What is a literature review?

A literature review is a select analysis of existing research which is relevant to your topic, showing how it relates to your investigation. It explains and justifies how your investigation may help answer some of the questions or gaps in this area of research. In a typical literature review you would

• compare and contrast different authors' views on an issue
• group authors who draw similar conclusions
• criticise aspects of methodology
• note areas in which authors are in disagreement
• highlight exemplary studies
• highlight gaps in research
• show how your study relates to previous studies
• show how your study relates to the literature in general
• conclude by summarising what the literature says

What is it for?
The aim of a literature review is to show your reader (your tutor) that you have read, and have a good grasp of, the main published work concerning a particular topic or question in your field. This work may be in any format, including online sources. It may be a separate assignment, or one of the introductory sections of a report, dissertation or thesis. In the latter cases in particular, the review will be guided by your research objective or by the issue or thesis you are arguing and will provide the framework for your further work.

It is very important to note that your review should not be simply a description of what others have published in the form of a set of summaries, but should take the form of a critical discussion, showing insight and an awareness of differing arguments, theories and approaches. It should be a synthesis and analysis of the relevant published work, linked at all times to your own purpose and rationale. In this way you would

• define and limit the problem you are working on
• place your study in an historical perspective
• avoid unnecessary duplication
• evaluate promising research methods
• relate your findings to previous knowledge and suggest further research

How to write a literature review?
You would need to ask yourself

• What research has already been done on this topic?
• What are the sub-areas of the topic you need to explore?
• What other research (perhaps not directly on the topic) might be relevant to your investigation?
• How do these sub-topics and other research overlap with your investigation?

You first need to decide what you need to read. In many cases you will be given a booklist or directed towards areas of useful published work. Make sure you use this help. With dissertations, and particularly theses, it will be more down to you to decide. It is important, therefore, to try and decide on the parameters of your research.

What exactly are your objectives and what do you need to find out? In your review, are you looking at issues of theory, methodology, policy, quantitive research, or what? Before you start reading it may be useful to compile a list of the main areas and questions involved, and then read with the purpose of finding out about or answering these. Unless something comes up which is particularly important, stick to this list, as it is very easy to get sidetracked, particularly on the internet.

A good literature review needs a clear line of argument. You therefore need to use the critical notes and comments you made whilst doing your reading to express an academic opinion. Make sure that

• you include a clear, short introduction which gives an outline of the review, including the main topics covered and the order of the arguments, with a brief rationale for this.
• there is always a clear link between your own arguments and the evidence uncovered in your reading. Include a short summary at the end of each section. Use quotations if appropriate.
• you always acknowledge opinions which do not agree with your thesis. If you ignore opposing viewpoints, your argument will in fact be weaker.

Your review must be written in a formal, academic style. Keep your writing clear and concise, avoiding colloquialisms and personal language. You should always aim to be objective and respectful of others' opinions; this is not the place for emotive language or strong personal opinions. If you thought something was rubbish, use words such as "inconsistent", "lacking in certain areas" or "based on false assumptions"!
When introducing someone's opinion, don't use "says", but instead an appropriate verb which more accurately reflects this viewpoint, such as "argues", "claims" or "states". Use the present tense for general opinions and theories, or the past when referring to specific research or experiments.

And remember at all times to avoid plagiarising your sources. Always separate your source opinions from your own hypothesis. making sure you consistently reference the literature you are referring to. When you are doing your reading and making notes, it might be an idea to use different colours to distinguish between your ideas and those of others. 

Literature review check-list

Selection of Sources

• Have you indicated the purpose of the review? 
• Are the parameters of the review reasonable? 
• Why did you include some of the literature and exclude others? 
• Which years did you exclude? 
• Have you emphasised recent developments? 
• Have you focussed on primary sources with only selective use of secondary sources? 
• Is the literature you have selected relevant? 
• Is your bibliographic data complete?

Critical Evaluation of the Literature

• Have you organised your material according to issues? 
• Is there a logic to the way you organised the material? 
• Does the amount of detail included on an issue relate to its importance? 
• Have you been sufficiently critical of design and methodological issues? 
• Have you indicated when results were conflicting or inconclusive and discussed possible reasons? 
• Have you indicated the relevance of each reference to your research?

Interpretation

• Has your summary of the current literature contributed to the reader's understanding of the problems? 
• Does the design of your research reflect the methodological implications of the literature review?

Final Note

• The literature review will be judged in the context of your completed research. 
• The review needs to further the reader's understanding of the problem and whether it provides a rationale for your research.

                                                                                        
                                                                                                            Nick Cave                                                                                                             Amalgam (brown), 2015

Design for behaviour change is a sub-category of design, which is concerned with how design can shape, or be used to influence human behaviour. All approaches of design for behaviour change acknowledge that artefacts have an important influence on human behaviour and/or behavioural decisions. They strongly draw on theories of behavioural change, including the division into personal, behavioural and environmental characteristics as drivers for behaviour change. Areas in which design for behaviour change has been most commonly applied include health and wellbeing, sustainability, safety and social context, as well as crime prevention.

Design for behaviour change developed from work on design psychology (also: behavioural design) conducted by Don Norman in the 1980s. Norman’s ‘psychology of everyday things’ introduced concepts from ecological psychology and human factors research to designers, such as affordances, constraint feedback and mapping. They have provided guiding principles with regard to user experience and the intuitive use of artefacts, although this work did not yet focus specifically on influencing behavioural change.

The models that followed Norman’s original approach became more explicit about influencing behaviour, such as emotion design and persuasive technology. Perhaps since 2005, a greater number of theories have developed that explicitly address design for behaviour change. These include a diversity of theories, guidelines and toolkits for behaviour change (discussed below) covering the different domains of health, sustainability, safety, crime prevention and social design. With the emergence of the notion of behaviour change, a much more explicit discussion has also begun about the deliberate influence of design although a review of this area from 2012 has identified that a lack of common terminology, formalized research protocols and target behaviour selection are still key issues. Key issues are the situations in which design for behaviour change could or should be applied; whether its influence should be implicit or explicit, voluntary or prescriptive; and of the ethical consequences of one or the other.

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Lately I am having difficulty to talk about writing. After reading highly structured, properly sequenced academic essays, it is difficult to brave it and write your own staff. Anything I write feels underdeveloped. Thus under extreme grief, I am proceeding to write a couple of underdeveloped thoughts about the dual relationship between the sensible (the world of objects) and discourse (pertaining the world of ideas).

This I find a complicated topic since I have a disbelief in dualistic and oppositional ideas. I should then, aim at creating some sense of blurring between these well defined-by discourse-concepts. The reason I am thinking about this, it's because I have been long thinking about the implications of the built environment in human's subjectivity. Here I'd like to apologise since I am still grasping this idea. I am also going to quote something it's been quoted to death:

     We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.- Winston Churchill

The reason for this, is than in the design of our built environment is a combination of both: the fusion of ideas pertaining how things should be-the magic of discourse and conceptual thinking- and how things are-a tint of pragmatism if you wish when heavily prioritised. Weighing both might be well called Art. But for now, completely ignoring the idea of Art (I am by no means developing this here) I would like to explain this expanded idea of the built environment, which I find massively of help when used against the term architecture (the art of putting constructive elements together with their ensuing "aura"), which I find really reductionist. I should also say that I find my definition of architecture to be mediocre, but that its the one I have for now.
An expanded built environment is the consideration of the built to be all that has been designed by humans, and that has implications stemming from social relations imbued both in their conception and design as well as in their post-occupation or use. The built is then, physically, the agglomeration of objects surrounding us which are tangible such as traffic lights, cars, clothes, cookery, curtains, barns, houses, pavements, office towers, rail infrastructure, town halls, sewage systems, data storage rooms, cemeteries, military bases, aircraft, and a long et cetera. In our prevalent dualistic conception of our worlds-for there is no one world exempt of a political aim-it is clear that the virtual and the physical are indeed different, and therefore excluded. Churchill's assertion, its of importance for it blurs this conceptual boundary line between the physical and the virtual. Furthermore he seems to imply that buildings then, after having been designed, they have some sort of agency over us (they shape us actively through our inhabitation of them). I believe in the idea that buildings affect our behavior. Not that they change our lives, but that they have some subtle and sometimes no so subtle implications in the way we conduct our lives. From the extreme example of confinement rooms in estate managed and privately managed prisons, to the more subtle shaping of privatised public space in England, which although open has a visual set of rules regulating our behavior. Thus, we can talk of legislation-in this last case-as the software of these public architectures. Conversely, it is worth making a remark about our belief of the things we deem to be natural, and the things we believe to be man-made: namely the distinction of the artificial, theatrical nature of the feminine persona-to sip from the queer theory cup-, to the ingrained, natural, (non)performative, character of the male persona. This idea that authenticity pertains to men, and that women are the carriers of the creative, artificial power. Here there is again a blurring, and surely, a mixing of ideas of the natural and the man-made. Here many times the discourse-mostly perpetuating relationships of power: subjugating and subjugated forms-are confused, like the assumption that gender is natural to men and women, and that religion is embedded in the very nature of things-to mention a couple of examples. This is my current conception, that our sense of control  of the world is based on the illusion that discourse equates nature and hence the world. I apologise to the readers to who might think I am addressing them as underdeveloped thinkers. I am nevertheless, writing to clarify myself and let out some thoughts, as opposed to writing an explication piece, which to some extent it is, but for me. Audience-if any- I guess its a collateral of my chosen format.

Coming back I wanted to talk both about the violence of discourse-which intedently and non-intendedly-instates certain forms of thought, and design, which deals with the very matter of the earth. With the soil of life. At this point it is in my head that an image of a man emerges: with strong hands, dips his arms elbow dip in a puddle of mud, and absorbed in a cloud of awe, he tries to understand the physics of flow in the running streams of cloudy water that run down his arms. Avoiding explanation of my attempt to eroticise male physique, and the romantic portrayal of a farm-land scenery, it is key to grasp here that thought and reality don't necessarily correlate, and therefore nature has-if commensurable-its very own politics of violence (say an earthquake in an urban epicenter). This is something religion has long struggled with and that becomes evident in reading the plaques of deceased, but still remembered people:

     We miss you dearly. We hoped for your recovery. We prayed and prayed to no avail. We have lost      you. God decided for you to part.


I was recently walking around graveyards in London. And what struck me the most, and what I found deeply moving was this sense of not understanding why this relative had passed away, what was the reason behind the inexplicable event. This moment when someone leaves, dies, perishes. It is common practice tor restore to religion to explain the inexplicable. To find relieve, to make a locus for this suffering. It is there, safeguarded by the walls of God. As an agnostic in a strange relationship with atheism, I find it most difficult to find any sense of this from partaking in the Real, apart from being a self-defense mechanism. This, is then, the violence of the real, or the contingent, inexplicable material world, to which to our surprise we have emerged in full consciousness. It is this emergence that also brings us together to this realm-and our very physical existence-of the physical, natural, inexplicable nature of things. Science in this respect has a lot to say, and I would enjoy looking into writings of science couple with religion and atheist attitudes. These I think should be underlined. More complex in nature, is the role of corporations and institutions in the production of this scientific practice and language (lets not forget the role of medical institutions in consolidating relationships of power, knowledge and identity amongst others).

I am concluding with my reason behind writing this, which is the idea of approaching my desire to design from either a theoretical standpoint, being critical or my own practice, and the frustration which carries all this work, which is that no work is being produced, i.e. If only I could just make. It is inevitable to think that this is necessarily of a dual, complex and mixed nature. I was also hoping to undermine the role of discourse in everyday practice (which I am sure there are strong academic accounts against this). It is easier to break a stone, than it is to generate a theory on the appearance of rocky conglomerations and its relationship to breakup points.  All in all, I think there is a frustration in this sense of being devoid of a continuous practice. I am here then, writing out loud to, once more, my none existing audience.

Besties.

corporate by-laws [diff. to] laws of land

     
    
    TAZ Office. This device is structured as a space where TAZ Archive is physically hosted, being a repository that lets you check the information that exists online through an analog medium. Yet the TAZ office intends to go beyond passing from one format to another. The office is intended as a temporary autonomous space wherever it is located. For this, it raises an infrastructure related to the practices and contents of the references included in the archive. This device enables the assemblies or citizen parliaments, enables workspaces to develop collaborative construction workshops, and it creates an open cultural infrastructure and establishes mechanisms to generate community gardens. Ultimately, it allows creating a temporary experience which allows, on the one hand, being a tool of direct communication at street level, and secondly, being a catalyst that enables connections with local communities for their involvement and inclusion in the Archive TAZ.


    Context. The project is developed in the context of the 2015 call for residencies promoted by the cultural center Casino Luxembourg, for interventions in public space. TXP’s proposal is the development of the TAZ office for its installation in the city of Luxembourg. This intervention is located in a square that is at the intersection of Boulevard de la Pétrusse and Passerelle / Viaduc. This space will be open for a period of three months, from June 20 to September 6, 2015, raising the recovery and activation of this square.


    Description. The TAZ Archive is made up of a scaffolding structure, a circular 7 meter high tower with two upper floors. Its inner diameter is 6 meter long, and the e wooden floors are surrounded by a perimeter staircase which allows access to each of the plants. The perimeter is covered with “new jersey barriers”, plastic barriers of road signs, that are placed vertically. These generate permeable planes that operate as a lattice, qualifying the space and giving it their singular character. This structure, of great constructive simplicity, generates several public spaces in height by multiplying the plaza area and articulating the different programs that are raised around the Archive. On the ground floor is the assembly area, a space equipped with mobile grandstands that allows multiple combinations. This is a multifunctional space that enables multiple activities: Assemblies, screenings, concerts, movie theater, etc. On the first floor is located the archive space, a space for reading and querying the database file of TAZ projects. In this first phase there have been collected close to 50 projects, both in Europe and Latin America. On the second floor is the community garden, a co-managed space for citizens which connects with local initiatives of the city.

from

The hardest thing to do, is to do what you want to do, rather than what you think you should be doing and it’s hard because it’s hard to work out what you really want to do and then it’s hard because you have to have courage to do what you want. 

My advice is caught up in that really – do what you want to do.




.-Emma Hart
from

    New Labour refers to a period in the history of the British Labour Party from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, under leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The name dates from a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994 which was later seen in a draft manifesto published in 1996, called New Labour, New Life For Britain.

The "New Labour" brand was developed to regain trust from the electorate and to portray a departure from "Old Labour", which was criticised for its breaking of election promises and its links between trade unions and the state. The "New Labour" brand was used to communicate the party's modernisation to the public. Following the leadership of Neil Kinnock and John Smith, the party under the New Labour brand attempted to widen its electoral appeal and, by the 1997 general election, had made significant gains in the upper and middle classes. Labour maintained this wider support in the 2001 and 2005 elections. The brand was retired in 2010.

The political philosophy of New Labour was influenced by the party's development of Anthony Giddens' "Third Way", which attempted to provide a synthesis between capitalism andsocialism. The party emphasised the importance of social justice, rather than equality, emphasising the need for equality of opportunity, and believed in the use of free markets to deliver economic efficiency and social justice. In 2002, Giddens named spin as New Labour's biggest failure, but commended the party's success in certain policy areas and at marginalising the Conservative Party.

    Third Way in politics, is a position akin to centrism that tries to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies. The Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various centre-left progressive movements in response to international doubt regarding the economic viability of the state; economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism and contrasted with the corresponding rise of popularity for economic liberalism and the New Right.The Third Way is promoted by some social democratic and social liberal movements.

Major Third Way social democratic proponent Tony Blair claimed that the socialism he advocated was different from traditional conceptions of socialism. Blair said "My kind of socialism is a set of values based around notions of social justice ... Socialism as a rigid form of economic determinism has ended, and rightly". Blair referred to it as "social-ism" that involves politics that recognized individuals as socially interdependent, and advocated social justice, social cohesion, equal worth of each citizen, and equal opportunity. Third Way social democratic theorist Anthony Giddens has said that the Third Way rejects the traditional conception of socialism, and instead accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views social democratic governments as having achieved a viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and other policies, and that contemporary socialism has outgrown the Marxian claim for the need of the abolition of capitalism.

Third Way politics, supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities, and productive endowments, while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this. It emphasizes commitment to balanced budgets, providing equal opportunity combined with an emphasis on personal responsibility, decentralization of government power to the lowest level possible, encouragement of public-private partnerships, improving labour supply, investment inhuman development, protection of social capital, and protection of the environment.

The Third Way has been criticized by some conservatives and libertarians who advocate laissez-faire capitalism. It has also been heavily criticized by many social democrats, democratic socialists and communists in particular as a betrayal of left-wing values. Specific definitions of Third Way policies may differ between Europe and America.

    Big Society was a political ideology developed in the early 21st century. The idea proposes "integrating the free market with a theory of social solidarity based on hierarchy and voluntarism". Conceptually it "draws on a mix of conservative communitarianism and libertarian paternalism". Its roots "can be traced back to the 1990s, and to early attempts to develop a non-Thatcherite, or post-Thatcherite, brand of UK conservatism" such as David Willets' Civic Conservatism and the revival of Red Toryism. Some commentators have seen the Big Society as invoking Edmund Burke's idea of civil society, putting it into the sphere of one-nation conservatism.

The term "Big Society' was originated by Steve Hilton, director of strategy for the Conservative Party, and the idea is particularly associated with the party's leader David Cameron who was a strong advocate for it. The idea became the flagship policy of the 2010 UK Conservative Party general election manifesto and formed part of the subsequent legislative programme of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement. The stated aim was to create a climate that empowered local people and communities, building a "big society" that would take power away from politicians and give it to people.

In UK politics the Big Society concept applies to domestic policy in England only. The relevant policy areas are devolved in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and are therefore the responsibilities of respectively the Northern Ireland Executive, the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government in those countries.

    Complacency is a feeling of self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies



With minor modifications from Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster Dictionary