Towards a Philosophy of the Musical Experience: Phenomenology, Culture, and Ethnomusicology in Conversation

This dissertation engages the questions and methodologies of phenomenology, the philosophy of culture, the philosophy of music and ethnomusicology in order to investigate the significance of music in human life. The systematic orientation of Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms provides the overarching framework that positions the approach in chapter one. Following Cassirer, art in general and music in particular are not regarded as enjoyable yet dispensable pastimes, but rather as fundamental ways of experiencing the world as intuitive forms and sensations. Establishing the ontological significance of music entails unpacking the sui generis experience of time, space and subjectivity that characterize the musical experience. Phenomenology, in particular the thought of Alfred Schütz, provides a point of departure for thinking more concretely about the musical experience. The turn to phenomenology is motivated both by its systematic consanguinuity with Cassirer’s project as well as its insistent focus on the details of lived experience. However, bolstered by what is argued to be a more holistic description of the musical experience gleaned from the work of ethnomusicologists, Schütz’s phenomenological account of the music is challenged on a number of key issues such as music’s ontological status and the tendency to equate “music” with “musical works.” Despite the blind spots of his writings on music, Schütz’s phenomenology of the social world proves to be a useful framework for thinking about the multiplicity of ways in which music is experienced as meaningful and how the equivocality of the concept of musical meaning brings the social nature of the musical experience into view. Sociality also figures into a discussion of improvisation, an important theme that has only relatively recently begun to receive philosophical attention. Arguing that an adequate philosophical treatment of music must account for both the variety of musical cultures as well as the variety of musical practices, a consideration of improvisation helps philosophy think outside of the work-paradigm that was critiqued in chapter two

Automated Image Interpretation for Science Autonomy in Robotic Planetary Exploration

Advances in the capabilities of robotic planetary exploration missions have increased the wealth of scientific data they produce, presenting challenges for mission science and operations imposed by the limits of interplanetary radio communications. These data budget pressures can be relieved by increased robotic autonomy, both for onboard operations tasks and for decision- making in response to science data. This thesis presents new techniques in automated image interpretation for natural scenes of relevance to planetary science and exploration, and elaborates autonomy scenarios under which they could be used to extend the reach and performance of exploration missions on planetary surfaces. Two computer vision techniques are presented. The first is an algorithm for autonomous classification and segmentation of geological scenes, allowing a photograph of a rock outcrop to be automatically divided into regions by rock type. This important task, currently performed by specialists on Earth, is a prerequisite to decisions about instrument pointing, data triage, and event-driven operations. The approach uses a novel technique to seek distinct visual regions in outcrop photographs. It first generates a feature space by extracting multiple types of visual information from the image. Then, in a training step using labeled exemplar scenes, it applies Mahalanobis distance metric learning (in particular, Multiclass Linear Discriminant Analysis) to discover the linear transformation of the feature space which best separates the geological classes. With the learned representation applied, a vector clustering technique is then used to segment new scenes. The second technique interrogates sequences of images of the sky to extract, from the motion of clouds, the wind vector at the condensation level — a measurement not normally available for Mars. To account for the deformation of clouds and the ephemerality of their fine-scale features, a template-matching technique (normalized cross-correlation) is used to mutually register images and compute the clouds’ motion. Both techniques are tested successfully on imagery from a variety of relevant analogue environments on Earth, and on data returned from missions to the planet Mars. For both, scenarios are elaborated for their use in autonomous science data interpretation, and to thereby automate certain steps in the process of robotic exploration

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Deliverable 1.1 review document on the management of marine areas with particular regard on concepts, objectives, frameworks and tools to implement, monitor, and evaluate spatially managed areas

The main objectives if this document were to review the existing information on spatial management of marine areas, identifying the relevant policy objectives, to identify parameters linked to the success or failure of the various Spatially Managed marine Areas (SMAs) regimes, to report on methods and tools used in monitoring and evaluation of the state of SMAs, and to identify gaps and weaknesses in the existing frameworks in relation to the implementation, monitoring, evaluation and management of SMAs. The document is naturally divided in two sections: Section 1 reviews the concepts, objectives, drivers, policy and management framework, and extraneous factors related to the design, implementation and evaluation of SMAs; Section 2 reviews the tools and methods to monitor and evaluate seabed habitats and marine populations.peer-reviewe

Affective Societies: Key Concepts

Affect and emotion have come to dominate discourse on social and political life in the mobile and networked societies of the early 21st century. This volume introduces a unique collection of essential concepts for theorizing and empirically investigating societies as Affective Societies. The concepts engender insights into the affective foundations of social coexistence and are indispensable to comprehend the many areas of conflict linked to emotion such as migration, political populism, or local and global inequalities. Each chapters provides historical orientation; detailed explication of the concept in question, clear-cut research examples, and an outlook toward future research

Making “healthy” families: the biomedicalization of kin marriage in contemporary Turkey

This thesis focuses on the impact of reproductive genetic health services on the making of “healthy” families in Turkey by exploring how kin marriage is being conceptualized, managed, and negotiated as a genetic risk factor and reproductive health concern within intersecting biomedical and genetic spaces in contemporary Turkey. It asks how notions of “healthy” reproduction and “healthy” family making inform the health policies, discourses and practices surrounding the biomedical management of kin marriage, and how couples practicing kin marriage respond to and negotiate concepts of “risky reproduction” and “genetic risk” in their experiences with genetic services. Although kin marriages as close as first cousin marriage are legally accepted and comparatively frequent in Turkey, these marriage patterns have long occupied a contested position within Turkey’s society. Modernist nationalist discourse depicted kin marriages as a remnant of the Ottoman past signifying the lingering presence of internal “non-modernity”, “traditionalism” and “Oriental” otherness. These existing legacies of otherization and stigmatization of kin marriage have gained a new biomedical quality with the emerging re-conceptualization of kin marriage as a reproductive health problem following the spread and routinization of reproductive genetic health services in Turkey from the 1980s onwards. This “biomedicalization” (Clarke et al. 2003) of kin marriage has shifted the question of how future citizens should be brought up in a socially and politically desirable familial environment to the question of how these future citizens should be conceived and born in the first place. Based on a critical reading of relevant government issued texts on reproductive health, family making and kin marriage, 19 qualitative interviews with medico-genetic professionals as well as 18 qualitative interviews with lay participants practicing kin marriage, and observations during a two-and-a-half months stay at a public genetics clinic in Istanbul, this thesis explores the (bio)political implications of this biomedicalization process

On the Shores of Education: Urban Bodies, Architectural Repetitions, and the Mythic Space of End Times

Orienting around Plato's allegory of the cave, this dissertation looks back to earlier mythological and historical roots and forward to the spatial aesthetics of "occupation" and "No Child Left Behind," to trace the enduring connection between philosophies and practices of education and sacrificial journeys of descent and emergence. This thematic work of repetition, birth and death, is not so much knowable as it is the privileged way in which we enact and recognize knowing itself. Education, as a spatial practice and a narrative rehearsal, is a way of situating ourselves and organizing our places. Urban Education, rather than being a beleaguered branch of Education proper, cleaves to the very project of Education, emerging as it does out of cities. This is an examination of the philosophical, architectural, urban, aesthetic, and embodied conditions and strategies by which we learn to remember and forget ourselves

The Making of the Humanities, Volume III. The Modern Humanities

This comprehensive history of the humanities focuses on the modern period (1850-2000). The contributors, including Floris Cohen, Lorraine Daston and Ingrid Rowland, survey the rise of the humanities in interaction with the natural and social sciences, offering new perspectives on the interaction between disciplines in Europe and Asia and new insights generated by digital humanities