6,242 research outputs found

    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

    Non-Market Food Practices Do Things Markets Cannot: Why Vermonters Produce and Distribute Food That\u27s Not For Sale

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    Researchers tend to portray food self-provisioning in high-income societies as a coping mechanism for the poor or a hobby for the well-off. They describe food charity as a regrettable band-aid. Vegetable gardens and neighborly sharing are considered remnants of precapitalist tradition. These are non-market food practices: producing food that is not for sale and distributing food in ways other than selling it. Recent scholarship challenges those standard understandings by showing (i) that non-market food practices remain prevalent in high-income countries, (ii) that people in diverse social groups engage in these practices, and (iii) that they articulate diverse reasons for doing so. In this dissertation, I investigate the persistent pervasiveness of non-market food practices in Vermont. To go beyond explanations that rely on individual motivation, I examine the roles these practices play in society. First, I investigate the prevalence of non-market food practices. Several surveys with large, representative samples reveal that more than half of Vermont households grow, hunt, fish, or gather some of their own food. Respondents estimate that they acquire 14% of the food they consume through non-market means, on average. For reference, commercial local food makes up about the same portion of total consumption. Then, drawing on the words of 94 non-market food practitioners I interviewed, I demonstrate that these practices serve functions that markets cannot. Interviewees attested that non-market distribution is special because it feeds the hungry, strengthens relationships, builds resilience, puts edible-but-unsellable food to use, and aligns with a desired future in which food is not for sale. Hunters, fishers, foragers, scavengers, and homesteaders said that these activities contribute to their long-run food security as a skills-based safety net. Self-provisioning allows them to eat from the landscape despite disruptions to their ability to access market food such as job loss, supply chain problems, or a global pandemic. Additional evidence from vegetable growers suggests that non-market settings liberate production from financial discipline, making space for work that is meaningful, playful, educational, and therapeutic. Non-market food practices mend holes in the social fabric torn by the commodification of everyday life. Finally, I synthesize scholarly critiques of markets as institutions for organizing the production and distribution of food. Markets send food toward money rather than hunger. Producing for market compels farmers to prioritize financial viability over other values such as stewardship. Historically, people rarely if ever sell each other food until external authorities coerce them to do so through taxation, indebtedness, cutting off access to the means of subsistence, or extinguishing non-market institutions. Today, more humans than ever suffer from chronic undernourishment even as the scale of commercial agriculture pushes environmental pressures past critical thresholds of planetary sustainability. This research substantiates that alternatives to markets exist and have the potential to address their shortcomings

    With the Participatory Consumer Audience in mind: exploring and developing professional brand identity designers reflexive practice

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    This PhD reflects upon first-hand unidirectional and passive consumer audience experience approaches prevalent in professional UK brand identity design. It explores: How brand identity designers might move towards an improved reflexive practice in the design of consumer audience experiences. This practice-led research focuses on the ideas generation stage of their design process. An ongoing constructivist audience paradigm shift signals that when thinking about and using their positionality in relation to their consumer audience experiences, designers need reflexive practice to support critical reflection of themselves, their biases and assumptions. This research uncovered a lack of relevant theory regarding reflexive practice specific to the context of brand identity design. This insufficiency throws into doubt designers' relational, participatory and equitable approaches in their working practices and their abilities to address market imperatives, including client requirements connected to the ongoing audience paradigm shift. Aligned with John Dewey's ethical pragmatism and drawing from Creswell, Tashakkori and Teddlie, my study adopts a mixed methods methodology. Alongside established qualitative and quantitative methods, this includes my practice via design visualisations, as discussed by Drucker, and builds upon Carl DiSalvo's approach of practice used to do inquiry and design as a method of inquiry. My practice enabled me to critically reflect, evaluate and construct reflexive practice knowledge, including the development of reflexive practice communications, to advance understanding of and improve other designers' reflexive practice, and to communicate my process of reflexive design practice research. Thirty UK-based professional brand identity designers participated in this research: nineteen participants in Phase One, a questionnaire, and six in Phase Two semi-structured interviews. Phase One and Two findings identified a gap in that designers are not employing a reflexive design practice and lack the resources to do so. Seeking to improve these shortcomings, eighteen initial reflexive design practice principles were explored and tested in Phase Three, a workshop involving five design participants. Results showed that the principles facilitated participants to advance prior thinking and engage in a reflexive design practice. Further reflections and insights from the same five Phase Three participants uncovered a need to refine and reduce the principles and communicate them in a guide. Eight revised overarching and eighteen sub-principles in a prototype guide were explored in Phase Four in applied practice by three brand identity designers involved in Phase Three. Results corroborated workshop findings and provided further recommendations. Contributions of this research are three-fold. First, offering an advanced understanding of professional brand identity designers' reflexive practice and process knowledge. Second, it produced a reflexive design guide with eight overarching and eighteen sub-reflexive design principles and corresponding digital app, thereby offering a preliminary new design practice method. This method offers a way to improve designers' thinking about and operation of their relational positionality, participatory consumer audience experience approaches, and reflexive design practice actions. Third, it provides a contribution to knowledge via its methodology, which integrates design visualisation practice into a mixed methods approach

    Cycling Through the Pandemic : Tactical Urbanism and the Implementation of Pop-Up Bike Lanes in the Time of COVID-19

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    Provides an international overview on how tactical urbanism was implemented to give more space to cycling Demonstrates the conceptual framework surrounding tactical urbanism and how it plays out theoretically Proposes new methodological insights to understand the effects of tactical urbanism intervention

    Cultures of Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century: Literary and Cultural Perspectives on a Legal Concept

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    In the early twenty-first century, the concept of citizenship is more contested than ever. As refugees set out to cross the Mediterranean, European nation-states refer to "cultural integrity" and "immigrant inassimilability," revealing citizenship to be much more than a legal concept. The contributors to this volume take an interdisciplinary approach to considering how cultures of citizenship are being envisioned and interrogated in literary and cultural (con)texts. Through this framework, they attend to the tension between the citizen and its spectral others - a tension determined by how a country defines difference at a given moment

    Raising Critical Consciousness in Engineering Education: A Critical Exploration of Transformative Possibilities in Engineering Education and Research

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    This thesis represents a critical exploration of the opportunities, challenges, and barriers to enacting social justice via the engineering curriculum. Through an ethnographic case study of a British engineering for sustainable development course, I illuminate tensions and contradictions of attempts to “do good” while “doing engineering” in a higher education setting. This work is couched within critical and anti-colonial theoretical frames. Through critical and reflexive analysis, I illustrate attempts of participants to innovate in engineering education toward a counter-hegemonic engineering practice, and highlight transformative possibilities, as well as barriers. This case illustrates how the structures that formed modern engineering continue to shape engineering higher education, restraining attempts to transform engineering training for social good.A central question that has driven this work has been: Is it possible to cultivate a more socially just form of engineering practice through engineering higher education? The function of asking this question has been to interrogate a core assumption in engineering education research – that with the right blend of educational interventions, we can make strides towards social justice. My intent in interrogating this assumption is not to be nihilistic per se. I believe it is entirely possible that engineering could potentially be wielded for just cause and consequence. However, if we do not critically examine our core assumptions around this issue, we may also miss out on the possibility that socially just engineering is not achievable, at least in the way we are currently approaching it or in the current context within which it exists.An examination of this topic is already underway in the US context. However, it is under-explored in a British context. Given the different historical trajectories of engineering and engineering in higher education between these two contexts, a closer look at the British context is warranted

    The Relationship between Flexible Seating and Math Self-Efficacy for Elementary Math Teachers in Northeast Ohio

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    The purpose of this paper is to examine flexible seating and how it can be used to improve achievement in math. Based on the constructivist theory, flexible seating is defined as providing a variety of furniture options for seating that can be easily reconfigured to meet a variety of educational needs, including collaborative work. The purpose of this causal-comparative study is to determine if a statistical difference exists between the use of flexible seating during math instruction (independent variable) and math teacher self-efficacy (dependent variable). This study employed the TSES, short to measure teacher self-efficacy of a teacher who uses one or two types of flexible seating arrangements, three or more types of flexible seating arrangements, and teachers who do not use flexible seating arrangements. A convenience sample of 126 elementary math teachers in Northeast Ohio was used to determine the self-efficacy difference between teachers who utilized various flexible seating arrangements and teachers who utilized traditional seating. A one-way between-groups analysis of covariance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the research question and decide if the null hypothesis was rejected. Results indicate that there is a statistical difference between the use of flexible seating during math instruction and teacher self-efficacy. Implications for using flexible seating and future studies are included in this study

    Contextualising Universities’ Third Mission:A Study of African Women’s Participation in Academic Engagement

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    The traditional mandate of universities has been to undertake research and teaching activities. However, in recent times, universities are pursuing a ‘third mission’ by collaborating with societal partners, including firms. Research suggests that such academic engagement (AE) activities are expedient for achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Other studies have, however, drawn attention to the gender differences in men and women’s pursuit and practice of AE. In particular, scholars have shown that the masculine cultures and structures of universities and firms are averse to women researchers’ lived experiences and, thus, limit their participation in AE activities compared to their male colleagues. The emerging gender dynamics in AE has raised important, yet unanswered questions, regarding the potential of universities and firms to support the achievement of SDG5 (gender equality and women’s empowerment), especially in developing countries that are characterised by weak institutions. Given the importance of AE to the success of the SDGs, this thesis aims to fill this knowledge gap by first, providing an understanding of how the corporate sustainability practices of businesses are pragmatically contributing to the achievement of the SDGs related to gender, climate change, democracy, and poverty, within the contexts of Mexico, Ghana, Vietnam, and South Africa. Second, and focusing narrowly on the theme of gender and the sub-Saharan African context, the thesis sheds light on how and why gender differences exist in the opportunities for men and women researchers to participate in AE activities. Next, the study draws on Bourdieusian social theory and in-depth interviews with 36 women researchers from Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, and Botswana, to explicate how women researchers within these contexts utilise their agency to overcome the structural and cultural constraints impeding their involvement in AE activities. Finally, the thesis deepens insights into how, and why, the efforts of African women researchers to overcome the systemic constraints impeding their participation in AE activities, come to reinforce the very structures that establish those barriers. A key finding from the study is that AE promotes competitiveness and performativity in academia, which in turn distorts the gender equality targets enshrined in SDG5. In particular, the findings demonstrate that AE is a gendered and neoliberal activity that urges women researchers to develop and implement career strategies that sustain male privileges and female disadvantages within universities. Emerging from the analysis is also the fact that, although businesses can make significant contributions to the SDGs, a failure to embed community participation in their corporate sustainability principles and agendas, can reverse much of the progress made on SDG5. This thesis makes several contributions. First, it extends and pushes forward existing scholarship and policy discussions on the SDGs by empirically investigating a significant, but understudied group of women, whose voices and experiences in academia have rarely been acknowledged. In addition, the study provides novel insights into the socio-cultural dimension of sustainable development by highlighting the utility of community participation approaches to corporate sustainability practices. Importantly, this study offers another way of viewing the gender gap in AE by drawing on Bourdieu’s (1977) social theory to show how the current single-level and de-contextualised explanations of this problem limit our understanding of the interesting ways in which micro-individual career opportunities are shaped by contextual influences at the macro-level and organisational processes and practices at the meso-level

    ‘Inner qualities versus inequalities’: A case study of student change learning about Aboriginal health using sequential, explanatory mixed methods

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    Racism and lack of self-determination in health care perpetuate injury and injustice to Aboriginal people. To instil cultural safety at individual, organisational, community and systems levels, a key site of action has been health professional education that seeks to elicit reflexivity, cultural humility and a working understanding of Aboriginal health concepts. Studies in Aboriginal community settings show Family Well Being (FWB) empowerment education is effective in supporting personal and collective reflexivity and transformation through empowering life skills development. Implementation of FWB within educational settings shows early signs of effectiveness among students. Yet knowledge of the steps and processes of student change is lacking. This mixed methods explanatory case study sought to measure and understand change in postgraduate students of a leading Australian university learning about Aboriginal health and wellbeing through blended delivery, including through face-to-face immersion in FWB in an urban classroom. Three interrelated studies investigated fidelity and acceptability of the program, measured and analysed growth and empowerment in students, and explained processes of change observed, through thematic analysis of asynchronous online discussions using lenses based on transformative learning and empowerment. Researcher reflexivity was promoted by Aboriginal supervision. Over six years, 194 students enrolled in two different Aboriginal public health courses, 85 of them in the FWB course. As well as achieving program fidelity and acceptability, pre/post-course change in students across a range of emotional empowerment, personal growth and life-long learning processes was measured in the FWB group. Thematic analysis revealed students’ fluid and recursive processes of transformative learning in their professional selves and capacities to act in domains important to Aboriginal health. This case study contributes new knowledge critical to strengthening health professional capabilities for ever more complex, uncertain and emotionally demanding sites of practice, and to work in empowering ways—with, not for, Aboriginal people and communities

    Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management

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    This book is a reprint of the Special Issue 'Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management' that was published in the journal Buildings
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