5,131 research outputs found

    Undergraduate Catalog of Studies, 2023-2024

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    Stories from the river: developing political awareness within psychotherapy in counselling sexual violence

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    From the stories in the river (Solnit, 2020) to the process of unfolding within the counselling room; this thesis invites, you, the reader, to join my fictive clients and I on a journey of observing how the ideologies (Kearney, 2018) of a post Trump era have continued to simmer within ourselves as individuals as well as the practice of counselling and psychotherapy when working with those who have experienced sexual violence. From the noticing of the ideologies instilled within our identities, to the re-emergence of the structural inequalities of oppression in the political world around us, the phenomenological contextualism of this process grapples with how the experience of relating between counsellor and client initiates the unfolding of such ideologies. A journey that may bring anxiety as counselling training has continued to ignore the context of these ideologies, leaving trainees with expectations of how this may be separate to the process (Kearney, 2018) rather than an important part of it. The hope, or rather the invitation, is to discover a language for this once ignored area of counselling theory and show you, the reader, how I grapple with the parts of my identity affected by Trumpism within the counselling room as I work within the streams of Islamophobia, Transphobia, and Neoliberal Feminist forced ideologies upon individuals who have experienced sexual violence through the reflective process of intersectional feminism. With fictionalisation and the display of my own reflexivity (Etherington, 2004), this journey from the river, to creation of my fictive clients, to the murky soup it generates, and the tasting that follows, leaves blueprints to how trainees, and you, the reader, may also wonder upon and discover their own language for the articulating these ideologies that appear within the counselling session when working with those who have experienced sexual violence

    How social media brand community development impacts consumer engagement and value formation; perspectives from the cosmetics industry

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    Social media and social media brand communities (SMBCs) are powerful tools for long-term consumer-brand relationship building. As a result, SMBCs are becoming significant marketing channels. Despite the wide use and adoption of SMBCs, further research is called for, as both practitioners and academics lack an understanding of the processes taking place within SMBCs. This study aims to contribute to knowledge of: (1) consumer engagement, (2) value formation in SMBCs, and (3) establishing the relationship between consumer engagement and value formation within the SMBC environment. This thesis adopts netnography, a method commonly employed to explore online communities in the social media environment. Three cosmetics brands were selected for this study. The selection was driven by geographical location, posting frequency and user activity. Data were retrospectively collected from Facebook SMBCs between 1st December 2019 and 31st January 2020. The data analysis employed thematic analysis techniques and was further guided by netnographic procedural steps, encompassing 25 distinct data operations. In total, 87 conversation threads were examined, which included 6,401 consumer comments. The findings present a typology of brand posts consisting of five overarching themes: presentation of offerings, belongingness building, engagement building, value-led, and educational. The research also identified a consumer comment typology consisting of four overarching themes brand-centred communication, cognitive-centred communication, conversation-centred communication, and personal experience-centred communication. Additionally, the thesis explores value formation processes within SMBCs, and the value types formed through consumer-to-consumer value formation interaction, brand-to-consumer value formation interaction, consumer-to-brand value formation interaction, as well as individual value formation processes, i.e., customer independent value formation and brand independent value facilitation. Through the findings, thesis broadens knowledge of the implication of SMBC development on consumer engagement. Additionally, this study extends the scope of value formation beyond service marketing, providing valuable insights into how value is created and perceived in the context of SMBCs. This research is also of significance for practice as it offers guidance and insight into how different brand posts can facilitate SMBC development, and, in turn, consumer engagement and value formation. The research provides a link between SMBC development and consumer engagement, highlighting the importance of SMBCs in the successful facilitation of consumer engagement. In particular, it provides evidence that the development of an SMBC has a significant impact on consumer engagement. The typology of brand posts that this study generates highlights the link between the types of posts published by the brand and SMBC development. In addition, the typology of consumer posts also suggests that there is a link between the types of comments published by consumers and the degree of SMBC development. As a result, the findings indicate significant growth in the variety of topics discussed within more developed SMBCs alongside a shift within the topics discussed. The study also investigates value formation within SMBCs, thereby enhancing the understanding of how SMBCs can facilitate value formation. By doing so, this research successfully extends the value formation lens predominantly applied in service marketing. In particular, the findings highlight the role of different actors in enabling the formation of different value types. Furthermore, the research emphasises the value of SMBCs as knowledge repositories as important virtual spaces for both brands and consumers. The findings facilitate understanding of the importance of SMBCs in value formation processes, contributing to advancing knowledge of the role of SMBCs in the development of consumer engagement and value formation. The thesis presents a contextualised conceptual framework of value formation within SMBCs, that captures different interactions taking place in the SMBC environment but also draws attention to the different value types generated through interaction between different actors. Finally, the thesis offers a conceptual framework of SMBCs, consumer engagement and value formation, which captures the correlation between the three researched concepts

    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

    Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies

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    Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial

    "It's not a career": Platform work among young people aged 16-19

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    In the online gig economy, or platform work as it is sometimes known, work can be organised through websites and smartphone apps. People can drive for Uber or Deliveroo, sell items on eBay or Etsy, or rent their properties on Airbnb. This research examines the views of young people between the ages of 16 and 19 in the United Kingdom to see whether they knew about the online gig economy, whether they were using it already to earn money, and whether they expected to use it for their careers. It discovers careers professionals’ levels of knowledge, and their ability (and desire) to include the gig economy in their professional practice. This research contributes to discussions about what constitutes decent work, and whether it can be found within the online gig economy. The results point to ways in which careers practice could include platform work as a means of extending young people’s knowledge about alternative forms of work. This study also makes a theoretical contribution to literature, bringing together elements of careership, cognitive schema theory, and motivational theory and psychology of working theory, in a novel combination, to explain how young people were thinking about platform work in the context of their careers

    Conversations on Empathy

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    In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arena have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy — be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others" – others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical, now more than ever, for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice

    Connecting the Dots in Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence: From AI Principles, Ethics, and Key Requirements to Responsible AI Systems and Regulation

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    Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) is based on seven technical requirements sustained over three main pillars that should be met throughout the system's entire life cycle: it should be (1) lawful, (2) ethical, and (3) robust, both from a technical and a social perspective. However, attaining truly trustworthy AI concerns a wider vision that comprises the trustworthiness of all processes and actors that are part of the system's life cycle, and considers previous aspects from different lenses. A more holistic vision contemplates four essential axes: the global principles for ethical use and development of AI-based systems, a philosophical take on AI ethics, a risk-based approach to AI regulation, and the mentioned pillars and requirements. The seven requirements (human agency and oversight; robustness and safety; privacy and data governance; transparency; diversity, non-discrimination and fairness; societal and environmental wellbeing; and accountability) are analyzed from a triple perspective: What each requirement for trustworthy AI is, Why it is needed, and How each requirement can be implemented in practice. On the other hand, a practical approach to implement trustworthy AI systems allows defining the concept of responsibility of AI-based systems facing the law, through a given auditing process. Therefore, a responsible AI system is the resulting notion we introduce in this work, and a concept of utmost necessity that can be realized through auditing processes, subject to the challenges posed by the use of regulatory sandboxes. Our multidisciplinary vision of trustworthy AI culminates in a debate on the diverging views published lately about the future of AI. Our reflections in this matter conclude that regulation is a key for reaching a consensus among these views, and that trustworthy and responsible AI systems will be crucial for the present and future of our society.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures, under second revie

    Mapping the Focal Points of WordPress: A Software and Critical Code Analysis

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    Programming languages or code can be examined through numerous analytical lenses. This project is a critical analysis of WordPress, a prevalent web content management system, applying four modes of inquiry. The project draws on theoretical perspectives and areas of study in media, software, platforms, code, language, and power structures. The applied research is based on Critical Code Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study that holds the potential as a theoretical lens and methodological toolkit to understand computational code beyond its function. The project begins with a critical code analysis of WordPress, examining its origins and source code and mapping selected vulnerabilities. An examination of the influence of digital and computational thinking follows this. The work also explores the intersection of code patching and vulnerability management and how code shapes our sense of control, trust, and empathy, ultimately arguing that a rhetorical-cultural lens can be used to better understand code\u27s controlling influence. Recurring themes throughout these analyses and observations are the connections to power and vulnerability in WordPress\u27 code and how cultural, processual, rhetorical, and ethical implications can be expressed through its code, creating a particular worldview. Code\u27s emergent properties help illustrate how human values and practices (e.g., empathy, aesthetics, language, and trust) become encoded in software design and how people perceive the software through its worldview. These connected analyses reveal cultural, processual, and vulnerability focal points and the influence these entanglements have concerning WordPress as code, software, and platform. WordPress is a complex sociotechnical platform worthy of further study, as is the interdisciplinary merging of theoretical perspectives and disciplines to critically examine code. Ultimately, this project helps further enrich the field by introducing focal points in code, examining sociocultural phenomena within the code, and offering techniques to apply critical code methods

    Revising the Future: Exploring Ethnofuturism

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    Title from PDF of title page, viewed January 4, 2023Dissertation advisors: Anthony S. Shiu and Norma E. CantúVitaIncludes bibliographical references (pages 218-236)Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Department of English Language and Literature. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2022While the desire for a postracial, colorblind society remains an emotional investment, the present reality of race and racist attitudes ingrained in the structure of American culture suggest that any such imagined future is structured based on the standards of whiteness. Representations of this future postracial society tend most often to manifest within speculative, magical realist, science fiction, and other fantastic cultural productions. These fantastic genres, whether set in an alternate present (or past) or some imagined future, give the greatest leeway for writers to navigate concepts of a society-in-the-making. It is important to note, however, that throughout their history, science fiction and futurist narratives have largely been the creation of white writers, and as such have perpetuated dominant notions of whiteness as superior through imaginary postrace worlds that negate racial identities and subsequently rely on the assumption of white as default. Depictions of colorblind worlds suggest the possibility that we can move past racial issues, and in fact many present that possibility as close-at-hand. The majority of these representations, as the creations of white authors and filmmakers, suggest that the concept of a postracial society has been largely subsumed by white society. However, another way of conceiving alternative concepts of race and identity might be found in those works portraying a future in which racial identity is not placed under erasure but instead becomes a ground for discussion of issues at the core of United States history and culture. Though it is not possible to draw a generalized conclusion about the entirety of an ethnofuturist authorship that encompasses a broad cross-section of experiences, backgrounds, interests, and personalities, larger patterns begin to emerge. Often, writers will engage current race issues in presenting speculations on the future, addressing problems directly instead of sidestepping into a whitewashed postracial vision. This dissertation looks at how ethnofuturist narratives navigate the cultural thrust of positive representation to counteract racist stereotyping in a multifaceted dialectical space, where an aesthetic of cultural intersection and self-contained ethnic agency starts to take shape, liberated from the perspective of a Eurocentric imperative and redefining the concept of postrace.Introduction -- Genre as a dialect -- Folklore and myth -- Framing super-bodie
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