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1

Islam, AKM Monwarul, M. Ullah, US Khan, and AAS Majumder. "Reuse of Cardiac Rhythm Control Devices: A Review." Cardiovascular Journal 6, no. 1 (August 7, 2013): 52–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/cardio.v6i1.16116.

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Cardiac rhythm control devices i.e. pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) and biventricular pacemakers are at times lifesaving treatment and prevention of arrhythmia. But, despite definite indications, many people in the developing countries cannot afford these devices due to high cost, and succumb to premature death. On the other hand, after implantation, pacemakers and ICDs are sometimes underutilized because of premature explantation due to death of the recipient, device infection, or upgradation, leaving a considerable extent of serviceable battery life unused. Majority of these explanted devices are simply thrown away. Though made for single use, a growing body of evidence indicates the safety, efficacy and feasibility of reimplantation of the prematurely explanted devices in patient in need who is otherwise unable to afford a new one. Patients, physicians, morticians, and even the general public support the idea of device donation and recycling. A number of organizations around the world have engaged themselves in this benevolent effort, and t he feasibility of device reutilization programme has already been established. However, some logistic, legal and ethical concerns are yet to be solved. The statutory bodies and professional organizations should address the issue of device recycling to solve the unsolved issues and formulate standard practice guidelines. In that case, such medical wastes may turn into invaluable resources, and help ensuring equitable medical care throughout the world. Cardiovascular Journal Volume 6, No. 1, 2013, Page 52-59 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/cardio.v6i1.16116
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Ottenheijm, Eric. "The Shared Meal—a Therapeutical Device The Function and Meaning of Hos 6:6 in Matt 9:10-13." Novum Testamentum 53, no. 1 (2011): 1–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853610x493009.

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AbstractIn Matt 9:10-13, the disciples of Jesus are asked why their master eats with tax-collectors and sinners. Both the question and the threefold answer are analysed in this study. Wisdom traditions prescribe Torah teachers not to engage with blatant sinners. This approach becomes contested in the first century C.E., as is clear from Pharisaic disputes on sinners and tax-collectors. In his answer, Jesus characterises himself as the divine doctor, who stirs the capacity to repentance by his sheer presence. The quote of Hosea functions as a legal justification of this strategy. Hos 6:6 points to the concept of good works, benevolent actions that save even blatant sinners.
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Kopelevich, O. V. "VLADIMIR ALEXANDROVICH ARTEMIEV - MORE THAN 60 SEA EXPEDITIONS FROM ARCTIC TO ANTARCTIC." Journal of Oceanological Research 48, no. 2 (August 28, 2020): 199–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.29006/1564-2291.jor-2020.48(2).15.

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The article is dedicated to the 70th birthday of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Artemiev, senior researcher at the Ocean Optics Laboratory of the IO RAS. This is a unique electronics specialist who directly performs scientific research and provides this opportunity to others. V.A. Artemyev has been developing and improving optical equipment for marine expeditionary research for over 40 years; Among the devices he developed are an underwater irradiance meter (Alfamer device), three types of submersible transparent meters (PUM, PUM-A, PUM-200). Member of more than 60 sea expeditions from the Arctic to the Antarctic and about two dozen coastal marine. Conducted measurements of the underwater brightness of solar radiation at depths of up to 300 m in the Philippine Sea, diving on the Pysis underwater manned vehicle (PA), and in the Black Sea on the Argus PA. Vladimir Aleksandrovich is an irreplaceable expeditionary employee both in terms of his business and human qualities: contact, benevolent, always ready to help, creating a friendly atmosphere in the team. Coauthor of over 80 scientific publications and one invention patent. Has state awards.
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Kuriata, Yuliia, and Olena Kasatkina-Kubyshkina. "STYLISTIC DEVICES IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE." Naukovì zapiski Nacìonalʹnogo unìversitetu «Ostrozʹka akademìâ». Serìâ «Fìlologìâ» 1, no. 13(81) (May 26, 2022): 27–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.25264/2519-2558-2022-13(81)-27-30.

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The article considers stylistic means in political discourse on the examples of modern and past Ukrainian and foreign politicians’ speeches. The topicality of the research is defined by social significance of political discourse in the life of the community. The term “political discourse” is determined as coherent oral or written text, expressed through both verbal and nonverbal means, which directly depends on the situation of political communication in combination with pragmatic, socio-cultural, psychological and other factors. A “figure of speech” (also called “stylistic device” or “rhetorical device”) is commented on as a modification of the usual or expected sequence of words, grammatical structure of the text, the use of any of a variety of techniques to produce an auxiliary meaning, idea, or feeling. The definitions and examples of “metaphors” (especially those related to war, sports, family, and nature), “personification”, “repetition”, “simile”, “allusion”, “synechdoche”, “hyperbole”, “emotive language”, “balance”, “inverted phrases”, “rhetorical figures” (rhetorical appeals, questions, assumptions, exclamations, statements), “gradation”, “ invective” and “poetic devices” (irony as one of the ways of comic perception of reality, which contains a hidden mockery of facts or people; satire as sharp, sensitive ridicule of vices, errors, negative phenomena of reality, a sharp, scathing mockery; sarcasm as malicious, scathing mockery, caustic irony; humour as benevolent laughter, aimed at exposing certain defects of human character or inconsistencies in people’s lives, in their behaviour; word game as a means of artistic expression that functions in language as a joke, created on the basis of polysemy, homonymy and similar sounding words) are given in the context of political discourse. “Sustained (prolonged) metaphor” is enlarged on with relation to the problem researched. Factors influencing the choice of political discourse strategies and tactics are commented on, namely – a personality of a politician and their function in the political system and the addressee of communication.
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Edelson, Steven A. "Promethean Business: From Financial Hedonism to Financial Eudaimonia." Journal of Management Inquiry 28, no. 4 (August 31, 2017): 420–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1056492617725201.

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The story of Prometheus and Pandora serves as an apt analogical device through which to demonstrate the impact that publicly traded corporations, and the shareholder primacy approach to corporate governance has created unintended consequences. Prometheus’s benevolent gift of fire led to the collateral damage of Pandora’s Box unleashing ills on mankind. Similarly, incorporation was a positive development that supported businesses lasting beyond one generation of owners, and led to businesses thriving and creating innovations that improve our lives. However, with these innovations and the related consumption has come a figurative Pandora’s Box of ills to society, including but not limited to widening income inequality, greater personal debt, and environmental degradation. In this critical essay, Greek mythology and classical philosophical approaches to happiness are intertwined with corporate approaches to stakeholder and shareholder optimization.
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Gallagher, Noelle. "Cancer and the emotions in 18th-century literature." Medical Humanities 46, no. 3 (November 6, 2019): 257–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2018-011639.

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This essay argues that the emotional rhetoric of today’s breast cancer discourse—with its emphasis on stoicism and ‘positive thinking’ in the cancer patient, and its use of sympathetic feeling to encourage charitable giving—has its roots in the long 18th century. While cancer had long been connected with the emotions, 18th-century literature saw it associated with both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ feelings, and metaphors describing jealousy, love and other sentiments as ‘like a cancer’ were used to highlight the danger of allowing feelings—even benevolent or pleasurable feelings—to flourish unchecked. As the century wore on, breast cancer in particular became an important literary device for exploring the dangers of feeling in women, with writers of both moralising treatises and sentimental novels connecting the growth or development of cancer with the indulgence of feeling, and portraying emotional self-control as the only possible form of resistance against the disease. If, as Barbara Ehrenreich suggests, today’s discourse of ‘positive thinking’ has been mobilised to make patients with breast cancer more accepting of their diagnosis and more cooperative with punitive treatment regimens, then 18th-century fictional exhortations to stay cheerful served similarly conservative political and economic purposes, encouraging continued female submission to male prerogatives inside and outside the household.
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Rambabu, Kalathiripi, and N. Venkatram. "Traffic flow features as metrics (TFFM): detection of application layer level DDOS attack scope of IOT traffic flows." International Journal of Engineering & Technology 7, no. 2.7 (March 18, 2018): 203. http://dx.doi.org/10.14419/ijet.v7i2.7.10293.

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The phenomenal and continuous growth of diversified IOT (Internet of Things) dependent networks has open for security and connectivity challenges. This is due to the nature of IOT devices, loosely coupled behavior of internetworking, and heterogenic structure of the networks. These factors are highly vulnerable to traffic flow based DDOS (distributed-denial of services) attacks. The botnets such as “mirae” noticed in recent past exploits the IoT devises and tune them to flood the traffic flow such that the target network exhaust to response to benevolent requests. Hence the contribution of this manuscript proposed a novel learning-based model that learns from the traffic flow features defined to distinguish the DDOS attack prone traffic flows and benevolent traffic flows. The performance analysis was done empirically by using the synthesized traffic flows that are high in volume and source of attacks. The values obtained for statistical metrics are evincing the significance and robustness of the proposed model
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Gratton, Brian. "“A Triumph in Modern Philanthropy”: Age Criteria in Labor Management at the Pennsylvania Railroad, 1875–1930." Business History Review 64, no. 4 (1990): 630–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3115501.

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Labor policies based on age have been variously explained as benevolent, maliciously anti-union, rational, or prejudicial. Nineteenth-century devices to stabilize the work force set the stage for the Pennsylvania Railroad's 1900 program of age limits, mandatory retirement, and pensions, but its immediate cause was the conviction that the seniority system already in place seriously reduced the efficiency of older workers. As the following article shows, this economic calculation remained appealing to some executives in the twentieth century, even as the actual costs of pensions became painfully apparent. For others, the old fear of workers' unrest reappeared as a justification for ignoring the impending crisis of the 1930s.
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Hjorth, Larissa, and Deborah Lupton. "Digitised caring intimacies: More-than-human intergenerational care in Japan." International Journal of Cultural Studies 24, no. 4 (June 14, 2021): 584–602. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367877920927427.

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Popular media and policy discussions of digital health for supporting older people in the ‘super-aged’ context of Japan often focus on novel technologies in development, such as service robots, AI devices or automated vehicles. Very little research exists on how Japanese people are engaging with these technologies for self-care or the care of others. In this article, we draw on our ethnographic research with Japanese families engaging in digitised self-care and intergenerational care to show how more mundane and well-established digital media and devices – such as the LINE message app, digital games and self-tracking apps – are contributing to digital kinship, mediated co-presences and care relations. We argue that these practices involve enactments of care that are benevolent and intimate forms of datafication and dataveillance that have emerged in response to the recent disruption of traditional face-to-face forms of health care and family relationships in Japan.
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Keeley, James F. "Toward a Foucauldian analysis of international regimes." International Organization 44, no. 1 (1990): 83–105. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0020818300004653.

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The liberal approach to international regimes is attractive in the development of that concept because it deploys a well-developed and rigorous set of analytic devices in the form of rational actor models. However, it also assumes that regimes are benevolent, voluntary, cooperative, and legitimate associations of actors, which unnecessarily limits theregime concept and encourages an ideological and apologetic position with respect to regimes. Following a critique of the liberal approach, this article suggests an alternative based on a fundamental assumption of contestability in regimes. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault which culminates in the concept of “power/knowledge,” it regards international regimes as attempts to define, order, and act within international public spaces. It also regards international regimes as loci and foci of struggle. Some aspects of this conceptualization are sketched in preliminary form, and a brief illustration in the area of nuclear nonproliferation is provided.
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Holmes, Sophie Nilusha, and Jan Illing. "Breaking bad news: tackling cultural dilemmas." BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care 11, no. 2 (March 24, 2021): 128–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjspcare-2020-002700.

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AbstractRequesting that serious diagnoses be concealed from patients, a widespread phenomenon in many cultures, presents a professional dilemma. Practical and sensitive communication strategies are needed.MethodologyIn this paper, we use analysis of the existing literature to develop a communication tool for practitioners facing requests for diagnostic non-disclosure. Our approach builds on existing strategies, in providing a mnemonic communication tool, permitting more than one outcome, and focusing on the need for mutual understanding and cooperation.ResultsExisting work on this dilemma highlights the need to appreciate the family's standpoint, affirm their benevolent intentions and correct misperceptions. To this end, we have developed a mnemonic tool, 'ARCHES', to be used in situations where the family has requested diagnostic non-disclosure. The model has six stages: acknowledge the request for non-disclosure, build the relationship, find common ground, honour the patient's preferences and outline the harm of non-disclosure, provide emotional support and devise a supportive solution.ConclusionFacing requests for diagnostic non-disclosure is a challenge of communication. The dilemma is particularly marked when practising across cultures. Our model gives a structure for building rapport with the family and realigning their misperceptions while upholding the patient's right to knowledge.
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Mavoa, Jane, Simon Coghlan, and Bjørn Nansen. "“It’s About Safety Not Snooping”: Parental Attitudes to Child Tracking Technologies and Geolocation Data." Surveillance & Society 21, no. 1 (March 16, 2023): 45–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.24908/ss.v21i1.15719.

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Families are increasingly using new apps and devices that provide detailed information about the location and activities of children and other family members. While typically performed for benevolent reasons such as maintaining child safety, tracking technologies like Life360 and Find My iPhone raise concerns about snooping and surveillance. This paper examines parental behaviours and attitudes towards this controversial practice via an online survey that collected 112 responses from parents of children aged 5–18. A significant number of parents reported using tracking tools. Parents’ views about the practice were sometimes ambivalent and in disagreement. Perspectives variously included: defending geo-tracking as conducive to child wellbeing and family management and logistics, contesting the language of surveillance used to describe it, and opposing the use of these technologies as antithetical to child independence and choice. After exploring such themes, the paper identifies and critically discusses the socio-ethical issues of changing family norms associated with powerful child monitoring technology, child autonomy and consent, and the normalisation of geo-tracking and surveillance. The discussion employs Helen Nissenbaum’s (2009) concept of contextual integrity to evaluate family and child privacy and to illuminate the socio-ethical complexity of this evolving technological practice.
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Song, Yi, Xuesong Lu, Sadegh Nobari, Stéphane Bressan, and Panagiotis Karras. "On the Privacy and Utility of Anonymized Social Networks." International Journal of Adaptive, Resilient and Autonomic Systems 4, no. 2 (April 2013): 1–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/jaras.2013040101.

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One is either on Facebook or not. Of course, this assessment is controversial and its rationale arguable. It is nevertheless not far, for many, from the reason behind joining social media and publishing and sharing details of their professional and private lives. Not only the personal details that may be revealed, but also the structure of the networks are sources of invaluable information for any organization wanting to understand and learn about social groups, their dynamics and members. These organizations may or may not be benevolent. It is important to devise, design and evaluate solutions that guarantee some privacy. One approach that reconciles the different stakeholders’ requirement is the publication of a modified graph. The perturbation is hoped to be sufficient to protect members’ privacy while it maintains sufficient utility for analysts wanting to study the social media as a whole. In this paper, the authors try to empirically quantify the inevitable trade-off between utility and privacy. They do so for two state-of-the-art graph anonymization algorithms that protect against most structural attacks, the k-automorphism algorithm and the k-degree anonymity algorithm. The authors measure several metrics for a series of real graphs from various social media before and after their anonymization under various settings.
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Bowen, Gordon, and Richard Bowen. "Differences and Similarities." International Journal of Online Marketing 6, no. 1 (January 2016): 54–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijom.2016010104.

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Social media is a pervasive platform, and consumers increasingly want to connect with it. The growth of mobile devices has increased connectivity to social media, but accessing social media platforms has uncovered interesting results with gender differences between males and females. Trust models have evolved to take account of website interactivity, website environment design, and brand effect on brand trust. Themes on ability, benevolence, integrity, and predictability are also influencers on brand trust. Increasing access to social media is changing attitudes and behaviour to challenge established social and behavioural norms. Brands in the online and offline environments are exposed to risks, but the sheer level of interactivity and connectedness of social media increases the consequence of negative responses. However, the use of brand communities could be a way forward to negate the risk of brand contamination.
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Bawa, Seema. "Visualising the Rāmayāṇa: Power, Redemption and Emotion in Early Narrative Sculptures (c. Fifth to Sixth Centuries CE)." Indian Historical Review 45, no. 1 (June 2018): 92–123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0376983617748000.

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This article seeks to explore the images based on the Rāmayāna tradition within archaeological, cultural and literary contexts in late fifth and early sixth century ce. It uncovers elements of politico-religious agency, art and historical knowledge. Narrative panels, spatially located largely in central and north India, narrativise the episodes set in the forest represented in the Aranya and Kiskindhākānda. Evolution of narrative complexities through placement, composition and representational devices in terracotta and stone relief sculptures at sites such as Nachna Kuthara and Deogarh is traced. Rāma’s idealised character, expressed through renunciation, benevolence, ameliorative power, authority and dharma, emerges within the physical and emotional landscape of Rāmayāna imagery. Ideal and deviant behaviour is represented through narratives based on Ahalya, Anusuyā, Śūrpanakhā, Vālin and such characters. The construction of the ‘other’ in form of monkeys and demons, vānaras and rāksasas, in the visual discourse, and the fascination with devotion, romance and heroism that is projected through these is seen as a thread that runs through the Rāmayāna narratives.
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Shuruhnov, Nikolay, Nikolay Mereckiy, and Vladimir Ishigeev. "Some Causes and Conditions of Manifest Excesses of Authority by Penitentiary Employees: Unlawful Acts Against Inmates." Russian Journal of Criminology 13, no. 5 (October 31, 2019): 772–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.17150/2500-4255.2019.13(5).772-781.

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The authors examine the legal preconditions and the actual grounds for the specific relations between the representatives of penitentiary administration and persons serving sentences or persons remanded in custody. They point out some causes for the antagonism of these groups and pay attention to historical documents containing ethical and legal norms that prescribe benevolent relations between citizens in different legal and actual conditions. Thus, the authors discuss some clauses of the Manifest on Duels of April 21, 1787 and the Instruction to the Regional Supervisors of the Prison Castle of April 9, 1831 prepared by the members of the Council of the Ministry of the Interior in Tsarist Russia. They also comment on some norms of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, Federal Laws and instructions, according to which the work of officials in the penitentiary system is based on the principles of legality, humanism, and respect for human rights. The authors draw attention to human rights protected by international and inter-continental legal documents, and the observance of inmates’ human rights by administrations of temporary detention facilities, pre-trial detention facilities, pre-trial detention regime wards, and correctional institutions. It is noted that this observance is controlled by different authorized agencies. The authors present statistical data for different periods that reflect the number of cases of justified use of physical force and special devices by penitentiary administrations against persons held in isolation, the number of cases of unlawful acts of officers against inmates, as well as the number of initiated criminal cases. They enumerate and thoroughly examine the causes of unlawful use of physical force and special devices against inmates. Some of the presented causes are proved by the analysis of specific criminal cases, courts’ verdicts, and analytical reports of Russian Federal Penitentiary Service. The authors attempt to present a brief prediction of the causes and conditions that will influence the future state of this problem.
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AbuSulayman, 'AbdulHamid A. "Guiding Light." American Journal of Islam and Society 3, no. 1 (September 1, 1986): 10–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v3i1.2901.

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TranslationIn the name of Allah, most benevolent, ever-merciful.God has promised, to thoseamong you who believeand work righteous deeds, that Hewill, of a surety grant themin the Land, inheritance(of power), as He granted itto those before them; thatHe will establish in authoritytheir religion- the onewhich He has chosen for them;And that He will change(their state), after the fearin which they (lived), to oneof security and peace:'They will worship Me (alone)and not associate aught with Me.'If any do reject Faithafter this, they arerebellious and wicked. Surah XXIV.55In this Qur'anic verse, Allah points out the three basic conditions for nationsto gain leadership and establish civilization on earth. These three are:1) clarity of vision and commitment to goals (Iman); 2) determination to translalatevisioninto action through appropriate means ('Amal); and 3) objectivityin assessing challenges and opportunities in order to devise and carry outstrategies and tactics best suited to produce the desired results in accordancewith the Laws of Creation (Salih).It is clear from this verse that Khilafah and the establishment of the MuslimUmmah as the leader of humanity and human civilization have to satisfy thesethree conditions of a clear commitment and a strategy based on a comprehensiveunderstanding of Islam. This Imam has to motivate action. Establishmentof the rule of the Ummah and the Khilafa can never be accomplished accordmgto this verse unless the Ummah's actions are based on objective assessmentsof what can be done and on the objective development and pursuit of goalsand objectives (Salih) ...
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Martínez-Muñoz, Enrique, Arturo Sánchez-Sánchez, and Cruz García-Lirios. "Modelling Organizational Violence in the Covid-19 Era." Neuroscience and Neurological Surgery 11, no. 3 (February 21, 2022): 01–06. http://dx.doi.org/10.31579/2578-8868/194.

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In the context of organizations and their relationship with the increasingly competitive environment, leaders have been pressured to establish control systems in which the differences between employees are exacerbated since, in the absence of labor competencies, these are They are intended to substitute for acts of loyalty to the company that lead to violence towards those who are the culprits of poor performance or are not seen as part of a working group. This is how organizational violence is justified within collaborative teams, as would be the case of Higher Education Institutions where the phenomenon is exacerbated with the emergence of electronic technologies, devices, and networks. The objective of this study was to establish the reliability and validity of an instrument that measures organizational violence. A non-experimental, cross-sectional, and confirmatory study was carried out with a non- probabilistic selection of 100 students from a public university in central Mexico. The results in general show that organizational violence would be made up of eight factors such as: prejudice, depersonalization, benevolence, harassment, subjugation, objectification, stigma, and harassment, which show the limits of the study and guidelines of research concerning equity.
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Guillén, Javier Carreón, Francisco Espinoza Morales, and Cruz García Lirios. "Validity Of Scale Organizational Violence In The Covid-19 Era." Jurnal Ilmu Sosial, Manajemen, Akuntansi dan Bisnis 4, no. 1 (April 7, 2023): 1–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.47747/jismab.v4i1.1006.

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In the context of organizations and their relationship with the increasingly competitive environment, leaders have been pressured to establish control systems in which the differences between employees are exacerbated since, in the absence of labor competencies, these are They are intended to substitute for acts of loyalty to the company that lead to violence towards those who are the culprits of poor performance or are not seen as part of a working group. This is how organizational violence is justified within collaborative teams, as would be the case of Higher Education Institutions where the phenomenon is exacerbated with the emergence of electronic technologies, devices, and networks. The objective of this study was to establish the reliability and validity of an instrument that measures organizational violence. A non-experimental, cross-sectional, and confirmatory study was carried out with a selection of 100 students from a public university in central Mexico. The results show that organizational violence would be made up of eight factors: prejudice, depersonalization, benevolence, harassment, subjugation, objectification, stigma, and harassment, which show the limits of the study and guidelines of research concerning equity.
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Barak Ventura, Roni, Kora Stewart Hughes, Oded Nov, Preeti Raghavan, Manuel Ruiz Marín, and Maurizio Porfiri. "Data-Driven Classification of Human Movements in Virtual Reality–Based Serious Games: Preclinical Rehabilitation Study in Citizen Science." JMIR Serious Games 10, no. 1 (February 10, 2022): e27597. http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/27597.

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Background Sustained engagement is essential for the success of telerehabilitation programs. However, patients’ lack of motivation and adherence could undermine these goals. To overcome this challenge, physical exercises have often been gamified. Building on the advantages of serious games, we propose a citizen science–based approach in which patients perform scientific tasks by using interactive interfaces and help advance scientific causes of their choice. This approach capitalizes on human intellect and benevolence while promoting learning. To further enhance engagement, we propose performing citizen science activities in immersive media, such as virtual reality (VR). Objective This study aims to present a novel methodology to facilitate the remote identification and classification of human movements for the automatic assessment of motor performance in telerehabilitation. The data-driven approach is presented in the context of a citizen science software dedicated to bimanual training in VR. Specifically, users interact with the interface and make contributions to an environmental citizen science project while moving both arms in concert. Methods In all, 9 healthy individuals interacted with the citizen science software by using a commercial VR gaming device. The software included a calibration phase to evaluate the users’ range of motion along the 3 anatomical planes of motion and to adapt the sensitivity of the software’s response to their movements. During calibration, the time series of the users’ movements were recorded by the sensors embedded in the device. We performed principal component analysis to identify salient features of movements and then applied a bagged trees ensemble classifier to classify the movements. Results The classification achieved high performance, reaching 99.9% accuracy. Among the movements, elbow flexion was the most accurately classified movement (99.2%), and horizontal shoulder abduction to the right side of the body was the most misclassified movement (98.8%). Conclusions Coordinated bimanual movements in VR can be classified with high accuracy. Our findings lay the foundation for the development of motion analysis algorithms in VR-mediated telerehabilitation.
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Šmelcerović, Miodrag. "IMPACT OF HYDROPOWER PLANT ON CLIMATE CHANGE." Knowledge International Journal 34, no. 3 (October 4, 2019): 651–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.35120/kij3403651s.

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Ocean waves are an immense, unused source of energy. Since for climate change, global attention is nowadays constantly being drawn to the fact that the level of CO2 is rising, creating the so called “greenhouse effect”, and influencing further climate changes, the focus on generating electricity from renewable sources forces itself as an important area of future research. The possibility to exploit the energy potential created by sea waves indisputably exists. Various researches conducted in the field of unused energy sources prove the necessity of seriously considering this potential of sea waves. The illustration of this point in noted in a recently performed estimation that up to 15 per cent of current UK electricity demand could be met by wave energy, and when this is combined with tidal stream generation, even up to 20 per cent of the UK demand for electrical power could be met. This paper introduces the readers to the topic of water power, as a natural source of renewable energy, investigating the possibility of using power of waves as one of the technically and ecologically appropriate solutions of exploiting this renewable natural source. It is a fact widely acknowledged that climate change and global warming are the number-one challenge of the contemporary world; practically every available research predicts that with the current rate of development the world is heading for at least 2, and even more likely 3-4, degrees warmer climate by the end of this century. As energy production and use account for two-thirds of global greenhouse-gas emissions, the energy industry is in a key role to cut emissions – while powering economic growth, boosting energy security and increasing energy access. In view of this, hydropower can make a major contribution to climate change mitigation. Not only is hydropower practically CO₂-free, thus eliminating its possible contribution to the greenhouse effect, but it is also both more efficient and flexible compared with existing fossil alternatives for base load and balancing power. Even though the world is aware of the potential of hydropower, and despite the fact that many wave energy devices are nowadays being investigated, most of these are currently at the research and development stage, with only a small range of devices having been tested at large scale, deployed in the oceans. Thus, one of the goals of this paper would be to present the technology used to turn the power of waves unto electric power, as well as the various types of turbines and devices which represent the latest technological achievements in this area. The goal of this paper is also to present the existing devices, their manner of functioning, and their efficiency and safety from the environmental aspect. It is also important to note that hydropower’s own overall environmental impact is limited, thus making hydropower more benevolent to the environment than other energy sources that have been exploited so far.
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Ramirez-Marin, Jimena Yolanda, and Saïd Shafa. "Social rewards: the basis for collaboration in honor cultures." Cross Cultural & Strategic Management 25, no. 1 (February 5, 2018): 53–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ccsm-10-2016-0180.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to define social rewards, as acts and expressions which specifically signal respect, courtesy and benevolence to the other party, based on cultural scripts found in honor cultures. Second, to explore whether social rewards mitigate competitive aspirations and foster collaboration in competitive settings, with honor values being a culturally relevant mechanism for this effect. Design/methodology/approach This paper reports on two experiments assessing high-honor and low-honor culture participants’ aspirations and behavioral decisions. In study 1, participants described a personal situation where they were praised by close others (social reward) or praised themselves (control condition), before responding to a buyer/seller negotiation scenario. In study 2, participants were either complimented (social reward) or not complimented (control condition), before engaging in live competition with a confederate for monetary outcomes. Findings Both studies indicate that social rewards diminish competitive aspirations and offers among high-honor culture participants, but not among low-honor culture participants. Results of study 1 indicate that endorsement of honor values mediates this effect. In conclusion, social rewards can improve interactions with members of honor cultures. Research limitations/implications These studies advance our understanding of cultural differences in negotiations and provide insight into social rewards as one of the mechanisms necessary to successfully manage intercultural negotiations and collaboration. Future research should address the effect of social rewards on self-worth and empowerment. Originality/value This research is the first to shed light on the relevance and importance of social rewards as a device to facilitate social interactions in honor cultures.
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Zengeya, Tsitsi, Paul Sambo, and Nyasha Mabika. "Trust in the Adoption of Internet of Things for Smart Agriculture in Developing Countries." International Journal of Distributed and Parallel systems 12, no. 05 (September 30, 2021): 11–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.5121/ijdps.2021.12502.

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Trust in online environments is based on beliefs in the trustworthiness of a trustee, which is composed of three distinct dimensions - integrity, ability, and benevolence. Zimbabwe has slowly adopted Internet of Things for smart agriculture as a way of improving on food security in the country, though there is hesitancy by most farmers citing trust issues as monitoring of crops, animals and farm equipment’s would be done online through connecting several devices and accessing data. Farmers are facing difficulties in trusting that the said technology has the ability to perform as expected in a specific situation or to complete a required task, i.e. if the technology will work consistently and reliably in monitoring the environment, nutrients, temperatures and equipment status. The integrity of the collected data as it will be used for decision making. There is a growing need to determine how trust in the technology influence the adoption of IoT for smart agriculture in Zimbabwe. The mixed methodology was used to gather data from 50 A2 model farmers randomly sampled in Zimbabwe. The findings revealed that McKnight etal. trust in technology model can be used to influence the adoption of IoT through trusting that the technology will be reliable and will operate as expected.Additional constructs such as security and distrust of technology can be used as reference for future research.
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Roy, Anurag, Aritra Ghosh, Shubhranshu Bhandari, Senthilarasu Sundaram, and Tapas K. Mallick. "Perovskite Solar Cells for BIPV Application: A Review." Buildings 10, no. 7 (July 13, 2020): 129. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/buildings10070129.

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The rapid efficiency enhancement of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) make it a promising photovoltaic (PV) research, which has now drawn attention from industries and government organizations to invest for further development of PSC technology. PSC technology continuously develops into new and improved results. However, stability, toxicity, cost, material production and fabrication become the significant factors, which limits the expansion of PSCs. PSCs integration into a building in the form of building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) is one of the most holistic approaches to exploit it as a next-generation PV technology. Integration of high efficiency and semi-transparent PSC in BIPV is still not a well-established area. The purpose of this review is to get an overview of the relative scope of PSCs integration in the BIPV sector. This review demonstrates the benevolence of PSCs by stimulating energy conversion and its perspective and gradual evolution in terms of photovoltaic applications to address the challenge of increasing energy demand and their environmental impacts for BIPV adaptation. Understanding the critical impact regarding the materials and devices established portfolio for PSC integration BIPV are also discussed. In addition to highlighting the apparent advantages of using PSCs in terms of their demand, perspective and the limitations, challenges, new strategies of modification and relative scopes are also addressed in this review.
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Šmelcerović, Miodrag, and Pavle Trpeski. "ECONOMIC VIABILITY OF THE HYDROPOWER PLANTS OF THE FUTURE." KNOWLEDGE - International Journal 47, no. 1 (August 16, 2021): 191–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.35120/kij4701191s.

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The impact of hydropower plants on the environment varies greatly, depending on site-specific mitigation measures and production strategies: if badly managed, hydropower production can reduce biodiversity and can significantly degrade fluvial ecosystems and associated ecosystem services.Ocean waves are an immense, unused source of energy. Since global attention is nowadays constantly being drawn to the fact that the level of CO2 is rising, creating the so called “greenhouse effect”, and influencing further climate changes, the focus on generating electricity from renewable sources forces itself as an important area of future research. The possibility to exploit the energy potential created by sea waves indisputably exists. Various researches conducted in the field of unused energy sources prove the necessity of seriously considering this potential of sea waves. The illustration of this point in noted in a recently performed estimation that up to 15 per cent of current UK electricity demand could be met by wave energy, and when this is combined with tidal stream generation, even up to 20 per cent of the UK demand for electrical power could be met. This paper introduces the readers to the topic of water power, as a natural source of renewable energy, investigating the possibility of using power of waves as one of the technically and ecologically appropriate solutions of exploiting this renewable natural source. It is a fact widely acknowledged that climate change and global warming are the number-one challenge of the contemporary world; practically every available research predicts that with the current rate of development the world is heading for at least 2, and even more likely 3-4, degrees warmer climate by the end of this century. As energy production and use account for two-thirds of global greenhouse-gas emissions, the energy industry is in a key role to cut emissions – while powering economic growth, boosting energy security and increasing energy access. In view of this, hydropower can make a major contribution to climate change mitigation. Not only is hydropower practically CO₂-free, thus eliminating its possible contribution to the greenhouse effect, but it is also both more efficient and flexible compared with existing fossil alternatives for base load and balancing power. Even though the world is aware of the potential of hydropower, and despite the fact that many wave energy devices are nowadays being investigated, most of these are currently at the research and development stage, with only a small range of devices having been tested at large scale, deployed in the oceans. Thus, one of the goals of this paper would be to present the technology used to turn the power of waves unto electric power, as well as the various types of turbines and devices which represent the latest technological achievements in this area. The goal of this paper is also to present the existing devices, their manner of functioning, and their efficiency and safety from the environmental aspect. It is also important to note that hydropower’s own overall environmental impact is limited, thus making hydropower more benevolent to the environment than other energy sources that have been exploited so far.
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Ismunandar, Ismunandar, and Mulyadin Mulyadin. "The Effect of Trust Dimension to E-Commerce Costumers Participation (Case Study to E-Commerce Costumers in Bima City)." JURNAL TERAPAN MANAJEMEN DAN BISNIS 4, no. 2 (September 1, 2018): 138. http://dx.doi.org/10.26737/jtmb.v4i2.833.

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Transactions through e-commerce have a high potential risk. Therefore, the trust factor of customers towards the vendor becomes a key factor in e-commerce. Indonesia as a developing country and about the last five years adopted e-commerce, absolutely, has some differences with developed countries that have been long practicing it. These differences are at least related to regulatory issues, legal device, and consumer behavior. In relation to the e-commerce practice in Bima city that is still relatively new, the interesting phenomenon to be studied is the extent to which customers trust and how it affects the level of customer participation in e-commerce. The aims of this research are (1) to analyze the effect of the trust dimension variable which includes ability, virtue, and integrity to Indonesian costumers participation; (2) As information about the trust dimension of costumers e-commerce in Bima city, so the company can choose the right strategy to improve trust and people participation in using e-commerce as a future business transaction system. The study has been conducting in Bima city for 1 year from December 2017 to December 2018. This research is divided into several steps, namely 1) Preparation (2) Implementation, (3) Reporting, (4) Monitoring, evaluation, and dissemination. The technique of data collection used in this study that is (1) Questionnaire, (2) Observation, (3) Study book. Technique of Data Collection used is multiple regression analysis using equation, that is: Y = a + b1x1 + b2x2 + b3x3. The results of the study concluded that the dimensions of trust, ability, and benevolence have a positive and significant effect on the participation of e-commerce customers in Bima City. While variable integrity does not have a positive and significant effect. Meanwhile, testing these three variables together has a positive and significant influence.
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Dehghanpour, Ali, and Zeinab Rezvani. "The profile of unethical insurance customers: a European perspective." International Journal of Bank Marketing 33, no. 3 (May 18, 2015): 298–315. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ijbm-12-2013-0143.

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Purpose – Although perceived as a wrong act, insurance fraud is a prevalent phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to understand the psychological factors that lead to reporting an exaggerated/false insurance claim would enable insurance companies and policy makers to devise better preventive policies. Design/methodology/approach – Utilizing data-driven clustering techniques on psychological and demographic measures from 985 insurance customers in Europe, this study outlines profiles of segments of customers as it relates to dishonesty in dealing with insurance companies. The segmentation criteria include attitude toward insurance fraud, perceived probability of punishment, basic human values and morals, religiosity, life satisfaction and demographic characteristics. Findings – Results reveal the existence of four market segments. The segments include non-conservatives (sensitive to both perception of wrong behavior and the monetary payoff for a fraudulent claim), self-protectionists (sensitive to the probability of being caught), hedonists (sensitive to the personal pleasure and monetary payoffs for insurance fraud) and socially focused individuals (sensitive to social norms regarding admitting to having committed insurance fraud). Among the demographic variables, only education and among psychological variables, universalism, hedonism, security, conformity, tradition, benevolence, moral philosophy, religiosity, perceived probability of punishment and attitude toward insurance fraud were significantly different among the four identified segments. Practical implications – Specific policies are proposed in order to prevent insurance fraud, tailored to the specific profile of each segment. Originality/value – Using a psychological perspective and a data-driven methodology, this study identifies four heterogeneous segments of unethical insurance customers with dissimilar values, attitudes toward fraud and perception of punishment probability.
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Andersen, Harald. "Nu bli’r der ballade." Kuml 50, no. 50 (August 1, 2001): 7–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/kuml.v50i50.103098.

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We’ll have trouble now!The Archaeological Society of Jutland was founded on Sunday, 11 March 1951. As with most projects with which P.V Glob was involved, this did not pass off without drama. Museum people and amateur archaeologists in large numbers appeared at the Museum of Natural History in Aarhus, which had placed rooms at our disposal. The notable dentist Holger Friis, the uncrowned king of Hjørring, was present, as was Dr Balslev from Aidt, Mr and Mrs Overgaard from Holstebro Museum, and the temperamental leader of Aalborg Historical Museum, Peter Riismøller, with a number of his disciples. The staff of the newly-founded Prehistoric Museum functioned as the hosts, except that one of them was missing: the instigator of the whole enterprise, Mr Glob. As the time for the meeting approached, a cold sweat broke out on the foreheads of the people present. Finally, just one minute before the meeting was to start, he arrived and mounted the platform. Everything then went as expected. An executive committee was elected after some discussion, laws were passed, and then suddenly Glob vanished again, only to materialise later in the museum, where he confided to us that his family, which included four children, had been enlarged by a daughter.That’s how the society was founded, and there is not much to add about this. However, a few words concerning the background of the society and its place in a larger context may be appropriate. A small piece of museum history is about to be unfolded.The story begins at the National Museum in the years immediately after World War II, at a time when the German occupation and its incidents were still terribly fresh in everyone’s memory. Therkel Mathiassen was managing what was then called the First Department, which covered the prehistoric periods.Although not sparkling with humour, he was a reliable and benevolent person. Number two in the order of precedence was Hans Christian Broholm, a more colourful personality – awesome as he walked down the corridors, with his massive proportions and a voice that sounded like thunder when nothing seemed to be going his way, as quite often seemed to be the case. Glob, a relatively new museum keeper, was also quite loud at times – his hot-blooded artist’s nature manifested itself in peculiar ways, but his straight forward appearance made him popular with both the older and the younger generations. His somewhat younger colleague C.J. Becker was a scholar to his fingertips, and he sometimes acted as a welcome counterbalance to Glob. At the bottom of the hierarchy was the student group, to which I belonged. The older students handled various tasks, including periodic excavations. This was paid work, and although the salary was by no means princely, it did keep us alive. Student grants were non-existent at the time. Four of us made up a team: Olfert Voss, Mogens Ørsnes, Georg Kunwald and myself. Like young people in general, we were highly discontented with the way our profession was being run by its ”ruling” members, and we were full of ideas for improvement, some of which have later been – or are being – introduced.At the top of our wish list was a central register, of which Voss was the strongest advocate. During the well over one hundred years that archaeology had existed as a professional discipline, the number of artefacts had grown to enormous amounts. The picture was even worse if the collections of the provincial museums were taken into consideration. We imagined how it all could be registered in a card index and categorised according to groups to facilitate access to references in any particular situation. Electronic data processing was still unheard of in those days, but since the introduction of computers, such a comprehensive record has become more feasible.We were also sceptical of the excavation techniques used at the time – they were basically adequate, but they badly needed tightening up. As I mentioned before, we were often working in the field, and not just doing minor jobs but also more important tasks, so we had every opportunity to try out our ideas. Kunwald was the driving force in this respect, working with details, using sections – then a novelty – and proceeding as he did with a thoroughness that even his fellow students found a bit exaggerated at times, although we agreed with his principles. Therkel Mathiassen moaned that we youngsters were too expensive, but he put up with our excesses and so must have found us somewhat valuable. Very valuable indeed to everyon e was Ejnar Dyggve’s excavation of the Jelling mounds in the early 1940s. From a Danish point of view, it was way ahead of its time.Therkel Mathiassen justly complained about the economic situation of the National Museum. Following the German occupation, the country was impoverished and very little money was available for archaeological research: the total sum available for the year 1949 was 20,000 DKK, which corresponded to the annual income of a wealthy man, and was of course absolutely inadequate. Of course our small debating society wanted this sum to be increased, and for once we didn’t leave it at the theoretical level.Voss was lucky enough to know a member of the Folketing (parliament), and a party leader at that. He was brought into the picture, and between us we came up with a plan. An article was written – ”Preserve your heritage” (a quotation from Johannes V. Jensen’s Denmark Song) – which was sent to the newspaper Information. It was published, and with a little help on our part the rest of the media, including radio, picked up the story.We informed our superiors only at the last minute, when everything was arranged. They were taken by surprise but played their parts well, as expected, and everything went according to plan. The result was a considerable increase in excavation funds the following year.It should be added that our reform plans included the conduct of exhibitions. We found the traditional way of presenting the artefacts lined up in rows and series dull and outdated. However, we were not able to experiment within this field.Our visions expressed the natural collision with the established ways that comes with every new generation – almost as a law of nature, but most strongly when the time is ripe. And this was just after the war, when communication with foreign colleagues, having been discontinued for some years, was slowly picking up again. The Archaeological Society of Jutland was also a part of all this, so let us turn to what Hans Christian Andersen somewhat provocatively calls the ”main country”.Until 1949, only the University of Copenhagen provided a degree in prehistoric archaeology. However, in this year, the University of Aarhus founded a chair of archaeology, mainly at the instigation of the Lord Mayor, Svend Unmack Larsen, who was very in terested in archaeology. Glob applied for the position and obtained it, which encompassed responsibility for the old Aarhus Museum or, as it was to be renamed, the Prehistoric Museum (now Moesgaard Museum).These were landmark events to Glob – and to me, as it turned out. We had been working together for a number of years on the excavation of Galgebakken (”Callows Hill”) near Slots Bjergby, Glob as the excavation leader, and I as his assistant. He now offered me the job of museum curator at his new institution. This was somewhat surprising as I had not yet finished my education. The idea was that I was to finish my studies in remote Jutland – a plan that had to be given up rather quickly, though, for reasons which I will describe in the following. At the same time, Gunner Lange-Kornbak – also hand-picked from the National Museum – took up his office as a conservation officer.The three of us made up the permanent museum staff, quickly supplemented by Geoffrey Bibby, who turned out to be an invaluable colleague. He was English and had been stationed in the Faeroe Islands during the war, where he learned to speak Danish. After 1945 he worked for some years for an oil company in the Gulf of Persia, but after marrying Vibeke, he settled in her home town of Aarhus. As his academic background had involved prehistoric cultures he wanted to collaborate with the museum, which Glob readily permitted.This small initial flock governed by Glob was not permitted to indulge inidleness. Glob was a dynamic character, full of good and not so good ideas, but also possessing a good grasp of what was actually practicable. The boring but necessary daily work on the home front was not very interesting to him, so he willingly handed it over to others. He hardly noticed the lack of administrative machinery, a prerequisite for any scholarly museum. It was not easy to follow him on his flights of fancy and still build up the necessary support base. However, the fact that he in no way spared himself had an appeasing effect.Provincial museums at that time were of a mixed nature. A few had trained management, and the rest were run by interested locals. This was often excellently done, as in Esbjerg, where the master joiner Niels Thomsen and a staff of volunteers carried out excavations that were as good as professional investigations, and published them in well-written articles. Regrettably, there were also examples of the opposite. A museum curator in Jutland informed me that his predecessor had been an eager excavator but very rarely left any written documentation of his actions. The excavated items were left without labels in the museum store, often wrapped in newspapers. However, these gave a clue as to the time of unearthing, and with a bit of luck a look in the newspaper archive would then reveal where the excavation had taken place. Although somewhat exceptional, this is not the only such case.The Museum of Aarhus definitely belonged among the better ones in this respect. Founded in 1861, it was at first located at the then town hall, together with the local art collection. The rooms here soon became too cramped, and both collections were moved to a new building in the ”Mølleparken” park. There were skilful people here working as managers and assistants, such as Vilhelm Boye, who had received his archaeological training at the National Museum, and later the partners A. Reeh, a barrister, and G.V. Smith, a captain, who shared the honour of a number of skilfully performed excavations. Glob’s predecessor as curator was the librarian Ejler Haugsted, also a competent man of fine achievements. We did not, thus, take over a museum on its last legs. On the other hand, it did not meet the requirements of a modern scholarly museum. We were given the task of turning it into such a museum, as implied by the name change.The goal was to create a museum similar to the National Museum, but without the faults and shortcomings that that museum had developed over a period of time. In this respect our nightly conversations during our years in Copenhagen turned out to be useful, as our talk had focused on these imperfections and how to eradicate them.We now had the opportunity to put our theories into practice. We may not have succeeded in doing so, but two areas were essentially improved:The numerous independent numbering systems, which were familiar to us from the National Museum, were permeating archaeological excavation s not only in the field but also during later work at the museum. As far as possible this was boiled down to a single system, and a new type of report was born. (In this context, a ”report” is the paper following a field investigation, comprising drawings, photos etc. and describing the progress of the work and the observations made.) The instructions then followed by the National Museum staff regarding the conduct of excavations and report writing went back to a 19th-century protocol by the employee G.V. Blom. Although clear and rational – and a vast improvement at the time – this had become outdated. For instance, the excavation of a burial mound now involved not only the middle of the mound, containing the central grave and its surrounding artefacts, but the complete structure. A large number of details that no one had previously paid attention to thus had to be included in the report. It had become a comprehensive and time-consuming work to sum up the desultory notebook records in a clear and understandable description.The instructions resulting from the new approach determined a special records system that made it possible to transcribe the notebook almost directly into a report following the excavation. The transcription thus contained all the relevant information concerning the in vestigation, and included both relics and soil layers, the excavation method and practical matters, although in a random order. The report proper could then bereduced to a short account containing references to the numbers in the transcribed notebook, which gave more detailed information.As can be imagined, the work of reform was not a continuous process. On the contrary, it had to be done in our spare hours, which were few and far between with an employer like Glob. The assignments crowded in, and the large Jutland map that we had purchased was as studded with pins as a hedge hog’s spines. Each pin represented an inuninent survey, and many of these grew into small or large excavations. Glob himself had his lecture duties to perform, and although he by no means exaggerated his concern for the students, he rarely made it further than to the surveys. Bibby and I had to deal with the hard fieldwork. And the society, once it was established, did not make our lives any easier. Kuml demanded articles written at lightning speed. A perusal of my then diary has given me a vivid recollection of this hectic period, in which I had to make use of the evening and night hours, when the museum was quiet and I had a chance to collect my thoughts. Sometimes our faithful supporter, the Lord Mayor, popped in after an evening meeting. He was extremely interested in our problems, which were then solved according to our abilities over a cup of instant coffee.A large archaeological association already existed in Denmark. How ever, Glob found it necessary to establish another one which would be less oppressed by tradition. Det kongelige nordiske Oldsskriftselskab had been funded in 1825 and was still influenced by different peculiarities from back then. Membership was not open to everyone, as applications were subject to recommendation from two existing members and approval by a vote at one of the monthly lecture meetings. Most candidates were of course accepted, but unpopular persons were sometimes rejected. In addition, only men were admitted – women were banned – but after the war a proposal was brought forward to change this absurdity. It was rejected at first, so there was a considerable excitement at the January meeting in 1951, when the proposal was once again placed on the agenda. The poor lecturer (myself) did his best, although he was aware of the fact that just this once it was the present and not the past which was the focus of attention. The result of the voting was not very courteous as there were still many opponents, but the ladies were allowed in, even if they didn’t get the warmest welcome.In Glob’s society there were no such restrictions – everyone was welcome regardless of sex or age. If there was a model for the society, it was the younger and more progressive Norwegian Archaeological Society rather than the Danish one. The main purpose of both societies was to produce an annual publication, and from the start Glob’s Kuml had a closer resemblance to the Norwegian Viking than to the Danish Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie. The name of the publication caused careful consideration. For a long time I kept a slip of paper with different proposals, one of which was Kuml, which won after having been approved by the linguist Peter Skautrup.The name alone, however, was not enough, so now the task became to find so mething to fill Kuml with. To this end the finds came in handy, and as for those, Glob must have allied him self with the higher powers, since fortune smiled at him to a considerable extent. Just after entering upon his duties in Aarhus, an archaeological sensation landed at his feet. This happened in May 1950 when I was still living in the capital. A few of us had planned a trip to Aarhus, partly to look at the relics of th e past, and partly to visit our friend, the professor. He greeted us warmly and told us the exciting news that ten iron swords had been found during drainage work in the valley of lllerup Aadal north of the nearby town of Skanderborg. We took the news calmly as Glob rarely understated his affairs, but our scepticism was misplaced. When we visited the meadow the following day and carefully examined the dug-up soil, another sword appeared, as well as several spear and lance heads, and other iron artefacts. What the drainage trench diggers had found was nothing less than a place of sacrifice for war booty, like the four large finds from the 1800s. When I took up my post in Aarhus in September of that year I was granted responsibility for the lllerup excavation, which I worked on during the autumn and the following six summers. Some of my best memories are associated with this job – an interesting and happy time, with cheerful comradeship with a mixed bunch of helpers, who were mainly archaeology students. When we finished in 1956, it was not because the site had been fully investigated, but because the new owner of the bog plot had an aversion to archaeologists and their activities. Nineteen years later, in 1975, the work was resumed, this time under the leadership of Jørgen Ilkjær, and a large amount of weaponry was uncovered. The report from the find is presently being published.At short intervals, the year 1952 brought two finds of great importance: in Februar y the huge vessel from Braa near Horsens, and in April the Grauballe Man. The large Celtic bronze bowl with the bulls’ heads was found disassembled, buried in a hill and covered by a couple of large stones. Thanks to the finder, the farmer Søren Paaske, work was stopped early enough to leave areas untouched for the subsequent examination.The saga of the Grauballe Man, or the part of it that we know, began as a rumour on the 26th of April: a skeleton had been found in a bog near Silkeborg. On the following day, which happened to be a Sunday, Glob went off to have a look at the find. I had other business, but I arrived at the museum in the evening with an acquaintance. In my diary I wrote: ”When we came in we had a slight shock. On the floor was a peat block with a corpse – a proper, well-preserved bog body. Glob brought it. ”We’ll be in trouble now.” And so we were, and Glob was in high spirits. The find created a sensation, which was also thanks to the quick presentation that we mounted. I had purchased a tape recorder, which cost me a packet – not a small handy one like the ones you get nowadays, but a large monstrosity with a steel tape (it was, after all, early days for this device) – and assisted by several experts, we taped a number of short lectures for the benefit of the visitors. People flocked in; the queue meandered from the exhibition room, through the museum halls, and a long way down the street. It took a long wait to get there, but the visitors seemed to enjoy the experience. The bog man lay in his hastily – procured exhibition case, which people circled around while the talking machine repeatedly expressed its words of wisdom – unfortunately with quite a few interruptions as the tape broke and had to be assembled by hand. Luckily, the tape recorders now often used for exhibitions are more dependable than mine.When the waves had died down and the exhibition ended, the experts examined the bog man. He was x-rayed at several points, cut open, given a tooth inspection, even had his fingerprints taken. During the autopsy there was a small mishap, which we kept to ourselves. However, after almost fifty years I must be able to reveal it: Among the organs removed for investigation was the liver, which was supposedly suitable for a C-14 dating – which at the time was a new dating method, introduced to Denmark after the war. The liver was sent to the laboratory in Copenhagen, and from here we received a telephone call a few days later. What had been sent in for examination was not the liver, but the stomach. The unfortunate (and in all other respects highly competent) Aarhus doctor who had performed the dissection was cal1ed in again. During another visit to the bogman’s inner parts he brought out what he believed to be the real liver. None of us were capable of deciding th is question. It was sent to Copenhagen at great speed, and a while later the dating arrived: Roman Iron Age. This result was later revised as the dating method was improved. The Grauballe Man is now thought to have lived before the birth of Christ.The preservation of the Grauballe Man was to be conservation officer Kornbak’s masterpiece. There were no earlier cases available for reference, so he invented a new method, which was very successful. In the first volumes of Kuml, society members read about the exiting history of the bog body and of the glimpses of prehistoric sacrificial customs that this find gave. They also read about the Bahrain expeditions, which Glob initiated and which became the apple of his eye. Bibby played a central role in this, as it was he who – at an evening gathering at Glob’s and Harriet’s home in Risskov – described his stay on the Persian Gulf island and the numerous burial mounds there. Glob made a quick decision (one of his special abilities was to see possibilities that noone else did, and to carry them out successfully to everyone’s surprise) and in December 1952 he and Bibby left for the Gulf, unaware of the fact that they were thereby beginning a series of expeditions which would continue for decades. Again it was Glob’s special genius that was the decisive factor. He very quickly got on friendly terms with the rulers of the small sheikhdoms and interested them in their past. As everyone knows, oil is flowing plentifully in those parts. The rulers were thus financially powerful and some of this wealth was quickly diverted to the expeditions, which probably would not have survived for so long without this assistance. To those of us who took part in them from time to time, the Gulf expeditions were an unforgettable experience, not just because of the interesting work, but even more because of the contact with the local population, which gave us an insight into local manners and customs that helped to explain parts of our own country’s past which might otherwise be difficult to understand. For Glob and the rest of us did not just get close to the elite: in spite of language problems, our Arab workers became our good friends. Things livened up when we occasionally turned up in their palm huts.Still, co-operating with Glob was not always an easy task – the sparks sometimes flew. His talent of initiating things is of course undisputed, as are the lasting results. He was, however, most attractive when he was in luck. Attention normally focused on this magnificent person whose anecdotes were not taken too seriously, but if something went wrong or failed to work out, he could be grossly unreasonable and a little too willing to abdicate responsibility, even when it was in fact his. This might lead to violent arguments, but peace was always restored. In 1954, another museum curator was attached to the museum: Poul Kjærum, who was immediately given the important task of investigating the dolmen settlement near Tustrup on Northern Djursland. This gave important results, such as the discovery of a cult house, which was a new and hitherto unknown Stone Age feature.A task which had long been on our mind s was finally carried out in 1955: constructing a new display of the museum collections. The old exhibitio n type consisted of numerous artefacts lined up in cases, accompaied ony by a brief note of the place where it was found and the type – which was the standard then. This type of exhibition did not give much idea of life in prehistoric times.We wanted to allow the finds to speak for themselves via the way that they were arranged, and with the aid of models, photos and drawings. We couldn’t do without texts, but these could be short, as people would understand more by just looking at the exhibits. Glob was in the Gulf at the time, so Kjærum and I performed the task with little money but with competent practical help from conservator Kornbak. We shared the work, but in fairness I must add that my part, which included the new lllerup find, was more suitable for an untraditional display. In order to illustrate the confusion of the sacrificial site, the numerous bent swords and other weapons were scattered a.long the back wall of the exhibition hall, above a bog land scape painted by Emil Gregersen. A peat column with inlaid slides illustrated the gradual change from prehistoric lake to bog, while a free-standing exhibition case held a horse’s skeleton with a broken skull, accompanied by sacrificial offerings. A model of the Nydam boat with all its oars sticking out hung from the ceiling, as did the fine copy of the Gundestrup vessel, as the Braa vessel had not yet been preserved. The rich pictorial decoration of the vessel’s inner plates was exhibited in its own case underneath. This was an exhibition form that differed considerably from all other Danish exhibitions of the time, and it quickly set a fashion. We awaited Glob’s homecoming with anticipation – if it wasn’t his exhibition it was still made in his spirit. We hoped that he would be surprised – and he was.The museum was thus taking shape. Its few employees included Jytte Ræbild, who held a key position as a secretary, and a growing number of archaeology students who took part in the work in various ways during these first years. Later, the number of employees grew to include the aforementioned excavation pioneer Georg Kunwald, and Hellmuth Andersen and Hans Jørgen Madsen, whose research into the past of Aarhus, and later into Danevirke is known to many, and also the ethnographer Klaus Ferdinand. And now Moesgaard appeared on the horizon. It was of course Glob’s idea to move everything to a manor near Aarhus – he had been fantasising about this from his first Aarhus days, and no one had raised any objections. Now there was a chance of fulfilling the dream, although the actual realisation was still a difficult task.During all this, the Jutland Archaeological Society thrived and attracted more members than expected. Local branches were founded in several towns, summer trips were arranged and a ”Worsaae Medal” was occasionally donated to persons who had deserved it from an archaeological perspective. Kuml came out regularly with contributions from museum people and the like-minded. The publication had a form that appealed to an inner circle of people interested in archaeology. This was the intention, and this is how it should be. But in my opinion this was not quite enough. We also needed a publication that would cater to a wider public and that followed the same basic ideas as the new exhibition.I imagined a booklet, which – without over-popularsing – would address not only the professional and amateur archaeologist but also anyone else interested in the past. The result was Skalk, which (being a branch of the society) published its fir t issue in the spring of 1957. It was a somewhat daring venture, as the financial base was weak and I had no knowledge of how to run a magazine. However, both finances and experience grew with the number of subscribers – and faster than expected, too. Skalk must have met an unsatisfied need, and this we exploited to the best of our ability with various cheap advertisements. The original idea was to deal only with prehistoric and medieval archaeology, but the historians also wanted to contribute, and not just the digging kind. They were given permission, and so the topic of the magazine ended up being Denmark’s past from the time of its first inhabitant s until the times remembered by the oldest of us – with the odd sideways leap to other subjects. It would be impossible to claim that Skalk was at the top of Glob’s wish list, but he liked it and supported the idea in every way. The keeper of national antiquities, Johannes Brøndsted, did the same, and no doubt his unreserved approval of the magazine contributed to its quick growth. Not all authors found it easy to give up technical language and express themselves in everyday Danish, but the new style was quickly accepted. Ofcourse the obligations of the magazine work were also sometimes annoying. One example from the diary: ”S. had promised to write an article, but it was overdue. We agreed to a final deadline and when that was overdue I phoned again and was told that the author had gone to Switzerland. My hair turned grey overnight.” These things happened, but in this particular case there was a happy ending. Another academic promised me three pages about an excavation, but delivered ten. As it happened, I only shortened his production by a third.The 1960s brought great changes. After careful consideration, Glob left us to become the keeper of national antiquities. One important reason for his hesitation was of course Moesgaard, which he missed out on – the transfer was almost settled. This was a great loss to the Aarhus museum and perhaps to Glob, too, as life granted him much greater opportunities for development.” I am not the type to regret things,” he later stated, and hopefully this was true. And I had to choose between the museum and Skalk – the work with the magazine had become too timeconsuming for the two jobs to be combined. Skalk won, and I can truthfully say that I have never looked back. The magazine grew quickly, and happy years followed. My resignation from the museum also meant that Skalk was disengaged from the Jutland Archaeological Society, but a close connection remained with both the museum and the society.What has been described here all happened when the museum world was at the parting of the ways. It was a time of innovation, and it is my opinion that we at the Prehistoric Museum contributed to that change in various ways.The new Museum Act of 1958 gave impetus to the study of the past. The number of archaeology students in creased tremendously, and new techniques brought new possibilities that the discussion club of the 1940s had not even dreamt of, but which have helped to make some of the visions from back then come true. Public in terest in archaeology and history is still avid, although to my regret, the ahistorical 1960s and 1970s did put a damper on it.Glob is greatly missed; not many of his kind are born nowadays. He had, so to say, great virtues and great fault s, but could we have done without either? It is due to him that we have the Jutland Archaeological Society, which has no w existed for half a century. Congr tulat ion s to the Society, from your offspring Skalk.Harald AndersenSkalk MagazineTranslated by Annette Lerche Trolle
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"An Automatic Model for Brain Tumor Detection using Machine Learning Techniques." International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering 8, no. 2S3 (August 10, 2019): 1316–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.35940/ijrte.b1246.0782s319.

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machine acing is a most recent technique that is connected in different essential projects; directly here we're connected to find the example dependent on the given preparing records. on this paper, we proposed a framework examining procedure to blast a strategy for identifying tumor zone from the given personality MRI depictions. The psyche is a central organ in our body; it controls the whole edge arrangement of a human. there can be a wild and mind boggling increment of cells in tissues makes most tumors in the body. Our contemplations is encased by an unyielding skull, there can be any undesirable blast in that amounts makes an issue. Benevolent and harmful are two sorts of tumor in our psyche, The Benign tumor is non-destructive and the dangerous tumor is carcinogenic likewise hazardous infection. Glioma is one of the mind tumors that is begun from the glial cells of the considerations or spine. principally dependent on the overview 80 level of the tumor is dangerous and unquestionably speedy future. Attractive Resonance Imaging is a way to supply the MRI previews of the cerebrum, this brings to the table additional actualities about the psyche. fundamentally based at the MRI picture records the treatment for tumor sufferers has been arranged. mind tumor photograph division and location of the tumor territory are not the perfect techniques by method for guide. on this paper, we've proposed a programmed and effective methodology for distinguishing tumor from the MRI previews utilizing a gadget examining procedure. a robotized strategy to segregate the mind tumor region from given MRI dependent on guide Vector device(SVM) and it is done 96.2% accuracy,94.1percentspecificity, and 97%sensitivity, the outcomes shows that the higher presentation..
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"Dynamic Traffic Assignment under Multiple Vehicle Classes." International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology 9, no. 1 (October 30, 2019): 2418–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.35940/ijeat.f9231.109119.

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This paper proposes a convergence point progression based arrangement abnormality figuring out for the multi-class dynamic traffic undertaking (DTA) difficulty which includes bodily traces using the plausibility of technique diploma. An extragradient framework that requires just pseudomonotonicity and Lipschitz improvement for get collectively is made to control the problem. We likewise gift a automobile truck association question, which imparts that enticing vans to travel or broadening the truck stream in a shape can enhance organize execution for cars the diploma that the immovable car journey time. Numerical fashions are set up to layout the centrality of considering specific vehicle sorts and their joint endeavors in a DTA model, the influences of various parameters at the occasion of the function, and the presentation of the course of movement figuring.Existing thoughts blowing site visitors project definitions necessarily assume the time-subordinate O-D excursion arrange and the time-subordinate structure route of motion to be known from the before for the whole finding out skyline. Notwithstanding, there's moreover a need to provide enduring manner statistics to organize clients below ATIS/ATMS whilst unexpected groupings in O-D desires in addition as structure attributes (for example most distant point decay on unequivocal relationship in attitude on occasions) take place. This paper demonstrates a transferring skyline device for preserving an eye out for the perpetual traffic project trouble, in which an ATIS/ATMS controller is needed to have O-D needs up to the existing time and area amongst time, and present moment and medium-time period assessments of destiny O-D needs. The mission issue is explained in semi predictable for a close by time period destiny period (or degree) to select a great manner embraced plot for customers coming into the shape sensibly for the brief move time variety. The next model is jumbled due to unfold everyday conditions portraying this issue. Two nuances are mentioned problem to whether an ability to reroute automobiles in tour exists. A moving skyline method approach benevolent to a semi steady usage of an change customer classes (MUC) time-subordinate traffic errand game-plan calculation created beforehand of time with the aid of the manufacturers is portrayed. Use issues are talked about from the point of view of ATIS/ATMS applications.
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Wang, Yan. "Design of Trustworthy Cyber-Physical-Social Systems with Discrete Bayesian Optimization." Journal of Mechanical Design, January 6, 2021, 1–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/1.4049532.

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Abstract Cyber-physical-social systems (CPSS) with highly integrated functions of sensing, actuation, computation, and communication are becoming the mainstream consumer and commercial products. The performance of CPSS heavily relies on the information sharing between devices. Given the extensive data collection and sharing, security and privacy are of major concerns. Thus one major challenge of designing those CPSS is how to incorporate the perception of trust in product and systems design. Recently a trust quantification method was proposed to measure trustworthiness of CPSS by quantitative metrics of ability, benevolence, and integrity. The CPSS network architecture can be optimized by choosing a subnet such that the trust metrics are maximized. The combinatorial network optimization problem however is computationally challenging. Most of the available global optimization algorithms for solving such problems are heuristic methods. In this paper, a surrogate-based discrete Bayesian optimization method is developed to perform network design, where the most trustworthy CPSS network with respect to a reference node is formed to collaborate and share information with. The applications of ability and benevolence metrics in design optimization of CPSS architecture are demonstrated.
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Abdelrahman, Maha. "The Indefatigable Worker: From Factory Floor to Zoom Avatar." Critical Sociology, February 5, 2021, 089692052199073. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0896920521990739.

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This contribution coins the term indefatigable worker as a lens to examine the concerted efforts by state and capital forces, since the early 20th century, to devise methods aimed to reduce mental and physical fatigue among the workforce in order to guarantee the productivity and economic health of the nation. Different interventions have targeted the worker’s body from the early 20th century factory labourer to the more fragmented workforce under neoliberal capitalism and finally to the locked-down Covid-19 Zoom participant. Interestingly, each intervention was triggered by the onset of one global economic crisis or the other but cloaked in the benevolent garb of workers’ welfare. Ostensibly putting the well-being of the worker at the heart of this seemingly technical, ideology-free regime aims to make it difficult for workers to resist attempts to help them cope with fatigue and to challenge the conditions which cause their physical and mental stress in the first place.
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Wang, Yan. "Design of Trustworthy Cyber–Physical–Social Systems With Discrete Bayesian Optimization." Journal of Mechanical Design 143, no. 7 (February 5, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/1.4049532.

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Abstract Cyber–physical–social systems (CPSS) with highly integrated functions of sensing, actuation, computation, and communication are becoming the mainstream consumer and commercial products. The performance of CPSS heavily relies on the information sharing between devices. Given the extensive data collection and sharing, security and privacy are of major concerns. Thus, one major challenge of designing those CPSS is how to incorporate the perception of trust in product and systems design. Recently, a trust quantification method was proposed to measure the trustworthiness of CPSS by quantitative metrics of ability, benevolence, and integrity. The CPSS network architecture can be optimized by choosing a subnet such that the trust metrics are maximized. The combinatorial network optimization problem, however, is computationally challenging. Most of the available global optimization algorithms for solving such problems are heuristic methods. In this paper, a surrogate-based discrete Bayesian optimization method is developed to perform network design, where the most trustworthy CPSS network with respect to a reference node is formed to collaborate and share information with. The applications of ability and benevolence metrics in design optimization of CPSS architecture are demonstrated.
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Šmelcerović, Miodrag. "HYDROPOWER PLANT." KNOWLEDGE - International Journal, March 20, 2019, 581–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.35120/kij3003581s.

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Ocean waves are an immense, unused source of energy. Since global attention is nowadays constantly being drawn to the fact that the level of CO2 is rising, creating the so called “greenhouse effect”, and influencing further climate changes, the focus on generating electricity from renewable sources forces itself as an important area of future research. The possibility to exploit the energy potential created by sea waves indisputably exists. Various researches conducted in the field of unused energy sources prove the necessity of seriously considering this potential of sea waves. The illustration of this point in noted in a recently performed estimation that up to 15 per cent of current UK electricity demand could be met by wave energy, and when this is combined with tidal stream generation, even up to 20 per cent of the UK demand for electrical power could be met. This paper introduces the readers to the topic of water power, as a natural source of renewable energy, investigating the possibility of using power of waves as one of the technically and ecologically appropriate solutions of exploiting this renewable natural source. It is a fact widely acknowledged that climate change and global warming are the number-one challenge of the contemporary world; practically every available research predicts that with the current rate of development the world is heading for at least 2, and even more likely 3-4, degrees warmer climate by the end of this century. As energy production and use account for two-thirds of global greenhouse-gas emissions, the energy industry is in a key role to cut emissions – while powering economic growth, boosting energy security and increasing energy access. In view of this, hydropower can make a major contribution to climate change mitigation. Not only is hydropower practically CO₂-free, thus eliminating its possible contribution to the greenhouse effect, but it is also both more efficient and flexible compared with existing fossil alternatives for base load and balancing power. Even though the world is aware of the potential of hydropower, and despite the fact that many wave energy devices are nowadays being investigated, most of these are currently at the research and development stage, with only a small range of devices having been tested at large scale, deployed in the oceans. Thus, one of the goals of this paper would be to present the technology used to turn the power of waves unto electric power, as well as the various types of turbines and devices which represent the latest technological achievements in this area. The goal of this paper is also to present the existing devices, their manner of functioning, and their efficiency and safety from the environmental aspect. It is also important to note that hydropower’s own overall environmental impact is limited, thus making hydropower more benevolent to the environment than other energy sources that have been exploited so far.
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Emmanuel Adu Boahen, Yaw Frimpong, Isaac Owusu, and Ato Dadzie Dennis. "FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE THE USAGE OF PROSTHESES AMONG PERSONS WITH LOWER LIMB AMPUTATION IN THE KUMASI METROPOLIS." EPRA International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (IJMR), May 20, 2022, 137–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.36713/epra9317.

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There has been numerous technological advancements in dealing with major etiologies of lower limb amputation but lower limb amputation has been on the rise. According to Amoah et al (2018), it is estimated that about 145,299 people have been amputated in Ghana. Yet, estimates by WHO (2010) indicates that only 5-15% percent of Ghanaians in need of assistive technology only have access to it. The objectives of this study is to assess the knowledge on usage of prostheses, determine the prevalence level of usage of prostheses, determine the factors that influence the use of prostheses and to identify the challenges of usage of prostheses among persons with lower limb amputation. A descriptive research design which made use of a mixed (quantitative and qualitative) approach. The study was carried out within the confines of the Kumasi Metropolis from March, 2021 to September. The study involved 72 persons with lower limb amputation out of the 90 participants earlier proposed. 62 persons with lower limb amputation responded to a structured questionnaire whiles 10 other persons with lower limb amputation participated in an interview to help in the data collection to satisfy the objectives of the study. Data was analyzed using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) and thematic Analysis. The findings reveal that most persons with lower limb amputation have good and very good knowledge of what prostheses are, the sources they can get prostheses from, prostheses training centers in Ghana. The number of persons with lower limb amputation who use prostheses are very low (40.3%) as opposed to the number who uses prostheses (59.7%). Cost is a major barrier to usage of prostheses among all the factors. Most persons with lower limb amputation said the prosthetic devices are very expensive unless through the benevolence of the society. The findings revealed that most persons with lower limb amputation experience pain when ambulating with the use of prostheses. Despite experiencing pain, they still use the prostheses. This study concluded that prostheses have become very necessary to use because of the benefits derived from them. Prostheses have become more accessible in the advanced countries relative to that in lower income countries like Ghana and the major factor is attributed to the cost involved and the exchange rates of our currency. It is recommended from evidence gathered from this study that a separate ministry which will be in the helm of affairs for only issues related to disability-related issues should be established so as to address the inadequacies and challenges faced by persons with disabilities in having access to assistive devices and more importantly subsidize the cost of prostheses. KEYWORDS: Prosthesis, Amputation, Limbs, Disability
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張, 高評. "杜甫詩史與六義之比興———兼論叙事歌行與《春秋》筆削." 人文中國學報, July 1, 2022, 113–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.24112/sinohumanitas.342269.

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LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 晉杜預,爲杜甫十三世祖,著《春秋經傳集解》,其《序》文特提微、婉、顯、晦之法,懲惡勸善之義。揭示叙事傳統無數法門,爲《春秋》學之一大功臣。杜甫三十歲時,曾作《祭遠祖當陽君文》,宣稱不敢忘本,不敢違仁。於是《春秋》與詩,同爲杜氏家學。杜甫流離隴蜀,所作敍事歌行,世號“詩史”,《本事詩》所謂“推見至隱,殆無遺事”者。叙事傳人之際,遂多《春秋》書法之體現。諸如屬辭比事,筆削顯義;據事直書,美惡自見;微婉顯晦,推見至隱;以小該大,因彼見此;偏載略取,舉輕明重;直斥不宜,曲筆諱飾;彼此相形、前後相絜,行屬辭比事之法;詳略、異同、重輕、忽謹,指義見乎筆削,其大者焉。杜甫於安史之亂前後所作敍事歌行,如《麗人行》、《哀江頭》、《贈花卿》、《戲作花卿歌》、《丹青引贈曹將軍霸》、《韋諷録事宅觀曹將畫馬圖歌》、《觀公孫大娘弟子舞劍器行》諸什,除轉化《春秋》書法爲詩史之外,且多寓抒情於叙事之中。正杜甫稱元結《舂陵行》,所謂“比興體制”;章學誠所稱:“必通六義比興之旨,而後可以講春王正月之書。”叙事傳統,可以兼涵抒情傳統,由杜甫詩史,“比興發於真機,美刺該夫衆體”,可見一斑。 Du Yu (222-285) of the Jin Dynasty was the great, great-grandfather of Du Fu (712-770) by thirteen generations. In the “Introduction” to his Variorum of the Spring and Autumn Annals with Zuo’s Commentaries, Du Yu described four devices of the classics, namely “subtlety,” “euphemism,” “manifestation,” and “ambiguity”; as well as the significance of punishing the evil and commending the virtuous. He illustrated countless devices of the narrative tradition and became a great contributor to the study of Spring and Autumn Annals. Du Fu wrote “A Funeral Oration for My Remote Ancestor, Lord of Dangyang” when he was thirty years old, in which he claims that he does not dare to forget his origin nor go against the principle of benevolence. Therefore, both the Spring and Autumn Annals and poetry became the legacy of the Du family. When Du Fu wandered to the Long and Shu regions in southwestern China, he wrote poems in the form of narrative ballad, which won him the sobriquet of “poet-historian.” Meng Qi (jinshi 875) in his Benshi shi praised him for “inferring the most obscure content without missing anything.” Du Fu employs devices of the Spring and Autumn Annals in writing narratives and biographical accounts. These devices include combining diction and enumeration of allusions, revealing meaning in refined wording; providing a faithful account of events to unveil the good and bad; inferring the most obscure content in subtle, indirect, manifesting, and ambiguous ways; including the whole picture with one small part and realizing one thing by means of another; recording minor and abridged details and illuminating the important through the minor; directly condemning the indecent and writing euphemistically to hide it if necessary; contrasting one part with another and establishing the foreground and background; deploying diction and allusions; and the most important points concern how the acts of recording and deletion reflect one’s choice between giving details or simplifying, disagreement and agreement, stressing and ignoring, and neglecting and taking seriously. During the An Lushan Rebellion, Du Fu wrote some narrative poems in ballad form, such as “The Beautiful Ladies,” “Lament by the Riverside,” “To Minister Hua,” “A Song on Minister Hua Written Playfully,” “Song of Painting, a Gift Poem for General Cao Ba,” “Viewing a Painting of a Horse By General Cao at Secretary Wei’s Residence,” and “Watching a Sword Dancing Performed by the Disciples of Madam Gongsun.” In these poems, Du Fu not only adapts the writing style of the Spring and Autumn Annals to that of a poet-historian, he also lodges his own sentiments in the narrative content. This practice is a realization of “a mode of analogy and metaphor,” a comment he makes on Yuan Jie’s (723-772) “On Chongling.” They also fit Zhang Xuecheng’s (1738-1801) comment: “One must first become proficient in the main ideas of analogy and metaphor and the Six Principles before one can talk about the Spring and Autumn Annals.” The tradition of narration can be compatible with the tradition of lyricism. This can be seen in the works of poet-historian Du Fu: “analogy and metaphor are made by genuine thought and praise and criticism can be found in his poems in various forms.”
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Starrs, D. Bruno. "Enabling the Auteurial Voice in Dance Me to My Song." M/C Journal 11, no. 3 (July 2, 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.49.

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Despite numerous critics describing him as an auteur (i.e. a film-maker who ‘does’ everything and fulfils every production role [Bordwell and Thompson 37] and/or with a signature “world-view” detectable in his/her work [Caughie 10]), Rolf de Heer appears to have declined primary authorship of Dance Me to My Song (1997), his seventh in an oeuvre of twelve feature films. Indeed, the opening credits do not mention his name at all: it is only with the closing credits that the audience learns de Heer has directed the film. Rather, as the film commences, the viewer is informed by the titles that it is “A film by Heather Rose”, thus suggesting that the work is her singular creation. Direct and uncompromising, with its unflattering shots of the lead actor and writer (Heather Rose Slattery, a young woman born with cerebral palsy), the film may be read as a courageous self-portrait which finds the grace, humanity and humour trapped inside Rose’s twisted body. Alternatively, it may be read as yet another example of de Heer’s signature interest in foregrounding a world view which gives voice to marginalised characters such as the disabled or the disadvantaged. For example, the developmentally retarded eponyme of Bad Boy Bubby (1993) is eventually able to make art as a singer in a band and succeeds in creating a happy family with a wife and two kids. The ‘mute’ girl in The Quiet Room (1996) makes herself heard by her squabbling parents through her persistent activism. In Ten Canoes (2006) the Indigenous Australians cast themselves according to kinship ties, not according to the director’s choosing, and tell their story in their own uncolonised language. A cursory glance at the films of Rolf de Heer suggests he is overtly interested in conveying to the audience the often overlooked agency of his unlikely protagonists. In the ultra-competitive world of professional film-making it is rare to see primary authorship ceded by a director so generously. However, the allocation of authorship to a member of a marginalized population re-invigorates questions prompted by Andy Medhurst regarding a film’s “authorship test” (198) and its relationship to a subaltern community wherein he writes that “a biographical approach has more political justification if the project being undertaken is one concerned with the cultural history of a marginalized group” (202-3). Just as films by gay authors about gay characters may have greater credibility, as Medhurst posits, one might wonder would a film by a person with a disability about a character with the same disability be better received? Enabling authorship by an unknown, crippled woman such as Rose rather than a famous, able-bodied male such as de Heer may be cynically regarded as good (show) business in that it is politically correct. This essay therefore asks if the appellation “A film by Heather Rose” is appropriate for Dance Me to My Song. Whose agency in telling the story (or ‘doing’ the film-making), the able bodied Rolf de Heer or the disabled Heather Rose, is reflected in this cinematic production? In other words, whose voice is enabled when an audience receives this film? In attempting to answer these questions it is inevitable that Paul Darke’s concept of the “normality drama” (181) is referred to and questioned, as I argue that Dance Me to My Song makes groundbreaking departures from the conventions of the typical disability narrative. Heather Rose as Auteur Rose plays the film’s heroine, Julia, who like herself has cerebral palsy, a group of non-progressive, chronic disorders resulting from changes produced in the brain during the prenatal stages of life. Although severely affected physically, Rose suffered no intellectual impairment and had acted in Rolf de Heer’s cult hit Bad Boy Bubby five years before, a confidence-building experience that grew into an ongoing fascination with the filmmaking process. Subsequently, working with co-writer Frederick Stahl, she devised the scenario for this film, writing the lead role for herself and then proactively bringing it to de Heer’s attention. Rose wrote of de Heer’s deliberate lack of involvement in the script-writing process: “Rolf didn’t even want to read what we’d done so far, saying he didn’t want to interfere with our process” (de Heer, “Production Notes”). In 2002, aged 36, Rose died and Stahl reports in her obituary an excerpt from her diary: People see me as a person who has to be controlled. But let me tell you something, people. I am not! And I am going to make something real special of my life! I am going to go out there and grab life with both hands!!! I am going to make the most sexy and honest film about disability that has ever been made!! (Stahl, “Standing Room Only”) This proclamation of her ability and ambition in screen-writing is indicative of Rose’s desire to do. In a guest lecture Rose gave further insights into the active intent in writing Dance Me to My Song: I wanted to create a screenplay, but not just another soppy disability film, I wanted to make a hot sexy film, which showed the real world … The message I wanted to convey to an audience was “As people with disabilities, we have the same feelings and desires as others”. (Rose, “ISAAC 2000 Conference Presentation”) Rose went on to explain her strategy for winning over director de Heer: “Rolf was not sure about committing to the movie; I had to pester him really. I decided to invite him to my birthday party. It took a few drinks, but I got him to agree to be the director” (ibid) and with this revelation of her tactical approach her film-making agency is further evidenced. Rose’s proactive innovation is not just evident in her successfully approaching de Heer. Her screenplay serves as a radical exception to films featuring disabled persons, which, according to Paul Darke in 1998, typically involve the disabled protagonist struggling to triumph over the limitations imposed by their disability in their ‘admirable’ attempts to normalize. Such normality dramas are usually characterized by two generic themes: first, that the state of abnormality is nothing other than tragic because of its medical implications; and, second, that the struggle for normality, or some semblance of it in normalization – as represented in the film by the other characters – is unquestionably right owing to its axiomatic supremacy. (187) Darke argues that the so-called normality drama is “unambiguously a negation of ascribing any real social or individual value to the impaired or abnormal” (196), and that such dramas function to reinforce the able-bodied audience’s self image of normality and the notion of the disabled as the inferior Other. Able-bodied characters are typically portrayed positively in the normality drama: “A normality as represented in the decency and support of those characters who exist around, and for, the impaired central character. Thus many of the disabled characters in such narratives are bitter, frustrated and unfulfilled and either antisocial or asocial” (193). Darke then identifies The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980) and Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone, 1989) as archetypal films of this genre. Even in films in which seemingly positive images of the disabled are featured, the protagonist is still to be regarded as the abnormal Other, because in comparison to the other characters within that narrative the impaired character is still a comparatively second-class citizen in the world of the film. My Left Foot is, as always, a prime example: Christy Brown may well be a writer, relatively wealthy and happy, but he is not seen as sexual in any way (194). However, Dance Me to My Song defies such generic restrictions: Julia’s temperament is upbeat and cheerful and her disability, rather than appearing tragic, is made to look healthy, not “second class”, in comparison with her physically attractive, able-bodied but deeply unhappy carer, Madelaine (Joey Kennedy). Within the first few minutes of the film we see Madelaine dissatisfied as she stands, inspecting her healthy, toned and naked body in the bathroom mirror, contrasted with vision of Julia’s twisted form, prostrate, pale and naked on the bed. Yet, in due course, it is the able-bodied girl who is shown to be insecure and lacking in character. Madelaine steals Julia’s money and calls her “spastic”. Foul-mouthed and short-tempered, Madelaine perversely positions Julia in her wheelchair to force her to watch as she has perfunctory sex with her latest boyfriend. Madelaine even masquerades as Julia, commandeering her voice synthesizer to give a fraudulently positive account of her on-the-job performance to the employment agency she works for. Madelaine’s “axiomatic supremacy” is thoroughly undermined and in the most striking contrast to the typical normality drama, Julia is unashamedly sexual: she is no Christy Brown. The affective juxtaposition of these two different personalities stems from the internal nature of Madelaine’s problems compared to the external nature of Julia’s problems. Madelaine has an emotional disability rather than a physical disability and several scenes in the film show her reduced to helpless tears. Then one day when Madelaine has left her to her own devices, Julia defiantly wheels herself outside and bumps into - almost literally - handsome, able-bodied Eddie (John Brumpton). Cheerfully determined, Julia wins him over and a lasting friendship is formed. Having seen the joy that sex brings to Madelaine, Julia also wants carnal fulfilment so she telephones Eddie and arranges a date. When Eddie arrives, he reads the text on her voice machine’s screen containing the title line to the film ‘Dance me to my song’ and they share a tender moment. Eddie’s gentleness as he dances Julia to her song (“Kizugu” written by Bernard Huber and John Laidler, as performed by Okapi Guitars) is simultaneously contrasted with the near-date-rapes Madelaine endures in her casual relationships. The conflict between Madeline and Julia is such that it prompts Albert Moran and Errol Vieth to categorize the film as “women’s melodrama”: Dance Me to My Song clearly belongs to the genre of the romance. However, it is also important to recognize it under the mantle of the women’s melodrama … because it has to do with a woman’s feelings and suffering, not so much because of the flow of circumstance but rather because of the wickedness and malevolence of another woman who is her enemy and rival. (198-9) Melodrama is a genre that frequently resorts to depicting disability in which a person condemned by society as disabled struggles to succeed in love: some prime examples include An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey, 1957) involving a paraplegic woman, and The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) in which a strong-spirited but mute woman achieves love. The more conventional Hollywood romances typically involve attractive, able-bodied characters. In Dance Me to My Song the melodramatic conflict between the two remarkably different women at first seems dominated by Madelaine, who states: “I know I’m good looking, good in bed ... better off than you, you poor thing” in a stream-of-consciousness delivery in which Julia is constructed as listener rather than converser. Julia is further reduced to the status of sub-human as Madelaine says: “I wish you could eat like a normal person instead of a bloody animal” and her erstwhile boyfriend Trevor says: “She looks like a fuckin’ insect.” Even the benevolent Eddie says: “I don’t like leaving you alone but I guess you’re used to it.” To this the defiant Julia replies; “Please don’t talk about me in front of me like I’m an animal or not there at all.” Eddie is suitably chastised and when he treats her to an over-priced ice-cream the shop assistant says “Poor little thing … She’ll enjoy this, won’t she?” Julia smiles, types the words “Fuck me!”, and promptly drops the ice-cream on the floor. Eddie laughs supportively. “I’ll just get her another one,” says the flustered shop assistant, “and then get her out of here, please!” With striking eloquence, Julia wheels herself out of the shop, her voice machine announcing “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me”, as she departs exultantly. With this bold statement of independence and defiance in the face of patronising condescension, the audience sees Rose’s burgeoning strength of character and agency reflected in the onscreen character she has created. Dance Me to My Song and the films mentioned above are, however, rare exceptions in the many that dare represent disability on the screen at all, compliant as the majority are with Darke’s expectations of the normality drama. Significantly, the usual medical-model nexus in many normality films is ignored in Rose’s screenplay: no medication, hospitals or white laboratory coats are to be seen in Julia’s world. Finally, as I have described elsewhere, Julia is shown joyfully dancing in her wheelchair with Eddie while Madelaine proves her physical inferiority with a ‘dance’ of frustration around her broken-down car (see Starrs, "Dance"). In Rose’s authorial vision, audience’s expectations of yet another film of the normality drama genre are subverted as the disabled protagonist proves superior to her ‘normal’ adversary in their melodramatic rivalry for the sexual favours of an able-bodied love-interest. Rolf de Heer as Auteur De Heer does not like to dwell on the topic of auteurism: in an interview in 2007 he somewhat impatiently states: I don’t go in much for that sort of analysis that in the end is terminology. … Look, I write the damn things, and direct them, and I don’t completely produce them anymore – there are other people. If that makes me an auteur in other people’s terminologies, then fine. (Starrs, "Sounds" 20) De Heer has been described as a “remarkably non-egotistical filmmaker” (Davis “Working together”) which is possibly why he handed ownership of this film to Rose. Of the writer/actor who plied him with drink so he would agree to back her script, de Heer states: It is impossible to overstate the courage of the performance that you see on the screen. … Heather somehow found the means to respond on cue, to maintain the concentration, to move in the desired direction, all the myriad of acting fundamentals that we take for granted as normal things to do in our normal lives. (“Production NHotes”) De Heer’s willingness to shift authorship from director to writer/actor is representative of this film’s groundbreaking promotion of the potential for agency within disability. Rather than being passive and suffering, Rose is able to ‘do.’ As the lead actor she is central to the narrative. As the principle writer she is central to the film’s production. And she does both. But in conflict with this auteurial intent is the temptation to describe Dance Me to My Song as an autobiographical documentary, since it is Rose herself, with her unique and obvious physical handicap, playing the film’s heroine, Julia. In interview, however, De Heer apparently disagrees with this interpretation: Rolf de Heer is quick to point out, though, that the film is not a biography.“Not at all; only in the sense that writers use material from their own lives.Madelaine is merely the collection of the worst qualities of the worst carers Heather’s ever had.” Dance Me to My Song could be seen as a dramatised documentary, since it is Rose herself playing Julia, and her physical or surface life is so intense and she is so obviously handicapped. While he understands that response, de Heer draws a comparison with the first films that used black actors instead of white actors in blackface. “I don’t know how it felt emotionally to an audience, I wasn’t there, but I think that is the equivalent”. (Urban) An example of an actor wearing “black-face” to portray a cerebral palsy victim might well be Gus Trikonis’s 1980 film Touched By Love. In this, the disabled girl is unconvincingly played by the pretty, able-bodied actress Diane Lane. The true nature of the character’s disability is hidden and cosmeticized to Hollywood expectations. Compared to that inauthentic film, Rose’s screenwriting and performance in Dance Me to My Song is a self-penned fiction couched in unmediated reality and certainly warrants authorial recognition. Despite his unselfish credit-giving, de Heer’s direction of this remarkable film is nevertheless detectable. His auteur signature is especially evident in his technological employment of sound as I have argued elsewhere (see Starrs, "Awoval"). The first distinctly de Heer influence is the use of a binaural recording device - similar to that used in Bad Boy Bubby (1993) - to convey to the audience the laboured nature of Julia’s breathing and to subjectively align the audience with her point of view. This apparatus provides a disturbing sound bed that is part wheezing, part grunting. There is no escaping Julia’s physically unusual life, from her reliance on others for food, toilet and showering, to the half-strangled sounds emanating from her ineffectual larynx. But de Heer insists that Julia does speak, like Stephen Hawkings, via her Epson RealVoice computerized voice synthesizer, and thus Julia manages to retain her dignity. De Heer has her play this machine like a musical instrument, its neatly modulated feminine tones immediately prompting empathy. Rose Capp notes de Heer’s preoccupation with finding a voice for those minority groups within the population who struggle to be heard, stating: de Heer has been equally consistent in exploring the communicative difficulties underpinning troubled relationships. From the mute young protagonist of The Quiet Room to the aphasic heroine of Dance Me to My Song, De Heer’s films are frequently preoccupied with the profound inadequacy or outright failure of language as a means of communication (21). Certainly, the importance to Julia of her only means of communication, her voice synthesizer, is stressed by de Heer throughout the film. Everybody around her has, to varying degrees, problems in hearing correctly or understanding both what and how Julia communicates with her alien mode of conversing, and she is frequently asked to repeat herself. Even the well-meaning Eddie says: “I don’t know what the machine is trying to say”. But it is ultimately via her voice synthesizer that Julia expresses her indomitable character. When first she meets Eddie, she types: “Please put my voice machine on my chair, STUPID.” She proudly declares ownership of a condom found in the bathroom with “It’s mine!” The callous Madelaine soon realizes Julia’s strength is in her voice machine and withholds access to the device as punishment for if she takes it away then Julia is less demanding for the self-centred carer. Indeed, the film which starts off portraying the physical superiority of Madelaine soon shows us that the carer’s life, for all her able-bodied, free-love ways, is far more miserable than Julia’s. As de Heer has done in many of his other films, a voice has been given to those who might otherwise not be heard through significant decision making in direction. In Rose’s case, this is achieved most obviously via her electric voice synthesizer. I have also suggested elsewhere (see Starrs, "Dance") that de Heer has helped find a second voice for Rose via the language of dance, and in doing so has expanded the audience’s understandings of quality of life for the disabled, as per Mike Oliver’s social model of disability, rather than the more usual medical model of disability. Empowered by her act of courage with Eddie, Julia sacks her uncaring ‘carer’ and the film ends optimistically with Julia and her new man dancing on the front porch. By picturing the couple in long shot and from above, Julia’s joyous dance of triumph is depicted as ordinary, normal and not deserving of close examination. This happy ending is intercut with a shot of Madeline and her broken down car, performing her own frustrated dance and this further emphasizes that she was unable to ‘dance’ (i.e. communicate and compete) with Julia. The disabled performer such as Rose, whether deliberately appropriating a role or passively accepting it, usually struggles to placate two contrasting realities: (s)he is at once invisible in the public world of interhuman relations and simultaneously hyper-visible due to physical Otherness and subsequent instantaneous typecasting. But by the end of Dance Me to My Song, Rose and de Heer have subverted this notion of the disabled performer grappling with the dual roles of invisible victim and hyper-visible victim by depicting Julia as socially and physically adept. She ‘wins the guy’ and dances her victory as de Heer’s inspirational camera looks down at her success like an omniscient and pleased god. Film academic Vivian Sobchack writes of the phenomenology of dance choreography for the disabled and her own experience of waltzing with the maker of her prosthetic leg, Steve, with the comment: “for the moment I did displace focus on my bodily immanence to the transcendent ensemble of our movement and I really began to waltz” (65). It is easy to imagine Rose’s own, similar feeling of bodily transcendence in the closing shot of Dance Me to My Song as she shows she can ‘dance’ better than her able-bodied rival, content as she is with her self-identity. Conclusion: Validation of the Auteurial OtherRolf de Heer was a well-known film-maker by the time he directed Dance Me to My Song. His films Bad Boy Bubby (1993) and The Quiet Room (1996) had both screened at the Cannes International Film Festival. He was rapidly developing a reputation for non-mainstream representations of marginalised, subaltern populations, a cinematic trajectory that was to be further consolidated by later films privileging the voice of Indigenous Peoples in The Tracker (2002) and Ten Canoes (2006), the latter winning the Special Jury prize at Cannes. His films often feature unlikely protagonists or as Liz Ferrier writes, are “characterised by vulnerable bodies … feminised … none of whom embody hegemonic masculinity” (65): they are the opposite of Hollywood’s hyper-masculine, hard-bodied, controlling heroes. With a nascent politically correct worldview proving popular, de Heer may have considered the assigning of authorship to Rose a marketable idea, her being representative of a marginalized group, which as Andy Medhurst might argue, may be more politically justifiable, as it apparently is with films of gay authorship. However, it must be emphasized that there is no evidence that de Heer’s reticence about claiming authorship of Dance Me to My Song is motivated by pecuniary interests, nor does he seem to have been trying to distance himself from the project through embarrassment or dissatisfaction with the film or its relatively unknown writer/actor. Rather, he seems to be giving credit for authorship where credit is due, for as a result of Rose’s tenacity and agency this film is, in two ways, her creative success. Firstly, it is a rare exception to the disability film genre defined by Paul Darke as the “normality drama” because in the film’s diegesis, Julia is shown triumphing not simply over the limitations of her disability, but over her able-bodied rival in love as well: she ‘dances’ better than the ‘normal’ Madelaine. Secondly, in her gaining possession of the primary credits, and the mantle of the film’s primary author, Rose is shown triumphing over other aspiring able-bodied film-makers in the notoriously competitive film-making industry. Despite being an unpublished and unknown author, the label “A film by Heather Rose” is, I believe, a deserved coup for the woman who set out to make “the most sexy and honest film about disability ever made”. As with de Heer’s other films in which marginalised peoples are given voice, he demonstrates a desire not to subjugate the Other, but to validate and empower him/her. He both acknowledges their authorial voices and credits them as essential beings, and in enabling such subaltern populations to be heard, willingly cedes his privileged position as a successful, white, male, able-bodied film-maker. In the credits of this film he seems to be saying ‘I may be an auteur, but Heather Rose is a no less able auteur’. References Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction, 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993. Capp, Rose. “Alexandra and the de Heer Project.” RealTime + Onscreen 56 (Aug.-Sep. 2003): 21. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue56/7153›. Caughie, John. “Introduction”. Theories of Authorship. Ed. John Caughie. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 9-16. Darke, Paul. “Cinematic Representations of Disability.” The Disability Reader. Ed. Tom Shakespeare. London and New York: Cassell, 1988. 181-198. Davis, Therese. “Working Together: Two Cultures, One Film, Many Canoes.” Senses of Cinema 2006. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/06/41/ten-canoes.html›. De Heer, Rolf. “Production Notes.” Vertigo Productions. Undated. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.vertigoproductions.com.au/information.php?film_id=10&display=notes›. Ferrier, Liz. “Vulnerable Bodies: Creative Disabilities in Contemporary Australian Film.” Australian Cinema in the 1990s. Ed. Ian Craven. London and Portland: Frank Cass and Co., 2001. 57-78. Medhurst, Andy. “That Special Thrill: Brief Encounter, Homosexuality and Authorship.” Screen 32.2 (1991): 197-208. Moran, Albert, and Errol Veith. Film in Australia: An Introduction. Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 2006. Oliver, Mike. Social Work with Disabled People. Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1983. Rose Slattery, Heather. “ISAAC 2000 Conference Presentation.” Words+ n.d. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.words-plus.com/website/stories/isaac2000.htm›. Sobchack, Vivian. “‘Choreography for One, Two, and Three Legs’ (A Phenomenological Meditation in Movements).” Topoi 24.1 (2005): 55-66. Stahl, Frederick. “Standing Room Only for a Thunderbolt in a Wheelchair,” Sydney Morning Herald 31 Oct. 2002. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/30/1035683471529.html›. Starrs, D. Bruno. “Sounds of Silence: An Interview with Rolf de Heer.” Metro 152 (2007): 18-21. ———. “An avowal of male lack: Sound in Rolf de Heer’s The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (2003).” Metro 156 (2008): 148-153. ———. “Dance Me to My Song (Rolf de Heer 1997): The Story of a Disabled Dancer.” Proceedings Scopic Bodies Dance Studies Research Seminar Series 2007. Ed. Mark Harvey. University of Auckland, 2008 (in press). Urban, Andrew L. “Dance Me to My Song, Rolf de Heer, Australia.” Film Festivals 1988. 6 June 2008. ‹http://www.filmfestivals.com/cannes98/selofus9.htm›.
38

Russell, Keith. "Loops and and Illusions." M/C Journal 5, no. 4 (August 1, 2002). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1976.

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Abstract:
Playing in childhood we are presented with foundational puzzles. Many of these arise directly from our negotiations with the laws of physics; others arise from the deliberate activities of our elders, teachers and siblings. As we sit on our grandmother’s knee we are presented with a range of playful and deceptive games. Something as simple as a loop of wool can initiate this play: now it is a straight thread; now it is a loop. Something as simple as the opening hand is the potential source of a problem that may stay with us for a lifetime: now it is a hand with open palm; now it is a fist that hides. Something as simple as a dropped toy ball can initiate the motive to engage with the world as a problem: now it is here, at hand; now it is gone, down there and rolling away. While each of these events is real, the space and time of such play can be described as an illusion. The figure of this illusion is itself a loop within which a special kind of logic pertains. This logic is illustrated in D. W. Winnicott’s concept of illusory experience and in John Dewey’s concept of perplexity as the source of human thinking. As illusions, loops are puzzling; as real objects and events, loops pre-figure and offer to mediate the development of our understanding of our being in the world. Donald Woods Winnicott (1896-1971) a British child psychoanalyst, spent much of his time exploring the relationships that children form with objects. His work offers accounts of an extraordinary array of everyday engagements that children have with simple things such as their own toes and bits of string. A key aspect of Winnicott’s theories of the formative years is the sustaining of a loop, or in Winnicott’s terms, "an intermediate state" between the child and reality. I am here staking a claim for an intermediate state between a baby’s inability and his growing ability to recognize and accept reality. I am therefore studying the substance of illusion, that which is allowed to the infant, and which in adult life is inherent in art and religion, and yet becomes the hallmark of madness when an adult puts too powerful a claim on the credulity of others, forcing them to acknowledge a sharing of illusion that is not their own. We can share a respect for illusory experience, and if we wish we may collect together and form a group on the basis of the similarity of our illusory experiences. This is a natural root of grouping among human beings. (Winnicott 3) Social groups establish preferred forms to account for dynamic systems in everyday life. The hand, for example, might be generally agreed to be an open hand, at rest, which means that fingers are curved towards the palm and the palm is down. The number of variations in the way in which a hand might be found, and described, is so large as to be able to symbolise an entire language. From the outside, to a non-signer, it is an illusion that hand-signing is language, just as it is an illusion that spoken and written languages are languages to those who do not share the particular language illusion. Within the range of possible hand gestures, a loop or tension-of-illusion is established: those in the loop can comprehend the signing as language; those outside the loop can only pretend that the illusion works. Recalling that the word "illusion" takes its origin in the Latin for play ("ludere") it comes as no surprise that initiation games frequently use spurious loop activities to trap the outsider in ways that will embarrass the new-comer. The sense of mockery in the word "illusion" is made evident as the new-comer has no way of determining the validity of the pretend inside information. Suggestions that they drink some foul concoction can only be answered by drinking the concoction: there is no way from the outside of the illusion group to resolve the challenge. To enter the inside of the loop, the new-comer has to cross some kind of line in a way that leaves a mark: the affect of embarrassment is often enough. Our ability to suspend disbelief and sustain the illusion as loop is a fundamental requirement of our social being and of our cognitive development. "Once upon a time" is a call to step inside the loop of fiction where things may emerge that cannot otherwise emerge. While this loop may be seen as nothing more than an inner fantasy world, it is impossible to sustain this concept unless we deny the common reality of such a world. The world of the loop is not some kind of denial of an outer reality, nor is it an assertion of an inner freedom that can remain separate to an external reality. We may claim to make words mean whatever we wish them to mean in an inner and private dimension, but in making such a claim we must use a common meaning of "meaning" and we must use the syntax and grammar of a language. Much as we might wish for such an interiority, Winnicott requires us to recognise the further need for an "intermediate area of experience". This intermediate area is the public space of shared illusion: It is an area that is not challenged, because no claim is made on its behalf except that it shall exist as a resting-place for the individual engaged in the perpetual human task of keeping inner and outer reality separate yet interrelated. (Winnicott 2) In this intermediate area, it is possible to sustain illusions only in relation to a presumed other reality. That is, the logics of illusion are logics that apply, if differently, in the outer and inner realms of experience. The reality of a loop may seem soft. Loops are readily formed without substantial alteration of the loop forming material. Loops are also frightening in their potential operation as capturing devices. The forces they can activate are deadly. As dynamic objects, loops offer their own interpretation of Winnicott’s concept of illusion. At some point the game or play of illusions terminates in a disclosure of closure that instructs the play. The closed hand that hides the marble opens to reveal the marble. One moment in the play of logics is elected or given a priority. The relative stability of this pattern is made obvious in certain forms of illusion that take illusions as their "fixed" shape. Knitting, for example, consists of loops interlocked with loops. As anyone who has pulled knitting apart knows, interlocking is fundamentally an illusion in its making and a disillusion in its pulling apart. Knitting can then be seen, in this sense to be "fake". Fakes "Fake" does not mean "false" except that we have come to see the dressing up of things as being insubstantial and therefore not warranting attention. Worse, we see "fake" as being morally repugnant in that a fake thing takes the place of a real thing. But "fake" also means "a coil of rope". In this case, the fake is substantial while ever it exists. Thus, a fake is a kind of benevolent illusion. The shape that the coil of rope makes is no less real, in time, than the ship-deck on which it is formed. When it is uncoiled, the rope takes on its "true" or active shape. Should the uncoiled rope form a loop, this loop is potentially malevolent. It may take the leg of a sailor. In childhood, this game is played out using simple loops and slip knots that hold but let go when pulled. The dynamic forms are sometimes the illusion; sometimes it is the static form that is the illusion. That is, the pragmatic interpretation allows for the display of the fake as a cognitive toy. Any state of the dynamic form may take priority at any one time for the purposes of the use of the system. When we sit down, our height differences are reduced: this fake is a crucial part of our social world. Loops Winnicott lets us see the life-long significance of the looping and faking that we daily use to sustain our dynamic worlds . In our loop worlds we establish a space "between thumb and the teddy bear, between the oral erotism and the true object-relationship" (Winnicott 2). Within the loop, the status of objects and systems is open to transformation, just as, over time, in the material world, objects and systems are transformed. The valency of any object or system, viewed from within the loop, is fundamentally indeterminate and hence open. It is within this loop-logic that we can understand the ironic singing of songs whose content is radically alternative to the situation of the singing: children can be heard singing songs filled with sexual connotations without there being any awareness of the inappropriate content; many people can hear and sing along with Bette Midler’s rendition of "God is watching us" without the irony striking home that God is doing this from a distance of total indifference. The tongue in Bette’s cheek could not get any bigger, but from within the loop, the song can have any value the singer selects. While we may sustain fantasy worlds as intermediate worlds, Winnicott makes obvious that "the mother’s main task (next to providing opportunity for illusion) is disillusionment" (Winnicott 12). At some point the disjunction between illusion and reality becomes perplexing. The ball that the child drops does evade the child’s grasp. It is not simply a matter of sustaining the mood. Either the ball can be recovered or else it cannot. Perplexity and the Dialectic of Loss John Dewey (1859-1952) is a major figure in American pragmatist schools of philosophy and in educational philosophy, especially problem-based theories of learning. His work bridges the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and covers all the major social and cultural issues of his day. As a thorough thinker, Dewey offers to provide explanations for most aspects of what is practically required of us in our living socially responsible lives. Even our "negative" affects, such as perplexity, are presented by Dewey as indicators of our practical connection with reality. For Dewey, perplexity is a key feature of the state of mind that initiates the growth of the individual through engagement with the problematics of the world in which they live. Dewey points out that "thinking begins as soon as the baby who has lost the ball that he is playing with begins to foresee the possibility of something not yet existing—its recovery" (How We Think 89). Losing the ball creates a difficulty, seeing that the ball might be recovered, the child is then able to move to resolve the difficulty, through action, in the real world. In this simple form we can determine the process of thesis (loss), anti-thesis (promise of recovery or remedy), synthesis (resolution of the problem with an enhanced understanding of the process). The theological allusions should not be discounted in this model. Nor should we forget Winnicott’s caution here "that the task of reality-acceptance is never completed". The ball game is still a game that retains the general forgiveness of the loop in that the real loss is mitigated by the surrounding and support "illusion" that the parent will recover the ball for the child. It may be socially frowned on, but adults still drop things just to instigate the "illusion" that others will recover their loss (for an extended account of Dewey’s notion of perplexity, see Russell). Still, the loss of the ball is a problem that holds very real interest for the baby and therefore the problem is perplexing. According to Dewey: "Interest marks the annihilation of the distance between the person and the materials and results of his action; it is the sign of their organic union" (Middle Works 160). Being "entirely taken up with" (p. 160) the loss of the ball, the baby experiences the situation in what McLuhan describes as "depth". In the depth approach attention is able to shift from content to attention itself: "Consciousness itself is an inclusive process not at all dependent on content. Consciousness does not postulate consciousness in particular" (McLuhan 247). Conclusion The capacity of consciousness to take an interest, in Dewey’s terms, is the same capacity that consciousness displays in the sustaining of the loop of illusion. For Dewey, "interest marks the annihilation of the distance between the person and the materials and results of his action". This annihilation, in Winnicott’s gentler terms, is more of respite in the long journey. For Winnicott "no human being is free from the strain of relating inner and outer reality". The intermediary illusions remain illusions even if they are instructive. For Dewey, the focus on perplexity allows that the strain is integrated in an affect-complex that both sustains the illusion ("I can get the ball back") in the manner of a hypothesis ("I had the ball, I lost the ball—losing the ball was a process, regaining the ball could also be a process—I can have the ball again"). Granted, Dewey, as a pragmatist, starts with a real world process. Nonetheless, his approach points to the deeper connections between consciousness itself and the operations of the psychological development of the individual. From the perspective of perplexity, the puzzles of childhood are also the puzzles of the adult. As adults we continue to play with loops of all kinds. We maintain intermediary spaces and we conspire in the social illusions of language References Dewey, John. How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process. Boston: D.C. Heath, 1933. Dewey, John. The Middle Works, 1899-1924. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Vol. 7. Carbondale and Edwardsville: South Illinios U P, 1979. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Signet, 1964. Russell, Keith. "The Problem of the Problem and Perplexity." Themes and Variations in PBL. Proc. of the 5th International Biennial PBL Conference, 7-10 Jul. 1999, U of Quebec. U of Newcastle: PROBLARC, 1999. 180-95. Winnicott, D. W. Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock, 1971. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Russell, Keith. "Loops and Fakes and Illusions" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.4 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/fakes.php>. Chicago Style Russell, Keith, "Loops and Fakes and Illusions" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 4 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/fakes.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Russell, Keith. (2002) Loops and Fakes and Illusions. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(4). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/fakes.php> ([your date of access]).
39

Monty, Randall W. "Driving in Cars with Noise." M/C Journal 27, no. 2 (April 16, 2024). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3039.

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Revving I’m convinced that no one actually listens to podcasts. Or maybe it’s just that no one admits it. This is partially because a podcast falls between fetish and precious. Listening to a podcast is at once intimate, someone speaking directly to you through your AirPods, and distant, since you’re likely listening by yourself. Listening to a podcast is weird enough; talking about listening to a podcast makes other people feel uncomfortable. This is why no one listens to podcasts while doing nothing else. Podcasts encourage passive listening; they compel active participation in something other than the podcast. There’s a suggested utility to listening to a podcast while doing something else—walking your cockapoo around the block, rearranging your bookshelf, prepping your meals—like you’re performing your practicality for the world. Listening to a podcast is not sufficient. When listening to a podcast, you simultaneously do something else to justify the listening. Podcasts are relatively new, as academic texts go. Yet they have been quickly taken up as technologies and artifacts of analysis (Vásquez), tools for teaching writing (Bowie), and modes of distributing scholarship (McGregor and Copeland). Podcasts are also, importantly, not simply audio versions of written essays (Detweiller), or non-visual equivalents of videos (Vásquez). Podcasts represent genres and opportunities for rhetorical choice that instructors cannot assume students already possess expected literacies for (Bourelle, Bourelle, and Jones). Paralleling much service work at institutions of higher education, women scholars and scholars of colour take on inequitable labour with podcast scholarship (Faison et al.; Shamburg). A promising new direction challenges the raced and gendered stereotypes of the genre and mode, highlighting podcasts as an anti-racist and anti-disinformation tool (Vrikki) and a way to engage reluctant students in critical race discourse (Harris). And, with so many podcasts accessible on virtually any topic imaginable, podcasts have more recently emerged as reliable secondary sources for academic research, a usage accelerated by the availability of audio versions of scholarly publications and professional academics composing podcasts to distribute and conduct their research. When we incorporate podcasts into our academic work, new connections become recognisable: connections between ourselves and other humans, ourselves and other things, and things and other things—including the connections between audio and work. Podcasts maintain their histories as a passive medium. A student can listen to a podcast for class while making dinner and keeping an eye on their family. A professional academic might more dutifully pay attention to the content of the podcast, but they’ll also attune to how the physical experience of doing research that way affects their work, their findings, and themself. When considered as academic work, as in this piece, podcasts persuade us to pay attention to methods, materiality, networks, and embodiment. Methods I listen to podcasts in the car, most often while driving to and from work. Listening to podcasts while commuting is common. Yet listening beyond content immersion or distraction, listening as part of an intentional methodology—formulating a plan, rhetorically listening, taking audio notes, annotating and building on those notes later—maybe less so. This intentional, rhetorical approach to listening while driving attunes the researcher to the embodied, physical aspects of each of these activities: research, driving, and listening. As a result, the research experience provides different kinds of opportunities for invention and reflection. My process is as follows: first, I curate a playlist based around a specific research question or agenda. This playlist will include selected episodes from podcasts that I have evaluated as reliable on a given topic. This evaluation is usually based on a combination of factors, mainly my familiarity with the podcast, the professional credentials (academic or otherwise) of the podcast hosts and guests, and recommendations from other researchers or podcasters. I also consider the structure of the podcast and the quality of the audio recording, because if I can’t hear the content, or if I must spend more time skipping ads than actively listening, then the podcast isn’t very usable for this stage of my research process. I will sometimes include single episodes of podcasts I’m less familiar with, usually because I noticed them pitched on one of my social media feeds and as a trial to see if I want to subscribe to the podcast. The playlist is arranged in what I hope will be a coherent order based on the episode descriptions. For example, sequencing episodes of Have You Heard (Berkshire and Schneider), Talking Race, Africa and People (Tiluk and Hope), and Is This Democracy (Mason and Zimmer) with the titles, "Digging Deep into the Education Wars”, “They Stole WOKE”, and “‘Cancel Culture’: How a Moral Panic Is Capturing America and the World” places these sources in conversation with each other, juxtaposes the arguments, and allows me to synthesise my own comprehensive response. Second, I listen. Ratcliffe positioned rhetorical listening as a performative “trope for interpretive invention” and a method for “facilitating cross-cultural dialogues” within composition studies (196). Listening is a thing we do in order to do something else. Under this framework, the listener/researcher approaches their task with goals of understanding and responsibility to themselves and others, which then affords opportunities to identify commonalities and differences within claims and cultural logics (204). In other words, by paying closer attention to who we are and who we’re listening to, and by listening in good faith, we can better understand what and why people are saying and doing what they are, and when we understand those better, we are better equipped for future action. Listening rhetorically can be an anchor when researching with podcasts, a modality notoriously coded and memed as white, male, and upper middle class (Locke; Morgan; “A Group of White Men Is Called a Podcast”). The technologies I use during this research afford and constrain, which leads to the third aspect: notetaking. I can’t write while driving. I tend to forget important bits. But the act of listening opens me up to things I might otherwise have missed. Sound, Detweiler shows, “affords different modes of composing, listening, thinking, and responding”. To facilitate my listening as invention, I added myself to my contacts list so that I can talk-to-text myself with questions about what I’m listening to, names and key terms that I need to look up later, and starter drafts of my own writing. While driving, I can “favourite” an episode while on the go, a marker to myself to re-listen and inspect the episode transcript. Later, at my work desk, I decipher whatever it is my phone’s text messaging app thought I said. “Anna Genesis Evolution from one species to another.” “Ben sick something at the bottom of the sea.” “Dinosaurs and dragons make each other plausible.” (Pretty sure my phone got that last one right.) There, my workflow is mediated by expected reading research technologies (word processing application, PDF viewer, boutique file organisation and annotation software), agents (desk, chair, and lighting selected by my employer to improve my productivity), and processes (coding transcripts, annotating secondary sources, writing, and revising). Materiality My methodology is an auditory variation of McNely’s visual fieldwork, which “attempts to render visible the environs, objects, sensations, and affects of inquiry” ("Lures" 216). Podcasts are expressions of physicality that bring together a confluence of networked actors, technologies, and spaces. Moreover, a podcast is itself a material artifact in the most literal sense: sound is a physical phenomenon, emitting and reverberating waves stimulating effects in our body and affecting physio-emotional responses. Inside my car, there is little impeding the sound waves emitting from the speakers and into my ears. Diffraction is minimal; the sound fills the interior of my vehicle so quickly that I can’t perceive that it is moving. I’m surrounded by the sound of the podcast, but not in the sense that is usually meant by “surround sound”. I’m also inundated by other sounds, the noises of driving that the twenty-first-century commuter has been conditioned to render ambient: the buzz of other vehicles passing me, the hum of my tyres on asphalt, the squeak of brakes and crunch of slowly turning tyres. Listening to a podcast in the car is like sitting in on a conversation that you can’t participate in. Slate magazine’s sports podcast “Hang Up and Listen” plays with this expectation, taking its name for the clichéd valediction that callers to local sports radio shows would say to indicate that they are done asking their question, signifying to the host that it’s their turn again. It’s a shibboleth through which the caller acknowledges and performs the participatory role of the listener as an actor within the network of the show. McNely writes that when he walks, “there are sounds in me, around me, passing through me. When I walk, I feel wind, mist, sleet. When I walk, I feel bass, treble, empathy. When I walk, I feel arguments, metaphors, dialogues—in my gut, in my chest” (Engaging 184). His attunement to all of these elicits physical sensations and emotional responses, and the sounds of the podcast cause similar responses for me. I jostle in my seat. I tense up, grip the steering wheel, and grind my teeth. I sigh, guffaw, roll my eyes, and yell. I pause—both my movement and the podcast app—to let a potential response roll about in my head. I’m in the car, but podcasts attempt to place me somewhere else through ambient worldbuilding: the clinking of cups and spoons to let me know the conversation is taking place in a coffee shop, the chirps of frogs and bugs to make me feel like I’m with the guest interviewee at the Amazonian research site, the clamour of a teacher calling their third-grade class to attention as a lead in for a discussion of public school funding. The arrangement and design of the podcast takes the listener to the world within the podcast, and it reminds me how the podcast, and myself, my car, and the listening are connected to everything else. Networks I am employed at an institution with a “distributed campus”, with multiple sites spread across the local region and online, without an officially designated central campus. Faculty and students attend these different places based on appointment, proximity, and preference. I teach classes in person on two of the campuses, sometimes at both simultaneously connected via videoconference. So where is the location of my class? It’s the physical campuses, certainly. It’s also the online space where the class meets, the locations where users join from (home, a dorm room, their workplace, etc.), and the Internet connecting those people and spaces. The class is transnational, as many of our students live in the neighbouring country. The class is also in between and in transit, with students using the shuttle bus Wi-Fi to complete work or join meetings. As with the research methodology detailed above, the class is moving between the static places, too, as the instructor and students alike travel to teach or attend class or book it home to join via videoconference in time. The institution’s networks enact Detweiller’s characterisation of podcasts as enacting both rhetorical distribution and circulation. Taken together, “distribution is not a strictly one-to-many phenomenon”. Yes, it’s “a conception of rhetoric that challenges but does not erase the role of human agency in rhetorical causes and effects”, but it’s also the physical networks and “supply chains” that move things. In both cases, the decentralisation draws attention away from individual nodes and to the network and the interconnections between various actors. Consider the routes the podcast takes. I start the episode as I leave my driveway. By the time I reach the highway, the podcast has made it through its preamble and first ad read. The episode travels with me in the car along my route, the sound of a single word literally takes up physical space on the highway. Ideas stretch for miles. I make the entire trip in a single episode. I then assign that episode to my students, who take the podcast with them. It moves at different speeds but also at the same speed (unless a particular listener sets their playback at a faster pace). In some ways, it’s the same sound, yet in other ways—time, space, distribution, audience—the same episode makes a different sound. Meanwhile, the podcast hosts remain in their recording booth, simultaneously locked into and moving through spacetime. Further, by analysing the various texts surrounding my listening to podcasts, we can see a multimodal genre ecology of signs, roadways, mapped and unmapped routes, turn-by-turn navigation apps, as well as other markers of location and direction, like billboards, water towers in the distance, the setting sun, and that one tree in a field that doesn’t belong there but lets me know I’ve passed the midpoint of my commute. Visual cues are perhaps more easily felt, but Rickert reminds us that “we consciously and unconsciously depend on sound to orient, situate, and wed ourselves to the places we inhabit” (152). The three-note dinging of a railroad crossing halts drivers even without visual confirmation of an oncoming train. The brutal springtime crosswind announces its presence on my passenger window, giving me a split second to steady the wheel. The lowering pitch of the pavement as I take the exit towards my house. The network of audio extends beyond the situations of the researcher and draws attention to what Barad referred to as “entangled material agencies” resulting in “networks or assemblages of humans and nonhumans” (1118, 1131). The network of my podcast listening accounts for the mobile device that we use to access content, the digital networks that I download episodes over, as well as the physical infrastructures that enable those networks, the hosting services and recording technologies and funding mechanisms used by the podcasters, the distribution of campuses, the roads I travel on, the tonnage of steel and plastic that I manipulate while researching, and that’s even before we get to everything else that impacts on my listening, like weather, traffic, the pathways all these material items took to get where they are, the head cold impacting on my hearing, my personal history of hearing different sounds, and on and on. Embodiment I listen to podcasts in the car while commuting to work. A more accurate way of putting that would be to say that commuting is work, which I mean twice over. First, a commute is likely a requisite component of your job. This is not to assign full culpability to one actor or another; the length of your commute likely owes to various factors—availability of affordable housing, proximity of worksite relative to your home, competing duties of family care, etc.—but a commute is and should be considered part of the work. Even if you’re not getting paid for it, even if the neoliberal economic system that overarches your life has convinced you that you are actively choosing to commute as part of the mutually and equally entered-into contract with your employer, you’re on the clock when commuting because you’re doing that action because of the work. If your response to this is, “then what about people who work from home? Should their personal devices and monthly Internet costs be considered work expenses? Or what about the time it takes to get up early to put makeup on or prepare lunches for their kids? Does all that count as work?” Yes. Yes, it does. The farmer’s day doesn’t start when they milk the cow, it starts as soon as they wake up. It starts before then, even. We are entangled with our work selves. Lately, I’ve begun logging these listening commutes on my weekly timesheet. It’s not an official record: salaried employees at my institution are not required to keep track of their work hours. Instead, it’s a routine and technical document I developed to help me get things done, an artifact of procedural rhetoric and the broader genre ecology of my work. Second, commuting is a physical act. It is work. We walk to bus and train stops and stand around waiting. We power our bicycles. We drive our vehicles, manoeuvring through streets and turns and other drivers. The deleterious effects of sitting down for prolonged periods for work, including while commuting, are well documented (Ding et al.). Driving itself is an act that places the human—the driver, passengers, and pedestrians—in greater physical danger than flying, or riding a train, or swimming with sharks. Research in this way presents a different kind of epistemic risk. Arriving So, the question I’m left to codify is what does this commuting audio research methodology offer for researchers that other, more traditional approaches, might not? Rickert analysed an electric car as “inherently suasive”, as it “participates in the conflicted discourses about that built environment and showcases some fundamental preconceptions rooted into our everyday ways of being together” (263). I’m alone in the car, but every sound reminds me of how I am connected to someone or something else. Of course, neither commuting nor listening to podcasts are exclusively solo endeavours: people carpool to work, and fans attend live recordings of their favourite shows. Perhaps listening while driving causes me to pay closer attention to what’s being said, the way you seem to learn the words of a song better when listening and singing along in the car. There are different kinds of distractions when driving versus sitting at one’s desk to read or listen (although it’s fair to say that the podcast itself is the distraction from what I should be paying the most attention to when driving). Anyone who has taken a long road trip alone can tell you about the opportunities it provides to sit with one’s thoughts, to spend uninterrupted time and miles turning over an idea in your mind, to reflect at length on a single topic, to rant to the noise of the road. Maybe that’s what a commuting podcast methodology affords: isolated moments surrounded by sound, away from the overtly audio, and connected to the rest of the world. References “A Group of White Men Is Called a Podcast.” Know Your Meme, 20 Feb. 2019. 6 Mar. 2024 <https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/a-group-of-white-men-is-called-a-podcast>. Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke UP, 2007. Berkshire, Jennifer, and Jack Schneider, hosts. “Digging Deep into the Education Wars.” Have You Heard 156 (4 May 2023). <https://www.haveyouheardpodcast.com/episodes/156-digging-deep-into-the-education-wars?rq=woke>. Bourelle, Andrew, Tiffany Bourelle, and Natasha Jones. “Multimodality in the Technical Communication Classroom: Viewing Classical Rhetoric through a 21st Century Lens.” Technical Communication Quarterly 24.4 (2015): 306-327. Bowie, Jennifer L. “Podcasting in a Writing Class? Considering the Possibilities.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 16.2 (2012). 29 Nov. 2023 <https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/16.2/topoi/bowie/index.html>. Detweiler, Eric. “The Bandwidth of Podcasting.” Tuning in to Soundwriting, special issue of enculturation/Intermezzo. 9 Feb. 2024 <http://intermezzo.enculturation.net/14-stedman-et-al/detweiler.html>. Ding, Ding, et al. “Driving: A Road to Unhealthy Lifestyles and Poor Health Outcomes.” Plos One 9.6. 15 Feb. 2024 <https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094602>. Faison, Wonderful, et al. “White Benevolence: Why Supa-Save-a-Savage Rhetoric Ain’t Getting It.” In Counterstories from the Writing Center, eds. Wonderful Faison and Frankie Condon. Logan: Utah State UP. 81-94. Harris, Jasmine. “Podcast Talk and Public Sociology: Teaching Critical Race Discourse Participation through Podcast Production.” About Campus 24.3 (2019): 16-20. Locke, Charley. “Podcasts' Biggest Problem Isn't Discovery, It's Diversity.” Wired, 31 Aug. 2015. 6 Mar. 2024 <https://www.wired.com/2015/08/podcast-discovery-vs-diversity/>. Mason, Lily, and Thomas, hosts. “‘Cancel Culture’: How a Moral Panic Is Capturing America and the World – with Adrian Daub.” Is This Democracy 24 (16 May 2023). <https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/24-cancel-culture-how-a-moral-panic-is-capturing/id1652741954?i=1000612321369>. McGregor, Hannah, and Stacey Copeland. “Why Podcast? Podcasting as Publishing, Sound-Based Scholarship, and Making Podcasts Count.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 27.1 (2022). 15 Feb. 2024 <https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/27.1/topoi/mcgregor-copeland/index.html>. McNely, Brian. “Lures, Slimes, Time: Viscosity and the Nearness of Distance.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 52.3 (2019): 203-226. ———. Engaging Ambience: Visual and Multisensory Methodologies and Rhetorical Theory. Logan: Utah State UP, 2024. Morgan, Josh. “Data Confirm That Podcasting in the US Is a White Male Thing.” Quartz, 12 Jan. 2016. 6 Mar. 2024 <https://qz.com/591440/data-confirm-that-podcasting-in-the-us-is-a-white-male-thing>. Ratcliffe, Krista. “Rhetorical Listening: A Trope for Interpretive Invention and a 'Code of Cross-Cultural Conduct'.” College Composition and Communication 51.2 (1999): 195-224. Rickert, Thomas. Ambient Rhetoric: The Attunements of Rhetorical Being. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2013. Shamburg, Christopher. “Rising Waves in Informal Education: Women of Color with Educationally Oriented Podcasts.” Education and Information Technologies 26 (2021): 699–713. Tiluk, Daniel, and Have Hope, hosts. “They Stole WOKE.” Talking Race, Africa and People 1 (14 Apr. 2023). <https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/01-they-stole-woke/id1682830005?i=1000609221830> Vásquez, Camilla. Research Methods for Digital Discourse Analysis. London, Bloomsbury, 2022. Vrikki, Photini, and Sarita Malik. “Voicing Lived-Experience and Anti-Racism: Podcasting as a Space at the Margins for Subaltern Counterpublics.” Popular Communication 17.4 (2018): 273-287.
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Gallegos, Danielle, and Felicity Newman. "What about the Women?" M/C Journal 2, no. 7 (October 1, 1999). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1798.

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Contemporary culinary discourse in Australia has been dominated by the notion that migration and the increased mobility of Australians is responsible for filling a culinary void, as though, because we have had no peasantry we have no affinity with either the land or its produce. This argument serves to alienate Australians of British descent and its validity is open to questioning. It's an argument in urgent need of debate because cuisine stands out as the signifier of a 'multicultural' nation. Despite all the political posturing, food has 'long been the acceptable face of multiculturalism' (Gunew 13). We argue that the rhetoric of multiculturalism serves to widen the chasm between Australians of British descent and other migrants by encouraging the 'us' and 'them' mentality. We have examined the common links in the food stories of three women from disparate backgrounds. The sample is small in quantitative terms but we felt that if the culinary histories of just three women ran counter to the dominant discourse, then they would provide a new point of departure. In doing this we hope to question the precept driving culinary discourse which gives more weight to what men have said and done, than what women have cooked and how; and propagates mythologies about the eating habits of 'ethnic' migrants. Multiculturalism The terminology surrounding policies that seek to manage difference and diversity is culturally loaded and tends to perpetuate binaries. "Multiculturalism, circulates in Australia as a series of discursive formations serving a variety of institutional interests" (Gunew 256). In Australia multicultural policy seeks to "manage our cultural diversity so that the social cohesion of our nation is preserved" (Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs 4). The result is to allow diversity that is sanctioned and is to some extent homogenised, while difference is not understood and is contained (see Newman). Multicultural? Who does it include and exclude? Gunew points out that official formulations of multiculturalism exclude people of 'Anglo-Celtic' origin, as though they had no 'ethnicity'. Multiculturalism, while addressing some of the social problems of immigration, is propelled at government level by our need for national cultural policy (see Stratton and Ang). To have a national cultural policy you need, it would seem, a film industry, a music industry, and a cuisine. In his history of Australian cuisine, Symons has only briefly alluded to women's role in the development of Australia's 'industrial cuisine'. One Continuous Picnic presents an essentially masculinist history, a pessimistic derogatory view giving little value to domestic traditions passed from mother to daughter. Women are mentioned only as authors of cookbooks produced throughout the 19th century and as the housewives whose role in the 1950s changed due to the introduction of labour-saving devices. Scant reference is made to the pre-eminent icon of Australian rural culinary history, the Country Women's Association1 and their recipe books. These books have gone through numerous editions from the 1920s, but Symons refers to them dismissively as a 'plain text' arising from the 'store-shelf of processed ingredients' (Symons 201). What of the 'vegie' patch, the afternoon tea? These traditions are mentioned, but only in passing. The products of arduous and loving baking are belittled as 'pretty things'. Is this because they are too difficult to document or because they are women's business? Female writers Barbara Santich and Marion Halligan have both written on the importance of these traditions in the lives of Australian women. Symons's discourse concentrates on 'industrial cuisine', but who is to say that its imperatives were not transgressed. The available data derives from recipe books, sales figures and advertising, but we don't actually know how much food came from other sources. Did your grandmother keep chickens? Did your grandfather fish? Terra Australis Culinae Nullius2 Michael Symons's precept is: This is the only continent which has not supported an agrarian society ... . Our land missed that fertile period when agriculture and cooking were created. There has never been the creative interplay between society and the soil. Almost no food has ever been grown by the person who eats it, almost no food has been preserved in the home and indeed, very little preparation is now done by a family cook. This is the uncultivated continent. Our history is without peasants. (10, our emphasis) This notion of terra Australis culinae nullius is problematic on two levels. The use of the word indigenous implies both Aboriginal and British settler culinary tradition. This statement consequently denies both traditional Aboriginal knowledge and the British traditions. The importance of Aboriginal foodways, their modern exploitation and their impact on the future of Australian cuisine needs recognition, but the complexity of the issue places it beyond the bounds of this paper. Symons's view of peasantry is a romanticised one, and says less about food and more about nostalgia for a more permanent, less changing environment. Advertising of 'ethnic' food routinely exploits this nostalgia by appropriating the image of the cheerful peasant. These advertisements perpetuate the mythologies that link pastoral images with 'family values'. These myths, or what Barthes describes as 'cultural truths', hold that migrant families all have harmonious relationships, are benevolently patriarchal and they all sit down to eat together. 'Ethnic' families are at one with the land and use recipes made from fresher, more natural produce, that are handed down through the female line and have had the benefit of generations of culinary wisdom. (See Gallegos & Mansfield.) So are the culinary traditions of Australians of British descent so different from those of migrant families? Joan, born near her home in Cunderdin in the Western Australian wheatbelt, grew up on a farm in reasonably prosperous circumstances with her six siblings. After marrying, she remained in the Cunderdin area to continue farming. Giovanna was born in 1915 on a farm four kilometres outside Vasto, in the Italian region of Abruzzi. One of seven children, her father died when she was young and at the age of twenty, she came to Australia to marry a Vastese man 12 years her senior. Maria was born in Madeira in 1946, in a coastal village near the capital Funchal. Like Giovanna she is the fifth of seven children and arrived in Australia at the age of twenty to marry. We used the information elicited from these three women to scrutinise some of the mythology surrounding ethnic families. Myth 1: 'Ethnic' families all eat together. All three women said their families had eaten together in the past and it was Joan who commented that what was missing in Australia today was people sitting down together to share a meal. Joan's farming community all came in for an extended midday meal from necessity, as the horses needed to be rested. Both women described radio, television, increasing work hours and different shifts as responsible for the demise of the family meal. Commensality is one of the common boundary markers for all groups 'indicating a kind of equality, peership, and the promise of further kinship links stemming from the intimate acts of dining together' (Nash 11). It is not only migrant families who eat together, and the demise of the family meal is more widely felt. Myth 2: Recipes in 'ethnic' families are passed down from generation to generation. Handing recipes down from generation to generation is not limited to just 'ethnic' families. All three women describe learning to cook from their mothers. Giovanna and Maria had hands-on experiences at very young ages, cooking for the family out of necessity. Joan did not have to cook for her family but her mother still taught her basic cookery as well as the finer points. The fluidity of the mother-daughter identity is expressed and documented by the handing on of recipes. Joan's community thought the recipes important enough to document in a written form, and so the West Australian version of the CWA cookbook became a reality. Joan, when asked about why the CWA developed a cookbook, replied that they wanted to record the recipes that were all well tried by women who spent the bulk of their days in the kitchen, cooking. Being taught to cook, teaching your children to cook and passing on recipes crosses borders, and does not serve to create or maintain boundaries. Myth 3: 'Ethnic' food is never prepared from processed products but always from homegrown produce. During their childhoods the range of food items purchased by the families was remarkably similar for all three women. All described buying tinned fish, rice and sugar, while the range of items produced from what was grown reflected common practices for the use and preservation of fresh produce. The major difference was the items that were in abundance, so while Joan describes pickling meat in addition to preserving fruits, Maria talks about preserving fish and Giovanna vegetables. The traditions developed around what was available. Joan and her family grew the food that they ate, preserved the food in their own home, and the family cook did all the preparation. To suggest they did not have a creative interplay with the soil is suggesting that they were unskilled in making a harsh landscape profitable. Joan's family could afford to buy more food items than the other families. Given the choice both Giovanna's and Maria's families would have only been too eager to make their lives easier. For example, on special occasions when the choice was available Giovanna's family chose store-bought pasta. The perception of the freshness and tastiness of peasant cuisine and affinity with the land obscures the issue, which for much of the world is still quantity, not quality. It would seem that these women's stories have points of reference. All three women describe the sense of community food engendered. They all remember sharing and swapping recipes. This sense of community was expressed by the sharing of food -- regardless of how little there was or what it was. The legacy lives on, while no longer feeling obliged to provide an elaborate afternoon tea as she did in her married life, visitors to Joan's home arrive to the smell of freshly baked biscuits shared over a cup of tea or coffee. Giovanna is only too eager to share her Vastese cakes with a cup of espresso coffee, and as new acquaintances we are obliged to taste each of the five different varieties of cakes and take some home. Maria, on the other hand, offered instant coffee and store-bought biscuits; having worked outside the home all her life and being thirty years younger than the other women, is this perhaps the face of modernity? The widespread anticipation of the divisions between these women has more to do with power relationships and the politics of east, west, north, south than with the realities of everyday life. The development of a style of eating will depend on your knowledge both as an individual and as a collective, the ingredients that are available at any one time, the conditions under which food has to be grown, and your own history. For the newly-arrived Southern Europeans meat was consumed in higher quantities because its availability was restricted in their countries of origin, to eat meat regularly was to increase your status in society. Interest in 'ethnic' food and its hybridisation is a global phenomenon and the creolisation of eating has been described both in America (see Garbaccia) and in Britain (James 81). The current obsession with the 'ethnic' has more to do with nostalgia than tolerance. The interviews which were conducted highlight the similarities between three women from different backgrounds despite differences in age and socioeconomic status. Our cuisine is in the process of hybridisation, but let us not forget who is manipulating this process and the agendas under which it is encouraged. To lay claim that one tradition is wonderful, while the other either does not exist or has nothing to offer, perpetuates divisive binaries. By focussing on what these women have in common rather than their differences we begin to critically interrogate the "culinary binary". It is our intention to stimulate debate that we hope will eventually lead to the encouragement of difference rather than the futile pursuit of authenticity. Footnotes 1. The Country Women's Association is an organisation that began in Australia in the 1920s. It is still operational and has as one of its primary aims the improvement of the welfare and conditions of women and children, especially those living in the country. 2. The term terra australis nullius is used to describe Australia at the point of colonisation. The continent was regarded as "empty" because the native people had neither improved nor settled on the land. We have extended this concept to incorporate cuisine. This notion of emptiness has influenced readings of Australian history which overlook the indigenous population and their relationship with the land. References Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs. Towards A National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia. Canberra, 1988. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. A. Lavers. London: Vintage, 1993. Belasco, Warren. "Ethnic Fast Foods: The Corporate Melting Pot". Food and Foodways 2.1 (1987): 1-30. Gallegos, Danielle, and Alan Mansfield. "Eclectic Gastronomes or Conservative Eaters: What Does Advertising Say?" Nutrition Unplugged, Proceedings of the 16th Dietitians Association of Australia National Conference. Hobart: Dietitians Association of Australia, 1997. Gallegos, Danielle, and Alan Mansfield. "Screen Cuisine: The Pastes, Powders and Potions of the Mediterranean Diet". Celebrate Food, Proceedings of the 17th Dietitians Association of Australia National Conference. Sydney: Dietitians Association of Australia, 1998. Garbaccia, D.R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Boston: Harvard UP, 1998. Gunew, Sneja. "Denaturalising Cultural Nationalisms; Multicultural Readings of 'Australia'." Nation and Narration. Ed. Homi Bhabha. London: Routledge, 1990. 245-66. Gunew, Sneja. Introduction. Feminism and the Politics of Difference. Eds. S. Gunew and A. Yeatman. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1993. xiii-xxv. Halligan, Marion. Eat My Words. Melbourne: Angus & Robertson, 1990. Harvey, D. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. James, Alison. "How British Is British Food". Food, Health and Identity. Ed. P. Caplan. London: Routledge, 1997. 71-86. Mennell, Stephen. All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996. Nash, Manning. The Cauldron of Ethnicity in the Modern World. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989. Newman, Felicity. Didn't Your Mother Teach You Not to Talk with Your Mouth Full? Food, Families and Friction. Unpublished Masters Thesis, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, 1997. Santich, Barbara. Looking for Flavour. Adelaide: Wakefield, 1996. Stratton, Jon, and Ien Ang. "Multicultural Imagined Communities: Cultural Difference and National Identity in Australia and the USA". Continuum 8.2 (1994): 124-58. Symons, Michael. One Continuous Picnic. Adelaide: Duck, 1992. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Danielle Gallegos, Felicity Newman. "What about the Women? Food, Migration and Mythology." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.7 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/women.php>. Chicago style: Danielle Gallegos, Felicity Newman, "What about the Women? Food, Migration and Mythology," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 7 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/women.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Danielle Gallegos, Felicity Newman. (1999) What about the women? Food, migration and mythology. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(7). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/women.php> ([your date of access]).
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Rose, Megan Catherine. "The Future Is Furby." M/C Journal 26, no. 2 (April 25, 2023). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2955.

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Fig. 1: “Pink Flamingo Furby” (2000), “Peachy Furby Baby” (1999), and “Owl Furby” (1999) Sunlight Up (“Dah-ay-loh oo-tye”): Introduction As playthings at the junction of human experience and imagination, toys like Furby present an interesting touch point to explore cultural imaginations, hopes, and fears about zoomorphic robots and AI toys. This year marks their 25th anniversary. Created by Dave Hampton and Caleb Chung, Furby publicly debuted at the American International Toy Fair in 1998. Originally released by Tiger Electronics, this toy was later sold to Hasbro in 2005 to 2007. Since their introduction to the market, Furbys have been occupying our shelves and basements, perceived as “annoying little owl-like dolls with embedded sound-recording chips” (Gullin) that speak their own language “furbish” (shown throughout in parenthesis). Early reportage likened Furby to all kinds of cute critters: mogwais, hamsters, and Star Trek’s tribbles. Narratively Furbys are framed as a benevolent, alien species, living in space in a cloud known as Furbyland. For motivations not revealed, Furbys, in looking down on our planet, were so struck by the beautiful view of nature and its signs of peacefulness — “no worry (boo boh-bay)” — that they jumped, plummeting to us like tiny fluffy asteroids. Little did they know that their arrival would spark an intergalactic diplomatic incident. During its introduction in 1998, the initial discourse in media reportage emphasised anxieties of the unknown. What lies beneath the surface of Furby, as a toy that might blur the line between the real and imagined for children? What technologies might it harbour? As a hybrid of technology and animal, Furby appeared as a creepy-cute cultural icon that simultaneously delighted and horrified children and adults alike. Today adult fans reimagine Furby through play and customisation as part of their reflections on their childhood experiences of this cultural moment, and as a way of exploring new futures. Furby provides an opportunity to reflect on adults’ interactions with toys, including parents, members of the public, and fans motivated by nostalgia. At the time of its release Furby presented adults with moments of “dissonance” towards new horrifying technologies that “might occur at the seams [of] … monumental cultural shifts” (Powell 4). But for adult fans today, as a childhood memory, the toy represents both strangeness and future possibilities; it has become a tool of “disrupt[ing] and challeng[ing] beliefs and connections” (Rand 9). In this article I primarily analyse the “original” Furbys of 1998 to 2002, but also mention a range of later versions. This includes: the Emoto-tronic Furbys (2006) which were designed to have more expressive faces; the Furby Boom (2003), a toy whose personality changes according to the level of care it is provided with; and the Furby Connect (2016), which has bluetooth capacity. This discussion is supported by a thematic analysis of 3800 news articles about Furby from 1998 to 2000, visual analysis of both the original and customised iterations of Furby, as well as my reflections as a member of the Furby fandom community. You Play? (U-nye-loo-lay-doo?): Furby Encounters A key part of the discourse around Furby since its introduction in 1998 was, “who would want one?” Indeed, the answer at the time appeared to be “several million of us, the toy demons hope” (Weeks). After their release in American toy stores on 2 October 1998 in limited supplies, a Furbish frenzy ensued, resulting in altercations between shoppers and staff (e.g. Munroe; Warmbir; Associated Press). Aged 10, I recall my little black and white Furby, Coco, waiting for me on the shelves of the electronics section of Big W in Australia, fortunately with no such commotion. Furby is classed by the Guinness World Records as the world’s first AI toy, but it was certainly not the first electronic toy to enter the market; at the time of Furby’s release, Tickle Me Elmo and My Interactive Pooh presented competition, and by the late 1980s there was already concern about how electronic pet toys might erode emotion and connection (Turkle, “Authenticity”; Turkle, “Nascent”). Speculation over the reason for the Furby mass hysteria ensued. Some suggested the appeal was the toy’s status symbol status (Beck), whereas others cited its broad appeal: “it's not gender specific; it doesn't appeal to a particular age group; and most important, it's affordable and doesn't require additional equipment or a computer” (Davis). Some experts offered their commentary of the cyberpet phenomena in general, suggesting that it is a way of dealing with isolation and loneliness (Yorkshire Post). Indeed, all of these features are important to note when we consider the transformation of Furby into queer icon. Central to Furby’s cultural narrative is the idea of contact, or a meeting between robot and user; through play children “teach” their new pet Earth’s new ways (Marsh, “Coded”; Marsh, “Uncanny”). And with this contact also comes a sense of the unknown: what lies beneath the creature’s surface? In their study of zoomorphic robots, Hirofumi Katsumi and Daniel White suggest that Donna Haraway’s work on animal encounters might help us understand this idea of contact. As “animal-like” creature, Furby recalls the transformative potentials of meeting with the more-than-human. Furby’s presence on toy shelves, in classrooms and in homes was one of the first times society had to consider what it meant to “enter the world of becoming with” zoomorphic robots, and to reflect on “who or what ... is precisely at stake” in this entanglement (Haraway 19). What do we learn about ourselves and the unknown through our encounters with Furby? “Monster” (Moh-moh): Technological Threat, Monstrous Other In media reportage, Furby is framed as both new and innovative, but also as a threatening fluffy anarchist. With its technology largely unknown, Furby at the time of its release presented society with a sense of “technohorror” and “imaginings of [social] collapse” (Powell 24). A common concern was that Furby might record and repeat inappropriate language in an act of rebellion. Occasionally tabloid newspapers would report claims such as, "MUM … was horrified when she sat down to play with her daughter's new Furby toy and it squeaked: "F*** me" (The Sun). Some concerns were quite serious, including that Furby could emit electromagnetic fields that would create interference for medical devices and aircraft instruments; this was later disproven by engineers (Tan and Hinberg; Basky; Computer Security). Other urban myths pointed to a more whimsical Furby, whose sensors had the capacity to launch spacecraft (Watson). One persistent concern was the surveillance potentials of Furby. In 1999 the US National Security Agency (NSA) issued a ban on Furby in their Fort Mead headquarters, with concern that they might record and repeat confidential information (Gullin; Ramalho; Borger). This was denied by Tiger Electronics, who emphatically stated “Furby is not a spy” (Computer Security). Engineers performing “autopsies” on Furbys quickly put much of this anxiety to rest (Phobe). This was met with mirthful rebuttals of how future Furbys might be transformed into cute and ubiquitous “wireless furby transmitters” to gather intelligence in warzones (Gullin). As a result, the initial anxiety about surveillance and toys dissipated. However, academics continue to remind us of the real risks of smart toys (e.g. Lupton; Milkaite and Lievens). The 2016 Furby Connect, equipped with voice recognition and Bluetooth capacities has been shown to be hackable (Williams). Further, Maria Ramalho has reported Snowden’s 2014 claims that both NSA and the UK Government Communication Headquarters have been accessing the data collected. In this context, Furby has become “Big Brother transmogrified into ambiguous, cute” unaccountable creature (Ramalho). Through this, we can see how our entanglement with Furby as an object of technohorror speaks both to our anxieties and the real possibilities of technology. In order to craft a narrative around Furby that speaks to this monstrous potential, many have drawn comparisons between Furby and the character Gizmo from the Gremlins franchise. This reference to Gizmo appears in the majority of the media articles sampled for this research. Gizmo is a “mogwai” (trans. demon) with both cute and monstrous potential; like Furby, it also has the potential to transform into a threat to “good society” (Chesher 153-4). This comparison speaks to Gremlins as an anti-technology statement (Sale). However, when we consider how media rhetoric has framed Furby as something to be tamed and controlled, it’s important we approach this comparison with caution in light of the Orientalist underpinnings of the Gremlins franchise. Wendy Allison Lee highlights how Gremlins reflects xenophobic themes of invasion and assimilation. While Gizmo is a “cute, well-behaved” character who “strives to assimilate” much like how Furby might, through play with children, it also harbours a threat to order. In this encounter are resonances of “racist love” that can sometimes underpin our affection for cuteness (Bow). Further reflection is needed on how we might unentangle ourselves from this framing and imagine more inclusive futures with toys like Furby. Fig. 2: Interactive Gizmo, a “Furby Friend” produced by Hasbro, Tiger and Warner Bros in 1999 Big Fun! (Dah doo-ay wah!): Queer Re-Imaginings of Furby Fig. 3: Party time! Adult fans around the world now gather under the “Furby” banner, participating in a colourful array of playful mischief. Reddit forum r/furby (11,200 subscribers) creates a fun space to enjoy the whimsy of Furby, transforming the figure into a sweet and kind companion. Under this umbrella, r/oddbodyfurby (997 subscribers) explore the horrifying potentials of Furby to its playful and surprising ends, which I discuss in this section. In other forums, such as Furby Collectors and Customisers (4.1k members) on Facebook, these different interests come together in a playful and creative space. There was also an active community on Tumblr, where some of the most creatively generative activities around Furby have occurred (Tiffany). In Japan, there is a lively community of fans on Twitter who dress and photograph Emoto-tronic Furbys in a range of cute and charming ways. This forms part of a broader network of creatives, such as “Circuit Benders” who tear down toys and rework them into instruments in a process known as “frankensteining”, such as Look Mum No Computer’s Furby Organ (Deahl). As fans and artists, people act as “queer accessories” to help Furby escape the world and narrative that sought to enclose it, so it might enact its revenge or transcend as a non-binary queer icon (Rand 9-11). As small, collectible and customisable friends, images of happy and creepy Furbys are part of a network of cute media that provides my generation with a source of comfort during times of precarity, occupying our spaces with their own vitality and presence as soothing companions (e.g. Stevens; Allison; Yano). Cuteness as media also lends itself to hybridisation; a mixing and matching with seemingly “opposing” aesthetics. For many fans, the charm of Furby lies in its nostalgic pull as a creature of childhood creepy-cute nightmares. Indeed, it seems that early concerns that Furby may “blur the line between the real and imagined for many children” were in fact valid (Knowlton). While we knew they weren’t “alive” in the true sense, to us they appeared “sort of alive” as our everyday environments became increasingly technological with a dazzling array of electronics (Turkle, “Authenticity”). As Allison (179) explains, we had to “adjust to a world where the border between the imaginary and the real” began to shift rapidly, leaving us open to dream, imagine, and craft narratives populated by a fear of the mechanised undead. Many Millennials were convinced as children that their Furby was waiting for them in the dark, watching, chuckling (“he he heeeee”). Patrick Lenton, diarising his adventures with a rescue Furby this year recalls his childhood toy as “a riot of noise and fury, the kind of demonic household terror”. Some adults, recalling these memories now refer to Furby as “it” or “evil” (Marsh, “Uncanny” 59). In 2020, adult Furby fans, thinking back to their childhood toys, speculated if the positioning of Furby’s eyes at the front of its head meant it was a predator (Watson). Some suggested that their short legs meant they are ambush predators, their infra-red sensor enabling them to detect prey in the dark. Other playful lore suggested that they were made of real cat and dog fur. Through this act of imaginative play, adults reach back to the playful horrors of their childhoods, combining their sense of dread with glee. This has been recently animated by films such as The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021), where Furbys equipped with “PAL” chips transmogrify into a horrific pack of menacing creatures, and exact revenge. The main contributing factor to this experience is in part the puppetry of Furby. The 1999 Furby presents an exaggerated performance that is both “alive” and “unalive”, its wild rocking, owlish blinking, and cackling creating a sense of “dread and creeping horror” (Freud 2; Marsh, “Uncanny”). Through a blend of animation and imagination, agency is diffused between toy and child to give Furby “life” (Silvio 423). Interestingly, studies of the 2016 Furby Connect and its friendly and social programming that is designed to encourage positive care and engagement has counteracted some of this experience for children (Marsh, “Uncanny” 54). Likewise, in discussing the 2013 Furby Boom Chesher (151) describes this animation as “zany”, working with Sianne Ngai’s conceptualisation of this aesthetic and its relationship to cuteness. While some might praise these later developments in the Furby franchise as having saved another generation of children from nightmares, compared to the original Furby these later editions are less popular among fans; perhaps there is less “material” to work with. Fans as adults now draw on Furby as a playful and cute text to experiment with and hybridise with a variety of horrifying and surprising potentials. This leans into Furby’s design as a chimera, as it uses a combination of cute features to create a “short-hand” for life and also evoke the “idea” or “character” of appealing animals that form part of cultures “charismatic megafauna” (Nishimura 179; Stuck and Rogers; Gn). With cat-like ears, a tuft of hair that drifts with sympathetic movement, two wide eyes, framed with coquettish false lashes, a bird’s beak, and two paws, Furby both suspends and confounds our disbelief. Following the principles of the Kindchenschema (Lorenz) to a “100% ratio” its body is reduced to a round form, its most dominant feature its large eyes (Borgi, Cogliati-Dezza, Brelsford Meints, and Cirulli). While large eyes generally are thought to have an affective pull to them (Harris 4), their fixed placement in the original Furby’s skull creates a dead-pan gaze, that morphs into a Kubrik stare as the toy tilts forward to greet the viewer. Fig. 4: Kindschenschema at work in Furby’s design Furby fans mischievously extend this hybridisation of Furby’s body further through a range of customisation practices. Through “skinning”, Furby’s faux fur surfaces are removed and replaced with a fantastic array of colours and textures. Through breaking into their mechatronic shell – a practice known as “shucking” – their parts are repaired or modified. This results in a range of delightfully queer, non-binary representations of Furby with a range of vibrant furs, piercings, and evocative twinkling and gentle eyes (“tee-wee-lah!”). These figures act as both avatars and as companions for fans. Sporting earrings and rainbow bead necklaces, they are photographed resting in grassy fields, soft crochet rainbows, and bookshelves: they are an expression of all that is joyful in the world. Some fans push the customisation further to create whimsical creatures from another dimension. Some Furbys appear with moss and lichen for fur, sprouting tiny toadstools. Furbys are also transformed into “oddbodies” of varying species. Some appear both as winged fairies, and as transcendental multi-eyed and winged “biblically accurate” angels. Others are hybridised with plush toys or are reworked into handbags. Some veer into the realm of body horror, using doll limbs and bodies to create humanoid forms. The most iconic is the “long furby”, created by Tumblr user FurbyFuzz in 2018. Elongated and insect-like, the Long Furby wriggles into homes and curls up on soft furnishings. Collectors gather “haunted photos from the dark recesses of the internet” to document their escapades (Long Furby). Sometimes, hybridised Furbys appear not through creator interventions but rather emerge from nature itself. One such mythical creature is Murby, an original Furby unearthed in 2013 on an old farm property. Once toy, now woodland spirit, Murby gazes upon and blesses fans with dreamy, clouded eyes, its body an entanglement of thick moss, rich earth and time. Furby’s queerness, strangeness, and hybridity speaks to fans in different ways. Personally, as a neurodivergent person, I experience the coding and the playful reimaginings of Furby as a reflection of my own life experience. Neurodivergent people have a high capacity for care and empathy for objects as curiosities, supports, and friends (e.g. Atherton and Cross; White and Remington; Clutterbuck, Shah and Livingston). Like Furby, I am an alien whom people want to tame. My body and movement are treated with the same infantilising bemusement and suspicion. I feel like a chimera myself; an entanglement of many parts that make a whole, each on their own charming, but together forming a chaotic attempt to connect with neurotypicals. For me, what lies beneath Furby’s surface is my own psyche; rescuing and customising Furbys is a symbolic act, a creative expression of my desire to transcend and resist ableist forces. Together my Furbys and I revel in our strangeness in solidarity, plotting our mischievous revenge (“party time!”). This micro-level resistance will not overturn ableism but brings me a sense of reprieve as I work with my allies to bring socio-cultural change. Fig. 5: The author, Furby Queen. Photo by Sherbet Birdie Photography. Through their creative work, fans explore how Furbys could be reimagined. While fannish activities may at first glance appear fringe or frivolous, they hold up a mirror to our own limitations, anxieties, and practices as a society. The future is Furby. Go to Sleep Now (U-nye-way-loh-nee-way): Conclusions As a source of technohorror and queer potential, Furby provides a vessel by which we can imagine the futures of toys. Through encounter and contact, this seemingly harmless fluffy robot brought about disruption and chaos as a threat to securities and social fabrics. Adult fans, now recalling this cultural moment, lean into this creature’s promise of new possibilities, queering its cultural narrative. Through exploring adults’ interactions with toys, we explore new potentials for change and futures that are playful and creative. Acknowledgments This article was produced with the support of a Vitalities Lab Scholarship and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. I also thank Deborah Lupton and David Eastwood for their support in the production of an arts-based project that draws on this research into cyberpet histories. References Allison, Anne. Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination. Berkeley: U of California P, 2006. Associated Press. “Two Injured in Flurry over Furby.” Charleston Daily Mail 28 Nov. 1998. Atherton, Gray, and Liam Cross. “Seeing More than Human: Autism and Anthropomorphic Theory of Mind.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018): 1–18. Basky, Greg. “Furby Not Guilty as ‘Charged’.” The Western Journal of Medicine 172 (2000): 59. Beck, Rachel. “‘Must-Have’ Toys Created by Intense Publicity Campaigns.” AP Business Writer 16 Oct. 1998. 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Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Milkaite, Ingrida, and Eva Lievens. “The Internet of Toys: Playing Games with Children’s Data?” The Internet of Toys: Practices, Affordances and the Political Economy of Children’s Smart Play. Eds. Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Lee, Wendy Allison. “Cute. Dangerous. Asian American. 'Gremlins' @ 35.” Public Books, 2019. <https://www.publicbooks.org/cute-dangerous-asian-american-gremlins-35/>. Lenton, Patrick. “Happy 25th Birthday Furby, the Toy That Stole a Generation’s Hearts.” Sydney Morning Herald 6 Apr. 2023. <https://www.smh.com.au/culture/comedy/happy-25th-birthday-furby-the-toy-that-stole-a-generation-s-hearts-20230403-p5cxoe.html>. The Mitchells vs. The Machines. Dir. Mike Rianda. Sony Pictures Animation, 2021 Munroe, Tony. “Fur Flies at Mass. Malls over Hasbro’s Furby Doll.” Reuters, 28 Nov. 1998. Ngai, Sianne. Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2012. Nishimura, Keiko. Communication Robot: Animating a Technological Solution in Twenty-First Century Japan. Dissertation. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2021. Phobe. Furby Autopsy, 1998. <http://www.phobe.com/furby/>. Powell, Daniel. Horror Culture in the New Millennium: Digital Dissonance and Technohorror. Washington, D.C.: Lexington, 2018. Ramalho, Maria Irene. “The Private Is Public or Furbies Are Us.” e-cadernos 27 (2017). <http://journals.openedition.org/eces/2199>. Rand, Erica. Barbie’s Queer Accessories. Carolina: Duke UP. Sale, Kirkpatrick. Rebels against the Future. London: Quartet Books, 1996. Silvio, Terry. “Animation: The New Performance.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20: 422–438. Stevens, Carolyn. “Cute But Relaxed: Ten Years of Rilakkuma in Precarious Japan.” M/C Journal 17.2 (2014). <https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.783>. Stuck, Rachel E., and Wendy A. Rogers. “Older Adults Perceptions of Supporting Factors of Trust in a Robot Care Providers.” Journal of Robotics (2018): 6519713. The Sun. “Frisky Furby Fun.” 31 Dec. 1999. Tan, Kok-Swang, and Irwin Hinberg, “Furby Does Not Interfere with Medical Devices.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 161 (1999): 971. Tiffany, Kaitlyn. “Every Furby Gets a Home.” Vox, 21 Dec. 2018. <https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/21/18149004/furby-collectors-tumblr-vintage-robots-fandom>. Turkle, Sherry. “Authenticity in the Age of Digital Companions.” Interaction Studies: Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems 8 (2007): 501–517. Turkle, Sherry. “A Nascent Robotics Culture: New Complicities for Companionship.” Machine Ethics and Robot Ethics. London: Routledge, 2017. Warmbir, Steve. “Mild Weather Draws Shoppers Out into the Sun. But Furby Frenzy Drives Desperate into Long Lines.” Chicago Daily Herald, 28 Nov. 1998: 4. Watson, Averie. “A Dark Furby Theory May Reveal Them as Flesh-Devouring Predators.” CBR, 20 Nov. 2021. <https://www.cbr.com/dark-furby-predator-theory/>. White, Rebecca, and Anna Remington. “Object Personification in Autism: This Paper Will Be Very Sad If You Don’t Read It.” Autism 23.4 (2018): 1042–1045. Williams, Al. “Mission Impossible: Infiltrating Furby.” Hackaday, 26 Nov. 2017. <https://hackaday.com/2017/11/26/mission-impossible-infiltrating-furby/>. Weeks, Linton. “The Great Furby Fuss.” The Washington Post, 24 Nov. 1998. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/11/24/the-great-furby-fuss/30a0a340-658a-4609-ae07-f38ff368c7c4/>. Yano, Christine. “Reach Out and Touch Someone: Thinking through Sanrio’s Social Communication Empire.” Japanese Studies 31.1 (2011): 23–36. Yorkshire Post. “Cyberpets – Harmless Fun or Addictive Craze?” 9 Nov. 1998: 9.
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Gildersleeve, Jessica. "“Weird Melancholy” and the Modern Television Outback: Rage, Shame, and Violence in Wake in Fright and Mystery Road." M/C Journal 22, no. 1 (March 13, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1500.

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In the middle of the nineteenth century, Marcus Clarke famously described the Australian outback as displaying a “Weird Melancholy” (qtd. in Gelder 116). The strange sights, sounds, and experiences of Australia’s rural locations made them ripe for the development of the European genre of the Gothic in a new location, a mutation which has continued over the past two centuries. But what does it mean for Australia’s Gothic landscapes to be associated with the affective qualities of the melancholy? And more particularly, how and why does this Gothic effect (and affect) appear in the most accessible Gothic media of the twenty-first century, the television series? Two recent Australian television adaptations, Wake in Fright (2017, dir. Kriv Stenders) and Mystery Road (2018, dir. Rachel Perkins) provoke us to ask the question: how does their pictorial representation of the Australian outback and its inhabitants overtly express rage and its close ties to melancholia, shame and violence? More particularly, I argue that in both series this rage is turned inwards rather than outwards; rage is turned into melancholy and thus to self-destruction – which constructs an allegory for the malaise of our contemporary nation. However, here the two series differ. While Wake in Fright posits this as a never-ending narrative, in a true Freudian model of melancholics who fail to resolve or attend to their trauma, Mystery Road is more positive in its positioning, allowing the themes of apology and recognition to appear, both necessary for reparation and forward movement.Steven Bruhm has argued that a psychoanalytic model of trauma has become the “best [way to] understand the contemporary Gothic and why we crave it” (268), because the repressions and repetitions of trauma offer a means of playing out the anxieties of our contemporary nation, its fraught histories, its conceptualisations of identity, and its fears for the future. Indeed, as Bruhm states, it is precisely because of the way in which “the Gothic continually confronts us with real, historical traumas that we in the west have created” that they “also continue to control how we think about ourselves as a nation” (271). Jerrold E. Hogle agrees, noting that “Gothic fiction has always begun with trauma” (72). But it is not only that Gothic narratives are best understood as traumatic narratives; rather, Hogle posits that the Gothic is uniquely situated as a genre for dealing with the trauma of our personal and national histories because it enables us to approach the contradictions and conflicts of traumatic experience:I find that the best of the post-9/11 uses of Gothic in fiction achieve that purpose for attentive readers by using the conflicted un-naturalness basic to the Gothic itself to help us concurrently grasp and conceal how profoundly conflicted we are about the most immediate and pervasive cultural “woundings” of our western world as it has come to be. (75)Hogle’s point is critical for its attention to the different ways trauma can be dealt with in texts and by readers, returning in part to Sigmund Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia: where mourning is the ‘healthy’ process of working through or narrativising trauma. However, melancholia coalesces into a denial or repression of the traumatic event, and thus, as Freud suggests, its unresolved status reappears during nightmares and flashbacks, for example (Rall 171). Hogle’s praise for the Gothic, however, lies in its ability to move away from that binary, to “concurrently grasp and conceal” trauma: in other words, to respond simultaneously with mourning and with melancholy.Hogle adds to this classic perspective of melancholia through careful attention to the way in which rage inflects these affective responses. Under a psychoanalytic model, rage can be seen “as an infantile response to separation and loss” (Kahane 127). The emotional free-rein of rage, Claire Kahane points out, “disempowers us as subjects, making us subject to its regressive vicissitudes” (127; original emphasis). In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler explicates this in more detail, making clear that this disempowerment, this inability to clearly express oneself, is what leads to melancholia. Melancholia, then, can be seen as a loss or repression of the identifiable cause of the original rage: this overwhelming emotion has masked its original target. “Insofar as grief remains unspeakable”, Butler posits, “the rage over the loss can redouble by virtue of remaining unavowed. And if that very rage over loss is publicly proscribed, the melancholic effects of such a proscription can achieve suicidal proportions” (212). The only way to “survive” rage in this mutated form of melancholia is to create what Butler terms “collective institutions for grieving”; these enablethe reassembling of community, the reworking of kinship, the reweaving of sustaining relations. And insofar as they involve the publicisation and dramatisation of death, they call to be read as life-affirming rejoinders to the dire psychic consequences of a grieving process culturally thwarted and proscribed. (212-13)Butler’s reading thus aligns with Hogle’s, suggesting that it is in our careful attendance to the horrific experience of grief (however difficult) that we could navigate towards something like resolution – not a simplified narrative of working through, to be sure, but a more ethical recognition of the trauma which diverts it from its repressive impossibilities. To further the argument, it is only by transforming melancholic rage into outrage, to respond with an affect that puts shame to work, that rage will become politically effective. So, outrage is “a socialised and mediated form of rage … directed toward identifiable and bounded others in the external world” (Kahane 127-28). Melancholia and shame might then be seen to be directly opposed to one another: the former a failure of rage, the latter its socially productive incarnation.The Australian Gothic and its repetition of a “Weird Melancholy” exhibit this affective model. Ken Gelder has emphasised the historical coincidences: since Australia was colonised around the same time as the emergence of the Gothic as a genre (115), it has always been infused with what he terms a “colonial melancholia” (119). In contemporary Gothic narratives, this is presented through the repetition of the trauma of loss and injustice, so that the colonial “history of brutal violence and exploitation” (121) is played out, over and over again, desperate for resolution. Indeed, Gelder goes so far as to claim that this is the primary fuel for the Gothic as it manifests in Australian literature and film, arguing that since it is “built upon its dispossession and killings of Aboriginal people and its foundational systems of punishment and incarceration, the colonial scene … continues to shadow Australian cultural production and helps to keep the Australian Gothic very much alive” (121).That these two recent television series depict the ways in which rage and outrage appear in a primal ‘colonial scene’ which fixes the Australian Gothic within a political narrative. Both Wake in Fright and Mystery Road are television adaptations of earlier works. Wake in Fright is adapted from Kenneth Cook’s novel of the same name (1961), and its film adaptation (1971, dir. Ted Kotcheff). Mystery Road is a continuation of the film narrative of the same name (2013, dir. Ivan Sen), and its sequel, Goldstone (2016, dir. Ivan Sen). Both narratives illustrate the shift – where the films were first viewed by a high-culture audience attracted to arthouse cinema and modernist fiction – to the re-makes that are viewed in the domestic space of the television screen and/or other devices. Likewise, the television productions were not seen as single episodes, but also linked to each network’s online on-demand streaming viewers, significantly broadening the audience for both works. In this respect, these series both domesticate and democratise the Gothic. The televised series become situated publicly, recalling the broad scale popularity of the Gothic genre, what Helen Wheatley terms “the most domestic of genres on the most domestic of media” (25). In fact, Deborah Cartmell argues that “adaptation is, indeed, the art form of democracy … a ‘freeing’ of a text from the confined territory of its author and of its readers” (8; emphasis added). Likewise, André Bazin echoes this notion that the adaptation is a kind of “digest” of the original work, “a literature that has been made more accessible through cinematic adaptation” (26; emphasis added). In this way, adaptations serve to ‘democratise’ their concerns, focussing these narratives and their themes as more publically accessible, and thus provoking the potential for a broader cultural discussion. Wake in FrightWake in Fright describes the depraved long weekend of schoolteacher John Grant, who is stuck in the rural town of Bundinyabba (“The Yabba”) after he loses all of his money in an ill-advised game of “Two Up.” Modernising the concerns of the original film, in this adaptation John is further endangered by a debt to local loan sharks, and troubled by his frequent flashbacks to his lost lover. The narrative does display drug- and alcohol-induced rage in its infamous pig-shooting (originally roo-shooting) scene, as well as the cold and threatening rage of the loan shark who suspects she will not be paid, both of which are depicted as a specifically white aggression. Overall, its primary depiction of rage is directed inward, rather than outward, and in this way becomes narrowed down to emphasise a more individual, traumatic shame. That is, John’s petulant rage after his girlfriend’s rejection of his marriage proposal manifests in his determination to stolidly drink alone while she swims in the ocean. When she drowns while he is drunk and incapable to rescue her, his inaction becomes the primary source of his shame and exacerbates his self-focused, but repressed rage. The subsequent cycles of drinking (residents of The Yabba only drink beer, and plenty of it) and gambling (as he loses over and over at Two-Up) constitute a repetition of his original trauma over her drowning, and trigger the release of his repressed rage. While accompanying some locals during their drunken pig-shooting expedition, his rage finds an outlet, resulting in the death of his new acquaintance, Doc Tydon. Like John, Doc is the victim of a self-focused rage and shame at the death of his young child and the abdication of his responsibilities as the town’s doctor. Both John and Doc depict the collapse of authority and social order in the “Weird Melancholy” of the outback (Rayner 27), but this “subversion of the stereotype of capable, confident Australian masculinity” (37) and the decay of community and social structure remains static. However, the series does not push forward towards a moral outcome or a suggestion of better actions to inspire the viewer. Even his desperate suicide attempt, what he envisions as the only ‘ethical’ way out of his nightmare, ends in failure and is covered up by the local police. The narrative becomes circular: for John is returned to The Yabba every time he tries to leave, and even in the final scene he is back in Tiboonda, returned to where he started, standing at the front of his classroom. But importantly, this cycle mimics John’s cycle of unresolved shame, suggests an inability to ‘wake’ from this nightmare of repetition, with no acknowledgement of his individual history and his complicity in the traumatic events. Although John has outlived his suicide attempt, this does not validate his survival as a rebirth. Rather, John’s refusal of responsibility and the accompanying complicity of local authorities suggests the inevitability of further self-damaging rage, shame, and violence. Outback NoirBoth Wake in Fright and Mystery Road have been described as “outback noir” (Dolgopolov 12), combining characteristics of the Gothic, the Western, and film noir in their depictions of suffering and the realisation (or abdication) of justice. Greg Dolgopolov explains that while traditional “film noir explores the moral trauma of crime on its protagonists, who are often escaping personal suffering or harrowing incidents from their pasts” (12), these examples of Australian (outback) noir are primarily concerned with “ancestral trauma – that of both Indigenous and settler. Outback noir challenges official versions of events that glide over historical massacres and current injustices” (12-13).Wake in Fright’s focus on John’s personal suffering even as his crimes could become allegories for national trauma, aligns this story with traditional film noir. Mystery Road is caught up with a more collectivised form of trauma, and with the ‘colonialism’ of outback noir means this adaptation is more effective in locating self-rage and melancholia as integral to social and cultural dilemmas of contemporary Australia. Each series takes a different path to the treatment of race relations in Australia within a small and isolated rural context. Wake in Fright chooses to ignore this historical context, setting up the cycle of John’s repression of trauma as an individual fate, and he is trapped to repeat it. On the other hand, Mystery Road, just like its cinematic precursors (Mystery Road and Goldstone), deals with race as a specific theme. Mystery Road’s nod to the noir and the Western is emphasised by the character of Detective Jay Swan: “a lone gunslinger attempting to uphold law and order” (Ward 111), he swaggers around the small township in his cowboy hat, jeans, and boots, stoically searching for clues to the disappearance of two local teenagers. Since Swan is himself Aboriginal, this transforms the representation of authority and its failures depicted in Wake in Fright. While the police in Wake in Fright uphold the law only when convenient to their own goals, and further, to undertake criminal activities themselves, in Mystery Road the authority figures – Jay himself, and his counterpart, Senior Sergeant Emma James, are prominent in the community and dedicated to the pursuit of justice. It is highly significant that this sense of justice reaches beyond the present situation. Emma’s family, the Ballantynes, have been prominent landowners and farmers in the region for over one hundred years, and have always prided themselves on their benevolence towards the local Indigenous population. However, when Emma discovers that her great-grandfather was responsible for the massacre of several young Aboriginal men at the local waterhole, she is overcome by shame. In her horrified tears we see how the legacy of trauma, ever present for the Aboriginal population, is brought home to Emma herself. As the figurehead for justice in the town, Emma is determined to label the murders accurately as a “crime” which must “be answered.” In this acknowledgement and her subsequent apology to Dot, she finds some release from this ancient shame.The only Aboriginal characters in Wake in Fright are marginal to the narrative – taxi drivers who remain peripheral to the traumas within the small town, and thus remain positioned as innocent bystanders to its depravity. However, Mystery Road is careful to avoid such reductionist binaries. Just as Emma discovers the truth about her own family’s violence, Uncle Keith, the current Aboriginal patriarch, is exposed as a sexual predator. In both cases the men, leaders in the past and the present, consider themselves as ‘righteous’ in order to mask their enraged and violent behaviour. The moral issue here is more than a simplistic exposition on race, rather it demonstrates that complexity surrounds those who achieve power. When Dot ultimately ‘inherits’ responsibility for the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission this indicates that Mystery Road concludes with two female figures of authority, both looking out for the welfare of the community as a whole. Likewise, they are involved in seeking the young woman, Shevorne, who becomes the focus of abuse and grief, and her daughter. Although Jay is ultimately responsible for solving the crime at the heart of the series, Mystery Road strives to position futurity and responsibility in the hands of its female characters and their shared sense of community.In conclusion, both television adaptations of classic movies located in Australian outback noir have problematised rage within two vastly different contexts. The adaptations Wake in Fright and Mystery Road do share similar themes and concerns in their responses to past traumas and how that shapes Gothic representation of the outback in present day Australia. However, it is in their treatment of rage, shame, and violence that they diverge. Wake in Fright’s failure to convert rage beyond melancholia means that it fails to offer any hope of resolution, only an ongoing cycle of shame and violence. But rage, as a driver for injustice, can evolve into something more positive. In Mystery Road, the anger of both individuals and the community as a whole moves beyond good/bad and black/white stereotypes of outrage towards a more productive form of shame. In doing so, rage itself can elicit a new model for a more responsible contemporary Australian Gothic narrative.References Bazin, André. “Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest.” Film Adaptation. 1948. Ed. James Naremore. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 2000. 19-27.Bruhm, Steven. “The Contemporary Gothic: Why We Need It.” The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 259-76.Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” London: Routledge, 1993.Cartmell, Deborah. “100+ Years of Adaptations, or, Adaptation as the Art Form of Democracy.” A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation. Ed. Deborah Cartmell. Chichester: Blackwell, 2012. 1-13.Dolgopolov, Greg. “Balancing Acts: Ivan Sen’s Goldstone and ‘Outback Noir.’” Metro 190 (2016): 8-13.Gelder, Ken. “Australian Gothic.” The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Eds. Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy. London: Routledge, 2007. 115-23.Hogle, Jerrold E. “History, Trauma and the Gothic in Contemporary Western Fictions.” The Gothic World. Eds. Glennis Byron and Dale Townshend. London: Routledge, 2014. 72-81.Kahane, Claire. “The Aesthetic Politics of Rage.” States of Rage: Emotional Eruption, Violence, and Social Change. Eds. Renée R. Curry and Terry L. Allison. New York: New York UP, 1996. 126-45.Perkins, Rachel, dir. Mystery Road. ABC, 2018.Rall, Denise N. “‘Shock and Awe’ and Memory: The Evocation(s) of Trauma in post-9/11 Artworks.” Memory and the Wars on Terror: Australian and British Perspectives. Eds. Jessica Gildersleeve and Richard Gehrmann. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 163-82.Rayner, Jonathan. Contemporary Australian Cinema: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000.Stenders, Kriv, dir. Wake in Fright. Roadshow Entertainment, 2017.Ward, Sarah. “Shadows of a Sunburnt Country: Mystery Road, the Western and the Conflicts of Contemporary Australia.” Screen Education 81 (2016): 110-15.Wheatley, Helen. “Haunted Houses, Hidden Rooms: Women, Domesticity and the Gothic Adaptation on Television.” Popular Television Drama: Critical Perspectives. Eds. Jonathan Bignell and Stephen Lacey. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005. 149-65.
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Foith, Michael. "Virtually Witness Augmentation Now: Video Games and the Future of Human Enhancement." M/C Journal 16, no. 6 (November 6, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.729.

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Introduction Ever-enduring advancements in science and technology promise to offer solutions to problems or simply to make life a bit easier. However, not every advancement has only positive effects, but can also have undesired, negative ramifications. This article will take a closer look at Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DXHR), a dystopian video game which promises to put players in the position of deciding whether the science of human enhancement is a way to try to play God, or whether it enables us “to become the Gods we’ve always been striving to be” (Eidos Montreal, “Deus Ex: Human Revolution”). In this article I will argue that DXHR creates a space in which players can virtually witness future technologies for human performance enhancement without the need to alter their own bodies. DXHR is special particularly in two respects: first, the developers have achieved a high credibility and scientific realism of the enhancement technologies depicted in the game which can be described as being “diegetic prototypes” (Kirby, “The Future Is Now ” 43); second, the game directly invites players to reflect upon the impact and morality of human enhancement. It does so through a story in line with the cyberpunk genre, which envisions not only the potential benefits of an emergent technology, but has an even stronger focus on the negative contingencies. The game and its developers foresee a near-future society that is split into two fractions due to human enhancement technologies which come in the form of neuro-implants and mechanical prosthetics; and they foresee a near-future setting in which people are socially and economically forced to undergo enhancement surgery in order to keep up with the augmented competition. DXHR is set in the year 2027 and the player takes control of Adam Jensen, an ex-SWAT police officer who is now the chief of security of Sarif Industries, one of the world's leading biotechnology companies that produce enhancement technologies. Augmented terrorists attack Sarif Industries, abduct the head scientists, and nearly kill Jensen. Jensen merely survives because his boss puts him through enhancement surgery, which replaces many parts of his body with mechanical augmentations. In the course of the game it becomes clear that Jensen has been augmented beyond any life-saving necessity that grants him superhuman abilities and allows him to find and defeat the terrorists, but the augmentations also challenge his humanity. Is Jensen a human, a cyborg, or has he become more machine than man? DXHR grants players the illusion of immersion into a virtual world in which augmentations exist as a matter of fact and in which a certain level of control can be practiced. Players take up the role of a character distinctly more powerful and capable than the person in control, exceeding the limits of human abilities. The superior abilities are a result of scientific and technological advancements implying that every man or woman is able to attain the same abilities by simply acquiring augmentations. Thus, with the help of the playable character, Adam Jensen, the game lets players experience augmentations without any irreparable damages done to their bodies, but the experience will leave a lasting impression on players regarding the science of human enhancement. The experience with augmentations happens through and benefits from the effect of “virtual witnessing”: The technology of virtual witnessing involves the production in a reader’s mind of such an image of an experimental scene as obviates the necessity for either direct witness or replication. Through virtual witnessing the multiplication of witnesses could be, in principle, unlimited. (Shapin and Schaffer 60) In other words, simply by reading about and/or seeing scientific advancements, audiences can witness them without having to be present at the site of creation. The video game, hereby, is itself the medium of virtual witnessing whereby audiences can experience scientific advancements. Nevertheless, the video game is not just about reading or seeing potential future enhancement technologies, but permits players to virtually test-drive augmentations—to actually try out three-dimensionally rendered prototypes on a virtual body. In order to justify this thesis, a couple of things need to be clarified that explain in which ways the virtual witnessing of fictional enhancements in DXHR is a valid claim. Getting into the Game First I want to briefly describe how I investigated the stated issue. I have undertaken an auto-ethnography (Ellis, Adams, and Bochner) of DXHR, which concretely means that I have analytically played DXHR in an explorative fashion (Aarseth) trying to discover as many elements on human enhancement that the game has to offer. This method requires not only close observation of the virtual environment and documentation through field notes and screenshots, but also self-reflection of the actions that I chose to take and that were offered to me in the course of the game. An essential part of analytically playing a game is to be aware that the material requires “the activity of an actual player in order to be accessible for scrutiny” (Iversen), and that the player’s input fundamentally shapes the gaming experience (Juul 42). The meaning of the game is contingent upon the contribution of the player, especially in times in which digital games grant players more and more freedom in terms of narrative construction. In contrast to traditional narrative, the game poses an active challenge to the player which entails the need to become better in relation to the game’s mechanics and hence “studying games … implies interacting with the game rules and exploring the possibilities created by these rules, in addition to studying the graphical codes or the narration that unfolds” (Malliet). It is important to highlight that, although the visual representation of human enhancement technologies has an enormous potential impact on the player’s experience, it is not the only crucial element. Next to the representational shell, the core of the game, i.e. “how game rules and interactions with game objects and other players are structured” (Mäyrä 165), shapes the virtual witnessing of the augmentations in just an important way. Finally, the empirical material that was collected was analyzed and interpreted with the help of close-reading (Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum 395). In addition to the game itself, I have enriched my empirical material with interviews of developers of the game that are partly freely available on the Internet, and with the promotional material such as the trailers and a website (Eidos Montreal, “Sarif Industries”) that was released prior to the game. Sociotechnical Imaginaries In this case study of DXHR I have not only investigated how augmented bodies and enhancement technologies are represented in this specific video game, but also attempted to uncover which “sociotechnical imaginaries” (Jasanoff and Kim) underlie the game and support the virtual witnessing experience. Sociotechnical imaginaries are defined as “collectively imagined forms of social life and social order reflected in the design and fulfillment of nation-specific scientific and/or technological projects” (Jasanoff and Kim 120). The concept appeared to be suitable for this study as it covers and includes “promises, visions and expectations of future possibilities” (Jasanoff and Kim 122) of a technology as well as “implicit understandings of what is good or desirable in the social world writ large” (Jasanoff and Kim 122–23). The game draws upon several imaginaries of human enhancement. For example, the most basic imaginary in the game is that advanced engineered prosthetics and implants will be able to not only remedy dysfunctional parts of the human body, but will be able to upgrade these. Apart from this idea, the two prevailing sociotechnical imaginaries that forward the narrative can be subsumed as the transhumanist and the purist imaginary. The latter views human enhancement, with the help of science and technology, as unnatural and as a threat to humanity particularly through the power that it grants to individuals, while the former transports the opposing view. Transhumanism is: the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. (Chrislenko et al.) The transhumanist imaginary in the game views technological development of the body as another step in the human evolution, not as something abhorrent to nature, but a fundamental human quality. Similar ideas can be found in the writings of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Gehlen, who both view the human being’s need to improve as part of its culture. Gehlen described the human as a “Mängelwesen”—a ‘deficient’ creature—who is, in contrast to other species, not specialized to a specific environment, but has the ability to adapt to nearly every situation because of this deficiency (Menne, Trutwin, and Türk). Freud even denoted the human as a “Prothesengott”—a god of prostheses: By means of all his tools, man makes his own organs more perfect—both the motor and the sensory—or else removes the obstacles in the way of their activity. Machinery places gigantic power at his disposal which, like his muscles, he can employ in any direction; ships and aircraft have the effect that neither air nor water can prevent his traversing them. With spectacles he corrects the defects of the lens in his own eyes; with telescopes he looks at far distances; with the microscope he overcomes the limitations in visibility due to the structure of his retina. (Freud 15) Returning to DXHR, how do the sociotechnical imaginaries matter for the player? Primarily, the imaginaries cannot be avoided as they pervade nearly every element in the game, from the main story that hinges upon human enhancement over the many optional side missions, to contextual elements such as a conference on “the next steps in human evolution” (Eidos Montreal, “Deus Ex: Human Revolution”). Most importantly, it impacts the player’s view in a crucial way. Human enhancement technologies are presented as controversial, neither exclusively good nor bad, which require reflection and perhaps even legal regulation. In this way, DXHR can be seen as offering the player a restricted building set of sociotechnical imaginaries of human enhancement, whereby the protagonist, Adam Jensen, becomes the player’s vessel to construct one’s own individual imaginary. In the end the player is forced to choose one of four outcomes to complete the game, and this choice can be quite difficult to make. Anticipation of the Future It is not unusual for video games to feature futuristic technologies that do not exist in the real world, but what makes DXHR distinct from others is that the developers have included an extent of information that goes beyond any game playing necessity (see Figures 1 & 2). Moreover, the information is not fictional but the developers have taken strategic steps to make it credible. Mary DeMarle, the narrative designer, explained at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2011, that a timeline of augmentation was created during the production phase in which the present state of technology was extrapolated into the future. In small incremental steps the developers have anticipated which enhancement technologies might be potentially feasible by the year 2027. Their efforts were supported by the science consultant, Will Rosellini, who voluntarily approached the development team to help. Being a neuroscientist, he could not have been a more fitting candidate for the job as he is actively working and researching in the biotechnology sector. He has co-founded two companies, MicroTransponder Inc., which produces tiny implantable wireless devices to interface with the nervous system to remedy diseases (see Rosellini’s presentation at the 2011 Comic-Con) and Rosellini Scientific, which funds, researches and develops advanced technological healthcare solutions (Rosellini; Rosellini Scientific). Due to the timeline which has been embedded explicitly and implicitly, no augmentation appears as a disembodied technology without history in the game. For example, although the protagonist wears top-notch military arm prostheses that appear very human-like, this prosthesis is depicted as one of the latest iterations and many non-playable characters possess arm prostheses that appear a lot older, cruder and more industrial than those of Jensen. Furthermore, an extensive description employing scientific jargon for each of the augmentations can be read on the augmentation overview screen, which includes details about the material composition and bodily locations of the augmentations. Figure 1: More Info Section of the Cybernetic Arm Prosthesis as it appears in-game (all screenshots taken with permission from Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011), courtesy of Eidos Montreal) More details are provided through eBooks, which are presented in the form of scientific articles or conference proceedings, for which the explorative gamer is also rewarded with valuable experience points upon finding which are used to activate and upgrade augmentations. The eBooks also reflect the timeline as each eBook is equipped with a year of publication between 2001 and 2022. Despite the fact that these articles have been supposedly written by a fictional character, the information is authentic and taken from actual scientific research papers, whereby some of these articles even include a proper scientific citation. Figure 2: Example of a Darrow eBook The fact that a scientist was involved in the production of the game allows classifying the augmentations as “diegetic prototypes” which are “cinematic depictions of future technologies … that demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, benevolence and viability” (“The Future Is Now” 43). Diegetic prototypes are fictional, on-screen depictions of technologies that do not exist in that form in real life and have been created with the help of a science consultant. They have been placed in movies to allay anxieties and doubts and perhaps to even provoke a longing in audiences to see depicted technologies become reality (Kirby, “The Future Is Now” 43). Of course the aesthetic appearance of the prototypes has an impact on audiences’s desire, and particularly the artificial arms of Jensen that have been designed in an alluring fashion as can be seen in the following figure: Figure 3: Adam Jensen and arm prosthesis An important fact about diegetic prototypes—and about prototypes (see Suchman, Trigg, and Blomberg) in general—is that they are put to specific use and are embedded and presented in an identifiable social context. Technological objects in cinema are at once both completely artificial—all aspects of their depiction are controlled—and normalized as practical objects. Characters treat these technologies as a ‘natural’ part of their landscape and interact with these prototypes as if they are everyday parts of their world. … fictional characters are ‘socializing’ technological artifacts by creating meanings for the audience, ‘which is tantamount to making the artifacts socially relevant’. (Kirby, “Lab Coats” 196) The power of DXHR is that the diegetic prototypes—the augmentations—are not only based on real world scientific developments and contextualized in a virtual social space, but that the player has the opportunity to handle the augmentations. Virtual Testing Virtual witnessing of the not-yet-existent augmentations is supported by scientific descriptions, articles, and the appearance of the technologies in DXHR, but the moral and ethical engagement is established by the player’s ability to actively use the augmentations and by the provision of choice how to use them. As mentioned, most of the augmentations are inactive and must first be activated by accumulating and spending experience points on them. This requires the player to make reflections on the potential usage and how a particular augmentation will lead to the successful completion of a mission. This means that the player has to constantly decide how s/he wants to play the game. Do I want to be able to hack terminals and computers or do I rather prefer getting mission-critical information by confronting people in conversation? Do I want to search for routes where I can avoid enemy detection or do I rather prefer taking the direct route through the enemy lines with heavy guns in hands? This recurring reflection of which augmentation to choose and their continuous usage throughout the game causes the selected augmentations to become valuable and precious to the player because they transform from augmentations into frequently used tools that facilitate challenge and reduce difficulty of certain situations. In addition, the developers have ensured that no matter which approach is taken, it will always lead to success. This way the role-playing elements of the game are accentuated and each player will construct their own version of Jensen. However, it may be argued that DXHR goes beyond mere character building. There is a breadth of information and opinions on human enhancement offered, but also choices that are made invite players to reflect upon the topic of human enhancement. Among the most conspicuous instances in the game, that involve the player’s choice, are the conversations with other non-playable characters. These are events in the game which require the player to choose one out of three responses for Jensen, and hence, these determine to some extent Jensen’s attitude towards human enhancement. Thus, in the course of the game players might discover their own conviction and might compose their own imaginary of human enhancement. Conclusion This article has explored that DXHR enables players to experience augmentations without being modified themselves. The game is filled with various sociotechnical imaginaries of prosthetic and neurological human enhancement technologies. The relevance of these imaginaries is increased by a high degree of credibility as a science consultant has ensured that the fictional augmentations are founded upon real world scientific advancements. The main story, and much of the virtual world, hinge upon the existence and controversy of these sorts of technologies. Finally, the medium ‘videogame’ allows taking control of an individual, who is heavily augmented with diegetic prototypes of future enhancement technologies, and it also allows using and testing the increased abilities in various situations and challenges. All these elements combined enable players to virtually witness not-yet-existent, future augmentations safely in the present without the need to undertake any alterations of their own bodies. This, in addition to the fact that the technologies are depicted in an appealing fashion, may create a desire in players to see these augmentations become reality. Nevertheless, DXHR sparks an important incentive to critically think about the future of human enhancement technologies.References Aarseth, Espen. “Playing Research: Methodological Approaches to Game Analysis.” DAC Conference, Melbourne, 2003. 14 Apr. 2013 ‹http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Aarseth.pdf›. Bizzocchi, J., and J. Tanenbaum. “Mass Effect 2: A Case Study in the Design of Game Narrative.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 32.5 (2012): 393-404. Chrislenko, Alexander, et al. “Transhumanist FAQ.” humanity+. 2001. 18 July 2013 ‹http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-faq/#top›. Eidos Montreal. “Deus Ex: Human Revolution.” Square Enix. 2011. PC. ———. “Welcome to Sarif Industries: Envisioning a New Future.” 2011. 14 Apr. 2013 ‹http://www.sarifindustries.com›. Ellis, Carolyn, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner. “Autoethnography: An Overview.” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung 12.1 (2010): n. pag. 9 July 2013 ‹http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095›. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Aylesbury, England: Chrysoma Associates Limited, 1929. Iversen, Sara Mosberg. “In the Double Grip of the Game: Challenge and Fallout 3.” Game Studies 12.2 (2012): n. pag. 5 Feb. 2013 ‹http://gamestudies.org/1202/articles/in_the_double_grip_of_the_game›. Jasanoff, Sheila, and Sang-Hyun Kim. “Containing the Atom: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Nuclear Power in the United States and South Korea.” Minerva 47.2 (2009): 119–146. Juul, Jesper. “A Clash between Game and Narrative.” MA thesis. U of Copenhagen, 1999. 29 May 2013 ‹http://www.jesperjuul.net/thesis/›. Kirby, David A. Lab Coats in Hollywood. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011. ———. “The Future Is Now : Diegetic Prototypes and the Role of Popular Films in Generating Real-World Technological Development.” Social Studies of Science 40.1 (2010): 41-70. Malliet, Steven. “Adapting the Principles of Ludology to the Method of Video Game Content Analysis Content.” Game Studies 7.1 (2007): n. pag. 28 May 2013 ‹http://gamestudies.org/0701/articles/malliet›. Mäyrä, F. An Introduction to Game Studies. London: Sage, 2008. Menne, Erwin, Werner Trutwin, and Hans J. Türk. Philosophisches Kolleg Band 4 Anthropologie. Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1986. Rosellini, Will, and Mary DeMarle. “Deus Ex: Human Revolution.” Comic Con. San Diego, 2011. Panel. Rosellini Scientific. “Prevent. Restore. Enhance.” 2013. 25 May 2013 ‹http://www.roselliniscientific.com›. Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Suchman, Lucy, Randall Trigg, and Jeanette Blomberg. “Working Artefacts: Ethnomethods of the Prototype.” The British Journal of Sociology 53.2 (2002): 163-79. Image Credits All screenshots taken with permission from Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011), courtesy of Eidos Montreal.
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Due, Clemence. "Laying Claim to "Country": Native Title and Ownership in the Mainstream Australian Media." M/C Journal 11, no. 5 (August 15, 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.62.

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Abstract:
Australia in Maps is a compilation of cartography taken from the collection of over 600,000 maps held at the Australian National Library. Included in this collection are military maps, coastal maps and modern-day maps for tourists. The map of the eastern coast of ‘New Holland’ drawn by James Cook when he ‘discovered’ Australia in 1770 is included. Also published is Eddie Koiki Mabo’s map drawn on a hole-punched piece of paper showing traditional land holdings in the Murray Islands in the Torres Strait. This map became a key document in Eddie Mabo’s fight for native title recognition, a fight which became the precursor to native title rights as they are known today. The inclusion of these two drawings in a collection of maps defining Australia as a country illustrates the dichotomies and contradictions which exist in a colonial nation. It is now fifteen years since the Native Title Act 1994 (Commonwealth) was developed in response to the Mabo cases in order to recognise Indigenous customary law and traditional relationships to the land over certain (restricted) parts of Australia. It is 220 years since the First Fleet arrived and Indigenous land was (and remains) illegally possessed through the process of colonisation (Moreton-Robinson Australia). Questions surrounding ‘country’ – who owns it, has rights to use it, to live on it, to develop or protect it – are still contested and contentious today. In part, this contention arises out of the radically different conceptions of ‘country’ held by, in its simplest sense, Indigenous nations and colonisers. For Indigenous Australians the land has a spiritual significance that I, as a non-Indigenous person, cannot properly understand as a result of the different ways in which relationships to land are made available. The ways of understanding the world through which my identity as a non-Indigenous person are made intelligible, by contrast, see ‘country’ as there to be ‘developed’ and exploited. Within colonial logic, discourses of development and the productive use of resources function as what Wetherell and Potter term “rhetorically self-sufficient” in that they are principles which are considered to be beyond question (177). As Vincent Tucker states; “The myth of development is elevated to the status of natural law, objective reality and evolutionary necessity. In the process all other world views are devalued and dismissed as ‘primitive’, ‘backward’, ‘irrational’ or ‘naïve’” (1). It was this precise way of thinking which was able to justify colonisation in the first place. Australia was seen as terra nullius; an empty and un-developed land not recognized as inhabited. Indigenous people were incorrectly perceived as individuals who did not use the land in an efficient manner, rather than as individual nations who engaged with the land in ways that were not intelligible to the colonial eye. This paper considers the tensions inherent in definitions of ‘country’ and the way these tensions are played out through native title claims as white, colonial Australia attempts to recognise (and limit) Indigenous rights to land. It examines such tensions as they appear in the media as an example of how native title issues are made intelligible to the non-Indigenous general public who may otherwise have little knowledge or experience of native title issues. It has been well-documented that the news media play an important role in further disseminating those discourses which dominate in a society, and therefore frequently supports the interests of those in positions of power (Fowler; Hall et. al.). As Stuart Hall argues, this means that the media often reproduces a conservative status quo which in many cases is simply reflective of the positions held by other powerful institutions in society, in this case government, and mining and other commercial interests. This has been found to be the case in past analysis of media coverage of native title, such as work completed by Meadows (which found that media coverage of native title issues focused largely on non-Indigenous perspectives) and Hartley and McKee (who found that media coverage of native title negotiations frequently focused on bureaucratic issues rather than the rights of Indigenous peoples to oppose ‘developments’ on their land). This paper aims to build on this work, and to map the way in which native title, an ongoing issue for many Indigenous groups, figures in a mainstream newspaper at a time when there has not been much mainstream public interest in the process. In order to do this, this paper considered articles which appeared in Australia’s only national newspaper – The Australian – over the six months preceding the start of July 2008. Several main themes ran through these articles, examples of which are provided in the relevant sections. These included: economic interests in native title issues, discourses of white ownership and control of the land, and rhetorical devices which reinforced the battle-like nature of native title negotiations rather than emphasised the rights of Indigenous Australians to their lands. Native Title: Some Definitions and Some Problems The concept of native title itself can be a difficult one to grasp and therefore a brief definition is called for here. According to the National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT) website (www.nntt.gov.au), native title is the recognition by Australian law that some Indigenous people have rights and interests to their land that come from their traditional laws and customs. The native title rights and interests held by particular Indigenous people will depend on both their traditional laws and customs and what interests are held by others in the area concerned. Generally speaking, native title must give way to the rights held by others. Native title is therefore recognised as existing on the basis of certain laws and customs which have been maintained over an area of land despite the disruption caused by colonisation. As such, if native title is to be recognised over an area of country, Indigenous communities have to argue that their cultures and connection with the land have survived colonisation. As the Maori Land Court Chief Judge Joe Williams argues: In Australia the surviving title approach […] requires the Indigenous community to prove in a court or tribunal that colonisation caused them no material injury. This is necessary because, the greater the injury, the smaller the surviving bundle of rights. Communities who were forced off their land lose it. Those whose traditions and languages were beaten out of them at state sponsored mission schools lose all of the resources owned within the matrix of that language and those traditions. This is a perverse result. In reality, of course, colonisation was the greatest calamity in the history of these people on this land. Surviving title asks aboriginal people to pretend that it was not. To prove in court that colonisation caused them no material injury. Communities who were forced off their land are the same communities who are more likely to lose it. As found in previous research (Meadows), these inherent difficulties of the native title process were widely overlooked in recent media reports of native title issues published in The Australian. Due to recent suggestions made by Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin for changes to be made to the native title system, The Australian did include reports on the need to ensure that traditional owners share the economic profits of the mining boom. This was seen in an article by Karvelas and Murphy entitled “Labor to Overhaul Native Title Law”. The article states that: Fifteen years after the passage of the historic Mabo legislation, the Rudd Government has flagged sweeping changes to native title to ensure the benefits of the mining boom flow to Aboriginal communities and are not locked up in trusts or frittered away. Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, delivering the third annual Eddie Mabo Lecture in Townsville, said yesterday that native title legislation was too complex and had failed to deliver money to remote Aboriginal communities, despite lucrative agreements with mining companies. (1) Whilst this passage appears supportive of Indigenous Australians in that it argues for their right to share in economic gains made through ‘developments’ on their country, the use of phrases such as ‘frittered away’ imply that Indigenous Australians have made poor use of their ‘lucrative agreements’, and therefore require further intervention in their lives in order to better manage their financial situations. Such an argument further implies that the fact that many remote Indigenous communities continue to live in poverty is the fault of Indigenous Australians’ mismanagement of funds from native title agreements rather than from governmental neglect, thereby locating the blame once more in the hands of Indigenous people rather than in a colonial system of dispossession and regulation. Whilst the extract does continue to state that native title legislation is too complex and has ‘failed to deliver money to remote Aboriginal communities’, the article does not go on to consider other areas in which native title is failing Indigenous people, such as reporting the protection of sacred and ceremonial sites, and provisions for Indigenous peoples to be consulted about developments on their land to which they may be opposed. Whilst native title agreements with companies may contain provisions for these issues, it is rare that there is any regulation for whether or not these provisions are met after an agreement is made (Faircheallaigh). These issues almost never appeared in the media which instead focused on the economic benefits (or lack thereof) stemming from the land rather than the sovereign rights of traditional owners to their country. There are many other difficulties inherent in the native title legislation for Indigenous peoples. It is worth discussing some of these difficulties as they provide an image of the ways in which ‘country’ is conceived of at the intersection of a Western legal system attempting to encompass Indigenous relations to land. The first of these difficulties relates to the way in which Indigenous people are required to delineate the boundaries of the country which they are claiming. Applications for native title over an area of land require strict outlining of boundaries for land under consideration, in accordance with a Western system of mapping country. The creation of such boundaries requires Indigenous peoples to define their country in Western terms rather than Indigenous ones, and in many cases proves quite difficult as areas of traditional lands may be unavailable to claim (Neate). Such differences in understandings of country mean that “for Indigenous peoples, the recognition of their indigenous title, should it be afforded, may bear little resemblance to, or reflect minimally on, their own conceptualisation of their relations to country” (Glaskin 67). Instead, existing as it does within a Western legal system and subject to Western determinations, native title forces Indigenous people to define themselves and their land within white conceptions of country (Moreton-Robinson Possessive). In fact, the entire concept of native title has been criticized by many Indigenous commentators as a denial of Indigenous sovereignty over the land, with the result of the Mabo case meaning that “Indigenous people did not lose their native title rights but were stripped of their sovereign rights to manage their own affairs, to live according to their own laws, and to own and control the resources on their lands” (Falk and Martin 38). As such, Falk and Martin argue that The Native Title Act amounts to a complete denial of Aboriginal sovereignty so that Indigenous people are forced to live under a colonial regime which is able to control and regulate their lives and access to country. This is commented upon by Aileen Moreton-Robinson, who writes that: What Indigenous people have been given, by way of white benevolence, is a white-constructed from of ‘Indigenous’ proprietary rights that are not epistemologically and ontologically grounded in Indigenous conceptions of sovereignty. Indigenous land ownership, under these legislative regimes, amounts to little more than a mode of land tenure that enables a circumscribed form of autonomy and governance with minimum control and ownership of resources, on or below the ground, thus entrenching economic dependence on the nation state. (Moreton-Robinson Sovereign Subjects 4) The native title laws in place in Australia restrict Indigenous peoples to existing within white frameworks of knowledge. Within the space of The Native Title Act there is no room for recognition of Indigenous sovereignty whereby Indigenous peoples can make decisions for themselves and control their own lands (Falk and Martin). These tensions within definitions of ‘country’ and sovereignty over land were reflected in the media articles examined, primarily in terms of the way in which ‘country’ was related to and used. This was evident in an article entitled “An Economic Vision” with a tag-line “Native Title Reforms offer Communities a Fresh Start”: Central to such a success story is the determination of indigenous people to help themselves. Such a business-like, forward-thinking approach is also evident in Kimberley Land Council executive director Wayne Bergmann's negotiations with some of the world's biggest resource companies […] With at least 45 per cent of Kimberley land subject to native title, Mr Bergmann, a qualified lawyer, is acutely aware of the royalties and employment potential. Communities are also benefitting from the largesse of Australia’s richest man, miner Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, whose job training courses and other initiatives are designed to help the local people, in his words, become “wonderful participating Australians.” (15) Again, this article focuses on the economic benefits to be made from native title agreements with mining companies rather than other concerns with the use of Indigenous areas of country. The use of the quote from Forrest serves to imply that Indigenous peoples are not “wonderful participating Australians” unless they are able to contribute in an economic sense, and overlooks many contributions made by Indigenous peoples in other areas such as environmental protection. Such definitions also measure ‘success’ in Western terms rather than Indigenous ones and force Indigenous peoples into a relationship to country based on Western notions of resource extraction and profit rather than Indigenous notions of custodianship and sustainability. This construction of Indigenous economic involvement as only rendered valid on particular terms echoes findings from previous work on constructions of Indigenous people in the media, such as that by LeCouteur, Rapley and Augoustinos. Theorising ‘Country’ The examples provided above illustrate the fact that the rhetoric and dichotomies of ‘country’ are at the very heart of the native title process. The process of recognising Indigenous rights to land through native title invites the question of how ‘country’ is conceived in the first place. Goodall writes that there are tensions within definitions of ‘country’ which indicate the ongoing presence of Indigenous people’s connections to their land despite colonisation. She writes that the word ‘country’: may seem a self-evident description of rural economy and society, with associations of middle-class gentility as well as being the antonym of the city. Yet in Australia there is another dimension altogether. Aboriginal land-owners traditionally identify themselves by the name of the land for which they were the custodians. These lands are often called, in today’s Aboriginal English, their ‘country’. This gives the word a tense and resonating echo each time it is used to describe rural-settler society and land. (162) Yet the distinctions usually drawn between those defined as ‘country’ people or ‘locals’ and the traditional Indigenous people of the area suggest that, as Schlunke states, in many cases Indigenous people are “too local to be ‘local’” (43). In other words, if white belonging and rights to an area of country are to be normalised, the prior claims of traditional owners are not able to be considered. As such, Indigenous belonging becomes too confronting as it disrupts the ways in which other ‘country’ people relate to their land as legitimately theirs. In the media, constructions of ‘country’ frequently fell within a colonial definition of country which overlooked Indigenous peoples. In many of these articles land was normatively constructed as belonging to the crown or the state. This was evidenced in phrases such as, “The proceedings [of the Noongar native title claim over the South Western corner of Australia] have been watched closely by other states in the expectation they might encounter similar claims over their capital cities” (Buckley-Carr 2). Use of the word their implies that the states (which are divisions of land created by colonisation) have prior claim to ‘their’ capital cities and that they rightfully belong to the government rather than to traditional owners. Such definitions of ‘country’ reflect European rather than Indigenous notions of boundaries and possession. This is also reflected in media reports of native title in the widespread use of European names for areas of land and landmarks as opposed to their traditional Indigenous names. When the media reported on a native title claim over an area of land the European name for the country was used rather than, for example, the Indigenous name followed by a geographical description of where that land is situated. Customs such as this reflect a country which is still bound up in European definitions of land rather than Indigenous ones (Goodall 167; Schlunke 47-48), and also indicate that the media is reporting for a white audience rather than for an Indigenous one whom it would affect the most. Native title debates have also “shown the depth of belief within much of rural and regional Australia that rural space is most rightfully agricultural space” (Lockie 27). This construction of rural Australia is reflective of the broader national imagining of the country as a nation (Anderson), in which Australia is considered rich in resources from which to derive profit. Within these discourses the future of the nation is seen as lying in the ‘development’ of natural resources. As such, native title agreements with industry have often been depicted in the media as obstacles to be overcome by companies rather than a way of allowing Indigenous people control over their own lands. This often appears in the media in the form of metaphors of ‘war’ for agreements for use of Indigenous land, such as development being “frustrated” by native title (Bromby) and companies being “embattled” by native title issues (Wilson). Such metaphors illustrate the adversarial nature of native title claims both for recognition of the land in the first place and often in subsequent dealings with resource companies. This was also seen in reports of company progress which would include native title claims in a list of other factors affecting stock prices (such as weak drilling results and the price of metals), as if Indigenous claims to land were just another hurdle to profit-making (“Pilbara Lures”). Conclusion As far as the native title process is concerned, the answers to the questions considered at the start of this paper remain within Western definitions. Native title exists firmly within a Western system of law which requires Indigenous people to define and depict their land within non-Indigenous definitions and understandings of ‘country’. These debates are also frequently played out in the media in ways which reflect colonial values of using and harvesting country rather than Indigenous ones of protecting it. The media rarely consider the complexities of a system which requires Indigenous peoples to conceive of their land through boundaries and definitions not congruent with their own understandings. The issues surrounding native title draw attention to the need for alternative definitions of ‘country’ to enter the mainstream Australian consciousness. These need to encompass Indigenous understandings of ‘country’ and to acknowledge the violence of Australia’s colonial history. Similarly, the concept of native title needs to reflect Indigenous notions of country and allow traditional owners to define their land for themselves. In order to achieve these goals and overcome some of the obstacles to recognising Indigenous sovereignty over Australia the media needs to play a part in reorienting concepts of country from only those definitions which fit within a white framework of experiencing the world and prioritise Indigenous relations and experiences of country. If discourses of resource extraction were replaced with discourses of sustainability, if discourses of economic gains were replaced with respect for the land, and if discourses of white control over Indigenous lives in the form of native title reform were replaced with discourses of Indigenous sovereignty, then perhaps some ground could be made to creating an Australia which is not still in the process of colonising and denying the rights of its First Nations peoples. The tensions which exist in definitions and understandings of ‘country’ echo the tensions which exist in Australia’s historical narratives and memories. The denied knowledge of the violence of colonisation and the rights of Indigenous peoples to remain on their land all haunt a native title system which requires Indigenous Australians to minimise the effect this violence had on their lives, their families and communities and their values and customs. As Katrina Schlunke writes when she confronts the realisation that her family’s land could be the same land on which Indigenous people were massacred: “The irony of fears of losing one’s backyard to a Native Title claim are achingly rich. Isn’t something already lost to the idea of ‘Freehold Title’ when you live over unremembered graves? What is free? What are you to hold?” (151). If the rights of Indigenous Australians to their country are truly to be recognised, mainstream Australia needs to seriously consider such questions and whether or not the concept of ‘native title’ as it exists today is able to answer them. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Damien Riggs and Andrew Gorman-Murray for all their help and support with this paper, and Braden Schiller for his encouragement and help with proof-reading. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their insightful comments. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. 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