While Skagboys portrays the descent into heroin addiction of young, working class Scots during the Thatcher era, shifting the analysis from a strictly human perspective to one focusing on the agency of objects opens up the novel to new readings wherein morality emerges through nonhuman actors. Welsh’s work has traditionally been hailed as Scottish working-class realism that portrays its characters unideologically, to the point that the novels, through the characters, appear without morality. Drawing upon Latour’s notion of Actor-Network Theory, ANT, reveals a Thatcherite materiality permeating the story, prescribing the moral behaviour which the characters of Skagboys repeatedly clash with as their heroin addiction and junk desperation grows. The impacts of the security camera, the smoke detector and the collection tin provide the basis for the analysis. This highlights two types of marginalization for the characters. Firstly, in the characters’ hopeless prospects with regards to employment due to Thatcher’s neoliberal politics, and secondly as objects of detection and control exerting agency in the world which the characters navigate. These objects presuppose and foil crime, effectively becoming extensions of Thatcherite morality, keeping the criminal and unemployed in check.

abstract: This study employed Participatory Action Research (PAR) which applied critical pedagogy, actor-network theory, and social network theory to create and implement an Application Framework for Critical Pedagogy (AFCP) with the goal of making critical pedagogy more broadly accessible to a wider range of faculty in higher education. Participants in the study included faculty, staff, and students from Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions of Arizona State University, and data was collected in the form of surveys, interviews, written interactions, and video observations of multidisciplinary committee meetings to build the framework. The study concluded with a functional framework from which faculty and instructional designers alike can work to create better, more effective courses. Including participants of diverse backgrounds, varying power levels, and sometimes opposing perspectives in the study created a diversity of thought and experience which offered the opportunity to refine the purpose, expectations, and specific language of the tool. While the framework is not intended to be a definitive source of critical pedagogy application, this refinement allows the possibility that more faculty, instructional designers, and other higher education stakeholders may find utility in the revised framework as a tool for self-advocating and for professional pedagogical growth. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Leadership and Innovation 2020

Homebirth as Actor-Network: Multiple realities The topic of this medical anthropology thesis is a description of homebirth seen through the eyes of Actor-Network Theory. The focus of this work is thus not on the professional concept of homebirth as a biological process or soon-to-be-mothers experience and take on homebirth. Focus is on homebirth in itself, how it is enacted via interactions of actors in network. After the presentation of two points of view on medicine (disease and illness), an introduction into the basic principles and innovations of ANT (including anthropology of symmetry), into the works of people, who build their ideas on it (Mol - multiplicity, De Laet - fluidity, Law) and the presentation of the current birthing situation in the Czech Republic, the thesis shifts its focus to the description of the whole actor-network, which enacts homebirth via interaction between the actors in practice. These practices are abstracted from the interviews with mothers, a dula and a paediatrician. The description includes people and objects, because according to ANT, they have the same amount of social agency. Homebirth is then enacted by the objects needed for homebirth - tools to make birth easier and to support its process, by people who partake, venues it takes place in and the birthing positions it...

This interdisciplinary project investigates the extents and limits of alternative news translation in the era of globalization and virtualization and is guided by the insights drawn from actor-network theory, material semiotics, ethnomethodology, anthropology, news sociology, and the philosophy of translation. It visually represents the semiotic, sociological and material components of news translation as well as describes the patterned and concerted actions of human and non-human actors that go into making news stories in the context of IPS, a global news agency. A contribution is made to both theoretical knowledge and the development of the conceptual research method, which is given scarce attention in translation studies as compared to prevailing empirical research. A meta-semiotic concept of sociological translation that I formulate helps bridge the gap between tackling ‘translation’ in terms ofJakobson’s triadic classification as either an intralingual, interlingual or intersemiotic phenomenon, and the recurrent metaphorical usage of ‘translation’ in the humanities, social sciences and beyond. The concept is informed by the networked ontology of actor-network theory and embodies the idea that meanings and translation are created by means of social interactions rather than by language alone. It is suggested that sociological translation stands for any linguistic, material-semiotic transformations and social articulations, which are all enmeshed with IPS journalistic and interlingual translation practices. On the other hand, in view of the absence of methodological tools for studying nonlanguage-based translation in translation studies, I have assembled my own methodology drawing on the traditions of the wider humanities and the social sciences. My case study adopts Law’s ideas on method assemblage and Latour’s elaborations on infra-reflexivity which are well-suited for conveying the serendipity and messiness of ‘real-life’ research. It incorporates traditional ethnography, virtual ethnography and digital methods. Visualizing a network of sociological translations at different junctures as well outlining a holistic map of the concept allows one to observe the practices of journalist-editor-translators from both micro- and macro-perspectives. Finally, the studied phenomenon reflects modern conditions of life: non-stopping globalization and virtualization and is transdisciplinary in nature. Delineating and comparing the articulations of sociological translation in a wider connected and virtual context illuminates the concept’s mechanisms and contributes to the scholarly awareness of the complexity of news translation in a digital age. In conclusion, the thesis offers a new conceptual space within TS—translational sociology—which would strike up a conversation between TS and other disciplines in the social sciences with the goal of cross-fertilization of knowledge and finding better-informed interdisciplinary solutions to the shared problems including their linguistic, discursive and cultural aspects.

This essay analyzes Mette Edvardsens performative work oslo, which usually falls under the label of dance and choreography. The performance is in many ways making use of and staging language though, so the aim here is to examine how the linguistic and textual material of the performance is enacted in relation to its mediating devices and vice versa. The essay is making use of the media theory by David J. Bolter and Richard A. Grusin to show that no medium stands by itself but always exists and works in a web-like relation to other medias. Language will therefore not be seen as isolated but always interacting with other mediating instances. Their theory will also stand as a base in trying to track different medias ideological origin. With inspiration from actor-network theory, this essay tries to map the performance as a network made up by components. The components will be understood, through material- semiotic theorists as Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, to exhibit agency. That is, they are seen to be doing something, they affect the network in a way which is beyond the control and possible intention by an author. The essay shows that Edvardsens performance is being enacted by its network, wherein the author or choreographer is one but not the only actor. The essay also examines how we come to understand a body or and object for what they are, how we define their borders, and will argue that borders are not static but are open for negotiation.

Les structures en réseau, hybrides entre marché et hiérarchie, se développent de plus en plus, notamment sous l'effet de la mondialisation et des manoeuvres de décentralisation. Parmi les différentes formes de réseaux, la méta-organisation territorialisée est une forme à la fois peu abordée et hautement spécifique. Une méta-organisation est une organisation constituée d'organisations mais sans pouvoir hiérarchique. Ce travail de thèse enrichit la théorie des méta-organisations en recourant à la théorie des biens communs et à la théorie de l'acteur-réseau dans le cas des corridors logistico-portuaires, qui sont des groupements de partenariat entre des ports maritimes et fluviaux d'un même axe géographique. Ainsi, cette thèse montre que la méta-organisation du corridor logistico-portuaire est performée grâce à un ensemble de biens communs et que les différences de perception de l'action de ces biens communs freine le processus de performation du fait organisationnel. / As hybrids between markets and hierachy, network structures have spread a lot due to globalization and de centralization. Among the varions types of networks, territory-anchored meta-organizations appear both as les studied and specific kinds of networks. A meta-organization is defined as an organization which is composed by organizations without having a real hierarchical power on its members, such as employment or property. This thesis enriches mate-organization theory by mobilizing both the theory of commons and actor-network theory in the case of gateway corridors. Gateway corridors are groupings created between seaports and inland ports from a sanie geographical axis. Within that scope, this thesis shows that the mets-organizations of gateway corridors are performed through the mobilization of différent kinds of common goods ant that differences in the perception of their action brakes the process of organizational performation.

Die vorgestellte Arbeit präsentiert ein geschlossenes Konzept für die synchronisierte Erfassung, Verarbeitung und Aufbereitung beliebiger Sensor-Informationen. Es ist nun möglich, heterogene Sensornetze sowie dedizierte, autarke Messsysteme zeitlich zu koordinieren und entsprechend in Relation zu setzen. Auf Basis von XML erfolgt die ganzheitliche Beschreibung des Monitoring-Szenarios und die Einordnung der einzelnen Datensätze. Die Informationen können nun in beliebigen Ausgabeformaten anwendungsspezifisch definiert und visualisiert werden. Zusätzlich ermöglichen Mechanismen zur gezielten Messwert-Vorverarbeitung und -Filterung eine Senkung des benötigten Datenvolumens. Die Funktionalität des vorgestellten GREASE-Frameworks wird am Beispiel eines geschlossenen Test-Systems aus dem Automotive-Bereich evaluiert. Dabei wird die vorhandene Sensorik eines Kfz-Bordnetzes mit einem zusätzlichen Netzwerk aus Sensorknoten verfeinert. Die korrelierten Daten werden anschließend für die Visualisierung mittels Google Earth, jBEAM und anderen Lösungen aufbereitet.

Václav Drozd Object oriented political theory? A contribution of object oriented philosophy for political theory Abstract (in English): This diploma thesis is concerned with the turn to materiality and object in contemporary philosophy and explores its impact on political theory. It focuses on conceptions trying to reformulate the relation between subject and object, culture and nature or human and inhuman entities - symetrical ontology of Bruno Latour, speculative realism and object-oriented ontology. The aim of the study is to identify the benefits of these aproaches for political theory. The first frame topic important for investigated theories is the relation of human and state towards complex technologies. The second general topic is the existence under conditions of anthropocene and climate change. Keywords: anthropocene, speculative realism, object, corelationism, actor, vibrant matter, technologies, symmetry, actor-network-theory, Latour

Homebirth as Actor-Network: Multiple realities The topic of this medical anthropology thesis is a description of homebirth seen through the eyes of Actor-Network Theory. The focus of this work is thus not on the professional concept of homebirth as a biological process or soon-to-be-mothers experience and take on homebirth. Focus is on homebirth in itself, how it is enacted in practice. After the presentation of two points of view on medicine (disease and illness), an introduction into the basic principles and innovations of ANT (including anthropology of symmetry) and works of people, who build their ideas on it (Mol - multiplicity, De Laet - fluidity, Law), the thesis shifts its focus to the description of the whole actor- network, which enacts homebirth via interaction between the actors in practice. These practices are abstracted from the interviews with mothers, a dula and a paediatrician. The description includes people and objects, because according to ANT, they have the same amount of social agency. Homebirth is then enacted by the objects needed for homebirth - tools to make birth easier and to support its process, by people who partake, venues it takes place and the birthing positions it brings. Another part of the actor-network can be found before the homebirth happens - the hunt for information...

In this diploma thesis I focus on the formation of urban cycling including heterogeneous participating actors - people, discourses, technologies, infrastructures and other materialities. I examine cyclists' relationships with their environment and describe asymmetries connected with the dominant status of automobilism in urban environment, and strategies for contesting this situation. I also focus on cyclo-activist discourse which plays an important role in the empowerment of cyclists in urban traffic. Mobilizing arguments of critical theory and the "right for the city" concept cyclo-advoacy strives to include as many citizens as possible in debate about public space and in this way support pro-cycling developments. From the perspective of actor-network theory (ANT) this strategy has limits due to its operation with stabilized social science categories and I argue that ANT could contribute a more nuanced arguments to cyclo-advocacy with detailed description of connections between cyclists and urban environment, focus on embodiment and emotions and highlighting the role of materialities. It could thereby provide a stronger argument for furthering the pro-cycling development. Key words: urban cycling, automobilism, actor-network theory (ANT), cycloadvocacy, critical theory, materiality