1. Overview (summaries of pages below)

1. Overview

2.Interactive database use

The Transformative Approaches to Social Organization section of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential is a long-term programme loosely described as an investigation into transformative approaches which collectively offer the potential for a new way of responding to complexity documented in other hyperlinked sections of the Encyclopedia.

This section provides comments related to governance in the Patterns and Metaphors area of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential

Related Sections

• 5.1 Comments: future possibilities and dangers

Use the links in the Table of Contents to navigate through the content.

Despite the number of studies of metaphor and the extent of its use, especially in some non-western languages, it can be considered a largely unexplored resource with its attendant dangers.

1. Complement to models

1. Conceptual patterns as a non-wasting asset

In many disciplines, as suggested by some of the above metaphors, work undertaken decades (or even years) in the past is no longer of any interest. This implies that work done today is in most cases a fairly rapidly wasting asset for society as a whole -- other than for historical purposes.

In Julie Klein's review of interdisciplinarity (1990) she devotes a chapter to the phenomenon of borrowing of conceptual tools, models and theories between disciplines. She notes:

1. Individual opportunity

The complexities of society and the global problematique are such that the shift in focus advocated in the preceding notes may well only occur in isolated groups, corporations and countries, if at all. Although it can be demonstrated that such a shift is a natural evolution beyond the current situation, and that it is pre-figured in many ways by current uses of metaphor in government, the pressures in favour of short-term political crisis management will in all probability prevail.

1. The Alexander initiative

The following set of metaphors endeavours to highlight the range of mind-sets through which cooperation has been so enthusiastically pursued in the last 30 years -- with questionable success. Fundamental problems associated with each are briefly noted. The metaphors provide contrasting windows through which the imagination can explore the ways in which people, groups, factions and governments organize meetings, projects and long-term cooperation to improve the condition of the world.

The previous note has indicated how problems may be seen in a new light by exploring the implications for the sustainable development of the individual -- through the individual's eyes. This provides an integrative focus that is absent when such problems are projected onto the global level, where mutually exclusive perspectives retain some measure of credibility. But, however valuable, it is not sufficient just to see such problems in a new light. The key question is whether they enable some new approach to