Charting the Kingdoms Between: Building Transmedia Universes and Transnational Audiences in the Kingdom Hearts Franchise

An Introduction to the Kingdom Hearts video game franchise as a prime example of the new generation of synergistic, multinational and transcorporate transmedia

“May your heart be your guiding key”: a educação estética de Kingdom Hearts

“May your heart be your guiding key” é uma máxima recorrentemente dita na saga de videojogos Kingdom Hearts (2002—). A frase costuma ser dita antes da partida para determinadas jornadas e a sua gramática implica um elemento de incerteza que depende das questões fatalistas levantadas pelo enredo. Esta incerteza gera uma tensão entre o poder individual de escolha que a frase solicita e o grande plano do enredo. A capacidade de escolher é um dispositivo narrativo para a auto-determinação das personagens no género literário do Bildungsroman, onde a escolha tem implicações morais e psíquicas para a caracterização das personagens; Franco Moretti defende que “o Bildungsroman pretende construir o Ego e fazer dele o centro indisputável da sua estrutura” (1987). Em Kingdom Hearts, os protagonistas têm de deliberar certos cenários que estão condenados a levar à Guerra das Keyblades. O enredo que junta os vários jogos da saga foca-se no romper deste ciclo. Kingdom Hearts serve uma forma imersível do cânone da Disney, da Pixar e da Square-Enix e, como tal, leva o jogador a fazer escolhas baseadas num contacto profundo com os mundos, enredos e personagens destas produtoras, fazendo dos seus corações chaves que os guiam.“May your heart be your guiding key” é uma máxima recorrentemente dita na saga de videojogos Kingdom Hearts (2002—). A frase costuma ser dita antes da partida para determinadas jornadas e a sua gramática implica um elemento de incerteza que depende das questões fatalistas levantadas pelo enredo. Esta incerteza gera uma tensão entre o poder individual de escolha que a frase solicita e o grande plano do enredo. A capacidade de escolher é um dispositivo narrativo para a auto-determinação das personagens no género literário do Bildungsroman, onde a escolha tem implicações morais e psíquicas para a caracterização das personagens; Franco Moretti defende que “o Bildungsroman pretende construir o Ego e fazer dele o centro indisputável da sua estrutura” (1987). Em Kingdom Hearts, os protagonistas têm de deliberar certos cenários que estão condenados a levar à Guerra das Keyblades. O enredo que junta os vários jogos da saga foca-se no romper deste ciclo. Kingdom Hearts serve uma forma imersível do cânone da Disney, da Pixar e da Square-Enix e, como tal, leva o jogador a fazer escolhas baseadas num contacto profundo com os mundos, enredos e personagens destas produtoras, fazendo dos seus corações chaves que os guiam.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

“I've been having these weird thoughts lately...”: Conspiratorial hermeneutics and reflexive depictions of fan practices in the Kingdom Hearts franchise

This paper draws on the theory of mastermind narration developed by M.J. Clarke in the context of prestige television dramas with highly complex non-linear narratives and inconsistent characters (Clarke, 2012) to offer a reading of the Kingdom Hearts (Square Enix, 2002-) franchise in light of postmodern practices of textual consumption characteristic of current fandoms, such as those explored by Henry Jenkins (2006) and Matt Hills (2002), but also addressing Japanese theorist Hiroki Azuma’s (2009) work around the notion of the Otaku. I argue that the series’ significant deviation from Disney’s traditional approach to narrative (Wasko 2001) indicates a desire for the corporation to explore radical new forms of textual production and to negotiate emerging fan consumption practices within the safe environment of a controlled and licensed text. Just as cultural theorists like Clarke and Anne Allison (2006) argue that a textual product can often contain traces that reflect its wider conditions of production, I propose that the Kingdom Hearts franchise can be read allegorically as an extended experiment by Disney into new forms of collaborative storytelling

Chinese Territorial Assemblages & The Politics Of Spatial Governance

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

From Cincinnati to Glasgow:a case study of international policy transfer of a violence reduction program

It has been acknowledged that there is growing interest in criminal justice policy transfer and also a dearth of empirical research in this area. This chapter seeks to address this gap by discussing the results of doctoral research conducted on a case of policy transfer of a criminal justice program. This focuses on group/gang violence reduction, from America to Scotland, in particular from Cincinnati to Glasgow. Policy transfer models were used to develop, frame, and conduct the analysis of what was considered a ‘successful’ program transfer. However, it was found that no single model could fully account conceptually for a key finding of the research, namely, a policy transfer ‘backflow.' This chapter details the key processes, mechanisms, and outcomes of the policy transfer and in doing so, reflects on the usefulness of orthodox and non-orthodox/social constructionist policy transfer approaches in understanding the outcomes of this case of criminal justice program transfer. This chapter discusses in detail the issues relating to gang violence in Glasgow and the reasons why a new approach to deal with such. It also discusses the similarities that existed in both cities, for example, similar socio-economic and drug-related violence issues. The processes of transfer are discussed and the acknowledgment that in order for a ‘successful’ transfer to take place certain adaptations must take place.</p

From Cincinnati to Glasgow:a case study of international policy transfer of a violence reduction program

It has been acknowledged that there is growing interest in criminal justice policy transfer and also a dearth of empirical research in this area. This chapter seeks to address this gap by discussing the results of doctoral research conducted on a case of policy transfer of a criminal justice program. This focuses on group/gang violence reduction, from America to Scotland, in particular from Cincinnati to Glasgow. Policy transfer models were used to develop, frame, and conduct the analysis of what was considered a ‘successful’ program transfer. However, it was found that no single model could fully account conceptually for a key finding of the research, namely, a policy transfer ‘backflow.' This chapter details the key processes, mechanisms, and outcomes of the policy transfer and in doing so, reflects on the usefulness of orthodox and non-orthodox/social constructionist policy transfer approaches in understanding the outcomes of this case of criminal justice program transfer. This chapter discusses in detail the issues relating to gang violence in Glasgow and the reasons why a new approach to deal with such. It also discusses the similarities that existed in both cities, for example, similar socio-economic and drug-related violence issues. The processes of transfer are discussed and the acknowledgment that in order for a ‘successful’ transfer to take place certain adaptations must take place.</p

The Development of the Southeast Asian Border Zone : A Social Theory

The main objective of this thesis is the development and testing of a theory to explain the interplay of historical processes that led to the creation of the borderline between the Southern parts of China (Yunnan and Sichuan) and what is now Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. Given that many polities existed in the area, this thesis investigates the process how these entities were absorbed in the lowland states and couldn’t maintain their independence. To that end, the development of the theoretical argumentation is based on concepts of territorialization, marginalization and state-development to bring the formation processes of the border into the context of different concepts of statehood and rule and to allow for a longue durée perspective. At the center of the theoretical argument are the ways and means of the territorial penetration of lowland states whose abilities of administrative, economic and political integration furthered a sense of otherness and so were crucial for the nexus between statehood and bordering. This process however was not a linear expansion of Southeast Asian lowland states but a cyclical contraction and expansion of contacts between lowland and upland entities who mutually informed ways of acceptance, resistance, defiance or coexistence that gradually morphed into territorialised states. Testing this model of cyclical territoriality allows to define five large cycles: from the 10th to the 15th century, from 1450s to 1600, from 1600s to the 19th century, and the creation of territorialized colonial states starting in the 19th century until the end of the Second World War. The analysis of these cycles shows that agency and control-mechanisms on both the sides of lowland states as well as upland states mutually informed actions and provided possibilities so that independent entities could maintain their existence sometimes over centuries in this border-region. At the same time, it refutes the narrative of predatory lowland and defensive upland entities, but provides insights on the complex management and leveraging of interrelations that often provided mutually beneficial equilibria, the disruption of which led to new cycles of integration or disintegration. This thesis also accounts for the internal dynamism and motivations of both lowland states and entities in the border-region to explain their actions and objectives and to provide insights how this contributed to the transformation of this area from a central hub of knowledge and economic transfer into a marginalized border-region. By going beyond linear models of state-development or statist ideas of territoriality, a century-long back-and-forth process of negotiation, integration and dissolution of statelets in the border area becomes visible that eventually formed a system that could accommodate the very different trajectories of state-building, territorial expansion and consolidation of the larger lowland-states. The formation of equilibria of interests and constantly changing fault-lines of territoriality followed certain trendlines yet not in a linear or congruent way. Over time economic and political determinants produced changes and asymmetric relations that in the long run fostered integration within teritorially stabilized states. This thesis shows that these trend lines can be understood as the aggregation of many smaller actions and developments on the ground that finally brought the border area into the fold of the lowland states. Entities in the border-region were far more than a playing ball between different lowland centers of power but boasted their own capabilities of agency and so created a dynamics that led to a congruence of the intention to exert control and to have this control manifested in a spatial view of possession and contained within a demarcated space – a border

The Exclusionary Foundations of Embedded Liberalism

Abstract: Analyses of embedded liberalism have focused overwhelmingly on trade in goods and capital, to the exclusion of migration. We argue that much as capital controls were essential components of the embedded liberal compromise, so too were restrictions on the democratic and social rights of labor migrants. Generous welfare programs in labor-receiving countries thrived alongside inclusionary immigration policies, but this balanced arrangement was only tenable if migrants were politically excluded in their destination countries. That is, embedded liberalism abroad rested on exclusionary political foundations at home. In bringing together the IPE literature on the “globalization trilemma” with the comparative politics of citizenship, we provide a novel account of how embedded liberalism worked politically, with implications for current debates about the fate of the liberal order in a time of populist resurgence