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This study develops the water requirement factors for different thermo-chemical and biochemical biomass conversion pathways for production of biofuels and biopower. Twelve biomass conversion pathways based on six biomass feedstocks are assessed. For all these pathways integrated water and energy requirement factors are developed. The biomass feedstocks considered for bioethanol production are corn, wheat, corn stover, wheat straw, and switchgrass. The biomass feedstock considered for biodiesel production is canola seed. Three biomass feedstocks are considered for biopower generation using direct combustion of biomass and bio-oil produced from the feedstocks through fast pyrolysis. These three feedstocks are corn stover, wheat straw and switchgrass. The water requirement is also evaluated for biofuels production based on wheat, wheat straw and canola seed in Alberta. Agriculture residues based ethanol production pathways are water and energy efficient, consuming only 0.3 liters of water per MJ of net energy value (NEV), whereas biopower pathways consume about 1.2 1.5 liters of water per MJ of NEV due to their lower energy efficiency. The pathway for producing ethanol from switchgrass is the most energy efficient, but consumes 117 liters of water per MJ of NEV. Producing biopower through the direct combustion of switchgrass and from combustion of switchgrass based bio-oil consumes 278 and 344 liters of water per MJ of NEV, respectively. Wheat and corn based ethanol production pathways consume 653 and 409 liters of water per MJ of NEV, respectively. Canola seed based biodiesel production pathway consumes 176 liters of water per MJ of NEV. Water demand in Alberta due to biofuels production will be 12.7% higher than the projected demand in 2025, but it can be met using existing resources. / Engineering Management

Thesis advisor: James Bernauer / Michel Foucault's account of power does not foreclose the possibility of ethics; on the contrary, it provides a inescapable framework within which ethics becomes possible. A clear elaboration of both the general features common to all kinds of power relations (Chapter One), as well as the evolution of particular modes of modern power (discipline and biopower, Chapters Two and Three) demonstrates how power relations both frame and require other, ethical relations. Foucault's articulation of these ethical possibilties (Chapter Four) follows several trajectories--some rooted in contemporary politics, others in ancient ethical practices--that begin with "bodies and pleasures," and move through the communal practice of friendship, to caring for oneself and others as a critical attitude. At the core of these interconected ethical trajectories are the interwoven concepts of critique and freedom, which give Foucault the resources to articulate a provisional but sufficient justification of ethical norms and values, thus answering his most incisive and significant critics. Foucault is thus a critical theorist whose work calls us not to despair but to hope in an ongoing struggle for the good and the just. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

This study explores the extent to which the implementation of the National Program for Reproductive Health and Family Planning by the Peruvian Government had consequences in the lives of women who underwent sterilizations. This study is based on a feminist methodology and used interviews as a method of data collection in order to privilege women’s voices and lived experiences from a gender perspective. It addresses notions of biopower and the concept of reproductive health within a framework of intersectionality. Finally, by linking women’s testimonies with the theoretical framework, it was possible to identify that specific Peruvian women, in vulnerable and poor conditions, were targeted by the Government because they did not represent the idea of development, and since then, women are dealing with physical, emotional, and social consequences.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate how processes of subjectification constitute the empowered citizen/patient in the discourses on smart cities. Descriptions of smartphone apps which use environmental sensor data are analysed through discourse analytic approach to governmentality. More specifically the thesis investigates the empowered citizen in relation to responsibilisation and relations to knowledge and power. The study finds that the citizen-subject is responsibilised and the relations knowledge are reformulated and redistribute responsibility. Data and the derived knowledge is represented as a form of empowerment. The citizen-subject is constituted as a manager of their own health, and a catalysts for changing the environment. Emphasising the importance of data and putting the user at the heart of data collecting further contributes to the responsibilisation. However, as the information from the data streams is transferable it also redistributes responsibility in the network of individuals who have access to it. The way of knowing the self and the environment is augmented to include a codified interface, which conditions the relationship. A distributed network of sensors allows the citizen-subject is able to simultaneously read the environment in multiple locations. Relations in knowledge production are also found to be altered.

Building on Critical Art Ensemble’s initial formulation of the data body, and on Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson’s concept of surveillant assemblages, my thesis explores a further articulation of digital subjectivity by examining ‘data body’ as a referent for the various data connections and layers that a neoliberal subject is presumed to gather and generate over the course of a day. The flesh is bound to and by this data, as many examples indicate data’s ability to expand, spread, “go viral” and have a discernible effect on a user’s practical existence. My thesis deals with the ways that disciplinary and security logics are at work in these digital spaces and how they establish a tertiary regime, as outlined by Foucault. By considering the work of Lauren Berlant and Sara Ahmed to support my assertion of bodies as situated and institutionally validated by technology, I discuss the modulation of affects such as fear and threat to establish modes of conduct mediated by the data bodies of their users.

This essay researches current workings of medicine in relation to contested, female diagnoses. This is made by looking at the construction of the new psychological diagnosis Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) in Swedish media, and relating it to a current trend seen in medicine; to medicalize women’s underperformance. A qualitative content analysis of 19 articles is conducted, showing that PMDD is constructed as; a biomedical fact and individual problem; a serious disease owned by the sufferers; and as something written out of the women’s self-image as a “not me”. These constructions are analysed with a theoretical framework built around the concept biomedicalisation, which we conceptualise as an exertion of biopower that shapes subjects in line with neoliberal ideals. Biopower is a concept from the Foucauldian notion of Governmentality, and describes power working on micro levels, through for example truth discourses, to make individuals understand and work on themselves as biological subjects. Our analysis shows that biopower can be seen to work through the different constructions of PMDD to shape self-managing, healthy subjects that are willing to biomedically change themselves in accordance with an ideological normal, but that this normal differs from that seen in research on other contested female diagnoses. To conclude we suggest that it would be more fruitful to look at biomedicalisation to understand current workings on female contested diagnoses, than to look at the trend on medicalisation of underperformance.

[pt] O presente estudo aborda o pensamento de Winnicott, buscando nele uma outra concepção da relação indivíduo/ sociedade distinta daquela que predomina hoje em nosso cenário social. A sua idéia de uma vitalidade espontânea e das condições necessárias para sua plena expressão contrasta com os dispositivos do biopoder descritos por Foucault que se apropriam da vida de modo a maximizar sua utilidade econômica. Ao mesmo tempo, a sua suposição de uma subjetividade que só pode emergir e diferenciar-se a partir da consistência do ambiente contrasta com a experiência de desamparo e vulnerabilidade descrita por Castel como característica do homem contemporâneo. Além disso, a noção winnicottiana de uma capacidade de preocupação com o outro que não depende de coerções e controles, mas de um ambiente cuidadoso internalizado, muito se aproxima das últimas análises de Foucault que tratam do cuidado de si antigo. Em tais análises, a ética greco-romana é entendida como expressão de liberdade, sendo retomada no presente sob a forma da amizade. Tanto Winnicott quanto Foucault sustentam a idéia de uma abertura potencial do indivíduo para o outro, mas é o primeiro autor quem, reconhecendo claramente as necessidades e tendências naturais da vida criativa, sem fechá-la em padrões normativos, nos permite criticar, por outro lado, o novo ideal de um sujeito totalmente aberto às demandas externas. / [en] The current study deals with Winnicott`s thought, searching in it another conception of the individual/society relationship, different from the one that prevails today in the social scenario. His idea of a spontaneous vitality, and the necessary conditions for its full expression, opposes the biopower mechanisms described by Foucault that take life in a way to maximize its economic use. At the same time, his assumption of a subjectivity that can only emerge and differentiate itself supported by a consistent environment opposes the helplessness and vulnerability experience described by Castel as characteristic of the contemporaneous man. Besides that, Winnicott´s notion of a capacity of concern with the other that does not depend on coercion and controls, but on an internalized careful environment, seems very close to Foucault latest analysis that deals with the concern of self in antiquity. In such analysis, the Greek-Roman ethics is understood as the expression of freedom, being recovered to the present in the form of friendship. Both Winninicott and Foucault support an idea of a potential openess of the individual to the other, but the former is the one who, clearly recognizing the needs and natural trends of creative life, without closing it in normative standards, allows us to criticize the new ideal of a subject completely open to the external demands.

A presente pesquisa propõe conhecer e analisar os sentidos de aprendizagem e as estratégias de governamento da população escolar utilizadas pelo Programa Pacto pela Aprendizagem: todos temos o direito de aprender. O Programa, desenvolvido no munícipio de Novo Hamburgo/RS, foi criado como consequência das dificuldades de aprendizagens apresentadas pelos estudantes e do aumento do número de retenções escolares. Foi pensado sob uma rede de proteção social e sob uma gestão democrática, que articulou uma ação intersetorial entre três Secretarias (Secretarias Municipais de Educação, de Saúde e de Desenvolvimento Social). A pesquisa é desenvolvida através da análise de documentos que descrevem/informam sobre esse Programa e também é pautada em outros textos e normativas de âmbito nacional e internacional, os quais servem de balizas para entender perspectivas que impulsionam a criação de programas voltados para a aprendizagem, tais como o Pacto. A pesquisa articula os Estudos Culturais com os Estudos Foucaultianos. Da caixa de ferramentas foucaultiana, foi utilizada a noção de governamento para operar as análises, além de ter sido útil a essa investigação a compreensão de Bauman sobre nosso tempo focalizada em suas noções e metáforas, a saber: ambivalência, Modernidade Sólida e Modernidade Líquida. Estas metáforas, em articulação com as ferramentas de Foucault, estabeleceram-se como potentes noções para entender os sentidos de aprendizagem e estratégias de governamento direcionadas à população na atualidade. Com a análise desenvolvida, foi possível perceber, nos discursos sobre a educação escolar, um deslocamento de ênfase do ensino para a aprendizagem, conforme o demonstrado por Biesta (2013) e Nogueira-Ramírez (2011). Em vista disso, ainda que o Programa Pacto pela Aprendizagem: todos temos o direito de aprender busque desenvolver suas estratégias resistindo à mercadorização da escola, os sentidos de aprendizagem tornam-se ambivalentes. Pois mesmo que haja essa resistência, existe também a valorização de atributos próprios dessa inteligibilidade contemporânea: aprendizagem permanente, para além dos muros da escola e a diversidade cultural. Tais características fazem com que o Programa busque aquilo que leva alunos a terem dificuldades em aprender em fatores que vão além do ensino institucional, isto é, fatores socioeconômicos ou relacionados à saúde. Classifica-se estas duas condições para a aprendizagem como a gestão do social e a gestão da saúde. Além disso, os documentos do Pacto indicam como estratégia de governamento, algo que denomina-se como a tríade: mobilização, participação e articulação. Através disso, outras ações estratégicas de governamento são assumidas, como a sedução direcionada para a participação, a formação docente continuada e a responsabilização da comunidade escolar pelas aprendizagens ou dificuldade dos estudantes em aprender. / This research aims to understand and analyze the senses of learning and the government strategies of scholar population used by the Program Pact for Learning: we all have the right o learn. More specificlly, the meaning of learning and the strategies of government operated by the Pact for the life of the school population are problematized. Developed in Novo Hamburgo/RS, the Program was create as a result of learning difficulties presented by students and by the increasing number of school failure. It was thought in a network social protection and under a democratic administration, which have articulated na intersectoral action from three Municipal Secretariats (Municipal Secretariats of Education, Health, and Social Development). The research is developed through the analysis of documents that describe/inform about this Program. Besides, this research is also based on other texts: national and international regulations, which serve as beacons to understand perspectives that drive the creation of programs for learning, such as the Pact. This research joins Cultural Studies with Foucault studies. From Foucault’s toolbox, it was used the notion of government to realize the analyzes. Besides, it was very useful for this investigation Bauman’s thought on our current time, which is focused on his notions and metaphors, namely ambivalence, Solid Modernity, and Liquid Modernity. Together Foucault’s tools, these metaphors have established themselves as powerful notions to understand the learning senses and government strategies, which are aimed at the population nowadays. After the analyses developed, in discourses about schooling, it was possibel to notice a shift emphasis from teaching to learning, as it is demonstrated by Biesta (2013) and Nogueira-Ramirez (2011). In this sense, although the Pact Program for Learning: we all have the right to learn seek to develop its strategies resisting the commodification school, the learning senses become ambivalent. Even if there is such resistence, there is also the valuation of own attributes of this contemporary intelligibility: lifelong learning beyond the school walls and cultural diversity. These features make the Program seek what leads students to have difficulty learning on factors that go beyond the institutional education, ie, socioeconomic factors or related to health. These two conditions for learning were classified as management of social and management of health. In addition, the Pact documents indicate as government strategy, which is called as the triad: mobilization, participation, and articulation. Through this, other strategic actions of government are assumed as seduction directed to participation, continued teacher training, and accountability of the school community, both for learning, as the difficulties of the students in learning.