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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Critical and Cultural Studies'
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Ciszek, Erica L. "Identity, culture, and articulation| A critical-cultural analysis of strategic LGBT advocacy outreach." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3640180.
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This study examines how LGBT activists and LGBT youth make meaning of a strategic advocacy campaign. By examining activist and advocacy efforts aimed at youth, this research brings to light how LGBT organizations use campaigns to articulate identity and, conversely, how LGBT youth articulate notions of identity. Through the lens of the It Gets Better Project, a nonprofit activist organization, this dissertation uses in-depth interviews with organizational members and chat-based interviews with LGBT youth to study the meanings participants brought to the campaign.
Strategic communication has been instrumental in construction of LGBT as a cohesive collective identity and has played a vital role in the early stages of the gay rights movement. This research demonstrates how contemporary LGBT advocacy, through strategic communication, works to shape understandings of LGBT youth.
Instead of focusing on the Internet as a democratic space that equalizes power differentials between an organization and its publics, this study shows that the construction of identity is the result of a dynamic process between producers and consumers in which power is localized and does not simply belong to an organization or its public.
This research challenges the Internet as a democratic space and demonstrates that identity is a discursive struggle over meaning that is bound up in the intimate dance between producers and consumers of a campaign. In contrast to functionalist understandings of public relations that privileges the organization, this dissertation contends that a cultural-economic approach focuses on the processes of communication. A cultural-economic approach gives voice to the diverse audiences of a communication campaign and addresses the role communication plays as a discursive force that influences the construction of identities.
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ZUSER, Tobias. "Hidden agenda? Cultural policy in Hong Kong’s urban redevelopment." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2014. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/21.
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For many years industrial buildings in Hong Kong have formed some of the city’s most vibrant cultural clusters by providing local artists with low-cost space to pursue their creative work. However, recent efforts by the government also targeted these areas for commercial revitalization. By 2020 the industrial part of Kwun Tong, a densely populated district in Kowloon East, will not only have been transformed into the city’s second Central Business District, but also seen the majority of the current cultural workers leaving due to the rapid valorisation of land. Nevertheless, these ongoing struggles over spatial power have also opened up a new space for a critical debate on Hong Kong’s urban planning and cultural policy strategies. This research uses the non-compliant Kwun Tong livehouse Hidden Agenda as a case study to shed light on the prospects for Hong Kong’s cultural diversity in its material, social and symbolic form of cultural clusters. By critically investigating research across different disciplines, I argue that—although the mere exposure of the contradictions between cultural planning and urban creativity discourses is significant—the governmental conditions that have been enabling the emergence of such spaces in the first place are often neglected by scholars and planners alike. Therefore, in order to understand both the destructive and productive impact of spatial power on Hong Kong’s cultural production, this thesis aims to examine the room for maneuvers within planning and policy discourses by expanding the Foucauldian approach of cultural policy studies to the domain of space.
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Petruska, Karen C. PhD. "The Critical Eye: Re-Viewing 1970s Television." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2012. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/communication_diss/38.
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In my dissertation entitled “The Critical Eye: Re-Viewing 1970s Television,” I argue that TV scholars would benefit greatly by engaging in a more nuanced consideration of the television critic’s industrial position as a key figure of negotiation. As such, critical discourse has often been taken for granted in scholarship without attention to how this discourse may obscure contradictions implicit within the TV industry and the critic’s own identity as both an insider and an outsider to the television business. My dissertation brings the critic to the fore, employing the critic as a lens through which I view television aesthetics, media policy, and technology. This study is grounded in the disciplines of television studies, media industries studies, new media studies, and cultural studies. Yet because the critic’s writing reflects the totality of television as an entertainment and public service medium, the significance of this study expands beyond disciplinary concerns to a reconsideration of the impact of television upon American culture.
This project offers a history of the television critic during the 1970s, a decade in which the field of criticism professionalized and expanded dramatically. Methodologically, I am incorporating three approaches, including historical research of the 1970s television industry, textual analysis of critical writing, and interviews with critics working during that decade. I’ve identified the 1970s for a variety of reasons, including its parallels with today’s significant technological and industrial transformations. My central texts will be the industry trade publications, Variety and Broadcasting, and national daily newspapers including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune. Viewing TV criticism as a profession, a historical source, and a site of scholarly analysis, this project offers a series of interventions, including a consideration of how critical writing may serve as a primary source for historians and how television studies has overlooked the significance of the critic as an object of analysis in his/her own right.
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CASTILLO, BAUTISTA Roberto Carlos. "Africans in Guangzhou : a cultural analysis of transnationality amongst Africans on the move." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2015. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/25.
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Over the last three decades, the shifts brought about by the ‘rise of China’ as a key player in global capitalism have had implications in a myriad of places, practices and imaginations. One such implication can be seen in the decade long presence of an African population in the southern city of Guangzhou.
In this dissertation, I look into the dynamics informing this presence by focusing on transnational connections, relations and practices. I take up the call (coming from different fields in the Humanities and Social Sciences) for an analysis of transnationality grounded in the everyday experiences of individuals ‘on the move’ (physically and metaphorically). Accordingly, in this dissertation I provide an extensive ethnographic analysis, accompanied by theoretical formulations, to explain how is African presence in Guangzhou (re)produced and what are the possibilities for the future.
Throughout these pages, I contend that transnationality entails much more than mere ‘movement’ across borders, and, as such, can be analysed from multiple perspectives. So, while I pay attention to issues of border crossing, connections beyond the reach of the state, and the reproduction of livelihoods from multiple locations, I also explore how is the transnational embodied in people and things (in emotions and aspirations, as well as in materialities), and embedded in placemaking processes. Hence, drawing from my fieldwork, I identify several ‘discursive sites of the transnational’ (i.e. neighbourhoods, things and practices, organisations, and aspirations, amongst others) from where, without necessarily undertaking international travel, one could critically observe and analyse how the complex material, political, affective and emotional geographies of transnationality unfold and expand. In this dissertation I present, thus, a ‘local’ multi-scalar approach to transnationality in the case study of Africans in Guangzhou.
The dissertation is divided into five chapters. In the first chapter, I present a historical overview of Guangzhou, focusing on the spatial conditions that facilitated the arrival (and continued presence) of foreigners in the city. I place an emphasis on highlighting how Africans articulate with China’s transprovincial migrants (and other populations) at the local level, and I problematise extant conceptualisations about the sociospatial formations emerging in the city. In Chapter 2, I explore how certain material formations have emerged after the arrival of foreigners to the city. I provide an ethnographic account of how multiple multiethnic interactions are mediated through certain objects and practices (that I construe as repositories, or sites, of the transnational). In Chapter 3, through the analysis of grassroots forms of organisation amongst Africans in the city, I discuss issues of placemaking and mobility and offer an insight into the complex relations between transnational movement, emplacement, identity, ‘homing’ and citizenship. In Chapter 4, I focus on the hopes, desires, and possibilities, what I call the ‘landscapes of aspiration’, amongst African musicians in the city. I argue that aspirations are crucial drives that not only move and motivate people but that help individuals to navigate through, and make sense of, their transnational journeys. Finally, Chapter 5 presents a theoretical discussion that advocates for a re-conceptualisation of the ‘transnational’ (and transnational mobilities) away from methodological nationalism. I argue that methodological nationalism is a burden that thwarts understandings of the multiple dimensions of contemporary forms of human movement.
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COPPOOLSE, Anneke. "Trash, a curatorial : an ethnographic and visual study of waste in urban Hong Kong." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2015. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/26.
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This is an ethnography of waste in the streets of urban Hong Kong and a curatorial inquiry into the significance of its visuality. Presented in the form of a triptych, the dissertation probes and portrays fragments of urban life in Hong Kong, consequently opening up a new vista for intellectual and social engagement at the juncture of aesthetics, lived experiences, and power. While urban density provides for its equivalent in trash, much of Hong Kong’s refuse first lands in the streets. It is thereupon regulated to be rendered invisible through government organisation which corresponds with what Gay Hawkins (2007) calls “the modern imaginary of the tidy city” where order and hygiene are brought together towards a ‘smooth running of things’ (Žižek 2006 in Moore 2012). Hawkins (2007) also states, however, that no city 'can hide the excesses of consumption'. Indeed, no matter the attempts at the ridding of rubbish in the modern city, trash keeps reappearing. Also Hong Kong has a waste problem that goes beyond its exhausting landfills. ‘It’s everywhere!’, as its collectors indicate. Both formal and informal collectors continuously pick up trash. This conflicting location between desired tidiness, persistent trash, and constant collection, it is argued here, is a political sphere that is largely negotiated visually. Taking on the collectors’ views of “trash in place” (in the streets; the city), I therefore rethink what is commonly understood as “matter out of place” (Douglas 2002) in the modern city. Emphasising the significance of the visuality of trash – understanding visuality as “an embodied process of situation, positioning, re-memory, encounter, cognition and interpretation” (Rose and Tolia Kelly 2012) – I advance the ethnographic project with curatorial practices, putting the collectors’ perspectives on trash and those of local artists in dialogue. From this dialogue, this thesis presents three “panels” on waste in urban Hong Kong. The “panels” engage in matters of order and duty, social networks and places, and the visuality and instantaneous of the everyday, to then reconsider the aesthetics of trash and the politics of urban life more generally. The thesis presents a range of different stories, therefore, about the instant undoing of disorder in the modern city, the (re)valuing of discards via social networks of excess, and the “unordering of the sensible” by means of a repositioning of trash. The triptych in its entirety, finally, manifests possibilities for methodological innovations on everyday matters of aesthetics and power.
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LEE, Eun Soo. "The discourse of ruination : interrogating urban renewal In Hong Kong." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2016. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/28.
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As stated in the Urban Renewal Strategy (2011), “the problem of urban decay” has been identified as the major task of urban renewal in Hong Kong. Rows of densely packed, “dilapidated” tenement buildings constitute the imaginary of a declining urban landscape that, much like the squatter areas of the 1950s, are seen to pose threats to public health and to the “prestige” of Hong Kong. I propose the concept of the discourse of ruination as a way to interrogate and at the same time, de-naturalise the pervasive assumption of the problem of decay, which serves to rationalise and perpetuate the cycle of destruction and renewal. I argue that crucial to this process is how certain sites are identified and framed as “pockets of decay”, which simultaneously “brings ruin upon” these spaces by rendering them as useless. This research investigates (educational) exhibitions, operated by the key actors of urban renewal to observe how exhibitions, as discursive practice, construct and consolidate knowledges about urban decay, and how it configures and normalises the logic of urban renewal. In the second case study, I present a critical reflection of the ongoing preservation project of the Blue House Cluster in order to highlight how heritage preservation is incorporated into the larger framework of urban renewal, and the erasures entailed in ‘preservation’ in the process of transforming ‘ruins’ to ‘heritage’. By converging insights derived from ‘ruin studies’, and studies on urban space and its power relations, this thesis aims to illuminate how the ‘discourse of ruination’ operates in the logic of urban renewal in Hong Kong.
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INTON, Michael Nuñez. "The bakla and the silver screen : queer cinema in the Philippines." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2017. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/30.
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This study looks at representations of the bakla in Philippine cinema from 1954 to 2015. I argue that the bakla, a local gender category that incorporates ideas of male homosexuality, effeminacy, cross-dressing, and transgenderism, has become a central figure in Philippine cinema. I examine the films of Dolphy, the actor who was the first to popularize bakla roles in mainstream cinema, and I outline several tropes that create the bakla image in movies: “classical” kabaklaan (being bakla), which involves crossdressing, effeminacy, and being woman-hearted; the conversion trope, where the bakla stubbornly resists being forcibly masculinized by the men that surround him; and women’s enabling of the bakla to perform femininity despite his male body. The bakla also becomes trapped in the dialectic between the genres of comedy and melodrama – the bakla then becomes either a comic relief character or a tragic character, someone who should be both pitied and admired for enduring tragic circumstances.
Since the word bakla colloquially means both the gay man and the transgender woman, I also look at the intersections between the bakla and global transgender rights discourse in Philippine cinema. I argue that the bakla’s male body and his female heart mirror contemporary thinking about transgenderism, where a person’s birth-assigned sex does not match their gender identity. I look at films in the science fiction/fantasy adventure genre and examine how the male body is transformed into a female body – whether through medical or magical means – but the bakla gender category remains pervasive. I next look at independent films and how the camera constructs bakla sexuality in cinema by framing the male body as an object of desire. I also examine how the bakla have shifted their sexuality from the desiring the otherness of the macho lalake (masculine man) to desiring sameness in the form of other bakla (masculine gay men). Incidentally, this shift in the object of sexuality coincides with the shift in gender performance from “traditional” kabaklaan, with its elements of effeminacy and crossdressing, to a more homonormative image, mirroring the “modern” discourse of gay globality.
Finally, I examine the contemporary Philippine celebrity star system and the popularity of bakla films within the last decade. I argue that Vice Ganda becomes representative of the ideal bakla, one who is affluent but still ‘reachable’; opinionated and politically engaged with LGBT rights; and finally, funny and comic in a way that is empowering for himself, but also in manners that are abrasive and offensive.
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WEN, Cuiyan. "Heritagising the everyday : the case of Muyuge." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2018. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/otd/20.
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Ever since the commencement of the new millennium, intangible cultural heritage, the cultural concept and campaign promoted by the UNESCO has rapidly spread the world. In China, thousands of traditional cultures and everyday practices have been absorbed into the intangible heritage system over the past decade, which is reshaping people's perception and engagement with everyday life and traditions. Intangible cultural heritage as an 'imported' concept has been highly localised and resituated in contemporary China. I seek to examine how intangible heritage as a prevalent cultural phenomenon incorporates everyday practices into regional and national narratives in China in light of the marketization of traditional culture and the political and cultural agenda of 'the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation'. Furthermore, I attempt to historicise the concept of heritage in China's history of modernisation especially since around the establishment of the PRC in 1949. Through the historicised approach, I aim to demystify the imaginary of heritage and interrogate how cultural heritage turns from something to be reformed in the revolutionary era to something to be 'protected' and 'preserved' in the consumer society.
Under such scope, l examine in detail the changes of mwywge (木鱼歌),a former popular everyday practice in the Pearl River Delta area, as it successively becomes an intangible heritage ofthe provincial and national levels. Despite its prevalence, muyuge was peripheral, marginalised in the both the cultural and geographical senses. I contextualise muyuge in the economic restructuring of the Pearl River Delta area and analyse the process of an everyday practice being reconstructed as an intangible heritage. Based on fieldwork interviews, policy analysis and media analysis, I particularly examine the reconstruction of muyuge's performing practices, the reshaping of muyuge practitioners and its connection with the restructuring of an industrial town. I argue that intangible heritage is gradually replacing previous values and understanding of folk culture with ideas of capital, market and nationalistic identities, and that the autonomy of everyday life has been dissolved and re-incorporated into the dominant discourse.
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PAN, Jiaen. "自我保護與 "另類" 實踐 : "雙向運動" 視野下的中國鄉村建設." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2012. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/17.
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本論文希望把中國鄉村建設運動放置在更為複雜與動態的脈絡下，嘗試以一種有別于“成王敗寇”邏輯的敍述與視野，通過參與者獨特的視角，結合起微觀與宏觀層面，將具體實踐扣聯（articulate）到近代中國轉型的“百年激進”、“百年鄉村破壞”、“百年鄉建”這一主線中。以理解鄉村建設的生命力、深層意義與內在困境，並在此基礎上對已有各種“類型化”評價認識、“刻板化”參照座標及背後的“意義系統”進行梳理與反思。
為更好實現以上目的，筆者借助卡爾•波蘭尼“雙向運動”視野，但努力避免因生搬硬套而“削足適履”式的尋找或對應本土及“三農”領域的“雙向運動”，而是更多借鑒其“視野”上的啟示。希望通過該“視野”的幫助，讓筆者可以更好的探討那些被遮蔽與忽略的面向，進而解決困擾筆者的理論思考與現實實踐問題。同時，本論文結合了歷史與當代鄉村建設的各組案例，實踐所蘊含的複雜性與豐富性也希望可以推進筆者對“雙向運動”發生及運作機制所展開的討論。
正如標題所示，本論文希望從“自我保護”和“另類實踐”結合起來的角度重新理解鄉村建設的定位與特點及其與“主流”社會的複雜關係及互動。它們既是鄉村建設的主要意義，同時也決定其將一直面對著各種困境與矛盾張力。
本論文借鑒文化研究的思想資源及其對脈絡與扣聯的強調，希望以此打破“研究者-行動者”、“理論-實踐”的習慣性分割。同時希望能跳出一般分析所隱含“樂觀-悲觀”、“積極-消極”的二元框架，也挑戰將鄉村建設納入“效果論”、“好人好事說”和“效果論”這三種常見的類型化處理。故本文儘量避免事實羅列、簡單代言與一般辯護，而是呼應以個人參與鄉村建設的生命史，反觀其中的興奮、困惑、不甘、無奈等複雜情感與認識，除以此帶出對所存在社會基礎與宏觀環境的討論外，希望再次說明鄉村建設的動力與張力。
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KHO, Tung Yi. "Eurocentrism, modernity and Chinese sociality : an ethnographic study of everyday socio-cultural life in new-millennium China." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2014. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/22.
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This dissertation seeks to contribute to our understanding of Eurocentrism, Modernity,and their impacts on traditional Chinese cultural formations. It is based on ethnographic research conducted in Shenzhen, South China and Qinghai, West China, and explores the impacts of Chinese modernization on everyday forms of sociality.
I conceive of Eurocentrism foremost as an Ontology, a mode-of-being grounded in a cosmology about the nature of reality and human being-and-becoming in the world. I argue that because Eurocentrism is an ontology predicated on materialism and individualism - “matter” being the basis of reality and the “individual”, the fundamental unit of society, respectively - it was able to manifest materially and to spread by way of coloniality. Its perpetuation was justified by two interrelated premises: that the West in being Modern was the avant-garde of progress and, concomitantly, that the history of the West should be the fate of all humanity. It is on the pretension of being Modernity’s progenitor, along with its corollary of the Modern being Universal, that Eurocentrism was materialized as an ontology throughout the globe. Because of Modernity’s historical imbrication with the West, one cannot speak of Modernity without implicating Eurocentrism and vice versa.
The ideologies of Euro-Modernity have permeated the Chinese social fabric since the colonial encounters of the 19th C. The depth of their penetration renders the desire for Modernity in China today ubiquitous: being modern is verily the mark of progress. But since the Modern is of Eurocentric provenance, involving a certain cultural ontology that was itself the result of a momentous religio-cultural revolution in the West, my research is animated by the following query: How and to what extent has the Eurocentrism implied in Chinese modernity transformed traditional forms of Chinese sociality? My research thus consists of an ethnographic study of contemporary Chinese cultural change, examining Modernity’s impact on the most fundamental aspects of Chinese culture today: its forms of sociality.
My studies in Shenzhen and Qinghai reveal that while much of Chinese life has adopted the standard ideologies and practices of Modernity, rich socio-cultural practices of communality and kinship remain. These practices of sociality are a crucial cultural resource making possible the felicities of everyday Chinese living. They stabilize and sustain Chinese socio-cultural life as it is confronted by the de-culturing effects of Modernity. This insight is noteworthy since it challenges the ubiquitous faith that becoming Modern will yield a better life in some hoped-for future, mostly by material progress. Against this, my findings suggest that the “better” life in China is already attainable in the here-and-now, inhering not in greater material progress but in the nourishment of the relations that have traditionally bound kith and kin. Hence, life’s meaning does not reside in the domain of matter, as per the illusion of Modernity; it is found in the ineffable realm of moral economy and sociality: in the mutuality-of-ourbeing. This insight harbours potential, for if acted upon, offers up all peoples the possibility of a human future beyond the monoculture of Modernism.
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YAU, Lai To Herman. "The progression of political censorship : Hong Kong cinema from colonial rule to Chinese-style socialist hegemony." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2015. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/24.
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Censorship is an important cultural regulatory instrument for the government of a society, or even a state. In certain socio-political settings, it can become a powerful administrative appartus (dispositif) and technique (techne) designed to render society governable. Censorship decisions often embody hegemonic views on social and political issues. No matter how virtuous the original intent maybe, the practice of censorship is inevitably geared to the social tensions surrounding issues of human rights and political dissent. The theory behind film censorship may once have been benign but banning or cutting a movie always involves an unnatural set of procedures and actions. This study examines this problem in the context of socio-political changes in Hong Kong. It is an enquiry into the evolution of political film censoship in its more conventional form to its full-fledged integration into other institutions and policies under today's 'on country, two systems' policy. It also analyses the discourse surrounding the changes in film censorship practices from the days of early cinema to Hong Kong in the 21st century. By contextualizing Hong Kong cinema from a historical and political perspective, the study of the Hong Kong experience aims to shed light on censorship's socio-political meanings for, and effects on, filmmakers and film production.
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CHENG, Keng Liang. "「超越藍綠」、想像「中國」、參照「香港」下的台灣政治論述." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2016. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/27.
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本論文疏理台灣民主化過程中，訴諸「超越藍綠統獨」的「台灣」民主共同體形構及其「中國」想像。「超越藍綠」是分析對象，包括1980年代末以來國民黨與民進黨的「藍綠」政治論述，以及「超越藍綠」的社會運動論述，想像「中國」是分析當中台灣主體形構的「中國」想像，參照「香港」是以香港的「中國」想像為對照，並試圖回應「今日香港明日台灣」的說法。
本論文分為四章節：「中國統一」與「台灣獨立」、國民黨與民進黨的「藍綠統獨」、知識批判界與社會運動的「超越藍綠」，香港的「中國」想像。本論文指出，台灣國民黨的反共「中國統一」與反國民黨的「台灣獨立」意義，是訴諸他者「中國」的威脅，建構政治現代化的自我。在此論述下，國民黨與民進黨在國家認同與兩岸主張上，形成「藍綠統獨對立」的立場，但各自政治論述又共同召喚面對「中國」（中共）的政治與經濟危機想像，共構政治上捍衛台灣「主權－民主」完整與經濟上追求兩岸「經濟發展共榮」的共同體想像。社運與批判知識界的「超越藍綠」，雖然企圖超越藍綠民粹化的對立，並修補政黨輪替後民進黨執政的「民主創傷」，但隨著國民黨重新執政與強調兩岸共榮的中國政策/超越藍綠」接合「藍綠」的「中國」迫切焦慮，從解決內部「民主創傷」轉為「捍衛台灣民主」、對抗外部「中國因素」的政治修辭，藍綠政黨也挪用此修辭標榜自身優於對方政黨的正當性。「超越藍綠」成為消費性的符碼，陷入「藍綠統獨」的迴圈。香港的「中國」想像，則凸顯「中國」內在於香港人民基層歷史與日常生活中，有難以切割的距離，進而問題化「香港」與「中國」的對立指稱，是台灣重新想像「中國」的可能參照。
知識批判上，本論文疏理台灣「藍綠統獨對立」問題的「中國」論述，作為未來「中國」轉向的討論基礎。政治意義上，本論文反思政治「藍綠」到社會運動「超越藍綠」的民粹化困境。最後，本論文嘗試提出「人民」與「階級」的「第三方」，作為超克前述困境與「中國」想像侷限的未來方向。
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SUN, Guoyuan. "在不明不暗的虚妄中寻找青春 : 当代中国“80 后”非政府组织工作者的价值观和行为转变研究." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2016. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/29.
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这是一个关于人的成长和转变的叙事研究。本研究的问题意识是：一方面，1990 年代以来，伴随着中国社会的进一步市场化，青年文化呈现出去政治化、物质主义、“小时代”的窄化的走向。越来越多的青年人希望进入“体制”，以求得社会认可、物质有保障之生活。但另一方面，1990 年代以来亦是中国民间非政府组织（NGO）迅速发展的时期，一小部分青年人选择在NGO 工作。然而，NGO 长期以来面临着公众的不理解、政府一定程度的漠视甚至猜测以及物质上的低回报。本研究正是希望进入NGO 工作者的生命故事，理解他们为何逆社会窄化的价值之流、选择在NGO 工作，形成了怎样的文化以及如何形成这一文化。另一方面，本研究亦希望向组织内部回观以批判性地分析NGO 携带的意识形态、操演等如何对工作者的价值观和行为产生不经意的影响，以期改造其身处之社会脉络。
因此，本研究试图回答的研究问题是：在1980 年代以来的社会脉络之下，“80 后”NGO 工作者如何与发展主义和“小时代”的青年文化、以及NGO 内部的文化与操作进行协商？形成了怎样的价值观和行为方式？
本研究通过叙事研究方法，深入理解10 位NGO 工作者的生命故事和日常实践。采取Dorothy Holland 等(1998)的形意世界(figured worlds)理论视角，本研究认为：一方面，NGO 工作者在参与NGO 的过程中增进了自我认识和成长，对社会发展有更深的理解和反思，并且形成一定的介入社会和公共生活的行动。另一方面，NGO 的操作中，可能带有缩窄批判思考和开放的学习多种思想资源的空间，缺乏对社会问题成因和解决方案的深入分析与公开论述，习惯性地以“主流”/“另类”二元简化的分析视角，这无益于NGO 工作者的成长，也可能阻碍NGO 对于社会和人的改造的工作。
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VAN, HOUTEN Sjoukje Marloes. "Greed, grief, a gift. War-traumatized women and contextualizing expressive arts therapy." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2016. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/31.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation explores the universality of trauma-storing in the body and the need for contextualization when it comes to treatment. Of the two central themes addressed, the first is war-related trauma and the intersection of expressive arts therapy and South (East) Asia (Nepal and Hong Kong in particular) with its specific imagery, art, and culture, and to see how both feed into each another and can transform as a result. The question is how to locally sensitize expressive arts therapy, which has its roots in Europe and the United States, to the Hong Kong setting; more specifically, to working with Nepali women who try to make Hong Kong their new home. The dissertation suggests a holistic, locally, and culturally sensitive approach to expressive arts therapy. This means adjusting the expressive arts framework and practices to the local and cultural setting, as well as looking at the resources (myths, dance forms, breathing practices, rituals, etc.) present in the local culture and including them in the anthropological approach to trauma transformation.
The second theme addressed is the importance of critically reflecting on power within therapeutic relationships, especially in trauma treatment, and recognizing the ontological underpinnings underlying therapy as well as our ‘human self-concept’, which leads to the acknowledgement of only a certain type of human experience, that of conscious, self-aware subjects in control of their acts. The latter leaves little room for understanding traumatic experiences, in which trauma victims seem to be unable to remember or shape the traumatic event. In Walter Benjamin’s dissertation, any kind of representation of our personal and collective identities is seen as a curation. When approaching history as a ‘collection’ of memories, it creates room for traumatic experiences to exist. Benjamin’s dissertation is applied to understanding trauma in such a way where it is precisely the discontinuity, the disparities, the ruptures of history and memory that make trauma visible; these are the gifts handed to the next generation. It is the piecing together of fragments and uncertainties that transforms trauma into a space of insight, creating meaning from what is known and unknown, bridging the stories and images of history present in our implicit and explicit memory.
In the critical reflection on traumatology, a Foucauldian approach is taken regarding the therapist-client relationship. Foucault speaks of a top-down apparatus with policies that act under the guise of ‘protect and serve’, and language that frames the clients as a helpless victim in need of ‘betterment’ by the therapist. The only way for therapists to tackle the problem of trauma and psychotherapy, and to admit its social/cultural construction and the role of power, is to read themselves into the problem, to go beyond one-way mirroring, to analyze their pathology, and attempt to change patterns of communication that reproduce the psy-complex apparatus. In this thesis the latter is done by including the creative and analytic reflections of expressive arts therapists and of the author herself.
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WONG, Yuk Ying Sonia. "Learning to be a lesbian : identity and sexuality formation among young Hong Kong lesbians." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2017. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/32.
Full textAbstract:
While the LGBT equal rights movements in Hong Kong have become increasingly visible and popular in recent years, and lesbians, when compared to homosexual male, seem to enjoy high visibility in the city’s public space and relevant safety from violent discrimination, their presence in the public sphere continue to be low. Writings by local queer activists and scholars such as Mary Kam Pui Wai (2001) and Denise Tang (2011) point out that instead of violent attacks, since the beginning of local LGBT activism, female have been facing systematic silencing and marginalizing within the community, their presence invisible, and their problems often ignored or trivialized. However, lesbians are not imagined to be, and do not perceive themselves as, the most oppressed and disadvantageous members within the larger LGBT community.
This study proposes that this seeming apolitical attitude and lack of acknowledgement of their marginalized position are the results of the unique “lesbian learning” taken place in the Hong Kong context that render their positions invisible and their problems unspeakable. I want not only to explore what these young women conceptualize as lesbian identity and sexuality, but through proposing the notion “lesbian learning”, offer a new framework to articulate and examine the formation and construction of the “field of sensible” that conditions their learning about lesbian(ism) in terms of perceptual equipment, information flow, as well as strategies of management and application, to see the meanings attributed to this identity, and the nuanced struggle for and negotiation of their lesbian identity formation, as both gender and sexual identity.
The findings of this study shows that their conceptualization of lesbian identity as gender and sexual identity is largely conditioned by how they have learned to be female, with normative gender social expectations having a huge influence on how they perceive their sexual identity and sexuality, and their priority. Through documenting and examining the process of their learning the lesbian identity and ways of managing it, I hope to shed light on the mechanisms behind the social construction of female subjectivity that conditioned the specific configuration of lesbian identity and sexuality in the Hong Kong context, and the close ties between the two.
To this end, 26 women between the ages of 20 - 30 were interviewed, additionally I spent 2 years conducting in-depth follow-up interviews and participant observation. With the help of social constructionist accounts of contextualization, interactionist accounts of meaning-making, the theory of sexual scripts, and Foucauldian notions of discourse and discipline, I seek to analyze how the Hong Kong lesbian subject is created, maintained, and regulated, both within different institutions operating at specific sites, namely family, school, and pornography, and by the lesbians themselves. By proposing the notion of “lesbian learning”, this study seeks to offer a new methodological tool of intervention, to examine the network of conditions of intersectional positions, and the negotiated agency of their understanding and imagination of identity, gender, and sexuality in the context of Hong Kong.
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CHEN, Shuo. "經典製造 : 金庸研究的文化政治." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2003. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/otd/12.
Full textAbstract:
金庸自一九五五年在新晚報開始連載第一篇武俠小說《書劍恩仇錄》，至一 九七○年封筆作《鹿鼎記》，共創作了十五部小說。這十五部小說在華人世界中 歷久不衰，更引起不少討論。一九八四年，台灣遠景出版社出版了一系列「金 學研究叢書」，「金學」一詞正式出現。最初，討論金庸作品都以短小的筆記型 文章為主，集中在閱讀金著的感受、討論書中情節和人物等。一九八○年代末 開始，「金學」己成為學術界的熱門研究課題，有大學更主辦「金庸小說學術研 討會」，與會者多為享負盛名的學者，最近更出現了所謂「金庸學」(Jinyonology) 一詞。「金學研究集」發行人王榮文認為金庸「極有可能在有生之年看到其作品 「經典化」的完成，這真是古今中外作家們少有的幸運」。王德威在《金庸小說 國際學術研討會論文集》的序言中亦提到：「本書的出版，無疑為金庸作品經典 化發展，再下一城。」
這情況在當代華文創作圈中非常罕有，實在是一個值得深思的文化現象。 金庸小說能發展到現在成為「經典」，內在原因當然是其小說本身的確是不可多 得的好作品。然而，這並不是唯一，甚至不是最重要的原因，外在的文化脈絡 因素發揮的作用更大。作為作者，金庸花了很大心力把自己的小說包裝成「經 典文學」呈現在讀者面前；另外，經過中國大陸、香港和台灣的學術界和文化 界不斷討論，金庸小說終於成為「經典」。然而，由於三地的政治文化環境不同， 金庸小說的經典化在中港台所經歷的道路也有很大差異。本論文的研究目的， 首先是分析金庸如何為其小說製造出一個「經典」形象，再進一步對金庸小說 不同的經典化過程作一疏理，從而探討其間三地在金學研究現象中所包涵的文 化政治意義。
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Reynolds, Alexandra. "Crowdsourcing, curating and network power : towards a critical crowdsourced cultural archive." Thesis, Kingston University, 2016. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/35849/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores the use of the crowdsourced digital archive in contemporary museological and cultural projects and investigates ways co-creation can be used more critically and meaningfully by museums, galleries and wider cultural initiatives. A primary focus of the project is the inherent relationship between the archive, curator, power and politics, particularly in relation to the performative mechanisms through which hegemonic power produces, mediates and consolidates cultural norms and ideals. Specifically, this project seeks to explore the complex relationship between the crowdsourced cultural archive and contemporary capitalist power, defined variously as New Capitalism, Network Capitalism or Inclusive Neoliberalism. Referring to a range of contemporary crowdsourced projects, the thesis argues that many existing participatory digital archives performativelt replicate and consolidate hegemonic cultural norms, mirroring historical archival forms in this way. Further, I argue that particular structuration of contemporary capitalism requires that attempts at critically or political action tend to be reassimilated into hegemonic power. Nonetheless, responding to calls for critical digital networks by theorists such as Jodi Dean (2008) and Geert Lovink (2011), the thesis aims to identify new models for the design and structuration of future critical crowdsourced archives. The project looks to Tactical Media, Hacktivism and Critical Digital Art to explore effective online criticality within New Capitalism, while an investigation of alternative architecures for critical collaboraion is undertaken with reference to Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and Net Art. Through this research, tenets for future critical crowdsourced cultural projects are delineated, paying particular attention to the role of the curator within the co-created project and critical approaches to digital architecture and design. The thesis primarily employs interpretive research based in Cultural Studies, but also includes findings from nine interviews undertaken with prominent digital project leaders. It is hoped the research will contribute to knowledge within Digital Humanities, Art and Design History, Museum and Gallery Studies, Design Theory and Cultural Studies, as well as contemporary curatorial and archival practice in museums and galleries.
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HUANG, Weizi. "當代中國文化明星的製造 : 變動的文化生產場." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2010. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/13.
Full textAbstract:
本文借助並修訂了布爾迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu）的理論框架，透過對中國大陸二十世紀九十年代以來文化明星的製造進行研究來理解變動中的文化生產場 (field of cultural production)，並探討在其間知識分子作為的新可能。文化明星問題之所以值得特別研究，首先是由於它處於當代中國文化生產的中心，涉及到電視、圖書、平面媒體、互聯網等不同的文化生產次場域（sub-field），以及製作人、 出版人、文化明星本人、“粉絲” (fans) 和批評者所代表的不同力量。考察圍繞著製造文化明星的複雜的關係網絡，正可以勾勒出當代中國變動的文化生產場域的概貌。其次，文化明星的產生和生產是對九十年代以來知識分子危機的一種回應，是知識分子問題的變奏。理解了文化明星的製造機制，有助於尋找在當下的文化生產場中知識分子作為的新可能。
本文選取余秋雨、易中天、于丹和韓寒四個個案進行深入分析。余秋雨是公認的第一個最成功的文化明星，對其案例進行研究揭示了文化明星產生的歷史轉變。易中天和于丹的案例則代表著著一種可以複製的成熟的文化明星製造模式的出現。韓寒的形象及製造是一種有別于以上主流文化明星的另類模式。
本文綜合運用多種研究方法，包括對十幾名相關的文化生產者進行訪問，組織了一個針對粉絲的焦點小組（focus group），並且到電視節目錄製現場、出版 社和大型書店進行參與式觀察。此外亦有歷史檔案梳理和文本、話語分析。 最終，本文繪製出了不同的文化明星在當代中國文化生產場中的位置，反思了現有文化明星生產模式的後果，並對知識分子/文化生產者參與文化生產提出有針對性的建議。
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SHEN, Dan. "後CEPA 時期香港電影懷舊想像中的「本土」身份書寫." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2014. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/23.
Full textAbstract:
2003 年中國內地與香港簽訂《內地與香港關於建立更緊密經貿關係的安排》(Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, 簡稱CEPA)。其中關於電影的條款放寬了香港電影進入內地的條件，加之龐大的市場需求，香港電影工業的跨境活動變得日益頻繁, 並開啟了新一輪的中港「合拍片」潮流。電影產業及其市場環境的轉變背後是更為深層的中港經濟、政治與文化的融合。香港從「九七」前後至今在新的政治空間及身份脈絡中不斷尋求「本土」位置顯得日益困難。電影作為流行文化文本和社會實踐曲折地表述「本土」、「自我」、「身份」，其中「懷舊」（nostalgia）便是近十年香港電影文化想像中一個顯著的憶述工具和路徑，亦即通過處理「過去」、歷史、集體記憶等來書寫「現在」的某種情感、經驗、欲望。
本論文以後CEPA 時期的香港電影為研究對象，檢閱以合拍片為主導的電影工業體制下，和香港近十年來文化政治脈絡中，不同類型、風格、主題，以及不同生產方式、製作規模、市場面向的香港電影懷舊想像與「本土」身份的互構關係。以及後CEPA 時代香港電影的懷舊想像與此前懷舊電影相比下的延續與新變。
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SIT, Tsui. "Specters of the subaltern : a critique of representations of rural women in contemporary China." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2005. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/11.
Full textAbstract:
China has speeded up modernization since the reform and open-door policy was introduced in 1978. After accession to the World Trade Organization in 1999, China has been further incorporated into the global track. The national policy of economic development requires a continuing exploitation of natural resources and intensive labor from the rural sector, and over the last few decades, there has been a ceaseless wave of rural women going to the cities and working mainly as assembly-line workers, domestic helpers and sex workers.
Developing a subaltern and feminist perspective, this thesis examines representations of rural women in academic research and literary works, as well as in films, documentaries, TV dramas, photography and popular magazines. The thesis attempts to outline and invoke a spectral figure of the subaltern as the rural woman demonstrably haunting dominant regimes of representations of modernization. In the prevailing mentality of development, a mega-city is portrayed as the ultimate destination; meanwhile, the rural is depicted as residual and as a repository of the past. There is a system of negative equivalences attached to the rural, which is always positioned as the unspoken, invisible or stereotyped other of overwhelming cosmopolitan values.
The thesis reviews how urban intellectuals represent rural women in the contemporary cosmopolitan settings. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s discussion of the two kinds of representation—proxy and portrait—the thesis aims to read how urban intellectuals speak for as well as draw a portrait of rural women.
The thesis also tries to read against the grain of the texts to trace the irreducible figure of the rural woman. As the readings will demonstrate, there are contradictions, paradoxes and ambivalences in narrating and portraying rural women as actors of modernization, victims of industrialization, agents of proletarian struggle, consumers purchasing commodities, and as the residual from agrarian society.
From such incongruities within the texts, one can posit the figure of the rural woman as a symbol of resistance to the predominant discourse of modernization. This is not necessarily to suggest a nostalgic return to the past, that is, to the statist industrialization of Mao Zedong’s period and the patriarchal tradition; or an orthodox ruralism that everyone should go back to ancient society; or a romanticization of the primitive. Rather, this figure operates like Stuart Hall’s concept of “black”, referring to a way of referencing the widespread experience of marginalization in contemporary China, and an organizing category of a new politics of resistance among different groups.
This research not only negotiates but also re-adjusts the notion of urban superiority by exploring the spectral figure of the rural woman. Gendering the rural vision means not only making a difference from the present capitalist and patriarchal values and practices, but also taking the excluded majority into serious consideration. It is hoped that this exercise, in the end, will help us to imagine a communal society in which we can recognize the practice of care of others as care of the self.
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Henry-Keon, Nadene Anne. "Hailing the hero: Critical cultural studies, subjectivity and girls in vocational high school." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/9040.
Full textAbstract:
Language allows us to narrate our stories. Creating ourselves as subjects is a function of language practices mobilized in complex and contradictory negotiations of the texts we engage, in the contexts in which they appear. This qualitative, interpretive study examines how seven, grade nine, female adolescent girls engage popular culture texts and practices to constitute themselves subjectively in vocational high school. The study shows that discursive representations of gender, desire, race and class critically inform and are informed by female adolescents' negotiation of their everyday lived experiences. In particular, it finds that female adolescents engage the discursive practice of anger to name their being and becoming.
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Henry-Keon, Nadene A. "Hailing the hero, critical cultural studies, subjectivity and girls in vocational high school." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape3/PQDD_0021/MQ57122.pdf.
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Poncelet, Eric Claude 1962. "The Japanese family/firm analogy: A critical analysis." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291719.
Full textAbstract:
The Japanese family/firm analogy has been utilized in the past by anthropological and business scholars for the purposes of better understanding the traditional Japanese family household (the ie) and the modern-day firm. The purpose of this study is to determine the appropriateness and utility of this analogy. To accomplish this, the study reconstructs the analogy by describing the models and theories upon which it is based and then examines it from a critical viewpoint. The conclusions are mixed. The study finds that the family/firm analogy is applicable, but only within the narrow limits defined by the specific ie and modern firm models. The analogy suffers further from its misrepresentation of Japanese families and firms, internal contradictions, and a disregard for social, economic, and political contexts. What is ultimately lost through the use of the analogy is the great complexity and diversity of Japanese society.
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LAU, Lai Leng. "屬靈戰爭與旅遊 : 一個短期宣教活動的個案研究." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2013. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/19.
Full textAbstract:
本研究試圖描繪香港細胞小組教會網絡短宣參加者的歷程及屬靈體驗，指出他們在旅途內的所見所聞受到了特定的宗教論述及旅遊操作所形塑和建構，而在此脈絡下產生的屬靈經驗可能不再純粹是神秘的、超自然和非物質的力量，相反它是可預期的文化產物，甚至不是本真(authentic)的屬靈經驗。然而，這種被建構的宗教及屬靈視野選擇性地把某些社會文化或問題 (如貧窮、種族主義、色情和異教文化)簡約歸類為邪惡他者的陰謀和控制，巧妙地隱藏或迴避了問題背後複雜而糾結的社會、經濟、政治及文化張力；同時鞏固了基督徒的身份認同及基督教的優越感，並相信基督教的價值觀獲得超越而且凌駕一切文化的合法性，然後將短宣內的屬靈經驗視為經歷神的重要證據。
此研究亦有助我們反思全球靈恩運動(Global Pentecostalism)的擴張，全球靈恩運動是近年基督教內增長最迅速的宗教運動，以屬靈恩賜、屬靈戰爭及繁榮神學(Prosperity Gospel)為主要特徵。除了依賴龐大的宗教媒體和超級教會等意識形態機器宣傳外，透過細緻的旅遊操作、宗教論述及靈性實踐，使短宣成為全球靈恩運動擴張的途徑之一，甚至讓這場源自美國的宗教運動轉化成本土的宗教內容。
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Gibson, Mark. "Monday morning and the millennium : cultural studies, scepticism and the concept of power." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2001. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1058.
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The thesis examines the use or the concept of power in cultural studies, offering a revisionist perspective on the history or this use. The dominant approach to questions or power in the field, it is argued, is a 'rationalist' one: the various phenomena comprehended under the concept are conceived ultimately as instances or the one phenomenon. This approach implies that positions in relation to power share a common referent allowing them to be assessed according to general criteria of 'correctness' or theoretical adequacy. It also allows developments in debates around power to be represented in terms or a narrative or enlightenment in which the 'truth' or power is progressively revealed. As an alternative to this, the thesis develops an 'empiricist' perspective on questions or power. From this perspective, the various phenomena comprehended under the concept are, in fact, distinct. Generalised uses or the singular 'power' do not share a common referent but are imaginative constructions gaining their sense from the particular contexts in which they are used. They cannot be assessed according to general criteria of theoretical adequacy, but only in terms of qualities of response to historical circumstances. The perspective is used to throw sceptical light on progressivist accounts of cultural studies as having discovered a phenomenon (power) which had not previously been recognised. It is demonstrated that the field has a history which precedes the introduction of generalised references to power. It is further argued that generalised references, when they were introduced, did not identify unrecognised phenomena but merely addressed them in a different way. The conditions for this intellectual shirt are traced to the historical circumstances of the Cold War, particularly 10 a rapid and massive expansion of tertiary education, government programs and media forms. A major sub-theme of the thesis is developed around the 'englishness' of cultural studies, where 'englishness' is used in an abstract sense to refer to a certain political response (exemplified by England as an actual polity) to the possibilities of modernity. This response is defined by a tendency to maintain a ‘pre-modern’ sense of powers as particular and a corresponding resistance to generalised references to power in the singular. It is pointed out that the tension between the tendency and European theoretical imports was very sharply articulated in the early formation of cultural studies. It is further argued that it has never entirely disappeared and has continues, at some level, to define the field. The significance of this is that cultural studies offers an intellectual resource for thinking about questions of power which is distinct from the European theoretical positions which it nonetheless cites. In the final chapters of the thesis, attention is given to the possibility of making this resource more visible in its own terms as a way of broadening options for the field in responding to changed conditions for intellectual work post-Cold War.
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Hong, Seung Min. "Protesting Korean Protestantism: media, resistance, and theology of critical insiders." Diss., University of Iowa, 2018. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6436.
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This study focuses on “critical insiders” of Korean Protestantism in the twenty first century, namely those who are committed to their Protestant faiths yet are highly critical of the ways in which Protestant Christianity is taught, believed, and practiced in South Korea. Particular emphasis is given to the question of how they resist/challenge dominant institutions and popular beliefs – especially on religious authority and various moral and monetary implications of such beliefs – as well as alternative visions they offer, through media. Scholars today acknowledge the centrality of media in various religious practices. I show that the role of media is no less important for religious critical insiders, albeit in somewhat different ways; in the South Korean case, I argue that they resist dominant voices by multi-mediatizing theology. Simply put, multi-mediatizing theology is making religiously normative (i.e. theological) discourses available through multiple outlets and voices and rendering informed theological judgments dependent upon such plurality and diversity of mediated sources. I analyze Korean Protestant critical insiders’ various media movements to illustrate this point and also to explore some ramifications of this kind of resistance taking place in the South Korean context. I also incorporate into my analyses the interviews I conducted with key individuals involved in the production of two Protestant TV shows that attempted at consolidating critical insider voices. I conclude with a theoretical and theological reflection upon the media/communication aspect of the entire phenomenon of Korean Protestantism and critical insiders.
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Hunt, L. A. Pearl. "Music lessons : a cultural studies analysis of music's capacity for critical pedagogy and methodology." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/29158.
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When expressing the phrase music lessons, one often visualizes students with their musical instruments practicing scales or compositions with the intent of memorizing the music. Although music can actualize as mnemonic practice, this dissertation focuses on other lessons that music teaches us by examining how musical knowledge is produced. Building on the ideologies articulated within a framework of cultural studies, the dissertation attempts a pedagogical praxis that establishes a fluid and dynamic conversation to express both my theoretical and empirical findings. The findings then are not definitive answers to the questions I pose about music’s effect, but operate as a process of opening up these questions to further reflection. The dissertation, by invoking a praxis-based structure, communicates both the theoretical “how” of music as praxis involved work and my practice of realizing music as culture-in-action.
The dissertation aims to redress music – not only in terms of music making as transformative praxis but also to assert that music, as a means of producing knowledge within critical discourse, can be situated as the subject versus the object of effect. Because a core component of music is its ability to be inclusive of all cultures/peoples, the dissertation examines how the performative aspects of music intersects sites and people of differing class, gender, race and culture to articulate music’s capacity for negotiating difference. Pitched in this way, music can no longer be regarded by critical educators as being on the sidelines of critical discourse but rather will be seen as integral to transforming consciousness and realizing praxis.
By informing and expanding upon the theory and practice of critical pedagogy, this music discourse not only seeks to influence a broader idea of social justice praxis but can also operate as a predominant cultural component in promoting peace education.
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Richards, Nathan. "Normative dimensions of cultural identity." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=82669.
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Dominant theories of aboriginal rights articulate the relation between rights and identity in terms of a logic which treats identity as an irreducible good and rights as the instrumental means of its protection. However, identity claims and legal claims emerge in our use of language. Identity and the institutions in which identities are expressed and experienced are constituted in speech. A close analysis reveals the degree to which law and identity are a systemic imbrication of normative claims characterized by an innate indeterminacy. This indeterminacy renders all rights and identity claims contingent on their reception and validation by others.
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LIU, Jingya. "Chronotope and regional Chinese independent films." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2010. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/2.
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This thesis aims to re-categorize Chinese independent films from a region-based perspective as a critical response to existing literature on Chinese independent films. This thesis analyzes three independent films made in three different regions of China in order to investigate regional Chinese independent cinema as a recently rising phenomenon: respectively, Jia Zhangke’s Xiaowu (1997) made in Shanxi Province, Ying Liang’s Taking Father Home (Bei yazi de nanhai, 2006) in Sichuan Province, and Robin Weng’s Fujian Blue (Jinbi huihuang, 2007) in Fujian Province.
By using Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope (literally time-space) as the fundamental framework and exploring the many aspects of it, I will develop three major theoretical points to study selected regional Chinese independent films: first, chronotope enables the evaluation of texts of Chinese independent films; second, the documentary impulses prevailing Chinese independent films serve as the chronotopic linkage between the world in the film text and the world the film text represents; three, the mediation function as one aspect of chronotope is characterized by the negotiation between regional Chinese independent films and many social relations, for example, filmmakers, casting, audiences.
This thesis also explores many issues related to Chinese independent films, for example: How do we value the unique film practice of Chinese independent filmmakers instead of viewing them as a unified whole? How do we relate Chinese independent films as aesthetic practices to the region-specific reality they are embedded in? How can Chinese independent cinema as a social practice play an effective role in society? The exploration of these questions does not only enlighten new research perspectives on Chinese independent films, but also provide reflections on the geographical, cultural and social diversity of Chinese regions.
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LEI, Qili. "时尚报刊、广告与当代中国消费意识形态." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2003. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/14.
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本论文针对 1990 年代以来中国社会在经济文化方面的巨大改变，归纳并指出一种新的“消费意识形态”在中国业已历史地形成并取代日渐式微的传统 意识形态，成为宰制当代中国社会的主导力量。论文批判地回顾了1949 年以后中国大陆语境中意识形态涵义的历史嬗变，以四个具有典型意义的时尚报刊和广告案例、广告事件为例，从不同侧面解析了广告形象以及广告产业如何作为 中介与以时尚报刊为代表的文化工业一起，参与当代中国“消费意识形态”建 构的社会过程。
论文通过对“消费意识形态”所遮蔽的当代中国社会问题的揭示，对“消费意识形态”在当代中国社会发生影响的深度和广度的阐释，回应了九十年代以来在中国思想界有较大影响的“后六·四”文化论争中的一些重要问题，展现了文化研究在中国大陆介入现实社会思考和批判的可能空间。
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Bush, Anthony J. "'Doing coaching justice' : promoting a critical consciousness in sports coaching research." Thesis, University of Bath, 2008. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.500692.
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This research enquiry is a positional paper that locates the context in which sports coaching research is undertaken. Embracing a physical cultural studies sensibility, the research enquiry raises critical questions about the explanatory framework guiding sports coaching research and presents a new conceptualisation for research in the ‘field’. Deploying the theory and method of articulation (Hall, 1996) and Foucault’s (1969) genealogical method, this research enquiry maps out the critical history of the sports coaching present through consideration of the social forces that comprise our conjunctural moment (Grossberg, 2006). By doing so, the impact of the liberal capitalist order prevalent in higher education in the United Kingdom – termed the ‘proto-fascist / pernicious present’ (Giroux, 2005a; Silk and Andrews, in press) – is unpacked. Within this context, the research enquiry explicates how these various social forces congeal at, meet at, and frame the practice of sports coaching research. Through mapping sports coaching research within a corporatised higher education, the dominant or legitimate forms of sports coaching knowledge are problematised.
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Bakher, Rozarina. "#CancelCulture : A critical discourse analysis of cancel culture and its effect on representation and voice." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Institutionen för konst, kultur och kommunikation (K3), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-44055.
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Cancel culture has been described by some as a form of online activism. It has also been argued as activism with both negative and positive effects. For the positive side, cancel culture has worked to emphasize the representation and voice of women during the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment at workplaces. On the other hand, cancel culture has a reputation for being "activism-for-bad" when it silences the voice of people that may contribute to the area of communication for development and social change. For example, it is said to have stifled academic freedom and restricted open debates in cultural institutions. The aim of this thesis is to examine how cancel culture determines whose representation and voice is heard, and has it evolved from being a tool of activism to one that is said to threaten democratic participation? The thesis analyses six online articles that appears as the top results on Google Search during a specific timeline between the period of 2015 - 2021. These timelines were determined from Google Trends® by looking at when the term 'cancel culture' were trending highest on the internet. Applying methodological framework based on the theories of Critical Discourse Analysis, this thesis sets out to analyse words and terms used in these online articles that contributed to the discourse on cancel culture and analyses its relations to representation and voice.
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Neely, Gloria Jean. "The effects of American influence on British culture." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2001. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2025.
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This study notes similarities and differences between the United States (U.S.) and the United Kingdom (U.K.). Study findings suggest that while at first glance the United Kingdom and the United States may seem similar in many ways, the differences between these countries are great, making each one unique.
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Passon, Jerry Walter. "The Corvette in Literature and Culture: Material Object and Persistent Image." OpenSIUC, 2010. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/123.
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This study examines the Corvette, an automobile with a distinct place in American literature and culture. For more than fifty years, the Corvette has been in the process of becoming what is described as an "icon," although this progress has never been satisfactorily approached and explained. Why this particular machine has not just survived, but come to be recognized--by and large by most if not all Americans--as the signifier of various virtues (and some vices) is a question of some significance: in analyzing the reasons for the Corvette's long life and success as an overwhelmingly positive and distinctively American car, we look at the literature and culture of the United States. What this reveals is a complex web of ideas and attitudes that centers on one thing--a material object with six different forms over fifty years, yet one that has always retained its identity and power to signify. The approach here is thematic rather than historical. As a popular subject, the Corvette already has historians who look at it as a tangible thing that can be described, measured, and defined. My assignment is different: through the lens of critical theories, several of them, and a wide range of materials--film, novels, songs, and more--I seek to discover some essential aspects of the car that make its image dynamic and permit it to evolve over time. This is not an easy process; it has demanded an open mind to materials not often looked at in an English dissertation. The Corvette and its image are described in four areas and a conclusion: * The Corvette: the Empty, the American, and the Deadly Signifier (the original that becomes America's image of itself and the danger of speed and technology out of control) * The Image of Potency: the Corvette, Males, and Minorities (aggressive sexuality, African-American males, and male domination) * Women, Sex, and Identity as Power: the Corvette, Baddest Mother of Them All (phallic females, the car as sexual power and identity) * Corvette as Art: the Expressive Image (the car's own self-reflexive nature, the automobile as fashion--belonging ["I stand out, yet I belong"] and sense of self--and its presence in "art") * The Corvette: Image and Object
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Georgiou, Emilia. "Constructions of cultural diversity and intercultural education : critical ethnographic case studies of Greek-Cypriot primary schools." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/31060.
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This thesis critically examines constructions of cultural diversity and intercultural education in Greek-Cypriot primary schools. Since 2008 the Cyprus Ministry of Education has officially adopted the Europeanized rhetoric of intercultural education and inclusion as the most effective approach to the increasing diversity in schools. As part of the wider reform of the education system aiming at the creation of the ‘democratic’ and ‘humane’ school, a new curriculum was introduced in 2010 to promote equality of opportunity for access, participation and attainment. Drawing on relevant key theoretical ideas, this study has developed a theoretical framework of intercultural education to assist the critical examination of constructions of intercultural education in Greek-Cypriot primary schools. For the purposes of this study, three-month long critical ethnographic case studies of intercultural education were constructed in three urban Greek-Cypriot primary schools with different profiles. Rich data was generated through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with head teachers, teachers and teachers of Greek as an additional language. The study also engaged in non-participant lesson and school observations, developed participatory methods with children, and undertook semi-participant observations of pupils’ play during breaks and of extra-curricular activities. Relevant policy and school documents were also analysed. The findings of this study reveal that constructions of cultural diversity and intercultural education in Greek-Cypriot primary schools are characterized by contradictions, inconsistencies and a lack of theoretical understanding of issues related to cultural diversity and intercultural education. Different cultures and identities were constructed in different, though mainly, essentialist ways by teachers from the dominant cultural group. This study argues that the concept of cultural diversity needs to be treated with some caution, as it tends to homogenise non-dominant cultures and thus, it may obscure the complexities involved in engagement with and recognition of different Others. Key differences between the two mainstream schools and the ZEP (Zone of Educational Priority) school which participated in this study in terms of the degree of autonomy and financial support officially granted by the Ministry; the school leadership style and the head teacher’s construction of diversity and intercultural education; the composition of the pupil population; and the dominant institutional discourses about diversity affected the extent to which and the ways in which teachers exercised their agency in relation to intercultural education. Moreover, the teachers’ positioning in the Greek Cypriot society and the extent to which they had developed a political literacy and critical consciousness through their life and professional histories also affected their constructions of cultural diversity and intercultural education and the extent to which they perceived and exercised their role as agents of change. In turn, the ways in which cultural diversity and intercultural education were constructed in each class influenced the extent to which and the ways in which bilingual and/or bicultural children used their agency and negotiated their cultural positionings. The findings carry implications for policy and practice. The study highlights the need for a coherent theoretical framework of intercultural education to enable schools and teachers to develop a theoretically-grounded understanding of intercultural education and move beyond fragmented practices that leave structural inequalities and barriers to educational achievement unacknowledged and unaddressed.
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Blackwood, Andria Lynn. "Curating Inequality: The Link Between Cultural Reproduction and Race in the Visual Arts." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1321704421.
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Erzen-Toyoshima, Mary. "An exploration of cultural differences in Japanese/American intercultural marriages." PDXScholar, 1986. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3595.
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Coward, John M. "Indians Illustrated: The Image of Native Americans in the Pictorial Press." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://amzn.com/B01NH0077S/.
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Book Summary: In Indians Illustrated, John M. Coward charts a social and cultural history of Native American illustrations--romantic, violent, racist, peaceful, and otherwise--in the heyday of the American pictorial press. These woodblock engravings and ink drawings placed Native Americans into categories that drew from venerable "good" Indian and "bad" Indian stereotypes already threaded through the culture. Coward's examples show how the genre cemented white ideas about how Indians should look and behave--ideas that diminished Native Americans' cultural values and political influence. His powerful analysis of themes and visual tropes unlocks the racial codes and visual cues that whites used to represent--and marginalize--native cultures already engaged in a twilight struggle against inexorable westward expansion. Fascinating and provocative, Indians Illustrated reopens an overlooked chapter in media and cultural history.https://dc.etsu.edu/alumni_books/1022/thumbnail.jpg
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Tull, Annalee. "Telling Tales as Oral Performance: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Storytelling in Ireland, Scotland and Southern Appalachia." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2014. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/2357.
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I sought to link, through this paper, cultural performances of identity through storytelling in Ireland, Scotland, and southern Appalachia. I evaluated storytelling practices, whether it was a public or private performance, using symbolic interactionism, dramatist theory, narrative paradigm, and performance theory. The author studied abroad in Ireland and Scotland through the East Tennessee State University Appalachian, Scottish, and Irish Studies Program and experienced an array of stories. She then evaluated her own experiences with storytelling from growing up in southern Appalachia and visited the International Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. The research is rooted in grounded theory from ethnographies, with themes emerging from the field notes. The themes reinforced the theories evaluated tied the cultures together through history.
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Houdek, Matthew. "Common sense racism: the rhetorical grounds for making meaning of racialized violence." Diss., University of Iowa, 2018. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6140.
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In this dissertation, I conceptualize common sense racism as the material basis for the unconscious rhetorical processes that shape and normalize unsympathetic and uncritical public responses to racialized violence against black communities, and which thereby perpetuate racial structures of power and foment white innocence and indifference. This form of common sense is comprised of a set of deeply embedded logics and rationalities—fragmented forms of prepropositional knowledge—that have evolved over time through the shapeshifting ideologies of white supremacy and anti-blackness to partly determine how civil society understands and interprets ongoing legacies of violence. Rather than just thinking of common sense in how we discuss it in everyday talk, I conceptualize and critique it with regard to how it animates and informs some of the fundamental cultural constructs, such as language, time, and humanity, that "we" as a nation rely upon to orient ourselves to and make sense of the world around us. Through these frameworks, common sense racism structures rhetorically how civil society's institutions make meaning in moments of racial crisis, tension, and transformation, and how its dominant publics relate to ongoing histories of racial oppression and abuse, or rather, how they do not relate to them at all. Through three case studies, a theoretical chapter, and an introduction and conclusion, I offer a critical vocabulary for understanding the nation's inability to confront racialized violence while considering the means by which these systems of meaning-making can be disrupted by black vernacular rhetorical practices.
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Odhiambo, Seonagh. "A Conversation With Dance History: Movement and Meaning in the Cultural Body." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2008. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/25258.
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DancePh.D.
This study regards the problem of a binary in dance discursive practices, seen in how "world dance" is separated from European concert dance. A close look at 1930s Kenya Luo women's dance in the context of "dance history" raises questions about which dances matter, who counts as a dancer, and how dance is defined. When discursive practices are considered in light of multicultural demographic trends and globalisation the problem points toward a crisis of reason in western discourse about how historical origins and "the body" have been theorised. Within a western philosophical tradition the body and experience are negated as a basis for theorising. Historical models and theories about race and gender often relate binary thinking whereby the body is theorised as text. An alternative theoretical model is established wherein dancers' processes of embodying historical meaning provide one of five bases through which to theorise. The central research questions this study poses and attempts to answer are: how can I illuminate a view of dance that is transhistorical and transnational? How can I write about 1930s Luo women in a way that does not create a case study to exist outside of dance history? Research methods challenge historical materialist frameworks for discussions of the body and suggest insight can be gained into how historical narratives operate with coercive power--both in past and present--by examining how meaning is conceptualised and experienced. The problem is situated inside a hermeneutic circle that connects past and present discourses, so tensions are explored between a binary model of past/present and new ways of thinking about dance and history through embodiment. Archives, elder interviews, and oral histories are a means to approach 1930s Luo Kenya. A choreography model is another method of inquiry where meanings about history and dance that subvert categories and binary assumptions are understood and experienced by dancers through somatic processes. A reflective narrative provides the means to untangle influences of disciplines like dance and history on the phenomenon of personal understanding.
Temple University--Theses
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CHAN, Wai Yin. "Beyond public health : the cultural politics of tobacco control in Hong Kong." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2009. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/4.
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This work provides cultural and political explanations on how and why cigarette smoking has increasingly become an object of intolerance and control in Hong Kong. Since the 1980s, the smoking population has been falling. Smoking behavior, sales and promotion of cigarette products have been under close surveillance by the government, medical experts and society at large. Cigarette smoking, as well as smokers, has increasingly been rejected and demonized in the public discourse. What are the conditions that make the growing intolerant discourses and practices against cigarette smoking possible and dominant? Why and how has the tobacco control campaign become prevalent as a governmentalist project, which is strong enough to tear down the alliance of tobacco industry giants? Why is tobacco singled out from other legal but harmful substances, such as alcohol, as an imperative object of intolerance and control? This work tackles these questions by adopting a Foucauldian discursive approach and the theory of articulation developed in cultural studies. By considering tobacco control as a historical and contextual practice, it traces the specific trajectory of tobacco control in Hong Kong, maps the cultural and political contexts that make it possible, and considers its consequence regarding the complex relationship among control, construction of risk, identity and freedom in society.
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Jubas, Kaela. "Promise and trouble, desire and critique : shopping as a site of learning about globalization, identity and the potential for change." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/2813.
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Adult educators talk frequently about learning which occurs during daily living; however, relatively few explore the breadth and depth of such learning. I contend that shopping, as it is commonly understood and practiced in Western societies, is a site of everyday learning. Among people concerned about globalisation, this learning connects shopping to the politics of consumption, identity and resistance.
Central to this inquiry are Antonio Gramsci's (1971) concepts of hegemony, ideology, common sense and dialectic. These are useful in understanding the irresolvable tensions between the political, economic and cultural arenas of social life. Informed by critical, feminist and critical race scholarship, I proceed to conceptualize adult learning as “incidental” (Foley, 1999, 2001) and holistic. I then conceptualize “consumer-citizenship.” Social relations of gender, race and class are central in the construction of identity which influences experiences and understandings of consumption and citizenship in the context of Canadian society and global development.
My over-arching methodology, which I call “case study bricolage,” incorporates qualitative case study methods of interviews, focus groups and participant observation with 32 self-identified “radical shoppers” in Vancouver, British Columbia. As well, I employ cultural studies' intertextuality, and include an analysis of popular fiction to further expose discourses of shopping, consumption and consumerism.
Drawing on Laurel Richardson's (2000) “crystallization,” I use various analytical “facets” to respond to three questions about shopping-as-learning: What do participants learn to do? Who do participants learn to be? How do participants learn to make change? Critical media literacy theory illuminates the function of popular culture in constructing a discursive web which shoppers navigate. Through shopping, participants learn how to learn and to conduct research, and how to develop a shopping-related values system, literacy and geography. Benedict Anderson's (1991) concept of “imagined community” helps explicate how participants' affiliations with shopping-related movements provide a sense of purpose and belonging. Finally, Jo Littler's (2005) notions of “narcissistic” and “relational” reflexivity clarify that different processes of reflexivity lead to different perspectives on societal change. This inquiry has implications for research and theorizing in adult learning, and the practice of critical adult education.
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Brimmer, Allison. "Investigating affective dimensions of whiteness in the cultural studies writing classroom toward a critical, feminist, anti-racist pedagogy /." [Tampa, Fla.] : University of South Florida, 2005. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/SFE0001226.
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Richey, Roni. "Critical factors: Best practices for expatriate accompanying partners in successfully adjusting while living across cultures." Scholarly Commons, 2014. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/252.
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The primary emphasis in the field of expatriate adjustment has focused on the experiences of the person working overseas on assignment. Research that includes the experiences of the accompanying partner of the working expatriate frequently positions this person as an antecedent to the working partner's adjustment process. Understanding the adjustment process from the accompanying partner's perspective is underrepresented in the literature. In this qualitative research project eight expatriate couples were interviewed to examine in detail their experiences of adjusting overseas on assignment in order to identify the critical adjustment factors, the resources that are available to assist the adjustment process, and what personal characteristics aid a successful intercultural experience while living overseas. Recommendations are provided for both the employer and the accompanying partner to assist the adjustment process.
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Chang, Mi-Kyoung. "A Critical Content Analysis of Korean-to-English and English-to-Korean Translated Picture Books." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/301535.
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This study explores cultural representations and cultural adaptations made by translators in translated children's picture books. This study has two focuses. In the first part of this study, which is a critical content analysis, I examine the cultural representations depicted in Korean-to-English and English-to-Korean translated picture books, using cultural studies as a theoretical framework. In the second part of this study, I compare original and translated editions of Caldecott and popular Korean picture books to find out how the translators adapt cultural, ideological, and linguistic conflicts in the process of translation, using translation as a dialogic process. For the first part of this study, I found four categories related to the cultural representations: (1) a sense of belonging and societal membership; (2) constructing and challenging gender stereotypes; (3) constructing images of childhood; and (4) dominant visual images of South Korea/the United States. These findings indicate that the insider authors of Korean culture try to show authentic images of South Korea, using contemporary fiction stories. The Korean translated books also deal with various images of American culture authentically from historical fiction to contemporary fiction. However, a small number of books do not show broad cultural representations of both cultures. In the second focus of this study on cultural adaptations, the analysis directly compared original and translated editions of the same texts. The themes of cultural familiarity, adaptations regarding illustrations, completely different translations, omissions, additions, and changes of titles or book jackets were identified. These findings indicate that most American and Korean translators purposely made cultural adaptations in the process of translation in order to help target readers to have better understanding of these international books. Additionally, they did not change essential authentic features, such as the characters' names and geographic names. I also found mistranslations between the original and translated editions of books. These changes could have occured because the translators lacked knowledge of both cultures or of the deep structures of the stories. The implication section provides recommendations to publishers, translators, educators, parents, teacher educators, and researchers and suggestions for further research.
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Fabien-Ouellet, Nicolas. "Poutine, Mezcal And Hard Cider: The Making Of Culinary Identities In North America." ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2017. http://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/805.
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Foodways, which in short refers to eating and drinking practices, are constitutive of personal and group identity. In this thesis, I explore the symbolic values of food and drink in group identification processes evolving across North America. Through the cases of poutine, mezcal, and hard cider, I investigate cultural identity formation, negotiation, and transformation; from everyday practices to global interactions. What I develop in this thesis is a rationale that can be actively used by members of a group, as well as by community development practitioners, governments, and industry stakeholders to bolster community capitals and agency through making, supporting or rejecting food and drink ownership claims.
In the first article, titled Poutine Dynamics, I explore both the culinary and social status of poutine. First, I identify poutine as a new(er) and distinct way to consume food that is increasingly adopted and adapted, and I propose a working definition of poutine as a new dish classification label in its own. Then, by coupling poutine’s sociohistorical stigma and its growing Canadization (that is, the presentation, not the consumption per say, of poutine as a Canadian dish), I expose two related situations: the ongoing culinary
appropriation of poutine and the threat of Quebecois cultural absorption by Canadians. In Poutine Dynamics, I problematize the notion of a “national cuisine” in the context of multinational and settler states. Although the focus is about cuisine, Poutine Dynamics
provides elements of analysis regarding how the Canadian nationalist project is constructed and articulated today, in current celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Confederation in Canada.
The second article of this thesis, titled Strategic Authenticity: The Case of Mezcal, draws upon the recent major update to the mezcal denomination of origin certification (DO) that was long-awaited and requested by “traditional mezcaleros.” This tour de force in the modification of the mezcal DO leads me to identify the notion of authenticity in food as a powerful rhetorical strategy in social negotiation between groups. Through the case of mezcal, I assert that the tasting experience is the most legitimate group identification path and authentication boundary (as opposed to political, ethnical or religious boundaries) in terms of foodways.
The third article, titled The Identity Crisis of Hard Cider, looks at the ongoing cultural affirmation of hard cider from its European counterparts. So far, the research on hard cider in Vermont has looked at the low-level of cider-specific apple production in that state as a supply issue. Instead, I approach this problematic from a demand angle, specifically from the low demand for hard ciders made with cider-specific apples. In this study, I survey the Vermont hard cider industry stakeholders as to possible mechanisms in order to differentiate between hard cider styles, as well as strategies to boost the demand for hard ciders made with cider-specific apples. The implementation of a geographical indication (GI) label was of high interests among participating cider makers. In this study, I also suggest that the hard cider foodways found in Vermont are part of a broader emerging hard cider identity that is taste-based and which crosses political borders within the American Northeast.
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Ding, Yunxue. "A critical comparison of American idol and Super girl a cross-cultural communication analysis of American and Chinese cultures /." Muncie, Ind. : Ball State University, 2008. http://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/377.
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Charles, Amelia N., and Lia M. Bevins. "Building Allies Who Are Informed and Engaged." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2019. https://dc.etsu.edu/asrf/2019/schedule/31.
Full textAbstract:
Growing inequity and political polarization necessitate organized political action capable of challenging large-scale, globalized power. Political projects around the globe, and certainly in America, that aim to shift power relations have become synonymous with projects of building allies. Others—people of color, queers, and women—have long formed political alliances in order to build movements that contest hegemonic power. Others have formed these alliances (with various allies) along the lines of political ideology. Increasingly, with the growing influence of identity politics overshadowing class politics, identity plays a key role in shaping who takes part in political action. The role of an “ally” has also followed this pattern, allowing non-marginalized subjects to claim a “good ally” identity, despite lived experiences that share struggle with Others. However, ally-ship is a project of life-long work that engages various forms of anti-oppression work and is rooted in a process of what Paulo Freire terms “conscientization.” Using Freire’s concepts, principals of “the ethics of care philosophy,” and qualitative interviews, this research examines why allies are important to liberation projects of marginalized groups, specifically queers. The individuals interviewed for the research each have extensive experience educating others in the process of building allyship. The research analyzes their unique approaches along with other programs centered on the process of ally building to highlight the most successful methods. The research explores the differences in ally-ship with and affirmation of Others; complicates the projects of non-oppressive groups versus anti-oppressive groups; and examines the process of ally building. Based on the data and information gathered from qualitative interviews and literature, a framework is created that outlines the processes necessary in allyship building. The findings of the research illustrate the benefits of allies to Others in the fight for equality and demonstrate how an individual can work towards becoming an ally to these groups. In short, this research illustrates Freire's concepts of education for “critical consciousness” as it is applied to allies and the necessary action against oppressive agents.
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Pankl, Elisabeth Erin. "The critical geographies of Frida Kahlo." Diss., Kansas State University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/18795.
Full textAbstract:
Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of Geography
Kevin Blake
Mexican artist and global phenomenon Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) fascinates and inspires people from all walks of life. Rather than simply approaching the life and work of Kahlo from a traditional art historical perspective, this dissertation draws from the interdisciplinary nature of critical human geography to investigate Kahlo. Specifically, this work is informed by two sub-fields of critical human geography—feminist geography and cultural geography. Kahlo’s iconic status as a feminist symbol makes feminist geography an obvious choice while cultural geography provides the dominant methodology of textual analysis. Both sub-fields are drawn together by the use of a poststructuralist theoretical foundation that views no one meaning or interpretation as fixed, but rather posits that meanings and interpretations are fluid and open to a variety of conclusions. The primary research question in this dissertation is, “How are the critical geographies of hybridity, embodiment, and glocalization developed and explored in Frida Kahlo’s art and life?” The question is answered through the geographical exploration of Kahlo’s work, life, and iconic status as a major public figure. I delve into each of the three components of the question (hybridity, embodiment, and glocalization) by connecting geographical concepts and understandings to Kahlo and her work. I extend this exploration by arguing that Kahlo demonstrates how the self both mirrors and constructs critical geographies. This research seeks to expand and deepen the understanding of Kahlo as a significant geographical figure—an artist who was intensely aware of people and place. Additionally, this research draws together diverse threads of geographic inquiry by highlighting the interdisciplinary and humanistic qualities of the discipline. Perhaps most importantly, this dissertation positions Kahlo as a critical geographer—defying the sometimes arbitrary and limited notions imposed on the discipline and its practitioners. I assert that Kahlo’s work and life are inherently a lived expression of geographical ideas that manifest themselves in a physical, mental, and emotional sense. Ultimately, Kahlo constructs an embodied geographic text—creating knowledge and helping people understand identity and place in a different way.