7,539 research outputs found
Comedians without a Cause: The Politics and Aesthetics of Humour in Dutch Cabaret (1966-2020)
Comedians play an important role in society and public debate. While comedians have been considered important cultural critics for quite some time, comedy has acquired a new social and political significance in recent years, with humour taking centre stage in political and social debates around issues of identity, social justice, and freedom of speech. To understand the shifting meanings and political implications of humour within a Dutch context, this PhD thesis examines the political and aesthetic workings of humour in the highly popular Dutch cabaret genre, focusing on cabaret performances from the 1960s to the present. The central questions of the thesis are: how do comedians use humour to deliver social critique, and how does their humour resonate with political ideologies? These questions are answered by adopting a cultural studies approach to humour, which is used to analyse Dutch cabaret performances, and by studying related materials such as reviews and media interviews with comedians. This thesis shows that, from the 1960s onwards, Dutch comedians have been considered âprogressive rebelsâ â politically engaged, subversive, and carrying a left-wing political agenda â but that this image is in need of correction. While we tend to look for progressive political messages in the work of comedians who present themselves as being anti-establishment rebels â such as Youp van ât Hek, Hans Teeuwen, and Theo Maassen â this thesis demonstrates that their transgressive and provocative humour tends to protect social hierarchies and relationships of power. Moreover, it shows that, paradoxically, both the deliberately moderate and nuanced humour of Wim Kan and Claudia de Breij, and the seemingly past-oriented nostalgia of Alex Klaasen, are more radical and progressive than the transgressive humour of van ât Hek, Teeuwen and Maassen. Finally, comedians who present absurdist or deconstructionist forms of humour, such as the early student cabarets, Freek de Jonge, and Micha Wertheim, tend to disassociate themselves from an explicit political engagement. By challenging the dominant image of the Dutch comedian as a âprogressive rebel,â this thesis contributes to a better understanding of humour in the present cultural moment, in which humour is often either not taken seriously, or one-sidedly celebrated as being merely pleasurable, innocent, or progressively liberating. In so doing, this thesis concludes, the âdarkâ and more conservative sides of humour tend to get obscured
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Meaning-Making Practices of Emergent ArabicâEnglish Bilingual Kindergarten Children in Cairo
The number of British Schools in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is growing. The National Curriculum of England is used by an increasing number of such schools. As well as exporting a culturally-specific curriculum, these schools usually adopt an ideology of monolingualism, thus potentially limiting communication for emergent bilinguals and failing to acknowledge the multiple ways of meaning-making.
Current studies of translanguaging are moving the focus to multimodal forms of communication as a resource for thinking and communicating (GarcĂa and Wei 2014, Wei 2018). Building on the work of Kress (1997, 2010) I explore pre-school emergent bilingualsâ wider signifying practices and create an analytical framework, which I call MMTL (multimodal translanguaging), used as a lens to illustrate meaning-making.
Valley Hill in Cairo, Egypt is a British school which encourages âEnglish-onlyâ as the medium of instruction in the kindergarten. Using a case study methodology, this research explores the meaning-making practices of eight emergent bilingual children aged 3â4 during child-initiated play, later reduced to four in the thesis to provide a detailed multimodal analysis. The principal aim is to explore their speech, gaze, gesture, and their engagement (layout/position) with artefacts during play.
The findings of this study suggest that although there is an âEnglish-onlyâ approach, these young emergent bilingual children are meaning-making in a variety of ways. Children are translanguaging but it is never in isolation from other modes of communication. Emergent bilinguals use a range of modes to mediate their understanding and communication with others. They use gesture, gaze, and artefacts alongside translingual practices to move meaning across to more accessible modes, enabling communication and understanding. The implications for schools should be to embrace such hybrid practices and for teachers to be more responsive to young childrenâs meaning-making to enable learning
TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF EFFORTFUL FUNDRAISING EXPERIENCES: USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS IN FUNDRAISING RESEARCH
Physical-activity oriented community fundraising has experienced an exponential growth in popularity over the past 15 years. The aim of this study was to explore the value of effortful fundraising experiences, from the point of view of participants, and explore the impact that these experiences have on peopleâs lives. This study used an IPA approach to interview 23 individuals, recognising the role of participants as proxy (nonprofessional) fundraisers for charitable organisations, and the unique organisation donor dynamic that this creates. It also bought together relevant psychological theory related to physical activity fundraising experiences (through a narrative literature review) and used primary interview data to substantiate these. Effortful fundraising experiences are examined in detail to understand their significance to participants, and how such experiences influence their connection with a charity or cause. This was done with an idiographic focus at first, before examining convergences and divergences across the sample. This study found that effortful fundraising experiences can have a profound positive impact upon community fundraisers in both the short and the long term. Additionally, it found that these experiences can be opportunities for charitable organisations to create lasting meaningful relationships with participants, and foster mutually beneficial lifetime relationships with them. Further research is needed to test specific psychological theory in this context, including self-esteem theory, self determination theory, and the martyrdom effect (among others)
'Exarcheia doesn't exist': Authenticity, Resistance and Archival Politics in Athens
My thesis investigates the ways people, materialities and urban spaces interact to form affective ecologies and produce historicity. It focuses on the neighbourhood of Exarcheia, Athensâ contested political topography par excellence, known for its production of radical politics of discontent and resistance to state oppression and eoliberal capitalism. Embracing Exarcheiaâs controversial status within Greek vernacular, media and state discourses, this thesis aims to unpick the neighbourhoodsâ socio-spatial assemblage imbued with affect and formed through the numerous (mis)understandings and (mis)interpretations rooted in its turbulent political history. Drawing on theory on urban spaces, affect, hauntology and archival politics, I argue for Exarcheia as an unwavering archival space composed of affective chronotopes â (in)tangible loci that defy space and temporality. I posit that the interwoven narratives and materialities emerging in my fieldwork are persistently â and perhaps obsessively â reiterating themselves and remaining imprinted on the neighbourhoodâs landscape as an incessant reminder of violent histories that the state often seeks to erase and forget. Through this analysis, I contribute to understandings of place as a primary ethnographic âobjectâ and the ways in which place forms complex interactions and relationships with social actors, shapes their subjectivities, retains and bestows their memories and senses of historicity
The Adirondack Chronology
The Adirondack Chronology is intended to be a useful resource for researchers and others interested in the Adirondacks and Adirondack history.https://digitalworks.union.edu/arlpublications/1000/thumbnail.jp
GENDERED EMBODIMENT, STABILITY AND CHANGE: WOMENâS WEIGHTLIFTING AS A TOOL FOR RECOVERY FROM EATING DISORDERS
This thesis explores the everyday embodied experiences of women who use amateur weightlifting as a vehicle for recovery from eating disorders. Within online spaces and on social media, women frequently share their experiences of using weightlifting to overcome issues relating to disordered eating, body image, and mental health. In particular, women with a history of eating disorders credit weightlifting to be integral to their recovery journey. However, there is a dearth of research on womenâs experiences with exercise during eating disorder recovery and no research that identifies weightlifting as beneficial to this process. To the contrary, discursive links are drawn between the practices of self-surveillance exercised by both eating disorder sufferers and weightlifters alike. In this regard, engagement with weightlifting during eating disorder recovery may signal the transferal of pathology from one set of behaviours to another. That is, from disordered eating to rigid and self-regulatory exercise routines. This thesis examines how women subjectively navigate and make sense of this pathologisation.
The data for this research comes from longitudinal semi-structured interviews and photo elicitation with 19 women, living in the United Kingdom, who engaged in weightlifting during their eating disorder recovery. In addition, to build up a holistic picture and to explore how this phenomenon also âtakes placeâ online, I conducted a netnography of the overlapping subcultures of female weightlifting and eating disorder recovery on Instagram. Womenâs standpoint theory and interpretative phenomenological analysis are combined to form the underpinning theoretical and analytical tools used to engage with these three rich data sets. Moreover, throughout I draw on an eclectic range of disciplinary perspectives, in order to bring together multiple fields of research and develop novel theoretical frameworks.
In the findings, I argue that womenâs experiences using weightlifting as a tool for recovery from eating disorders manifests in an embodied sense of multiplicity. In this sense, understandings of the body that are often viewed as ontologically distinct (muscularity/thinness/fatness) hang-together at once in the lived experience of a single individual.
I argue that women, particularly those who have previously struggled with an eating disorder, are too readily positioned as vulnerable to media and representation. To theoretically combat these ideas regarding womenâs assumed passivity, I develop the concept of âdigital pruningâ to account for womenâs agency in relation to new media.
I contend that weightlifting offers women in recovery from eating disorders a new framework for approaching eating and exercise. Specifically, weightliftingâs norms and values legitimate occupying a larger body, which gives women in recovery permission to eat and gain-weight in a way that is both culturally sanctioned and health-promoting.
Finally, I explore identity transformation as a specific tenet of recovery from eating disorders. I argue that, on social media, recovery identities are characterised by personal empowerment, resilience, and independence. While offline, quieter and less culturally glorified aspects of recovery (such as relationships of care) are central to womenâs accounts of developing a new sense of self as they transition away from an eating disorder identity.
In summary, this thesis is an examination of the ways in which women strategically navigate pathology in relation to their bodies, social media, food/exercise practices, and identity. I argue that women develop a set of âDIYâ recovery practices that allow them to consciously channel and draw on their negative experiences with eating disorders, to develop new ways of living that serve their overall wellbeing. Weightlifting is integral to this process, as it provides women transitioning out of this difficult phase in their lives with new ways of relating to their bodies and of being in the world. I situate this phenomenon within a neoliberal socio-political climate in which individuals are required to take personal responsibility for their mental health and wellbeing, despite living within conditions which are not conducive to recovery
Management controls, government regulations, customer involvement: Evidence from a Chinese family-owned business
This research reports on a case study of a family-owned elevator manufacturing company in China, where management control was sandwiched between the state policies and global customer production requirements. By analysing the role of government and customer, this thesis aimed to illustrate how management control operated in a family-owned business and to see how and why they do management control differently. In particular, it focused on how international production standards and existing Chinese industry policies translated into a set of the management control practices through a local network within the family-owned business I studied.
Based on an ethnographic approach to research, I spent six months in the field, conducted over 30 interviews, several conservations, and reviewed relevant internal documents to understand how management control (MC) techniques with humans cooperated in the company. I also understood how two layers of pressure have shaped company behaviour, and how a company located in a developing country is connecting with global network. I also found there is considerable tension among key actors and investigated how the company responded and managed it.
Drawing on Actor Network Theory (ANT), I analysed the interviews from key actors, examined the role of government regulations and customer requirements to see how management control being managed under two layers of pressure, i.e., the government regulations (e.g., labour, tax, environment control) and customer requirement (e.g., quality and production control). Management controls were an obligatory passage point (OPP), and transformation of those elements of Western production requirements and government requirements arrived at the Chinese local factory and influenced management control and budgeting.
The findings suggest that management control systems are not only a set of technical procedures, but it is also about managing tensions. This understanding shows a linear perspective on MC practices rather than a social perspective. However, when we use ANT as a theoretical perspective, we see those actors who, being obliged and sandwiched, and controlled by external forces for them to follow. Consequently, human actors must work in an unavoidable OPP. This is the tension they face which constructed mundane practices of MC. Hence, MCs are managing such tensions. This study contributes to management control research by analysing management controls in terms of OPP, extends our understanding by illustrating the role of the government and customers, and our understanding of family-owned business from a management controls perspective in a developing country
International Conference Shaping light for health and wellbeing in cities
The book collects contributions presented during the international conference âShaping light for health and wellbeing in citiesâ organized in the framework of the H2020 ENLIGHTENme project. The conference has investigated the multifaceted consequences light has on life in cities, by adopting a multidisciplinary and integrated approach to explore the complexity of challenges urban lighting poses on health and wellbeing, urban realm and social life. Papers cover several disciplines such as clinical and biomedical sciences, ethics and Responsible Research & Innovation, urban planning and architecture, data accessibility and interoperability, as well as social sciences and economics, and provide multifaceted insights that inspire further explorations. Contributions represent a step towards the development of innovative policies for improving health and wellbeing in our cities, addressing indoor and outdoor lighting
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