Intervening in a Messy Reality: A Case of Interorganizational Collaboration in Talent Development Within the Danish Sport System

The overall aim of this paper is to share our experiences in development, implementation, and evaluation of an intervention designed for establishing interorganizational collaboration in talent development between a Danish sports club, a municipality, and a federation. Yet, despite a neat plan, we faced several challenges in what turned out to be a less successful intervention. The account is based on the first author’s field notes, informal interviews, and intervention debriefings. The professional philosophy of the research team was informed by the holistic ecological approach and an empowerment approach. We used the pyramid model for optimizing interorganizational collaboration in talent development as a framework to design and guide the 7-month intervention that included four workshops covering (a) initiation: building relationships; (b) exploration: foundation for the shared philosophy; (c) clarification: negotiating values and strategy; and (d) implementation: from talk to action. However, challenges (e.g., resignations of key stakeholders) led to program adjustments and, ultimately, termination. This paper shows the nuances of a less successful intervention, which can help practitioners plan and carry out better interventions in the future. Despite the challenges faced here, we still deem the pyramid model for optimizing interorganizational collaboration in talent development a valuable framework for practitioners working at an interorganizational level.

Subverting/Reinforcing Neoliberal Capitalism: The Complex Ambivalence of Anti-Austerity Activism

This chapter concludes the book by discussing the ambivalence and complexity of anti-austerity activist culture and the difficulty of resisting a force that is as pervasive as neoliberal capitalism, raising questions about how this can be more effectively achieved and asserting the importance of paying attention to the messy reality of social movement activism. It suggests that, moving forwards, there is a need for further in-depth ‘thick description’ of the complex processes of activist cultures that reveal the contradictions, tensions, and advantages of the internal dynamics and how they interact with the wider political context. It reminds us that resistance does not exist within a vacuum and that it is important to consider the multiple facets of political participation, and the implicit power relations that exist, in order to both better understand and change future political intervention. Finally, it considers limitations of the research this book draws on and suggests future directions for research.

Learning New Vocabularies

This final chapter begins by contrasting the opening sketch of Jewish-Christian relations as practised in the London East End of the 1930s with the very different multiculturalism of today. It seeks to apply lessons learned from the ‘new dialogue’ between Jews and Christians to further dialogues and conversations. In the light of the forces of secularization and globalization which have created a ‘post-Christendom’ world, all theology—and a fortiori theology of dialogue—has to be what David Tracy calls ‘public theology’. If Martha Nussbaum teaches us to take seriously the all-too-limited efforts of human beings to build just and cohesive communities with love and compassion, Simone Weil takes us more deeply into the experience of loss and affliction and thus to confront the sheer messy reality of human living with confidence and equanimity. She acts as an icon of patience and empathy for all persons of faith as they wait upon the movements of grace in a contested pluralist world.

Introduction

Publishing is one of only a handful of industries which has a lineage dating back centuries, yet in important respects, remains on the frontlines of change. This alone would render it an interesting object of academic study, and yet it is only the start of what is peculiar and valuable about this protean and influential industry. Publishing has a global significance because it pioneers new cultural forms and trends; it undergirds the public sphere and the production and dissemination of new scientific knowledge; it enables modern education systems. Publishing then, has a structural role in society. However, defining publishing remains a challenge and while it is often connected to the idea of a book, this is by no means exhaustive of publishing as journal publishers would be the first to attest. And beyond that, the book itself, as with publishing, faces a time of immense change. The digital revolution has impacted books and publishing and understanding this change is one of the key challenges of understanding publishing today. This Introduction sets up such questions and then summarizes the volume as a whole. It seeks to position the work as an example of interdisciplinary scholarship from across the fields of media, communication, literature, sociology, business, and library and information science, whilst also producing an analysis poised between theory and practice: as both a landmark in the study of publishing but also something useful in its dynamic, messy reality as an ongoing, flourishing activity.

Dude Looks Like a Lady: Gender Deception, Consent and Ethics

Finding the answer to whether consent is present within a sexual encounter has become increasingly difficult for the courts. We argue that this is due to the focus placed on entrenching gender binaries, a conservative sexual ethic and clear offender/victim roles. It should be the case that the court’s task is to find the truth of the encounter in coming to a judgment as to the ethical balance, rather than judging the parties’ conformity to cisnormative and heteronormative roles. This endeavour is obscured by the court’s need to exclude ‘sex talk’, or otherwise testimony as to the messy reality of the encounter, in favour of asserting gender identity and a procreative understanding of sex. We are, therefore, left in the position where the required information necessary for valid consent is obscured by the courts. We draw on an analysis of cases involving issues relating to consent to sex in order to argue for a judicial approach that is informed by a more flexible understanding of sexual autonomy.

Bottom-Up, Top-Down, and the Messy Reality of the In-Between

"This paper reflects my recent five-year experience as a practicing architect, educator and advocate embedded in the contentious fray of public discourse regarding housing and land use policy in Seattle. During this period I testified before city council regarding proposed housing-focused land use legislation, presented my analysis of that policy in professional and community forums, published opinion pieces in the Seattle Times, coordinated the housing advocacy efforts of AIA Seattle, conducted graduate-level design studios focused on the topic at the University of Washington, and presented the student work (often with students) in venues throughout the city. I ended this period of local advocacy in 2018, when I was appointed to the Seattle Planning Commission, although I continue to help coordinate AIA Seattle’s advocacy efforts as co-chair of its Public Policy Board."

Humility

When faced with moral or environmental problems, the industrial culture searches for a set of rules that can guide us through a messy reality. Yet these codes arrogantly foreclose a complex reality and provide a false assurance of propriety; as such, they are ways of keeping the self buffered. Berry, following thinkers such as Ivan Illich and Charles Taylor, turns to the parable of the Good Samaritan for insight into the embodied, humble forms of love that would characterize a truly sustainable community. His essays practice such humility not by being deferential or meek, but by recognizing that the human condition requires us to choose and act from a position of irremediable ignorance. Worse still, we humans generally don’t act on the basis of our most careful, rational thought, but on a more gut level. The occasional, ad hoc nature of his essays evinces his efforts to walk along what he terms a “way of ignorance,” a way of approaching reality in light of our condition as finite persons. In addition, many of Berry’s essays are structured by binaries—boomers versus stickers, the industrial economy versus the Kingdom of God—that work to pry open the codes we use to foreclose reality.

Research Ethics in an Unethical World: The Politics and Morality of Engaged Research

This article explores ethical dilemmas in researching the world of work. Recent contributions to Work, employment and society have highlighted challenges for engaged research. Based on the emancipatory epistemologies of Bourdieu, Gramsci and Burawoy, the authors examine moral challenges in workplace fieldwork, question the assumptions of mainstream ethics discourses and seek to identify an alternative approach. Instead of an ethics premised on a priori, universal precepts that treasure academic neutrality, this article recognises a morality that responds to the social context of research with participation and commitment. The reflection in this study is based on fieldwork conducted in the former Soviet Union. Transformation societies present challenges to participatory ethnography but simultaneously provide considerable opportunities for developing an ethics of truth. An approach that can guide engaged researchers through social conflict’s ‘messy’ reality should hinge on loyalty to the emancipation struggles of those engaged in it.