Brokers And Boundaries

Colonial exploration continues, all too often, to be rendered as heroic narratives of solitary, intrepid explorers and adventurers. This edited collection contributes to scholarship that is challenging that persistent mythology. With a focus on Indigenous brokers, such as guides, assistants and mediators, it highlights the ways in which nineteenth-century exploration in Australia and New Guinea was a collective and socially complex enterprise. Many of the authors provide biographically rich studies that carefully examine and speculate about Indigenous brokers’ motivations, commitments and desires. All of the chapters in the collection are attentive to the specific local circumstances as well as broader colonial contexts in which exploration and encounters occurred. This collection breaks new ground in its emphasis on Indigenous agency and Indigenous–explorer interactions. It will be of value to historians and others for a very long time. — Professor Ann Curthoys, University of Sydney In bringing together this group of authors, the editors have brought to histories of colonialism the individuality of these intermediaries, whose lives intersected colonial exploration in Australia and New Guinea. — Dr Jude Philp, Macleay Museum

Colonial exploration continues, all too often, to be rendered as heroic narratives of solitary, intrepid explorers and adventurers. This edited collection contributes to scholarship that is challenging that persistent mythology. With a focus on Indigenous brokers, such as guides, assistants and mediators, it highlights the ways in which nineteenth-century exploration in Australia and New Guinea was a collective and socially complex enterprise. Many of the authors provide biographically rich studies that carefully examine and speculate about Indigenous brokers' motivations, commitments and desires. All of the chapters in the collection are attentive to the specific local circumstances as well as broader colonial contexts in which exploration and encounters occurred.

Change agents, in any capacity and environment, play a pivotal role in moving new knowledge and ideas forward. Their role is complex and requires an array of skills that allows productivity and relationship building. This book investigates the change agent role within one large-scale educational initiative, providing an in-depth examination of the entry skills brought to the role, how skills develop over time, and their influence as boundary brokers across all levels of the initiative. This work has implications for any agency with the responsibility of hiring and creating a positive environment for change. It provides insights into the variety of strength profiles that change agents possess, and how constellations of strengths in a group may support one another. The conclusions also shed light on how the skills of change agents may be developed over time in ways that include attention to ongoing, multi-level professional development, support during destabilizing events, ongoing emotional and cognitive support, and using questioning as a powerful tool. Agencies with change agent hiring and support responsibilities will be able to use this information to craft job postings and to design short- and long-term support structures.

In this book about communities of practice in the international, higher education sector, the authors articulate the theoretical foundations of communities of practice (CoPs), research into their application in higher education, leadership roles and how CoPs sustain and support professional learning. Research demonstrates that communities of practice build professional and personal links both within and across faculty, student services and administrative and support units. This book describes how community of practice members may be physically co-located and how social media can be used to connect members across geographically diverse locations. It positions higher education communities of practice within the broader community of practice and social learning literature, and articulates the importance of community of practice leadership roles, and the growing focus on the use of social media for community of practice implementation. The multiple perspectives provide higher education leaders, academic and professional staff with the means to establish, or reflect on existing CoPs, by sharing insights and critical reflections on their implementation strategies, practical guidelines and ideas on how community of practice’s theoretical underpinnings can be tailored to the higher education context.

Examining the ways in which feminist and queer activists confront privilege through the use of intersectionality, this edited collection presents empirical case studies from around the world to consider how intersectionality has been taken up (or indeed contested) by activists in order to expose and resist privilege. The volume sets out three key ways in which intersectionality operates within feminist and queer movements: it is used as a collective identity, as a strategy for forming coalitions, and as a repertoire for inclusivity. The case studies presented in this book then evaluate the extent to which some, or all, of these types of intersectional activism are used to confront manifestations of privilege. Drawing upon a wide range of cases from across time and space, this volume explores the difficulties with which activists often grapple when it comes to translating the desire for intersectionality into a praxis which confronts privilege. Addressing inter-related and politically relevant questions concerning how we apply and theorise intersectionality in our studies of feminist and queer movements, this timely edited collection will be of interest to students and scholars from across the social sciences and humanities with an interest in gender and feminism, LGBT+ and queer studies, and social movement studies.

This text deals with increasing understanding of the relationships within organizational changes, redesigns, and performance.

The thesis focuses on workplace development programmes (WPDPs) that operationalize national policies on workplace development. WPDPs are time-limited and they provide support to organizations that aim to improve their operational performance or employees’ work conditions. The support that such programmes provide to organizations consists of competence-development activities provided through networks, courses or hands-on coaching. The supported organizations aimed at changing work practices to increase their operational performance. Departing from a workplace-learning perspective, the overall aim of the thesis was to contribute to knowledge about learning in workplace development programmes and the supported organizations when realizing policies on workplace development. A qualitative multiple-case study design was used and a total of 115 interviews and notes from meetings are included in the data material. Four substudies made up the empirical base. The findings revealed that realizing policies on workplace development required continuous learning among stakeholders at different levels of the WPDPs. Thus, conditions that enabled learning were important throughout the whole WPDP, which was seen as a large, complex social learning system. Learning between different levels of the WPDP was especially important, which required stakeholder representatives with the appropriate qualifications or characteristics that enabled them to take on roles as brokers between the stakeholders involved in realizing the policy. The overall conclusion pointed towards the dynamics of realizing policies of workplace learning, which cannot be achieved by a one-size-fitsall model for learning. The findings imply that funders and other authorities that make policies on workplace development through WPDPs should scrutinize how learning among stakeholders that enter into partnership to operate WPDPs is to be facilitated. Linear plans that are not complemented with careful explanations of how such learning is to be facilitated may constitute warning signs. Furthermore, the findings imply that organizations looking for external support to develop the innovative capabilities of employees must be careful in choosing their support. A WPDP may consume the resources of an organization without providing any benefit, if it does not provide the appropriate support. On the other hand, a WPDP may be a great source for learning, particularly if it includes support in designing the change effort, and help in developing an internal support infrastructure that will continue supporting workplace development after the programme ends. I denna avhandling ligger fokus på tre nationella utvecklingsprogram vars avsikt är att stödja arbetsplatser och organisationer för att realisera beslutsfattares policyer. Med utgångspunkt från ett arbetsplatslärandeperspektiv är syftet med avhandlingen att bidra med kunskap om lärande i arbetsplatsutvecklingsprogram och organisationer som dessa stödjer för att realisera policyer för utveckling av arbetsplatser. Studien har en multipel fallstudiedesign och totalt 115 intervjuer och anteckningar från möten ingår i datamaterialet. Resultaten visar att kontinuerligt lärande mellan intressenter på olika nivåer i programmen var en nödvändig förutsättning när en policy skulle realiseras. Särskilt viktigt var att de som representerade intressenterna tog rollen som mäklare vilket krävde rätt kvalifikationer och karaktärer för att kunna knyta samman de olika intressenterna som realiserade policyn. Den övergripande slutsatsen är att dynamiken i realiserande av policyer av detta slag visar på orimligheten i att hitta en modell för lärande som passar alla arbetsplatsutvecklingsprogram. Vidare kan ett utvecklingsprogram skapa goda förutsättningar för lärande i deltagande organisationer om programmet ger stöd vid utformning av förändringsinsatsen och vid utveckling av en intern infrastruktur som fortsätter att stödja utveckling av arbetsplatsen efter det att programmet avslutas.

This important book contributes to understandings of the ways in which healing practices in southeast Africa mediate divides between the wealthy and the impoverished, the traditional and the modern, the local and the global.