Author as ethnographer: The merging of genres in Raymond Carver's and Thomas Pynchon's texts

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1999Several of Raymond Carver's short stories and two of Thomas Pynchon's novels are analyzed for their ability to function as ethnography, through which they reveal the dominant and dominated codes in American culture. These texts were approached from an interdisciplinary stance, using theories and concepts from literary criticism, cultural anthropology, and sociology in order to interpret them with a greater degree of accuracy; because the text is treated as an ethnographic representation of a culture, it is possible to turn to it as the sole illustration of cultural elements and, in doing so, to be more open to addressing themes that the text explicates, rather than approaching the it with a preconceived agenda of what necessarily constructs American culture. By focusing in this manner on Carver's and Pynchon's texts as accounts of what is to be "American," it is possible to remain closer to what the texts portray and to avoid misreadings as well as misinterpretations of culture. Through these authors' representations of characters who defy mainstream cultural codes, the reader encounters in these authors' works what mainstream America finds most unsettling: characters who are not only alienated, but also aware of their status as outsiders and, more frequently than not, choose to embrace deviance in their self-definitions. Carver and Pynchon, when taken together, afford the reader with a vision of our culture that explores the dissociation and alienation that cuts through our society regardless of class or background. In their varying presentations of reality, they offer complementary views of distinct American subcultures that feature characters who are isolated and who generally denounce mainstream ideals. Conformist society is merely hinted at within the texts; its presence appears through its absence, characters' recognition of what they are denying, and what characters are denied. Both authors feature characters who identify aberrant behavior, for which rule-breaking individuals are labeled. Characters, once labeled, adopt secondary deviance and instigate a deviant career, from which the authors rarely permit a reprieve. The effect of labeling is the creation of a schism in the social fabric of American culture, which is characterized by the societal exclusion of individuals who do not uphold the dominant beliefs. American culture is also characterized by assimilation; as characters in Carvers and Pynchon's texts resist this process, they pose a threat to the social order, which is the prime factor in their labeling

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

A Review of Verbal and Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interactive Communication

In this paper, an overview of human-robot interactive communication is presented, covering verbal as well as non-verbal aspects of human-robot interaction. Following a historical introduction, and motivation towards fluid human-robot communication, ten desiderata are proposed, which provide an organizational axis both of recent as well as of future research on human-robot communication. Then, the ten desiderata are examined in detail, culminating to a unifying discussion, and a forward-looking conclusion

To Stage a Reading: The Actor in British Modernism

The popular British theatre of the late nineteenth century has often been regarded as both aesthetically and politically bankrupt: bombastic and spectacular, it offered a vision of sensational theatricality lacking both the formal innovation and the intellectual charge of the later avant-garde stage and of literary modernism. My dissertation, by contrast, argues that one element of the nineteenth-century stage survived and claimed a place at the heart of British modernism: the idea of the actor. In successive chapters stretching from 1897 to 1958, I take up works of fiction and drama by Bram Stoker, Bernard Shaw, T. S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, revealing how various performers of the late-Victorian stage became essential to the formation of modernist aesthetics. I show that the actor's significance lay not only in her cultural station but also in her subversive mediation of artistic convention and self-conscious reenactment of the past; by returning to the performers of the 1890s, these British and Irish writers reconceived the terms that are central to our understanding of modernism: personality, history, and tradition. As the late-Victorian stage passed out of living memory, these writers continued to invoke the actor in their treatments of the technological proliferation of text, the politics of reading during the First World War, the authority of obituary in the literary tradition, and the potential for re-writing historical progress through the lens of community theatre. Positioned between media--theatre, poetry, and the novel--and also between opposing visions of creativity and the artistic process, my research intervenes in related discussions in both theatre studies and the scholarship on modernist literature. By focusing on the art of the actor at this pivotal moment in both theatrical and literary history, I challenge the dominant assumption of an abstract anti-theatricality on the modernist stage by discussing the ambivalently "naturalistic" performance styles of Henry Irving, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Marie Lloyd, and Ellen Terry. Likewise, I argue that their art of acting reframes the key terms of literary modernism by reversing the prerogatives of textuality and the cultural practice of reading. In these ways, the actor provided a means of continually restaging the advent of modernity (and the death of the past) into the middle of the twentieth century

Understanding collective international opportunity recognition : Studies on Finnish SMEs exploring maritime and offshore industry markets in Norway and Russia

This doctoral research was triggered by my interest in understanding why some Finnish maritime and offshore sector SMEs engage in a joint entry to new, challenging foreign markets, such as neighbouring Norway and Russia, while others do not. On this basis, the objective of the thesis is to explore the dynamics of the collective international opportunity recognition process among Finnish maritime and offshore industry SMEs that aim at joint internationalisation. This objective is divided into the following research questions: (1) How do individual entrepreneurs recognise collective international opportunities? (2) How do several entrepreneurs together recognise collective international opportunities? (3) How does the collective international opportunity recognition process evolve over time? These questions are answered in four empirical articles that constitute the core of the thesis. The employed theoretical framework builds on three streams of literature: international opportunity recognition, mental images and sensemaking, and network interaction. The qualitative data were collected primarily via biyearly interviews from 2015 to 2017 with representatives of Finnish maritime industry SMEs exploring business opportunities in Norway and Russia. The thesis contributes particularly to the international entrepreneurship literature by providing insight into collective international opportunity recognition, a process critical to the joint internationalisation of SMEs yet highly understudied. First, by introducing mental images specific to opportunity contexts and by exploring the dynamics of auspicious and ominous sensemaking involved in an individual’s recognition of collective international opportunities, this thesis sheds light on the individual-level aspects of the phenomenon. Second, by investigating two forms of inter-firm sensemaking, that is, collective and fragmented sensemaking, the study provides insight into how multiple individuals from different firms come to recognise, together, an opportunity for joint internationalisation. Third, by building on the process-based approach, this thesis provides understanding on the temporal dynamics of collective international opportunity recognition: mental images and sensemaking processes evolve over time through various kinds of events and determine whether managers recognize opportunities for joint internationalisation in the future. In addition, this thesis provides avenues for further research and offers managerial and policy recommendations for supporting the joint internationalisation of SMEs.Tämä väitöskirjatutkimus sai alkunsa kiinnostuksestani ymmärtää miksi jotkin suomalaiset meri- ja offshore-teollisuuden pk-yritykset lähtevät yhteistyössä kansainvälistymään uusille haastaville markkinoille, kuten Norjaan ja Venäjälle, kun taas toiset eivät. Väitöskirjan tavoitteena onkin tutkia kollektiivisten kansainvälistymismahdollisuuksien tunnistamisen dynamiikkaa sellaisten suomalaisten meri- ja offshore-teollisuuden pk-yritysten keskuudessa, jotka pyrkivät kansainvälisille markkinoille yhteistyössä. Tämä tavoite jakautuu edelleen seuraaviin tutkimuskysymyksiin: (1) Miten yksittäiset yrittäjät tunnistavat yhteisen kansainvälistymisen mahdollisuuksia? (2) Miten useat yrittäjät yhdessä tunnistavat yhteisen kansainvälistymisen mahdollisuuksia? (3) Miten yhteisten kansainvälistymismahdollisuuksien tunnistaminen kehittyy ajan kuluessa? Vastaan näihin kysymyksiin neljässä empiirisessä artikkelissa, jotka muodostavat väitöskirjan ytimen. Tutkimuksen teoreettinen viitekehys yhdistää elementtejä kolmesta tutkimuskirjallisuudesta, jotka ovat kansainvälisten mahdollisuuksien tunnistaminen,’mielikuvat’ (mental images) ja ’järkeistäminen’ (sensemaking), sekä vuorovaikutus yritysverkostoissa. Olen kerännyt tutkimuksen kvalitatiivisen aineiston haastattelemalla Norjan ja Venäjän liiketoimintamahdollisuuksia tutkailevien suomalaisten meriteollisuusyritysten edustajia puolivuosittain vuosina 2015–2017. Väitöskirja edistää erityisesti kansainvälisen yrittäjyyden kirjallisuutta luomalla uutta ymmärrystä kollektiivisten kansainvälisten mahdollisuuksien tunnistamisesta, joka on pk-yritysten kansainvälistymiselle kriittinen, mutta silti vielä varsin tutkimaton ilmiö. Ensinnäkin, tutkimuksen mukaan eri mahdollisuuskonteksteihin liittyvät mielikuvat sekä hyväenteinen ja pahaenteinen järkeistäminen ovat keskeisiä yksilötason elementtejä yhteisten kansainvälisten mahdollisuuksien tunnistamisessa. Toiseksi, yritystenvälisellä tasolla hajautununut ja kollektiivinen järkeistäminen puolestaan määrittävät miten useat yksilöt yhdessä tunnistavat mahdollisuuksia kansainvälistyä yhteistyössä. Kolmanneksi, tämä prosessipohjainen tutkimus avaa ilmiön ajallista dynamiikkaa; miten mielikuvat ja järkeistäminen kehittyvät erilaisten tapahtumien myötä ja vaikuttavat siihen miten johtajat tunnistavat yhteisen kansainvälistymisen mahdollisuuksia tulevaisuudessa. Tutkimus tarjoaa myös jatkotutkimusehdotuksia sekä suosituksia pk-yritysten yhteisen kansainvälistymisen tukemiseksi

Addressing climate vulnerability : promoting the participatory rights of indigenous peoples and women through Finnish foreign policy

Julkaistu versi

Towards a complete multiple-mechanism account of predictive language processing [Commentary on Pickering & Garrod]

Although we agree with Pickering & Garrod (P&G) that prediction-by-simulation and prediction-by-association are important mechanisms of anticipatory language processing, this commentary suggests that they: (1) overlook other potential mechanisms that might underlie prediction in language processing, (2) overestimate the importance of prediction-by-association in early childhood, and (3) underestimate the complexity and significance of several factors that might mediate prediction during language processing