Re-evaluating participatory catchment management: Integrating mapping, modelling, and participatory action to deliver more effective risk management

Recent policy changes, such as the EU Water Framework Directive, have transformed catchment management to consider connected socio-ecological systems at the catchment scale, and integrate concept of public participation. However, there is relatively little research exploring how effective these changes have been in altering existing practices of management. Adopting a transdisciplinary approach, this thesis investigates a range of perspectives to explore existing participatory practices in current catchment management, and understand how we can integrate alternative knowledges and perspectives. The research employs diverse social and physical science methods, including participant led interviews and participatory mapping, numerical flood modelling, and the creation of a participatory competency group. The research finds that, despite the participatory policy turn, established supracatchment scale drivers continue to dictate top-down practices of everyday catchment management, excluding local communities from decision-making power. In contrast, participation in managing extreme events is actively encouraged, with the development of community resilience a key objective for management agencies. However, the research findings suggest that a similar lack of meaningful participation in knowledge creation and decision-making restricts resilience building. Based on these findings, the research explores practical ways in which participation and resilience can be embedded in ICM, using the typically expert-led practice of numerical flood modelling to show how existing practices of knowledge creation can be enhanced. The thesis also demonstrates how new practices of knowledge creation, based on social learning, can be used to develop new, more effective ways of communicating flood risk and building local resilience. The thesis proposes a new framework for the management of connected socio-ecological catchment systems, embedding evolutionary resilience as a practical mechanism by which public participation and the management of everyday and extreme events could be unified to develop more effective and sustainable catchment management and more resilient communities

Tracking the con in con-sent: Reflections on the hyper-aesthetics of sex in consent culture

In their recent book, Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth, Matthew Fuller and Eyal claim that ‘hyper-aesthetic images are not part of a symbolic regime of representation, but actual traces and residues of material relations and of mediatic structures assembled to elicit them’ (2021, p.81). This paper mobilises this claim to better understand the fields of power that are operating through the ascent of consent culture. From a cultural perspective, enthusiastic consent clearly relays a range of feminist lineages. For instance, consent effectuates a postfeminist sensibility, while it complicates the illusory power of self-determined femininity. Current models also impute sexual agency in normatively gendered terms and fashion conservative politics of sexuality, among other shortcomings, as discussed by Katherine Angel (2021), Joseph Fischel (2019), Laura Kipniss (2017), and more. To further understand the implications of the current formations of consent, this paper considers our cultural fascination with the “con,” suggested by a recent spate of programmes and films such as Fyre (2019), Tinder Swindler (2022), Inventing Anna (2022), Hustlers (2019), and The Hustle (2019), in relation to “consent,” not as a ‘symbolic regime of representation,’ but as indexes of a hyper-aesthetics of sex—the production of images that are actual traces and residues of material relations. In so doing, this paper takes heed from the sociological observation, made in the US, that everyday conceptions of consent foreground that which consent should defend against against—deceit (Sommers 2020)

Proceedings of the Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC) 2011

These proceedings bring together a selection of papers from the 2011 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference(SPARC). It includes papers from PhD students in the arts and social sciences, business, computing, science and engineering, education, environment, built environment and health sciences. Contributions from Salford researchers are published here alongside papers from students at the Universities of Anglia Ruskin, Birmingham City, Chester,De Montfort, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores and Manchester

Limnological aspects of the Uvs Nuur Basin in northwest Mongolia

The limnological knowledge of waters in arid regions, especially Mongolia, is still insufficient. It was the goal of the Mongolian-German research project “Limnological Particularities of Characteristic Waterbodies in the Uvs Nuur Basin” to develop a systematic inventory of waters, describe their morphological, hydrophysical, chemical and biological characteristics and to generalize the framework of abiotic and biotic factors that determine their character. During the field work, carried out from 1996 to 1999, samples of water, sediments, benthic and planktonic biota were taken from 76 places at 15 stagnant water bodies, 21 streams and several groundwater bodies; morphological, hydrological, physical and hydrochemical measurements were made. Chemical and biological analyses were carried out in Germany. The most important taxonomical groups were determined by German and international specialists. The results of the work are presented and discussed separately for running waters, lakes and groundwater. Based on these findings, several general topics are dealt with: factors shaping the character of water bodies, food webs, biogeography, spatial sequence of water bodies, typology and protection issues. A checklist of 596 taxa was compiled; 109 additional taxa from the Russian and Mongolian literature were included. Two species (Cyclops glacialis Flößner 2001 and Acanthocorbis mongolica Paul 2011) were new for the science and 103 species were new reports for Mongolia. A regional stream typology with 11 different types was developed using the criteria ecoregion, altitude and catchment area. The typology developed for stagnant waters comprises 9 types based on altitude, lake area, existence of an outflow and relative depth. This dissertation comprises 139 pages and an appendix of 59 pages, 50 tables, 94 figures and a map.:Acknowledgments ii Abstract iii List of Tables iii List of Figures vi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Significance of the investigations 1 1.2 Aims of the investigations 2 1.3 Sequence of field research activities 3 1.4 Area of investigation 4 1.4.1 Topographic situation and morphology .4 1.4.2 Climate 5 1.4.3 Geology and soils 9 1.4.4 Vegetation 10 1.4.5 Population and economy 10 1.4.6 Former limnological investigations in the Uvs Nuur Basin 11 1.4.7 Short description of the investigated waters 12 2 Methods 15 2.1 Sampling 15 2.2 Field measurements 16 2.3 Laboratory analyses and data evaluation 19 3 Results and discussion 26 3.1 Rivers 26 3.1.1 Morphology and hydrology 26 3.1.2 Runoff dynamics 34 3.1.3 Water temperature and freezing 38 3.1.4 Chemical properties 39 3.1.5 Aquatic biota 43 3.2 Lakes 53 3.2.1 Formation and morphometry 53 3.2.2 Water level changes and water balance 58 3.2.3 Temperature and overturn dynamics of the water body 63 3.2.4 Vertical gradients of physico-chemical parameters and chlorophyll 65 3.2.5 Horizontal gradients in Uvs Nuur: surface temperature and suspended matter 69 3.2.6 Salinity and ionic composition 71 3.2.7 Nutrients and trophic state 74 3.2.8 Sediments 79 3.2.9 Aquatic biota 83 3.3 Groundwater 95 3.3.1 Hydrology 95 3.3.2 Chemical composition 96 3.3.3 Biota 98 4 Conclusions and synthesis 99 4.1 Exogenous factors influencing the character of water bodies 99 4.1.1 Biological structure of running waters 100 4.1.2 Biological structure of lakes 104 4.2 Food webs 105 4.3 Biogeographical classification 110 4.4 Spatial sequence of water bodies and material flows 113 4.5 Transformation of the water bodies 116 4.6 Typology of water bodies 117 4.7 Protection of landscape and waters 121 5 Literature 124 6 Appendices 140 6.1 Tables 140 6.2 Cross sections and longitudinal profiles of rivers 169 6.3 Microscopical images of algal species 175 6.4 Satellite images 179 6.5 Photographs of sampled waters 18

How to be a queer woman: A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of online media

This thesis examines the discursive identity construction of queer women in contemporary online media. It focuses on two of the most popular entertainment and lifestyle websites for queer women, AfterEllen and Autostraddle, both of which are based in the United States. I assemble a dialogic corpus of advice articles and below-the-line comments from the websites, capturing for the first time the voices of both producers and consumers of online media content on a large scale. This forms the 2-million-word Queer Women’s Advice Corpus. As a genre which instructs queer women in their everyday lives, advice provides a direct route into normativity, the central concept in queer linguistic research. Using a mixed methodology of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, I show how recurrent textual patterns produce normativity in the data. The study considers normativity in two key ways: as an intersubjective construct, and as a neoliberal phenomenon. The findings reveal that queer female identity is intersubjectively constructed against the negative positioning of heterosexual people, especially men. A major contribution of the thesis is that the analysis shows how these intersubjective constructions pose challenges for the inclusivity of bisexual women and queer trans women. Compared to previous studies, this thesis finds more integration of these two groups within the websites’ communities. However, there are barriers in terms of bisexual women’s opposite-sex relationships, and in terms of trans women’s (imagined) embodiment. Ultimately, cisgender lesbian identities are discursively privileged. The findings also demonstrate that lesbian normativity operates in relation to more neoliberal models of identity, captured through a focus on individualism and a lack of attention to structural problems. By uncovering the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect to produce normative discourses, this thesis advances a queer linguistic understanding of normativity, as well as making a valuable contribution to multidisciplinary scholarship on queer women’s media

An aesthetic for sustainable interactions in product-service systems?

Copyright @ 2012 Greenleaf PublishingEco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. However the application of this concept is still very limited because its implementation and diffusion is hindered by several barriers (cultural, corporate and regulative ones). The paper investigates the barriers that affect the attractiveness and acceptation of eco-efficient PSS alternatives, and opens the debate on the aesthetic of eco-efficient PSS, and the way in which aesthetic could enhance some specific inner qualities of this kinds of innovations. Integrating insights from semiotics, the paper outlines some first research hypothesis on how the aesthetic elements of an eco-efficient PSS could facilitate user attraction, acceptation and satisfaction