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As computing technology has become a vital part of everyday life, studies have increasingly scrutinized the underlying meaning of computational things. As different devices become interwoven with daily practices and routines, there is a growing interest in understanding not only their functional meaning in computational terms but also their meaning in relation to other non-computation artefacts. This thesis investigates how people relate to artefacts and how their individual values and attitudes affect this relationship.  The analysis is based on four ethnographic studies, which look at the richness of ordinary interactions with technology to understand the impact of technology upon practice and experience. The process through which humans develop a relationship to artefacts is framed as a continuous series of encounters, through which the individual constantly reshapes their relationship to things.  Artefacts are seen as lines in the mesh of everyday life, and the encounters are the intersections between lines. This approach–grounded in phenomenology and paired with an anthropological understanding of everyday life–reconceptualises understanding of the processes of adaption, meaning-making, disposing and recycling. The work reveals how human relations to all kinds of things–in the form of meaning–is continually transforming. Core to this understanding is the cultural relative essence that becomes perceived of the artefacts themselves. This essence deeply affects the way we encounter and thus interact with technology, as well as objects more broadly. In the daily interaction with computing devices we can observe that computing technology alters the mesh on a different level than non-computational artefacts: digital interfaces pull our lines together, bundle experiences an affect how we encounter the material and the social world. This enables computing devices to have meanings distinct from non-computing technology. To go further, computing is itself a mode of existence – a crucial difference in things that helps us understand the complexity of the material world.

The work deals with the current burning issue of cultural differences. These issues relate to the expression of culture and one's home country within the mediums of the Internet and online communication. Based on the research of previous studies, this work aims to demonstrate the influence of cultural dimensions in web design and content. In a sample of the largest beer producers in the Czech Republic, Japan and Great Britain supplemented with the largest international brewing companies are analyzed components which characterize cultural differences. The main scope of this study is based on assumptions and theories according to G. Hofstede and E. T. Hall. It thus demonstrates the influence of culture and dimensions -- Collectivism/Individualism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, High/Low Context, Masculinity/Femininity, Time Orientation and Colour symbolism. It is recommended that companies pay more attention to the cultural adaption of web communication, which can bring more clarity and attractiveness, and also a higher added value to the customer himself.

This study is a sequential multi-methods research effort which examines the issue of equality in Chinese higher education after the recent expansion, and explores how educational equality has been shaped by policies which reflected the shifting value orientations of the government since 1949. Quantitative methods were used to discover the current patterns of educational equality. The dataset is derived from a survey carried out under a project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Logistic regressions were conducted to discover the relations between students’ social background characteristics and their likelihood of studying in different part of the differentiated higher education system. The findings show that while overall access has increased greatly, advantaged groups have maintained their advantage in gaining entry to higher status universities and attractive disciplines. The study went deeper to explore the changing patterns of educational equality through historical analysis of policy using the lens of culture, since social phenomena are context-based and culture is a deep yet decisive force which has previously been given inadequate attention in relation to this issue. Applying a multidisciplinary approach, an indigenous analytical framework was developed which identified six dimensions of culture relating to educational equality, and Chinese cultural values were then organized along these dimensions. This framework was used to explain the results of the quantitative analysis at a deeper level. It was also used to construct ideal types of elitism and populism as a means of analyzing the historical process of policy change. The study found that policies regarding educational equality swung between these two poles in post 1949 China, due to an internal tension in the Chinese cultural value system which was in turn stimulated or provoked by diverse external influences. Four major modes were identified: politically restrained elitism, politically restrained populism, inclusive elitism, and a tendency toward harmony. This approach represents an original attempt to develop an indigenous framework to interpret educational equality through a cultural lens. The dissertation also seeks to contribute to knowledge and theory development in the comparative research on educational equality more widely, and to provide insights that may inform policy making.

This study is a sequential multi-methods research effort which examines the issue of equality in Chinese higher education after the recent expansion, and explores how educational equality has been shaped by policies which reflected the shifting value orientations of the government since 1949. Quantitative methods were used to discover the current patterns of educational equality. The dataset is derived from a survey carried out under a project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Logistic regressions were conducted to discover the relations between students’ social background characteristics and their likelihood of studying in different part of the differentiated higher education system. The findings show that while overall access has increased greatly, advantaged groups have maintained their advantage in gaining entry to higher status universities and attractive disciplines. The study went deeper to explore the changing patterns of educational equality through historical analysis of policy using the lens of culture, since social phenomena are context-based and culture is a deep yet decisive force which has previously been given inadequate attention in relation to this issue. Applying a multidisciplinary approach, an indigenous analytical framework was developed which identified six dimensions of culture relating to educational equality, and Chinese cultural values were then organized along these dimensions. This framework was used to explain the results of the quantitative analysis at a deeper level. It was also used to construct ideal types of elitism and populism as a means of analyzing the historical process of policy change. The study found that policies regarding educational equality swung between these two poles in post 1949 China, due to an internal tension in the Chinese cultural value system which was in turn stimulated or provoked by diverse external influences. Four major modes were identified: politically restrained elitism, politically restrained populism, inclusive elitism, and a tendency toward harmony. This approach represents an original attempt to develop an indigenous framework to interpret educational equality through a cultural lens. The dissertation also seeks to contribute to knowledge and theory development in the comparative research on educational equality more widely, and to provide insights that may inform policy making.

Since their original formation in the summer of 1997, Detroit rock duo, the White Stripes have occupied a formidable and well-publicized position within the context of American music. Despite this accomplished status, the majority of discourse surrounding the White Stripes has tended toward sensationalized fandom or immediate and callous dismissal, with little investigation as to how the duo have been so polarizing. Recognizing a key analytical void in such a treatment of the duo, this thesis examines the White Stripes with the tools of postmodern thought, considering their artful use of kitsch and sincerity in their image, musical language, and aesthetic. In so doing, it offers much-needed insight into the band’s widespread appeal as a blues revival band at the end of the rock era.

Abstract of “A meaningful work” The aim of this paper is to make a cultural analysis of Swedish voluntary workers’ experiences of their engagement with refugees during the fall and winter of 2015/2016. I have interviewed eight people between the age of 19 and 61 with experiences from working as volunteers with refugees. In addition to the interviews, I have conducted a participant observation on a refugee accommodation.      I have highlighted interesting themes brought up by the informants during the interviews.  These themes have been further analyzed from the theoretical concepts of self-identity, class and gender.       As the results show, my informants have had different motives and driving forces for engaging as volunteers, depending on their habitus and self-identities. For many the volunteer work fulfilled an important social aspect in their life. As volunteers they also got first hand information about the refugee situation, which they could pass on to their environment.       One of my informants had more negative experiences than the others. She experienced a lot of critique for her engagement, which partly was because of her norm-breaking leader position as a black, young woman.       Through my participant observation I got to experience the gloomy facilities of a refugee accommodation located in a distant, secluded environment. But I also experienced the informants’ joy when playing with the kids, and how their engagement created a more cheerful atmosphere.

Given the accessibility of media devices available to us today and utilising van Leeuwen's concept of inscription and synthesis as a guide, this thesis explores the practice of re-presenting a domestic material object, the Croxley Recipe Book, into digital media. Driven by a creative practice research method, but also utilising materiality, digital storytelling practices and modality as important conceptual frames, this project was fundamentally experimental in nature. A materiality-framed content analysis, interpreted through cultural analysis, initially unraveled some of the cookbook's significance and contextualised it within a particular time of New Zealand's cultural history. Through the expressive and anecdotal practice of digital storytelling the cookbook's significance was further negotiated, especially as the material book was engaged with through the affective and experiential digital medium of moving-image. A total of six digital film works were created on an accompanying DVD, each of which represents some of the cookbook's significance but approached through different representational strategies. The Croxley Recipe Book Archive Film and Pav. Bakin' with Mark are archival documentaries, while Pav is more expressive and aligned with the digital storytelling form. Spinning Yarns and Tall Tales, a film essay, engages and reflects with the multiple processes and trajectories of the project, while Extras and The Creative Process Journal demonstrate the emergent nature of the research. The written thesis discusses the emergent nature of the research process and justifies the conceptual underpinning of the research.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. / My grandfather was in a fix. He wasn’t black, like his father, but he wasn’t quite white either, like his mother. He was marrying a woman who also wasn’t-black-but-wasn’t­quite-white. The problem was that his mother was worried that her future daughter-in-law’s father was a bit too ‘dark, Oriental looking’, whilst her mother was worried because his father was half-black ‘negro’. It really was a case of pot calling kettle black. And she was already three months pregnant, so everyone was worried about whether ‘the throwback thing’ would mean that they would have a black, ‘negro’ baby. My grandparents had managed to modify their ‘brown’ bodies so they could ‘pass’ as ‘white’, but could they also somehow also modify their potentially ‘non-white’ offspring? What might the materially affective mechanisms be, that have the power to ‘fix’ bodies, so as that a brown body can become white? Franken-rat, in a different time and place, was a rat in a laboratory who had a human ear growing on its back. Its body was hideous, a monstrous blend of ratty-human flesh. Franken-rat lived and died in a laboratory, in the service of science and humanity. But how does its body, and the discourses surrounding it, materialise certain understandings about our bodies and their relationships to ‘others’ and to the world? How might our bodies understand that relationship? If my understanding of my relationship to ‘others’ is based upon a liberal humanist construct that separates ‘self’ from ‘other’ and such fleshy intertwinings as monstrous, then can I ‘become posthuman’ and affectively create that relationship as a generous and welcoming of ‘otherness’? Can posthumanism ‘overcome’ the abjection and horror of liberal humanist ideas of monstrosity? This thesis is a fictocritical exploration of bodies and their dynamic discursive and material relations with the world. If the world is a site continually in flux, how might bodies modify or be modified in order to continually belong to it? And how might we sift through the facts, the stories and the affects of family narratives, institutional spaces, historical documents, philosophical ideas, and cultural texts, discourses and practices, in order to find spaces of integrity in connection and becoming, and affective, corporeal knowledges to take into the future?

Syftet med uppsatsen är att utifrån teorier om hegemonisk maskulinitet och homosocialitet studera hur normer för maskulinitet reproduceras i tre svenska populära podcasts. Uppsatsen innehåller tre frågeställningar som är följande: Hur förhandlas maskulinitetsnormer hos Alex & Sigge, Filip & Fredrik och Luuk & Lokko?, genom vilka rollprestationer upprätthålls eller omförhandlas normer för hegemoniska maskulinitetsideal? och vad innehåller dessa podcasts för specifika strukturer och hur återfinns maskuliniteter i detta innehåll? Mitt teoretiska och analytiska perspektiv grundar sig i forskning om maskulinitetsprocesser och hegemonisk maskulinitet. Vidare utvecklar jag mitt teoretiska ramverk med genreteoretiska anknytningar där den ideologiska funktionen inom dessa blir central. Analysen består av samtalscitat från mitt material där jag transkriberat relevanta delar för att kunna gå nära texten. Ut efter tematiseringar grundade på huvudpersonernas relationer till varandra och till personer utanför texten analyserar jag sedan mitt material i två delar. Maskuliniteten konstrueras i och med olika rollprestationer som huvudpersonerna sätter i spel gentemot varandra och andra. Dessa rollprestationer blir talande i min analys och bidrar till min slutdiskussion. Sammanfattningsvis avslutar jag med en slutdiskussion där jag anknyter till mitt teoretiska ramverk och diskuterar vilka maskulinitetsnormer som är rådande inom min text. Jag lyfter även det teoretiska perspektivet till en större samhällelig kontext i och med att jag anser att maskulinitetsnormer ingår i ideologiska strukturer i samhället. / The purpose of this paper is: based on theories of hegemonic masculinity and homosociality to, study how masculinity is reproduced in three popular Swedish podcasts. The paper contains three research questions: Which values around masculinity exists and is represented in the three podcasts that I have chosen? How is masculinity represented based on defined performances of Alex & Sigge, Filip & Fredrik and Luuk & Lokko? What content does these podcasts have and which specific structures around masculinity is found in this content? My theoretical and analytical perspectives are based on research in masculinity representations and hegemonic masculinity. Furthermore, I develop my theoretical framework with genre theories, where the ideological functions of these become central. The analysis consists of conversation quotes from my material, which I transcribed the relevant parts in order to get close to the text. I have thematically constructed two levels of analysis based on the characters' relationships to each other and to the persons outside the text. Masculinity is constructed with various performances by the main characters put in play against each other and others. These performances will be critical in my analysis and contribute to my final discussion. In the chapter called conclusion I end with a final discussion, in which I relate to my theoretical framework, and discuss which masculinity values that are present in my text. I also broaden my theoretical perspective to a larger social context, in that I believe masculinity norms are included in the ideological structures of society.