•  89
    Where bonds become binds
    Sign Systems Studies 30 (1): 163-180. 2002.
    The paper examines important discrepancies between major figures influencing the intellectual development of biosemiotics. It takes its perspective from the work of Gregory Bateson. Unlike C. S. Peirce and J. von Uexküll, Bateson begins with a strong notion of interaction. His early writings were about reciprocity and social exchange, a common topic among anthropologists of the time, but Bateson’s approach was unique. He developed the notion of meta-patterns of exchange, and of the “abduction” o…Read more
  •  10
    Essential reading
    Biosemiotics 4 (3): 401-409. 2011.
  •  24
    Understanding Gregory Bateson (review)
    Environmental Ethics 32 (2): 215-218. 2010.
  •  13
    Social Anthropology Volume 12, Part Two, June 2004; Special Issue (review)
    American Journal of Semiotics 24 (1-3): 189-193. 2008.
  •  2
    Making Knowledge Count: Advocacy and Social Science
    McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. 1991.
    Largely due to the impact of human rights legislation, especially in Canada, the radical dissent of the 1960s has been replaced by the more co-operative framework of social advocacy. Political activity is no longer necessarily radical or rooted in social class but instead expresses broad themes of cultural aspiration. Consequently, social activists and social scientists need a new understanding of the role of dissent in society. Peter Harries-Jones and the contributing authors provide that under…Read more
  •  6
    Gregory Bateson was one of the most original social scientists of this century. He is widely known as author of key ideas used in family therapy - including the well-known condition called 'double bind'. He was also one of the most influential figures in cultural anthropology. In the decade before his death in 1980 Bateson turned toward a consideration of ecology. Standard ecology concentrates on an ecosystem's biomass and on energy budgets supporting life. Bateson came to the conclusion that un…Read more
  •  25
    Contractual governance: Institutional and organizational analysis
    Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 20 (3): 317-351. 2000.
    This paper focuses on the role of contract as a governance mechanism in contemporary economic and social relations, exploring this theme in the context of recent writing on contract and contracting within law and other disciplines. The trends towards both outsourcing by private firms and privatization of public services have increased the importance of contract as an instrument of market and quasi-market exchange. Such organizational developments have been accompanied by institutional changes in…Read more
  •  18
    The paper examines the sudden disappearance in the United States of millions of honeybees in managed bee colonies. The major research undertaken in the U.S. concentrates on finding the pathogens responsible. This paper suggests an alternative avenue of research a) that as a result of global warming there is a disjunction between bees pollinating cycles and the life cycle of plants b) that understanding changes in “timing cycles” as a result of global warming is the key to understanding the disap…Read more
  •  30
    The initiators of information theory had deliberately tried to expunge ‘meaning’ from aspects of their theory. Bateson’s ecology of mind was consistent with physical definitions of information as feedback and constraint yet tied these cybernetic mechanisms into context of messages, meta-messages, and their meaning. Thus Bateson’s cybernetic epistemology was of a most unusual type: a theory of informational constraint with no located mind, a theory of agency in which conscious purpose was no long…Read more