Narrow Results

This study investigates the engagement of communities with little or no GIS expertise in the use of publicly available spatial data for self-education in the protection of drinking water sources. A traditional administrative top-down approach to assisting communities in getting or using spatial information was replaced in the study with a bottom-up approach based on the principles of social cybernetics. The study investigated how communities used spatial datasets provided by the state to facilitate public participation in creating maps for water resource protection. Nine rural communities in the State of Idaho within the Nez Perce Indian Reservation participated in a field study from 2001–2002. Results included "map archetypes" developed by the communities and a validation of the bottom-up approach stressing community control over the process of using spatial data.

Neurocybernetics in management theory is a new concept of learning decision systems based on the episteme of unity of knowledge. Such an episteme must be unique and universal so as to be appealing to the global community. Neo-liberalism, which is the core of present perspectives in management theory, cannot offer such a new epistemic future. That is because of the inherently competitive nature of methodological individualism that grounds received management and decision-making theory. On the contrary, the episteme of unity of knowledge on which a new and universal perspective of management and decision-making theory can be established remains foreign to the liberal paradigm. Neurocybernetic theory of management is thus a theory of learning and unifying types of decision-making systems. It is studied here with reference to the case of community-business unitary relations and the family. The social neurocybernetic implications are examined for these two cases in the light of neo-liberalism and Islam according to their contrasting perspectives of the nature of the world of self and other. Out of these specific studies, the chapter derives a generalized theory of neurocybernetic of social management encompassing the wider field of endogenous morality, ethics, and values within the unified process-oriented methodology of a new episteme of science and society.