Organizing the Spontaneous
Organizing the Spontaneous

Author: Wesley Sasaki-Uemura

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2001-05-01

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0824840356

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In 1960 millions of Japanese citizens took to the streets for months of protest against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo) and its forcible ratification by the Kishi government. In the decades that followed, the Anpo era citizens' movements exerted a major influence on the organization and political philosophies of the anti-Vietnam War effort, local residents' environmental movements, alternative lifestyle groups, and consumer movements. Organizing the Spontaneous departs from previous scholarship by focusing on the significance of the Anpo protests on the citizens' drive to transform Japanese society rather than on international diplomacy. It shows that the movement against Anpo comprised diverse, at times conflicting, groups of politically conscious actors attempting to reshape the body politic.

Spontaneous Venturing
Spontaneous Venturing

Author: Dean A. Shepherd

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0262038870

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Identifying a new approach to disaster response: spontaneous, compassionate, and impromptu actions to alleviate suffering. In Spontaneous Venturing, Dean Shepherd and Trenton Williams identify and describe a new approach for responding to disaster and suffering: the local organizing of spontaneous, compassionate, and impromptu actions—the rapid emergence of a compassionate venture. This approach, termed by the authors “spontaneous venturing,” can be more effective than the traditional “command-and-control” methods of large disaster relief organizations. It can customize and target resources and deliver them quickly, helping victims almost immediately. For example, during the catastrophic 2009 bushfires in Victoria, Australia—the focal disaster for the book—residents organized an impromptu relief center that collected and distributed urgently needed goods without red tape. Special bonds and friendships formed among the volunteers and victims; some were both volunteer and victim. Many victims were able to mobilize resources despite considerable personal losses. Shepherd and Williams describe the lasting impact of disaster and tell the stories of Victoria residents who organized in the aftermath of the bushfires. They consider the limitations of traditional disaster relief efforts and explain that when victims take action to help others, they develop behavioral, emotional, and assumptive resilience; venturing leads to social interaction, community connections, and other positive outcomes. Finally, they explore spontaneous venturing in a less-developed country, investigating the activities of Haitians after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The lesson for communities hit by disaster: find opportunities for compassionate action.

Spontaneous Venturing
Spontaneous Venturing

Author: Dean A. Shepherd

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-11-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0262546760

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Identifying a new approach to disaster response: spontaneous, compassionate, and impromptu actions to alleviate suffering. In Spontaneous Venturing, Dean Shepherd and Trenton Williams identify and describe a new approach for responding to disaster and suffering: the local organizing of spontaneous, compassionate, and impromptu actions—the rapid emergence of a compassionate venture. This approach, termed by the authors “spontaneous venturing,” can be more effective than the traditional “command-and-control” methods of large disaster relief organizations. It can customize and target resources and deliver them quickly, helping victims almost immediately. For example, during the catastrophic 2009 bushfires in Victoria, Australia—the focal disaster for the book—residents organized an impromptu relief center that collected and distributed urgently needed goods without red tape. Special bonds and friendships formed among the volunteers and victims; some were both volunteer and victim. Many victims were able to mobilize resources despite considerable personal losses. Shepherd and Williams describe the lasting impact of disaster and tell the stories of Victoria residents who organized in the aftermath of the bushfires. They consider the limitations of traditional disaster relief efforts and explain that when victims take action to help others, they develop behavioral, emotional, and assumptive resilience; venturing leads to social interaction, community connections, and other positive outcomes. Finally, they explore spontaneous venturing in a less-developed country, investigating the activities of Haitians after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The lesson for communities hit by disaster: find opportunities for compassionate action.

Organizing Modernity
Organizing Modernity

Author: Larry Ray

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-11

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1134879172

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This book provides a re-evaluation of Weber's work on the current debates about the institutional and organizational dynamics of modernity, offering interpretations of his work which emphasize the reality of modernity as a dual process.

Organization and Spontaneity
Organization and Spontaneity

Author: Kimathi Mohammed

Publisher: On Our Own Authority!

Published: 2013-01-29

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780985890926

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Kimathi Mohammed, a Michigan based activist who was a native of Savannah, Georgia deserves to be recognized as among the most original political theorists of the Black Power movement in the United States. "Organization & Spontaneity," originally published in 1974, was a response to key contradictions of the late 1960s and early 1970s Black freedom movement, manifested in the Black Panther Party and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. In contrast to many political thinkers of the Civil Rights and Black Power era, Mohammed's work emphasized the self-organization of ordinary African Americans and their liberating, self-directed activism. Mohammed placed forward his critique of would-be Black vanguards at a time when most prominent Black Power activists--even the socialist advocates among them--were beginning to embrace electoral politics and systems of patronage which would ultimately suppress any independent Black political power. "Organization & Spontaneity" anticipated new obstacles in the Post-Civil Rights era, and continues to point the way out for our own place and time. This updated volume includes an additional essay by the author documenting CLR James' influence on the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, as well as a new introduction by Modibo Kadalie and an afterword by Matthew Quest.

The Spontaneous Brain
The Spontaneous Brain

Author: Georg Northoff

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2024-08-06

Total Pages: 533

ISBN-13: 0262552825

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An argument for a Copernican revolution in our consideration of mental features—a shift in which the world-brain problem supersedes the mind-body problem. Philosophers have long debated the mind-body problem—whether to attribute such mental features as consciousness to mind or to body. Meanwhile, neuroscientists search for empirical answers, seeking neural correlates for consciousness, self, and free will. In this book, Georg Northoff does not propose new solutions to the mind-body problem; instead, he questions the problem itself, arguing that it is an empirically, ontologically, and conceptually implausible way to address the existence and reality of mental features. We are better off, he contends, by addressing consciousness and other mental features in terms of the relationship between world and brain; philosophers should consider the world-brain problem rather than the mind-body problem. This calls for a Copernican shift in vantage point—from within the mind or brain to beyond the brain—in our consideration of mental features. Northoff, a neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and philosopher, explains that empirical evidence suggests that the brain's spontaneous activity and its spatiotemporal structure are central to aligning and integrating the brain within the world. This spatiotemporal structure allows the brain to extend beyond itself into body and world, creating the “world-brain relation” that is central to mental features. Northoff makes his argument in empirical, ontological, and epistemic-methodological terms. He discusses current models of the brain and applies these models to recent data on neuronal features underlying consciousness and proposes the world-brain relation as the ontological predisposition for consciousness.

The Origins of Order
The Origins of Order

Author: Stuart A. Kauffman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1993-06-10

Total Pages: 734

ISBN-13: 9780199826674

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Stuart Kauffman here presents a brilliant new paradigm for evolutionary biology, one that extends the basic concepts of Darwinian evolution to accommodate recent findings and perspectives from the fields of biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. The book drives to the heart of the exciting debate on the origins of life and maintenance of order in complex biological systems. It focuses on the concept of self-organization: the spontaneous emergence of order that is widely observed throughout nature Kauffman argues that self-organization plays an important role in the Darwinian process of natural selection. Yet until now no systematic effort has been made to incorporate the concept of self-organization into evolutionary theory. The construction requirements which permit complex systems to adapt are poorly understood, as is the extent to which selection itself can yield systems able to adapt more successfully. This book explores these themes. It shows how complex systems, contrary to expectations, can spontaneously exhibit stunning degrees of order, and how this order, in turn, is essential for understanding the emergence and development of life on Earth. Topics include the new biotechnology of applied molecular evolution, with its important implications for developing new drugs and vaccines; the balance between order and chaos observed in many naturally occurring systems; new insights concerning the predictive power of statistical mechanics in biology; and other major issues. Indeed, the approaches investigated here may prove to be the new center around which biological science itself will evolve. The work is written for all those interested in the cutting edge of research in the life sciences.

The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church
The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church

Author: Roland Allen

Publisher: Lutterworth Press

Published: 2006-08-24

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 0718840062

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"If it were once believed that the freedom of churches should be restricted to bring greater control to missions, Roland Allen sets out to overturn this conception. Warning against the danger of imposing greater limits on churches, the Author advocates that all members of the church, 'natives' and foreigners alike, must take an active role in its establishment and daily life. The study divides itself into nine chapters; the first, introducing Allen's standpoint, the second as an opening into thenature and character of Spontaneous Expression. The third chapter deals with modern attempts by 'natives' towards the liberty of their churches. The fear of the doctrine becoming weakened by natives taking it into their own hands is addressed by chapter four and this fear is widened into the realm of the Christian standard of morals in chapter five. Civilisation and enlightenment form the central themes of the sixth chapter. Chapters seven and eight tackle the distinction between the Church andmissionary societies. It is in the final chapter that the future of Spontaneous Expansion is investigated and Allen puts forward his ideas which, as he rightly predicted, were broadly accepted fifty years and longer still after their original publication."