I’ve been involved in two discussions recently which have collided, for me at least, in a mix of hope and expectation. Discussion#1 goes something like this. Is the care economy a thing? And if it is a thing, is it a thing whose defining characteristic, fairly or not, is its stubborn resistance to many of […]
The Third Stack: Epistemic Discretion and the Power to Decide
“By contributing to an open-source, transnational effort that aligns with its own industrial priorities, Vietnam inserts itself not as a peripheral adopter but as a co-author of global AI infrastructure. This is asymmetry as strategy: composing relevance not by competing at the centre, but by accruing influence at the edge.” I’ve now read this essay […]
This is why you need to study ancient history: we’ve been here before
I’m obsessed with the idea of just how much our current global moment of transition resonates with the transition in ancient China from the Spring and Autumn period (770 to 476 BCE) to the Warring States period (475 to 221BCE). More accurately, my obsession is with this recent essay from Noema by Shanghai-based Chinese scholar […]
The Road to Relational [Part 2]
This is the second of two posts reflecting on recent conversations I’ve been involved with about relational care and how more effectively its reflexes and practices might become more embedded in our care systems. The focus is especially on out of home care as a particular domain in which its absence is widely recognised as […]
The Road to Relational (Part 1)
To talk about relational care sounds a bit odd. After all, what is care if not relational? As it turns out, in some contexts – out of home care and child protection for example – the experience can be anything but relational pretty much for everyone involved but especially for those about whom these systems […]
Try, test and grow: the smell of new paradigms
I wrote a short piece recently based on James Plunkett’s ‘governing human’ observation about the energy for reform and even transformation in how we govern, including the work of the public sector, emanating from an energetic edge. And I noted that aspects of James’ work are being picked up in some strands of work within […]
