The aim of this study is to examine the transformation of war into play in the context of the hobby called wargaming. The main focus is around Military Simulations (Milsims) using so called airsoft guns, and the miniature game-rules called Force on Force. It also studies how participants create a common understanding of the plays content, and how conceptions of modern conflicts, soldiers and the traumatizing effects of war are perceived and mirrored in wargaming. The investigation is based on interviews with airsoft and figure gamers, as well as an analysis of rulebooks and observations of said wargames. The theoretical frame is Gregory Batesons play frames (as used by Lotten Gustafsson), discourse theory and Actor-Network-theory, showing the importance of human and material interactions – articulations - within the context of playing. This investigation also relies heavily on the conclusions regarding Wargaming made by P.A.G. Sabin. Using meta-communication and performance, participants create the play frame where their conceptions of modern warfare are played out. Physical objects are an important part of the play frame, affecting the performance of the participants. The study also shows how common prejudices, like the portrait of an irrational and bloodthirsty Muslim, prevail. Women are welcomed to join these male dominated games, but are strongly feminized, making it difficult to enter on even terms. The study concludes that the articulations used to transfer war into game reflect the participants apprehensions of gender, culture, anti-heroes and the military; even though wargamers themselves see their play as being relatively distanced from the ”real” worlds opinions and conceptions.

<p>Programmes and policies to support ecological sustainable development and the practice of implementation is a question of innovation rather than known and taken for granted procedure. This thesis argues a priori models concerning stability in the social sciences, and human geography especially, are less able to help us understand this practice and planning in such unstable situations. Problematic in common understandings of planning and policy implementation concerning sustainability are the dualisms between physical-social spaces and between rationality-contingency. The first dualism makes it hard to grasp the interaction between humans and nonhumans. The second dualism concerns the problem of how to capture change without resorting to reductionism and explanaining the evolving projects as either technically, economically, or culturally rational. </p><p>The scope of the thesis is to test resources from actor-network theory as a means of resolving these dualisms. The case is the Stockholm Local Investment Programme and the new district of Hammarby Sjöstad. The programme’s objective was to support the implemention of new technologies and systems, energy efficiency and reduced resource-use as well as eco-cycling measures. The case-study follows how the work with the programme unfolded and how administrators’ efforts to reach satisfactory results was approached. In doing this, the actors had to be far more creative than models of implementation and traditional technology diffusion seem to suggest. The recommendation is to take the instrumentalisation framing the plasticity of a project in planning seriously – as innovativeness is not a special but the general case. Hence, to broaden our tools and understanding of planning a human geography of planning projects is pertinent.</p>

Electronic Patient Records (EPRs) are becoming standard tools in healthcare, lauded for improving patient access and outcomes. However, the healthcare professionals who work with, around, and despite these technologies in their daily practices often regard EPRs as troublesome. In order to investigate how EPRs can prompt such opposing opinions, this project examines the EPR as a collection of communication genres set in complex contexts. In this project, I investigate an EPR as it was used on the Nephrology ward at a large, Canadian, urban, paediatric teaching hospital. In this setting, this study investigates EPR-use in relation to the following aspects of context: (a) the visual rhetoric of the EPR's user-interface design; (b) the varied social contexts in which the EPR was used, including a diversity of professional collaborators who had varying levels of professional experience; (c) the span of social actions involved in EPR use; and (d) the other genres used in coordination with the EPR. <br /><br /> This qualitative study was conducted in two simultaneous stages, over the course of 8 months. Stage one consisted of a visual rhetorical analysis of a set of genres (including the EPR) employed by participants during a specific work activity. Stage two involved an elaborated, qualitative case study consisting of non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews. Stage two used a constructivist grounded theory methodology. A combination of theoretical perspectives -- Visual Rhetoric, Rhetorical Genre Studies, Activity Theory, and Actor-Network Theory -- supported the analysis of study data. This research reveals that participants routinely transformed EPR-based information into paper documents when the EPR's visual designs did not support the professional goals and activities of the participants. <br /><br /> Results indicate that healthcare professionals work around EPR-based patient information when that genre's visual organization is incompatible with professional activities. This study suggests that visual rhetorical analysis, complemented with observation and interview data, can provide useful insights into a genre's social actions. This research also examines the effects of such EPR-to-paper genre transformations. Although at one level of analysis, the EPR-to-paper-genre transformation may be considered inefficient for participants and so should be automated, at another level of analysis, the same transformation activity can be seen as beneficially supporting the detailed reviewing of patient information by healthcare professionals. <br /><br /> To account for this function in the transformation dysfunction, my research suggests that many contextual factors need to be considered during data analysis in order to construct a sufficiently nuanced understanding of a genre's social actions. To accomplish such an analysis, I develop a five-step approach to data analysis called 'context mapping. ' Context mapping examines genres in relation to the varied social contexts in which they are used, the span of social actions in which they are involved, and a range of genres with which they are coordinated. To conduct this analysis, context mapping relies heavily on theories of "genre ecologies" (Spinuzzi, 2003a, 2003b; Spinuzzi, Hart-Davidson & Zachry, 2004; Spinuzzi & Zachry, 2000) and "Knotworking" (Engestrom, Engestrom & Vahaaho, 1999). Context mapping's first three steps compile study data into results that accommodate a wide range of contextual analysis considerations. These three steps involve the use of a composite scenario of observation data, genre ecologies and the description of a starting point for analysis. The final two steps of this approach analyse results using the theory of Knotworking and investigate some of the implications of the patterns of genre use on the ward. <br /><br /> Through context mapping analysis, this study demonstrates that EPR-based innovations created by a study participant could result in the generation of other improvisations, in a range of genres, by the original participant and/or by other collaborators. These genre modifications had ramifications across multiple social contexts and involved a wide range of genres and associated social actions. Context mapping analysis demonstrates how the effects of participant-made EPR-based variations can be considered as having both beneficial and detrimental effects in the research site depending on the social perspective adopted. Contributions from this work are directed towards the fields of Rhetorical Genre Studies, Activity Theory research, and Health Informatics research, as well as to the research site itself. This study demonstrates that context mapping can support text-in-context style research in complex settings as a means for evaluating the effects of genre uses.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

‘Integration’ is often referred to in Swedish policy documents and analyzed by measures of effectivity and structural adjustment, assuming acculturation and essentialization of populations. This thesis explores how integration is practiced and defined within the context of professional adult education for newly arrived immigrants. The main case study focuses on Swedish for Professionals (SFX) and specifically, the Swedish for truck drivers (SFL) program as sites where the lifeworlds of teachers and students emerge as an actor-network of integrative forces. By relying on ethnographic methods including semi-structured interviews and participant observation the informants’ own narrative of entering society surfaces. Actor- network theory and community of practice theory lift the informants’ actions and accounts to assemble a community of integrators located within a network of integration. Tracing the voices, actions and interactions of the participants at SFX and SFL in particular, results in a contextual version of integration that relays their subjective experiences and explains the social and material processes involved in them ‘coming into society.’ The lived-in experiences of integration offered in this thesis both compares and contrasts to forms of integration offered in political and scholastic discussions.

A construção institucional das políticas ambientais no Brasil tem como marco inicial a criação da Lei Nº 6938 (1981), que instituiu a Política Nacional do Meio Ambiente. A partir desta lei foi estabelecido um Sistema Nacional do Meio Ambiente Sisnama, criado para organizar os mecanismos para a construção e o funcionamento de uma legislação ambiental no país. O Sisnama foi composto por órgãos setoriais (órgãos estaduais de meio ambiente), um órgão superior (o Conselho Nacional do Meio Ambiente - Conama) e um órgão central executor (Secretaria Especial do Meio Ambiente - Sema). Como órgão superior e deliberativo do Sisnama, o Conama se tornou um campo de negociação ao agregar interesses heterogêneos pelo objetivo de definir um conjunto de resoluções que, ancoradas na lei Nº 6938 (regulamentada pelo Decreto Nº 88351 de 1983), adquiriram força de lei. O referencial teórico-metodológico utilizado para a análise do Conama é a Teoria do Ator-Rede (TAR, ou ANT, em inglês). O presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a construção e atuação do Conama, como arena ambiental desde a sua construção até o momento em que foi estabelecido o Ministério do Meio Ambiente (1981-1992), entendendo esse período como momento de institucionalização do meio ambiente no Brasil. O Conama reuniu humanos e não-humanos, entre os quais: políticos, engenheiros, cientistas, ambientalistas, as hidrelétricas, a floresta amazônica, as usinas nucleares, os resíduos atômicos, as unidades de conservação, as destilarias de álcool, os rios, entre outros. A discussão proposta consiste, portanto, em analisar a trajetória deste conselho e sua particip(ação) no cenário político nacional como órgão designado a estabelecer uma política de proteção ambiental em um momento marcado pelos desdobramentos da crise energética e pela tentativa de retomada do crescimento econômico no Brasil. / The institutional construction of environmental policies in Brazil has as starting point at the creation of Law No. 6938 (1981), which established the National Environmental Policy. Within this law was established a National Environmental System (Sisnama) created to organize mechanisms for the construction and the operation of the environmental legislation in the country. The Sisnama was composed by institutional bodies (state environmental agencies), a higher body (the National Environmental Council - CONAMA) and an executor central body (Special Environmental Secretariat - SEMA). As the superior and deliberative body of Sisnama CONAMA became a trading field by adding heterogeneous interests by the objective of defining a set of resolutions which, anchored in the law No. 6938 (regulated by Decree No. 88351 of 1983), acquired the force of law. The theoretical framework used for the analysis from CONAMA was the Actor-Network Theory (ANT). This study aims to analyze the construction and the operation of CONAMA, as environmental arena, since its construction until the moment the Ministry of the Environment was established (1981-1992), understanding this period as the environmental institutionalization in Brazil. CONAMA gathered humans and nonhumans actors including: politicians, engineers, scientists, environmentalists, hydropower, the Amazon rainforest, nuclear power plants, atomic waste, conservation units, alcohol distilleries, rivers, among others. Therefore the discussion proposed is to analyze the trajectory of this council and its particip(ation) in the national political scene as designated agency to establish an environmental protection policy in a period highlighted by the consequences of the energy crisis and the attempt to re-establish the economic growth in Brazil.

Submitted by JOSIANE SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA (josianeso) on 2018-05-07T12:31:21Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcelo Vianna Batista_.pdf: 3994978 bytes, checksum: b85db163349c1fce17129d095339eadf (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-07T12:31:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcelo Vianna Batista_.pdf: 3994978 bytes, checksum: b85db163349c1fce17129d095339eadf (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-20 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / No senso comum, o briefing é entendido como um componente importante em qualquer projeto por conter elementos necessários que explicitam o problema e orientar os envolvidos na ação projetual. Mesmo que os estudos em design o compreendam como algo que gera diálogo entre os atores envolvidos no projeto (ZURLO, 2010), não sendo restritivo ou vago demais (BROWN, 2009) e auxiliando no enquadramento dos problemas (BUCHANAN, 1992) tornando, desta forma, o processo de projeto mais criterioso (Associação dos Designers Gráficos do Brasil, 2004), tais concepções não parecem acompanhar as movimentações teóricas sobre o processo de projeto, entendido como transdisciplinar, não-linear e coevolutivo. (MAURI, 1996, FINDELI, 2001, DORST, 2003). Chega-se, desta forma, ao problema de pesquisa: quais são as competências do briefing no processo de projeto? Com o objetivo de compreender suas competências, adota-se a perspectiva teórico-metodológica da Teoria Ator-Rede por entender que seus princípios contribuem no alcançar de outras compreensões acerca das relações estabelecidas nas dinâmicas de projeto, a partir da impossibilidade de distinguir entre humanos e não-humanos ou apontar empiricamente diferenças entre suas actancialidades na construção de fatos e artefatos (LAW, 1992; LATOUR, 1987; CALLON, 1986). Suas agências, enquanto actantes (LATOUR, 1999), mediam e intermediam (SAYES, 2013) a emergência de questões de preocupação (LATOUR, 2008) em uma processualidade que enacta-se (LAW, 2009) no campo das competências ou no ‘poder-fazer’ (FIORIN, 1989), trazendo uma nova luz aos temas do design. A partir análise de conteúdo, realizada sobre a análise documental de 58 briefings enviados por 6 informantes que se denominavam escritórios de design ou se denominam ‘empresas com departamento de design’ e de dois grupos focais compostos por 3 e 4 informantes, respectivamente, seguindo o mesmo critério, esta pesquisa propõe tópicos gerais que compreendem o briefing com competências de 1) enactar a ação projetual, ampliando a capacidade crítico reflexiva ao operar agenciamentos criativos e deslocamentos temporais; 2) mediar interesses relacionados ao processo de projeto (estabelecendo um tipo de nivelamento de ordens distintas que estabilizam da rede formada em torno do projeto), traduzindo a si mesmo (sendo plástico suficiente para moldar-se conforme a necessidade e as naturezas distintas de projeto) e pontualizando e despontualizando os interesses, abrindo competências as quais o projeto deverá estar sensível e atento; 3) inscrever o designer como alguém capaz de tratar destes interesses em jogo, seja numa arqueologia que vai as profundezas do que não é explicitados claramente relacionados a mercado ou a sensibilidades, seja tratando de aspectos puramente técnicos, em um movimento que evidencia 4) o caráter ambíguo e ambivalente do briefing no processo de projeto, de uso plural, orientado pela doma do projeto. / In common sense, design brief is understood as an important component in any project because contains necessary elements that explain the problem, guiding those involved in design process. Going further, design studies understand it as something that generates dialogue among the actors involved in design process (ZURLO, 2010), not being too restrictive or too vague (BROWN, 2009), helping to frame problems (BUCHANAN, 1992) and enabling more criteria to design (Associação dos Designers Gráficos do Brasil, 2004), but these conceptions do not seem to be in tune to theoretical movements about the design process itself. Understood as transdisciplinary, non-linear and coevolutionary (MAURI, 1996, FINDELI, 2001, DORST, 2003), design process seems more open than what their own studies posit about design brief. In this sense, this research proposes to inquiry what are the competencies of the briefing in the design process. To understand their competencies, the theoretical-methodological perspective of Actor-Network Theory is adopted because its principles contribute to achieve other understandings about the relations established on design’s dynamics. That means, for Actor-Network Theory, it is impossible to distinguish between humans and non-human, or empirically point out differences between their actions generating facts and artifacts (LAW 1992, CALLON 1986): they are understood as actants (LATOUR, 1999) with agencies that mediated and intermediated (SAYES, 2013) the emergence of matters of concern (LATOUR, 2008) in a processuality that enacts (LAW, 2009) itself in the realm of competencies or ‘being-able-to-do-something’ (FIORIN, 1989), therefore, bringing a new light to design discussion. Adopting the content analysis method over a documental analysis of 58 briefings (sent by 6 informants that called themselves design offices or 'design department companies') and later over two focus groups composed of 3 and 4 informants, respectively (following the same criteria of data collection), this research proposes general topics that present the briefing with competencies of 1) enact the design action, expanding the critical reflexive capacity when operating creative assemblages and temporal displacements; 2) mediate interests of actants related to the design process (establishing a sort of leveling of distinct orders that stabilize the network formed around the design process), translating itself (being plastic enough to shape itself towards different design process) and emphasizing and clarifying the interests, opening competencies which the design process should be sensitive and aware of; 3) inscribe the designer as someone capable of dealing with the interests at stake through an archeology that goes to the depths that are not explicitly (such as market or sensitivities), or dealing with purely technical aspects, in a movement that evidences 4) the ambiguous and ambivalent use of the briefing, guiding the design process as something that takes in in its account a plural and diverse natures.

Submitted by Mariana Dornelles Vargas (marianadv) on 2015-05-08T13:14:27Z No. of bitstreams: 1 rota_romantica.pdf: 618997 bytes, checksum: c065090442668749e7c913a218b03987 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-08T13:14:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 rota_romantica.pdf: 618997 bytes, checksum: c065090442668749e7c913a218b03987 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-08-24 / Nenhuma / Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo analisar de que forma os diferentes atores integrantes de uma rota turística estabeleceram suas estratégias, desenvolveram suas ações e interagem para gerar inovações sociais. Como estratégia de pesquisa utilizou-se o estudo de caso único na Rota Romântica, no Rio Grande do Sul, uma região que abrange 13 municípios do estado e cujas ações conjuntas visam a trabalhar o turismo coletivo destas localidades. Teorias sobre inovação territorial, construção social e ator-rede permitiram realizar uma análise detalhada do caso. O resultado da pesquisa foi que a Rota Romântica cujo objetivo primordial e inicial não era social, desenvolveu, ao longo da sua história, iniciativas e inovações sociais. Embora a literatura pressuponha que somente se considera inovação social o empreendimento cujo objetivo é fundamentalmente social, percebe-se, através deste estudo, que pode haver inovações sociais até mesmo quando o objetivo principal não é esse. A Rota Romântica representa uma inovação social por proporcionar melhor qualidade de vida para a população, através do desenvolvimento econômico e social dos municípios. / This study aimed to examine how different actors, which are members of a tourist route, established their strategies, develop their actions and interact to generate social innovation. As research strategy it was used the single case study of the Romantic Road, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, a region covering 13 counties of the state and whose joint actions aim at working the collective tourism of these places. Theories of territorial innovation, social construction and actor-network allowed a detailed analysis of the case. The result showed that the Romantic Road, which primary objective was not social, developed, throughout its history, initiatives and social innovation. Although literature only assumes that social innovation is considered the social enterprise whose aim is fundamentally social, it can be seen through this study that social innovation can exist even when the primary purpose is not the one mentioned above. The Romantic Road is a social innovation by providing better quality of life for people through economic and social development of municipalities.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T13:30:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Mariana Prioli Cordeiro.pdf: 2192794 bytes, checksum: 78c0945031e3118c47f60aab83dd844c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-04-20 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Social Psychology has many definitions, theories and objects of study. In this dissertation, based on Actor-Network Theory, we argue that these are not different aspects or attributes of a single object, but elements that help to perform different versions of this object. They are, therefore, elements that make Social Psychologies different, although related to each other. They produce a multiple Social Psychology, which is more than one and, at the same time, less than many. To build this argument, we read and reread textbooks on Social Psychology that were available in two reference libraries. After an initial approach to those books, we observed that many of them talk about the reference crisis that assailed Social Psychology in the 1970s. Therefore, we decided to look for materials to help us tell these histories better. As a next step, we selected two master and two doctoral dissertations in the area, since this kind of work tends to describe the procedures used with more details. Finally, we looked up academic texts and public domain documents related to the creation of the Specialist Title in Social Psychology. We treated all those materials not only as texts , but as materialities that produce effects, relate to each other, articulate with other texts, with other practices. That is, we treated them as materialities that produce certain Social Psychology realities. In doing so, we strived to call attention to the possibility of ordinating and coordinating reality in different ways, of recognizing that there are multiple and diverse actants in a discipline and of making a Social Psychology that searches for complex connections that articulate humans and non-humans and perform multiple realities / A Psicologia Social apresenta inúmeras definições, abordagens teóricas e objetos de estudo. Nesta tese, embasados em pesquisas da Teoria Ator-Rede, argumentamos que esses não são diferentes aspectos ou atributos de um mesmo objeto, mas elementos que ajudam a performar diferentes versões desse objeto. São, portanto, elementos que fazem Psicologias Sociais diferentes, embora relacionadas entre si. Que fazem uma Psicologia Social múltipla, ou seja, que é mais do que uma ao mesmo tempo em que é menos do que muitas. Para construir esse argumento, lemos e relemos livros-texto de Psicologia Social disponíveis em duas bibliotecas de referência, buscando identificar como eles descrevem as práticas, referenciais teóricos, objetivos e locais de atuação da disciplina. Após essa leitura, observamos que vários desses manuais abordam a crise que assolou a Psicologia Social na década de 1970 e decidimos buscar materiais que nos ajudassem a contar melhor essas histórias. Além disso, decidimos selecionar duas dissertações de mestrado e duas teses de doutorado defendidas na área, afinal, esses trabalhos tendem a descrever de forma mais detalhada os procedimentos utilizados. Por fim, fizemos um levantamento de textos de acadêmicos e documentos de domínio público que abordam a criação do título de especialista em Psicologia Social. Tratamos todos esses materiais não apenas como textos , mas como materialidades que produzem efeitos, se conectam, se articulam com outros textos, com outras práticas. Ou seja, os tratamos como materialidades que produzem certas realidades da Psicologia Social. Buscamos, com isso, chamar a atenção para a possibilidade de ordenar e de coordenar a realidade de diferentes modos. De reconhecer que em uma disciplina cabem múltiplos e diversos actantes. De fazer uma Psicologia Social que busca conexões complexas que articulam humanos a não humanos e que performam múltiplas realidades