The idea expressed in the quotation above, by a hostage-poet in 1960s Beirut that appears in Don DeLillo's novel MAO II, suggests the importance of writing as a way to produce new space. The narrative examines the difficult and necessary relationship between the writer, the written word, and the production of social change. In focusing attention specifically on the power of text to influence sy...

Previous research indicates that the benefits of e-government initiatives are slower to realize than initially expected. This has partly been ascribed to the particularly complex settings of e-government projects, consisting of a variety of stakeholders promoting different and often conflicting objectives. Yet few studies have explicitly addressed the inherent challenges of this diversity. This...

The aim of this paper is to point out which role the individual plays in the generation of information in social systems. First, it is argued that the individual is a social, self-conscious, creative, reflective, cultural, symboland language-using, active natural, producing, labouring, objective, corporeal, living, real, sensuous, visionary, imaginative, designing, co-operative being that makes...

The present study aims to learn the health production logic in the ICU based on the discourse defended by nurses and on the professional practice that is recognized by the relatives accompanying the hospitalized patients. This is a qualitative and dialectic investigation performed with seven nurses and five relatives in an ICU for adults of a teaching hospital in Santa Catarina. The theoretical...

Many complex and unstructured decisions are hindered by a lack of clear understanding of various underlying assumptions and perspectives involved in the decision process. At present, little attention is paid to the elicitation of underlying assumptions and perspectives in dealing with complex issues in traditional decision support systems (DSS). We argue that the Socratic dialectic inquiry is a...

Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 675 The Dialectic Method of Resolving Contradictions .................................................. 681 Contradictions Between Modding Communities and Game Developers ............. 682 Contradictions Between Chinese Modders and Their Users .........................