Bringing Politics Into It: Organizing at the Intersection of Videogames and Academia

This dissertation explores the structural and ideological roots of GamerGate and the Alt-Right within the game industry and academia. The analysis draws on the author’s personal experiences engaging in feminist community organizing, an examination of online materials associated with GamerGate, as well as various strands of critical theory, to interrogate the material reproduction of liberal ideology and meritocracy within neoliberal capitalism. Using the recent “culture wars” in videogames and academia as an example, the author argues that liberal capitalist institutions pave the way, both materially and ideologically, for the rise of fascist movements during periods of capitalist crisis, creating a social context that is oriented towards scapegoating oppressed people and reinforcing existing hierarchies. While the specific targets, symbols, and strategies used by fascist movements may change to reflect the changing circumstances, there are also many similarities that can be found between early 20th-century fascism, and contemporary neo-fascist movements like the Alt-Right. The problems marginalized people encounter in both games and academia are a product of capitalism and its historical development, including the international division of labour created by imperialism and patriarchy. Whether we’re talking about targeted harassment, the emergence of reactionary movements like GamerGate, institutionalized discrimination, exclusionary and constrained definitions of play and games, or the culture of overwork, capitalism and the drive for profit lies at the root. Previous attempts to address these issues through corporate diversity initiatives, indie game entrepreneurialism, consumer activism, and merit-based selection processes are limited by the fact that they do not directly challenge capitalist social relations. In order to both expose those limits and move past them, feminist organizers need an anti-capitalist political strategy that leverages the latent power of the international working class to challenge imperialism, colonialism, and patriarchy

Social work with airports passengers

Social work at the airport is in to offer to passengers social services. The main methodological position is that people are under stress, which characterized by a particular set of characteristics in appearance and behavior. In such circumstances passenger attracts in his actions some attention. Only person whom he trusts can help him with the documents or psychologically

Master\u27s Tools and the Master\u27s House: A Historical Analysis Exploring the Myth of Educating for Democracy in the United States

Over the past forty-years, neoliberal education reform policies in the U.S. have spurred significant resistance, often galvanized by claims that such policies undermine public education as a vital institution of U.S. democracy. Within this narrative, many activists call to “save our schools” and return them to a time when public schools served the common good. With these narratives in mind, I explore the foundational and persistent power structures that characterize the U.S. as a means to reveal the fundamental purpose of its public education system. The questions that guide my research include: (1) With an understanding that capitalism, white supremacy, settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy are inherently inequitable, incredibly violent and undemocratic; how can we expect meaningful and lasting social protections or even emancipation within a nation-state constituted by these structures? (2) Consequently, can we then expect public education - an institution constructed and controlled by these structural forces - to be transformed into an equitable and democratic institution? (3) Is it even possible to attain state protections for the common good within the current global domain of finance capital? In this extensive historical analysis, I examine these questions using a critical theory lens, historical revisionism and discourse analysis to interrogate primary source materials, scholarly work, news stories, policies and industry publications. This research shows that public education is an extension of a duplicitous and despotic cultural political economy and thus has never been, nor ever could be, an institution that serves democratic or emancipatory purposes. I contend that it is imprudent to strive to transform public education to serve democratic purposes. My research makes evident how current education policies are a continuation of the original design of public education, yet modernized to bolster the imperious and ubiquitous interests of global financialization

It Goes Beyond Product - Business Innovativeness and Consumer's New Values Adoption

The concept of consumer behavior in today’s trend of competitiveness has been enriched by the study on consumer’s adaptation to new values. More specifically in this new era of digital technology business has been able to creatively promote values in which consumer’s loyalty is systematically developed. Business sells beyond product. Hierarchical regression and One-way Anova were employed to show the dynamic process of new values adoption. The respondents were Generation Z in Palembang – Indonesia. Within this scheme the process of new values adoption is conditioned by the innovative capacity of the business ie. innovativeness that attracts the market to learn newness. Consequently, consumer has become more advanced in his involvement to adapt with the innovativeness of the business. This conceptual research intends to rationalize the dynamic of consumer’s new values adoption within the frame of business innovativeness

Dissertation Abstracts 1969-2019

This is the Seventh Edition of the Dissertation Abstracts of the Center for International Education (CIE). It contains abstracts of all the doctoral dissertations completed by students actively involved in CIE from 1969 through the academic year ending in June 2019. The abstracts in this document reflect research in the fields of Development Education, Nonformal and Adult Education, Literacy, Community Development, and Global Education in both international and domestic contexts. The abstracts reflect the values that inform the research and the practice of the Center: the theory and practice of liberation, consciousness-raising, literacy and popular education, empowerment, social change, gender issues in education, an emphasis on qualitative, participatory and action research methodologies, and education in crisis and conflict situations. The emphasis on the human component of development reflects the ongoing commitment of CIE to study and implement educational processes which increase the learners\u27 control over their lives. The abstracts are presented in chronological order based on dates of graduation and are numbered sequentially. Abstracts are indexed by the author\u27s name in the Author Index, by geographic location of the research, and by topic in the Subject Index. To locate relevant abstracts search one or more of the indexes and then use the sequence number/s to find the desired abstract/s in the text. The full text of many of the dissertations is available free from ScholarWorks, a public, online digital library for scholarly publications from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Most the dissertations contained in this document can be accessed from the CIE section of Scholarworks (https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cie_diss/). A new section is included at the end of this document that includes abstracts of students who were affiliated with CIE beginning in 2019. These abstracts are numbered A1, A2, ...etc

Liberal economics and a liberal education in Canada : leading theorists, apologists, and "imaginary expressions" of value

The structure of this dissertation is roughly three parts. Chapters one and two focus on the historical and current idea of higher education in Canada. Chapters three and four expand the scope, situating the Canadian university in the geo-political context of globalisation, globalisation's impact on labour generally, and intellectual labour specifically. Chapter four introduces theoretical debates within Marxism in order to formulate, in chapter five, a critical position better suited to resisting the political and ideological forces acting to reconstruct the Canadian university in the image of the globalised market