Journal articles on the topic 'Gerard Delanty'

Yliopiston tärkein olemassaolon oikeutus on ollut tiedon tuottaminen, ja tieto itsessään on yliopistoinstituution päämääränä. Tieto itseisarvona on kuitenkin ammentunut legitimaatiolähteenä tyhjiin. Jälkiteollisessa yhteiskunnassa yliopisto on menettänyt asemansa tärkeimpänä tiedon tuottamisen ja jakamisen instituutiona, väittää aikamme tunnettu sosiologi, professori Gerard Delanty. Artikkelissa pohdiskellaan yliopistoa tietoinstituutiona yliopistopedagogiasta ja sen uudistumisesta käsin. Pedagogisen reformin vaikeus on kuitenkin kulttuurisen muutoksen vaikeudessa, kirjoittaja toteaa.

In Formations of European Modernity, Gerard Delanty, one of the foremost social theoreticians of Europe, offers a historical-sociological assessment of the idea of Europe as the development of modernity from a cosmopolitan perspective. With this book, based upon a broad and impressive discussion of sociological and historical literature, Delanty somewhat comes back from his earlier constructivist approach in favour of a theory that emphasizes the originality of Europe and assesses European history as the development of modernity, interpreted in a classical neo- Weberian sense. This approach sits uneasily with his ambition to present a cosmopolitan view on Europe, which emphasizes the interactions of Europe with the rest of the world, all the more so as he largely ignores the postcolonial critiques of Eurocentric narratives as well as modernization theories. While Delanty is still quite successful in his assessment of historical diversities in Europe, Formations of European Modernity nevertheless disappoints. While the focus on global interactions is highly commendable, the lack of critical assessment and contextualization leads to a neglect of the fact that Europe often despised the (contribution of the) other. Hence his presentation of cosmopolitan Europe is flawed, and remains if not Eurocentric at least overly Europhile.

According to Val Plumwood (1995), liberal-democracy is an authoritarian political system that protects privilege but fails to protect nature. A major obstacle, she says, is radical inequality, which has become increasingly far-reaching under liberal-democracy; an indicator of ‘the capacity of its privileged groups to distribute social goods upwards and to create rigidities which hinder the democratic correctiveness of social institutions’ (p. 134). This cautionary tale has repercussions for education, especially civics and citizenship education. To address this, we explore the potential of what Gerard Delanty calls ‘cultural citizenship’ as an alternative to the disciplinary citizenship that permeates Western liberal discourse. Cultural citizenship emphasises citizenship as communication and continual learning processes, rejecting the idea of citizenship as a fixed set of cultural ideals, norms or values defined and enforced by liberal society’s legal, political and cultural institutions, including education and ‘citizenship training’. However, we contend that a critical first step, essential to democratic correctiveness, is to clear away obstacles created by the privileging of a dominant epistemic position. We conclude that Plumwood’s philosophy alongside John Dewey’s work on democracy and education provide a theoretical framework for effective democratic inquiry aimed towards interconnective, deliberative practice and corrective methodology for epistemic accountability.

This article explores the representation of borders and cosmopolitanism in the city of London in “London River”, a film about two parents looking for their children in global city after the 7th of July of 2005 terrorist attacks. As will be argued, different spaces in the city work simultaneously as dividing lines and as borderlands, emphasising the dual nature of borders theorized by border scholars such as Gloria Anzaldúa (1999), Mike Davis (2000) and Anthony Cooper and Christopher Rumford (2011). Elijah Anderson’s (2011) concept of cosmopolitan canopy and Gerard Delanty’s (2006) moments of openness will be used to analyse the articulation of cosmopolitanism in the different constructed spaces displayed in the film.

Higher education (HE) administrators worldwide are responding to performance-based state agendas for public institutions. Largely ideologically-driven, this international fixation on performance is also advanced by the operation of isomorphic forces within HE's institutional field. Despite broad agreements on the validity of performance goals, there is no "one best" model or predictable set of consequences. Context matters. Responses are conditioned by each nation's historical and cultural institutional legacy. To derive a generalized set of consequences, issues, and impacts, we used a comparative international format to examine the way performance models are applied in the United States, England, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Our theoretical framework draws on understandings of performance measures as normalizing instruments of governmentality in the "evaluative state," supplemented by field theory of organizations. Our conclusion supports Gerard Delanty's contention, that universities need to redefine accountability in a way that repositions them at the heart of their social and civic communities.

This article suggests that both territorial and symbolic borders ought to be treated as specific cultural forms enabling the exercise and practice of cross-border communication. The notion of active border is introduced as a nexus of the transnationalization of public spheres and identities in Europe. Active border is interpreted as a border that supports and produces both public criticism and social integration without generating antagonism toward those from “over borders.” Contrary to active border, passive border entrenches stereotypical negative identities and cognitive foreclosures and is a significant hindrance in positive identities formation. The concept of active border contributes to the broad sociological context of Europeanization and transnational public spheres and identities formations in which questions about cultural change and plurality should be discussed. It tries to offer a novel interpretative perspective on processes of transnationalization in Europe and beyond. This article draws inspiration mainly from Edward Shils’s typology of collective identities, Erik Erikson’s concept of identity formation, and Gerard Delanty’s typology of cultural encounters.

Relato analítico da criação e do desenvolvimento do ESTAGIAR – Encontro do Estágio de Língua Portuguesa e Literaturas de Língua Portuguesa, evento anual promovido na Universidade Estadual de Londrina pelo Grupo de Pesquisa FELIP – Formação e Ensino em Língua Portuguesa. Como inspiração e parceria de pensares ao longo desse processo, fundamentamo-nos principalmente em Nóvoa (1992) e Tardif (2006), quando olhamos para a formação de professores, em Pimenta e Lima (2008) e Zabalza (2014), ao refletirmos sobre questões gerais do estágio, e em Silva (2012) e Pietri (2018), quando procuramos adentrar nas especificidades do estágio de Língua Portuguesa e Literatura. A trajetória do ESTAGIAR até o momento, expressa nesse artigo, caminha no sentido de aprofundar questões do ensino dentro do estágio e de respondermos, como universidade, a essas questões – seja expondo experiências bem sucedidas, seja ajudando, em parceria com a escola, a trabalhar questões problemáticas. Ao mesmo tempo, entendemos que esse exercício de análise reforça o foco maior da trajetória acadêmica da Área de Metodologia e Prática de Ensino do Departamento de Letras Vernáculas e Clássicas, a que pertencemos, de contribuir para a construção de um pensamento problematizador para as questões de ensino e formação de professores de Língua Portuguesa e Literatura.Referências:AGUIAR, Denise Brasil Alvarenga. Formação de professores de língua portuguesa: impressões de viagem. Querubim, ano 8, p. 1-9, set. 2012.ANGELO, Graziela Lucci de. Revisitando o ensino tradicional de língua portuguesa. Tese (Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística Aplicada), Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2005.GERALDI, João Wanderley. A aula como acontecimento. São Carlos: Pedro João Editores, 2010.HINZ, Josiane Redmer; DI FANTI, Maria da Glória Corrêa. A atividade do professor-estagiário de língua portuguesa: aprendizagem de gêneros profissionais? Letras, Santa Maria, v. 22, n. 44, p. 55-83, jan./jun. 2012.MAFRA, Núbio Delanne Ferraz; MOREIRA, Vladimir; ACRI, Marcelo Cristiano; FERREIRA, Beatriz do Prado. Quando a prática se torna componente curricular dos PPPs de Letras. In: CAMPONES, Kelly Cristina (org.). Ensino e aprendizagem como unidade dialética. Ponta Grossa: Atena, 2019. p. 410-416.NÓVOA, António. Vidas de professores. Lisboa: Porto Editora, 1992.PIETRI, Émerson de. A formação do professor entre a escola e a academia: o estágio supervisionado em ensino de língua portuguesa/língua materna. In: BARZOTTO, Valdir Heitor; PIETRI, Émerson de (orgs.). Estágio, escrita e formação. Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 2018. p. 13-30.PIMENTA, Selma Garrido; LIMA, Maria Socorro Lucena. Estágio e docência. 3. ed. São Paulo: Cortez, 2008.SEGABINAZI, Daniela Maria; LUCENA, Josete Marinho de. Estágio supervisionado na formação do professor de Língua Portuguesa: desafios e possibilidades. In: CONGRESSO NACIONAL DE FORMAÇÃO DE PROFESSORES E CONGRESSO ESTADUAL PAULISTA SOBRE FORMAÇÃO DE EDUCADORES, 4. 14., Lindóia, Anais [...] UNESP, 2018. p. 1-11.SILVA, Wagner Rodrigues. Estudos do letramento do professor e formação inicial nos estágios supervisionados das licenciaturas. In: SILVA, Wagner Rodrigues (org.). Letramento do professor em formação inicial: interdisciplinaridade no estágio supervisionado da licenciatura. Campinas: Pontes, 2012. p. 27-49.TANURI, Leonor Maria. História da formação de professores. Revista Brasileira de Educação, n. 14, p. 61-88, maio/ago. 2000.TARDIF, Maurice. Saberes docentes e formação profissional. 6. ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2006.UEL. Conselho de Ensino, Pesquisa e Extensão. Resolução CEPE/CA nº 142/2017: reformula o Projeto Pedagógico do Curso de Letras Português – Modalidade: Licenciatura – Habilitação: Língua Portuguesa e Respectivas Literaturas, a ser implantado a partir do ano letivo de 2018. Londrina, 6 dez., 2017.VALSECHI, Marília Curado; KLEIMAN, Angela Bustos. O estágio supervisionado e a voz social do estagiário. Raído, v. 8, n.15, p. 13-32, jan./jun. 2014.ZABALZA, Miguel A. O estágio e as práticas em contextos profissionais na formação universitária. São Paulo: Cortez, 2014.Recebido em 30-01-2021Revisões requeridas em 31-03-2021Aceito em 12-04-2021

A população que apresenta ensino superior nos países desenvolvidos é maior que nos países em desenvolvimento, um dado indicador do avanço tecnológico e do desenvolvimento de um país. O Brasil está acima da média mundial, com uma taxa de 30% de escolarização superior, à frente dos países em desenvolvimento, porém longe da média dos países desenvolvidos. Para reverter este cenário o governo brasileiro tem investido em infraestrutura e em políticas de ampliação do acesso e permanência no ensino superior. Porém, fatores como a falta de informação e a desmotivação, em especial dos alunos de baixa renda, são barreiras a estas ações. Partindo desta análise o grupo PET “A Difusão do Pensamento Científico como Ferramenta para a Cidadania” foi às escolas de Ouro Branco – MG, para desenvolver o projeto “Diálogos sobre o que Significa Cursar Engenharia”, realizando palestras informativas e motivacionais para alunos do último ano do ensino médio, com intuito de impulsioná-los na busca de seus ideais. Nos três anos em que foi realizado o projeto, os alunos do ensino médio foram questionados sobre seu interesse em cursar o ensino superior. A maioria afirmou querer ingressar em uma Instituição de Ensino Superior e muitos desejam complementar os estudos com uma pós-graduação. No entanto, até 40% dos estudantes do noturno tem preferência pelo curso técnico, ou desejam apenas concluir o ensino médio. Observou-se ainda elevada autoconfiança nos alunos de escolas particulares e o sentimento de auto-exclusão dos alunos da rede pública. Estas análises confirmam a necessidade de uma divulgação qualificada do ensino superior público. Abstract: The population with higher education in developed countries is greater than in developing countries. Such index represents the technological advancement and the development of a country. Brazil is above the world average, with a rate of 30% of its population with higher education, ahead of developing countries, but far from the average of the developed ones. To reverse this scenario, the Brazilian government has invested in infrastructure by expanding the access and the permanence policies in higher education. However, factors such as lack of information and motivation are barriers to these actions, particularly for low-income students. By taking into account this perspective, the PET group, a tutorial education program, "The Diffusion of Scientific Thought as a Tool for Citizenship" visited schools in the municipality of Ouro Branco, in the State of Minas Gerais, to develop the project "Dialogues on Studying Engineering". This initiative has as its main objective to deliver informative and motivational lectures to the students of the last year of high school by at promoting the pursuit of their ideals. In the three years the project took place high school students were asked about their interest in pursuing a higher education. Most answered that wanted to enter a Higher Education Institution and many wished to supplement their studies with a post-graduate degree. On the other hand, up to 40% of the students in the evening period intended to take technical courses, or just want to finish high school. Furthermore, high self-confidence in students of private schools and the feeling of self-exclusion of public school students were observed. These analyzes confirm the need for publicizing public higher education. Keywords: High School National Exam, Public University, role of the engineer. El análisis del nivel de conocimiento y la motivación de los estudiantes de secundaria hacia la educación superior: Proyecto “Diálogos acerca de qué significa Estudiar Ingeniería” Resumen: La población con educación superior en los países desarrollados es mayor que en los países en desarrollo, un índice de avance tecnológico y de desarrollo del país. Brasil está arriba del promedio mundial, con una tasa del 30% de la educación superior, delante de los países en desarrollo, pero muy lejos del promedio de los países desarrollados. Para revertir esta situación, el gobierno brasileño ha invertido en infraestructura y en políticas de ampliación del acceso y permanencia en la educación superior. Sin embargo, factores como la falta de información y la desmotivación son barreras a estas acciones, especialmente para los estudiantes de bajos ingresos. A partir de este análisis, el grupo de PET "la difusión del pensamiento científico como herramienta para la Ciudadanía" visitó las escuelas del municipio de Ouro Branco, Estado de Minas Gerais/Brasil, para desarrollar el proyecto "Diálogos acerca de qué significa estudiar Ingeniería", dictando palestras y charlas motivacionales a los estudiantes del último año de la escuela secundaria, con el objetivo de impulsarlos en la búsqueda de sus ideales. En los tres años en que el proyecto fue llevado a cabo, a los estudiantes de secundaria se les preguntó sobre su interés en ingresar a la educación superior. La mayoría respondió que quería unirse a una Institución de Educación Superior y muchos deseen complementar sus estudios con un título de postgrado. Sin embargo, hasta un 40% de los estudiantes nocturnos tienen preferencia por un curso técnico, o simplemente quieren terminar la escuela secundaria. Por otra parte, se observaron una alta auto-confianza en los estudiantes de las escuelas privadas y el sentimiento de auto-exclusión de los estudiantes de las escuelas públicas. Estos análisis confirman la necesidad de una divulgación cualificada de la educación superior pública. Palabras-clave: Examen Nacional de la Secundaria, Universidad Pública, el papel del Ingeniero.

Mobilities We live in a world of mobilised social life, as John Urry describes it. This is a world made out of constant flows of items, ideas, and actors travelling materially and/or immaterially from one location to another, non-stop. The movement of things and people goes back and forth; it changes direction and passes around various locations, both physical and virtual. No discussion of mobility today can be complete without consideration of the role of communication in reshaping mobilised social life. In many respects, our social life and a sense of community may be thought of as displaced and imaginary (Taylor). This is to say that, in today’s world, “belonging” as a constitutive element of community is acted out, in many cases, at a distance, without physical contact (Delanty 119-49). Furthermore, our sense of belonging is shaped by cultural and social communication networks and the media logic of the latest communication technology (Castells 54-136). It is in these de-territorialised communities (Dayan 166) that we communicate from one to one, or from one to many, without physical restriction; and by doing this, we form, transmit, and modify our self-understanding (or mis/understanding!) of the world in which we live and in which our lives are formed, transmitted, and modified by others. To understand the deeper dynamics of our newly mobilised social life, we need to elaborate on yet another dimension of communication: that is, the idea of circulation (Latour 36). The simplest way of defining circulation is to say that it is about “going the round” and/or “passing on” something—whether it is material or immaterial items, goods, artefacts, ideas, or beliefs that are being distributed and disseminated (Sumiala 44-55). However, as Benjamin Lee and Edward LiPuma (192) argue, if circulation is to serve as a useful analytic construct for the analysis of contemporary social life, “it needs be conceived as more than simply the movement of people, ideas, and commodities from one culture to another.” It is necessary to analyse circulation as a cultural process with its “own forms of abstraction, evaluation, and constraint” (192). It is, indeed, the dynamic structures of circulation that we have to look for. In this article, I shall attempt to illuminate the workings of circulation by discussing how images of violence travel in different types of mobile media environments and how that movement contributes to the formation and reformation of various social imaginaries. Drawing on Charles Taylor’s, Arjun Appadurai’s and Dilip Gaonkar’s work, I define social imaginaries as a symbolic matrix within which people imagine their collective social life. As Gaonkar (1-19) argues, it is within the folds of a social imaginary that we see ourselves as agents who traverse a social space and inhabit a temporal horizon. In everyday life, social imaginaries are carried in stories, symbols and images and in today’s world they rely heavily on stranger sociability—that is, sociability based on media-related relations among strangers (Gaonkar 4-5, 10). Images In Kauhajoki, Finland, on 23 September 2008, a 22-year-old male student went on the rampage at the Seinäjoki University of Applied Science (located in Kauhajoki, the province of Western Finland: a town with a population of some 14,000 inhabitants). The killer shot a teacher, nine of his classmates and, finally, himself. This was a second school shooting tragedy in Finland in less than a year, the first major incident being in Jokela in 2007. Before committing his crimes, the killer had distributed several self-images on the Internet (namely on IRC-gallery and YouTube) in which he broadcast his fascination for guns and shooting. Altogether, he had posted some 15 images on the IRC-gallery site. Some of the images were video clips, but these were later converted into still images. The images that started to circulate in the media after the tragedy included ones of the shooter pointing at the camera with his gun or of him shooting in a shooting range, as well as a number of self-portraits. Following Bruno Latour (159-64), I shall attempt to track the circulation of the killer’s images across different media landscapes: social and mainstream media. This short media ethnography covers excerpts from the Finnish online papers, television news, social media, and newspapers from the day of the tragedy (23 September 2008). Only print newspapers are collected from the next day, 24 September. More specifically, I trace the killer’s images from the largest broadsheet Helsingin Sanomat (print and online versions), the two tabloids Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti (print and online versions), and the national public broadcasting company, YLE (TV1 and TV2), as well as the two largest national commercial TV channels, MTV3 and TV4 (I will look especially at the main broadcast newscasts from the channels for the first day). En Route The Kauhajoki rampage shooter launched the process of circulation only about 15 minutes before he left home and started shooting. He logged in, downloaded the images on the social media website, IRC-gallery, and made a link to a server called Rapidshare to accelerate dissemination of his visual material. But this was only the tip of the iceberg in the shooter’s case. In the past, he had been an active circulator of violent material on the Web. By tracing his online history, we can confirm that the killer was a competent user of the digital communication technology (Hakala 99-118). The shooter registered with IRC-gallery in December 2004 and with YouTube in mid-March 2008. He took, for example, the username Wumpscut86 as his online identification. In the course of 2008, the images of the young man smiling at the camera changed into profile photos taken at a shooting range and eventually into a video where the man shoots at the camera. The shooter posted the first photos, hinting at the impending massacre, in the IRC-gallery in August 2008. Ten days after the first posting, the shooter downloaded a picture of his weapon onto the IRC-gallery, titled “Pity for majority”. At the end of August, pictures appeared on the IRC-gallery featuring the man firing his weapon at a shooting range and posing for the camera with his weapon. On Wednesday, 17 September 2008, he again added two more gunman photos of himself to his gallery (Sumiala and Tikka 17-29). During September, the killer downloaded four shooting videos onto YouTube, the last ones on 18 September 2008 (the Thursday of the week before the shooting). The videos feature the man firing his weapon at a location that appears to be a shooting range. On the day of the shooting, Tuesday 23 September 2008, he included a link to his Massacre in Kauhajoki file package, which contained the videos “You will die next”, “Goodbye”, and “Me and my Walther,” as well as an aerial shot of the school centre and photos of him aiming the weapon at the camera (Sumiala and Tikka 17-29).It is therefore clear that the shooter had planned his media strategy carefully before he committed his crime: he left plenty of visual traces, easy to find and distribute, after the catastrophe. In this respect, he also followed the pattern of his predecessors in Virginia Tech and in Jokela: these shooters had also activated social media sites to circulate violent material before taking any action (Kellner 39-43; Sumiala and Tikka 17-29). The killer started shooting in the school centre at around 10:46. The emergency response centre was notified of a fire and of the shooting at 10:47. Altogether, he shot ten people: nine students and one teacher. Around noon, the killer shot himself, but didn’t die immediately. His death, from gunshot wounds, was reported at Tampere University Hospital at 17:40 that evening. The first pieces of information about the shooting appeared on the social media site MuroBBS (a chat room) about half an hour after the shooting had started. About five minutes later, people chatting on the MuroBBS site made a connection between the shooter and his YouTube videos and IRC-gallery material. The IRC-gallery server removed his videos at 11:29 and the YouTube server an hour later, but they had already been uploaded by other users of social media and thus could not be totally destroyed by the server (Hakala 100-18). The online tabloid Iltalehti, published the first of the shooter’s images about 45 minutes after he had shot himself but was still alive. At this point, his face was not recognisable in the images because it was obscured by a black box. The tabloid headline said (in English translation) “Is he the shooter?” Later in the afternoon, all three online papers, Helsingin Sanomat, Iltalehti, and Ilta-Sanomat, published online images of the killer shooting and pointing his gun at the camera, and of his face (as originally published in IRC-gallery). With regard to issues of mobility, the online images travelled much faster than people with cameras. Kauhajoki, the town where the massacre took place, is situated far away from Helsinki, the capital of Finland, and centre of the country’s largest media and news organisations. Only the most well-resourced news organisations were able to send journalists and photographers to the scene of the crime with helicopters and planes; other journalists and broadcasters had to sit in a car or in a train for hours to get to Kauhajoki. Consequently, the critical moment had passed by the time they finally arrived (Hakala 99-118). By contrast, the images posted by the killer himself were available on the Web as soon the shooting started. And it was the social media sites that were the first to make the connection between the shooter and his images. This early annexing of images by the social media users was thus crucial in putting the massacre into circulation in its virtual form (Sumiala and Tikka 17-29). As noted above, social media operators in IRC-gallery and YouTube started to remove the shooter’s material less than an hour after the tragedy started at Kauhajoki. But, when searching YouTube or googling “Kauhajoki” at around 14:00 on the same day, one could still find at least 15 (and probably many more) of his videos (or at least, clips) on YouTube. The titles of these videos included: “School Massacre in Finland (Kauhajoki) 9/23/2008”, “The Shooter at the Massacre in Kauhajoki”, “Kauhajoki Killer Shooting his Deadly Weapon”. One of the crucial aspects of circulation is the issue of which material gets into circulation and what value is attached to it. In the case of the Kauhajoki school shootings, one needs to ask which were the texts or images that started to circulate in the national media, as it is the national media (in particular, television) that play a crucial role in transforming a local news event it into a national media catastrophe (see e.g. Liebes 71-84). The newscasts analysed for this research included evening news from every national news channel: YLE: channel 1 (20:30); channel 2 (21:50); MTV3 (19:00); and TV4 (23.00). All of them showed the shooter’s own images as part of their broadcasts. YLE channels 1 and 2 were more cautious about showing visual material, whereas the commercial channels MTV3 and TV4 used more airtime (and a larger number of images, both still and moving) to profile the killer. By the end of the day, the “Kauhajoki Killer” had become “the star” of the shootings (both nationwide and internationally), largely on account of the visual material he had left behind on the Web and which was so easy to circulate from one medium to another (Hakala 48-98). Needless to day, the “victims” of the shooting (nine students and a teacher) all but faded from view. Events the next day only increased this emphasis. The two tabloids Iltalehti and Ilta-Sanomat brought out extra issues featuring the killer’s own visual material on several double-page spreads. Especially interesting was Iltalehti’s double page (24-25), covered with images from the international online papers: Spiegel Online, Mail Online, CNN.com, BBC news, El Pais.com, Expressen and Aftonbladet, all but one of which had chosen to display the killer’s face on the front page. Helsingin Sanomat also chose to give the killer’s face extraordinary visibility; in Finland, the front page of the daily is usually always sold for advertisements and there are only very few instances in its history that have been an exception to this rule. The Kauhajoki massacre was one of these rare moments in history. Community Through this short media ethnography, I hope to have illustrated some of the ways in which circulation features in a contemporary media context through the example of the “Kauhajoki School Shooter”. The direction of this “circulation” was clearly from the social media to the mainstream media: from online to offline. As a media event, it was diachronic (i.e. “historical”—it evolved “across time”), but also synchronic inasmuch as the images multiplied on the Web in an instant (Sumiala and Tikka 17-29). In the circulation of the Kauhajoki shooter’s images, digital communication technology clearly played an absolutely central role. The images were easily accessible on social media sites and they were in a digital format that was simple to convert from one medium to another. This enabled instant and sensational “remediation”, to use Bolter and Grusin’s formulation. Not only were the images transformed from one medium to another; they became remediated, especially in commercial electronic and print media, as they all (MTV3, TV4, Helsingin Sanomat, Iltalehti, and Ilta-Sanomat) circulated images from the killer’s own online sites. Yet I do not wish to give the impression that the media circulation of the Kauhajoki killer images is an “innocent” or inconsequential cultural phenomenon in the context of mobilised social life. Circulation, as a means of communication, has the power to influence social imaginaries: how belonging is imagined and acted out in the age of mobility. In his book Fear of Small Numbers, Arjun Appadurai has argued that, in the contemporary era, communities are not only organised around communications that nurture positive imaginaries, but also circulate violence, fear, destruction, and uncertainty. By copying, repeating, and “recycling” violent material—by keeping circulation on the move, in other words—social imaginaries of violence are spread, not only on a national scale but globally. In this sense, it is arguable that they become distinctly glocal phenomena. Some of the circulation of the violent material is condensed on Web-based “hate groups”: this refers to those global communities that share a common hatred or anger regarding a given phenomenon or issue. The cause of hatred is often race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender, but it can also be misanthropy of a more general kind (Duffy 292). The attitudes towards the objects of hatred that are revealed may vary in both nature and degree, but the “national” exporting of violence from one country to another arguably follows a similar trajectory to the migrant flow of human subjects (Sumiala and Tikka 17-29) and therefore adds to the impression that circulatory “flows” have become the dominant trope of contemporary life the world over. Imaginary communities, as de-territorialised forms of belonging, can, in fact, be regarded as the communities of the era of mobility (see also Pikner in this issue). They cannot be physically perceived, but they do have social momentum. The shooter in Kauhajoki was a member of a large number of global virtual communities himself and arguably succeeded in exporting both himself, and “Finland”, to the rest of the world. He had, as we’ve seen, registered with YouTube, IRC-gallery, Suomi24 (Finland’s largest online community), and Battlefield 2 long before the massacre took place. It is also worth noting that, in these virtual communities, the killer took up his place as a resident rather than a visitor. Having established his online profile, he sought out contact with like-minded users, and engaged in social relationships in global online communities that were, quite literally, a world away from his home in Finland. In the virtual “hate communities” to which the Kauhajoki shooter belonged, dispersed people from around the world came together through a discourse of violence, hate, and destruction; I call these ephemeral encounters of stranger sociability networked communities of destruction. These are virtual global communities held together by a social imaginary constructed around the visualisation of texts of death and violence that emanate from a specific nation (in this case, Finland) but almost instantly transcend it. These communities cancel the distance between centre and periphery and cohere around the discourses of hate and destruction (Coman and Rothenbuhler 6). By remaking and circulating the Kauhajoki shooter’s photos and videos, these communities render a figure like the Kauhajoki killer immortal in an unprecedented way. The promise of post-mortem fame for a potential school shooter is thus kept vividly alive in today’s networked communities through the endless circulation of imaginaries of violence and destruction, raising issues of ethics and digital/media responsibility that have only just begun to be addressed. References Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Appadurai, Arjun. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. London: Duke University Press, 2006. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation. Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Castells, Manuel. Communication Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Coman, Mihai, and Eric Rothenbuhler. “The Promise of Media Anthropology.” Media Anthropology. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2005. 1-11. Dayan, Daniel. “The Pope at Reunion: Hagiography, Casting, and Imagination.” Media Anthropology. Ed. Eric Rothenbuhler and Mihai Coman. Thousand Oaks and London: Sage, 2005. 165-75. Delanty, Gerard. Community. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2010. Duffy, Margaret. “Web of Hate: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of the Rhetorical Vision of Hate Groups Online.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 27 (2003): 291-312. Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar. “Toward New Imaginaries: An Introduction.” Public Culture 14 (2002): 1-19. Hakala, Salli. Koulusurmat verkostoyhteiskunnassa. Analyysi Jokelan ja Kauhajoen kriisien viestinnästä. Helsingin yliopisto: CRC/Viestinnän laitos, 2009. ‹http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/blogs/crc/koulusurmat.htm›. Kellner, Douglas. Guys and Guns Amok: Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the Virginia Tech Massacre. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Lee, Benjamin, and Edward LiPuma. “Cultures of Circulation: The Imaginations of Modernity.” Public Culture 14 (2002): 191-214. Liebes, Tamar. “Television’s Disaster Marathons: A Danger for Democratic Processes?” Media, Ritual and Identity. Eds. Tamar Liebes and James Curran. London : Routledge, 1998. 71-84. Sumiala, Johanna. “Circulation.” Keywords in Religion, Media, and Culture. Ed. David Morgan. London: Routledge, 2008. 44-55. Sumiala, Johanna, and Minttu Tikka. “‘Web First’ to Death: The Media Logic of the School Shootings in the Era of Uncertainty. Nordicom Review 31 (2010): 17-29. ‹http://www.nordicom.gu.se/eng.php?portal=publ&main=info_publ2.php&ex=325&me=2%22%20%5Ct%20%22_blank›. Taylor, Charles. “Modern Social Imaginaries.” Public Culture 14 (2002): 91-124. Urry, John. Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity, 2008.

This study analyses and discusses the opinions of children contained in the texts and drawings that were forwarded to us regarding what they think about what they learn by watching television. Starting from this material, we formulated certain hypothesis regarding the relationship these children established with the television, and the way they deal with the issues that are more common in the actual debates about television in the current days: violence, TV news, soap operas, cartoons, adult entertainment, among others. La televisión no es solo diversión, sino también información y «enseñación». Enseñación es un neologismo que fue adoptado por los niños inspirados en la idea de aprendizaje, que expresa la actividad de la enseñanza. Ésa es la opinión que se escucha entre los niños cuando les preguntamos lo que piensan sobre la televisión. En Brasil, los niños forman parte del segmento más significativo de televidentes: permanecen delante de la pequeña pantalla por lo menos 3 horas todos los días; ellos son los que se relacionan de manera más intensa con la programación televisiva, ya que el tiempo promedio de permanencia en la escuela es reducido (cerca de 4 horas por día), las actividades culturales y deportivas y las opciones de ocio se restringen, de manera general, a las clases económicamente favorecidas. Además de eso, miles ( tal vez millones) de niños están solos en sus casas durante el día, esperando que sus padres vuelvan del trabajo. Por esa razón, muchos estudios y debates han sido realizados al respecto de la influencia que la televisión ejerce, o puede ejercer, sobre los pequeños televidentes. Padres, profesores e investigadores han discutido ampliamente lo que la televisión enseña y lo que de hecho los niños aprenden con ella, pues están preocupados en definir la extensión y los límites del llamado «potencial educativo» de ese sector. Interesado en aproximarse a esa problemática desde el punto de vista del niño, o sea, desde el ángulo del receptor, el Grupo de Investigación en Educación y Comunicación, de la PUC-Rio, elaboró un estudio que tuvo como punto de partida pedirle a los niños que escribiesen textos expresando lo que piensan sobre lo que ven en la TV. Recopilamos algunos centenares de esos trabajos escritos por niños, con edades entre los 9 y los 12 años, de escuelas públicas y particulares, que viven en grandes y pequeñas ciudades de los Estados de Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo y Minas Gerais . Algunos textos fueron enviados individualmente, mientras que otros fueron enviados en conjunto, habiendo sido recopilados por profesores en situación escolar; todos llegaron por correo. El material es rico, denso y extremadamente interesante y su análisis permitió formular algunas hipótesis al respecto de las relaciones que esos niños establecen con la televisión y del modo como ellos lidian con cuestiones más o menos recurrentes en los debates públicos sobre la televisión en la actualidad: violencia, noticieros, novelas, dibujos animados, programas para adultos, entre otras. Una de las reflexiones más frecuentes de esos niños es con respecto a la concepción que ellos poseen sobre lo que es y sobre lo que no es educativo en la televisión. En su mayoría expresan una visión bastante crítica a ese respecto, fundamentada en argumentos consistentes. Para ellos, la televisión es un ambiente donde se enseñan «cosas» buenas y mala, y donde ellos aprenden no siempre lo que es bueno. El presente trabajo describe, analiza y trae a colación las consideraciones de los niños, en los textos que nos fueron enviados, al respecto de lo que ellos piensan sobre lo que aprenden en la televisión.

In 1991 the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival evicted two female identified transsexual attendees on the grounds that they violated its women only policy of admittance. The Festival, established in 1976 and now the largest of its kind, turned into a "microcosm of the conflicts that have plagued the women's movement" (Rubin 18) and revived widespread debate about the place of trans and non-standard gender performances in feminist activism. A pro-trans event, aptly named Camp Trans, was held outside the Festival's gates with the aim of inciting greater interest in the area. The Festival's founder and on going organiser, Lisa Vogel, responded with a statement in 2001 claiming the "intention is for the Festival to be for womyn-born womyn, meaning people who were born and have lived their entire life experience as female" (Vogel 2000). This resulted in the exclusion of not only trans individuals, but also a plethora of non-conventional gender identities. Bitter debate ensued, revealing the Festival's role not just in appealing to a defined, recognisable demographic, but in constructing and maintaining an entire category of identity. My initial encounters with the Festival occurred through independent media and the internet. It become particularly widely debated after artists from the Queer orientated Mr Lady record label (most famously Le Tigre, fronted by riot grrl icon Kathleen Hanna) confirmed that they would perform at the event, despite knowledge of the anti-trans policy. Perhaps the most poignant reflection came from Ciara Xyerra's 2001 zine A Renegade's Handbook To Love And Sabotage. She comments that the Festival's intent was to provide "not only just a 'safe space' for women, but specifically for 'womyn born womyn.'" […] this essentialist logic is […] flawed in that it assumes every "womyn born womyn" was socialized in exactly the same way, that differences regarding race, class, ability, personal history, have no bearing on how a woman perceives herself as a woman […](69). Certainly the revised womyn born womyn label is a problematic way of dealing with the situation. The standard woman is assumed not to encounter trans issues, at least not in a way that impacts on her sense of gendered self. This issue provokes comparisons to the race debates that wreaked havoc through US feminism in early eighties. The sentiments of the Camp Trans protest echo Audre Lorde's 1984 criticism that: As white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define women in terms of their experience alone, then women of Color become 'other', the outsider whose experience is too alien to comprehend (632). In retrospect what remains most striking about the race debates is how incredibly poorly they were handled. The period is marked by a tendency towards splinter and separatist groups, evident in the writing of people like bell hooks and Mary Daly. Communication between various factions collapsed amid accusations of racism and ignorance of the wider struggle, leaving ruptures still visible today. (Gubar 884-890) The emphasis has shifted from presumed racial background to presumed biological characteristics, but at its core this is the same argument about which performances of self are given legitimacy, and which are passed off as outside the interests of the feminist community. Indeed the Festival's anti-trans policy can also be traced back to the early 1980's, stemming from clashes between separatists and post-operative transsexuals entering feminist activism. In both instances there has been an assumption that the majority of members within the community experience the world from a common perspective, a collective sense of self at the core of the movement, outlining its wider agenda. I am reminded of Gayatri Spivak's comment that "We take the explanations we produce to be the grounds of our action; they are endowed with coherence in terms of our explanation of self" (In Other Worlds 104). Conflict arises when internal factions find their concerns being overlooked, and begin questioning exactly whose experience is taken as the model for the collective self. There is a tendency towards viewing this as a threat to the movement's solidarity. In an effort to maintain wider group cohesion, divergent voices are often dealt with by claiming they arise from entirely different strains of selfhood. New identities, or at the least hyphenated subcategories, proliferate under "the essentialist's claim that there must be an ultimate (that is, comprehensive), complete, consistent, coherent set of types" (Spinosa and Dreyfus 72). These redefinitions explain and dispel difference without actually addressing it. It would be naive to assume this sort of essentialism exists only for the Festival and older activist methodology. While Queer theory has certainly given us new tools for understanding the issues, its practical application does not necessarily avoid "knitting out more fashionably an otherwise reconstructed […] essentialism" (Jagose). As people like Martha Nussbaum and Benita Parry have argued, if somewhat problematically, there is a fine line between fluidity and dissolution. Activist and liberal scepticism towards deconstructive methodology contains an at least reasonably justified trepidation towards tinkering with political communities which have proved historically successful. The unfortunate revival of the 'old school' activism versus 'new school' theory attitude, itself founded on an essentialist belief in a single, correct ideological stance, has further complicated matters. Festival attendee Janel Smith, writing for one of the bastions of 'old school' activism, Off Our Backs, voiced activist scepticism when commenting that post structuralism is "an entire movement and theory […] designed to debunk these 'myths' about gender and racial identity." She continues: We often make sense of other people by categorizing them into labels and boxes that we ourselves feel comfortable with. Dominant discourse tends to dismiss this process as inherently negative, one that limits people and their understanding of self and projected identity (17). The criticism of dominant academic discourse is worth consideration. If it "is not possible for us to describe our own archive, since it is from within these rules that we speak" (Foucault 130), we need to be acutely aware of the way we act within culture, and wary of any movement which claims to fully recognise and transcend its boundaries. Our treatment of identity needs to "avoid the mistake of slipping between 'no absolute truth' and 'absolutely no truth,'" as Felicity Newman, Tracey Summerfield and Reece Plunkett suggest. From the alternate perspective, Aviva Rubin argues "our activism is characterized by seemingly incompatible inclinations to generalize and to particularize" (17). She writes that the Festival's attempt to develop a "theoretical 'she'" with which we "identify sameness – she shares our politics, our goals, our place" is fundamentally flawed as "the notion collapses when confronted with the differences we've deliberately ignored" (8). This leaves the situation double bound. A standard sense of gendered self provides unity and a workable common agenda, but comes into conflict with the identities it has excluded from its definition. The unified self combats repression, but, as Judith Butler so aptly puts it, "exclusion operates prior to repression" (71). However there are certainly areas of common ground. Rubin's "plea for grey", or an area "between absolutes," (20) is remarkably similar to Smith's endeavour to exist "somewhere in-between butch and femme" (14). Yet, for the Festival, that difference was enough to cause a gap between those who found it "an atmosphere of unparalleled safety" (Smith 13) and the pro-trans attendees who felt they needed "an escort to get out safely after darkness fell" (Wilchins 2000). As these relative similarities exist, it is disappointing to see that the arising differences have met with such aggressively negative reactions. Given the unlikeliness of everyone agreeing on a definitive understanding in the near future, it would seem beneficial to shift the focus away from searches for correct identities and ideologies, and develop new approaches to the debates themselves. I am again reminded of a comment from Gayatri Spivak, this time from her 1992 essay "More on Power/Knowledge". She comments that "if the lines of making sense of something are laid down in a certain way, then you are able to do only those things with that something which are possible within and by arrangement of those lines" (151). This is as true for our concepts of self as it is for any other issue. If we cannot reach outside of the structures of culture to find more universally true categories, or expect an ideological stance to present entirely new and more correct understandings, how we handle the arising debate is of major importance. Homi Bhabha's comment that "our political references and priorities […] are not there in some primordial, naturalistic sense" (26) does not necessarily render them null and void. There is a difference between needing to debate an identity or ideology, and needing to discard or reinvent it. Instead of looking for a true model of self or a correct ideology, the problem becomes looking at the cultural structure we have, trying to "recognise it as best one can and, through one's necessarily inadequate interpretation, to work to change it" (Spivak 1988 120). From this perspective the conflict that emerges from the Festival is as important as the possibilities for final resolution. Rather than treating differences as immediate problems and being "shocked, disappointed and instantly sidetracked into seeking resolution" (Rubin 20), it seems possible to consider the debate important in its own right. In practice this would mean keeping the lines of communication between the various factions open, and treating debate as an integral and on going process, rather than an unwelcome confrontation to be settled as quickly and quietly as possible. The commitment of the Camp Trans protesters to "workshops to educate festival goers" (Wilchins 2000), and their modest success, indicates that maintaining ongoing debate is a workable and productive approach. On the other hand Vogel's unwillingness to talk to the Camp Trans group is perhaps as open to criticism as her definitions of gender identity. Surely if a definitive concept of self cannot be settled upon easily, the lines of communication between Camp Trans and the Festival can at least be expected to keep the search from stagnating. The role the Festival has served as "a locus of political and cultural debate" (Delany) combined with its relatively successful negotiations of class and race issues indicates that it can play this role successfully. Although the womyn born womyn policy might not have changed, it is difficult to imagine many other platforms on which trans related debates could occur on such a large scale. In light of this it does not seem unrealistic to think of the debate as beneficial in ensuring continued rethinking of the issues, and not just as part of some potential revision or creation of identities which will hopefully be completed some time in the future. References Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. 1994 London: Routledge. 2000. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999. Delany, Anngel. "Michigan Womyn's Music Festival celebrates 25 years of controversy." Gay.Com (2002) May 10th, 2002. http://content.gay.com/people/women_spac... Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A Sheridan Smith. Ed. R.D Laing, London: Routledge, 2000. Gubar, Susan. "What Ails Feminist Criticism?" Critical Inquiry 24.4 (1998): 878-903. Jagose, Annamarie. "Queer Theory." Australian Humanities Review 4 (1996) http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archiv... (28-6-02). Lorde, Audre. "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference". Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. 4th Ed. Malden: Blackwell, 1998: 630-636. Newman, Felicity, Summerfield, Tracy and Plunkett, Reece. "Three Cultures from the 'Inside': or, A Jew, a Lawyer and a Dyke Go Into This Bar…" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/count.... (28-5-02) Nussbaum, Martha. "The Professor of Parody: The Hip Defeatism of Judith Butler." The New Republic 22 Feb. 1999: 38-45. Parry, Benita. "Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse." Oxford Literary Review 9 (1987) 27-58. Rubin, Aviva. "The Search for Grey: an agree-to-disagree." Canadian Dimensions 31.5 (1997) 17-21. Smith, Janel. "Identity Crisis: Fuches Rise up and Unite." Off Our Backs 30.9 (2000): 13-20. Spinosa, Charles and Hubert Dreyfus. "Two Kinds of Antiessentialism and Their Consequences." Critical Inquiry 22.4 (1996) 735-764. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravority. In Other Worlds. London: Routledge, 1988. ---, "More On Power/Knowledge." The Spivak Reader. Ed. Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean. New York: Routledge, 1996: 141-174. Vogel, Lisa. "Official Statement of Policy by MWMF." (2000).http://www.camptrans.com/press/2000_mwmf... (30-6-2002). Wilchins, Riki Ann. Interview with In Your Face. (2000) http://www.camptrans.com/stories/intervi... (30-6-02). Xyerra, Ciara. A Renegades Handbook to Love and Sabotage 4. Madford: Independently Published, 2001. Links http://www.camptrans.com/ http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/country.html http://www.camptrans.com/stories/interview.html http://www.camptrans.com/press/2000_mwmf.html http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-Dec-1996/jagose.html http://content.gay.com/people/women_space/michigan_000807.html Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Ware, Ianto. "Conflicting Concepts of Self and The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Ware.html &gt. Chicago Style Ware, Ianto, "Conflicting Concepts of Self and The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Ware.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Ware, Ianto. (2002) Conflicting Concepts of Self and The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Ware.html &gt ([your date of access]).