Radio astronomy projects require large open spaces with minimal radio frequency interference, light and air pollution. Often, indigenous minorities such as the San in South Africa and the Wajarri Aboriginal peoples in Western Australia live on this land or have cultural rights to the land. Communication and engagement challenges with these stakeholders include language, culture, cultural heritage and stakeholder expectations. This study shows how the Square Kilometre Array South Africa (SKA SA) used the narratives and indigenous knowledge of astronomy of the San peoples of South Africa to facilitate some stakeholder engagement. These narratives were originally documented by Bleek and Lloyd (1911). Different versions of these narratives are still being told in the Central Karoo region of South Africa by the descendants of the San people. The key finding was that narratives are an effective method of creating a communication and engagement platform and for fostering collaboration, particularly for astronomy projects where the establishment of common ground among stakeholders could be challenging. The study concluded that it is important for astronomy projects and science communication to invest in indigenous knowledge systems and to preserve and recover cultural heritage as far as possible for the benefit of future research. In this way, beneficial stakeholder collaboration can be facilitated and progress can be made towards the achievement of global sustainability goals.

Gender-based violence (GBV) is the most prevalent form of violence that poses multiple threats to global sustainability, estimated at costing the global economy as much as $1.5 trillion annually (United Nations Women 2016). Despite increased research and intervention there has not been a significant reduction in global statistics. The objective of this article is to conceptualise GBV as a consequence of functional differentiation by drawing from Luhmann’s social systems theory and current reports published in news media in South Africa and globally. The key argument is that function systems exclude both victims and perpetrators of GBV through their binary coding, and that systems’ evolution determines the outcome, which is, in this case, the persistence and increase in GBV, more so in South Africa. As Luhmann further argues, world society “lacks the inherent rationality required” to facilitate change and given that human individuals cannot communicate, it is unlikely that successful GBV intervention can be planned or implemented because systems evolution cannot be planned. It is therefore most likely that the “unresolvable indeterminacies” of function systems will sustain GBV in their environments.

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Many studies have explored Network Direct Selling Organisations (NDSOs) because they createmany communicative contexts and demonstrate such a diverse range of communicative processesthat form and sustain this large industry. These organisations exist in more than 70 countries, andhave almost 88 million members who generate over US$132 billion annually (WFDSA, 2011).This paper argues that although NDSOs can be differentiated from other types of organising, theircharacteristics can be linked to some key premises in postmodern thinking about organising. Itutilises the schismatic metaphor identified by Morgan (1981) to generate further insights into thestudy of individuals as composite unities of operationally closed self-creating systems that cocreateorganisations such as NDSOs. The schismatic metaphor is utilised to provide a powerfulframework for social analysis of organisations by identifying and discussing some theoretical linksbetween postmodernism, social autopoiesis, and second-order cybernetics.

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