325 research outputs found
The experience of enchantment in human-computer interaction
Improving user experience is becoming something of a rallying call in humanâcomputer interaction but experience is not a unitary thing. There are varieties of experiences, good and bad, and we need to characterise these varieties if we are to improve user experience. In this paper we argue that enchantment is a useful concept to facilitate closer relationships between people and technology. But enchantment is a complex concept in need of some clarification. So we explore how enchantment has been used in the discussions of technology and examine experiences of film and cell phones to see how enchantment with technology is possible. Based on these cases, we identify the sensibilities that help designers design for enchantment, including the specific sensuousness of a thing, senses of play, paradox and openness, and the potential for transformation. We use these to analyse digital jewellery in order to suggest how it can be made more enchanting. We conclude by relating enchantment to varieties of experience.</p
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âDead people donât claimâ: A psychopolitical autopsy of UK austerity suicides
One of the symptoms of post financial crisis austerity in the UK has been an increase in the numbers of suicides, especially by people who have experienced welfare reform. This article develops and utilises an analytic framework of psychopolitical autopsy to explore media coverage of âausterity suicideâ and to take seriously the psychic life of austerity (internalisation, shame, anxiety), embedding it in a context of social dis-ease.
Drawing on three distinct yet interrelated areas of literature (the politics of affect and psychosocial dynamics of welfare, post and anti-colonial psychopolitics, and critical suicidology), the article aims to better understand how austerity âkillsâ. Key findings include understanding austerity suicides as embedded within an affective economy of the anxiety caused by punitive welfare retrenchment, the stigmatisation of being a recipient of benefits, and the internalisation of market logic that assigns value through âproductivityâ and conceptualises welfare entitlement as economic âburdenâ. The significance of this approach lies in its ability to widen analytic framing of suicide from an individual and psychocentric focus, to illuminate culpability of government reforms while still retaining the complexity of suicide, and thus to provide relevant policy insights about welfare reform
Entrepreneurship, incongruence and affect: drawing insights from a Swedish anti-racist organisation
In recent years, entrepreneurship has been reconceptualised as social change. Understood as such, entrepreneurship can be viewed to disrupt and disturb the social order. We argue in this paper that Foucaultâs notion of heterotopia and Lacanâs concepts of the real and anxiety help us to conceptualize the disturbing aspect of entrepreneurship as social change, and understand why the latter may encounter social resistance. Our contribution to critical entrepreneurship literature is to first emphasise that entrepreneurship instigates social change by introducing incongruence, and second, to highlight that this process can be affective: it can create anxiety. The paper uses an illustrative historical case-example of a Swedish anti-racist commercial magazine (Gringo) to elucidate these points. We conclude by pointing out that anxiety may be necessary for the provocation of social transformation
Lady Gaga as (dis)simulacrum of monstrosity
Lady Gagaâs celebrity DNA revolves around the notion of monstrosity, an extensively
researched concept in postmodern cultural studies. The analysis that is offered in this
paper is largely informed by Deleuze and Guattariâs notion of monstrosity, as well as
by their approach to the study of sign-systems that was deployed in A Thousand
Plateaus. By drawing on biographical and archival visual data, with a focus on the
relatively underexplored live show, an elucidation is afforded of what is really monstrous
about Lady Gaga. The main argument put forward is that monstrosity as sign
seeks to appropriate the horizon of unlimited semiosis as radical alterity and openness
to signifying possibilities. In this context it is held that Gaga effectively delimits her
unique semioscape; however, any claims to monstrosity are undercut by the inherent
limits of a representationalist approach in sufficiently engulfing this concept. Gaga is
monstrous for her community insofar as she demands of her fans to project their
semiosic horizon onto her as a simulacrum of infinite semiosis. However, this simulacrum
may only be evinced in a feigned manner as a (dis)simulacrum. The analysis of
imagery from seminal live shows during 2011â2012 shows that Gagaâs presumed
monstrosity is more akin to hyperdifferentiation as simultaneous employment of
heterogeneous and potentially dissonant inter pares cultural representations. The article
concludes with a problematisation of audience effects in the light of Gagaâs adoption of
a schematic and post-representationalist strategy in the event of her strategyâs emulation
by competitive artists
How Malthusian Ideology crept into the Newsroom: British tabloids and the coverage of the âunderclassâ
This article argues that Malthusianism as a series of discursive regimes, developed in the Victorian-era, serves in times of austerity to reproduce an elite understanding of social exclusion in which those in a state of poverty are to blame for their own situation. It highlights that Malthusianism is present in the public discourse, becoming an underlining feature in news coverage of the so-called âunderclassâ. Our findings broadly contradict the normative claim that journalism âspeaks truth to powerâ, and suggest instead that overall as a political practice, journalism tends to reproduce and reinforce hegemonic discourses of power. The piece is based on critical discourse analysis (CDA), which has been applied to a significant sample of news articles published by tabloid newspapers in Britain which focussed on the concept of the âunderclassâ. By looking at the evidence, the authors argue that the âunderclassâ is a concept used by some journalists to cast people living in poverty as âundeservingâ of public and state support. In so doing, these journalists help create a narrative which supports cuts in welfare provisions and additional punitive measures against some of the most vulnerable members of society
At the Crossroads of Sustainability: The Natural Recompositioning of Architecture
It is widely acknowledged that the mantra of sustainability has triggered a fundamental reversal in the core of design practice: If the original purpose of architecture was to protect humans from the destructive actions of nature,today it should protect nature from the damaging actions of humans. But sustainable design is far from being a coherent body of fully totalized ideas:it has a broad spectrum of disputing interpretations that oscillate between the
deterministic models of energy control and technological efficiencies, and the moralistic and romantic approaches that attempt to see in nature and natural processes a fundamental way to de-escalate the global urban footprint and its associated patterns of consumption.
However, mainstream green design has been evolving by progressively absorbing the narrative of deep ecology. Nature has been being integrated into architecture literally, by inserting vegetation onto buildings; digitally, by bringing environmental data into the design process (climate records, wind streams, sun rotation and air flows are computed, modelled and effectually shape architectures), and transcendentally, by claiming that sustainable architecture nurtures âthe existing and evolving connections between spiritual and
material consciousness.â The acknowledgement of the inexorable affiliation between architecture and the environment is, of course, not exactly new. What
is distinctive today is the reification of the role of nature in architecture as an ideological stance, now totally intertwined with state-of-art data processing
and the market-driven tools brought by Natural Capitalism.
This paper will examine emblematic âgreenâ buildings produced by leading architects such as Pelli Clarke Pelli, William McDonough, Stefano Boeri,
Norman Foster and BIG in the light of Tim Mortonâs, Slavoj Zizek and Bruno Latourâs critique of nature. It will illustrate how, despite being able to successfully
forge new creative freedoms by exploring hybridizations between the domains of design and science, sustainabilityâs self-righteous ânaturalisticâ narrative is enabling a vision of the architect as an âexpert managerâ
focused on producing projects of ecologic âbeautificationâ while assumed to be âsaving the world,â effectively depoliticizing the architectural practice.
Nevertheless, these examples attest that there is a vast and fertile field of ideas to be explored and in this regard it is important to underline that we are still
in the embryonic outset of the engagement of architecture with sustainability
Cultural Consumption Through the Epistemologies of the South: 'Humanization' in Transnational Football Fan Solidarities
In 2014, Boaventura de Sousa Santos awoke the global sociological community to the need to privilege âhumanizationâ in the exploration of transnational solidarities. This article presents the cultural consumption of a football club â Liverpool FC â to understand the common âloveâ, âsufferingâ, âcareâ and âknowledgeâ that fans who are part of the âBrazil Redsâ or âSwitzerland Redsâ (although not all fans engaged in such communities are âfromâ Brazil or Switzerland) experience. The argument is that the global North lexicon of social class, ethnicity, gender and, especially, nationality is less significant as starting points for analysis than humanization through shared love, which consolidates Liverpool FC fansâ transnational solidarities. Accordingly, the article calls for the epistemologies of the global South to be used to understand the practices of cultural consumption that constitute activities in the sphere of everyday life, such as those involved in âloveâ for a football club
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