WCCS26: World Conference on Complex Systems 20-22nd April

It was good that today I could relax a little sooner than I expected with my presentation delivered over lunch time instead of 1730. To recap, at the 6th edition conference theme of:

“Navigating Contemporary Complexity:
Transdisciplinary Approaches to Economic, Social, Political, and Environmental Challenges”

- my talk (I added "Hodges' model" in the slides):

'Hodges’ model: PRESENTING a UNIVERSAL and SIMPLE CONCEPTUAL WORKBENCH to SITUATE and ENCOMPASS COMPLEXITY'

This after arriving back from a conference dinner near Marrakech at 0100, but the event at Chez Ali was different and most enjoyable. 

I'm conscious that unlike other speakers I (still!) did not have 'data' to share and discuss. Equations have been necessary over the first two days. But overall all sessions have proved accessible. From comments received Hodges' model was understood and deemed relevant. One delegate noted how the visual nature of Hodges' model was apparent, the illustrations revealed the model more clearly than a verbal description the evening before.

There were two questions. I eventually recalled awareness of Franco Basaglia, the Italian pioneer of community mental health and mental health law in Italy. Another questions concerned were I though the arts, drama and culture sit, or fit in Hodges' model? I suggested a search of the blog for posts tagged 'art', 'theatre', or 'culture'; with a warning that it can be a bit of a rabbit-hole.

Discussion, in-sessions and outside have proved refreshing, and not just as a welcome change from 'world news'. There were reminders too of early career researchers, professionals, and policymakers and the need to phone home.

While I pack for a transfer to Marrakech tomorrow afternoon, I will reflect and look to add more here.

In adition to data, I need new angles so I am not self-plagiarizing; hence the attempt to see Hodges' model as a mathematical object.

Many thanks to the WCCS26 Committee for being able to participate and share this model made in the 20th century for the challenges of the 21st.

More to follow and in the meantime, you can read the programme yourself.

Re. 'Lagoonscapes' - previous post ...

It was the title of the journal in the previous post that caught my attention:

Individual

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

Group

	'Lagoonscapes' made me think of the periplus, used by ancient explorers - sailors to 'map' coastlines and their features. I also realised that people living with: more advanced stage dementias reduced mobility / balance partial sightedness stroke - may negotiate their immediate surroundings (living room ...) using 'furniture walking'. The first explorers did likewise by analogy?
Is a lagoon - a resting place/space - an offering of respite (care)? In 2018 the Oceania exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/oceania - highlighted knowledge of the peoples who could read the currents, winds - perhaps in as differentiated manner similar to the Inuit and their environment and cultural beliefs?

Previously 'landscape'

Book review: "After Ethnos" ii

COVID and the increased frequency with which the 'collective' has entered our discourse resonates for me, as this disrupts, crystallizes the INDIVIDUAL-GROUP axis of Hodges' model. It is clearer now.

There is an important take-away in: "Ethnology emerged as the "science" of the people without history.." p.9. 

There is an elephant in this book. You hear it in the distance, far away - as in anthropologically, ethnographically in fieldwork. When premoderns and moderns are discussed, colonial attitudes and beliefs of peoples far-away.

Good to see Latour p.12 and leaving the index unwrapped there was a surprise to follow. Which came first I wondered, medical sociology or medical anthropology? There are - inner-disciplinary developments. In the late 1980s - early 90s several anthropologists conducted fieldwork in "domains that were formerly believed to be beyond the scope of anthropological expertise, or interest ... medicine, science, and technology." p.11.

After Ethnos

I related readily to Rees's scene-setting and history on the arrival of 'culture' (1770s) and how the human is conceptualized. Yes, in the age of anthropogenic climate change, would you really want to be a cultural anthropologist? p.14.

Time, really is messed up. The developed majority have opted-in to record history in carbon, not just as it has always been. The future is being written now. 

Anyone familiar with Hodges' model will understand my enthusiasm in reading of 'spaces of being', 'disciplinary significance', and the 'house of knowledge' (yes!). The key to the book overall, Rees calls for a philosophically inclined (another line?) anthropology (after ethnos). p.14.

"To be a philosophically inclined anthropologist is to orient oneself in thinking by way of thinking* - in order to find out if, and if, then in what concrete ways venues of thinking/being are coming into existence." p.16 (with ref.)

*meta-cognition?

Rees devotes chapter 3 on fieldwork, the major expeditions that helped shape anthropology and ethnography. In terms of orientation there is a stage even before the journey to the hinterlands. I have interpreted Hodges' model as a conceptual periplus, a map of the coastline of an unknown land, the foundation and (literal) framework of the house of knowledge, be that, a situation, person, family, a discipline, or culture.

Reading, you appreciate the need for anthropology to revise its intellectual toolkit. 

Yes, as an 'open situation' anthropology is situated, but then so is all humanity (and h2cm)?

 individual 

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

person, self, individuated	SCIENCES, TECHNOLOGY, MEDICINE time - distance - place
people, family, other(s), myths, rituals, magic, history(?), society	a philosophically inclined anthropology APPLY HERE!

 

More to follow ... 

and thank you to Duke University Press for the review copy.

Book review: "After Ethnos" i 

Book review: "After Ethnos" iii

 

Book review: "After Ethnos" iv

 

After Ethnos - acknowledgements

Jones Act(s)

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group - population

Jones act - to highlight to the worlds of education, health - social care, informatics, global health, politics, ecology...	... a way and means to step beyond comfort zones, familiar ports of call and turn the stones to assure and grasp the whole, the big, the rich picture ...
... to see people in their context, their environment, what matters to them, their families and communities. To see and acknowledge past, present and envision a new future individually and collectively.	Jones Act - "which requires that only American-flagged ships carry goods between domestic ports." p.22

 

See also previously on  W2tQ:

https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search?q=periplus

My source:

Briefing: Joe Biden's economic plans, The pragmatist, The Economist, 3rd-9th October, 2020, 437:9214. pp. 19-22. 

Hodges' model: Background - Foreground and the Space Between

If there is one thing that h2cm exemplifies it is distance.
It is after all a four-way signpost.
Seven-way (and more) if we include past, now and future
and wrap these in a spiritual domain.

The novice coming to study and explore the periplus (Cunliffe, 2001) that is health and social care (plus informatics), is presented with a daunting and yet exciting coastline.

The curriculum the new learner must navigate ('negotiate' literally via learning contracts) lies before them the challenge heightened by several vanishing points on several horizons.

Our senses are designed to quantify and our intellect to qualify this thing we call distance. Distance within conceptual spaces and the semantic web is all about semantics: the meaning of the terms we use in everyday and specialised languages.

If it is not a case of begging the question, consider the key concepts that comprise an explanation of h2cm.

Declare one concept, for example, ‘individual’ and we create a semantic singularity (in the sense of conceptual plurality not noun?). As soon as we add another concept, such as 'group' a conceptual space (the h2cm grid or matrix) is created.

The axes of h2cm are not passive.
They provide a spatial and cognitive scaffold.
Like gravity each concept is related to others by an all pervasive force.

The force here while not physical, it is universal in the sense that every concept is associated with the others by virtue of their similarity. Even if not physical in that arc of the diver sense, this similarity can be calculated and can be represented computationally within a computer program or virtual reality environment – the force potentially represented as feedback.

Gardenfors, P. (2000). Conceptual Spaces, MIT Press, London.
Cunliffe, B. (2001). The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek, Penguin.
semantic singularity? I thought of singularity in the astronomical sense at first, but found ...
Levy, P. (2008). Beyond Semantic Web SEMANTIC SPACE
http://www.ieml.org/IMG/pdf/Balisage2008-pierre-levy.pdf
http://www.springer.com/linguistics/semantics/book/978-0-7923-6569-3
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0749596X05000720

Serres-Hodges model chapter proof & Oamos

I've received the proof for the book chapter to appear in:

Social Information Technology: Connecting Society and Cultural Issues
edited by Dr. Kidd and Dr. Chen

Exploring Serres’ Atlas, Hodges’ Knowledge Domains
and the Fusion of Informatics and Cultural Horizons

Abstract

This chapter explores the extent to which selected writings of French philosopher Michel Serres and a health care model created by Brian Hodges in the UK can augment and inform the development of social informatics. The volume of Serres’ output contrasts markedly with work devoted to Hodges’ Health Career - Care Domains - Model. Since the concept of health is universal culturally, and informatics disciplines are emerging fields of practice characterised by indistinct boundaries in terms of theory, policy, and practice, various ethnographic and cultural associations will be made. Placing Hodges’ model and Serres' work together is not intended to suggest direct equivalence, other than the common themes this author intends to bring to the attention of the social informatics community. Central to this is the notion of holistic bandwidth, utilising Hodges’ model as a tool to develop and disseminate sociotechnical perspectives.

-<>-

This has been a long road, but it is smashing to see your text nearly there as 'chapter 7'.

Jones, P. (2008) Exploring Serres’ Atlas, Hodges’ Knowledge Domains and the Fusion of Informatics and Cultural Horizons, IN Kidd, T., Chen, I. (Eds.) Social Information Technology Connecting Society and Cultural Issues, Idea Group Publishing, Inc. Chap. 7, pp. 96-109.

To close here is a new media search engine:

http://www.oamos.com/