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“The Disposable Camera” theorizes the relationship between the cinematic image and energy resources. Framed by the emergent carbon-neutral cinema, the recent UCLA report on the film industry’s environmental footprint, as well as common perceptions about digital sustainability, “The Disposable Camera” posits that cinema has always been aware of its connection to the environment, the realm from which it sources its power, raw materials and, often enough, subject matter. But because the natural environment is so inextricably embedded within film’s basic means of production, distribution and reception, its effects remain as overlooked as they are complex. “The Disposable Camera” argues that cinematic history and theory can and indeed ought to be reappraised against the emerging ascendancy of environmental politics, all films; as such, all cinema could logically be included within the analytical parameters of this project. Primary focus, however, is given to documentary cinema, as well as notable experimental and narrative films. Selected texts do not overtly represent an environmental issue; rather, they reflexively engage with and theorize themselves as films, thus addressing the technological, industrial, and resource-derived essence of the moving image. Of import here are films that reveal how specific formal or aesthetic choices evidence and critique the ideology attached to resource consumption and/ or abuse. While it composes a distinctly environmental trajectory of the cinematic image, this project likewise historicizes and critiques these same stages and also challenges the utopian and/ or apocalyptical tendencies challenging eco-politics. Additionally, “The Disposable Camera” is committed to mapping out the shift from a distinctly tangible celluloid-based cinematic infrastructure to the ostensibly immaterial form of digital filmmaking. Indeed, the tension that now pits cinema’s material past against its immaterial future corresponds with the decline of natural reality on the one hand and the rise of cyber realities on the other, a parallel condition that fully evidences the increasingly palpable overlap between environmental and cinematic politics.

<p>Environmental attitudes have interested scholars for decades, but researchers have insufficiently appreciated the low salience of the environment, and the enormous complexity of this issue area. In this dissertation, I investigate how these features influence the way ordinary citizens think about the environment.</p><p>Research into the dynamics of public opinion has found a generic relationship between policy change and public demands for activist government. Yet, less is known about the relationship between policy and attitudes in individual issue areas. In the first chapter, I investigate the influence of a variety of factors on public opinion in a particularly complex policy area---the environment. To study the short-run and long term dynamics of environmental public opinion, I generate an annual metric of environmental attitudes running from 1974 to 2011. Consistent with prior research, I find the economy and major environmental disasters play an important role in aggregate environmental opinion. However, actual policy innovations are found to play only a limited role in attitude formation. Instead, the party label of the president appears to affect demand for environmental activism, when other factors are held constant.</p><p>Scholarly research has found a weak and inconsistent role for self-interest in public opinion, and mixed evidence for a relationship between local pollution risks and support for environmental protection. In the second chapter, I argue that focusing events can induce self-interested responses from people living in communities whose economies are implicated by the event. I leverage a unique 12-wave panel survey administered between 2008 and 2010 to analyze public opinion toward offshore oil drilling before and after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. I find that residence in counties highly dependent upon the offshore drilling industry was predictive of pro-drilling attitudes following the spill, though not prior to the spill. In addition, there is no significant evidence that residence in a county afflicted by the spill influenced opinion. This chapter concludes that local support for drilling often arises only after focusing events make the issue salient.</p><p>Previous research into place effects has provided mixed evidence about the effect of geography on public opinion. Much of the work finding a relationship is susceptible to methodological criticisms of spuriouness or endogeneity. In the third chapter, I leverage a unique research design to examine the influence of residential setting on environmental attitudes regarding water use. The findings indicate that local drought conditions increase individuals' level of concern about the nation's water supply. In addition, drought conditions are related to public attitudes towards water use regulation, with those living in drought-afflicted counties more likely to support government regulation. This chapter provides a firm foundation for research attempting to demonstrate that local conditions have a causal effect on public opinion.</p> / Dissertation

The focus of this research is what constitutes school ethos for a purposive sample of seven final year students in a Scottish secondary school. A review of existing literature on the topic of school ethos highlighted the importance that policy makers and practitioners in Scotland afford to the notion of a positive school ethos. Yet knowledge of the topic remains limited with only a narrow range of approaches to researching school ethos evident within the literature reviewed. This study begins by considering the ideas of the early twentieth century philosophies of Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976) and Edith Stein (1891 – 1942). In their ideas about the human person and human relationships the conceptual tools: thrownness; beingwith; care (acts of solicitude); mood; and temporality are identified to investigate school ethos from a different perspective. The hermeneutic phenomenological tradition particularly Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1908 – 1961) notion of embodiment and Hans George Gadamer’s (1900 – 2002) ideas of: conversation; fusion of horizons; and the hermeneutic circle provide both the methodology and method to investigate the phenomenon that presents itself as school ethos from the student perspective. Data on the students’ lived experience of secondary school were collected by conversational interview and are presented as participant stories with each story organised around the same five explicative themes. The analysis of the data found that there was little evidence of the school’s declared ethos entering the lifeworld of the participants, rather school ethos is experienced for them as moods which surface from acts of solicitude. Although the small-scale nature of the study precludes wider generalisations from the findings the study highlights issues that may be useful to policy makers and practitioners. In particular, it suggests there is a need to pay greater attention to understanding the lifeworlds of students, to the lived experience of school ethos and on seeking further clarification around what constitutes positive acts of solicitude within the context of school.

Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone Project / Sustainable certifications are expanding in popularity within the built environment as the construction industry is progressing towards sustainability, while benefits are becoming more valuable to the businesses that reside in sustainably certified spaces. These benefits, such as thermal comfort and natural daylighting, not only translate to enhancing employee’s health, but employers within sustainably certified buildings have found greater retention rates in employees, improved business recruitment, as well as higher productivity in employees. The range of this analysis is directed towards two businesses that reside in sustainably certified buildings, DPR Construction-Phoenix in Arizona and the Mosaic Centre for Conscious Community and Commerce in Edmonton, Canada. Both buildings will be assessed for the impact their sustainable space have on their business. The purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of holistic and specific components of sustainability certifications, exclusively LEED and Net Zero Energy, on businesses. The study was unique as it was conducted by interviewing an integral consultant/designer in the construction process that still currently works in the building. The interview revealed that DPR Construction found employees to be more comfortable in their workspace, thus suggesting that productivity would be improved however this cannot be measured. The Mosaic Centre found new business advantages such as utilizing the space for tours and community engagement opportunities that have given the businesses within the Mosaic Centre unique marketing opportunities to improve business. This analysis will help commercial building owners gain insight on the business impacts of implementing sustainable building components to achieve a LEED certification, Net-Zero Status or a Living Building Challenge certification.

The project team has, on behalf of Autoliv Development AB, analyzed transport flow and logistics in Gothenburg and Shanghai as well as its effects on the society and environment. The project team looked in-depth at different logistics operations, which served as basis for different scenario simulations. Key points of interest in the simulation were traffic safety (including congestion and noise exposure), efficiency, cost and the environmental effect. Due to confidentiality, the original text has been removed. The text above gives a brief overview of different parts of the project.