Asia Institute - Research Publications
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ItemCan Sustainability Knowledge-Action Platforms Advance Multi-level Sustainability Transitions?(University of Barcelona / Zenodo, 2021-09-01)In an effort to share local knowledge and best practices, online sustainability knowledge-action platforms of various types have proliferated. We conducted a review of 42 online sustainability knowledge-action platforms, which we define as digital tools that seek to manage and organize (local) knowledge and activities to advance a sustainability agenda. This interdisciplinary paper analyzes the structure and functionality of existing sustainability platforms through a systematic coding process. The coding is based on a review of the key issues highlighted in three bodies of literature: i) localization of the SDGs, ii) digital platforms and iii) multi-level governance of sustainability transitions. Our analysis indicates that numerous online collaborative tools, while offering an array of resources, struggle to provide context-sensitivity and higher-level analysis of the trade-offs and synergies between different sustainability actions. Context sensitivity and systemic thinking are essential, however, to align local priorities with international priorities like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG localization adds another layer of complexity where multi-level governance, actor priorities and institutional logics may generate tensions as well as opportunities for intra- and cross-sectoral alignme
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ItemBali Mula: An Introduction to Indigenous Highland Balinese History, Ritual and Social Organisation(National Museum of Prehistory, 2018)More than fifty villages in the central highlands and along the northern coast of the island of Bali, Indonesia, share a common indigenous culture distinct from that of mainstream Balinese society. Based on ethnographic research conducted in 1993-94, and then regularly for shorter periods every year until now, this article looks at the ethnohistory of this Austronesian-speaking people, known as the Bali Mula or Bali Aga (meaning ‘original’ or ‘mountain Balinese’ respectively). The focus will be the ritual order of their regional domains and characteristic local village councils. Ritual relationships define these two major institutions of Bali Mula society according to a principle of seniority or, more precisely, precedence (‘proximity to origins’). Bali Mula social organisation is rather similar to that of Taiwanese indigenous people, shedding light on the historical process of cultural dispersion of the Austronesian peoples.
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ItemUnity in Diversity: Why we need to do justice to local characteristics and identities while also cultivating a sense of global citizenship(Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2018)We have been witnessing a massive nationalist reaction to globalisation in recent years, the reasons for which can be difficult to untangle. If intellectuals hastily come to the defence of the globalist position and demonise this opposite point of view, we only add to a general climate of hostility that is poisoning the prospects for rational public debate in many countries. Rather, our duty is to reveal what is really at stake in this struggle, to identify the forces that are at play, and to make proposals for how to address the underlying problems associated with ‘real-existing globalisation.’ In short, we need to present the public with alternatives superior to those offered by a legion of democracy-, journalism- and science-bashing right-wing demagogues.