Institutional Innovation

The challenge is operationalising the model. This was my concern in the last post. We may draw three dimensions as:

• what/why/how
• micro/macro/agent
• emergent/given/project
• actor/network/awareness
• observation/theory/engineering
• or even x/y/z; height/width/breadth
• etc

But, the task is to choose the elements of any model such that they either answer given questions or are productive of new and useful questions.

According to Engstrom (2001: 137), contradiction (or tension)  is a defining characteristic of activity theory. Foucault observes that the “…political investment of the body is bound up in accordance with complex reciprocal relations, with its economic use.” (1977: 25-26) He calls these, “power-knowledge relations”: mutually implicit and implicating the other. For Freire, the basic tension is between theory and practice. He constitutes the space between – or the collapsed binary – as “praxis”. For Foucault the collapsed binary of knowledge and power is “discipline”. For Bhabha (2004), the space between oppressor and oppressed is the “third space”.

Further to the consideration of 3D models and their axes I have first considered the empty centre, the zero-space, the hub. At the intersection of any number of dimensions there is a point, the collapsed dimension. A two dimensional model of the Institutional Innovation space might – say – take its x & y axes from a spreadsheet where I have listed projects across the top and emergent themes down the left side.

Cluster analysis trial 1

We could just as well represent the axes as a cross and create four quadrants with clusters of project/themes. The intersection of the axes is a hub. This “hub” can be projected as a dimension in its own right: an axle, with its own extent. I had been tacitly assuming that this axle was the “why”, “macro”, “institutional pragmatics and policy” axis. Do we all revolve around this? But you could just as well take any axis, make it the hub and spin an understanding around that hub.

References