METROPOLITAN ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT. METROPOLITAN ANTHROPOLOGY FOR THE CONTEMPORARY LIVING MAP CONSTRUCTION

We can no longer interpret the contemporary metropolis as we did in the last century. The thought of civil economy regarding the contemporary Metropolis conflicts more or less radically with the merely acquisitive dimension of the behaviour of its citizens. What is needed is therefore a new capacity for imagining the economic-productive future of the city: hybrid social enterprises, economically sustainable, structured and capable of using technologies, could be a solution for producing value and distributing it fairly and inclusively. Metropolitan Urbanity is another issue to establish. Metropolis needs new spaces where inclusion can occur, and where a repository of the imagery can be recreated. What is the ontology behind the technique of metropolitan planning and management, its vision and its symbols? Competitiveness, speed, and meritocracy are political words, not technical ones. Metropolitan Urbanity is the characteristic of a polis that expresses itself in its public places. Today, however, public places are private ones that are destined for public use. The Common Good has always had a space of representation in the city, which was the public space. Today, the Green-Grey Infrastructure is the metropolitan city's monument that communicates a value for future generations and must therefore be recognised and imagined; it is the production of the metropolitan symbolic imagery, the new magic of the city

Discovering the New Place of Learning

The book explores the potential of learning outside the traditional classroom when students gain real-world experiences in a variety of contexts and public spaces such as built, natural and virtual landscapes, museums, heritage sites, science centres and community venues. The authors of the book promote and put the flexible and ‘plastic’ concept of a place of learning into action by including physical geographical location, digital, virtual and textual spaces into the analysis. The book illuminates the importance of innovative educational strategies in connecting formal, non-formal and informal education – experiential learning in museums, heritage places and communities, inquiry-based pedagogy, digital storytelling, environmental online games, narrative geographies, and the use of geospatial technologies

Sonic heritage: listening to the past

History is so often told through objects, images and photographs, but the potential of sounds to reveal place and space is often neglected. Our research project ‘Sonic Palimpsest’1 explores the potential of sound to evoke impressions and new understandings of the past, to embrace the sonic as a tool to understand what was, in a way that can complement and add to our predominant visual understandings. Our work includes the expansion of the Oral History archives held at Chatham Dockyard to include women’s voices and experiences, and the creation of sonic works to engage the public with their heritage. Our research highlights the social and cultural value of oral history and field recordings in the transmission of knowledge to both researchers and the public. Together these recordings document how buildings and spaces within the dockyard were used and experienced by those who worked there. We can begin to understand the social and cultural roles of these buildings within the community, both past and present

Relační marketing na trhu videoher

Import 02/11/2016The main topic of this diploma thesis was relationship marketing in a video game industry. The goal was to demonstrate the usage of relationship marketing aspects on this market and to assess relationship potential of a selected video game brand. Focus was put on internet socialization about video games and on the associated social media, as a platform of support for the newly created communitas. Symptoms of relationship presence were identified inside these brand communities, consumer tribes and subcultures of consumption. Love for video games took shape of individual or collective gatekeeping, technical and emotional support among gamers, voluntary maintenance and extension of products’ functionality and marketing communication, and in a shape of visible projection of affinity towards selected game developers, games, or gaming characters, due to the presence of shared values. These aspects were inspected in detail on TombRaiderForums.com, a gaming community that was later identified as a brand community centred around Lara Croft, the main character of the Tomb Raider video game series. Netnography was selected as the main research method for primary, qualitative data collection. Its insights were broadened with quantitative data collected through an online questionnaire. Author’s own self-reflection and experience with the community and the Tomb Raider series also served as a foundation for the methodology. Besides artefacts that proved the relationship potential of the group, values of the Lara Croft brand were investigated as well. Data gathered from official audio-visual material analysis of individual Tomb Raider titles were confronted with community’s ideal and revealed key, relationally potent brand values of Lara Croft. Results of the research also served as an overview and a critical evaluation of each Lara Croft iteration, including her latest incarnation. It was found that the brand had preserved its relationship potential, but its consecutive alterations led to erosion of key values and to a split in the community, TombRaiderForums.com being an example. It was concluded that the Tomb Raider series has a big potential due to its long history, good production value, strong key values of the Lara Croft brand, and positive specifics of the target group. Game’s developer and publisher stand before a dilemma whether to remove the conflicting values from the current depiction of the main heroine and to move her towards the community’s ideal, or to place their bids on current Lara’s relationship potential and to create a new community. Concurrently, there is still space for extension of relationship marketing activities, thus a space for deepening the support of the active, mature, intelligent and creative community that surrounds the brand and that co-creates brand value for free. The video game market is then an ideal space for relationship marketing practices in general, since the consumption of video game products derives directly from relationship aspects.Tématem této diplomové práce byl vztahový marketing na trhu videoher. Cílem práce bylo demonstrovat užití prvků vztahového marketingu na tomto trhu a určit vztahový potenciál zkoumané herní značky. Bylo pojednáno o problematice internetové socializace týkající se videoher a sociálních médií, jako platforem podpory pro takto vzniklé herní komunity. V rámci těchto značkových komunit, spotřebních kmenů a subkultur spotřeby byly identifikovány příznaky přítomnosti vztahu. Láska k videohrám se projevovala ve formě individuálního, či kolektivního hlídání informačních bran, technické i emocionální podpoře mezi hráči, dobrovolnému udržování a rozšiřování funkcionality produktu a marketingové komunikace značky, a v neposlední řadě taky ve formě viditelné projekce afinity k vybraným herním vývojářům, hrám, nebo herním postavám, díky přítomnosti sdílených hodnot. Tyto projevy vztahu byly detailně zkoumány na herní komunitě TombRaiderForums.com, která byla identifikována jako značková komunita centrována kolem Lary Croft, hlavní postavy herní série Tomb Raider. Netnografie byla zvolena jako výzkumná metoda pro shromáždění primárních, kvalitativních dat, které byly poté pomocí online dotazování rozšířeny o data kvantitativní. Metoda rovněž stavěla na sebereflexi autora a na jeho osobním prožitku s komunitou a herní sérií Tomb Raider. Mimo artefakty dokazující vztahový potenciál skupiny, byly podrobeny výzkumu i hodnoty značky Lary Croft. Data získaná pomocí analýzy oficiálního audiovizuálního materiálu jednotlivých dílů série Tomb Raider byla konfrontována s komunitním ideálem a byly tak odhaleny klíčové, vztahově potentní hodnoty Lary Croft. Výsledky výzkumu rovněž posloužily jako přehled a kritické zhodnocení jednotlivých iterací Lary Croft, včetně její současné podoby. Bylo zjištěno, že si značka zachovala svůj vztahový potenciál, ovšem její průběžné úpravy vedly k narušení klíčových hodnot a k rozpolcení komunity, jakou byla právě TombRaiderForums.com. Závěrem bylo konstatováno, že série Tomb Raider má díky své dlouhé historii, kvalitní produkci, silným klíčovým hodnotám značky Lary Croft, a pozitivním specifikům cílové skupiny velký potenciál. Vývojář a vydavatel hry však stojí před dilematem, zdali odstranit konfliktní hodnoty ze současného vyobrazení hlavní hrdinky a přiblížit se tak komunitnímu ideálu, či vsadit na vztahový potenciál její nové podoby a vytvořit komunitu novou. Zároveň je zde stále prostor pro rozšíření aktivit vztahového marketingu a tím k prohloubení podpory oné aktivní, dospělé, inteligentní a kreativní komunity, která značku obklopuje, a to v činnostech, které bezplatně spoluvytvářejí její hodnotu. Videoherní trh je pak obecně ideálním místem pro praktiky vztahového marketingu, jelikož samotná spotřeba videoherních produktů se od aspektů vztahu odvíjí.116 - Katedra marketingu a obchoduvýborn

Sustainable Integrated Clean Environment for Human & Nature

In this book, the articles published in the special issue of the journal Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050), entitled “Sustainable Integrated Clean Environment for Human & Nature” are re-printed. The objective of this book is to answer the following questions regarding technical, economic, and social approaches:1. What is the current state of the environment? Is it clean?2. How can we make our environment clean and suitable for humans as well as nature?3. How can we keep our environment clean through sustainable practices? The re-printed research articles and review papers aim to cover the subjects mentioned below: 1. COVID-19 and the sustainability of a clean environment for humans and nature: visions, challenges, and solutions2. Clean technologies and nature-based approaches, including environmental remediation and resource circulation3. Global sanitation, hygiene, and public health issues4. Economic approaches, including the development of economic models, life cycle assessment, and the circular economy5. Social awareness and effective education on human rights for procuring clean air and water Through including the latest studies in the above-mentioned fields, this book addresses the technicians, economists, social activists, and decision-makers who are concerned about clean environment concepts for sustainable development of the current and next-generation through respectful interactions between humans and nature

Fictional Practices of Spirituality I: Interactive Media

"Fictional Practices of Spirituality" provides critical insight into the implementation of belief, mysticism, religion, and spirituality into worlds of fiction, be it interactive or non-interactive. This first volume focuses on interactive, virtual worlds - may that be the digital realms of video games and VR applications or the imaginary spaces of life action role-playing and soul-searching practices. It features analyses of spirituality as gameplay facilitator, sacred spaces and architecture in video game geography, religion in video games and spiritual acts and their dramaturgic function in video games, tabletop, or LARP, among other topics. The contributors offer a first-time ever comprehensive overview of play-rites as spiritual incentives and playful spirituality in various medial incarnations

Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World

The book contains essays on current issues in arts and humanities in which peoples and cultures compete as well as collaborate in globalizing the world while maintaining their uniqueness as viewed from cross- and inter-disciplinary perspectives. The book covers areas such as literature, cultural studies, archaeology, philosophy, history, language studies, information and literacy studies, and area studies. Asia and the Pacific are the particular regions that the conference focuses on as they have become new centers of knowledge production in arts and humanities and, in the future, seem to be able to grow significantly as a major contributor of culture, science and arts to the globalized world. The book will help shed light on what arts and humanities scholars in Asia and the Pacific have done in terms of research and knowledge development, as well as the new frontiers of research that have been explored and opening up, which can connect the two regions with the rest of the globe

Investigating and Writing Achitectural History: Subjects, Methodologies and Frontiers.

The volume contains the abstracts and full texts of the 157 papers and position statements presented and discussed at the III EAHN (European Architectural History) International Meeting, Torino 19-21 June 201