the (jigsaw) puzzle. The first activity is from a session on the history of calculus and the second is from a session on Euler.
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Fashion has become inextricably linked with digital culture. Digital media have opened up new spaces of fashion consumption that are unprecedented in their levels of ubiquity, immersion, fluidity, and interactivity. The virtual realm continuously needs us to design and communicate our identity online. Unfortunately, the current landscape of digitised fashion practices seems to lack the type of self-governing attitude and urgency that is needed to move beyond commercially mandated platforms and systems that effectively diminish our digital agency. As transformative power seems to be the promise of the virtual, there is an inherent need to critically assess how digital representation of fashion manifests online, especially when these representations become key mediators within our collective and individual public construction of self. A number of collectives and practitioners that actively shape a counter movement, organized bottom up rather than through capital, are questioning this interdependence, applying inverted thinking and experimenting with alternative modes of engagement. Starting from the research question ‘How can critical fashion practitioners introduce and amplify digital agency within fashion’s virtual landscape through new strategies of aesthetic engagement?’, this project investigates the implications of fashion’s increasing shift towards the virtual realm and the ramifications created for digital agency. It centers on how identity is understood in the digital era, whether subjects have full agency while expected to construct multiple selves, and how online environments that enact as playgrounds for our identities might attribute to a distorted sense of self. By using the field of critical fashion as its site, and the rapidly expanding frontier of digital counter practices as a lens, the aim of this project is to contribute to larger changes within an increasingly global and digital society, such as new modes of consumerism, capital and cultural value.
De discussie over de transitie naar een circulair modesysteem richt zich doorgaans op verduurzaming van materialen en productieprocessen. Het is echter van groot belang om de emotionele waarde en culturele betekenis van mode, consumentengedrag en dus de sociale aspecten van duurzaamheid nadrukkelijker te belichten in onderzoek naar verduurzaming van de textiel- en mode-industrie (Walker 2006; Thorpe 2007; Chapman 2009). De verwachting is dat dit doorslaggevende factoren zijn bij de acceptatie van duurzame mode door de consument, maar er is meer onderzoek nodig om hier dieper inzicht in te verkrijgen. Het Nederlandse textielbedrijf Vlisco, dat sinds 1846 stoffen ontwerpt en produceert voor de West-Afrikaanse markt, is een interessante casus in dit kader. De diepgaande verankering van het merk Vlisco in de Afrikaanse cultuur en identiteit demonstreert hoe sterk de ‘emotionele duurzaamheid’ (Chapman 2009) van mode kan zijn. In dit project zullen de reststoffen van Vlisco door middel van ontwerpend onderzoek ‘ge-upcycled’ worden tot nieuwe kwaliteitsproducten, waarbij er een vergelijking zal worden gemaakt tussen de betekenis van duurzaamheid in een Afrikaanse context en in een westerse context. De hypothese is dat de ontwikkeling van meer inzicht in en kennis over ‘emotionele duurzaamheid’ in een Afrikaanse context, aan de hand van de grote emotionele waarde van de Vlisco-stoffen voor Afrikaanse consumenten, een essentiële bijdrage levert aan de westerse discussie over duurzaamheid, en specifiek over nieuwe circulaire design strategieën. De resultaten uit dit onderzoek zullen worden vertaald naar algemeen geldende inzichten en kennis over circulaire mode, die relevant zijn voor de sector als geheel.
Client: Blue Plan regional activity centre (UNEP/MAP), subcontracted through TEC Conseille, Marseille As part of a regional workshop organized by the Blue Plan in July 2008, one of the conclusions of the Group "Tourism and Climate Change” was the need for saving energy in tourism transportation and particularly of air transport, as air transport is responsible for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions caused by tourism. In the period 1998-2005, the share of international arrivals by air in the Mediterranean area rose from 23% to 40%, respectively, or in numbers, from 47 to 122 million tourists. Some countries, particularly islands, almost entirely depend on air transport for their international tourism. For example in 2005 air transport is used by 87%, 78%, 73%, 64% and 51% of international tourists arriving in, respectively, Israel, Egypt, Spain, Tunisia and Morocco. According to Plan Bleu forecasts on international arrivals, assuming that the share of air transport remains the same, the number of tourists travelling by plane will reach over 158 million by 2025. Given the role of aviation in the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), such a development is clearly not sustainable in the light of the necessary reduction of emissions to avoid dangerous climate change. The overall aim of the study is to inform policy makers and entrepreneurs in both destination and in origin countries, on possible options to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from air travel, while at the same time not impairing the economic development of tourism. To do this, CSTT has developed a tourism scenario model for all countries with Mediterranean coasts describing inbound and outbound international tourism and domestic tourism by all available transport modes and giving both contributions to GDP and total GHG emissions. This model responses to global mitigation policies (increasing the cost of carbon emissions) as well as national policies (taxes, subsidies and changes in transport quality per transport mode). Using the model both global and national policies can be assessed as well as the risks of global mitigation policies for specific countries.
