Your Abjection is in Another Castle: Julia Kristeva, Gamer Theory, and Identities-in-Différance

Typified rhetorical situations are often a result of normalized ideologies within cultures; however, they also have the capability to produce new ideology. Within these discursive sites, identities are constructed among these normalized social acts. More importantly, these identities are constructed across many layers, not limited to one social act, but many that overlap and influence each other. In this paper, I focus on the identities that are constructed in marginalized spaces within sites of interacting discourse. Focusing on the rhetoric of abjection posited by Julia Kristeva, along with McKenzie Wark’s exploration of gamespace, a liminal theoretical space that encompasses the sites of analysis and ideology formation from the perspective of gamers, I analyze disruptions of normalized social practices in the gaming genre in order to implement the use of abjection as a method of understanding how sites of difference produce meaning for minoritarian subjects

Protest camps

Protest camps are global phenomena, occurring across a wide range of social movements and encompassing a diversity of demands for social change. They are spaces where people come together to imagine alternative worlds and articulate contentious politics, often in confrontation with the state. By taking a closer look at protest camps this book contributes two original insights. Firstly it provides a detailed investigation into the empirical history of protest camps from a global perspective, a story that has never been told before. Protest Camps will discuss a variety of examples of camps, taking the reader across different cultural, political and geographical landscapes of protest. Secondly the book will contribute to the understanding of the role of protest camps in contentious politics. This book argues that protest camps are unique spaces in which activists form collective political identities and enact experimental and experiential forms of democratic politics

Saudi Women Online Practices on Social Media Platforms: A Qualitative Multi-Method Study

This study is a part of an ongoing PhD research into Saudi women’s online practices across a number of social media platforms (SMP) (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram). The focus of this thesis is first to discover Saudi women’s online practices across different SMP, and second, to explore the relationship between these practices and Saudi women’s identities. A qualitative multi-method approach is adopted, including online observations and semi-structured interviews. Following purposive and snowballing sampling, twelve Saudi women from different cities in Saudi Arabia (Jeddah, Riyadh, and Dammam) participated. Initial findings indicate that (a) Saudi women’s online practices vary across SMP by appropriating platforms’ features and affordances, (b) SMP are used as spaces where Saudi women cautiously manage contexts’ collapse and divide with different audiences across SMP, and (c) Saudi women’s online practices have reshaped their offline identity and vice versa, and Saudi women’s offline identities are represented online as a part of their online identities. Though there is a growing body of literature in HCI, CHI, and CSCW in social media studies within the Arab and Gulf regions (GCC), there is little research addressing Saudi women’s online practices on SMP in particular. Therefore, this study aims to make a novel contribution to the field of socio-technological integration, and particularly how cultural contexts shape technology adoption, to help form a greater understanding of the challenges involved

Spaces of informalisation : playscapes, power and the governance of behaviour

Geographers have contributed a great deal towards an understanding of social control across different spaces and the ways in which power is exercised in the interests of élite groups to the detriment of marginalised ‘others’. Little attention however, has been given to decontrolled spaces: spaces where the standard of conduct expected of previous generations is no longer as rigid and formalised as it once was. This paper draws on the work of Norbert Elias and Cas Wouters in exploring how previously prohibited behaviours become admissible within particular social situations, groups and settings: a process known as informalisation. The informalisation thesis posits that a long-term perspective can elucidate the ways in which gradual changes in expected standards of behaviour are linked to corresponding changes in social habitus and the power differentials that characterise the social relations between élite and outsider groups. The paper contends that a revision of the sociological concept of informalisation, emphasising spatial context and difference, can contribute a great deal to debates in human geography. It is argued that the spatialisation of Elias' work could provide a useful theoretical framework with which to enhance the geographer's understanding of the relationship between group identities, power, social change and governance. Conversely, a focus on the spaces of informalisation may also advance the theory from a sociological perspective. The theory is applied to specific playscapes and highlights the uneven, problematic nature of contemporary governance projects and the related problem of social misdiagnoses in the quest towards the ‘non-antagonistic’ city

The learning migration nexus: towards a conceptual understanding

Learning and identity formation are inescapable facets of the upheavals accompanying migration; movement across social space inevitably involves reflection, questioning and the need to learn new ways of being and new identities. Although migration is characterised by complexity and diversity, this paper suggests that we can identify key learning perspectives which illuminate the nexus between learning and migration. It argues for an approach which grounds learning in an understanding of socio-cultural space, and highlights the significance of policy discourses surrounding migration and integration. Within the conceptual framework suggested, the nature of learning is seen as multifaceted, and as having the potential to have both positive and negative outcomes for migrants

Reclaiming Sacred Space

I wrote this piece for myself as a hybrid of personal discovery and academic inquiry, and I hope it can guide and empower others like myself. In this piece, I examine the intersections of queer identity with religious and spiritual identity development and discuss how practitioners can help students reclaim sacred space. Foregrounding my personal narrative and expanding with scholarship, I show why this development deserves attention from student affairs professionals. I give both programmatic and institutional considerations to review when centering religious and spiritual development for LGBTQ students

Combining thematic and narrative analysis of qualitative interviews to understand children’s spatialities in Andhra Pradesh, India

One of the foremost questions for any researcher setting out on a qualitative study is which form of analysis to use. There are a diverse range of qualitative analytical methods, each offering different forms of insight. In this paper, we discuss our experience of combining two distinct but complementary analytic methods – thematic and narrative analysis. We provide a worked example that combines the two approaches to analyse secondary data from the Young Lives study (see www.younglives.org.uk), in a project carried out as part of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Node, NOVELLA (Narratives of Varied Everyday Lives and Linked Approaches, see www.novella.ac.uk). We reflect on the challenges and benefits that result from our combined approach, aiming to illuminate the ways in which the integration of narrative and thematic analysis can support and enrich understanding of a complex dataset

Learning through social spaces: migrant women and lifelong learning in post-colonial London

This article shows how migrant women engage in learning through social spaces. It argues that such spaces are little recognised, and that there are multiple ways in which migrant women construct and negotiate their informal learning through socialising with other women in different informal modes. Additionally, the article shows how learning is shaped by the socio-political, geographical and multicultural context of living in London, outlining ways in which gendered and racialised identities shape, construct and constrain participation in lifelong learning. The article shows that one way in which migrant women resist (post)colonial constructions of difference is by engaging in informal and non-formal lifelong learning, arguing that the benefits are (at least) two-fold. The women develop skills (including language skills) but also use their informal learning to develop what is referred to in this article as 'relational capital'. The article concludes that informal lifelong learning developed through social spaces can enhance a sense of belonging for migrant women

Multiliteracies, Pedagogy and Identities:Teacher and Student Voices from a Toronto Elementary School

In this article, I draw on an ethnographic case study of one Toronto elementary school, as part of a Canada‐wide action research project: Multiliteracy Project (www.multiliteracies.ca). I have explored how Perminder, a grade‐4 teacher, devel‐ oped a multiliteracies pedagogy, drawing on her own and her students’ identities and linguistic and cultural forms of capital to create learning opportunities for all students to access the English mainstream curriculum. Alternative pedagogical choices in‐ cluded students’ creation of multimodal dual language “identity texts” (Cummins, Bismilla, Cohen, Giampapa, & Leoni, 2005a), and identity work, expanding literacy practices valued within Canadian classrooms. Key words: critical pedagogies, critical literacies, ESL/EAL, identities, Multilit‐ eracy Project, urban schools Dans cet article, l’auteure part d’une étude de cas ethnographique portant sur une école primaire de Toronto, étude réalisée dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche‐ action pancanadien, The Multiliteracy Project (www.multiliteracies.ca). Elle analyse comment Perminder, une enseignante de 4e année, a mis au point une pédagogie en matière de multilitératies. Puisant dans sa propre identité et dans celles de ses élèves ainsi que dans diverses formes de capital linguistiques et culturelles, elle offre à tous ses élèves la possibilité d’apprendre et ainsi d’avoir accès au curriculum standard en anglais. Parmi les choix pédagogiques novateurs figuraient la création par les élèves de « textes identitaires » (Cummins et coll. 2005a) multimodaux en deux langues et des travaux portant sur l’identité, élargissant ainsi les pratiques en matière de littéra‐ tie jugées utiles dans les classes canadiennes. Mots clés : pédagogies critiques, littératies critiques, ESL/EAL, identités, The Multiliteracy Project, écoles urbaines.

Medium for empowerment or a 'centre for everything': students’ experience of control in digital environments within a university context

In maximising opportunities to nurture rich and productive learning communities, there is a need to know more about the cultures and sub-cultures that surround virtual learning environments (VLEs). Drawing from a small-scale interview study of students’ digital practices, this paper explores how different discourses may have patterned a group of students’ experiences of VLEs. Unlike studies which have focused upon evaluations of specific projects or interventions, this study investigated their experience across their course. It explores the student identities they associated with digital environments and the power relationships which seemed to pattern how they positioned themselves (or felt positioned) as learners. Whilst none were intimidated by technical aspects, the student identities available to them seemed to vary, as did their perceptions of the student identities associated with university-sponsored digital environments. The analysis considers three aspects of their experience: how they related to the VLE itself, how they related to others through this, and the alternative communities they created to attempt to manage their engagement with the VLE. The paper concludes by arguing for further research which focuses on the broader student experience across courses in order to explore how university-based digital environments intersect with students’ identities as learners