Social learning as an analytical lens for co-creative planning

This article highlights the psychological dimension of social learning. Insights from psychology address the interrelated role of personal and group dynamics in social learning. This can provide a useful starting point for a rewarding use of social learning as an analytical tool in co-creative planning. Such an approach to social learning proves beneficial to (i) identify both positive and negative potential effects of social learning, (ii) untangle hidden power relationships at play at individual and small group levels in relation to social psychological factors, and (iii) discern the role of individuals and small groups within their larger contexts. The findings are empirically illustrated with a case of incremental urban development in Groningen, the Netherlands.     

“History had taken such a large piece out of my life” — Neuroscientist refugees from Hamburg during National Socialism

ABSTRACT

Approximately 9,000 physicians were uprooted for so-called “racial” or “political” reasons by the Nazi regime and 6,000 fled Germany. These refugees are often seen as survivors who contributed to a “brain drain” from Germany. About 432 doctors (all specialties, private and academic) were dismissed from the major German city of Hamburg. Of these, 16 were Hamburg University faculty members dismissed from their government-supported positions for “racial” reasons, and, of these, five were neuroscientists. In a critical analysis, not comprehensively done previously, we will demonstrate that the brain drain did not equal a “brain gain.” The annihilation of these five neuroscientists’ careers under different but similar auspices, their shameful harassment and incarceration, financial expropriation by Nazi ransom techniques, forced migration, and roadblocks once reaching destination countries stalled and set back any hopes of research and quickly continuing once-promising careers. A major continuing challenge is finding ways to repair an open wound and obvious vacuum in the German neuroscience community created by the largely collective persecution of colleagues 80 years ago.     

On the Sexagenary Cycle of the Tibetans

This study examines Zuozhuan narrative accounts that conclude with evaluations ascribed to the “Gentleman” (junzi 君子). The Zuozhuan is one of the earliest extant Chinese works of narrative history, and in the past many scholars assumed that narrative accounts formed its core, dismissing subjective evaluations of those accounts, such as the Gentleman's comments, as secondary, later additions. This study demonstrates that narrative account plus Gentleman judgment function together as a unit, contending that these units were likely introduced into the Zuozhuan as such. It further proposes that the perception that the Gentleman's concluding comments were later, independent additions was likely influenced by the practice of capping narrative accounts with quotations borrowed from other sources, and furthermore, suggests that this perception may have led compilers on occasion to insert material between the narrative accounts and the Gentleman's evaluations of them.