Inhabiting Volatile Worlds (original) (raw)

Reconcile the Paradox: Stability & Volatility Inclusive

European Journal of Studies in Management and Business, 2023

The paper answers the questions: How is it possible for mature and complex organizations to break out from their evolutionary trajectories? How do these changes take place on the micro level? The paper argues, that stability and volatility can be mutually inclusive. Stability is found to provide the structures, processes, and agentic templates for the organization to perceive change stimuli, to act on these and to roll out changes. The integration of social and formal structures and processes is found essential to effect changes. To conceptualize, path dependence theory is synthetized from a process perspective. The exploratory study is conducted by the author in the shipping industry of Japan, that brings the closed, complex, and hyper-stable Japanese business groups to focus, the core headquarters operation of which has been out of reach of scholars till now due to organizational-cultural boundaries. The findings are relevant to all organizations undergoing change in general, to c...

Insight and change in turbulent times

Explorations in Climate Psychology Journal, 2024

Over a decade ago I wrote the book Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos (Dodds, 2011), so I was pleased to receive the invitations from CPA Explorations for an article on this theme. Since then, the world has changed almost beyond recognition, and I thought it would be useful to reflect on aspects of the theme of chaotic dynamics and the emergence of patterns and order from chaotic systems in the context of the current world, clinical practice, and psychoanalysis, including possible sources for hope in these difficult times. Chaos theory and complexity theory have much to offer us in our clinical work with patients, and in making sense of our world, including its ecological systems. It also offers us something to hold onto in the face of so much hate, pain, and despair. I find increasingly helpful the findings that complex and beautiful patterns and structures emerge from chaotic systems, especially at the boundaries, the ‘edge of chaos’. For a more theoretical and technical structured account on the role of complexity theory as foundational for ecopsychoanalysis, please see Dodds 2022a . Here I wish to provide something more personal and reflective.

Introduction: Volatility in finance, art, and culture

Finance and Society, 2023

Special Issue on Volatility in Finance, Art, and Culture co-edited by Benjamin Lee and Emily Rosamond The term 'volatility' applies to changeability: both that which can be measured, such as temperatures and stock prices, and that which cannot be easily measured, such as affects and emotions. Quantitative financial volatility has typically been studied quite separately from art, culture, and everyday life. Randy Martin's work, which addressed the resonances between volatility in dance and finance, was a notable exception. Martin focused on derivatives, which played a critical role in the development of financialized capitalism, especially between 1973-2008. Arguably, however, derivatives are no longer the key drivers of volatility as a social and cultural logic. New assemblages of asset managers, rentiers, and online platforms-along with a pandemic, new banking crises, and ongoing climate emergency-are reshaping how volatility is produced and navigated. How might we rethink volatility in order to better grasp its changing logics? This introduction unpacks existing debates on volatility in finance, art, and culture, suggesting several directions in which new work in this area might depart from existing frameworks-some of which are pursued in this special issue. We focus on three broad lines of exploration: rethinking the intellectual histories of volatility; rethinking volatility across disparate post-2008 contexts; and imagining volatile futures through art practice.

Volatile Worlds, Vulnerable Bodies

Theory, Culture & Society, 2010

The abrupt climate change thesis suggests that climate passes through threshold transitions, after which change is sudden, runaway and unstoppable. This concurs with recent themes in complexity studies. Data from ice cores indicates that major shifts in global climate regimes have occurred in as little as a decade, and that for most of the span of human existence the climate has oscillated much more violently than it has over the last 10,000 years. This evidence presents enormous challenges for international climate change negotiation and regulation, which has thus far focused on gradual change. It is argued that existing social theoretic engagements with physical agency are insufficiently geared towards dissonant or disastrous physical events. Wagering on the past and future importance of abrupt climate change, the article explores a way of engaging with catastrophic climatic change that stresses the inherent volatility and unpredictability of earth process, and the no-less-inheren...