15 research outputs found
Georges Perec's Geographies
In Species of Spaces Georges Perec suggests various âPractical exercisesâ as a means to investigate the street. The instructions propose its exhaustive exploration through attention to what would be most obvious, common and therefore usually of no interest; to take up this methodology, investigators are told to go about things âmore slowly, almost stupidlyâ. As part of his project to reveal and understand the infra-ordinary, in Approaches to what, Perec makes clear that the purpose of such activity is to wrest âcommon thingsâ from the dross in which they remain mired and to give them a tongue, to âspeak of what is, of what we are.â As an artist-scholar researching âeverydayâ places through essayistic photographic practice, I am drawn to Perecâs specific injunction âForce yourself to see more flatlyâ, which reflects for me photographyâs ultimate translation of dimensional space into flat picture plane, and relates to what David Campany has described as modernist photographyâs âheightened interest in the surfaces of the worldâ.
This contribution emerges from photographic research, which takes up very literally the Perequian practice of seeing flatly, and attending to what is âmost colourlessâ: it investigates therefore, via the constraint of black and white image-making, the material surfaces encountered along the 12 minute walk from my home to the tram stop from which I commute to my university job. That Perec makes clear his interest in âA town: stone, concrete, asphaltâ, and recognises the âinvisible underground proliferation of conduitsâ, or the âunderneathâ of limestone, marl, chalk, gypsum, sand and lignite, encourages me to consider what lies exactly underfoot, passing unremarked on so many daily journeys. This visual essaying of the surface of a place (given that properly speaking an essay is a trial, test or experiment) will be excerpted for the current context, accompanied by a reflection upon Perecquian photographic practice as a method of artistic research, and what a determinedly superficial attention reveals about the infra-ordinariness of place
Are Immigrants and Nationals Born to Immigrants at Higher Risk for Delayed or No Lifetime Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening? The Results from a Population-Based Survey in Paris Metropolitan Area in 2010
Innovative research methods in health social sciences : an introduction
Innovative, or creative research, methods have become increasingly popular in the last few decades. In this chapter, I will include several salient issues on which chapters in the section on âInnovative Research Methods in Health Social Sciencesâ can be situated. First, I discuss some ideas about innovative and creative methods. This is followed with the notion of those who practice innovative methods: the innovative researcher. I will then bring readers through a number of innovative and creative methods that researchers have adopted in their research. These include the theoretical lens, arts-based and visual research methods, the body and embodiment research, digital methods, and textual (plus visual) methods of inquiry. As an innovative researcher, our choice of innovative methods primarily depends on the questions we pose; the people who are involved; our moral, ethical, and methodological competence as researchers; and the sociocultural environment of the research. As we are living in the world that continue to change, it is likely that health and social science researchers will continue to experiment with their creative methods in order to ensure the success of their research. I anticipate that in the future, we will see even more creative methods that researchers will bring forth
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Geographic patterns of tree dispersal modes in Amazonia and their ecological correlates
Funder: Brazilian Program for Biodiversity ResearchFunder: Fundação de Amparo Ă Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004916Funder: National Institute for Amazonian BiodiversityAbstract: Aim: To investigate the geographic patterns and ecological correlates in the geographic distribution of the most common tree dispersal modes in Amazonia (endozoochory, synzoochory, anemochory and hydrochory). We examined if the proportional abundance of these dispersal modes could be explained by the availability of dispersal agents (disperserâavailability hypothesis) and/or the availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits (resourceâavailability hypothesis). Time period: Treeâinventory plots established between 1934 and 2019. Major taxa studied: Trees with a diameter at breast height (DBH) â„ 9.55 cm. Location: Amazonia, here defined as the lowland rain forests of the Amazon River basin and the Guiana Shield. Methods: We assigned dispersal modes to a total of 5433 species and morphospecies within 1877 treeâinventory plots across terraâfirme, seasonally flooded, and permanently flooded forests. We investigated geographic patterns in the proportional abundance of dispersal modes. We performed an abundanceâweighted mean pairwise distance (MPD) test and fit generalized linear models (GLMs) to explain the geographic distribution of dispersal modes. Results: Anemochory was significantly, positively associated with mean annual wind speed, and hydrochory was significantly higher in flooded forests. Dispersal modes did not consistently show significant associations with the availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits. A lower dissimilarity in dispersal modes, resulting from a higher dominance of endozoochory, occurred in terraâfirme forests (excluding podzols) compared to flooded forests. Main conclusions: The disperserâavailability hypothesis was well supported for abiotic dispersal modes (anemochory and hydrochory). The availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits seems an unlikely explanation for the distribution of dispersal modes in Amazonia. The association between frugivores and the proportional abundance of zoochory requires further research, as tree recruitment not only depends on dispersal vectors but also on conditions that favour or limit seedling recruitment across forest types