Marketing theory has traditionally sought explanation of commodity consumption based upon psychological and economic assumptions of needs, utility and exchange value, a paradigm of understanding that is becoming increasingly problematic. An alternative perspective of commodity consumption is presented, drawing on contemporary social and cultural theory where the commodity form constitutes a cultural and social logic; a discourse of communication which consumers use to mediate and participate in daily life. Instead of defining commodities in terms of use value and economic value, the commodity is seen in terms of a specific subject-object relation experienced in late capitalism, manifest as sign value and sign exchange. Taking the case of the museum, a context that it increasingly applying the terminology of the market, consumer and commodity; a qualitative research project is undertaken to asses the credibility of the cultural theoretical approach. It is proposed that the museum functions as a site of commodification, presenting history and culture as a set of commodities for visitors consumption. Whilst sign value is a useful concept in explaining commodity consumption, it is suggested a clear distinction between use value, exchange value and sign value is unworkable in practice and that utility and exchange value can be most accurately represented as cultural conditions rather than economic ones. The study suggests that consumption should be conceptualised as a constructive, active and productive process which involves the consumer in a continual exchange, use and manipulation of signs. The role of marketing is thus most appropriately thought of as a facilitative capacity rather as a provisional or directive force that mediates consumption behaviour.

The approach that emphasises the active audience, and the subversive potential of audience encounters with texts, has greatly influenced the study of media fandom which has tended to see media fans, and the cultures they produce, as set in opposition to writers and producers. My thesis challenges this view of the relationships between fans and producers by examining fan-producers in contemporary television. This research challenges the influential theoretical models that see authorship as a major source of social control and thus sees audiences that 'poach' meanings from texts as engaged in rebellion. The approach that perceives fandom as in opposition to the meanings of production falls short in representing the complexity of fan and producer interactions and thus curtails our understanding of these relationships. My thesis moves beyond the untenable opposition between fans and producers and, in doing so, paves the way for an understanding of fan studies more suitable for the contemporary, and still developing, climate of audience interactions. I believe that the practices of fandom demonstrate that consumption and authorship are more closely linked than previous tendencies to divide them would suggest. Previous works have served to both underestimate fandom, as powerless rebels or dupes, or exaggerate its position as a force of political or cultural resistance. My research engages with the contemporary developments within fan culture, and emphasises the importance of deconstructing monolithic ideas of the media industry in order to better understand the influences and pressures placed on the figure of the fan-producer. I argue that the media industries are not as homogeneous as previously implied, and that the fan-producer is forced to negotiate the complex and often conflicting relationships within the worlds of both fandom and official production.

This thesis develops a postmodernist theory of institution, Discursive Organisation Theory (DOT), by building on elements of the work of Jacques Derrida and Giles Deleuze. One aspect of the theory is demonstrated by analysing transcriptions of eight focus groups composed of students studying in the field of business and management studies in universities in London. Postmodernists have so far eschewed theory development of this type but this study explicitly argues for the legitimacy of the project. The version of postmodernism to be used is carefully defined and takes as its central feature arguments from Derrida’s “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”. Derrida’s “absence of presence” is taken as the defining characteristic of this version of postmodernism. Its epistemology is developed from Derrida’s notion of différance. Its ontology is based on the realist ontology of Deleuze and places emphasis on the notion of assemblage (agencement). The theory assumes that the physical world is only knowable through the mediation of a system that is symbolic in nature which processes sense data. Since organisation of action is the ultimate purpose of this processing system, and is more fundamental than perception or cognition, it is necessary to build a model of this processing system in order to arrive at an understanding of institution, which is taken as the ultimate manifestation of organisation. This processing system is labelled as “discourse” in this thesis and includes all human symbolic systems and chiefly, but not limited to, language (Iedema 2007). The theory is developed by constructing a series of mutually dependent assemblages beginning with discourse itself, then the institution assemblage, then the organisation assemblage and ultimately the assemblage of everyday life, or society as a whole. These assemblages are fictions, reality is itself a continuum, but they are convenient for understanding the nature of the phenomena included at these levels and how they are interrelated. These phenomena traditionally come under the headings of subjectivity, identity, communication, conversation, power, institution, bureaucracy (Weber, 1964), culture, organisation and many others. Derrida’s concept of deconstruction is used as a method to analyse the processes of constructing and maintaining organisation. Bureaucracy is taken to be a diagram (Deleuze) belonging to the assemblage of everyday life and generates the only legitimate form of organisation in the fields of government and private enterprise that can be used today. Grid-Group Cultural Theory, as developed by Mary Douglas, Michael Thompson and others, is reinterpreted and used to analyse institutional construction. This part of the theory is tested empirically. The data gathered from the focus groups is analysed using Grid-Group Cultural Theory as a typology of thought styles. The analysis shows that the thought styles interact with each other both antagonistically and co-operatively in a way that confirms the contention that Grid-Group Cultural Theory may be used to deconstruct bureaucracy. This study makes several theoretical contributions by developing theory in an area where little has been done before. It makes a practical contribution by demonstrating how practitioners may be helped to make more effective decisions. It points the way to further development and applications of the theory.

Accessibility in the landscape has gained increased attention in recent years, and the practice of Universal Design, rather than providing ‘accessible’ accommodations as separate, distinct elements within the landscape, attempts to address social issues such as segregation by proposing an integrated accessibility and design for a diverse society. However, while proposing integration, it can be criticized as designing to the lowest common denominator and clinging to the idea of a ‘disabled’ population which must be designed down to. It frequently fails to address the complexities arising from conflicts between the needs of individuals with different disabilities and lacks a theoretical framework which would place the philosophy’s ideals within a broader social and cultural context. The poststructural project is posited as such a theoretical framework, and a means for evaluating the principles of Universal Design along with the social and cultural beliefs upon which the accessibility issue rests. Poststructuralism is used to challenge the idea of separate ‘able’ / ‘disabled’ populations on the basis that this dichotomous opposition is based on limiting conceptions of disability and fails to acknowledge the complexities which comprise the diverse fabric of society. The project is explored here as an alternative means for advancing the ideals of Universal Design within the realm of landscape architecture. Using a matrix of poststructural practices, social concepts such as normality and disability are examined and ‘deconstructed.’ Ultimately a reconstruction of the paradigm, a Critically Integrated Design, is proposed based upon the reconceptualization and resituation of accessibility and social conditions. / Master of Landscape Architecture

<p>Most scholars now believe that Black students in schools will only succeed if they exhibit certain character traits, such as grit, resilience, and optimism. However, Black students are punished during school at a higher rate due to the belief that Black students need to be “fixed.” There is much literature that measures the so-called helpful traits that successful Black students have. For example, there are hundreds of studies that look at “resilient” Black students, and those researchers disseminate evidence that calls for Black students to change their being. The understanding that well-behaved students do better in schools than “bad” Black students is a dominant idea that my study challenges. As a result of my study Black students’ knowledge and behaviors are viewed with a humanizing lens that appreciates how Black students engage with the social structure of school. It is emphasized that the process of school discipline reinforced through discourses limits inclusion of Black student’s identities in education; however, I assert that the process of school discipline is reinforced through discursive limits that restrict Blackness in real-life school settings. In addition, as schools reflect larger society, this dissertation also interrogates how Black people navigate systemic racism despite the inundation of social norms that favor whiteness. Using qualitative methodologies and critical theoretical approaches, I examine 1) racializing surveillance in education, 2) Black student resistance at a high school, and 3) racism’s larger effects on societal responses to anti-blackness. First, I use critical autoethnography to tell my story as a Black girl in school navigating racializing surveillance and my understandings of how to be a good person/student. Second, I reframe Black student resistance by engaging five Black high schoolers in congregation meetings, exploring their creative and necessary work confront racialized discipline at their school. Third, I use psychoanalytic theory to describe how a pedagogy of anti-blackness penetrates not just in schools, but also larger society. Furthermore, how a society (and schools as an organization within society) disciplines individuals is not neutral, and school discipline is unjust. </p>

Thesis advisor: Heather T. Rowan-Kenyon / Studies of college students’ development indicate the collegiate experience can have a negative impact on undergraduate women’s self-esteem (Zuckerman et al., 2016). Research also suggests mentorship programs that provide marginalized groups, such as undergraduate women, with faculty or administrative adult mentors have the potential to improve outcomes for the marginalized group (Crisp et al., 2017). However, it is important to consider the mentors may struggle against the same systemic marginalization they are working to help their undergraduate mentees successfully navigate. The Brazilian philosopher, Paulo Freire, built the concept of “critical consciousness” to explain how those who are oppressed come to understand the systemic nature of their oppression and subsequently seek to change the factors that lead to it (Freire, 1970). This grounded theory study sought to understand if mentors develop a critical consciousness of their own oppression through their involvement in a mentorship program designed to combat the institutionalized oppression that undergraduate women face. Nineteen interviews and two focus groups of mentors who served in the program were conducted. The following research questions guided this study: (a) How do mentors perceive that their involvement in the Summit program has impacted their awareness and understanding of institutionalized sexism and its effects? (b) How do mentors perceive that their involvement in the Summit program has impacted their motivation or ability to effect change related to institutionalized sexism? (c) In what ways have mentors enacted change on behalf of themselves or other women at the institution that they perceive to be connected to their involvement in Summit? The theory constructed from the data suggests a varying effect of the impact of serving as a mentor in the mentorship program on participants’ development of Critical Consciousness. Participants’ progression through the components of Critical Consciousness was complex when they considered their own experiences as women at the institution. Data indicates the community of the mentorship program played a fundamental role in participants’ development of Critical Consciousness of institutional sexism at the institution. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

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This dissertation approaches both being and knowledge as functionally no different than storytelling, with stories themselves given life by the various theoretical and narrative frameworks and strategies through which they are shaped and made credible. Storytelling is the foundational methodology of this work, and the work itself takes imagination as central to complicating and disrupting the normative terms (i.e., the stories) of both being and knowledge. Its particular agenda is in making space for imagining futures without both war and the figure of the human, especially the human as Man, as a way through the interminable conflict characteristic of the contemporary historical moment. Situated in the field of human-animal studies, the analysis takes up military working dogs, which I argue are made to sustain the disimagination processes inherent to militarization. The innate dehumanization of war requires narratives that recover the human, and dogs, as companion species and creatures of the home, are especially well positioned for this task. Drawing on Black feminist thought, and anti-colonial insights from Indigenous thinkers, this work also shows how such dogs are used strategically within assemblages of whiteness to reify certain forms of sovereignty at the expense of both racialized people and dogs. Finally, I argue that imagining futures without conflict and war requires asking seemingly unimaginable questions, such as why sacrificing dogs in combat seems an unassailable truth given the alternatives. By asking such questions, I seek to engage a kind of radical imagination unconstrained by the limits of Man as the locus of ethics, especially during times of conflict, and to bring about an appreciation of dogs, whether in combat or otherwise, as beings for whom our responsibility to, and ethical relation with, runs far deeper than most humans willingly acknowledge. / Dissertation / Candidate in Philosophy / This project looks at weaponized and military working dogs within the context of war and conflict to examine the stories we tell about them, and what these stories do. I ask, how do these stories work and who are they for? To answer these questions, I traverse an expansive archive that includes, among other things, popular media representations, military memoir, mainstream journalism, and documentary film. I am especially interested in the ways stories about dogs inform how we understand war, militarization, and race, and how they impact the operation of power and sovereignty. I argue that dogs have been used to teach us who is and isn’t human, but that our obligation and responsibility to the gift that dogs bring is to undo the oppressive story of Man, which institutes untold amounts of suffering and oppression across species, and to tell new stories in its place.

Over past decades, governments within Australia and throughout the Western world have sought to establish multi-sectoral planning processes that operate at a regional scale. Research on these processes has tended to focus on the challenges of ‘joining-up’ government and non-government sectors to create robust, effective and democratic regional structures and processes. Far less attention has been paid to integration within and between the various entities of government involved within these regional governance initiatives. This thesis, therefore, investigates the role of inter-governmental integration, or ‘whole-of-government’ activities, in relation to regional multi-sectoral governance. The institutional forms, enabling and constraining factors, and implications of inter-governmental arrangements between the various agencies and levels of government are examined. The study applies a sociocultural approach to institutional analysis. Commonly known as grid-group cultural theory, this approach provides a conceptual framework for identifying the fundamental social dynamics underlying differing forms of social organisation and governance. This framework specifies the primary forms, modus operandi and enabling social contexts of inter-institutional integration. These are, respectively: coordination by authority within hierarchy; cooperation through self-interest based collective action within competitive individualism; and collaboration through trust and a sense of commitment to the group within a communitarian social context. This study sought to investigate whole-of-government within regional governance through examination of two contemporaneous region-wide, multi-sectoral planning projects in Central Queensland, Australia. These were, namely, Central Queensland: A New Millennium, covering planning across a broad suite of issues, and the Fitzroy Basin Association, more specifically focussing on natural resource management planning for the region. Both bodies were in the process of implementing their regional plans at the time of this study. A qualitative case study methodology was employed in research, involving in-depth interviews with government officials, examination of project documents, and participation at meetings. The research data were analysed to identify the main processes and perceived outcomes of the two projects, and underlying factors relating to these. The two regional planning processes were generally perceived to have resulted in widely differing levels of success, and with many of the same government officials involved, there was considerable scope to contrast the whole-of-government structures and processes applied in the two cases. Analysis of the case material in the light of the theoretical framework and broader literature emphasised the nested and subordinate nature of regional whole-of-government efforts within the broader system of government. This system was revealed as characterised by horizontal fragmentation between departments and between jurisdictional tiers of government (Federal, State, and Local) but strong vertical integration within departments. The research highlighted the importance of central level political commitment to regional level integration efforts. Support is seen as particularly important in the form of 1) the political will to direct high-level coordination between departments and to advance cooperation between tiers of government; 2) sufficient resources allocated to regional plan implementation in order to motivate inter-governmental cooperation at a range of levels; and 3) the granting of sufficient autonomy to ensure effective devolution and regional level ownership that assists cooperation and collaboration at the regional level. In the light of the decisive importance of central level support, it was found that while high quality regional level leadership of regional whole-of-government processes is a necessary condition for their success, it is not a sufficient condition. To be effective, regional whole-of-government leadership requires both meaningful devolution and substantive central support. The study identified the multiple and contradictory forms of inter-governmental relations that comprise the social contexts at different levels within the broader system of government. In particular, the case study comparison suggested that success at the regional level relies on the application, at all levels, of forms and mechanisms of inter-governmental integration that are appropriate to the specific social contexts within which they are embedded.

Studien utgår från en utbildning kring idrotts- och föreningsliv riktad till SFI-studerande i en svensk stad och syftar till att utforska hur ett utbildningsprojekt kan bidra till inkludering och empowerment för målgruppen. För att skapa förståelse kring ämnet undersöktes forskning som bland annat belyser inkludering i en samhällskontext i relation till idrottsrörelsen. Studiens valda teorier genomsyrar metoden i enlighet med deduktion. Metoden bygger på fokusgruppsintervjuer med sammanlagt tolv personer där en semistrukturerad intervjumall användes och datan som framkom har bearbetats grundligt genom kvalitativ analys. Tolkningen har skett med hjälp av Cultural theory of learning och empowerment samt en modell som problematiserar inkludering och integration i samhället. Datan från intervjuerna delades in i två huvudkategorier och fyra subkategorier för att kunna analyseras och tolkas och resultatet visar att inkluderingsprocessen kan delas upp i konkreta och komplexa utsagor. Resultatet pekar vidare på att deltagarna i studien har upplevt utbildningen som stärkande och den har givit dem trygghet och empowerment, samt hjälpt dem att inkluderas i samhället genom att de ökat sin förståelse och respekt för sin omvärld. Det visar också att deltagarna önskar ett större utrymme att skapa goda relationer och kulturella möten snarare än enkelriktad undervisning om svensk kultur med underförstådda krav på anpassning. Detta skulle stärka deras empowerment i lärandet och i samhället och göra inkluderingsprocessen enklare och mer effektiv. Projektet kan också med fördel i framtiden anknytas till kreativa uttrycksformer, för att tillfredsställa olika behov som yttrar sig inom gruppen som utgör objektet i studien.