5,132 research outputs found

    Resilience and food security in a food systems context

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    This open access book compiles a series of chapters written by internationally recognized experts known for their in-depth but critical views on questions of resilience and food security. The book assesses rigorously and critically the contribution of the concept of resilience in advancing our understanding and ability to design and implement development interventions in relation to food security and humanitarian crises. For this, the book departs from the narrow beaten tracks of agriculture and trade, which have influenced the mainstream debate on food security for nearly 60 years, and adopts instead a wider, more holistic perspective, framed around food systems. The foundation for this new approach is the recognition that in the current post-globalization era, the food and nutritional security of the world’s population no longer depends just on the performance of agriculture and policies on trade, but rather on the capacity of the entire (food) system to produce, process, transport and distribute safe, affordable and nutritious food for all, in ways that remain environmentally sustainable. In that context, adopting a food system perspective provides a more appropriate frame as it incites to broaden the conventional thinking and to acknowledge the systemic nature of the different processes and actors involved. This book is written for a large audience, from academics to policymakers, students to practitioners

    Playing with (my)self: Reconfiguring 21st century performance art as an emerging encounter amongst the becoming-stage, the becoming-actor, and the becoming-audience

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    “Playing with (my)Self: Reconfiguring 21st Century Performance Art as an Emerging Encounter amongst the Becoming-Stage, the Becoming-Actor, and the Becoming-Audience” This practice-based PhD revolves around the stage, the actor, and the audiences as three primary locations where performance emerges via an encounter between those entities: the interplay between the stage, the performer, and the audience feeds back on itself to create the conditions with which it is possible for these encounters to generate emerging performance. This PhD relocates the stage onto the surface and intensity of the performer; creates multiplicity within a single performer/space; and produces a new sense of aesthetics through techniques of improvisation, use of costume, props and constructed spaces, led by notions of becoming and immanence, as both object and action of performance itself. In the context of performance studies, theatre technique and theory are explored to contribute to new performance in its expanded field, including theatre, moving image, and live performance, and works through notions of archetype, humour, and staging to create several new works of art as research. Theatre theorists and practitioners researched include Konstantin Stanislavski, Lee Strasberg, Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, Bertolt Brecht, Richard Foreman, and Tim Etchells. The main contribution and intention of this PhD is to show how theatre theory and technique positively inform fine art performance practice,in that builds a new sense of self, in that the actor or performer becomes one part of many co-emergences amongst the stage, the actor, and the audience, and seeks to add knowledge in the field of performance studies by establishing a new condition for the stage as an encounter with the performer, who is positioned as a structure from which performance emanates, and includes practical research into the mechanics of acting including the work of Konstantin Stanislavsky along with Lee Strasberg’s ‘Method Acting’ technique, and examines the space between the audience and the performed event as a co-producers, with a particular emphasis on Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Alienation Effect’. By putting myself in the role of actor in this research, I am examining how such a role can be decoupled from the actor in question, and how it can be totally linked within the co-emergent space of stage/actor/audience; in this way performers within performance can be viewed as one element among many within the constellation of performance-making. This research situates itself among Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys’ moving image work; Diane Torr’s “Man For a Day” workshops; Andy Kaufman’s “Foreign Man” persona; Liz Magic Laser’s “I Feel Your Pain”; Marcus Coates’ shaman practice; Keren Citter’s moving image work; Mike Kelly’s musical “Day is Done”; Tino Seghal’s performance “These Associations”; Lindsay Seers’s photographic and installation practice; Ryan Trecartin’s video “Center Jenny”; Anna Deveare Smith’s verbatim theatre; and Cindy Sherman’s character-based photographic practice, among others. Bruce Nauman and Paul McCarthy, whose physical and conceptual spaces have been important points of departure researching sculpture as stage, and thresholds as they relate to perception and audience engagement are also examined. This research is also indebted to the performance practices of New York-based theatre artists Mabou Mines, Richard Foreman, and The Wooster Group, all of whom worked towards an aesthetics in theatre which bumped into the conceptual and practical space of performance art since the 1970s. Important theoretical contributions include Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy; Sartre’s essay The Look, Bertolt Brecht’s A Short Organum for the Theatre and particularly the Alienation Effect; Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus; Deleuze’s essay One Less Manifesto; Strasberg’s A Dream of Passion with particular reference to Method Acting; Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares; Ranciere’s The Emancipated Spectator; Bogart and Landau’s Viewpoints; and Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy

    Modelling, Monitoring, Control and Optimization for Complex Industrial Processes

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    This reprint includes 22 research papers and an editorial, collected from the Special Issue "Modelling, Monitoring, Control and Optimization for Complex Industrial Processes", highlighting recent research advances and emerging research directions in complex industrial processes. This reprint aims to promote the research field and benefit the readers from both academic communities and industrial sectors

    Sport team leadership coaching and captaincy in elite level rugby union football

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    A wide range of literature exists on coaching but it is concerned predominantly with the high school and college levels, is based upon athlete or coach perceptions, or is confined to observations of training or competition. As leaders of sports teams, coaches and captains have rarely been studied at the highest level of national or international sports competition. In the present study, the team leadership roles of the coach and captain in elite rugby union football in New Zealand were examined using participant observation and other qualitative research methods. Elite was defined as New Zealand rugby’s highest internal level of competition: (a) the national provincial championships and (b) international test matches of the national team, the All Blacks. The study explored the roles of the elite rugby coach and captain in vivo in a wide variety of team situations. It was felt that this could provide first-hand information on particular team leader behaviours, on what a coach and captain actually do, and how they are perceived by those around them. The main objective, however, was to use grounded theory techniques to create a model of elite rugby team leadership that might guide developmental programmes on such leadership. The research phases undertaken were those of participant observation with a Provincial Team for five matches, a survey of provincial teams’ coaches and captains on their leadership associated with actual matches, three years’ participant observation with the All Blacks (including observation in eight test match weeks), multiple perspectives on elite team leadership from past rugby test players in New Zealand and overseas, and interviews with national team leaders in sports other than rugby. Participant observation, interviews, questionnaires and document analysis generated data from the research settings. These data were considered in terms of symbolic interactionism and subjected to a grounded theory process. This led to a set of elite rugby team leadership categories and properties which, in turn, generated a comprehensive set of theoretical propositions. The propositions became the basis for a model of elite rugby team leadership. This model was then considered as the basis for a programme to develop elite rugby team leaders. Significant aspects of the research findings which have not featured in previous research literature included the coach’s vision, team culture, centrality of the game plan, match week build-up, the importance of the captain’s playing example, the coach's ability to utilise teaching precepts, the coach’s personal qualities, and the need to develop and evaluate team leaders. The model, and the developmental programme principles emanating from it, are seen as relevant for developing elite level leaders in team sports other than rugby

    Canadians Redefining R&B: The Online Marketing of Drake, Justin Bieber, and Jessie Reyez

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    In a country that long failed to accept, include, and institutionalize R&B music as part of Canadian culture, musical artists Justin Bieber, Drake, and Jessie Reyez have successfully broken-down barriers by having successful careers as racially diverse Canadian R&B artists. This qualitative study surveys the literature on classifications of the R&B genre and of Canadian identities in popular media. The theoretical framework of discourse analysis is used to conduct a brief episodic history of Canadian R&B and to evaluate how the music genre “R&B,” is traditionally associated with people who have Black and American identities, and how a “Canadian” identity is traditionally associated with “white” and “folk” musical artists. I conclude that the ascription of racialized and nationalized identities is found to play a role in each artist\u27s respective inclusion, exclusion, and/or authentication vis a vis R&B. I evaluate how Bieber, Drake, and Reyez each articulate “R&B-ness” and “Canadian-ness” to represent multiple, yet equally Canadian national narratives through their Canadian R&B artist lifestyle brands. In exploring ideas of national identity, intersectionality, digital celebrity, branding, and marketing related to contemporary Canadian popular music genres, the dissertation seeks to answer the question: How have the careers of Justin Bieber, Drake, and Jessie Reyez reinforced, complicated, and/or challenged hegemonic understandings of both “Canadian-ness” and “R&B-ness”? Through textual analyses of their social media posts, brand partnerships, interviews, music videos, and music lyrics, the dissertation traces out how multicultural Canadian artists Bieber, Drake, and Reyez broke into the music industry as “digital stars” (Harvey, 2017) by using online communication strategies, alongside traditional industry practices (such as networking with music industry gatekeepers). A particular focus involves Drake’s, Bieber’s, and Reyez’s brand partnerships and social media strategies, between 2019 and 2022, when the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the significance of online communications, and the Black Lives Matter movement encouraged changes to race-based music industry classifications. The dissertation includes insights from interviews conducted with 35 U.S. and Canadian marketing professionals and music industry executives in 2020. This study is applicable to explorations of how race, nationality, and music genre categories are classified, cultural branding, and contemporary marketing strategies

    Suffering in Babylon: Ludlul bēl nēmeqi and the scholars, ancient and modern

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    Suffering in Babylon comprises a series of studies on Ludlul bēl nēmeqi. Part One examines the modern scholarship surrounding the poem’s textual reconstruction and translation. Ludlul exists today as a composite text, pieced together over the last 180 years from dozens of cuneiform tablets and fragments from various archaeological sites. With these disparate sources, Assyriologists have reconstructed three quarters of the poem’s original text, which is here translated anew with extensive epigraphic and philological notes. Part Two explores the historical contexts of the poem and its reception among first-millennium scribes. Whether the poem’s protagonist is the historical Ć ubĆĄi-meĆĄrĂȘ-Ć akkan or not, his experiences as described in the poem provide insight into the worldview and concerns of the ancient scholars among whom the poem’s author was counted, likely from the ranks of the exorcists. The protagonist’s experience with divine revelation sheds light on those scholars’ divinatory worldview. The anatomical and pathological vocabulary used to describe his suffering compares well to the vocabulary in exorcism texts. The ritual failures he experiences reflect the poem’s institutional agenda. And the structure and language of his first person account shows intertextual connections with incantation prayers, a genre distinctive to exorcism. The poem’s subsequent incorporation into various scribal curricula and tablet collections demonstrates the poem’s cultural stature among first-millennium scribes, who wrote a commentary on Ludlul and used the text in the creation of others. Part Three offers a comparative study that bridges the ancient and modern scholarly horizons. Drawing on both ancient and modern scholarship, it compares the protagonist’s experience of the alĂ» demon with the clinical condition known today as sleep paralysis. The book’s underlying goal is to illustrate the potential of a multi-perspectival approach to Akkadian literature that acknowledges the contexts of both ancient and modern scholars involved in producing meaningful readings of this ancient literary gem
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