Blockchains, like many “disruptive” digital media, continue to garner significant academic and popular attention about what they are. Recent critical provocations in geography and cognate disciplines shift lines of enquiry to interrogate the material realities of digital technologies, emphasizing instead how they are lived. Inspired by critical and feminist thinking, the primary task of this dissertation is to follow the latter mode of analysis and present a critical cartography of blockchains, loosely defined. The critical cartography presented in this study sketches a conceptual and methodological map of context-specific and intimate blockchains practices I participated in and experienced from 2013-2020, in a mostly Canadian context. I construct this cartography by using a variety of autobiographical and auto-ethnographic methods that are sometimes buttressed by more conventional qualitative methods. Research reveals that blockchains have the capacity to become economic in a diversity of ways, enacting multiple rowdy characteristics of capitalism, a phenomenon I term rambunctious capitalism. Rambunctious economic flows actualizing through blockchains rely on different situations of power to enact nomadic subject/ivities in a variety of spatial, temporal, and material contexts. Specifically, the blockchain practices addressed in this dissertation highlight the embodiment of joyful moments for a pregnant body working in Toronto’s crypto-economy, the algorhythmic impacts of blockchain hard fork events, where code participates in the instantiation of diverse temporalities that produce uneven geographies, and the materialization of Canadian policy discourses about blockchains that position and, in some cases, implement these media as smart solutions to civic service delivery. Findings presented throughout this study contribute to feminist and digital geographies by offering autobiographical, auto-ethnographic, and intimate accounts of blockchains, and how they are practiced as lived and multiple realities. In addition, this dissertation also adds ethnographic research to the now expansive multi-disciplinary scholarship on blockchains and cryptocurrencies to understand how these media operate in specific contexts. / Graduate

This dissertation examines how the nature, extent, and consequences of mass supervision shape the health outcomes of individuals living under parole and probation. It addresses gaps within the geography literature concerning systems of parole and probation, as well as offering a contribution to examinations of the health impacts associated with these pervasive forms of carceral control. Using qualitative approaches, I explore the following research questions: 1) What are the structural conditions through which mass supervision impacts individual and community health? 2) How are structural dimensions of mass supervision experienced, and how might these embodied experiences shape pathways to ill-health? 3) How might the health impacts of mass supervision relate to processes of racial formation? In answering these questions this study draws on and synthesizes literatures from carceral geographies, biosocial theory and theories of racial capitalism. Key to understanding the health impacts of supervision is an integrated analysis of both the structural and the embodied and experiential pathways. By examining the impacts of and interrelations between these pathways, this study provides important context for the development of future research into persistent health inequities and the role of carceral control in spatial, political-economic and racial processes. / Geography

This research examines the transformations occurring in children and youth’s identity narratives as they engage dialectically with the recent public narratives of social and political inclusion. Employing children’s experiences of the favela, this thesis explores children’s ontological narratives as part of a place-based identity constructed within the public narratives of Rio de Janeiro. A range of public narratives are constituted and socially constructed by the state, media and culture industries. However, cultural, social and economic narratives from non-governmental organizations based in favelas have emerged as counter-production to the mainstream public narratives. This work captures the intersections of these narratives in children’s lives through empirical research in a favela in Rio de Janeiro using participant observation, a mini questionnaire, and photo-voice technique with children aged 10-13. It provides insight into the ways in which children face every-day boundaries enforced by relationships at the individual, the community, and the city levels. The findings show that children are caught in a web of disorder that is strongly influenced by both traffickers and the state, which contributes to their continued social exclusion from formal city space. / text

During the last decade, Japanese cuisine has become firmly rooted in Canada. The once unusual sounding dishes such as sushi, tempura, and edamame are now familiar to most Canadians. Indeed, Japanese restaurants make up a substantial portion of Toronto’s diverse foodscape, yet little is known about how this culinary culture is understood, how the constructed image is created, and the identities that are produced through its production and consumption. This dissertation aims to unpack the constructed identities of the cosmopolitan and the “Oriental Other” contained within Japanese culinary circuits in Toronto, while also examining the connections, constructions, and negotiations concealed within the Japanese restaurants’ cultural landscape. It seeks to highlight the processes of racialization, Whiteness, and the articulation of difference that are interconnected and interdependent on the production and consumption of Japanese food in Toronto’s restaurants. Through this process, cultural differences are mapped out, allowing Japanese cuisine to become an accessible and readily available place to search for cosmopolitan identity making and the performance of Otherness. To this aim, in-depth interviews were conducted with residents of Toronto and chefs of Japanese ethnic origin. Both groups emphasize the relations between food providers and consumers, authenticity strategies, and their imaginative geographies of Japanese culinary culture but had remarkably different interpretations on how these constructions are practiced, articulated, and ultimately understood. / Thesis (Ph.D, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2008-03-24 15:40:29.811

The University of ManchesterNatalie Dietrich JonesPhD Development Policy and ManagementThe ma(r)king of complex border geographies and their negotiation by undocumented migrants: The case of Barbados2013ABSTRACTUsing Barbados as a case study, this thesis examines the relationship between agency, undocumentedness and borders. The relationship between these three concepts has been debated in a well-established European and North American literature; however, there is no similar body of work for the Caribbean, a space which since its genesis has been shaped by b/ordering practices. Through a stratified view of the border, it explored the discursive and non-discursive (material) factors which constrained migrants’ existence, and migrants’ agentic response to these constraints. The timing of fieldwork meant that the location’s geography, as well as migrants’ narratives, was marked by a recent amnesty exercise. In addition to ‘talk’ the research also relied on text, in the form of government and other legal documents relating to the management of migration. The research is therefore based on a combination of narrative and critical discourse analysis, espousing the methodological eclecticism that is encouraged in critical realist methodology. The study makes an important contribution to the field of border studies, based on its exploration of the relationship between a complex border ontology and migrant agency. The principal finding is that borders create complex geographies, which operate at varying spatial scales. The thesis thus provides an enhanced theorization of border(s), in particular as it relates to conceptualizations of space, suspect status, governmentality, and agency.

Concerned with the ongoing coloniality within the form and interactions of international relations, this project examines the legacy of colonial mapping practices on contemporary geopolitics. Specifically, I investigate Sri Lankan tourist maps as subversive examples of the politics of vision implicated within the historical formation of island-space under colonial mapping practices (i.e. Portuguese, Dutch, and British), and the contemporary political implications of the island geography as the state, including exclusionary identity politics during the the civil war (1983-2009). Using a mix-analysis approach, including interviews, participatory mapping, and autoethnography, as well as feminist, postcolonial, and critical theoretical lenses, I argue that Sri Lankan tourist maps serve as examples of the historically developed and continued right to space, mobility, representation, and resources between the Global North and South in what I term "cosmopolitan geopolitics." As geopolitics can be identified as the relationship between territories and resources, cosmopolitan geopolitics is concerned with the power relations when such elements as culture, authenticity, history, and religion are marked in places, people, and experiences as valued resources within the international tourist economy, particularly in this project which connects the colonial histories of mapping, travel, and international relations. In order to address the imperial, masculine politics of vision this project is separated into two parts: the first is concerned with the ontology and colonial legacy the map (Chapters 1-3), the second with the politics of the map, including exclusionary politics of the nation state (Chapters 4-6). Chapter 1 investigates the politics of island space as represented on the tourist map, where the state serves as both a "treasure box" and "caged problem." Chapter 2 argues that the cartoon images and icons serve as a resource map for contemporary geopolitics, and Chapter 3 indicates that this map simultaneously acts an invitation to the cosmopolitan, with assumed access and hospitality. Examining the various ways that the exclusionary politics of the Sinhala-Buddhist state are implicated in the representations on the tourist map, Chapters 4-6 look at cultural tourist sites, natural or wildlife sites, and former war zones, respectively. Overall, this is an interdisciplinary examination between postcolonial studies, critical tourism studies, critical geography, and Sri Lankan studies that examines the continued politics of vision and access to space with both international and domestic political-economic implications. / Doctor of Philosophy / This project takes a critical examination of tourist maps, as a cultural artifact in what has been called “coloniality,” or the ongoing colonial relations in contemporary relationships between nation states. I suggest that my taking into account the colonial history and development of mapping practices, tourism, and international relations that tourist maps serve as material intersection to examine such relations. The island state of Sri Lanka is an ideal case study for this project, as not only does it intersect colonial relations between the Portuguese, Dutch, and British, but because after ending nearly 30-year ethnic-religious civil war the country is looking to expand its tourism industry. Therefore, I argue that an understanding of what I term “cosmopolitan geopolitics” helps us to account for the ways in which culture and religious experiences become resources in contemporary geopolitics within the international tourist economy. Using a mix-analysis approach of interviews, participatory mapping, autoethnography, and theoretical perspectives, I organize the project into two main parts. The first questions “what a map is,” and the second questions “who gets to map.” Overall, this interdisciplinary investigation pulls from postcolonial studies, critical tourism studies, critical geography, and Sri Lankan studies in order to question the continued narratives and representations within cultural commodification and travel.

In 2003 school geography was in a state of crisis: enrolment in GCSE geography courses had fallen by a third over the previous eight years. In response, a radical new ‘pilot’ geography GCSE course was designed and implemented in England. The GCSE was an attempt to rejuvenate a school subject that had become out of date, with little change to its content since the inauguration of the National Curriculum in 1988. With student-centred learning at its heart the GCSE aimed to make the subject much more exciting and relevant to young people. The following thesis examines alternative pedagogical approaches to teaching school geography that draw on young people’s experiences as citizens and consumers to make geography more relevant and interesting to them. Written as an unfolding story this multi-sited ethnography began by exploring the networks behind the pilot. This involved not only several different actors/groups of actors (including geography educators, academic geographers, geography teachers and school pupils) but also several different spaces (including schools, classrooms, organisation headquarters, working group meetings and publications). It moves on to examine how the GCSE’s approaches to teaching, learning and assessing were being played out in practice and to what extent its aims, claims and intentions were being realised in the classroom. Through exploring the pilot’s approach to the pedagogy of school geography my research became action-oriented in approach, and I became involved in co-creating critical, connective curriculum materials for the GCSE. The development of these new materials and teaching and learning strategies are situated within debates in human geography about critical pedagogy, young people’s geographies and public geographies and the thesis forges links between these different theoretical strands. I conclude by asking what lessons can be learnt from the pilot GCSE and its implications for the role of geography within a wider educational context. Written autoethnographically to reflect the collaborative and iterative nature of my research my intention has been to critically engage with multiple publics who are involved in this area.

This thesis investigates the myriad of responses and complex relationships residents have to the stigma attached to their neighbourhood, one categorised by the police as socially vulnerable (Nationella operativa avdelningen 2019). This research explores the narrative of place to diffuse some complexity around the multidimensional positions people have to stigma and stigmatising imagery of place. Drawing on qualitative interview material, with past and present residents in Hisings Backa, this thesis explores the narrative of stigmatisation from experiential and temporal perspectives of understanding the place of Hisings Backa. Using a feminist approach, the research highlights the importance of understanding everyday experiences of place and space in the context of locating the wider effects of place stigma.

Over the recent years, technological changes in the music industry have altered the geography of music production and non-creative music work. Progress in information and communication technology has lead to decreasing revenues from record sales, which in turn has affected traditional income models for musicians, in particular income from record sales. Therefore, contemporary musicians need to spend longer periods on tour, thus being spatially fragmented in a multitude of geographies while performing artistic work practices. In light of such changes, new music geographies have started to gain the attention for performing artistic work, in particular temporary geographies at popular music festivals as well as digital online communities.This dissertation explores these spaces of music work and creativity, and the roles played by such spaces for Swedish musicians’ working lives. By using a triangulation of methods, this dissertation addresses three important features of the contemporary music profession. First, I explore the geographies of networks and network relations, and the role of networks for coping with contemporary working conditions. Second, I pay attention to the spaces of non-creative work, particularly in festival backstage areas. Third, I focus on how, when and where musicians perform creative work, and the relation between traditional studio locations and new opportunities for creative work while being on tour. Based on interviews, observations and netnographies, I argue that contemporary musicians perform much non-creative work in temporary festival backstage areas and in online communities while creative work preferably is located to traditional studio environments. I also argue that while female musicians and new-established musicians at large, due to increasing competition, have started to explore online communities, established musicians benefit from networking in face-to-face gatherings in order to gain job opportunities. Thus, there is a distinction between different groups of musicians based on career stage and gender.

This thesis makes a productive contribution to understanding the rapidly expanding and contested field of global school partnerships, by placing the rich narratives from a handful of school partnerships into the global education context of social, historical, political, and cultural processes. Principally, it tells the story of one partnership, between two primary schools in rural Devon and urban Tanzania, nested within a network of partnerships and governed by DfID’s Global School Partnership (GSP) programme. The cross-continental nature of the school partnerships called for a multi-sited, ethnographic approach, informed and shaped by postcolonial and feminist principles. Partnerships comprise a range of practices, most significant of which were the reciprocal teacher visits that punctuated, and energised, the partnership calendar, presenting spaces for encounter. The emotional and embodied encounters formed the backbone of the partnerships, and produced narratives that were circulated amongst the partnerships and re-presented to audiences in the home country. Firstly, school partnerships engendered the production of moral subjectivities, which were underscored by broad discourses of citizenship, global citizenship, and moral education. With its objective to foster global citizenship, the global partnership occupied an ambiguous position within this discursive framework. Secondly, the encounters presented moments in which narratives of education, teaching, and learning were produced, contested, negotiated, and in some cases, reworked by the participating teachers. As a cultural device, the GSP was both indicative, and constitutive, of the discourse surrounding the neoliberal realignment of the education sector around the world, and provided a productive lens through which to reflect upon the contemporary transformation of the institution. Importantly, the GSP presented a significant site in which neoliberal stories of aspiration, hard work, and global outlooks, became intimately entangled with ‘caring’ stories of concern and responsible citizenship. Most scholarship has focused on the role of secondary and tertiary education sectors in the production of the knowledge economy, but this ethnography finds that nascent discourses and imaginaries of the ‘global’ citizen are already being established and performed in primary schools around the world.