Urban semiosis: Creative industries and the clash of systems

© The Author(s) 2014. This article has two aims. The first is to make the case that the ‘universe of the mind’ imagined by Yuri Lotman may be considered as a foundational model for cultural evolution (population-wide, dynamic, autopoietic, self-organising adaptation to changing environments). The second aim is to take forward a model of culture derived from Lotman’s work – a model I call ‘the clash of systems’ – in order to apply it to creative industries research. Such a move has the salutary effect of putting the ‘universe of the mind’ literally in its place. That place, now, predominantly, is in the city. Thus, the article uses Lotman’s model of the semiosphere to link different complex systems, principally the semiosphere with that of the city, in order to explore the productive potential of encounters – clashes – between different systems. Applying these insights to the field of creative industries research, the article proposes that creative culture in the globalised, urban and web-connected era can be characterised as ‘urban semiosis’

A mirror of society: a discourse analytic study of 15- to 16-year-old Swiss students’ talk about environment and environmental protection

Environment and environmental protection are on the forefront of political concerns globally. But how are the media and political discourses concerning these issues mirrored in the public more generally and in the discourses of school science students more specifically? In this study, we analyze the discourse mobilized in whole-class conversations of and interviews with 15- to 16-year-old Swiss junior high school students. We identify two core interpretive repertoires (each unfolding into two second-order repertoires) that turn out to be the building blocks of environmental discourse, which is characteristic not only of these students but also of Swiss society more generally. The analysis of our students’ discourse demonstrates how their use of interpretive repertoires locks them in belief talk that they have no control over ecological issues, which can put them in the danger of falling prey to ecological passivity. As a consequence of our findings we suggest that teachers should be endorsed to interpret their teaching of environmental issues in terms of the enriching and enlarging of their students’ interpretive repertoires

Valuation discourses and disciplinary positioning struggles of academic researchers—A case study of ‘maverick’ academics

10.1057/s41599-020-0427-2Palgrave Communications6