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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

MeshWORK’

Breaking-Up Britain needs a National MeshWORK

It’s to be seriously hoped that Theresa May doesn’t get the landslide victory on 8 June that was initially predicted – and which she clearly aimed for in calling a snap general election on 18 April. As discussed in 8 June: Time for a Change!, she clearly thought she would be able to crush a weak and ineffectual opposition. To her chagrin though, Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran speaker at  public rallies, has proved a robust and highly effective on-the-stump campaigner. Although greatly under-reported in the largely right-wing dominated mainstream media, he has consistently pulled crowds in their thousands to his campaign events. In spite of the under-reporting, there has been enough grassroots and social media activity to get at least some wider attention to them. In comparison Mays’ carefully stage-managed appearances before mere handfuls of Tory activists would have seemed pitiful if not for ‘doctoring’ of the photos to make the audience seem that much larger. (See the examples below.) Slowly but surely Labour have closed the gap on the Tories in the opinion polls. Whether they can close it enough by 8 June – assuming, of course, that the polls are reasonably accurate –  is a different matter. The third factor in all of this is… Read More

A Downward Spiral…

Relaunched: 28 October 2016 Navigation note: please click on the graphics to enlarge them in their own windows. I created the above schematic way back in February 2001 to provide a MeshWORK analysis/Gravesian interpretation (meta-state) of the causes of bad behaviour in so many of Britain’s school classrooms. It is based upon my own experiences as a part-time teacher and discussions around that time  with a range of teachers, including Kevin Beaton at (Kingswood High, Hull), Sheila Kaye (Whitgift, Grimsby), Angela Ogilvie (St Mary’s College, Hull), Steve Graham (Cleve Primary, Hull), Chris Massender (Westcliffe Primary, Scunthorpe), Cathy Byrne (Danepark Primary, Hull) and Jennie Beasty and Lynne Clarke (Shaw Park Primary, Hull). The schematic is, as these teachers pointed out, a generalisation and should not divert attention away from the many positive things going on in many schools. Nonetheless, the schematic does identify the roots of so many of the problems and how so many situations are compounded by the best of intentions. A Downward Spiral… was developed as part of a  in February 2001 and was used by Spiral Dynamics co-developer Don Beck as part of his keynote address to the World Education Fellowship in Sun City, South Africa, that April. It has… Read More

The Thriving Organisation

Organisations Seen From The Second Tier Complexity Theory in the MeshWORK Approach to Businesses by Peter Fryer 4 February 2003 Author Peter Fryer was the Chief Executive of Humberside Training & Enterprise Council throughout its existence. He now works under the banner of ‘trojanmice’ and can be contacted via e-mail or you can call (+44) (0)1724 733303. How is your organisation faring in these rapidly changing times? Are you just surviving, are you surviving well, or are you thriving? Obviously surviving is crucial, but there is more to organisational life than that – a sort of Corporate BEIGE – much more. If we are thriving we are clearly doing well at all the things needed for survival but more importantly we are fulfilling our organisation’s true purpose. We are making the real difference that we intended when we set up the business and we are laying the foundations for our organisation’s existence for a long time. Thriving is not a state that is naturally reached by becoming better at surviving. No amount of continuous improvement (BLUE/ORANGE) will turn a surviving organisation into a thriving one. Thriving organisations have learnt to see themselves in a very different – 2nd Tier – way… Read More

When BLUE fails, call for Clint!

Updated: 25 August 2016 For those of us who were raised in the 1960s and 1970s, Clint Eastwood was arguably the ultimate ‘big screen tough guy’. Never impossibly-muscled like the generation of ‘action men’ who came after him – the likes of Arnold Schwarzenneger and Sylvester Stallone – and rarely prone to the ridiculous levels of single-handed mass slaughter commonplace in their movies, Eastwood mostly played far more believable characters. And, because they were far more believable, Eastwood’s anti-heroes exuded a far greater sense of menace. Though Eastwood has long since moved on to become acclaimed as a director and filmmaker of quality, character-driven films with strong narratives, on the occasion this now rather-old actor gets his fists flailing, he is still believable as someone who would very willingly do you serious harm. Periodically there are still Eastwood seasons on TV, usually built around one or more outings of his 2 main anti-heroes, the mysterious ‘Man with No Name’ gunslinger and the homicidal maverick cop ‘Dirty Harry’. That Eastwood can still command a TV season of his films, when most of his contemporaries are forgotten by all but the most devoted, is testament to the enduring power of the myth Eastwood… Read More

Killing the Terrorists

20 January 2009 This feature is being written even as Israeli shells fall on the citizens of Gaza and people are being killed and maimed. (That’s quite a sobering thought!) The aim of the Israeli assault on Gaza avowedly is to neutralise terrorist organisation Hamas’ capacity to fire rockets into southern Israel. However, there is also talk of toppling Hamas – the duly-elected party controlling the government of the Gaza Strip. Does a government have the right to take action to protect its citizens? In a BLUE-ORANGE Western-style democracy, the government has an obligation to take action. If it doesn’t, the electorate will punish it at the polls – and it’s no coincidence that Israel has an election next month. (By contrast, with the kind of RED-BLUE zealotry, with which Hamas runs Gaza, its government can actually sacrifice large numbers of its own citizens with a fair degree of impunity!) Does a government have a right to invade the land of those who are trying to kill its citizens (and sometimes succeeding!)? The Americans certainly saw it as legitimate to invade Afghanistan as a response to 9/11 – and most of the rest of the world supported the invasion (or at… Read More

Is Racism Natural..?

Updated: 9 November 2015 In my past as a part-time teacher, teaching psychological and sociological approaches to prejudice & discrimination, every year I found myself confronted with this question from one or more of my A-Level students. With posters on some Internet discussion forums making statements like: “I think they [British National Party, Britain First, etc] is only saying what most people think but are too afraid to say” , it seems appropriate to me to revisit the students’ question from an Integrated SocioPsychology perspective. It was explaining Henri Tajfel & John Turner’s Social Identity Theory (1979) in relation to the formation of in-groups and out-groups that usually triggered the student’s question as to whether racism is natural. In essence, Tajfel & Turner say that, simply by identifying yourself with one group as opposed to another, your group becomes the in-group and the other becomes the out-group. According to Tajfel & Turner, this basic act of social categorisation – one group has one identity label and the other group has a different identity label – is enough to bring about prejudice and discrimination. Because we invest something of our self in the groups to which we belong, we need our in-groups to… Read More

Social Change

Updated: 25 August 2020   Social change means some aspect of society, culture or sub-culture changes. The changes may be overt and dramatic and obvious to everyone or they may be more discreet and less obvious…until people come to a realisation society around them has already changed. An example of this is the attitude of the general public in the UK towards welfare and benefits. As Elizabeth Clery shows in the results of the 2012 British Social Attitudes survey (BSA)– see graphic left – there has been an increased perception that people on welfare are over-reliant on their benefits and that cutting benefits won’t harm too many people too badly. The following 2 years’ surveys  showed only the most marginal reversal (3%) of this trend (Sarah Alcock, 2015) and the election in 2015  of a Tory government determined to cut even more could be seen as voter approval of these strategies. This was actually a major attitudinal shift in a country that, for many years, had largely prided itself on a generous attitude to welfare. Yet these more subtle changes in public perception often only become news when surveys like the British Social Attitudes annual survey pick them up. How complex… Read More

Society FAQs

Click the question to go to its answer… 1. How is the MeshWORK approach superior? 1. How is the MeshWORK approach superior? Updated: 17/05/2015 Most partnerships (in whatever sector) are built on aligning the ‘partners’ around power plays, answering questions such as:- Who’s got the power  Who wants to do what? Who will back me/us doing what I/we want to do and what will I/we give in return? These kinds of partnerships are usually characterised by sub-alliances, back-biting and horse-trading. Partnerships built on genuine consensus are usually considerably more sophisticated but can be slow in the extreme to build. They are then often characterised by some form of consensual dogma to which all the ‘partners’ are locked in, whether the dogma is effective or not. What distinguishes the MeshWORK approach is that the partnership is built on what might be described as ‘meta-principles’ which are universal. The point of a MeshWORK is to address the needs/wants of all levels of the Spiral in all ways for the good of the Spiral as a whole. At a partnership level, this produces two key questions:- What needs to be done? Who is most suited to do it? Using the vMEMES of the Gravesian… Read More

Global

These pages use the models and theories of the Integrated SocioPsychology approach for analysing and understanding the factors underlying international conflict and global issues and developing appropriate intervention strategies. More immediate ‘hotspot’-type observations can be found in the Blog. Those who support the Integrated approach and are interested in such matters are invited to submit pieces for publication here as ‘guest features’ or ‘guest reports’. Please get in touch with your ideas via the Contact page. Different Values: Different Democracy Guest feature by Alan Tonkin exploring the concept of Stratified Democracy The Often Misunderstood Dynamics of Global Change Guest feature by Alan Tonkin on the importance of addressing values in international negotiations Innovation & Values in the 21st Century Guest feature by Alan Tonkin on  the concept of innovation being influenced by value systems Values & Development Guest feature by Alan Tonkin exploring how Democracy develops in different ways over time and in different contexts Developing Countries, Democracy & Values Guest feature by Alan Tonkin on the need for countries to develop Order-oriented values to avoid becoming ‘failed states’ Killing the Terrorists The argument for being tough on terrorists and the causes of terrorism The EU: an Organisation divided by Values Guest… Read More

About This Site…

Updated: 15 October 2022  Obviously one key purpose of this site is to tell you about me – see About Me… The other key purpose is to present what I call Integrated SocioPsychology. I coined the term ‘Integrated SocioPsychology’ in 2004 for a comprehensive and cohesive approach I intuited could align and integrate all the different (and all too-often bickering!) disciplines in the behavioural sciences. To make cohesive sense of all the theories, models and interventions in the behavioural sciences and the complimentary ‘hard sciences’ (Biology, Neuroscience), I have been using the concepts of the Gravesian approach (vMEMES) – and Clare W Graves’ research on which it is based – to underpin the science of Memetics and Robert Dilts’ Neurological Levels structure and develop the approach I think of as Integrated SocioPsychology. The Dimensions of Temperament construct of Hans J Eysenck serves well to describe individual temperamental dispositions while the framework of 4Q/8L enables multi-context ‘big picture’ views. The concept of Integrated SocioPsychology postulates the complementarity of much in the academic disciplines of Psychology and Sociology and what are often considered ‘alternative’ fields such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). The overarching paradigm of Integrated SocioPsychology is that, by ‘re-imagining’ the behavioural sciences with… Read More