YouTube is a new kind of media, offering new ways to search for meaning and identity in the digital information age. In this study, I explore how the struggle to establish meaning and identity is played out in this new cultural space, centering on amateur creators as they navigate tensions and test semiotic relationships with their productions online. I first situate YouTube within a larger context of cultural criticism that sees meaning as socially negotiated by consumers as active participants with cultural productions. I then discuss television as a cultural force and the effects of a new digital territory for these forces. By grounding my discussion in an understanding of media ecology that assumes a more varied and diverse collection of available cultural material will yield a healthier media ecology and thus healthier cultural subjects, I argue that YouTube is a positive intensification of television because it allows more viewers to participate in and more importantly participate in this media system. I then use two particular YouTube creators (Philip DeFranco and Hannah Hart) to demonstrate how these ideas are articulated in practice and how this process is not without its own problems. / Master of Arts

Proceeding from the assumption that psychoanalytic theory has yielded insightful literary interpretations, I propose that equally legitimate readings result from analyzing consciousness in literature. William James' "Stream of Thought" offers a psychological theory of consciousness from which I develop a literary theory that counterbalances the Freudian emphasis on the unconscious. Examining two works by Henry James, I demonstrate how assessing the elements of a character's consciousness leads to conclusions at which other theories do not arrive. This analytical approach leads to not only an alternative critical agenda but also a fuller understanding of the psychological function of the character's and, by extension, the human mind. / Master of Arts

Yes / We report qualitative findings from a study in a multi-ethnic, multi-faith city with high levels of deprivation. Primary research over 2 years consisted of three focus groups and 18 semi-structured interviews with food insecurity service providers followed by focus groups with 16 White British and Pakistani women in or at risk of food insecurity. We consider food insecurity using Habermas’s distinction between the system and lifeworld. We examine system definitions of the nature of need, approved food choices, the reification of selected skills associated with household management and the imposition of a construct of virtue. While lifeworld truths about food insecurity include understandings of structural causes and recognition that the potential of social solidarity to respond to them exist, they are not engaged with by the system. The gap between system rationalities and the experiential nature of lay knowledge generates individual and collective disempowerment and a corrosive sense of shame. / NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care Yorkshire and Humber (NIHR CLAHRC YH) (Grant Number IS-CLA-0113-10020).

Thesis (PhD) -- Macquarie University, Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy, Dept. of Sociology, 2008. / Bibliography: p. 233-248. / Academic vessels: STS and HPS -- SSK : scientism as empirical relativism -- Latour and actor-network-theory -- Tensions and dilemmas in science studies -- Kuhn - paradigm of an uncritical turn -- Critical theory of technology: Andrew Feenberg -- Critical theory and science studies: Jürgen Habermas -- Concluding remarks: normativity and synthesis. / Science Studies is an interdisciplinary area of scholarship comprising two different traditions, the philosophical History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) and the sociological Science and Technology Studies (STS). The elementary tension between the two is based on their differing scholarly values, one based on philosophy, the other on sociology. This tension has been both animating the field of Science Studies and complicating its internal self-understanding. --This thesis sets out to reconstruct the main episodes in the history of Science Studies that have come to formulate competing constructions of the cultural value and meaning of science and technology. It tells a story of various failed efforts to resolve existing antimonies and suggests that the best way to grapple with the complexity of the issues at stake is to work towards establishing a common ground and dialogue between the rival disciplinary formations: HPS and STS. --First I examine two recent theories in Science Studies, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Both of them are found to be inadequate as they share a distorted view of the HPS-STS divide and both try to colonise the sociology of science with the tools of HPS. The genesis of this colonizing impulse is then traced back to the Science Wars which again is underpinned by a lack of clarity about the HPS-STS relationship. This finding further highlights the responsibility of currently fashionable theories such as ANT that have contributed to this deficit of understanding and dialogue. / This same trend is then traced to the work of Thomas Kuhn. He is credited with moderate achievements but recent re-evaluations of his work point to his culpability in closing the field to critical possibilities, stifling the sociological side and giving rise to a distorted view of the HPS-STS relationship as seen in SSK and ANT. Now that the origins of the confused and politically divided state of Science Studies is understood, there is the urgent task of re-establishing a balance and dialogue between the HPS and the STS sides. --I use two important theoretical threads in critical theory of science and technology to bring clarity to the study of these interrelated yet culturally distinct practices. Firstly I look at the solid line of research established by Andrew Feenberg in the critical theory of technology that uses social constructivism to subvert the embedded values in the technical code and hence democratize technology. --Secondly I look at the work of Jürgen Habermas's formidable Critical Theory of science that sheds light on the basic human interests inside science and technology and establishes both the limits and extent to which social constructivism can be used to study them. --Together Feenberg and Habermas show the way forward for Science Studies, a way to establish a common ground that enables close scholarly dialogue between HPS and STS yet understands and maintains the critical difference between the philosophical and the sociological approaches that prevents them from being collapsed into one indistinguishable entity. Together they can restore the HPS-STS balance and through their shared emancipatory vision for society facilitate the bringing of science and technology into a democratic societal oversight, correcting the deficits and shortcomings of recent theories in the field of Science Studies. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / vii, 248 p

Neonatal intensive care is an ambiguous and anxious medicine with troubling un/intended consequences. The causes and increasing prevalence of premature birth, available histories and the establishment hospital-based neonatology are presented, with a particular focus on American and Canadian contexts. The thesis traces neonatal medicine’s unlikely swerve through early-American freakshow culture, considers the influence of the eugenics movement, and spans decades of haphazard clinical experimentation with premature babies. Of particular interest is the complex nexus between neonatology and disability and what new technologies reveal about deep-rooted human desires and fears about life, death and disability. Incorporating statistical data, policy analysis and clinical trends with personal, parent and practitioner narratives leads to provocative ethical questions about neonatology’s growing powers. This thesis draws on critical disability theory and contemporary critical theories concerning technology, and builds towards a conception of disability that is separate from the medical paradigm, somewhat unorthodox, and certainly post conventional. / Graduate

<p>This thesis aims to explore the different aspects of the phenomenon of migration in Greece, as a case study. The choice of country is motivated by its geographical position at Europe’s external borders. In order to gain an insight into the reality that migrants are faced with when searching for a better life in Europe, a field study was conducted in Athens, Greece during a period of six weeks in the spring of 2010. The field work included interviews with various actors and individuals that are directly involved in migration issues, informal discussions with migrants and personal observations. Additionally, secondary sources such as previous studies were used. The framework used to approach the material included elements from neo-institutionalism, hermeneutics as well as critical theory.</p><p>The most important conclusions reached incorporate that the rights of migrants are not respected in any aspect of the societal sphere, or in other words the three institutional pillars, the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive. As a result, there are double standards applied to Europeans respective migrants. As a possible cause of the problematic situation described, underlying perceptions of national identity versus "otherness" are identified. These perceptions derive from a deeply rooted acceptance of social constructions such as national borders, as undisputable facts.</p>

My argument assesses and reconfigures binary structures in Shakespeare’s plays and in Shakespeare criticism. I contend that ideas in early modern literature often exhibit three aspects, but that critics, who mostly rely upon a binary philosophical vocabulary, tend to notice only two aspects at a time, thereby “digesting” the third. My opening chapter theorizes the superimposition of triadic structures upon dyads, arguing that this new polyrhythmic strategy helps recapture an early modern philosophical perspective by circumventing the entrenched binary categories we have inherited from the Enlightenment. In Chapter Two, I examine the relationship of tyranny and conscience in Tudor politics, Reformed psychology, and Richard III. Early modern political theorists often employ a binary opposition of kingship and tyranny, and historians typically draw a binary distinction between absolutists and resisters. I argue that there were in fact three ideological positions on offer which these binaries misrepresent. As well, Reformed psychology emphasizes the relationship of the individual subject and an objective God, unmediated by community, and I propose that this opposition of subjectivity and objectivity digests the idea of intersubjectivity. In Richard III, Shakespeare interrogates the implausibility of Tudor political binaries and stages a nostalgia for intersubjective community and conscience. In Chapter Three I read the debates on value in Troilus and Cressida alongside contemporary economic writings by Gerard de Malynes on currency reform and “merchandizing exchange.” Our current models of value – intrinsic and extrinsic, use and exchange, worth and price – are emphatically binary, but the mercantile practices that Malynes describes depend upon a triadic conception of value. My contention is that Troilus and Cressida becomes a less problematic problem play when value is conceived as triadic rather than dyadic. In Chapter Four I explore early modern scepticism in connection with Coriolanus. Reading Montaigne and Wittgenstein in parallel, I distinguish between various conceptions of truth that are regularly grouped together under the blanket term “scepticism.” Then I turn to read Coriolanus as an experiment in competing modes of early modern epistemology, arguing that the play ultimately endorses the same sort of polyphonous Pyrrhonian scepticism that we find in Montaigne and Wittgenstein.

Max Horkheimer’s mature works on theology and Schopenhauerian metaphysics have been portrayed by subsequent critical theorists as an illicit regression from his earlier social theory in a two-fold sense. First, his concern to reflect on empirical experience is replaced with speculation regarding intelligible concepts, i.e. concepts that do not arise from observation on the basis of sense-intuition but are rather products of “pure” reason (God) or the imagination (Schopenhauer’s will). Second, his advocacy of the Enlightenment as an emancipatory political project is replaced by its skeptical critique. I argue that this consensus radically misunderstands the concerns animating the late Horkheimer insofar as his reflections on intelligible concepts are both intimately related to a continuing concern with empirical inquiry, as well as an outworking of his commitment to the realization of the Enlightenment. The argument is presented in three related movements. In the first, I interpret Horkheimer’s oeuvre in terms of his pervasive interest in developing a materialist logic. I begin by outlining his early understanding of thought as a form of inquiry for embodied social subjects (chapter 1), before noting how, in his mature theorizing, this account serves as a basis for a presentation of the relationship between various kinds of inquiry and the practice of social critique (chapter 2). In the second, I contend that Horkheimer’s critique of instrumental reason is best understood as congruent with this materialist logic, not as a speculative departure from an earlier concern with empirical inquiry. I begin by examining Horkheimer’s empirical analysis of how historical changes in the basic institutions defining political economy in modern life affect the reasoning habits of subjects (chapter 3). I then turn to his diagnosis of the way such changes affect the selfunderstanding of modern subjects, leading to a pervasive form of alienation (chapter 4). In the final movement, I present Horkheimer’s turn to theological concepts of the intelligible as a therapeutic response to this alienation. First, I examine his understanding of the content of theological concepts as well as how such concepts may be preserved in a form appropriate to modern life (chapter 5), and conclude by illustrating his own attempt at such a retrieval in his late reflections on the Jewish liturgy (chapter 6). In the conclusion, I note that this interpretation offers a constructive challenge to philosophers concerned with the tradition of critical theory. On the one hand, Horkheimer articulates what would be required for the fulfillment of the Enlightenment project in terms critical theorists will recognize as their own, by offering an account of the social practices that are necessary for the self-determination of the subject. Yet his presentation contests a fundamental axiom of such theorists regarding the role intelligible concepts ought to play in seeking this goal. Horkheimer defends an account of the significance of the liturgy for practices of reasoning that is quiet foreign to such theorists. Instead of setting liturgical reasoning over against a militantly “secular” Enlightenment, he demonstrates that such reasoning is integral to its fulfillment.

Stefan Elbe (2005) in his writing about international security dimensions calls HIV/AIDS as a “global security threat” and emphasizes the importance of the disease acknowledgement by the scholars and international policy-makers. Indeed, HIV/AIDS is already for a long time not considered solely as a health problem, on the contrary, the medicalisation of the disease, remains one of the biggest obstacles to the global prevention and holistic treatment approaches. This research highlights those particular obstructions in the essence of cross-cultural peculiarities, bringing more vividness into idea of how HIV/AIDS related challenges are seen in different communities, despite of being a globally actual issue for more than three decades. It is almost an undeniable reality that HIV/AIDS pandemic unites millions and millions of people throughout the world each year, and no matter how bitter might the fact of comprehension be, it still continues to take lives away, therefore, investigations and researchers must be going on, for making the survival a better experience. This study provides case-studies of stigma and discriminatory challenges as a cultural systems (both internal and external) with its own symbols, rules, thinking models, approaches, norms, laws, values, beliefs, prejudices, taboos, goals, contexts, and political abutments through the exploration of cultural resources that specific societies adopt. Besides that, psychological and existential analysis are used to reveal... [to full text] / ŽIV/AIDS jau ilgą laiką nėra laikoma tik kaip sveikatos problema, priešingai, medicininiu požiūriu išlieka viena iš didžiausių problemų taikant pasaulines prevencijos ir holistinį gydymą. Šis tyrimas pabrėžia problemos skirtingose kultūrose ypatumus, todėl dėmesys kreipiamas kaip su ŽIV/AIDS susijusios problemos vertinamos skirtingose bendruomenėse. todėl tyrimai ir tyrėjai turi būti vyksta, už išlikimo geresnį įspūdį. Šis tyrimas atskleidė diskriminacijos problemas, kurios atsiskleidė skirtingose kultūrose per tam tikrus simbolius, taisykles, mąstymo modelius, pagalbos metodus, įstatymus, vertybines nuostatas, tabu. Tyrimo duomenys analizuoti taikant psichologinį ir egzistencinį požiūrius. Bendras tyrimo dalyvių skaičius 13 (11 sergančių ŽIV ir 2 ekspertai). Duomenys rinkti Azerbaidžane, Lietuvoje ir Vokietijoje.

This master’s thesis provides a critical inquiry into Rainer Forst’s theory of toleration, including a descriptive section and a normative critical stance of said theory. Being placed in the tradition of critical theory, also applied as the theoretical framework, and using a hermeneutics methodology when approaching the material, the aim is to provide a close reading of Forst’s texts. The research question of the thesis is What are the possibilities and limits of Forst’s theory of toleration when applied to a democratic political community? The descriptive section of Forst's theory of toleration includes sections comprising of what constitutes the domain of toleration, the components and foundation of toleration, and toleration in relation to virtue and politics. In essence, Forst proposes a principle of justification as the foundation of toleration, mainly derived from his political theory of justification, practiced in a reciprocal and universal manner of the participants in a system combined with a reflexive component. The critique includes components of toleration in relation to the need of tradition, ambivalence in relation to the claims of the intolerants, and how spontaneity is needed in contrast to the mechanistic view mainly proposed by Forst. Other sections of the critique include the relation of toleration and whom can participate in the domain of it, inter- and intra-group deviances regarding power and perspective, but also a discussion of toleration and religious minorities – mainly focused on bodily integrity. The critique includes the suggestion that one should approach the question of toleration from a discursive virtue ethics position, a stance that should be developed further during future research. The discussion at the end of the thesis includes a section of the future of toleration and a self-reflexive discussion of theory in relation to the thesis.