<p>This dissertation examines the relationship between legislation and advocacy as forms of professional communication and interrogates their influence on mental health in the United States. Through a case study of one mental health nonprofit’s advocacy materials and interactions with the legislative process, this dissertation demonstrates the entanglements between legislation and advocacy materials and how their circulation impacts mental health outcomes at the national, state, and local levels. I use two major research strategies to conduct my case study: 1) structured interviews with staff members from the nonprofit’s national, Indiana state, and local offices and 2) a qualitative analysis of mental health legislation at the federal, state, and local levels, as well as the nonprofit’s advocacy materials using Rhetorical Ecologies and Assemblage Theory as the primary theoretical frameworks. My findings suggest that, although both the organization and legislative bodies in the United States have some hierarchal tendencies, they function more like a rhizomatic, multilevel assemblage that is constantly evolving and growing as a result of the communicative interactions among its various components. This is due largely in part to the organization’s grassroots structure, which enables staff and supporters from the state and local levels to affect change within and beyond the organization. Although components at the federal/national level have the most significant affects across the assemblage, my findings demonstrate how state and local components can disrupt or <i>deterritorialise</i> the assemblage to create new “lines of flight” or “flows” that expand the assemblage (DeLanda, 2006, 2016; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Fox & Alldred, 2015).</p><p>The findings and conclusions generated from this dissertation have several implications for mental health advocacy organizations, Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) pedagogy, and the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) and the broader field of Rhetoric and Composition. For advocacy organizations, it provides a framework for tracking the potential material impacts of advocacy initiatives and legislation. For TPC pedagogy, it enables instructors to frame professional genres as components of a larger assemblage or organizational/institutional system, rather than as static artifacts. Finally, for RHM and Rhetoric and Composition, it provides a methodology for engaging in institutional and systems research that can be adapted to other rhetorical contexts.</p><br>

As plastic pollution is considered a potential geological marker of the Anthropocene, some living organisms have evolved and adapted into symbiotic relationships with polymers. The wicked problem of pollution and toxic exposure contributes to waste colonialism, which is inherent to the current state of climate and ecological emergency. From plastics to fungi and back again, this project speculates on the possibilities to decolonise plastic waste with the help of a plastic-decomposing fungus. My research prompts toward anthropo-de-centrism and multispecies storytelling as design methods to develop care for plastic waste. The project draws upon the complexity of fungi-plastics-humans relations and is supported by a transdisciplinary collaborative research focused on fungi cultivation. At the core of this practice, I relate the omnipresence of fungi and plastics to queer ecologies, and as such, I develop my design proposal with generative toxicity as theoretical and creative framework.  To materialise this, I propose a workshop bridging between local communities of designers and self-taught mycologists, in order to change the general opinion on plastic waste by focusing on hosting and care as forms of slow activism. The longer-term aim would be a systemic rebalancing of our permanently polluted world. Queer ecologies could therefore contribute to refine what sustainability means for design today by facilitating multispecies care and decolonising gestures.

This research examines the history of a small Florida agricultural community over the course of the twentieth century from a rhetorical perspective in order to understand the technological and communicative transitions that governed the development of American agricultural production. By examining archival and oral histories, this research will add to our understandings of how written and oral communications temper the relationships and social situations of an agricultural community, including the knowledge-making and technological adaptation resulting from communications within the community and with outside institutions and entities. Agricultural villages are not isolated entities, but rather sites of multiple rhetorical situations, and farmers do not farm alone, but inside an ecosystem of networked knowledges, practices, and traditions. Thus, the history of a singular farming community may serve as a rhetorical microcosm of modern American agriculture's evolution over the course of the twentieth century, and provide some mindfulness concerning the social, technological, and natural ecologies that act and interact within modern farming communities. This dissertation will use rhetorical genre theory and ideas of local literacies to examine the written and oral discourses that run through these ecologies for the purpose of tracing the relationships between the sponsors of agricultural ideas and technologies and the local farmers who interpreted, employed, and modified them. In addition, this project purports to add to digital history-making research through the construction of an historical archival website to which community members can add their voices. The Samsula Historical Archive creates an online nexus where community members can document, organize, and preserve the history of the community, offering a portal supporting multiple narratives and perspectives. Each family has its own stories and perspectives on historical happenings; by bringing these together in one databased location, the layers and interconnections will become clearer and perhaps stimulate further memories and insights. A discussion of the rhetorical choices faced in constructing such an artifact may also help future researchers embarking on such a project.

[pt] A presente tese visa apresentar uma perspectiva antropológica para a crise ambiental da Baixada de Jacarepaguá, situada na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, ao longo do século XX. Mais especificamente, essa perspectiva busca compreender a história dessa crise a partir da intensa transformação das águas e da terra, inserindo as ações antrópicas locais no contexto global de ações humanas que mudaram a relação entre os seres humanos e não humanos que configuram o Antropoceno-mais-que-humano da antropóloga Anna Tsing. Ao longo do século XX, principalmente a partir dos anos 1970, após a aprovação do Plano Piloto do arquiteto Lúcio Costa, as inúmeras e aceleradas ações humanas para modernizar a região, como as obras de infraestrutura urbana e os frequentes lançamentos de diversos empreendimentos imobiliários pelos agentes da transformação – poder público e empreendedores - iniciaram uma crise ambiental local que foi acentuada pelo comportamento feral de algumas espécies, como o crescimento descontrolado das gigogas e floração das cianobactérias em todo o complexo lagunar da baixada. Além disso, enquanto as tilápias, uma espécie exótica, contribuíram para a mudança na ecologia da ictiofauna, o jacaré-de-papo-amarelo, espécie local, passou a ser um reflexo dessas ações antrópicas, quando seu corpo foi deformado por conta da ingestão de plástico e outros produtos inorgânicos oriundo das atividades humanas. A transformação da paisagem e do comportamento das espécies proporcionou alteração na vida daquelas pessoas que dependem dos recursos naturais provenientes das águas do complexo lagunar. Dessa forma, a crise ambiental desencadeada por conta tanto da intensa e acelerada transformação da região quanto do comportamento feral de algumas espécies da Baixada talvez possa ser entendida como um exemplo local, dentre tanto outros pelo mundo, que revelam os riscos do Antropoceno. / [en] This thesis aims to present an anthropological perspective on the environmental crisis in Baixada de Jacarepaguá, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, throughout the 20th century. More specifically, this perspective seeks to understand the history of this crisis based on the intense transformation of water and land, inserting local anthropic actions in the global context of human actions that changed the relationship between human and non-human beings that shape the More –than- human - Anthropocene by the anthropologist Anna Tsing. Throughout the 20th century, mainly from the 1970s onwards, after the approval of architect Lúcio Costa s Pilot Plan, the countless and accelerated human actions to modernize the region, such as urban infrastructure works and the frequent launches of various real estate projects by agents of transformation – public authorities and entrepreneurs – initiated a local environmental crisis that was accentuated by the feral behavior of some species, such as the uncontrolled growth of gigogas and the bloom of cyanobacteria throughout the lagoon complex of the Baixada. Furthermore, while tilapia, an exotic species, contributed to the change in the ecology of the ichthyofauna, the broad-snouted caiman, a local species, became a reflection of these anthropic actions, when its body was deformed due to ingestion plastic and other inorganic products arising from human activities. The transformation of the landscape and the behavior of species led to changes in the lives of those people who depend on natural resources from the waters of the lagoon complex. In this way, the environmental crisis triggered by both the intense and accelerated transformation of the region and the feral behavior of some species in the Baixada can perhaps be understood as a local example, among many others around the world, that reveal the risks of the Anthropocene.

This thesis is concerned with acknowledging farm animals and their co-presence in the more-than-human space of the livestock farm, and with accounting for them responsibly in sustainability debates. The enrolment of farm animals as actors in political agendas for environmental sustainability, and farm animal welfare suggests that there are new ways of seeing and being with farm animals that permit their relational presence and recognise their subjectivity. Indeed geographers have in recent years acknowledged animals and their relations with humans, and they have begun to recognise the nature of animal subjectivies. However, within the fundamental rethinking of animals that has been provoked by these discussions, I suggest that farm animals have remained relatively invisible. Occupying ethically confusing terrain, farm animals have nonetheless been visible in a set of philosophical positions regarding their moral status, yet these debates present a rather confusing picture in which the farm animal as an individual is conspicuous by its absence. In seeking to redress the invisibility of farm animals within these debates, and recast them in relation to humans and the broader farm ecology, this thesis attempts to set out an epistemological and methodological framework through which farm animals might become visible as individual fleshy beings. Drawing on the concept of agricultural stewardship and new agendas in farm animal welfare science, it makes use of new methodological tools that have emerged in the social sciences to conduct a relational study of the livestock farm; a study in which farm animals themselves participate. It also considers how the divisions that have been constructed between humans, farm animals and the environment can be reconfigured as a more unified political science of the livestock farm.

La thèse analyse le processus de genèse et d'institutionnalisation de la démarche HQE, ainsi que ses effets performatifs sur les marchés et les systèmes d'acteurs dans le secteur de la construction en France.La démarche HQE a été initiée en 1992, par le Plan Construction et Architecture (PCA), placé sous l'autorité du Ministère de l’Équipement et du Logement, avec la création d'un collège d'experts sur le thème de la qualité environnementale (QE) des bâtiments. Sur la base des travaux du PCA, une association HQE est créée en octobre 1996 et le premier référentiel officiel de la démarche HQE est publié en novembre 1997. Il établit sous la forme de 14 cibles les principales caractéristiques qui permettent de limiter les impacts d'une opération de construction sur l'environnement extérieur, tout en préservant le confort et la santé des habitants à l'intérieur des bâtiments. Ce premier référentiel est traduit en décembre 2004, en norme officielle par un comité de l'Agence Française de Normalisation (AFNOR) puis, en février 2005, en référentiel privé de certification, spécifié pour les bâtiments tertiaires, par le Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment (CSTB).A travers l'étude historique de la trajectoire de la démarche HQE, la thèse rend compte de l'importante hybridation qui caractérise la « carrière » des dispositifs de normalisation technique. D'un problème public (Gusfield 1981) mis à l'agenda politique (Cobb & Elder 1972) par les autorités publiques au début des années 1990, la QE des bâtiments fait l'objet d'un travail de traduction (Callon 1986) et d'appropriation (Gusfield 1989) par un collège d'experts. La constitution d'un monde social commun (Strauss 1992) et d'une représentation commune (Fligstein 1997), suite à la création de l'association HQE et la publication du premier référentiel officiel, permet à la démarche HQE de s'imposer progressivement auprès des acteurs politiques, sociaux et économiques comme le standard français de la QE des bâtiments. Alors que le modèle économique du bâtiment est centré sur la concurrence par les prix, les « concepteurs » de la démarche HQE, en faisant la promesse aux professionnels (van Lente 1993, van Lente & Rip 1998) d'établir une économie de la qualité (Karpik 1989, 1995), parviennent à leur faire accepter la traduction du standard de la démarche HQE en norme française (NF) homologuée et en référentiel privé de certification.L'analyse met en exergue l'emprise exercée, par un collège d'experts, sur la fabrique de la normalisation technique ainsi que les tensions entre acteurs et professionnels autour de la transformation de l'architecture marchande du bâtiment (Fligstein 2001). L'étude de la démarche HQE montre ainsi le rôle politique joué par les collèges d'experts (Olshon 1993) qui, en participant à la création de nouveaux domaines de compétences et de règles marchandes, performent les modèles économiques (Callon 1998), que ce soit par l'instauration d'une économie de la qualité (Karpik 1989 & 1995, Musselin 1996), l'évolution des dispositifs collectifs de calcul et des business models (Callon & Muniesa 2003, Barrey 2006) la mise en place d'un marché de la prescription (Hatchuel 1995) ou encore, en reconfigurant les juridictions au sein des écologies professionnelles (Abbott 1988). / This research discusses the emergence, the formalization and the institutionalization processes of the Environmental High Quality (HQE) Buildings' standard in France.In 1992, the Environmental High Quality (HQE) approach was initiated in a workgroup of the Ministry of Housing and supported by public administration sector. An HQE Association was created in 1996 to promote and develop the approach. It was conceived as a “standard-based organization with the purpose of supporting one certain standard” (Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000: 50). Thus the HQE association's first mission was to create a reference defining environmental building quality that, in turn, would allow for a common language among actors in this field. The first version of the HQE standard is published in 1997 by the Association. It specified building characteristics, its tools and other elements of the building process, controlling the exterior environmental impacts and creating healthy conditions inside houses. In 2005, the certification of the HQE approach is launched. Progressively the certification of the HQE approach met a great success both in the public and private se ctors. Finally, in less than fifteen years this approach became the French standard of the Environmental Quality of Buildings.Standardization is not just a technical process but “thoroughly political process” (Olshan 1993: 320). Standards set the question about the political role played by experts in the performation of markets (Callon 1998). We claim that a research focused on the standardization-making is relevant to explain knowledge dynamics and markets innovation.Following the emergence of new environmental rules in the French building sector allows us to analyse the process of “standardization-making” by collective professional actors. Three main conclusive findings can be stressed :- The process of « standardization-making » don't essentially take place within the official standardization Agencies (as AFNOR). Collective professional actors take an important part in the process of “standardization-making” by operating as “institutional entrepreneurs” in emerging fields.- Within the process of “standardization-making”, collective professional actors fix new jurisdictions to shape the system of profession (notably the jurisdiction of Architect is reduced by the HQE advisors).- Standardization performs the markets by introducing and legitimating new rules and creating new Business Models (notably with the certification process).

Cette recherche interroge l’existence des nouvelles formes de ruralité émergentes dans le bassin métropolitain du delta du Yangzi. En opposition à l’écart croissant entre patrimoine infrastructurel et société on réaffirme la priorité du territoire comme principe théorique et paradigme naturel. L’analyse des processus historiques d’aménagement du territoire agricole à partir des réformes foncières et des pratiques autochtones de « Guangxi » (réseaux sociaux), a révélé une restructuration des ressources stratégiques du territoire du delta avant la réorganisation des espaces ruraux bâtis : la nature du sol et le réseau de l’eau. En même temps dispositif de contrôle politique et de développement social, la modification de l’infrastructure territoriale jusqu’ à la fin du maoïsme, peut être interprétée comme un investissement sur le long terme du capital humain et environnemental. Notre hypothèse est que la diffusion des petites et moyennes entreprises dans les zones rurales représente une forme de capitalisation des matrices sociales et organisationnelles du tissu agricole plus ancien. Ces transformations ont amené à la formation de nombreux espaces hybrides et clusters des entreprises dispersées dans la campagne qui s’appuient de façon complémentaire aux réseaux environnementaux préexistants. En conséquence, ce mode de production a à son tour, remodelé la relation entre l'économie, les communautés et l'environnement naturel locaux donnant lieu à des formes du développement sans fractures, plus ductiles et résilientes où la relation entre l'espace construit et l'espace agricole n'est plus de nature opposée. Ce qui émerge est un réseau de “milieux” dont chaque élément rend compte de la conception d’un paysage, de matériaux propres, de méthodes et procédures de construction. L’organisation morphologique qui en résulte montre un modèle d'urbanisation capillaire dans ces zones conventionnellement définies « non-urbaines ». Interroger ces formes émergentes de ruralité veut dire réviser la façon de conceptualiser la notion du « territoire métropolitain », et notamment de ce que on définis l’ « urbain ». On fait valoir, finalement, pour un besoin urgent de reconsidérer la séquence programmatique qui sous-tendent la morphologie spatiale de régions mégalopolitaines, par la prise en compte des rapports de continuité entre « milieux » et « communauté » et par le biais d'un examen des interactions entre ces réalités souvent, disjoints / The territorial scale and the form of the territory are fundamental basis to understand metropolitan processes and the changes occurred in its spatial, economic and social structure. The centrality of landforms and of their dynamics inspires more situated approaches, in which the agency of natural elements is integrated. This research investigates the existence of new forms of emerging rurality in the metropolitan basin of the Yangtze Delta. In opposition to the growing gap between infrastructural heritage and society, the priority of the territory is reaffirmed as a theoretical tool and environmental paradigm. The research hypothesis is that the spread of small and medium-sized enterprises in rural areas represents a form of capitalization of the spatial reorganization occurred in the Commune's period. The preliminary factor which originated the process of rural industrialization is based on the restructuring of two strategic territorial resources: the soil structure and the water network. These transformations have led to the formation of numerous hybrid spaces and clusters of small and micro enterprises dispersed over the countryside. As a result, this mode of production has, in turn, reshaped the relationship between the local economy, communities and natural environment giving rise to forms of urban development without fractures, where the relationship between the built space and the agricultural area is no longer of an opposite nature. What emerges is a network of "milieu” where the resulting socio-spatial organization shows a pattern of capillary urbanization in these conventionally defined "non-urban" areas. The notion of urban is changing and ecological rationality can offer fundamental opportunities to analyse, intersect and integrate the various territorial layers

In this thesis I explore sunscreen use-practices, imaginaries, and material flows. I aim to understand how young people in the globally-immersed UK use sunscreens and how they makesense of them. Specifically, I follow Donna Haraway’s practice of implosion, employing theconcepts of care and toxicity to explore how sunscreens are employed to protect particularbodily ideals, aspects of embodied subjectivities and material-discursive boundaries. In following these various forms of protection, I ask what normative discourses, ecologies andbodies are, in turn, made vulnerable. The main corpus of my study comes from interviewconversations with eight people. Their stories highlight how sunscreens mediate understandings of skin, places, bodies, and social relations. I analyse sunscreen advertising from 1979to 2019 to investigate harmonies and conflicts between the cultural imaginaries curated bysunscreen companies and the stories which emerged from these interview conversations. Ialso put these materials into conversation with sunscreen discourses from the biological sciences, asking how these cultural works infuse sunscreen practices and material-semiotics.This thesis is an exploratory journey which encounters tanning, ageing, beauty, ‘race’,smells, places, intimacies, sun-burns, skin cancers, bodily boundaries, ‘Endocrine Disruptors’, toxic ecologies, and emplaced knowledges. It traverses disciplinary boundaries, following attitudes from the feminist and environmental post-humanities in bringing togetherapproaches, methods and theorising from many varied fields of scholarship usually locatedin the humanities, social sciences, and ‘natural’ sciences. As such, this thesis is a wide-ranging, thick description of how sunscreens are used in desires for protection and what is contingently and consequently made vulnerable.

This dissertation concerns the development of the MicroWave Radiometer (MWR) brightness temperature (Tb) algorithm and the associated algorithm validation using on-orbit MWR Tb measurements. This research is sponsored by the NASA Earth Sciences Aquarius Mission, a joint international science mission, between NASA and the Argentine Space Agency (Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, CONAE). The MWR is a CONAE developed passive microwave instrument operating at 23.8 GHz (K-band) H-pol and 36.5 GHz (Ka-band) H- and V-pol designed to complement the Aquarius L-band radiometer/scatterometer, which is the prime sensor for measuring sea surface salinity (SSS). MWR measures the Earth's brightness temperature and retrieves simultaneous, spatially collocated, environmental measurements (surface wind speed, rain rate, water vapor, and sea ice concentration) to assist in the measurement of SSS. This dissertation research addressed several areas including development of: 1) a signal processing procedure for determining and correcting radiometer system non-linearity; 2) an empirical method to retrieve switch matrix loss coefficients during thermal-vacuum (T/V) radiometric calibration test; and 3) an antenna pattern correction (APC) algorithm using Inter-satellite radiometric cross-calibration of MWR with the WindSat satellite radiometer. The validation of the MWR counts-to-Tb algorithm was performed using two years of on-orbit data, which included special deep space calibration measurements and routine clear sky ocean/land measurements.

[pt] Baseada no compromisso com a qualidade de vida das crianças em suas relações com a natureza e nos desafios de uma educação ambiental que seja assegurada como mais um direito humano, no sentido de garantir uma relação ampla dos seres humanos com e enquanto natureza, e mais que isso, de resgatar o direito da própria vida se manter, esta pesquisa focou as relações das crianças da Comunidade das Pedras (Teresópolis-RJ) entre si e na/com a natureza, tanto em sua comunidade e convívio familiar quanto dentro da escola, buscando compreender as atividades propostas que se dedicam a um convívio com o ambiente natural e sua importância curricular. Dessa forma, o objetivo da pesquisa foi, por um lado, compreender, no contexto de uma comunidade rural, como as crianças do campo, que já têm, fora da escola, algum convívio garantido com a natureza, compreendem essa relação, e, por outro, como a escola reconhece e trabalha a partir desta realidade local. A pesquisa se fundamentou teoricamente a partir, principalmente, da articulação de três eixos de referência: o conceito de três ecologias de Félix Guattari e sua influência na discussão atual sobre educação ambiental; a sociologia das ausências e das emergências de Boaventura Sousa Santos; e a defesa do direito à vida e de um meio ambiente saudável na perspectiva da educação em direitos humanos. A partir de uma inspiração etnográfica, a pesquisa se deu de forma imersiva no contexto de uma comunidade rural, entendendo, que, apesar da natureza abundante, a relação dicotômica entre cultura e natureza que construímos a partir da civilização ocidental vem contribuindo para o fortalecimento de uma cultura antropocêntrica que separa os humanos de seu entorno, isolando-os das outras espécies e cultivando atitudes destrutivas em relação a tudo que vive. Apesar da maior inserção da temática ambiental na escola através da educação ambiental e de sua importância anunciada pelos professores, a incorporação desta temática às práticas pedagógicas ainda é frágil, apontando o caráter monocultural da escola e a necessidade de repensar a importância da natureza para o desenvolvimento integral das crianças. / [en] Being based on the commitment to the life quality of children as related to nature and bearing in mind the challenges of an environmental education to be guaranteed as another human right, the research aimed at the way children of Comunidade das Pedras (Teresópolis, in the State of Rio de Janeiro) relate among them as well as with nature, both in their family nucleuses and at school. On the one hand, the chief aim was to investigate from the perspective of a rural community how children from the country envisage this relation, considering that some contact with nature is already guaranteed to them. On the other hand, the aim was to investigate how the school acknowledges this local reality and works based on this local reality. The theoretical basis was the articulation of three reference sources: Felix Guattari’s concept of the three ecologies and its influence on the current discussion of environmental education; Boaventura Sousa Santos’ sociology of absences and emergencies; and the fight for the right to life and for a healthy environment from the perspective of education in human rights. Beginning with an ethnographic inspiration, an immersion was conducted in different contexts, interviews with teachers, group activities with the students and documental analysis. We are convinced that, in spite of the plentiful nature of the context in which the research was conducted, the two-part relationship between culture and nature which we have built based on the western civilization, is contributing to the strengthening of an anthropocentric culture that separates human beings from their surroundings, thus isolating them from other species and cultivating destructive attitudes towards anything that lives. In spite of environmental topics being more present at school and the fact that teachers have declared its importance, the incorporation of such topics to pedagogic practices is still very uncertain. That, in turn, points to the monocultural nature of school and the necessity of revising the importance of nature to the all-inclusive development of children.