Useful Sociology
for Builders of the Future
There is an article that we wrote with fellows for the International Summit of Cooperatives (Quebec, 2016).
The article was not approved by scientific committee, so we decided to not participate in 2016.
It was called by us "How to become an agent of sustainable development".
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Abstract
Social problems are growing in complexity faster than human capacity to solve them. This is a systemic governance crisis, overarching all domains at the regional and global levels. The root of cause-effect interrelations leading to the governance crisis is lack of agency of sustainable development (“SD”). The intrinsic relations between agency, social institutions of education and science, and culture, are such that agency is at the root of all societal change. The key characteristic of agency is ‘conceptual power’ – capability to create and implement a viable conception of social development. Effectiveness of SD agents depends on their alignment with six categories of universal laws and principles that condition sustainable life of humanity, which in the context of globalization is achievable by means of collective agency. Mechanisms by which cooperatives can realize themselves as effective SD agents are described, and the basic principles of an SD strategy are proposed.
More on concept of Agency in wikipedia:
Agency (sociology), the ability of social actors to make independent choices, relating to action theory in sociology
Agency (philosophy), the capacity of an autonomous agent to act, relating to action theory in philosophy
Agency (psychology), the ability to recognize or attribute agency in humans and non-human animals
Agency and structure, ability of an individual to organize future situations and resource distribution
Agency (moral), capacity for making moral judgments
Agency (law), a person acting on behalf of another person
Agency (LDS Church), "the privilege of choice... introduced by God"
Ideas Bank
Article Small talk should be banned in WIRED (Small talk prevails because of the need to find a socially acceptable topic. But when it's removed, it changes the game)