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Parry, Ariana J. "Flow: Abstracting Mundane Environments." Kent State University Honors College / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ksuhonors1481565925915224.
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Taipaleenmäki, T. (Tomi). "Pervasive gaming:from special to mundane." Master's thesis, University of Oulu, 2014. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201405281553.
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In the early 2000’s the idea about digital pervasive gaming was somewhat limited, as there was a lot of technological obstacles, which made implementing pervasive elements into practical use either difficult or expensive. Pervasive games could mean, that if you wanted to play them you would have to have a plethora of different devices with you, depending of if you needed a GPS for navigation, laptop for data search or just some contraption for virtual reality or just a camera to take photos with. And on the top of that, accessing the internet on the go was, if not impossible, potentially very expensive and not necessarily easy, depending on your location.
Gradually the technology has begun to evolve in more versatile direction. Today a good cellphone can replace most of the devices that were cumbersome to lug around ten years ago. 3G and 4G internet connections can provide an access to the internet so, that it is possible to access the data sources almost anywhere, were you in the city or in a forest. Of course there’s still gaps in the networks, but at least there’s lesser need to find a phone outlet.
Pervasive gaming is not just for location based outdoors activity anymore. Thanks to the advancements of technology elements enabling pervasive gaming have also found their way to home game consoles, MMO games and many kinds of social platform games.
Pervasive games come in many different shapes and forms. The elements used can be simple social interaction, where the player informs the social network when the game is played or what kind of achievements is done in the game, thus trying to lure in more gamers or they can be more massive style of a games, where not only social activity is a must, but also where and when the game is played has an effect as well. The game can use specialized controllers, such as motion or voice or the player can just simply stream the gameplay to the web, enabling others to spectate and comment the gameplay.
The designers need to ask themselves what kind of features they want to use and what kind of devices the players need in order to use these kind of pervasive features. There are also questions of the player security, be it actual physical wellbeing of the player on the real life location of the game or information security of the data gathered during the game.
This thesis tries to provide some theoretical insight on what pervasive gaming has been, is now and where it is heading. There are some speculation about how pervasive elements should be designed and used as well points the designers should take a note of.
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Novisk, Jason. "Devised architecture : revitalizing the mundane." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2009. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0003146.
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Jolly, Adam Howard. "Three Furies: The Mythic and the Mundane." TopSCHOLAR®, 2004. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/1098.
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Adam Jolly May 7th, 2004 67 pages
Directed by: Dr. Nancy Roberts, Dr. David Lenoir, and Dr. Lloyd Davies
Department of English Western Kentucky University
This thesis, consisting of three short stories, proposes to explore ubiquitous motifs by exhibition of symbolic, mythological conceptions and personalities relating mutually with the everyday and the exceptional in a plausible way. These stories are intended to include effectual inquiry and still be inventive and entertaining.
Source materials for this thesis range from Norse mythology to Homer to the Charlie Daniels Band.
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O'Brien, Rhona Bridget. "Mundane monsters : cultural readings of paternal failure." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.445479.
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Zubillaga, Amanda. "The Mundane Habits of the Opposite Sex." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/77483.
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The stories in The Mundane Habits of the Opposite Sex explore themes of identity, loss, gender, and the often-complex landscape of human interaction. These are relationship stories, coming-of-age stories. Stories about searching for answers to mysteries both large and small. Loneliness is de rigueur for these characters despite a fervent desire to connect with others in a meaningful way. A Congressional intern misrepresents herself in order to mingle with the Washington in-crowd, a fledgling screenwriter is intrigued by an enigmatic woman with a distinct tattoo, a runaway honor student and an alcoholic former cop become unlikely travel companions on a cross-country road trip, and Iowa teenagers resist their own mortality by hanging out in a small-town graveyard. These stories ask the question: if we don’t fully know ourselves, how well will we ever truly know someone else? In settings both dreamy and extraordinarily commonplace, from sleepy diners to abandoned tourist traps, from the real world to places weird and imaginary, this collection examines the rare moments of beauty and persistent minefields that arise while navigating the convoluted intricacies of human experience.Master of Fine Arts
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Glaze, Shyling, and Shyling Glaze. "Between The Mundane and Super-Mundane: Master Yongjue Yuanxian and the Revival of Chinese Buddhism in 17th Century Fujian Area." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/626639.
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Yongjue Yuanxian (1578-1657) was a Confucian scholar, an eminent 17th-century Buddhist Master, and a prolific writer who re-established the reputation of the Caodong Buddhism. This study investigates Yuanxian's life and his works: the Shou ta ming (Inscription of the Longevity Stupa), the Yiyan (Nonsense Uttered in Dreams), the Jie ni nü (To Refrain from Drowning Female Infants), and the Jianzhou hongshi lu (Record of Propagating Buddhism in Jianzhou).
This research unfolds Yuanxian's Confucian and Buddhist backgrounds as well as his impact through his writings on both the mundane and super-mundane worlds. The Shou ta ming gives us clues regarding Yuanxian's natural inclination and life. The study of Yiyan investigates Yuanxian's philosophy, his position towards the harmonizing the Three Teachings, and his approach towards the challenges of 17th-century Chan Buddhism. The Jie ni nü provides us with Yuanxian's engagement in Fujian society, the social phenomena among the commoners, and their unconventional Buddhist concepts. His Jianzhou hongshi lu reveals eminent local Chan and Confucian masters, how the Chan teachings enhanced the Confucian scholars' demeanor, and the influence of the Chan masters of the Jianzhou area that extended well beyond that local region.
Yuanxian devoted his literary talents as a reviver and fearless defender to uphold the supremacy of Buddhism. He vigorously pointed out the deficiencies of Confucianism and Daoism and expressed distinctive insight towards the popular trend of the Three Teachings syncretism. His life manifested the ideal of actualizing the functions of the super-mundane world while engaging simultaneously in society.
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Didziokaite, Gabija. "Mundane self-tracking : calorie counting practices with MyFitnessPal." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2017. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/33485.
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This thesis investigates self-tracking practices of users of MyFitnessPal calorie counting app. The thesis researches everyday self-trackers users who have started using the app on their own and are not part of any self-tracking community and focuses on the practices of self-tracking. The thesis responds to the literature on self-tracking that has often neglected everyday self-trackers and practices of self-tracking. First, many studies, whether sociological investigations or human-computer interaction research, focus on members of Quantified Self (QS) community (Choe, Lee, Lee, Pratt, & Kientz, 2014; Li, Dey, & Forlizzi, 2010; Neff & Nafus, 2015; Sharon & Zandbergen, 2016). QS is a community of individuals who are interested in learning more about themselves through, oftentimes unusual and complex, self-tracking, which involves modification of existing technologies or even creation of new ones. Thus, focusing on QS members neglects the individual everyday self-trackers, their experiences and practices. Second, existing studies have mainly focused on health or social implications of self-tracking (Lupton, 2012b, 2013d, 2014a, Swan, 2012b, 2013). These include, but are not limited to, potential of self-tracking to assist diagnosis (Wile, Ranawaya, & Kiss, 2014), or behaviour change (Chiauzzi, Rodarte, & Dasmahapatra, 2015), self-tracking increasing surveillance, public pedagogy (Rich & Miah, 2014) and subjection to neoliberal values and promotion of healthism (Lupton, 2012b, 2013a) or leading to monetisation of exercise (Till, 2014). While these studies have yielded important insights, they do not help us to understand what people actually do when they self-track, i.e. what practices self-tracking involves and how people engaged in self-tracking manage them. Guided by the STS approach that highlights the importance of observing the mundane practices and need to focus on technology users, this thesis explores the practices of everyday self-trackers. The exploration of the practices of self-tracking among the everyday self-trackers is based on 31 interviews with early mid-life individuals, who were mainly recruited from gyms and shared their self-tracking experience of using the MyFitnessPal calorie counting app. The analytical chapters answer three questions: What is self-tracking by calorie counting in the everyday like? How is self-tracking by calorie counting done? What are the practices through which self-tracking affects those engaged in it? To answer the first question, I juxtapose self-tracking goals, use and effects as they are represented in the literature on the QS to those of my participants. Doing this reveals that self-tracking in the everyday is perceived and done quite differently than the QS metaphor would allow us to believe. The goals of the participants are mundane (weight loss), they do not use the sophisticated features of the app and are not interested in the historical data, the effects of the app are not life-changing and temporary closely tied to the use of the app. This stands in contrast to QS metaphor where self-tracking is geared towards continuous self-improvement, driven by intricate data analysis and biohacking. To answer the second question, I focus on self-tracking by calorie counting with MyFitnessPal as a dieting practice. I explore how self-tracking affects the daily practices as well as is incorporated in participants lives. The users, thus, aim to find an approach to temporal aspects of tracking and precision that would fit most conveniently with their other daily practices. They manipulate their use of the app to accommodate any meals that are not in their usual dieting routine. This highlights that dieting through self-tracking is not a straightforward data collection and involves practical strategies and negotiations, and can both influence and be influenced by other everyday practices. The third question focuses on quantification, that is the production and communication of numbers (W. N. Espeland & Stevens, 2008, p. 402). Quantification has usually been discussed at institutional levels, in terms of government, science or, in the case of Espeland and Sauder s (W. N. Espeland & Sauder, 2007) seminal work, in terms of academic rankings. I adopt the insights from these studies to make sense of the quantification at the individual level using MyFitnessPal. I draw out two features of individual quantification that distinguish it from institutional one, mainly that quantification is done for oneself only and it relies on self-governance. Further, I outline how quantification affects such decisions as whether to eat, what to eat and how much to eat. Quantification also works as commensuration as participants compared different foods referring to their calorie value. However, unlike in the case of institutional quantification, individual quantification did not have to be accepted unquestionably and often other values of food would be weighted in relation to calories when participants made choices what to eat. Ultimately, this thesis contributes a new perspective on self-tracking as it explores the mundanity of it. It adds fine-grained insights into the everyday practices of self-tracking by adopting a novel analytical angle that centres on practices and by exploring a neglected user group of everyday self-trackers.
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Weaver, Stephen T. "Connected Consumers: Cognizance of Provision Networks in Mundane Consumption." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2011. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/marketing_diss/22.
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Many types of product meanings have been investigated in the consumer behavior literature, and these layers of meaning have been shown to influence consumer behavior. However, very little research has attempted to investigate product meanings having to do with provision networks, that is, the people, places, resources and processes involved in creating products and delivering them to the consumer. In addition, researchers in several fields have argued that consumers have lost an awareness of provision networks due to their increasing size and complexity in the modern economy. This research indicates that some consumers are indeed cognizant of the systems of provision for the products they consume. The results of this study indicate that some consumers expend effort to create and ascribe provision meanings for some products, and that these meanings in turn affect the consumer’s consumption decisions and experiences. In spite of the commodifying effects of modern market systems, these consumers exhibit an appreciation for products as the outcome of a complex system of relationships among people, places, resources and processes and have thus become reconnected to the provision of what they consume.
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Aspinen, Maria. "Making Mundane Magical - Analyzing Vlogger-Audience Interaction in YouTube." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23178.
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In the past decades a lot of research has been dedicated to widening the understanding of different media audiences, as well as to determining the motivations behind both, creation of user-generated content (UGC) as well as audience behavior. This thesis seeks to broaden this knowledge by studying vloggers and their interaction with their audiences. Instead of asking the audience members: In what ways are the vloggers an influence on you, this thesis asks: “Can the audience be a source of inspiration and influence for vloggers? The thesis aims also at recognizing typicality’s in vloggers audio-visual content as well as strategical approaches for audience engagement. Approach in order to find answers to the set questions is critical yet humanistic. Empirical research is divided in two parts, of which the first is done by qualitative content analysis and the second part by semi-structured interviews. The aim of this multimethod approach is to get a broad yet deep view on this commercial, and contemporary storytelling form. Appadurai’s five scape- theory is used as the theoretical framework, and the research findings as well as conclusions are also viewed through other recent studies from media and communications field.
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Ransom, Michael R. "It's a Miracle: Separating the Miraculous from the Mundane." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1304531829.
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Holland, Owen James. "William Morris's utopianism and the politics of mundane intervention." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708825.
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Ma, Siyuan. "To Utopianize the Mundane: Sound and Image in Country Musicals." Scholar Commons, 2016. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6112.
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Many consider music, songs, and dance performance as utopian signifiers for cinema, but few has entered the utopian discourse of country musicals, a small genre of cinema usually known as country music films. By closely scrutinizing Pure Country (1992), this thesis aims to reveal how country music—as music numbers and as background cues— integrate and connect the fragmented on-screen world for the country musicals so as to offer audiences a fullness of utopian experience, and how this utopian effect are culturally significant for American audiences due to country music’s unique mechanism of constructing utopia and nostalgia in its past-orientations, sentimentalities, and alleged authenticities. I argue because of the American country music’s internal need for utopia as an individual and social agent, Pure Country, as well as the neo-traditionalism country music defined by Pure Country, reconciles the pop and the old time country music, and also conciliates the tension expressed in such music tastes between the rural and urban communities. This reconciliation makes Pure Country a not so perfect cinematic text for documenting country music’s authenticity and origin, but fully and clearly reflects the utopian meaning of country music on an individual and social level.
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Cheniti, Tarek. "Global internet governance in practice : mundane encounters and multiple enactments." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.527285.
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Mallett, Jane. "Nurse-patient haemodialysis sessions : orchestrated institutional communication and mundane conversations." Thesis, Open University, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.364120.
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Cohen, Jonah Avriel. "Religious appreciation and the mundane-sacred : a neglected area of philosophy." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2004. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/29337/.
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This dissertation belongs within the field of the philosophy of religion. The thesis proposes three basic ideas. First, there is a kind of religious language and religious experience disregarded in philosophy: the kind of religious language that is philosophically examined is called "mundane-sacred judgment;" the mental state behind that language is called "religious appreciation." Second, these phenomena are relevant to the philosophy of religion and therefore should not be ignored. Third, the philosophical model by which these two linguistic and experiential facts of religion are explicated is aesthetics. Just as metaphysics often supplies the concepts and logical problems associated with, say, the philosophical study of mystical or prayer experience, so it will be shown that the philosophy of aesthetics provides the ideas and difficulties connected with the philosophical study of mundane-sacred judgment and religious appreciation. To show this, the dissertation draws analogies between, on the one hand, "mundane-sacred judgment" and "aesthetic judgment", and, on the other hand, "religious appreciation" and "aesthetic appreciation." It also shows that, like aesthetics, the goals of the philosophical study of mundane-sacred judgment and religious appreciation are (1) to elucidate the meaning of this language and (2) to characterize its associated experience. Because the primary aim of the thesis is to suggest the existence of a neglected religious language and experience, and how they are relevant to philosophy, no single interpretation of them is proffered. Accordingly, the thesis looks at a broad constellation of philosophical ideas - ranging from ancient philosophy, to phenomenology, to analytic philosophy - and how those differing ideas might apply to this subject. Throughout, then, the reader is encouraged and challenged to consider various philosophical interpretations of mundane-sacred judgment and religious appreciation. In this way, the field of philosophical debate underlying these religious issues is delineated.
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Jarai, Maté. "Structures of meaning : form and the mundane in the contemporary novel." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2017. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/418887/.
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In the contemporary novel, the mundane is proving addictive. The lengthy digressions and obsessive details of Karl Ove Knausgaard have hooked readers, while Brett Easton Ellis hailed Tao Lin as 'the most interesting prose stylist of his generation', while labelling his novel Taipei 'boring'. But what strategies does the contemporary writer use to arouse interest in monotony? This thesis explores the question through a new novel Illuminato, whose protagonist Florián Hal struggles to find meaning, in what he feels is a pointless existence. The novel asks the reader to explore Florián's world experientially, and focus on the repetitiveness of his daily life. Through the novel, I ask how the contemporary mundane can prompt intrigue, immersion, and engagement from readers. The accompanying critical commentary considers strategies for writing the mundane, focusing on Tao Lin, Karl Ove Knausgaard and Scarlett Thomas. It assesses the techniques and devices these writers use in place of narrative climax or dramatic action, concentrating on their use of style, structure, and their interest in questions of fidelity, realism and form. It focuses on three distinct binaries of the contemporary mundane; Tao Lin's interest in attention versus boredom, Knausgaard's depiction of memory and the present, and Thomas' contest between action and ideas. Each binary is examined with reference to the drafting and development of my own novel; in chapter one, from my protagonists' distracted narration; in chapter two, the flashbacks used to represent his past; to the use of Plato's cave allegory as a substitute for dramatic structure in chapter three. The doctoral project offers a work in dialogue with the contemporary mundane, while reflecting on its limitations, opportunities, and challenges.
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Pedersen, Thomas. "Actants and Networks in 'Skagboys' – Thatcher, Crime and Mundane Artifacts as Mediators." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-21757.
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While Skagboys portrays the descent into heroin addiction of young, working class Scots during the Thatcher era, shifting the analysis from a strictly human perspective to one focusing on the agency of objects opens up the novel to new readings wherein morality emerges through nonhuman actors. Welsh’s work has traditionally been hailed as Scottish working-class realism that portrays its characters unideologically, to the point that the novels, through the characters, appear without morality. Drawing upon Latour’s notion of Actor-Network Theory, ANT, reveals a Thatcherite materiality permeating the story, prescribing the moral behaviour which the characters of Skagboys repeatedly clash with as their heroin addiction and junk desperation grows. The impacts of the security camera, the smoke detector and the collection tin provide the basis for the analysis. This highlights two types of marginalization for the characters. Firstly, in the characters’ hopeless prospects with regards to employment due to Thatcher’s neoliberal politics, and secondly as objects of detection and control exerting agency in the world which the characters navigate. These objects presuppose and foil crime, effectively becoming extensions of Thatcherite morality, keeping the criminal and unemployed in check.
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Jackson, Amber McGinnis Beard DeAnna M. Toten. "Balancing the mythic and mundane a director's approach to Sarah Ruhl's 'Eurydice' /." Waco, Tex. : Baylor University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2104/5308.
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Miller, Courtney. "Origins of Color." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/35715.
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The purpose of this thesis was to use color as the primary design element for a place of commerce along the Big Dig (Boston). Color informed the building form and provided the connection for the building type and the urban site.
The thesis book unfolds in reverse order, with the intent to reveal the final design at the beginning. As the pages unfold, the evolution of the design emerges to complete with the beginning of the thesis.Master of Architecture
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Kelly, Howard Damian. "Being and time, §15 : around-for references and the content of mundane concern." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2014. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/being-and-time-15-aroundfor-references-and-the-content-of-mundane-concern(ce40e9c6-4305-4cd0-b3a5-1c50fb19cbb0).html.
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This thesis articulates a novel interpretation of Heidegger’s explication of the being (Seins) of gear (Zeugs) in §15 of his masterwork Being and Time (1927/2006) and develops and applies the position attributed to Heidegger to explain three phenomena of unreflective action discussed in recent literature and articulate a partial Heideggerian ecological metaphysics. Since §15 of BT explicates the being of gear, Part 1 expounds Heidegger’s concept of the ‘being’ (Seins) of beings (Seienden) and two issues raised in the ‘preliminary methodological remark’ in §15 of BT regarding explicating being. §1.1 interprets the being (Sein) or synonymously constitution of being (Seinsverfassung) of a being (Seienden) as a regional essence: a property unifying a region (Region), district (Bezirk), or subject-area (Sachgebiet) – a highly general (‘regional’) class of entities. Although Heidegger posits two components of the being of a being, viz. material-content (Sachhaltigkeit, Sachgehalt) and mode-of-being (Seinsart) or way-of-being (Seinsweise, Weise des Seins, Weise zu sein) (1927/1975, 321), the unclarity of this distinction means that it does not figure prominently herein. §1.2 addresses Heidegger’s distinction between ontological and ontic investigations and his notion of ‘modes of access’ (Zugangsarten, Zugangsweisen). Part 2 expounds §15 of BT’s explication of the being of gear. §2.1 analyses Heidegger’s two necessary and sufficient conditions for being gear and three core basic concepts (Grundbegriffe) enabling comprehension of these conditions and therewith a foundational comprehension of gear. Heidegger explicates the being of gear through content of unreflectively purposeful, non-intersubjective intentional states. I term such states ‘mundane concern’, which is almost synonymous with Hubert Dreyfus’s term ‘absorbed coping’ (1991, 69). Heidegger’s explication highlights around-for references (Um-zu-Verweisungen) as the peculiar species of property figuring in mundanely concernful intentional content. §2.2 clarifies Heidegger’s position on the relationship between to-hand-ness (Zuhandenheit) and extantness (Vorhandenheit) in the narrow sense: two of Heidegger’s most widely discussed concepts. I reject Kris McDaniel’s recent reading of Heidegger as affirming that nothing could be both to-hand and extant simultaneously (McDaniel 2012). Part 3 develops and applies Heidegger’s phenomenology of mundane concern. §3.1 explains the phenomena of situational holism, situated normativity, and mundanely concernful prospective control. §3.2 undertakes the metaphysical accommodation of around-for references, which §3.1 posited as featuring prominently within mundanely concernful intentional content. This thesis thus contributes not only to Heidegger scholarship, but also to contemporary debates within the philosophy of action and cognitive science.
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Kaaristo, Maarja. "Mundane tourism mobilities on a watery leisurescape : canal boating in North West England." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2018. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/620501/.
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There are over 3,000 miles of navigable inland waterways in England and Wales, managed mainly by the Canal and River Trust, which promotes their use for various leisure activities. Canals have undergone a radical transformation in their use and purpose, from being important transport links in the 18th and 19th centuries, to largely being left derelict. During the 20th century, however, the canals have been transformed from an obsolete infrastructure into a modern leisurescape used by various individuals, groups and stakeholders. Concentrating on the canals of Northern England and Northern Wales, this thesis focuses on one of those groups on the canals who have not yet received sufficient academic attention, the holiday and leisure boaters. In order to research tourism, a temporary and mobile phenomenon, with the commitment necessary for an ethnographic research, this study develops a methodology, reflexive mobile ethnography that combines the mobilities approach and European ethnology, utilizing semi-structured interviews, participant observation and auto-ethnography for data collection. As no previous academic study has presented a comprehensive analysis of contemporary canal tourism as a lived and embodied experience, the present study extends our understanding of inland waterways tourism and mobilities. Theoretically, the study suggests studying tourism mobilities from the everyday life perspective – mundane tourism mobilities – and the data analysis shows that these are simultaneously material, embodied, temporal and convivial. A number of materialities have to come together in order to constitute mobile assemblages that make canal travel possible. These assemblages, such as boat-humans, move in the temporal canalscape, characterised by its specific – slow – tempo, but also engaging with the past in embodied ways. Furthermore, the canal temporalities are characterised by mundane socio-natural and socio-bodily rhythms, which are identified in the thesis through the rhythmanalysis of the leisure boating everyday life. The material and temporal practices of boating take place in the context of social interactions and their closer examination helps to redefine the boundaries of a canal boating community. This study therefore presents an analysis of the canal leisurescape where the human and non-human form various co-agencies and assemblages, experienced in embodied ways in the context of mundane tourism mobilities. The latter framework, as developed in this thesis, constitutes a theoretical contribution to mobilites studies by proposing to research tourism from the perspective of everyday life focusing on three key elements: time, place and practice. The work will therefore extend existing understanding of tourism mobilites, particularly in the ways in which they relate to embodied everyday life practices.
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Silva, Renato Izidoro da. "O impossível material de algumas proposições para a realidade da educação escolar indígena: aporias, alquimias e ideologias." Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação da UFBA, 2011. http://www.repositorio.ufba.br/ri/handle/ri/11743.
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Trata da educação escolar indígena acerca da configuração de sua realidade contemporânea. Sugerimos como hipótese central que a educação escolar indígena contemporânea apresenta como sendo uma de suas facetas mais relevantes e possivelmente hegemônicas em relação a outros direcionamentos nesse campo, a constituição e desenvolvimento profícuo de uma realidade científica confluente com o privilégio e a ênfase que nossa sociedade nacional e globalizada investe sobre a produção de ciência, cultura, política e economia na forma de textos e literaturas fundamentalmente codificadas a partir da escrita, designando a modernidade ocidental como sendo grafocêntrica alfabética em detrimento de outros modos de informação, comunicação, pensamento e práticas próprias de outras formas de sociedade como o caso das etnias indígenas. Defendemos que a prerrogativa empreendida em prol do desenvolvimento textual ou literário grafocentrado no sistema alfabético de comunicação governamental e acadêmico provoca um distanciamento do pensamento e da ação cientifica que se anunciam como comprometidos com as realidades mundanas, objetiva, material – em oposição ao ideal – realista das escolas indígenas cada vez mais presentes e participantes da vida comunitária das inúmeras e diversas etnias habitantes do território político e econômico brasileiro. O privilégio sobre as produções textuais tem como guia hodierno quatro conceitos legislativos e também científicos fundamentais para a configuração teórica e prática da educação escolar indígena: interculturalidade, bilinguismo, diferenciada e específica. Em sendo o centro motriz das experiências e análises acadêmicas e políticas sobre a educação escolar indígena, tais conceitos surgem e são assim reforçados como proposições teóricas e políticas para o desenvolvimento de intervenções educacionais no seio das aldeias indígenas tomando como ambiente privilegiado a escola. Entretanto, os incontáveis fracassos, os diversos efeitos colaterais teóricos e metodológicos provocados pelas aplicações das proposições legislativas; o agravamento de situações específicas junto a um imenso conjunto de mal-entendidos ao lado do acirramento de contradições filosóficas, ideológicas, políticas, econômicas, científicas, críticas e experimentais fizeram com que passássemos a desconfiar – e investigar as – das possibilidades objetivas de realização dos referidos conceitos fundamentais fora dos campos de produções imaginárias – mentais – e textuais concebidas aqui como virtuais, assim como impossíveis de realização dentro das dinâmicas mundanas das comunidades indígenas, suas escolas e seus sujeitos. Em suma, os excelentes e esclarecedores desdobramentos das produções textuais e literárias sobre educação escolar indígena, assim como por esse meio a produção e aperfeiçoamento de instrumentos teórico-metodológicos e técnicotecnológicos cada vez mais complexos e arrojados, não vêm correspondendo com as aparências superestruturais e com as bases infra-estruturais da vida indígena na Modernidade. Assim, a dúvida que passou a nos acometer toma a forma de perguntas como: não seriam os quatro conceitos fundamentais da educação escolar indígena atual aporias e ideologias cujas tentativas de efetivação não seriam esquadrinhadas pelo que entendemos por práticas da alquimia? Nesse sentido, a partir de pensadores como Bachelard, Peirce e Marx/Gramsci sugerimos como práxis o estabelecimento de experimentações cada vez mais radicais e controladas dos mencionados quatro conceitos fundamentais em contextos particulares de educação escolar indígena não em prol da afirmação dos mesmos, mas sim em favor de um ponto de vista científico que tem como garantia de um conhecimento aproximado do real a dúvida e a desconfiança sobre as proposições teóricas geralmente tidas como imutáveis e necessárias.
Salvador
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Helani, Fadi. "The Topic Transition Sequence and the Management of Topic Change in Mundane Arabic Conversation." Thesis, University of Essex, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.485301.
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This study investigates topic change in mundane Arabic conversation.. Following a conversation analytic approach, we examine data collected from naturally occurring talk in Arabic mundane conversation recorded from telephone calls to look at how speakers end talk on one topic and initiate another. Therefore, we look at the topic transition sequence in which participants disengage from an on-going sequence prior to the proffering of a new topic. Here, we study the participants' initiation of religious' expressions that are understood as prompting a:specific action in the conversation. We also look at how a specific discourse marker may propose, or endorse a prior proposal, to end talk on one topic. The participants' entry into non serious talk is also examined in detail, with specific attention to turns that expand such sequences prior to the topic change. We distinguish the turns we study in this sequence from those that close the talk at the end of the conversation. Our analysis also examines the topic proffering turns that open talk on a new matter in the conversation. We focus here on the inquiry as a first pair part of an adjacency pair sequence, which makes relevant next a response that endorses talk on the topic ,. proffered by that inquiry. Here, we study a range of responses that display the recipient's collaboration or declination to talk on the new topic. Another type of topic proffering turns we investigate is announcements that initiate a news delivery sequence. In such sequences, new topics can be initiated as disjunctive from, or as a continuation of, the prior talk in the prior sequence, as exhibited in the composition of the announcement that initiates the new topic. This study aims to initiate conversation analytic studies in Arabic by examining normative aspects of the language in mundane· conversation, which are recognisable by the participants as accomplishing specific actions, as displayed in their collaborative efforts to end an on-going sequence upon the initiation of a new topic.
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Huang, Jianxiang M. C. P. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The sequence of the supreme and mundane : case studies of the Chinese urban order." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/42269.
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Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-88).
After decades of urbanization and growth, Chinese cities are experiencing rapid renewal and redevelopment. The revolutionary changes in city form are accompanied by not only prosperity and wealth, but also chaotic environment and life. On the one hand, the current international style of urban design, which is largely copied from abroad, applies homogeneous grids and modern buildings without much concerns of the context. On the other hand, the past traditions have been forgotten or frowned upon. It is time for planners and urban designers to reflect on the question: will there be any relevant components from the past tradition which will prove to be valuable for contemporary Chinese cities? In what follows I want to explore an appropriated model of urban design which provides attractive environment and strengthened identities for contemporary Chinese cities. Different from previous approaches, my study focuses on the urban sequence which refers to the ordered configuration in a succession along urban routes. There are five chapters in this thesis. I start with a brief introduction to the definition and categorization of urban order and sequence. Then I looked at the vocabulary of sequence in pre-modern Chinese cities, including walls, gates, urban routes, paifang archways, the fabric of module, and landmarks. The application of sequential principles from the courtyard house to the plan of a capital is examined, and the basic features of Chinese sequence are summarized. Afterwards, the transformation of urban sequence is reveal through contemporary cases. Here I looked at how Chang'an Street and the danwei space in contemporary Chinese inherited the political and social sequence of the past with new architecture language and larger scales.
(cont.) An additional discussion on contemporary Chinese urban design models are provided, including stylistic architecture, urban conservation, and the international style of urban design. Further, I proposed the model of sequential design based on reinvented principles from traditional urban sequence. These principles, which originated from the authoritarian politics, Confucius hierarchy, and urban control, were adapted to match modern democratic society and market economy. Lastly, I conclude that the model of sequential design will create livable and attractive urban environment. And it is capable of bring consistency to large urban projects.
by Jianxiang Huang.
M.C.P.
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Greer, Timothy S. "Accomplishing identity in bilingual interaction: codeswitching practices among a group of multiethnic Japanese teenagers." University of Southern Queensland, Faculty of Education, 2007. http://eprints.usq.edu.au/archive/00003592/.
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[Abstract]: The number of so-called ‘half-Japanese’ children (haafu) has been increasing in Japan over the last twenty years, and one place in which such multiethnic people exist in community is in the international school system. Although international schools typically deliver their curricula in English, most multiethnic students are equally familiar with the dominant Japanese culture and language, and can alternate between English and Japanese to accomplish discourse functions and express their hybrid identities. However, little research has been conducted into the bilingual interactional practices that multiethnic Japanese people use to accomplish aspects of their identity in mundane conversation.In conjunction with ethnographic observations and focus group discussions, this study adopts a conversational analytic (CA) approach to investigate some of these interactional practices. Specifically, the investigation draws on video-recorded data of the participants’ speech in naturally occurring conversations to explore the role of codeswitching in co-constructing aspects of identity in interaction with others.The study draws on Membership Categorization Analysis to examine the participants’ use of competency-related category bound activities to index identity in mundane talk, and Conversation Analysis to explore the role of discursive and situated identities in indexing transportable identities like ‘multiethnic Japanese’ in bilingual interaction. The investigation found several bilingual practices that index identity in multi-party talk, including the use of forward-oriented self-repair in bilingual word search sequences and backwards-oriented repair to design a translation in bilingual multi-party talk for a known non-native (or novice) speaker. In combination with embodied practices such as gaze shift, these bilingual practices worked by altering the participant constellation to partition recipients based on their perceived language preference.Throughout the study, mundane talk is seen as a key site in which multiethnic identity is made visible and co-accomplished by the participants.
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Covher, Corbin R. "Packaged Little Lives." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2014. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1787.
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This document attempts to capture the main ideas and evolution of my art making process during the three years of graduate studies at the University of New Orleans. My art making practice is an ever-evolving exploration of materials and ideas. Through art processes and experimentations I am able to overcome negative feelings about my role in society. I get lost in my process making things, thinking about things, and trying to come up with new ideas for the world. I am attempting to heighten mundane materials like cardboard, crayons, foams and concrete with intuitive abstract shape making. I am trying to present materials to the viewers in a way that is unusual and engaging. It is my hope that in doing so they might think about similar things that I think about while making the objects.
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Opperman, Susan. "Transmuting the mundane into transcendence : migrations of myth and its connection to contemporary comic books." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/6823.
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Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2011.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates the human capacity of modifying established myth in the light of new circumstances. It focuses on the changing status of myth and mythical cosmologies in Western culture as advances in telematics and techno-culture has led to the abundant proliferation of mythic content in modern society. The rise of scientific, secular and rational tendencies in the Occident has resulted in the demystification and negation of some myths and the cultural realities they once supported. Mythical symbols, however, do exhibit a certain degree of independence from their original set ontologies, growing and transforming continuously within contemporary culture as they are communicated to all social spheres. A particular focus is placed on the demystification of myth and its ability to be appropriated within other discourses, most notably fiction. As such, myth tends to exhibit certain migratory and conservational qualities that this study investigates. This serves as background for this thesis that is primarily located within the broader theoretical argument of myth as a system of world-representation in society, the main point of discussion is the re-appropriation of myth within the narrower field of visual signification, specifically the comics medium, as exemplified in the works of Neil Gaiman and Conrad Botes, as well as in my own work.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die tesis ondersoek die menslike kapasiteit om gevestigde mites te wysig in die lig van nuwe omstandighede. Dit fokus op die veranderlike status van mites en mitiese kosmologieë in die Westerse kultuur, aangesien vooruitgang in die telematiek en tegnokultuur gelei het tot ’n ryk proliferasie van mitiese inhoud in die moderne samelewing. Die opkoms van wetenskaplike, sekulêre en rasionele tendense in die Weste het die demistifikasie en negasie van sommige mites en kulturele realiteite wat hulle eens ondersteun het, tot gevolg gehad. Mitiese simbole vertoon egter ’n sekere graad van onafhanklikheid van hul oorspronklike vasgestelde ontologieë en groei wild binne die kontemporêre kultuur, aangesien hulle deurlopend gekommunikeer word aan verskillende sosiale sfere. Daar word veral gefokus op die demistifikasie van die mite en sy vermoë om geapproprieer te word binne ander diskoerse, veral in fiksie. As sodanig is mites geneig tot migrasie en die vertoon van konserverende kwaliteite, soos ondersoek in hierdie studie. Alhoewel die tesis eerstens gelokaliseer is binne die breër teoretiese argumentasie rondom mite as ’n sisteem van wêreldrepresentasie in die samelewing, is die kern van diskussie die re-appropriasie van die mite binne die smaller veld van visuele betekenisgewing, spesifiek in strippe as medium, soos uitgelig in die werke van Neil Gaiman en Conrad Botes, asook in my eie werk.
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Kallunki, K. (Kreetta). "Mundane images?:an exploratory case study analyzing the visual communication of one online news article." Bachelor's thesis, University of Oulu, 2018. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201801241106.
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The purpose of this thesis is to present the analysis of the visual communication of one dis-informative, English online newspaper article, and compare the findings briefly with previous studies by Knox (2007; 2009). The study applied the qualitative, social semantic approach, utilizing the analytical tools adapted from Kress and van Leeuwen’s framework of visual grammar (2006). The research aim was to explore how visual elements are used in communicating dis-informative news content. The results show, among other things that in contrast with the narrative based text the images were thematic and presented in organized sequences. The finding suggests that the apparently mundane images have purposes other than supporting the narrative of the news story, interpretively that of supporting advertisement and enhancing credibility. The analysis also showed that, in contradiction to Knox’s previous findings, the reading path on an online newspaper page can be linear, and that the organization of the webpage can pertain to Ideal–Real and Given–New contrastsTämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli analysoida yhden englanninkielisen, harhaanjohtavan verkkouutisen visuaalista viestintää, sekä lyhyesti vertailla tuloksia Knoxin (2007; 2009) tutkimustuloksien kanssa. Tutkimuksella oli kvalitatiivinen, sosio-semanttinen lähestymistapa, jonka analyysimetodina hyödynnettiin Günther Kressin ja Theo van Leeuwenin (2006) visuaalista kielioppia. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli tarkastella, kuinka visuaalisia elementtejä on käytetty viestittäessä harhaanjohtavaa sisältöä. Tarkasteltaviksi elementeiksi valittiin artikkelin kymmenen kuvituskuvaa, sekä kokonaiskuva artikkelin asettelusta sivulla. Tutkimustulokset osoittivat muun muassa, että narratiivisen tekstin rinnalla kuvat olivat temaattisia sekä järjestetty sekvensseihin. Analyysin tulokset viittaavat siihen, ettei kuvien tarkoituksena ole tukea narratiivia tai tarjota uutiseen uutta sisältöä, vaan hyödyttää mainontaa ja kohentaa uutisen uskottavuutta. Lisäksi analyysi osoitti, vastoin Knoxin tutkimustuloksia, että verkkosivun luenta tapahtuu lineaarisesti, ja että sivun sisältö on järjestetty vastakohtaparien Given–New ja Ideal–Real mukaisesti
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McKinnon, Heather K. "The mundane lives of households: A design exploration into everyday resource sufficiency in the home." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2018. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/119193/1/Heather_McKinnon_Thesis.pdf.
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This thesis explores the relationship between household resource sufficiency, modern mundanity, and contemporary design. Using a Research-through-Design methodology, it collects personal narratives, histories, experiences, and philosophies from the ordinary lives of 61 urban and regional households across Australia and reflects on how these experiences can impact the broader conversation regarding resource sufficiency, domestic life, and environmentally-focussed approaches to design. The work explores the household through a theoretical lens of everyday life, seeking to uncover a deeper understanding of the experiences related to resource use, waste, and conservation, and in turn reflect on how design can best support practices of sufficiency.
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Swan, Laurel M. "Artful systems : investigating everyday practices of family life to inform the design of information technology for the home." Thesis, Brunel University, 2010. http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/6507.
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The research in this thesis was motivated by an interest in understanding the work and effort that goes into organising family homes, with the aim of informing the design of novel information technology for the home. It was undertaken to address a notable absence of in-depth research into domestic information and communication technology in the fields of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). To that end, this thesis presents an ethnographic study of everyday routines in thirteen family homes. Following an established tradition within HCI and CSCW, the study applies qualitative fieldwork methods as a means to investigate and interpret the empirical materials. Periods of extended observation and semi-structured interviews with the thirteen families over a three-year period form the basis of the empirical material. The materials are analysed using a hybrid perspective composed of a combination of influences from the study of material culture, to interaction analysis and ethnography. The hybrid analytical perspective draws out insights regarding the families’ mundane practices and the artfully devised solutions they use to organise daily life. Four household activities and artefacts are given specific focus: (i) household list making, (ii) the display qualities of refrigerator doors, (iii) the organisation of household clutter, and (iv) the devising of bespoke solutions in organising home life. Broader findings include the observations that people tailor solutions to meet their needs, that optimum efficiency is not the pre-eminent determinant in what method or artefact people choose to organise themselves and their homes, and that homes determine their individual characters in part by how everyday tasks and organisation are accomplished. In short, the personal qualities of these mundane practices are part of what makes a home a home. These findings are used to elicit implications for information technology design, with the aim of encouraging designers of domestic technology to be aware of and respectful towards the idiosyncratic nature of the home, and, wherever possible, to design in such a way as to allow the technology to be appropriated for families’ bespoke tailoring. To evaluate and address this point, two design projects, one on augmented magnets and another on a “media bowl”, are used to develop and test out this approach. Both projects are critically examined to reflect on the efficacy of the design approach and what lessons might be learnt for future studies and design exercises. The combination of detailed ethnographic fieldwork on family homes combined with the development of experimental design projects is intended to deepen the understanding of the mundane behaviours and everyday routines of family homes, in order to better inform the design of information technology for the home.
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McNamee, Aaron. "Some Kind of Time." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2010. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1194.
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This critical analysis examines the progression and trajectory of my studio practices over the final two years of my graduate career. The pinnacle of my development became a meditation on time and its overall encompassing effects. The mundane and the fantastic are all bound by time. Many archetypes have ventured to escape the clutches of time. Found objects are remnants of time, linking past to present, present to future. Scars and blemishes are also vestiges of time, marking us like scratches on a record. The detritus of our lives defines our time, as it defines us. This thesis will elaborate on my exploration of time and its implications. It will describe works and identify the evolution of concepts from one work to the next. By defining what the work is and how it operates, the analysis will explore the larger implications of that work.
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Kryger, Pedersen Mette. "Digital ethnography and critical discourse analysis of the Zero waste movement on social media." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-21382.
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The humankind uses more of earth’s resources than the planet’s ability to provide renewable resources (WWF 2016). This trend is also contributing to climate changes, which have been a topic on the global political agenda for decades. However, there has yet to be found a sustainable solution. People are becoming impatient of the politicians’ ability to solve the issue and through grassroot movements and activism a range of different approaches have been made to find solutions to climate changes. Social media provides new opportunities to organize large groups of loosely connected people of interest towards a common goal, in this case to take care of the planet. Social media have also developed new forms of political engagement. This thesis is a case study of climate change activism through the zero waste community in Denmark that based on framing theory (Goffman 1974), online observations of local Facebook groups and Instagram activity as well as in-depth interviews pursues to understand in what ways participants use social media to make their everyday climate activism meaningful. In this thesis, Bakardjieva (2009, 2012) concepts of subactivism and mundane citizenship combined with framing theory are used to understand the ways mundane climate change actions are perceived meaningful for the participants in the Danish zero waste community. The study shows examples of how participants of the zero waste community in Denmark use social media in a variety of ways to make their mundane climate activism meaningful for them. They use social media to be inspired, share experiences and feel part of a community that emphasize climate change activism through mundane every day routines. Through online discussions in Facebook groups and on Instagram the participants create, challenge and negotiate a collective action frame of the zero waste movement, which proves useful in motivating and inspiring them to continue to do small acts in their everyday life.
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White, Rachel. "The splendour of the insignificant : an investigation of sacred and mundane landscapes and the alchemy of light." Thesis, University of Derby, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10545/621819.
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This study aims to contextualise my own photographic practice in relation to the interaction between mundane and sacred landscapes and the role that the transformative alchemy of light has on our perception of the ordinary. Reference will be made to the development of the genre of landscape photography, with particular reference to the selective aesthetic of pristine Wilderness, as embodied in the work of Ansel Adams, through the ‘man-altered’ landscapes of the New Topographics and Mark Klett’s rephotographic project, to discuss an aesthetic of the everyday. Reference will also be made to the benefits to health and wellbeing that can be achieved as a result of engaging in a state of mindfulness (Crane), also known as optimal experience or flow (Csikszentmihalyi) through photographic practice. Rather than narrowing the focus of the study by excluding relevant information to make the research less complex, the thesis comprises information from a diverse range of disciplines encompassing both the more obviously creative subjects of photography, aesthetics and poetry and areas such as health care. Given the parameters of the PhD process in relation to the breadth of the research undertaken, the specific study of each diverse element is, of necessity, not as detailed as it may have been had a single, more specifically defined, area of research been the entire focus of the research. The inclusive nature of the research presented in this thesis offers unique insights by providing direct comparisons and establishing new relationships between the theoretical and methodological approaches of a range of differing disciplines. While a written thesis forms part of the dissemination of the research findings the images that have emerged as a result of engagement with the study will be exhibited as an integral element of the outcome. The images that have been created as a result of the research process will take their place as objects within the world, offering viewers potential new ways of perceiving and experiencing what Rancière refers to as the ‘splendour of the insignificant’ within the landscape of their own everyday lives.
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Tabberer, Sharon. "Moving between the symbolic and the mundane : the introduction of the abortion pill RU486 into the NHS." Thesis, Anglia Ruskin University, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.341654.
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Dos, Santos Ganho Ana. "Reshaping sovereignty powers in agriculture in the Limpopo valley, Mozambique (2004-2014)." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2017. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/reshaping-sovereignty-powers-in-agriculture-in-the-limpopo-valley-mozambique-20042014(2d12ac30-9e59-4a18-a85a-b3f54d4dd9e6).html.
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Among the core concerns with the extraordinary proliferation of land deals in Africa - often referred to as "land grabs" - is that the signing of contracts between host states and foreign companies and/or other states for large swaths of territory and associated agribusinesses could represent an erosion of the host state's sovereignty powers. This concern reveals a double characterisation of the state, as weak in its sovereignty and, yet, as very able to negotiate and implement deals. Host states have been shown to be able to exercise sovereignty in those deals, what type of sovereignty - and whose -, however, remains in dispute. This thesis seeks to address this issue through a case study that focuses on the question how sovereignties are shaping and being shaped by land deals in Mozambique's Limpopo Valley. It specifically investigates the rice and sugar projects in areas of the Chokwe and Xai-Xai regadios. It considers land deals as a set of processes for international-domestic negotiation of goals and funding, followed by processes in the areas of decision-making, policy-making, and project implementation. Based on critical reappraisals of the concept of sovereignty, the thesis understands sovereignty as a set of powers that a state effectively has, beyond mere legal sovereignty, rather than an a priori attribute that a state does or does not possess, in zero-sum terms. As such it is an outcome of relational, inter-subjective processes and, thus, dynamic and historically contingent. Consequently, rather than absolute power over its territory and population, sovereignty is considered in terms of degrees of two types of political power practices, "command" power and "infrastructural" power, according to multiple and not always congruent state functions. To this, the thesis brings a notion of socially constructed state such that it is never neutral because a part of society and, thus socially embedded and produced. This allows me to move past the assumption of 'common good' and the moralist discussions of 'elite capture' and corruption. Based on this theoretical and analytical framework, the thesis posits irrigated agriculture and the state schemes hosting foreign projects as "sites" where actors' interests and powers are shaped relationally: the state (in different capacities), other states and their development agencies, foreign private sector actors and multiple domestic groups. The processes are studied at two levels. The first concerns how state "command" power is used to harness and/or defend against different international developments, negotiating international narratives and domestic needs, resulting in agricultural and water regulations, with ODA dependence for budgets. A subset of regulatory activity is the revisions to by-laws of management irrigation-scheme companies, as new representatives of central power locally. At the second level, the research focuses on interaction with Western equity and Chinese cooperation projects, two of the main types of investors, which come with different foreign management and funding models. Further, processes are embedded in historical trajectories of elite groups' moving away from agriculture since the 1980s, yet holding on to land entitlements, and of producers' displacement. This analytical framework allows research to effectively go beyond the notion of the state as either weak or able, considering it as polymorphous and acting in specific dimensions that no longer seem contradictory. Further, it illuminates the mutually constitutive nature of (sub)national and international dimensions of sovereignty, which tend to be exiled from each other in mainstream approaches to the notion, as well as the inextricability of political and economic powers in the 'sovereignty frontier' of post-conditionality states.
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Hope, Ashley W. "The Everyday Universe." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2018. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2517.
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I take inspiration from ordinary objects and materials. Through photography, I attempt to transcend the familiar to discover complexity within the bits and pieces of my everyday life. Like other artistic representations, a photograph is a singular portrayal, not an actualization of physical reality. My artistic exploration of this involves incorporating elements of abstraction to point to the truth that all photographs are, by nature, an abstraction of our physical reality based on perspective. The resulting images often share a quality of impermanence, counterbalanced by the act of making a photographic document. By evoking this temporal quality of photography and abstracting familiar materials and surfaces, I aim to create a playful tension in my imagery.
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Woo, Yuen Ying Grace. "Oral and written media coverage of mundane news in Hong Kong : a case study of a fire incident." HKBU Institutional Repository, 1995. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/95.
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Walton, Kristina A. "Blisters." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2013. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1677.
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Coleman, Andrew Robert. "I need to be myself : authenticity and performance in the everyday and mundane practice of trustworthy leadership : a paradox?" Thesis, Lancaster University, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.511719.
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Coe, Jason George. "Left behind by history: complicating narrative, modernity in the mundane, and reading history through womenin "feeling of life films"." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2012. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B48539533.
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This dissertation scrutinizes a corpus of films considered to be the stylistic and thematic descendants of Yasujiro Ozu, which I call “feeling of life films.” Focusing upon common themes such as female narrative and the portrayals of the quotidian, this dissertation identifies various methods used in specific films of Ozu, Hou Hsiao Hsien, and Tran Anh Hung that complicate narrative meaning and engage in the discourse of national modernity and history. The female protagonists of these films can be considered “left behind” by the narrative progression of history, serving an allegorical function that critiques standard notions of time and official history. The basis for understanding this phenomenon will be scholarly discourse primarily concerning Ozu’s “Noriko Trilogy,” which marks the transitional period of post-war Japan through the narrative of a woman’s path to marriage. This dissertation seeks to complicate the discourse of reading women in these films by introducing different methodologies of formalist analysis, cultural analysis, theoretic discourse, historiography, and phenomenology. In doing so, this dissertation demonstrates the cinematic importance of these films through their unique formal characteristics and their cultural and historical meanings.published_or_final_version
Literary and Cultural Studies
Master
Master of Arts
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Linder, Elin. "Food: A Sensuous Matter of the Everyday : A sensorial exploration of material and bounded natures of mundane food practices." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Socialantropologiska institutionen, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-172675.
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This thesis examines everyday food practices such as sensed by seven households in the city ofStockholm, Sweden. By sensuously exploring the acts of acquiring, preparing, cooking, eating,and wasting food, I analyze how food is a matter of olfactory, gustatory, auditory, tactile, andvisual significance, as much as matter per se. More specifically, I address relational andbounded aspects of food, looking at how ambient surroundings, presences of material andimmaterial factors, sensuously influence everyday experiences of food. Intrigued by the at onceinter-, extra-, and re-corporeal matters of food, I analytically position myself alongside Latour,Ingold, Douglas, and Bennett. In entertaining their theoretical lines of thoughts, using them asanalytical springboards, this thesis explores socio-material dimensions of food practices, as wellas corporeal dynamics of human-material encounters. Methodologically carried out by meansof sensuous ethnography, following Pink’s notion of participatory practice, I have during tenweeks of fieldwork—in people’s homes and in their frequented grocery stores—engaged mysenses to experientially sense the world of food, such as lived by them. In our conjoint sensorialexploration, taken-for-granted mundane understandings of what food constitutes and whatconstitutes it, have emerged as domestically diverse, bounded to sensuous perceptionsderivative of the past, carried out in the presents, and cor(po)related to the future. By surveyingsituated meanings of what is smelled when savored, tasted when flavored, seen when looked,and felt when touched, simultaneously as accounting for nonhuman matters salient to coursesof actions, the thesis remarks context-sensorial-imbued figurations of everyday food.
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Lindstrand, Sophie. "The governance of the energy concept in low-energy buildings : The perceptions of housing companies and occupants." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Tema Miljöförändring, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-149431.
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Energy efficiency within the housing sector is progressing. In Vallastaden which is a newly developed city district in Linköping, Sweden, constructors together with the municipality have made attempts to create a sustainable built environment. One of the goals was to establish energy efficient residential buildings in Vallastaden. The overall aim of the study was to investigate the development of two energy plus buildings in Vallastaden and explore the potentials for the energy concept in these buildings to reduce the energy use. The perceptions of the occupants were included in the study since their views and practices play an important part for the buildings’ energy performance. Qualitative interviews were conducted with informants from two housing companies and three households. The findings show that the motives for the housing companies were try out new things and progress within the housing sector. The housing companies were however uncertain if their buildings would become energy efficient in practice since it depended on how the occupants would interact with the technology and the energy concept. There is a risk that the energy concept and the technology may not reach its full potential in reducing energy since the occupants either had no reflection about their role in the energy concept or were uncertain about the technology. The communication between the housing companies and the occupants needs to be strengthened for occupants to realize their influence on the energy use in these buildings.
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Odajima, Fumiaki. "Species of Spaces and Other Pieces." VCU Scholars Compass, 2006. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd_retro/28.
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I am inspired by the mundane activities engaged in, in daily life. Every morning, I check the temperature of outside. At that time I think about the day ahead. Do I need an umbrella? What color am I enamored of today? This is a small but important part of my day. In this moment of my thought paths can be very intuitively chosen. When I water the plants or pour milk into a coffee, I get a similar feeling, something that might be categorized as a sensation of "time apart."I came to The United States to begin to gain an understanding of conceptual art. I could not make it myself and it always fascinated me. I had believed that conceptual art always concerned itself with larger global or political issues, was restrained, and unemotional. I have since change my mind. My new work is about sharing how beautiful the energy is when people join in laughter, how sad people appear to always drive so fast, how interesting it is that pigeons always stay in a specific place. I am interested in not just objects, but their sounds, their history, their physical properties, their potential for change, and the life surrounding them. That which "surrounds" the making is as important as that which is made... so to check the temperature of outside is (in the end) as integral as any aspect.
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Hedberg, Sofia. "Gäris and ickebinäris: Exploring a Swedish Gender-Separatist Group on Facebook." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-21305.
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This thesis explores the experience of participating in a ‘hidden’ gender separatist forum for women and nonbinary persons on Facebook. It does so through a case study of a group called Växtgäris, which constitutes one link in a chain of gender separatist forums established on Swedish Facebook in recent years, whose names all end with -gäris. The aim of the research was to investigate what motivates people to participate in such groups, how members understand the separatist framework with regards to their experience of the forum, and how such online practices might relate to notions of ‘safe space’ and ‘mundane citizenship’. The study combines two (digital) ethnographic methods for collecting data: participant observations of the group’s discussion thread and in-depth interviews with eight members. In analysing the empirical material, the Roestone Collective’s re-conceptualisation of ‘safe space’ was combined with Bakardijeva’s theorisation of ‘mundane citizenship’ (and the related notion of ‘subactivism’) to address different segments of the data.Results show that participants in Växtgäris hold a variety of motivations for participating in the group, such as exchanging knowledge, connecting with other people interested in plants and to escape oppressive behaviour. Interviewees further described a variety of attitudes towards the group’s separatist element, ranging from very positive to more questioning standpoints. The study concludes that Växtgäris might provide a ‘safe space’ for sharing information, expressing feminist views, and ‘geeky’ expressions of love for plants. Finally, inconspicuous individual actions, such as referring to wider societal and political discourses and planting certain linguistic codes, might be viewed as expressions of ‘mundane citizenship’ and ‘subactivism’. The thesis adds to research investigating contemporary feminist expression, community formation and identity construction in online environments and further reveals how marginalised identities in Sweden might deal with oppression in today’s increasingly digital society.
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Speight, Dana T. Ms. "Transforming the Mundane: Juxtaposing Maria Friedman’s "High Society" with George Cukor’s "The Philadelphia Story" as an Emphasis on the Importance of Theatre." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/352.
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The subjects of film and theatre belong to an extensive hierarchical debate that has remained prominent within the realm of performing arts since the introduction of cinema in the late nineteenth century. A plethora of scholars choose to argue in favor of the former, suggesting that film surpasses theatre as superior in both aesthetics and overall execution of naturalism; however, the argument is purely subjective and cannot be applied to all films and their corresponding plays. As a counterclaim, theatre continues to thrive as a prominent source of artistic entertainment globally, not only offering a contemporary twist to preexisting texts, but also impacting an audience in methods that film will never be able to do so. Maria Friedman’s High Society is a primary example that reaffirms how theatre can triumph the continual debate when compared to its preceding film – The Philadelphia Story – directed by George Cukor, both artistically and through its overall execution of the profound topics represented within the original text. This thesis will primarily juxtapose Cukor’s iconic film with Friedman’s revival of the former that was performed in 2015 at London’s Old Vic theatre, offering an innovative rebuttal to the preexisting debate as well as to affirm the argument of how theatre compellingly transforms the mundane.
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Moy, Cheryl Kristin. "Architectu(Re)mergence: A Solution for the Modern American Grocery Store." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/51752.
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Imagine a grocery store that physically helps you to make healthy decisions for you. Your Twinkies, Hoho's, and other processed foods are all available and within sight, but you've got to work for them.
In the wake of challenges that Americans face every day, this thesis project is putting a magnifying glass to (hi)stories and the human experience, and promoting change for American suburban and urban grocery stores to be health-fitness machines that we need them to be in order to help those of us on a quest to stay fit and healthy.
With the information age pretty much exploding- as we are able to do a search for just about anything on Google, lack of information is not necessarily the problem. While gimmicky short term dieting fads come and go, an architectural model solution can set the foundation and structure to sustain progress. Let's look to the origins of architecture, labyrinths are built of walls, but if we are not careful, we can let them lead us to dead ends. Let's look to the origins of the marketplace, where fresh foods are taken directly from the source. For many of us, the modern American grocery store is the origin of our energy, where we will return again and again. It is our food source. It might be one root of our society's increasing levels of unhealthy weight gain, but also the source of opportunity to challenge the current design of the boxed store.Master of Architecture
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Tamm, Peter L. "Mundane yet miraculous: cultural elements in the rise of modern economy (an analysis of the protectionist/free trade controversy in the United States)." Thesis, Boston University, 1997. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/32876.
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Thesis (B.A.)--Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses.PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you.
2031-01-01
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Reeve, Alan Richard. "Urban design and places of spectacle : social control as an aspect of the design and management of mundane leisure space in contemporary British context." Thesis, Oxford Brookes University, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.363778.
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Albrecht, Marissa. "Pedestrian." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2020. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/8598.
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My feet are my transportation while living in the college town of Provo, Utah. When walking, I am drawn to designs found at construction sites and office workplaces, methods of labor that are executed sequentially. These designs lead me to think about laborious jobs that I have had and time performing mundane, repetitive tasks. Walking, photographing, gathering, and transporting used material to a workspace are the preliminary actions for my art practice. Creation emerges by relating material from varying environments through their inherent patterns, sizes, and shapes. I organize elements of the everyday in a new harmonious context with each other. At the core of my art practice, I present an altered way of looking at commonplace materials.