This paper theorizes the spiritual processes of community entrepreneuring as navigating tensions that arise when community-based enterprises (CBEs) emerge within communities and generate socio-economic inequality. Grounded on an ethnographic study of a dairy CBE in rural Malawi, findings reveal that intra-community tensions revolve around the occurrence of ‘bad events’ – mysterious tragedies that, among their multiple meanings, are also framed as witchcraft. Community members prepare for, frame, cope and build collective sustenance from ‘bad events’ by intertwining witchcraft and mundane socio-material practices. Together, these practices reflect the mystery and the ambiguity that surround ‘bad events’ and prevent intra-community tensions from overtly erupting. Through witchcraft, intra-community tensions are channelled, amplified and tamed cyclically as this process first destabilizes community social order and then restabilizes it after partial compensation for socio-economic inequality. Generalizing beyond witchcraft, this spiritual view of community entrepreneuring enriches our understanding of entrepreneuring – meant as organization-creation process in an already organized world – in the context of communities. Furthermore, it sheds light on the dynamics of socio-economic inequality surrounding CBEs, and on how spirituality helps community members to cope with inequality and its effects.
Educational programs teaching entrepreneurial behaviour and knowledge are crucial to a vital and healthy economy. The concept of building a Communities of Practice (CoP) could be very promising. CoP’s are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour (Wenger, McDermott and Snyder, 2002). They consist of a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. Normally CoP’s are rather homogeneous. Saxion institute Small Business & Retail Management (SB&RM) started a CoP with entrepreneurs September 2007. Typical in the this community, are the differences between the partners. The Community consists of students, entrepreneurs and members of an institution for higher education. They have different characteristics and they don’t share the same knowledge. Thus, building long-lasting relations can be complicated. Solid relations for longer periods are nevertheless inevitable in using CoP as a mean in an educational concept that takes approximately 4 years. After one year an evaluation took place on the main aspects of a lasting partnership. The central problem SB&RM in Deventer faces is to design the CoP in a way possible members will join and stay for a longer period and in a way it ensures entrepreneurial learning. This means important design characteristics have to be identified, and the CoP in Deventer has to be evaluated to assess whether it meets those design characteristics in an effective and efficient way. The main target of the evaluation is to determine which key factors are important to make sure continuity in partnership is assured and entrepreneurial learning is best supported. To solve the problem, an investigation on how a CoP works, what group dynamics take place, and how this can be measured has to be conducted. Furthermoreusing the CoP as a tool for entrepreneurship means key aspects of entrepreneurial learning have to be identified. After that the CoP in Deventer has to be examined on both aspects. According to literature CoP’s define themselves along three dimensions: domain (indicating what is it about), community (defining how it functions), and practice (indicating what capabilities it has produced) (Wenger, 1998). This leads to meaningful, shared and coordinated activities (Akkerman et al, 2007): Key aspects of a successful CoP lie in both hard and soft sides of creating a partnership. It means on one hand a CoP has to deal with defining their own overall vision, formulating long term goals and targets on the short term. They have to formulate how to achieve those targets and create meaningful activities (reification). On the other hand a CoP has to deal with relations, trust, norms and values (participation). Reification and participation as design characteristic can provide indicators on which the CoP in Deventer can be evaluated. A lasting partnership means joining the CoP and staying. Weick provides us with a suitable model that enables us to do research and evaluate whether the CoP in Deventer is successful or not, Weick’s model of means convergence. To effectively ensure entrepreneurial learning the process in the CoP has to provide or enable actionoriented forms through Project-based activity, accompanied by reflection, with high emotional exposure (or cognitive affection) preferably caused by discontinuities to be suitable as a tool in entrepreneurial learning. Furthermore it should be accompanied by the right preconditions to work effectively and efficiently. The evaluation of the present CoP in Deventer is done by interviewing all participants at the end of the first year of the partnership. In a structured interview, based on literature studies, all participants were separately questioned
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Sportverenigingen in Nederland dragen bij aan een gezonde leefstijl, sociale cohesie en inclusieve sportdeelname. Ondanks dat de sportparticipatie toeneemt, hebben de clubs het moeilijk om hun ledental op peil te houden. Diverse ontwikkelingen spelen daarbij een rol. De focus van het onderzoek in dit proefschrift richt zich op twee maatschappelijke ontwikkelingen, ‘individualisering’ en ‘digitalisering’. In zeven studies wordt antwoord gegeven op twee onderzoeksvragen: 1) hoe het clubgevoel van leden van sportvereniging kan worden geconceptualiseerd in termen van definitie, voorspellers en opbrengsten en 2) hoe sociaalnetwerksites van sportverenigingen kunnen bijdragen het ontwikkelen van het clubgevoel van leden? Die studies vormen samen een multimethode onderzoek. Resultaten laten zien dat clubgevoel verwijst naar de gevoelsband van leden met hun club op basis van participatie, relevantie en de sociale wereld van de club. Clubgevoel hangt samen met bindingsaspecten zoals de intentie om je in te zetten voor de club en te blijven. Sociaalnetwerksites van sportverenigingen kunnen helpen om dit clubgevoel te ontwikkelen, bij voorkeur door de kanalen in te zetten voor informatie en interactie over de club, de sport en de leden. De online kanalen vormen samen de virtuele community van de vereniging die, afhankelijk van de aanpak door de club en de leden, verschillende verschijningvormen kan hebben. Met hun virtuele community bieden sportverenigingen, naast de accommodatie, ook een ónline ontmoetingsplek voor sport en andere activiteiten waarmee ze het clubgevoel onder hun leden kunnen bevorderen. Met dit proefschrift geeft Nanny Kuijsters inzichten voor de ontwikkeling van virtuele community’s voor verenigingen, professionals en geïnteresseerden in de georganiseerde sport.
Society continues to place an exaggerated emphasis on women's skins, judging the value of lives lived within, by the colour and condition of these surfaces. This artistic research will explore how the skin of a painting might unpack this site of judgement, highlight its objectification, and offer women alternative visualizations of their own sense of embodiment. This speculative renovation of traditional concepts of portrayal will explore how painting, as an aesthetic body whose material skin is both its surface and its inner content (its representations) can help us imagine our portrayal in a different way, focusing, not on what we look like to others, but on how we sense, touch, and experience. How might we visualise skin from its ghostly inner side? This feminist enquiry will unfold alongside archival research on The Ten Largest (1906-07), a painting series by Swedish Modernist Hilma af Klint. Initial findings suggest the artist was mapping traditional clothing designs into a spectral, painterly idea of a body in time. Fundamental methods research, and access to newly available Af Klint archives, will expand upon these roots in maps and women’s craft practices and explore them as political acts, linked to Swedish Life Reform, and knowingly sidestepping a non-inclusive art history. Blending archival study with a contemporary practice informed by eco-feminism is an approach to artistic research that re-vivifies an historical paradigm that seems remote today, but which may offer a new understanding of the past that allows us to also re-think our present. This mutuality, and Af Klint’s rhizomatic approach to image-making, will therefore also inform the pedagogical development of a Methods Research programme, as part of this post-doc. This will extend across MA and PhD study, and be further enriched by pedagogy research at Cal-Arts, Los Angeles, and Konstfack, Stockholm.
The tourism strategy of the municipality of Amsterdam and the Destination Management Organisation stress the importance of increasing liveabilty and enhancing a sense of unity through, also by connecting with residents. An important area in which they would like to achieve this, is Amsterdam Noord, a neighbourhood that was historically on the fringe of the city but is now appointed as one of the (to be further developed) multi-cores of the city. As such it is facing a rapid transformation on a social, cultural, economic and infrastructural level with an increasing leisure and tourism offer. The idea is to apply principles of regenerative tourism and community capacity building to ensure a sustainable tourism development, although it remains unclear how to do this in in practice. The current PD addresses this issue by investigating possible regenerative urban tourism principles and practices (here: collaborative interventions) that can be designed to increase local community building capacities, using a living lab setting in Amsterdam-Noord. It follows a participatory action research approach where the researcher is part of a living lab team and local eco system. By participating in local meet-ups as well as desk research and (group)interviews a further contextual understanding of how regenerative tourism can be conceptualised in an urban context is gained. Next, workshops, experiments and design-based interventions with local stakeholders will be done to construct different stories of place and new ways of performing tourism. The PD will contribute to knowledge development creating a conceptual framework for regenerative urban tourism. It will also provide academic and practical insights on with regards to stimulating capacity building and how to measure this within a tourism context (also in relation to co-creation and placemaking practices), what potentials can be tapped into and how small-scall collaborative interventions can influence wider system change.
