Unsettling Conversations

Unsettling the Centralized Mindset

Researchers in the field of adaptive behavior are quite familiar with the idea of higher-order complex global patterns emerging from the lower-level simple local interactions of components in a distributed system. Our artificial ants form colonies and self-organized foraging expeditions; our robots and simulated birds flock and cooperate on tasks; our genetic algorithm populations form species ...

Unsettling standards: the biological age controversy

One key debate within the sociology of aging and the life-course in the past decade has been focused on understanding the extent to which life course processes have become de-standardised. However, little attention has been devoted to the infrastructural processes that would support such a transition. This paper focuses on one of such standards, ‘biological age’, and the 40 year controversy aro...

Unsettling Bodies: Frida Khalo’s portraits and in/dividuality

Compassionate Conversations

Staff engagement is much more than just a bonus in any organisation. CQC data shows that it is very clearly linked to positive results in both patient and staff outcomes (fewer complaints, improved safety, reduced sickness, fewer accidents, and more as per Michael West). Staff engagement may seem nebulous but is in fact measured routinely annually in the National Staff Survey. The problem is th...

Critical Conversations

The notion of assumption plays an important role in the literature on critical thinking. However, the critical imperative of revealing one’s assumptions forces one either to follow some predefined scheme in which they are defined—in which case it restricts thinking and runs counter to the critical ideal—or to recognise that one cannot know those assumptions— in which case it is impossible. In t...