Change! Combining Analytic Approaches with Street Wisdom

Book details

Change! Combining Analytic Approaches with Street Wisdom (2015), edited by Gabriele Bammer, ANU E-Press, Canberra, Australia.

The book is available from ANU Press as a free downloadable e-book or it is available to buy in paperback.

Brief overview of book

Change happens all the time, so why is driving particular change generally so hard? Why are the outcomes often unpredictable? Are some types of change easier to achieve than others? Are some techniques for achieving change more effective than others? How can change that is already in train be stopped or deflected?

Knowledge about change is fragmented and there is nowhere in the academic or practice worlds that provides comprehensive answers to these and other questions. Every discipline and practice area has only a partial view and there is not even a map of those different perspectives. The purpose of this book is to begin the task of developing a comprehensive approach to change by gathering a variety of viewpoints from the academic and practice worlds.

The book is edited by Gabriele Bammer, a professor in the Research School of Population Health at The Australian National University and an ANU Public Policy Fellow. The contributions drawn on are advertising (Dee Madigan), anthropology (Francesca Merlan), art (John Reid), demography (Peter McDonald), economics (Jim Butler), education (Robyn Gillies), evolutionary biology (Lindell Bromham), global environmental change (Mark Stafford Smith), industrial innovation (Sarah Pearson), international relations (Michael Wesley), materials conservation (Ian MacLeod), media advocacy (Simon Chapman), organisational change (Christine Nixon), philosophy (Paul Griffiths), politics (Kate Carnell), psychiatry (Beverley Raphael), security-based intelligence (Grant Wardlaw) and sociology (Craig Browne). The final synthesis chapter by Gabriele Bammer draws on these rich multidisciplinary perspectives to examine research impact and how it can be improved.

Contents of Change!

  • Preliminary pages
  • Acknowledgments
  • Part 1: Introduction
    • An approach to understanding change (Gabriele Bammer)
  • Part 2: Perspectives
    • A politician’s view of change (Kate Carnell )
    • Responding to global environmental change (Mark Stafford Smith)
    • Teleology, cyclicality and episodism: three competing views of change in international relations (Michael Wesley)
    • Change is central to sociology (Craig Browne)
    • Advertising and change: message, mind, medium, and mores (Dee Madigan)
    • Media advocacy for public health (Simon Chapmam)
    • Is the intelligence community changing appropriately to meet the challenges of the new security environment? (Grant Wardlaw)
    • Evolutionary change: nothing stands still in biology (Lindell Bromham)
    • Demographic change: how, why and consequences (Peter McDonald)
    • Conceptual change and conceptual diversity contribute to progress in science (Paul Griffiths)
    • Mental illness and psychiatry have seen substantial change—But There is Still a Long Way To Go (Beverley Raphael )
    • Education reform: learning from past experience and overseas successes (Robyn M Gillies)
    • Ten lessons from changing policing organisations (Christine Nixon)
    • Change management in materials conservation (Ian D MacLeod)
    • Change and continuity in anthropology: examples from Christianity and from the situations of contemporary Indigenous Australians (Francesca Merlan)
    • Learning about change through industrial open innovation in the fast‑moving consumer goods sector (Sarah Pearson)
    • Increasing interest in the economic determinants of structural, technological and climate change (Jim Butler)
    • Visual fine art: documenting change, influencing change, and subjected to change (John Reid)
  • Part 3: Synthesis
    • Improving research impact by better understanding change: a case study of multidisciplinary synthesis (Gabriele Bammer)
  • Contributors

About the editor of Change!

When the book was published Gabriele Bammer was a professor at The Australian National University, Director of the Research School of Population Health and of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, both in the ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment. She was also an ANU Public Policy Fellow and a Research Fellow in the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, in addition to being the Program Leader on integration and implementation for the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security.

External reviews

(last updated October 2015)