Title: Political Aspirations for the Special Issue, Toward Development of Politics and the Political
Abstract: There is no question that in our age there is a good deal of turmoil about the manner in which society is run. Probably at no point in the history of man [sic] has there been so much discussion about the rights and wrongs of the policy makers…[We begin] to suspect that the people who make the major decisions that affect our lives don't know what they are doing…They don't know what they are doing simply because they have no adequate basis to judge the effects of their decisions. To many it must seem that we live in an age of moronic decision making. —C. West Churchman (1968, p. iv) in The Systems Approach Welcome to Integral Review’s (IR) special issue on the theme Toward Development of Politics and the Political. Not only is this theme political. Beyond the content that shows up in a journal, the act of publishing itself is also political, political behavior we engage consciously at IR. This special issue integrates its political essays with the politics of publishing, the politics of inviting works to publish, and now the politics of writing an editorial. I use this editorial space for three purposes: to share our motivation for doing this special issue, to introduce its contents, and to reflect on such influences as these for integral thinking about politics and the political and what that can mean—I would say, must mean—in today’s world. Our stated aim for this special issue was to make a “politically significant contribution to public knowledge and discourse, to illuminate a comprehensive range of considerations that need to be integrated into effective approaches to today’s—and the future’s—political behaviors and complex political issues, policies, and systems.” 1 This aim is consistent with IR’s mission to publish a transdisciplinary and transcultural range of works that, taken as a whole, model integral ways of perceiving, thinking, researching, and serving the world we live in… In general, they will reflect some holistic understandings of issues in individual and social life, change, and development.…[IR] encourages attention to the interactive dynamics among individuals, communities, organizations, societies, and international bodies. It invites attention to categories such as the socio-cultural, political, economic, technological, and environmental…to portray the range of factors that need to be integrated into effective approaches to today’s complex issues. 2
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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