5,252 research outputs found

    Information actors beyond modernity and coloniality in times of climate change:A comparative design ethnography on the making of monitors for sustainable futures in Curaçao and Amsterdam, between 2019-2022

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    In his dissertation, Mr. Goilo developed a cutting-edge theoretical framework for an Anthropology of Information. This study compares information in the context of modernity in Amsterdam and coloniality in Curaçao through the making process of monitors and develops five ways to understand how information can act towards sustainable futures. The research also discusses how the two contexts, that is modernity and coloniality, have been in informational symbiosis for centuries which is producing negative informational side effects within the age of the Anthropocene. By exploring the modernity-coloniality symbiosis of information, the author explains how scholars, policymakers, and data-analysts can act through historical and structural roots of contemporary global inequities related to the production and distribution of information. Ultimately, the five theses propose conditions towards the collective production of knowledge towards a more sustainable planet

    UMSL Bulletin 2023-2024

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    The 2023-2024 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1088/thumbnail.jp

    Choreographing tragedy into the twenty-first century

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    What makes a tragedy? In the fifth century BCE this question found an answer through the conjoined forms of song and dance. Since the mid-twentieth century, and the work of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, tragedy has been variously articulated as form coming apart at the seams. This thesis approaches tragedy through the work of five major choreographers and a director who each, in some way, turn back to Bausch. After exploring the Tanztheater Wuppertal’s techniques for choreographing tragedy in chapter one, I dedicate a chapter each to Dimitris Papaioannou, Akram Khan, Trajal Harrell, Ivo van Hove with Wim Vandekeybus, and Gisèle Vienne. Bringing together work in Queer and Trans* studies, Performance studies, Classics, Dance, and Classical Reception studies I work towards an understanding of the ways in which these choreographers articulate tragedy through embodiment and relation. I consider how tragedy transforms into the twenty-first century, how it shapes what it might mean to live and die with(out) one another. This includes tragic acts of mythic construction, attempts to describe a sense of the world as it collapses, colonial claims to ownership over the earth, and decolonial moves to enact new ways of being human. By developing an expanded sense of both choreography and the tragic one of my main contributions is a re-theorisation of tragedy that brings together two major pre-existing schools, to understand tragedy not as an event, but as a process. Under these conditions, and the shifting conditions of the world around us, I argue that the choreography of tragedy has and might continue to allow us to think about, name, and embody ourselves outside of the ongoing catastrophes we face

    Decolonising Higher Education in the Era of Globalisation and Internationalisation

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    Conceived within a context of transdisciplinarity and pluriversalism, and in rigorous response to the Eurocentric, globalising and nationalising structures of power that undergird and inhabit contemporary praxis in higher education – especially in African higher education – this collection of essays brings to the on-going discourse on decolonisation fresh, rich, probing and multilayered perspectives that should accelerate the process of decolonisation, not only in higher education in Africa, but also in the global imaginary. A remarkable, courageous and potentially revolutionary achievement, this book deserves a special place on curricula throughout the world of higher education

    Women's Leadership in Music: Modes, Legacies, Alliances

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    Various modes of women's contemporary cultural, social and political leadership can be found in music. Informed by different histories and culturally bound social mores but also by a comparative perspective, the contributors of this volume ask what can be considered leadership in culture from women's point of view. They deconstruct the notion of leadership as corporative and career-related modes of success by showing how women's agency, power and negotiation in and through music can and should be considered as empowering, transformative and role-modeling. By interweaving several disciplinary perspectives - from ethnomusicology, musicology and cultural management to sociology and anthropology - this volume aims to substantially contribute to the study of women's leadership

    'A way of life': practising place in the small press

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    This thesis is a study of place in the practice and publications of three small presses: Moschatel Press, Coracle Press and Corbel Stone Press. Practice is central to my approach, both in situating place as something practised, unfinished and ongoing, and in the repetitive everyday acts that make running a press ‘a way of life’. I examine the ways in which small press practice shapes and responds to a variety of places. Beginning with the home, the thesis moves gradually outwards to larger-scale spaces: the local area, public spaces, the wider landscape. The thesis is founded upon the press model as one of collaboration, both between artists, and with the places they inhabit. Chapter One establishes the domestic space as central to the activities and publications of the press. The home is a site of production enmeshed with the everyday, and is the intended habitat of many small press pieces. I trace the influence of domestic intimacy and tactility across small press poetics, and the importance of ‘the domestic scale’ is foregrounded throughout the thesis. Chapter Two is an exploration of small press localness. I build upon the domestic chapter to examine how the local is shaped by its relationship to the home. I frame small press localness as distinctly embodied, examining the charting of local places on foot and the gathering of texts and objects by hand. Chapter Three examines site-specific work, exploring the presence of small press pieces in public, communal spaces. I focus particularly upon the hospital-based works of Thomas A Clark, and how they provoke questions around attention, contemplation and care. The chapter closes by reflecting upon how these pieces facilitate thinking about the more- than-human. Chapter Four sustains a focus upon the more-than-human to explore the small press relationship with the wider landscape. The chapter scrutinises an ambivalent attitude towards books as a means of relating to and recording landscapes. I consider work across deep timescales and study the embodied landscape-based practices of Corbel Stone Press, such as burial and the leaving of offerings

    Art and Creativity for HIV/AIDS Awareness, Prevention, and Empowerment of Young People in Uganda

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    Art, youth engagement and informality in the context of HIV prevention have been generally ignored by most researchers and stakeholders within the HIV programming and policy arenas, thus silencing the plight of urban youth infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS. In response, this thesis draws on the case of peri-urban settings of Kampala, Uganda to bring geographies of applied sculpture, HIV/AIDS prevention, and youth empowerment into dialogue, informed by the notions of art having the capacity to move beyond the spaces of galleries into an expanded field, and thus, beyond the visual and into the social spheres. In liaison with local NGOs (The Uganda AIDS Support Organisation - TASO, National Guidance and Empowerment Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS - NGEN+ and Lungujja Community based Health care Organisation – LUCOHECO, it adopts a mixed methodological approach, including applied art and participatory techniques - observation, video, storytelling, and interviews, to understand the lived experiences of young people (15-24 years) in marginalized spaces in Kampala. The thesis first examines the general context of using ethnography and applied social sculpture to explore every day experiences by facilitating the engagement of young people in open communication about the epidemic. This is intended to enable them to act in confronting stigma, taboos, and their precarious existence, while raising their awareness about HIV/AIDS. The thesis then explores the everyday precarious existence of young people in informal settings in Kampala. It proceeds to examine how workshops with these young people allowed collective engagement which, in turn, influenced the creation of artworks envisioned to act as communication tools for raising awareness of HIV/AIDS with the potential for livelihood benefits. Finally, the thesis examines young people’s active involvement in participatory workshops for HIV/AIDS prevention, providing ethnographic evidence regarding the artmaking process, the conversations that ensued as they worked, and the creation of applied objects/forms that enabled them to build their confidence to freely express about the precarities affecting their lives, countering taboos, and encouraging them to change their behaviours and practices while potentially acting as change agents in their own communities. It highlights the significance of stimulating open conversations about HIV/AIDS - as a starting point towards confronting stigma and other aspects of precarity, while advocating for the incorporation of the approach into practice by public health experts, policymakers, and development practitioners. The thesis shows the strengths of applied sculpture as an approach that has potential for making sense of ordinary everyday experiences, finding meaning and crafting clarity of young people’s lived experiences in the context of HIV/AIDS. It concludes that applied sculpture is potentially an important tool in tackling HIV/AIDS and its attendant problems by engendering and facilitating open conversations and social economic development through an engagement with the voices and agency of young people in Uganda and beyond

    Natural Toxins: Environmental Fate and Safe Water Supply

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    Plants, bacteria, cyanobacteria, algae and other organisms produce a vast diversity of bioactive and toxic natural compounds. We know that many of these toxins are mobile and can be produced in high amounts close to or within drinking water reservoirs. Natural toxins represent emerging classes of environmental contaminants for which we have very limited insight on occurrence, fate and effects. The konference “Natural toxins: Environmental Fate and Safe Water Supply” addresses knowledge gaps within the field of natural toxins, target, non-target, suspect and effect-directed analysis, distribution, fate, toxicity and management of natural toxins in aquatic environments and drinking water reservoirs. These proceedings are a collection of the abstracts to contributions presented at the conference

    The American Indian Agent, 1791-1861 Questioning the Literary and Cinematic Stereotype as well as Historical Narratives to find the real Indian Agent

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    The American Indian Agent is a known figure in the national drama. Originally defined by nineteenth century political opponents, settlers, frontier business interests, the American military, Indian policy reformers and even Indians, the Indian agent ranges from inept to cupidinous; cruel to inhuman. Western fiction writers, screenwriters and episodic television dramatists of the twentieth century took the agent’s tarnished reputation and created a stereotype stock character for Westerns emphasising all his malevolent attributes. The historical profession has largely perpetuated the cultural and literary perception of the Indian agent, until some historians began to identify individualized exceptions to agent perfidy. As examples of benevolent agents grew, the profession revised its analysis allowing that some agents assisted Indians while most remained obdurately delinquent.Most historical research on Indian agents has focused on the period from 1861–1888, the Civil War to the end of the Apache Wars. Large swaths of history remain lightly explored as the Indian agent existed from 1791–1908. This thesis examines the Indian agent in the early years of the Republic, from 1791–1861, interacting with Indians from New York to Puget Sound, from Georgia to New Mexico and the vast Great Plains in between. Crucially this thesis places the agent in the world of the Indian agency as well as the competing worlds of politics, business, religion, settlement, and government administration of which he was also a part.The results are surprising. Although there were a few criminals and several men overwhelmed by conditions, most agents of Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, and Antebellum America were honest, sincere public servants, many coming to favor the Indians and spending their own money, and in a few cases, their blood to aid Indian development and freedom.This conclusion runs counter to both popular and historical perceptions. It seems almost everyone has adopted the old Aristotelian idea of petitio principii or “begging the question”. The bad and inept Indian agent must be bad and inept. No longer. These are the real Indian agents of 1791–1861
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