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In 2010, Sir Ken Robinson, a world thought leader in education, released a provoking TED Talk called Education Paradigms. In it he said, 'I believe we have a system of [...]

The introduction of the system of direct provision and dispersal (DPDS) to house asylum seekers in Ireland was the result of a number of processes, performing several functions, including the [...]

WHAT HAPPENS when you give a third grader a power drill? With some wood and a little supervision, she'll make her own keepsake box. Or, put her in that same [...]

Aldo Leopold in 'The Land Ethic' made the case for an environmental ethic as both a moral imperative and an unfolding historical process. In The Civilising Process, Norbert Elias shows how, in all societies, the molding of personality and the internalization of affective constraints on behavior are linked to long-term processes of social development. In terms of a common root in Darwinian/Humean naturalism, an understanding of the land ethic as an 'ecological civilizing process' can shed light on the sociogenetic mechanisms which are transforming, albeit slowly, the 'foundations of conduct' toward the environment. In this transformation, expanded notions of kinship and proximity provide the basis for the deontological identification of community with the biosphere.

After coming to power in 1984, Manchester's 'New Urban Left' were for a while at the forefront of those radical councils seeking to use the local state both as the primary site of resistance to the Thatcher government, but also to develop a genuinely 'prefigurative' local socialism. However, in Manchester this experiment proved short-lived. The subsequent entrepreneurial project has proved both durable and more distinctive. This article provides a detailed narrative account of the transition from 'municipal socialism' to the politics of 'Manchester First'. Whilst summarizing the notable differences between the two projects, the paper argues that an interpretative emphasis on the apparent political U-turn after 1987 obscures important continuities. With hindsight, the municipal Left can be credited with redefining the role of local authorities in relation to the economy, creating a space for proactive local and regional economic strategies. At the same time, the embrace of urban entrepreneurialism in the late 1980s did signal a marked shift in the perception of what was actually possible in terms of the parameters and constraints on local strategy.

Byline: Andrew Dobson, Stephen Quilley, William Young This paper draws on a series of five ESRC-funded seminars held between 2006 and 2008 on 'Sustainability as competitive advantage in higher education in the UK'. We sketch the background to sustainability in HE, distinguishing between teaching about and for sustainability and arguing that the move to latter has prompted questions about the sustainability performance of universities themselves. We outline the rationale for the seminar series - an analysis of the degree to which the reluctance of senior managers to embrace sustainability can be overcome by the promise of competitive advantage - and then discuss the lessons we learned from the seminars regarding the successful implementation of sustainability strategies in HEIs. We then analyse what 'establishing competitive advantage' in the HE sector might entail, generically and offer some suggestions as to what a specific instantiation of this might look like, guided by the idea of creating 'sustainable communities'.

Elias repeatedly makes the point that the social sciences are at an early phase of development as compared with the natural sciences and hence, high levels of predictive success cannot be expected. As a result Arpad Szakolczai's comments completely underplay the distinctive character of sociological knowledge, which is central to Elias's own sociology and theory of science.

The sociological process developed by Norbert Elias that gives a framework for a 'central theoryE in sociology and it's orchestrating role played in human science, is argued. It is concluded that Eliasian sociology was the best to provide a 'central theory' not only for the social sciences, but also for the human sciences.