Science, technology and innovation for economic growth: Linking policy research and practice in ‘STIG Systems’

This paper reflects on the relevance of “systems-theoretic” approaches to the interdependent policy issues relating to the dynamics of science, technology and innovation and their relationship to economic growth. Considering the approach that characterizes much of the current economics literature's treatment of technology and growth policies, we pose the critical question: what kind of systems paradigm is likely to prove particularly fruitful in that particular problem-domain? Evolutionary, neo-Schumpeterian, and complex system dynamics approaches are conceptually attractive, and we examine their respective virtues and limitations. Both qualities are readily visible when one tries to connect systems-relevant research with practical policy-making in this field.     

Role Distance in Question: When it is No Longer Participating But Winning Which is Important

The purpose of this study, which follows on from previous work, is to show in what ways sport has surreptitiously changed and become more complex, to the extent that its functioning only imperfectly responds to one of the basics of sport as envisaged by Elias: role distance. That is the propensity of the participants to avoid being caught in the game, which is only a game, defining in this way the social distance which classes sports performers and the relationship of their practice to the contingencies and material necessities of life. The choice of this focal point is another attempt to understand what happens when sport, by transforming itself, becomes more than sport or even another type of sport. In other words, here we wish to discover what makes Elias' model incomplete. Although sport is supposed to contribute to the pacification of social relations, there are still a large number of elements, which in sporting practice, and in its most recent developments, cannot be explained by the theory of the ‘civilising process’.