This thesis theorises the practice of three female British dance artists, Miranda Tufnell, Helen Poynor and Hilary Kneale. It engages with the central idea that a combined practice of creative writing and movement improvisation enhances the artist's articulation and assimilation of the experience of dance, consequently developing a deeper connection to the experiences of the body in relation to one's environment. Refuting common perception that the inadequacy of language fails to embody the experience of dance, I argue that the approaches used by these women contribute to a distillation of experience thus revealing the essence of movement. Importantly, it focuses on practices that have been born of the feminist consciousness that facilitated the development of both British postmodern dance and women's writing since 1970. As a result, I utilise Elizabeth Grosz's notions of freedom and writing otherwise, and David Abram's Merleau-Pontian ideas on participation to underpin theoretical endeavours. Fieldwork, in the form of interviews and the participation in/observation of various performances, workshops and training programmes, run by each of the dance artists studied, is presented. The development of my own practice resulting from these enquires is documented, analysed and appraised throughout the thesis. The Introduction outlines research questions addressed and methodological approaches undertaken before considering the historical context of each artist's unique practice. Each case study is preceded by a chapter that identifies biographical circumstances, creative choices, and socio-political conditions that have influenced the careers of these dance artists. The function of writing as a bridge between the subjective embodied experience and objective analysis of that experience is examined alongside an assessment of the scope of each practice as a method of harvesting a [re]connection with nature and its power to generate self-affirming stories. Finally, the conclusion offers thoughts on the difficulties of such an endeavour within the framework of contemporary thought that maintains its stance on the split between [body]dance and [mind]written language.

Practices of sculpture and geography have collaborated ever since Stone Age humans hoisted up rocks to point them into the air. The ephemerality of life was rendered in a circle of forms and mass that celebrated the union of sky, earth and dwelling. Through the manipulation of stone, the land became a place, it became a home, it became situated and navigable. As millennia unfolded, the land was written with the story of itself. The creativity woven into the story of place is an evolution of material collaborations. In recent decades, academic geographers have explored the realms of creativity in their work, and sculptors have critically engaged with the nature of place. I have united these disciplines in the exploration of a truth of materials. The aim of the research was to investigate the relationship between making and place. The structure of my PhD focussed on the development of a transdisciplinary research environment that could host a range of creative practices around stone-working. I developed a long-term relationship with Trenoweth Dimension Granite Quarry, working as an apprentice sawman and mason. Here, I examined the everyday practices of labour and skill development, from which emerged deeper material and human interactions, that went on to inform my sculpture and modes of making. Arguing that granite has threads of relational agency embedded within its matrix, I initiated a series of practices that made use of my emerging knowledge as a granite-quarry worker, cast within experimental sculpture, texts, performance, photography and film. By formulating my methods around the vibrancy of matter, I disclosed new materialisms and more-than-human relations. This assemblage of documentation and artwork records and reflects on a series of practices and processes in tension. This productive tension arises from a re-rendering of artisanal practice as a research method; ushering in modes of representation as loops of experience and interpretation take place across different sites, spaces and times of mediation. The objective for the PhD research was to present a critically informed practice of sculpture-as-ethnography that could not only provide a model for practice-based research in general, but also significantly expand what might be meant by stone-work. This PhD by alternative submission is presented as a Commentary with an accompanying Digital Archive website.

This multi-modal dissertation examines the historical hegemonic making of U.S. education, and how compulsory schooling has framed acceptable notions of culture, language/literacy, and knowledge production. Through this criticism of colonization and education, theoretical and practical alternatives are explored for the opportunities outside mainstream schooling in the US. In examining the literary work on decolonizing education, these efforts can engage in unlearning of coloniality by finding examples from a time before colonization. In contemporary society, the practice of de/unschooling can hold the possibilities for decolonizing education. To demonstrate how families of color in the U.S. engage with unschooling, interview questions serve as the sharing of knowledge and experience so as to ground the research in lived reality. A brief survey of critical education and critical pedagogy broadens those already critical of schools and/or receptive to the criticism of schools and the un/deschooling alternative then places student and family/community as the center of learning and teaching.

<div> <div> <div> <p>Water is a critical resource for life, and communities are dependent upon reliable access to clean </p> <p>water to maintain stable quality of life. Issues of water contamination threaten this stability, creating uncertainty, threatening public health, and necessitating community response. One emerging water contamination issue involves a family of industrial chemicals called Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS). This study uses an integrated multi-theory approach to examine the processes of Resilience and Collective Action within a community experiencing issues of PFAS contamination. Results indicate that the community was generally successful in enacting resilience, however some challenges were encountered in the form of high levels of uncertainty, inaccessibility of technical information, challenges foregrounding productive action, and challenges maximizing transformative potential. Results also indicated the community was general successful with collective action in the immediate aftermath of the issue. The community struggled to maintain collective action over a long period and to transition to high level advocacy. Results demonstrated that existing theoretical frames are limited in their ability to predict effective resilience and collective action in events of long-term water contamination. These limitations are described in detail and the potential for expansion of these theories is discussed. Suggestions to improve future responses to issues of PFAS contamination, as well as suggestions for intervention into the community of focus are offered. </p> </div> </div> </div>

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This is an auto/ethnographic account of one organization and one person as we concurrently moved thru a process of IT driven planned organizational change. The purpose of the study is to explain how the change agent is affected by the experience of leading change. Using actor-network theory and a polyphonic approach, I present a multi-voiced, multi-actor account of the social network in situ and trace how the various actors engaged with one another during the organizational change process. I reflect upon my own multi-role performativity when acting in the role of the internal change agent next to my daily job roles and explore the effects on both me and the network; which identifies that a new actor network has been created. Finally, a multi-voiced exploration of myself is presented which traces my evolution from researcher to auto/ethnographer, further demonstrating the effects of multi-role performativity on the human actor. The study demonstrates that the effects of organizational change on both the social network and the actors within the network cannot be foreseen. Furthermore, in combining the use of Actor Network Theory and auto-ethnography, the study provides new insights into the effects of performance on the human actor within a socio-technical network, which is an unexplored dimension within the field of organizational change.

No description available.

This research study explores how future educational and occupational aspirations are constructed by young Sikh adults. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten young Sikh adults, both their parents, and their teachers at one school in West London to investigate how future aspirations are constructed, which resources are employed, and why certain resources are used over others. In some previous research on aspirations and future choices, Sikhs have either been ignored or, instead, subsumed under the umbrella category of ¿Asian¿ and this study seeks to address this. Furthermore, the study seeks to shed light on how British-Sikh identities are constructed and intersected by social class, caste and gender. This is important to explore since it can have an impact upon how young adults are structured by educational policy. A ¿syncretic¿ social constructionist framework which predominantly draws upon Pierre Bourdieu¿s notions of habitus, capital and field, along with the cultural identity theories of Avtar Brah and Stuart Hall, is employed to investigate the construction of identities and aspirations. In addition, the study contains ethnographical elements as it is conducted on my ¿own¿ Sikh group and at my former secondary school. Consequently, I brought a set of assumptions to the research which, rather than disregard, I acknowledge since they highlight how I come to form certain interpretations of phenomena over others.

In this study the stories of Unisa academic employees and fashion models were explored. The aim was to understand the nature of place-identity at work and to also look at what impact do changes to these working environments have on place-identity. Another aim of this study was to compare these two work contexts. The data was collected through interviews combined with an auto-ethnographic approach. The study suggested that people form an identity towards their places of work and also that changes within the workplace can be perceived as a threat. The study also showed that there are similarities between Unisa and the catwalk as contexts of place-identity. / Psychology / M.A.(Psychology))

M. Tech. (Fine Art, Department of Visual Arts and Design, Faculty of Human Sciences), Vaal University of Technology| / My Masters of Fine Arts degree consists of two components: the dissertation and practical works in the form of sculptures displayed as an exhibition. This body of work explores myth, belief and ritual practices relating to birth, life and death of twins in Xhosa culture. The purpose of the dissertation is to enrich and reflect on both the understanding of Xhosa ritual practices and that of my own work. The study will hopefully add significantly to the body of knowledge about Xhosa Indigenous Knowledge Systems as relating to twins. UNESCO emphasizes that Indigenous Knowledge Systems are part of immaterial cultural heritage such as languages, music and dance, festivities, rituals and traditional craftsmanship, and this cultural heritage is important for the identity of a society (Kaya & Masoga 2008:2). The choice of employing autoethnography in this qualitative study is derived from lived experience. Born as a twin in a rural Xhosa community, I experienced some unusual practices during my upbringing and thus a qualitative research method is used, involving auto-ethnography. This methodological approach aims at exploration of personal experience as a focus of investigation. The study also looks briefly at Yoruba twins as a means of finding similarities and commonalties with those of Xhosa culture. / National Arts Council