6 research outputs found

    LO ENCONTRÉ EN EL PAQUETE: REPARTO MUSIC, MEDIA PIRACY AND CULTURAL EXCHANGE IN CUBA’S OFFLINE INTERNET

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    My dissertation, “Lo Encontré en El Paquete,” considers digital piracy’s role in providing equitable solutions for a Cuban music community. For the members of this community, digital piracy is a necessary fixture of daily life to close gaps of internet scarcity. Specifically, I regard el paquete semanal (“the weekly package”) as a crucial technology for the pirate trade of digital cultural products. The peer-to-peer based platform is one terabyte of data downloaded weekly, sold to Cuban nationals for the equivalent of $2US, and surreptitiously shared across the island on USB drives. A controversial style of Cuban reggaetón (or reparto) is circulated through el paquete semanal. Though the Havana-based musical style is banned from broadcast through Cuba’s nationalized television and radio, it has, thanks to the efforts of the mainly Black Cuban artists who move new songs through el paquete semanal’s peer-to-peer platform, become one of the most popular styles of music in Havana and in neighboring Miami’s Cuban diaspora community. Long-studied for its capacity to smuggle international media to everyday Cubans, my research instead explores the ways in which el paquete semanal’s one-terabyte of digital material also circulates domestically produced songs, reparto music in particular, within Havana. The nation-wide circulation of reparto music challenges assumptions regarding how technological precarity is conventionally understood. Drawing from music and internet studies, I argue that el paquete semanal’s pirate digital network provides a viable model to circulate the cultural products of a transnationally-based community of reparto artists and music fans. By storing and sharing their music on the USB drives that transport the digital contents of el paquete semanal, participants use the network to represent and empower themselves and their communities, defying significant technological and political limitations in the process.Doctor of Philosoph

    'The Mula Ring': Material Flows of Circulation Through the Cuban World

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    This thesis explores the permeability of what is arguably one of the most politicised and reified ‘frontiers’ in the world: that between the U.S. and Cuba. Despite decades of diplomatic hostilities and economic sanctions, the border between Miami and Havana is in a state of constant flux, with ceaseless flows of both people and things moving in both directions. Drawing upon fifteen months of ethnographic research primarily in Miami and Havana (2017-2018), and also in Panama, Mexico and Guyana, this thesis traces these ‘flows’ to understand how and why these material and digital flows constitute everyday life for millions of Cubans who, notwithstanding this political rhetoric, seek to maintain personal and business relationships. The thesis presents personal stories based on these flows to examine the shifting relationship between Cuba and its diaspora. Cubans in both Miami and Cuba are negotiating materiality and digital networks within their own plural notions of cubanidad (‘Cubanness’), capitalism and socialism, and according to their own geopolitical and socioeconomic contexts. By focusing on the inconsequential objects of the everyday, and centring on notions of ‘flow’ and ‘flux’, this thesis seeks to show how a politically and economically turbulent landscape is experienced and reconfigured at a micro level by ordinary Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits who, by the happenstance of their birth right, must negotiate extraordinary and difficult conditions on a daily basis to maintain their family connections, cultural identity, and ultimately, to live what they consider to be meaningful lives. The thesis shows how it is only through a slippage in traditional categories of ‘people’ and ‘things’ that such flows are made possible, and then positions this observation within theoretical arguments that situate rupture as crucial for the emergence of new cultural forms

    Digital Technology and Communications in Today\u27s Cuba

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    Drawing on four months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Havana in 2016, this thesis focuses on how digital technologies have been integrated into Cuban society and how they have been intertwined with the Cuban government’s educational goals and its attempt to control the circulation and quality of information at a time of change. Among the topics discussed are the role of digital technologies in: (1) reconfiguring space and sociality on the island; (2) expanding Cubans’ options to connect with people overseas and meet their desire for knowledge and pride in being worldly and up-to-date; and (3) generating alternative sources of information and entertainment that may compete with, replace, or complement government-sanctioned sources. Overall, the analysis allows me to explore significant societal transformations and the accompanying generational and social differences that characterize contemporary Cuba

    Gaming myth: an exploration of video gaming, heritage, and identity creation in contemporary Cuba

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    This thesis examines the relationship between video games and the creation and sustainment of local, national, and personal myths in contemporary Cuba. This thesis examines traditional notions of myth, particularly those which relate to culture and heritage. At the same time, it will analyse the evolving role which video games, and technology more generally, play in our lives, and how new technologies affect the creation and propagation of myth in personal and national narratives. This thesis will then go on to give an overview of the historical context of Cuba, a nation in which myth continues to play a fundamental role in the national narrative, and explore how video games are an increasingly central element of these narratives. This thesis asks whether video games and computing can tell us anything of note about Cuban culture, and whether the games which are being played and developed in Cuba are part of a broader cultural and historical tradition which shapes Cuba as it is today. This thesis answers both of these questions in the affirmative, and demonstrates the significant impact which video games have had upon Cuba (particularly the more rural and remote parts of the country). This thesis also examines the question of whether gaming in Cuba might provide us with any practical or theoretical approaches to gaming which might be missing from the existing literature, and brings to the fore the lessons which Cuba’s unique circumstances hold for the furthering of the study of video games as an academic discipline. In order to support these assertions, the final chapter of this thesis is dedicated to a case study of the rural province of Granma. Using original interviews and fieldwork, this chapter combines the extensive historical and theoretical considerations which have been laid out in the preceding chapters, and applies them to the contemporary Cuban context. This thesis makes an original contribution to both the fields of Cuban studies and video game theory. Video game studies have traditionally been Western-centric, and have all but ignored countries such as Cuba. Whilst previous works have explored the role of myth within Cuba and gaming separately, this is the first work to study the manner in which myth underpins both video gaming and Cuban culture as a symbiotic whole

    As Artes no Xadrez da Globalização: Heranças e Desafios no Início de um Novo Milénio

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    Com o tema presente, As Artes no Xadrez da Globalização: Heranças e Desafios no início de um novo Milénio, pretendemos auscultar qual o lugar das Artes Visuais na contemporaneidade, o que passa, necessariamente, pela procura de um (re)entendimento do próprio conceito de arte. Assim, utilizámos como metodologia o estudo de grandes exposições internacionais, procurando entender quais as constantes / diferenças dos seus modelos expositivos. Ocupámo-nos, nomeadamente, da Documenta de Kassel (2012), da Bienal de Veneza (2013), da Manifesta e da Bienal de São Paulo (2014), tendo visitado três destas exposições nas edições específicas acima anotadas.With this theme, The Arts in the Chess of Globalisation: Legacies and Challenges at the Beginning of a New Millennium, we aimed to understand which is the place of the Visual Arts in contemporary times, a task implying a (re)understanding of the own concept of art. In that sense, we used as methodology the study of some large international exhibitions, trying to understand the constants and differences of their exhibition models. We studied the Documenta of Kassel (2012), the Venice Biennale (2013), the Manifest and the Bienal de São Paulo (2014), and we visited three of these exhibitions in the specific years noted above

    Metodología de implantación de modelos de gestión de la información dentro de los sistemas de planificación de recursos empresariales. Aplicación en la pequeña y mediana empresa

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    La Siguiente Generación de Sistemas de Fabricación (SGSF) trata de dar respuesta a los requerimientos de los nuevos modelos de empresas, en contextos de inteligencia, agilidad y adaptabilidad en un entono global y virtual. La Planificación de Recursos Empresariales (ERP) con soportes de gestión del producto (PDM) y el ciclo de vida del producto (PLM) proporciona soluciones de gestión empresarial sobre la base de un uso coherente de tecnologías de la información para la implantación en sistemas CIM (Computer-Integrated Manufacturing), con un alto grado de adaptabilidad a la estnictura organizativa deseada. En general, esta implementación se lleva desarrollando hace tiempo en grandes empresas, siendo menor (casi nula) su extensión a PYMEs. La presente Tesis Doctoral, define y desarrolla una nueva metodología de implementación pan la generación automática de la información en los procesos de negocio que se verifican en empresas con requerimientos adaptados a las necesidades de la SGSF, dentro de los sistemas de gestión de los recursos empresariales (ERP), atendiendo a la influencia del factor humano. La validez del modelo teórico de la metodología mencionada se ha comprobado al implementarlo en una empresa del tipo PYME, del sector de Ingeniería. Para el establecimiento del Estado del Arte de este tema se ha diseñado y aplicado una metodología específica basada en el ciclo de mejora continua de Shewhart/Deming, aplicando las herramientas de búsqueda y análisis bibliográfico disponibles en la red con acceso a las correspondientes bases de datos
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