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RMIT Global Cities Research Institute

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The RMIT Global Cities Research Institute was a major research institute of RMIT University . It was formed in 2006 as one of the four flagship research bodies at the university crossing all the disciplines from the humanities and social sciences to applied science and engineering. It has 200 staff, affiliated with seven programs.

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33-532: The Institute's founding Director was Paul James (2006–2013). The research of the Global Cities Institute Cities begins with the proposition that cities are the crucible of contemporary human living. Cities are reframing the way in which people live on this planet. The research of the institute encompasses questions of globalization, cultural change and community sustainability, human security, and urban restructuring under pressure Over

66-630: A Reconciliation Summit on the Middle East held in Amman, Jordan in 2009, organized by Komesaroff and James. Because his work has a general reach, criticisms of James’ work tend to take the form of rebukes for what he does not do or challenges to take seriously mainstream considerations such as citizenship and social movement success. For example, describing James's book written with Tom Nairn, Global Matrix , Claudia Aradau (2007, p. 371) initially writes positively that: “Contradiction remains however

99-496: A distinctive comparative method called 'constitutive abstraction' or ' engaged theory ', he has contributed to theories of political culture, the changing nature of community, and the structures and subjectivities of social formation. He is author or editor of more than 30 books, including a SAGE Publications series on globalization. The series, Central Currents in Globalization , is a collection of writings by key figures in

132-408: A process of abstraction . This is what philosophers call epistemological abstraction. However, they do not characteristically theorize their own bases for establishing their standpoint. Engaged theory does. By comparison, grounded theory , a very different approach, suggests that empirical data collection is a neutral process that gives rise to theoretical claims out of that data. Engaged theory, to

165-536: A thorough on-going research program entails going beyond identifying the immediate threats to cities and communities to explore pathways towards enhancing sustainability, security, resilience and adaptation. The Institute has partnerships with many other programs. The Institute is engaged with the City of Melbourne on a series of projects, including the Future Melbourne project. It has global collaborations with

198-644: Is Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice: Circles of Sustainability . As Research Director of Global Reconciliation (2009–present), an organization dedicated to global dialogue and community-level practice, he has (with Paul Komesaroff) contributed to redefining the concept of 'reconciliation'. Instead of an emphasis on reconciliation as an event of testimony and contrition, the Global Reconciliation Foundation treats reconciliation as an ongoing process of dialogue and practice across

231-494: Is affected by slow changes in the nature of time, space and embodiment. Paul James (academic) Paul James (born 1958, Melbourne ) is Professor of Globalization and Cultural Diversity at Western Sydney University, and Director of the Institute for Culture and Society where he has been since 2014. He is a writer on global politics , globalization , sustainability , and social theory . After studying politics at

264-401: Is also analytically defended through more abstract theory, the claim that economics, ecology, politics and culture can be distinguished as central domains of social practice has to be defensible at an empirical level. It needs to be useful in analysing situations on the ground. The success or otherwise of the method can be assessed by examining how it is used. One example of use of the method

297-613: Is in the world and of the world, whereby a theory somehow affects what occurs in the world, but engaged theory does not always include itself into a theory about the constitution of ideas and practices, which the sociologist Anthony Giddens identifies as a double hermeneutic movement. Engaged theory is explicit about its political standpoint, thus, in Species Matters: Human Advocacy and Cultural Theory , Carol J. Adams explained that: “Engaged theory ... arises from anger about what is, theory that envisions what

330-435: Is one of the key developers of the ' Circles of Sustainability ' method used by a number of cities around the world to respond to relatively intractable or complex issues. That method takes the emphasis away from economic growth and suggests that cities should rather be aiming for social sustainability , including cultural resilience, political vibrancy, economic prosperity and ecological adaptation. Here his key contribution

363-456: Is possible. Engaged theory makes change possible.” Moreover, in the praxis of engaged theory, theoreticians must be aware of their own tendencies to be ideologically driven by the dominant concerns of the time in which the theory is presented; for example, the ideology of Liberalism is reductive in its advocacy of and for 'freedom', fails to reflect upon the influence of the ideology of the liberal advocate. All social theories are dependent upon

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396-411: Is the integration of learning and practice which makes for intelligent and sustainable cities. Along these lines he is quoted as saying that London used the 2012 Olympics in an intelligent way 'where the economy, politics and culture thrive, aided by good transport and a strong information technology infrastructure, all built on a platform of ecological sustainability'. Consistent with this approach, he

429-880: The UN Global Compact , UN-HABITAT , Metropolis, and other institutes and centres across the world. Through the work of the Global Cities Institute, RMIT was named in 2008 as the first UN Habitat university in the Asia-Pacific region. From 2007 the Institute has hosted the United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme, the only International Secretariat of the United Nations in the Asia-Pacific region. The Global Cities Institute uses an overall approach called Engaged theory which integrates

462-670: The University of Melbourne James was a lecturer in the Department of Politics at Monash University , Melbourne before moving to Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2002 as Professor of Globalization and Cultural Diversity, the first professor of globalization in Australia. At RMIT he led and secured funding for several successful initiatives, including the Global Cities Institute (Director, 2006–2013);

495-651: The constitutive abstraction approach of writers, such as John Hinkson, Geoff Sharp, and Simon Cooper, who published in Arena Journal ; and the approach developed at the Centre for Global Research of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology , Australia by scholars such as Manfred Steger , Paul James and Damian Grenfell, who draw from the works of Pierre Bourdieu , Benedict Anderson , and Charles Taylor , et al . Engaged theory research

528-656: The Minister for Community Development at the time, Dame Carol Kidu , as the basis of community development policy in Papua New Guinea. As Director of the UN Global Compact Cities Programme (2007-2014), James also works in the cross-over fields of urban sustainability and sustainable development . He argues against the mainstream view that 'smart cities' are necessarily better or more sustainable cities, suggesting instead that it

561-476: The UN Global Compact Cities Programme (Director, 2007–2014); and the Globalism Institute (Founding Director, 2002–2007; now, the Centre for Global Research) that brought scholars including Tom Nairn , Manfred Steger , Heikki Patomäki  [ fi ] and Nevzat Soguk to RMIT. He was appointed as Director of the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University in 2014. He

594-539: The boundaries of continuing difference. In 2002, James, Komesaroff, and a management team led by Peter Phipps and Haris Halilovich, ran the first national reconciliation forum in Bosnia Hercegovina. In October 2012, James, Komesaroff and Suresh Sudram, together with a team in Australia and Sri Lanka ran the first national civil-society reconciliation forum in Sri Lanka since the end of the war. This followed

627-410: The broad range of methods and tools that different researchers in the Institute draw upon across different disciplines. At the empirical level this approach begins with a tool box for social mapping, organised around four domains of the social: economics, ecology, politics and culture (see Circles of Sustainability ). At the most abstract level it engages in research into the way in which such social life

660-430: The complexity of social relations examines the intersecting modes of social integration and differentiation. These different modes of integration are expressed here in terms of different ways of relating to and distinguishing oneself from others—from the face-to-face to the disembodied. Here we see a break with the dominant emphases of classical social theory and a movement towards a post-classical sensibility. In relation to

693-571: The contradictory formation of that kind of community. This level of enquiry is based upon an exploration of the ontological categories (categories of being such as time and space). If the previous form of analysis emphasizes the different modes through which people live their commonalities with or differences from others, those same themes are examined through more abstract analytical lenses of different grounding forms of life: respectively, embodiment, spatiality, temporality, performativity and epistemology . At this level, generalizations can be made about

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726-424: The contrary, treats such a claim to value neutrality as naively unsustainable. Engaged theory is thus reflexive in a number of ways: In the version of Engaged theory developed by an Australian-based group of writers, analysis moves from the most concrete form of analysis—empirical generalization—to more abstract modes of analysis. Each subsequent mode of analysis is more abstract than the previous one moving across

759-460: The crisis-ridden transformations of our time, and is on the board of a dozen other journals. His work also contributes empirically to understanding contemporary politics and culture, particularly in Australia, East Timor, and Papua New Guinea. His research on sustainable community development laid part of the foundation for the 2007 legislation that went through the PNG parliament, and was developed by

792-428: The field of globalization. His collaborative work includes writing with other senior scholars such as Jonathan Friedman , Peter Mandaville , Tom Nairn , Heikki Patomäki , Manfred Steger and Christopher Wise , amongst others. His main contribution in the field of global studies is the book Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism . He co-edits Arena Journal (1986–present), a publication concerned with understanding

825-528: The following themes: 1. doing, 2. acting, 3. relating, 4. being. This leads to the 'levels' approach as set out below: The method begins by emphasizing the importance of a first-order abstraction, here called empirical analysis . It entails drawing out and generalizing from on-the-ground detailed descriptions of history and place. This first level involves generating empirical description based on observation, experience, recording or experiment—in other words, abstracting evidence from that which exists or occurs in

858-425: The last decade, billions of dollars have been spent on development and security projects by both government and non-government agencies. Despite this investment, many communities continue to live under enormous pressure. Understanding this set of problems is central to the research agenda of the Global Cities Institute. It has implications for basic questions of sustainability. For the Global Cities Institute, developing

891-499: The nation and the state are internally related such that the apparently strange idea of the nation-state was considered self-evident by many." Engaged theory Engaged theory is a methodological framework for understanding the social complexity of a society, by using social relations as the base category of study, with the social always understood as grounded in the natural , including people as embodied beings. Engaged theory progresses from detailed, empirical analysis of

924-479: The nation-state, for example, we can ask how it is possible to explain a phenomenon that, at least in its modern variant, subjectively explains itself by reference to face-to-face metaphors of blood and place—ties of genealogy, kinship and ethnicity—when the objective 'reality' of all nation-states is that they are disembodied communities of abstracted strangers who will never meet. This accords with Benedict Anderson 's conception of 'imagined communities', but recognizes

957-413: The people, things, and processes of the world to abstract theory about the constitution and social framing of people, things, and processes. As a type of critical theory , engaged theory is cross-disciplinary, drawing from sociology, anthropology, and political studies , history, philosophy, and global studies to engage with the world whilst seeking to change the world. Examples of engaged theory are

990-500: The structuring principle of the book and a method of analysis. It allows the authors to think alternatives from ‘the field of our own ideological determinations’ (Balibar, 2004, p. 25)". However, she then goes on to criticize the authors for failing to consider citizenship as one of the missing conceptions in the range of alternatives to the world in crisis that the authors describe. In a similar vein, Bihku Parekh says that despite his comprehensive coverage, "James does not explore how

1023-579: The world—or it involves drawing upon the empirical research of others. The first level of analytical abstraction is an ordering of ‘things in the world’, in a way that does not depend upon any kind of further analysis being applied to those ‘things’. For example, the Circles of Sustainability approach is a form of engaged theory distinguishing (at the level of empirical generalization) between different domains of social life. It can be used for understanding and assessing quality of life . Although that approach

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1056-504: Was Director of the United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme, a UN International Secretariat with offices in Sydney, Melbourne and New York until 2014. James is primarily known as a theorist of globalization, particularly how local and national communities alter under an emergent level of global integration. His work has been read as challenging the simple notion of 'global flows' presented by other writers such Zygmunt Bauman . Using

1089-514: Was a project on Papua New Guinea called Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development . This second level of analysis, conjunctural analysis, involves identifying and, more importantly, examining the intersection (the conjunctures) of various patterns of action (practice and meaning). Here the method draws upon established sociological, anthropological and political categories of analysis such as production, exchange, communication, organization and inquiry. This third level of entry into discussing

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