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5 PASCAL and the PURE Project The genesis and purpose of this volume This chapter explains what led to a book drawing on the work of the PASCAL PURE project as a main source: action-research field-experience intended to enhance good practice, which involved regions participating on four continents. It sketches the PURE project and foreshadows the chapters that follow. These examine and draw lessons from different dimensions of the work of the project. When the book was planned the intention was to write something accessible to the diffuse and diverse people
recommendations for the sector. The emphasis – in this project at least – was on encouraging historical thinking and engaging in reflection. Trying to summarise those discussions and the myriad voices and disparate opinions that engaged in them to a set of easily referenceable lessons risked conforming to the ‘stabilising practices’ identified by Pascal Dauvin (2004) as a core characteristic of a professionalised aid industry. As he might have put it, we
The concept of the learning region is central to the way of problem-solving. Like 'lifelong learning' the term is used variously and carelessly. This book explores the meaning and importance of the learning region. Not all universities warm to such local-regional engagement. The unwise pride of global forces and nations undermines it; but even the most prestigious and 'global' university has a local footprint and ever-watchful neighbours. The book arises from the work of PASCAL, an international non-governmental network Observatory. Its name exploits echoes of philosophical depth as well as technical modernity of language, taking the concepts of Place, Social Capital and Learning together with the vital connecting conjunctions of And, to define its mission. At the heart of the story is PASCAL's experience of working with multiple regions and their universities on their experience with engagement. The book examines in turn several central strands mainly of policy but also of process that are illuminated by the PASCAL Universities and Regional Engagement (PURE) project. The PURE processes and outcomes, despite limitations and severe disruption by forces located outside the region and often too the nation, show the potential gain from international networking and shared activities. The book also discusses internal arrangements within the administration before turning to external relations: both with the university and tertiary sector and with other stakeholders in the private and third sectors. Regional innovation systems require entrepreneurialism inside government, higher education and training, as well as within industry from small and medium enterprises to multinationals.
’, is required if regions are to seize opportunities and shoulder responsibilities in demanding and dangerous times. This is the new imperative. This chapter takes stock of the learning that has taken place through the PURE project, by the partner organisations and regions themselves. There may be lessons having wider applicability: learning includes being able to distinguish what is so particular and unique that it cannot be generalised from lessons having wider application. We begin with the lead partner, PASCAL, before considering what learning may have occurred in
more of the other’s world in order to co-create sustainable healthy development. It is a long step beyond being merely decent neighbours. This book arises from the work of PASCAL, an international non-governmental network Observatory. Its name exploits echoes of philosophical depth as well as technical modernity of language, taking the concepts of Place, Social Capital and Learning together with the vital connecting conjunctions of And, to define its mission. PASCAL seeks also to connect scholarship with the practice of governance in its widest sense. It explores
suicides in Bresson (four in thirteen features) 15 situates him within a well-established heretical tradition. The theological term most often used to refer to Bresson, however, is Jansenist, after the Dutch theologian whose belief in predestination set him at odds with orthodox Catholicism. Jansenism, influential in France through the work of Racine and Pascal, has as its founding premise the radical hiddenness of God, at once present
masochism, facing shame 115 Solange’s scenario thus departs considerably from the death-driven masochism of Histoire d’O, and we can get a better understanding of Solange by comparing her story to that of a ‘closer relative’, Camille, in Christine Pascal’s Zanzibar (1989), a film co-scripted by Breillat. Actress Camille is self-destructively hooked on drugs much as director Solange is hooked on degrading sex with men: ‘je suis “accrochée”’, Solange realises about Bruno, ‘Je le veux. Je le veux. Je le veux. … C’est une drogue. Je ne peux plus survivre. Plus respirer sans
to local 10 MUP_Osborne_Final.indd 10 30/07/2013 15:50 the ‘global problematique’ regions without the centrally controlled budgets being transferred to match them. In its work with PURE regions the international non-governmental organisation PASCAL found some regions hamstrung by central government reluctance to trust, delegate and empower. Any wish to work with local universities as development partners was hampered by central regulation and control. We find examples of this in Part II below. This is not the place to try to explain much less solve the
PASCAL are INGO initiatives inhabiting the politica–economic and philosophical setting sketched above. They are committed to seeking new forms 155 MUP_Osborne_Final.indd 155 30/07/2013 15:50 learning and partnership processes of governance for new times in a significantly altered world. The changing social structure and governance outlined in Chapter 2 includes a diminished state sector which is nevertheless often still growing in scale and reach of activity as well as into the international sphere. It includes a more empowered third sector: voluntary, civil society