Editors' introduction

In approaching this Special Issue on Foresight, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (FI&E) we considered that globalisation and rapid modernisation were increasingly creating the need for social reflexivity. We thought that in respect to the production and diffusion of innovations, both social and technical, that the landscape for new enterprise was characterised by widening change horizons and deeper ethical concerns. As a consequence of the greater demand for innovation to achieve economic prosperity, it was conceived that 'unforesightful' innovation may have irreparable affects on social and ecological systems and uncertain implications for our futures. Therefore, we considered a new intellectual alliance between FI&E was potentially a matter of human survival. New approaches to thinking about how and what we innovate, the choices we face for new enterprise creation and the influence of infrastructure for generating entrepreneurship, we considered, would need to emerge if we are to positively impact human and planetary sustainability in the 21st century. Hence this special issue was designed to bring together cross-disciplinary research aimed at exploring the synergies between foresight, innovation and entrepreneurship and the way in which these connections may be taking place in both the practical and theoretical sense.

Accounterability and the problematics of accountability

This paper seeks to contribute to the emerging stream of literature on the problematics of accountability ( [McKernan, in this issue], [Messner, 2009] and [Roberts, 2009]) and the possibilities of accounterability (Kamuf, 2007) by questioning whether and how accounterability can appear as a response to the problematics of accountability's operationalisation. To answer this question, this research considers the problematics of accountability found in the limits inherent to the giving of an account (Messner, 2009), in the ambiguous relationship between accountability and transparency (Roberts, 2009), and in the as yet unresolved contradictions of accountability (McKernan, in this issue). Accounterability is seen as a practice of resisting accountability demands while giving an account. Alternative practices arising out of such resistance are inductively identified through an ethnographic study of the day-to-day practices of the Salvation Army used as an extreme case. This case shows how an ideal form of accountability raises more questions than it answers in practice, thereby leading individuals to develop their own counter-abilities. Because accountability to a Higher-Stakeholder appears to be an unreachable ideal, identifying to whom one should give an account of oneself becomes problematic. A working response to the problematics of accountability, accounterability emerges as the mechanism whereby the limits and contradictions of account giving are transformed into the conditions of its realisation: unreachable accountability is transformed into tangible day-to-day practices that may differ slightly from expected ideal conduct. It transpires from this study that the main strength of accountability lies in its ability to absorb and to override its limits and contradictions, transforming them into conditions of its possibility. As such, accounterability emerges as the ultimate manifestation of this strength.

Re/presenting readings of the indigenous literary terrain

In this study I investigate the spectrum of authoring, publishing and everyday reading of three texts - My Place (Morgan 1987), Jandamarra and the Bunuba Resistance (Pedersen and Woorunmurra 1995) and Carpentaria (Wright 2006). I have addressed this study within the field of production and consumption, utilising amongst others the work of Edward Said (1978, 1983) and Stanley Fish (1980). I locate this work within the holism of Kombu-merri philosopher, Mary Graham's 'Aboriginal Inquiry' (2008), which promotes self-reflexivity and a concern for others as central tenets of such inquiry. I also locate this work within a postcolonial framework and in recognition of the dynamic nature of that phenomenon I use Aileen MoretonRobinson's (2003) adoption of the active verb, "postcolonising"(38). In apprehending selected texts through the people who make them and who make meaning from them - authors, publishers and everyday readers, I interviewed members of each cohort within a framework that recognises the exercise of agency in their respective practices as well as the socio-historical contexts to such textual practices. Although my research design can be applied to other critical arrangements of texts, my interest here lies principally in texts that incorporate the subjects of Indigenous worldview and Indigenous experience; and in texts that are Indigenous authored or Indigenous co-authored.

Toward cultural epidemiology : beyond epistemological hegemony

It is more than 10 years since the anthropologist DiGiacomo (1999) answered the question “Can there be a cultural epidemiology?” with disappointment, concluding ethnographic and epidemiological narratives are divergent not complementary. In the same year, the epidemiologist Krieger (1999, p. 1151) asked related questions about the epistemological foundations of epidemiology: “Epidemiology is–or is not—the basic science of public health. Epidemiology is—or is not—an objective science. Science and advocacy are—or are not—distinct and contrary endeavours.” Again in the same year the Indigenous researcher Smith (1999, p. 1) wrote, “From the vantage point of the colonized, a position from which I write, and choose to privilege, the term ‘research’ is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism.” The act of conceptualizing and practicing cultural epidemiology thus brings with it a series of deep epistemological questions about the nature of knowledge production. The Western academy of health research assumes an intellectual and moral privilege to fill gaps in knowledge aimed at yielding improvements in health status. With such privilege comes responsibility, since the power to conceptualize health problems and their solutions deserves considerable critical, historical, and political reflexivity, particularly at the boundaries between dominant and oppressed cultural spaces...

The ethnographer as community manager : language translation and user negotiation

This article investigates the ethnographic methodological question of how the researcher observes objectively while being part of the problem they are observing. It uses a case study of ABC Pool to argue a cooperative approach that combines the roles of the ethnographer with that of a community manager who assists in constructing a true representation of the researched environment. By using reflexivity as a research tool, the ethnographer engages in a process to self-check their personal presumptions and prejudices, and to strengthen the constructed representation of the researched environment. This article also suggests combining management and expertise research from the social sciences with ethnography, to understand and engage with the research field participants more intimately - which, ultimately, assists in gathering and analysing richer qualitative data.

Workable solutions : the intersubjective careers of women with families

This chapter considers to what degree the careers of women with young families, both in and out of paid employment, are lived as contingent, intersubjective projects pursued across time and space, in the social condition of growing biographical possibilities and uneven social/ideological change. Their resolutions of competing priorities by engaging in various permutations of home-work and paid work are termed ‘workable solutions’, with an intentional play on the double sense of ‘work’ – firstly as labour, thus being able to perform work, whether paid or not; secondly as in being able to make things work or function in the family unit’s best interests, however defined.

Strengthening critical health psychology : a critical action orientation

The commentaries on my original article ‘The Emergence of Critical Health Psychology: Can it Contribute to Promoting Public Health?’ provided engaging views on what critical health psychology (CHP) actually is and does. Consideration of each commentary gave rise to numerous themes and generated my own further thoughts on CHP which I frame as five key areas of a continuing dialogue: (1) reflexivity and CHP; (2) health psychology: pluralist or not? (3) CHP as a moral project; (4) social action and change; and (5) strengthening critical approaches to health. Throughout I highlight concepts and issues that are integral to the capacity of CHP to create a shift towards a reinvigorated action-orientated agenda.

Imagining neighbourhood-based community : an autoethnography

This research is an autoethnographic investigation of consumption experiences, public and quasi-public spaces, and their relationship to community within an inner city neighbourhood. The research specifically focuses on the gentrifying inner city, where class-based processes of change can have implications for people’s abilities to remain within, or feel connected to place. However, the thesis draws on broader theories of the throwntogetherness of the contemporary city (e.g., Amin and Thrift, 2002; Massey 2005) to argue that the city is a space where place-based meanings cannot be seen to be fixed, and are instead better understood as events of place – based on ever shifting interrelations between the trajectories of people and things. This perspective argues the experience of belonging to community is not just born of a social encounter, but also draws on the physical and symbolic elements of the context in which it is situated. The thesis particularly explores the ways people construct identifications within this shifting urban environment. As such, consumption practices and spaces offer one important lens through which to explore the interplay of the physical, social and symbolic. Consumer research tells us that consumption practices can facilitate experiences in which identity-defining meaning can be generated and shared. Consumption spaces can also support different kinds of collective identification – as anchoring realms for specific cultural groups or exposure realms that enable individuals to share in the identification practices of others with limited risk (Aubert-Gamet & Cova, 1999). Furthermore, the consumption-based lifestyles that gentrifying inner city neighbourhoods both support and encourage can also mean that consumption practices may be a key reason that people are moving through public space. That is, consumption practices and spaces may provide a purpose for which – and spatial frame against which – our everyday interactions and connections with people and objects are undertaken within such neighbourhoods. The purpose of this investigation then was to delve into the subjectivities at the heart of identifying with places, using the lens of our consumption-based experiences within them. The enquiry describes individual and collective identifications and emotional connections, and explores how these arise within and through our experiences within public and quasi-public spaces. It then theorises these ‘imaginings’ as representative of an experience of community. To do so, it draws on theories of imagination and its relation to community. Theories of imagined community remind us that both the values and identities of community are held together by projections that create relational links out of objects and shared practices (e.g., Benedict Anderson, 2006; Urry, 2000). Drawing on broader theories of the processes of the imagination, this thesis suggests that an interplay between reflexivity and fantasy – which are products of the critical and the fascinated consciousness – plays a role in this imagining of community (e.g., Brann, 1991; Ricoeur, 1994). This thesis therefore seeks to explore how these processes of imagining are implicated within the construction of an experience of belonging to neighbourhood-based community through consumption practices and the public and quasi-public spaces that frame them. The key question of this thesis is how do an individual’s consumption practices work to construct an imagined presence of neighbourhood-based community? Given the focus on public and quasi-public spaces and our experiences within them, the research also asked how do experiences in the public and quasi-public spaces that frame these practices contribute to the construction of this imagined presence? This investigation of imagining community through consumption practices is based on my own experiences of moving to, and attempting to construct community connections within, an inner city neighbourhood in Melbourne, Australia. To do so, I adopted autoethnographic methodology. This is because autoethnography provides the methodological tools through which one can explore and make visible the subjectivities inherent within the lived experiences of interest to the thesis (Ellis, 2004). I describe imagining community through consumption as an extension of a placebased self. This self is manifest through personal identification in consumption spaces that operate as anchoring realms for specific cultural groups, as well as through a broader imagining of spaces, people, and practices as connected through experiences within realms of exposure. However, this is a process that oscillates through cycles of identification; these anchor one within place personally, but also disrupt those attachments. This instability can force one to question the orientation and motives of these imaginings, and reframe them according to different spaces and reference groups in ways that can also work to construct a more anonymous and, conversely, more achievable collective identification. All the while, the ‘I’ at the heart of this identification is in an ongoing process of negotiation, and similarly, the imagined community is never complete. That is, imagining community is a negotiation, with people and spaces – but mostly with the different identifications of the self. This thesis has been undertaken by publication, and thus the process of imagining community is explored and described through four papers. Of these, the first two focus on specific types of consumption spaces – a bar and a shopping centre – and consider the ways that anchoring and exposure within these spaces support the process of imagining community. The third paper examines the ways that the public and quasi-public spaces that make up the broader neighbourhood context are themselves throwntogether as a realm of exposure, and considers the ways this shapes my imaginings of this neighbourhood as community. The final paper develops a theory of imagined community, as a process of comparison and contrast with imagined others, to provide a summative conceptualisation of the first three papers. The first paper, chapter five, explores this process of comparison and contrast in relation to authenticity, which in itself is a subjective assessment of identity. This chapter was written as a direct response to the recent work of Zukin (2010), and draws on theories of authenticity as applied to personal and collective identification practices by consumer researchers Arnould and Price (2000). In this chapter, I describe how my assessments of the authenticity of my anchoring experiences within one specific consumption space, a neighbourhood bar, are evaluated in comparison to my observations of and affective reactions to the social practices of another group of residents in a different consumption space, the local shopping centre. Chapter five also provides an overview of the key sites and experiences that are considered in more detail in the following two chapters. In chapter six, I again draw on my experiences within the bar introduced in chapter five, this time to explore the process of developing a regular identity within a specific consumption space. Addressing the popular theory of the cafe or bar as third place (Oldenburg, 1999), this paper considers the purpose of developing anchored relationships with people within specific consumption spaces, and explores the different ways this may be achieved in an urban context where the mobilities and lifestyle practices of residents complicate the idea of a consumption space as an anchoring or third place. In doing so, this chapter also considers the manner in which this type of regular identification may be seen to be the beginning of the process of imagining community. In chapter seven, I consider the ways the broader public spaces of the neighbourhood work cumulatively to expose different aspects of its identity by following my everyday movements through the neighbourhood’s shopping centre and main street. Drawing on the theories of Urry (2000), Massey (2005), and Amin (2007, 2008), this chapter describes how these spaces operate as exposure realms, enabling the expression of different senses of the neighbourhood’s spaces, times, cultures, and identities through their physical, social, and symbolic elements. Yet they also enable them to be united: through habitual pathways, group practices of appropriation of space, and memory traces that construct connections between objects and experiences. This chapter describes this as a process of exposure to these different elements. Our imagination begins to expand the scope of the frames onto which it projects an imagined presence; it searches for patterns within the physical, social, and symbolic environment and draws connections between people and practices across spaces. As the final paper, chapter eight, deduces, it is in making these connections that one constructs the objects and shared practices of imagined community. This chapter describes this as an imagining of neighbourhood as a place-based extension of the self, and then explores the ways in which I drew on physical, social, and symbolic elements in an attempt to construct a fit between the neighbourhood’s offerings and my desires for place-based identity definition. This was as a cumulative but fragmented process, in which positive and negative experiences of interaction and identification with people and things were searched for their potential to operate as the objects and shared practices of imagined community. This chapter describes these connections as constructed through interplay between reflexivity and fantasy, as the imagination seeks balance between desires for experiences of belonging, and the complexities of constructing them within the throwntogether context of the contemporary city. The conclusion of the thesis describes the process of imagining community as a reflexive fantasy, that is, as a product of both the critical and fascinated consciousness (Ricoeur, 1994). It suggests that the fascinated consciousness imbues experiences with hope and desire, which the reflexive imagining can turn to disappointment and shame as it critically reflects on the reality of those fascinated projections. At the same time, the reflexive imagination also searches the practices of others for affirmation of those projections, effectively seeking to prove the reality of the fantasy of the imagined community.

The institutional limits to, and possibility of, understanding young people diagnosed with 'mental disorders', within inclusive teacher-student relationships

A persistent pattern of exclusion of young people with ‘mental disorders’ from school systems, despite the best intentions of schools and teachers, has prompted a call for a more reflexive understanding of their behaviours. This thesis, by describing how institutionally recognised ways of understanding can result in otherwise avoidable moral collisions and exclusion, produces new insights into the nature and processes of understanding required to promote inclusion. These insights were produced through an intensive qualitative examination of a violent classroom episode, identifying key points in the interaction that could make the difference between misrecognition and recognition, turning exclusion into inclusion.

Culture in and culture of health promotion: tensions at the interface of Australian Indigenous health promotion

With persisting health inequalities across and between diverse populations, health promotion must consider its engagement with the culture concept in achieving better health for all. By way of a conversation between an Indigenous and non-Indigenous health promotion practitioner, this unique presentation will critically examine the cultural practice of health promotion for Indigenous Australians. Culture becomes the central tenant of this conversation – but not culture in the sense of something to “fix” to improve Indigenous health, or import to make mainstream practices “culturally appropriate”. Rather, the somewhat invisible culture of Australian health promotion practice itself is highlighted. The enthusiasm of mainstream health promotion practice for risk and reductionism supplants biological determinism with a cultural determinism that constructs culture as illness-producing. This is in contrast to Indigenous perspectives of culture in which it is described as integral to individual and community health and well-being. Whilst empowerment features strongly within global health promotion discourses, the preoccupation of health promotion with the inherent deficit/behavioural change approach is an all too convenient distraction from the broader structural factors impacting on the health of Indigenous Australians. That Indigenous Australians have not benefitted from successful public health policy interventions in the same way as the general population is in itself revealing of the culture of health promotion practice in Australia and it is somewhat ironic that the health promotion fraternity seems not to have questioned its own practice. This conversation aims to encourage health promotion practitioners, researchers and policy makers to interrogate the cultural assumptions of their own practice and of the public health system they are part of and consider how to embed and empower the voices and experiences of those who are ‘culturally othered’ within health promotion practice.

The voices of the exegesis : Composing the speech genres of the practitioner-researcher into a connective thesis

Postgraduate candidates in the creative arts encounter unique challenges when writing an exegesis (the written document that accompanies creative work as a thesis). As a practitioner-researcher, they must adopt a dual perspective–looking out towards an established field of research, exemplars and theories, as well as inwards towards their experiential creative processes and practice. This dual orientation provides clear benefits, for it enables them to situate the research within its field and make objective claims for the research methodologies and outcomes while maintaining an intimate, voiced relationship with the practice. However, a dual orientation introduces considerable complexities in the writing. It requires a reconciliation of multi-perspectival subject positions: the disinterested academic posture of the observer/ethnographer/analyst/theorist at times; and the invested, subjective stance the practitioner/producer at others. It requires the author to negotiate a range of writing styles and speech genres–from the formal, polemical style of the theorist to the personal, questioning and emotive voice of reflexivity. Moreover, these multi-variant orientations, subject positions, styles and voices must be integrated into a unified and coherent text. In this chapter I offer a conceptual framework and strategies for approaching this relatively new genre of thesis. I begin by summarizing the characteristics of what has begun to emerge as the predominant model of exegesis (the dual-oriented ‘Connective’ exegesis). Framing it against theoretical and philosophical understandings of polyvocality and matrixicality, I go on to point to recent textual models that provide precedents for connecting differently oriented perspectives, subjectivities and voices. I then turn to emergent archives of practice-led research to explain how the challenge of writing a ‘Connective’ exegesis has so far been resolved by higher degree research (HDR) candidates. Exemplars illustrate a range of strategies they have used to compose a multi-perspectival text, reconcile the divergent subject positions of the practitioner researcher, and harmonize the speech genres of a ployvocal text.

Risky business : mapping ethical landscapes and negotiating governance tensions when researching female offending

Whilst there is an excellent and growing body of literature around female criminality underpinned by feminist methodologies, the nitty gritty of the methodological journey is nowhere as well detailed as it is in the context of the Higher Degree Research (HDR) thesis. Thus the purpose of this paper is threefold: i) to explore a range of feminist methodologies underpinning 20 Australian HDR theses focussing on female criminality; ii) to identify and map the governance/ethics tensions experienced by these researchers whilst undertaking high risk research in the area of female offending; and iii) to document strategies drawn from negotiations, resolutions and outcomes to a range of gate-keeping issues. By exploring the strategies used by these researchers, this paper aims to: promote discussion on feminist methodologies; highlight pathways that may be created when negotiating the challenging process of accessing data pertinent to this relatively understudied area; contribute to a community of practice; and provide useful insights into what Mason & Stubbs (2010:16) refer to as “the open and honest reflexivity through the research process by describing the assumptions, and hiccups” for future researchers navigating governance landscapes.

Agentive motility meets structural viscosity: Australian families relocating in educational markets

This paper will develop and illustrate a concept of institutional viscosity to balance the more agentive concept of motility with a theoretical account of structural conditions. The argument articulates with two bodies of work: Archer’s (2007, 2012) broad social theory of reflexivity as negotiating agency and social structures; and Urry’s (2007) sociology of mobility and mobility systems. It then illustrates the concept of viscosity as a variable (low to high viscosity) through two empirical studies conducted in the sociology of education that help demonstrate how degrees of viscosity interact with degrees of motility, and how this interaction can impact on motility over time. The first study explored how Australian Defence Force families cope with their children’s disrupted education given frequent forced relocations. The other study explored how middle class professionals relate to career and educational opportunities in rural and remote Queensland. These two life conditions have produced very different institutional practices to make relocations thinkable and doable, by variously constraining or enabling mobility. In turn, the degrees of viscosity mobile individuals meet with over time can erode or elevate their motility.

Advancing practice in critical care : a model of knowledge integration

Aim The aim of this paper was to discuss the potential development of a conceptual model of knowledge integration pertinent to critical care nursing practice. A review of the literature identified that reflective practice appeared to be at the forefront of professional development. Background It could be argued that advancing practice in critical care has been superseded by the advanced practice agenda. Some would suggest that advancing practice is focused on the core attributes of an individual’s practice, which then leads onto advanced practice status. However, advancing practice is more of a process than identifiable skills and as such is often negated when viewing the development of practitioners to the advanced practice level. For example, practice development initiatives can be seen as advancing practice for the masses, which ensures that practitioners are following the same level and practice of care. The question here is, are they developing individually? Relevance to clinical practice What this paper presents is that reflection may not be best suited to advancing practice if the individual practitioner does not have a sound knowledge base both theoretically and experientially. The knowledge integration model presented in this study uses multiple learning strategies that are focused in practice to develop practice, e.g. the use of work-based learning and clinical supervision. To demonstrate the models application, an exemplar of an issue from practice shows its relevance from a practical perspective. Conclusions In conclusion, further knowledge acquisition and its relationship with previously held theory and experience will enable individual practitioners to advance their own practice as well as being a resource for others.

Editorial : Loop

This time last year we proposed the theme of the 'loop' issue to the M/C collective because it sounded deeply cool, satisfying our poststructuralist posturings about reflexivity and representation, while also tapping into everyday cultural objects and practices. We expected that the 'loop' issue would generate some interesting and varied responses, and it did. We received submissions about music, visual art, language, child development, pop-cultural artefacts, mathematics and culture in general. These explorations of disparate fields seemed, however, to be tied together by a common thread: the concept of "generation" itself. Each article in the 'loop' issue describes a loop that does not simply repeat an original operation, but that through iteration creates new possibilities and new meanings...