The aim of this thesis is to develop an innovative theoretical understanding of technological innovation as a social phenomenon and to demonstrate the results of its application to the sector of UK's marine energy technology. Via a creative analysis and critique of various theoretical approaches to technology, I identify several key elements of a theory capable of understanding technological change, which I then develop based on the critical juxtaposition of the approaches of Pierre Bourdieu and Cornelius Castoriadis. Technological innovation is understood as the ultimate outcome of the relations of cooperation and competition formed by radically creative agents, capable of ex-nihilo creation, who participate in private and public institutions of a quasi-regulated technological field. After arguing in favour of applying a primarily subjectivist epistemology with objectivist elements, I present a research methodology based on semi-structured interviews. The results of the data analysis highlight several key features of technological change as it takes place within the technological field of UK's marine energy technology. Firstly, I present the ways the technological field influences the agents therein and helps them develop their craft. Secondly, I explore how the agents of the field use their craft as they create ex-nihilo. Thirdly I show the interactions between the technological field and other social institutions/spaces such as the economic sector and the general public. Subsequently, I analyse the internal organization of the technological field and its impact upon the trajectories that technological innovation follows therein. Finally, I make the first tentative steps towards developing policy advice for the sector. I conclude that, as long as policy makers manage to develop a precise understanding of the technological field of marine energy technology, then they actually can design policy capable of positioning the technological innovations therein within a preferred path.

That Josiah Royce's philosophy relies on imagination has been acknowledged, but there has not yet been scholarship behind what this argument consists of or implies, both for imagination and Roycean loyalty. This project works to examine how imagination works in Royce's philosophy and, in particular, the ethical system of loyalty, as imagination serves in the creation and perfection of loyalty. The first level of this explores Royce's psychological groundwork for imagination and how this works into the development of the self. From there, this project works with the connections of aesthetics and beauty to Roycean loyalty, with particular interest in how beauty aids in the self's choice of cause. The final level of this project is concerned with how imagination informs the community and how imagination aids in the development of loyalty to a lost cause and thus loyalty to loyalty.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement on September 17, 2011 that involved public protest and the occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York City’s financial district, is an important example of mass public dissent in American history. The conflict that lies at the heart of the protests is between two parties identified in the data as the 99% and the 1%. An abductive, grounded research strategy to explore the language used in interpreting the circumstances and details of the event, is used in conjunction with a theoretical framework provided by C. Wright Mills (1959) and Jock Young (2011), to uncover the motivations behind the 99%’s decision to protest. What is revealed upon completion of the analysis are two broad motivations for public protest by the 99% related to issues of fairness and access, set within an historical context of growing dissent against corrupt economic institutions and the governments that sustain them.

Conservation is today often interpreted as the preservation of a still-shot, an understanding informed by the belief that by displaying photographic memory of the past, it is possible to gain access to it. Naturalistic representation is unequivocal and presents the onlooker with a single meaning. The dominance of the photorealistic image as model for memory, should be challenged by undermining the notion that architectural representation is a portrayal of likeness, restoring its full potential as an iconic representation of presence. A micro-historical study of the Renaissance concept of restoration, focused on Tiberio Alfarano's 1571 ichnography of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, offers an alternative paradigm in order to inform, critically, contemporary theory and the practice of the renewal of mnemic buildings. The hybrid drawing (1571) extends beyond the opera of graphic architecture, realizing a real effigy. Alfarano factured a track-drawing, providing memory traces on the drawing-site, which, acting like a veil, bear marks of the building's presence within time. The ichnography makes visible a "hallowed configuration", conceived as a substratum for the imagination of conservation. This defines a collective daydreaming strategy, from which multiple authors can imagine possible futures. Ambiguity and polysemy inform the drawing, generating an equivocal space where unforeseeable inventions occur by the process of future predictions by recollecting memories. This invites merging multiple stories. Grasping the significance of Alfarano's drawing, one begins to comprehend the mistaken belief in the primacy of photo rendering to access a building and conserve its essence. Any essence cannot be achieved through exact visual reconstruction, rather through a chiasmus of past and present form, expressing allegoric significance. The retrospective and prospective character of the architectural-conservation process can be experienced through the intermediacy of hybrid-drawings directing the gaze simultaneously in two directions; a pre-existent condition engages in dialogue with future design. This is a condition absent from today's practice, where measured drawings and design drawings are often kept separate. Seen this way, architectural drawings could rejoin these two temporal conditions, through metaphoric or literal transparency, and allow for a real transformation within continuity of identity. / Ph. D.

Literature is a source that enriches students’ language ability on every level and short stories are a form that is suitable for adolescent students. To young people, memories from childhood are still close and vivid. To most these memories are mixed; among games and adventures there are both happiness and disappointments, both childhood friendships and betrayals. It is a topic everyone can talk about and many discussions can be developed from it. In addition, the short story is a genre that can be easily applied to the classroom because of its length. There is no great risk that the students will not remember the content of the story after reading. For students that are not pursuing further academic life, or low-performing students, short stories are definitely a better choice than novels. This essay sets out to compare three of Willa Cather’s short stories: “The Way of the World”, “The Enchanted Bluff” and “The Treasure of Far Island”. All three stories show us a childhood world as experienced by a group of children centered round a leader. These childhood worlds are portrayed from an adult perspective, with much beauty and nostalgia, giving a sense of the innocence, excitement and magic of a childhood paradise. The essay argues that it is through the power of children’s imagination that their paradise is created and that sooner or later paradise is lost. However, in the last of the three stories, the childhood paradise is regained in adulthood through the artistic imagination.

My dissertation is a phenomenological analysis of the relationship between intersubjectivity and imagination in Hannah Arendt. The objective of my dissertation is to demonstrate that Arendt has a theory of imagination that provides a substratum to explain her key notions such as "action," "freedom" "beginning," "history," "power," "understanding," "appearance," "space of appearance," and "judgment." In other words, my dissertation shows that not only are these notions related, and not only do they characterize Arendt's account of the political life as fundamentally intersubjective, but they are also derived from her peculiar understanding of imagination that arises within the phenomenological legacy. <br> The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 provides an analysis to suggest a strong relation between imagination and taste as an intersubjective phenomenon in Arendt's Lectures on Kant Political Philosophy (1992). Chapter 2 traces the "possible" nature of imagination in Arendt's notion of "action and "understanding" back through her various works, beginning with the essay "Understanding and Politics" (Difficulties of Understanding) (1954) and the last chapter of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1952), the proceeding through further analyses in The Human Condition (1958). There is an intermediate section outlining the structure of Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 focuses on what Arendt calls "metaphysical fallacies" that are derived from thinking activity and the thinking ego in The Life of the Mind: Thinking. Moreover, this chapter serves as a preparatory discussion and analysis for the following chapter, in addition to discussing how Arendt tries to reestablish a linkage between thinking and judgment based on intersubjectivity, echoing her encounter of Adolf Eichmann's "thoughtlessness." The last chapter demonstrates that these analyses of the "metaphysical fallacies," which Arendt points out in The Life of the Mind: Thinking, are her implicit criticism of Heidegger's ontological interpretation of Kant's transcendental imagination in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1973). Furthermore and finally, by pointing out several parallelisms between Heidegger's interpretation of Kant and Arendt's criticism, the chapter offers a way to reconstruct Arendt's account of intersubjectivity as her own phenomenological interpretation of Kant's transcendental imagination as reproductive imagination against the productive imagination in Heidegger's interpretation. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Philosophy / PhD; / Dissertation;

During our university studies we learned about the importance of play for children'sdevelopment. During play children practice many elements, such as social andcommunication skills and they learn easier. This because play is fun and they use theirimagination and creativity to develop their play, creating new games - this isimportant for their learning and development. Therefore, we know that play is anexcellent teaching tool, but I wonder what do pedagogues think of play?I also wonder what factors influence children's play and how important the "oldfashionedplay" or play without modern toys such as electronic toys or gadgets are forchildren's development? Therefore, I travelled to a small village in India, where there is no modern technology,to carry out this study about play. Over the course of ten days I observed childrenplaying and interviewed three teachers in a private school to study how thecircumstances make children create their own toys to play with, and how importantthis play and these toys are for the children's' lives and development. As a result ofthis study I came to the conclusion that economic, religious, cultural and genderfactors influence children's play in this village in India. Creating their own toysdevelops children´s creativity and fine motor skills, and helps them socialize whilethey are teaching each other how to create the toy. In a multicultural society like ours in Sweden, we have many first- and secondgenerationimmigrants in our schools, therefore it is important to learn and understandhow other cultures play and how we as pedagogues see and adopt this kind of playand different games to teach. In this study I want to show another perspective of playto understand our own play in Sweden. I believe that this multicultural perspectivewill only enrich our profession.

Kant’s theory of productive imagination falls at the center of the critical project. This is evident in the 1781 Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant claims that the productive imagination is a “fundamental faculty of the human soul” and indispensable for the construction of experience. And yet, in the second edition of 1787 Kant seemingly demotes this imagination as a mere “effect of the understanding on sensibility” and all but withdraws its place from the Transcendental Deduction. In his 1929 Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Martin Heidegger provided an explanation for the revisions between 1781 and 1787. Heidegger suggested that the Critique was supposed to be a foundation for Kant’s metaphysics of morals, which holds that practical reason is freely bound by a categorical imperative. Yet after 1781 Kant recognized that the Critique implicates the productive imagination as the “unknown root” of the faculties of understanding and sensibility. If the 1781 Critique reveals this imagination to be the source of theoretical rules and practical imperatives, then, according to Heidegger, Kant could not but “shrink back” from this shocking discovery. A faculty so intimately tied to sensibility, and hence contingency and particularity, is a poor progenitor of freedom and universal rules. I think there is some truth to Heidegger’s explanation. But I also think there is something more important to draw from the revisions between 1781 and 1787. In this dissertation, I assume that something about the productive imagination did frighten Kant. But, pace Heidegger, I do not think that Kant shrank back from his initial position. Rather, I argue that the revisions clarify a theory that was implicit in 1781 but made explicit by 1787. If the imagination is a power for representation, which is at times a dream and at times a veridical experience, then the difference lies in the rule according to which the construction of the representation is bound. Furthermore, I argue that Kant’s revisions reveal a duty to bind the reproductive imagination according to a common concept, what Kant sometimes refers to as common sense. This is what I call the theoretical imperative.

Thesis advisor: John Sallis / This dissertation investigates the importance of the imagination in the thought of F.W. J. Schelling and Martin Heidegger, and argues that Heidegger's later philosophy cannot be understood properly without appreciating Schelling's central importance for him. It is increasingly recognized today that Schelling, who had long been overlooked, is an important figure in post-Kantian German Idealism. However, his significance for Heidegger's concentration on the creative character of thought remains undervalued. I argue that, by tracing the theme of imagination in these thinkers, the milieu of Schelling's absolute idealism and that of Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenlogy may be understood as distinct discourses that nevertheless share in a profound impulse to overcome sensible-intelligible and subject-object dualisms and retrieve and refine the productive and projective character of reason. This impulse is first evident in both thinkers' attention to the role of imagination in Kant's critical project (for Schelling, cir. 1800; for Heidegger, cir. 1929). It then proves inseparable from Schelling's treatments of intuition, identity, ground, and freedom; and it becomes still more evident in Heidegger's 1936 lecture course on Schelling and his affiliated inquiries into the essence of art and poetry. Even as Heidegger labors to deconstruct the alleged visual and subjectivist bias of metaphysics, he remains preoccupied with Schelling's ontological treatment of the law of identity and intent on translating Schelling's aesthetic emphasis into a poetic paradigm for philosophical inquiry. By focusing on how, alongside his engagement with Schelling, Heidegger endeavors to recover the imagination as a poetic (as opposed to reductive and willful) basis for reason, we attain a decisive rubric for understanding his later thought / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Jane E. Regan / Few would dispute the notion that consumerism is a prevailing feature of American culture. The extent to which consumer culture dominates the way most people see the world makes imagining alternatives to consumerism almost impossible. This stultification of imagination is highly problematic. As it stands, consumer culture, measured by the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, demonstrably tends to inhibit human flourishing on personal, social, and global levels. There is a need to transform consumer culture in order to support human flourishing more robustly, and this barrenness of imagination impedes that transformation. This dissertation assumes that it is a task of teachers in faith to educate toward cultural alternatives that better support human flourishing. This task requires engaging in and developing what Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann calls "prophetic imagination." The prophetic imagination involves both deconstructing the taken-for-granted dominant culture and entering into a community whose practices, values, and ideals effect an alternative culture. While here focused on consumer culture, this model of educating for prophetic imagination has broader applicability; it can also be used, for example, to challenge cultures of racism, sexism, and militarism. This education in imagination develops in what scholars of management Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger call "communities of practice." Jesus and his disciples model for Christians a community of practice that imagines and acts prophetically. Communities of practice that educate for prophetic imagination ought to measure their own imagination against Jesus's prophetic imagination, shaped by his understanding of the Reign of God. This portrait of communities of prophetic practice is fleshed out in an exploration of empirical studies of communities that engage learners and draw them into an imagination that re-shapes not only how they see what the world is but also how they envision what the world can be. Communities of practice that educate for prophetic imagination can foster the transformation of consumer culture into a culture that better supports human flourishing. In order to do so, however, they must start with an anthropology that adequately understands what flourishing entails. These communities ought to be attentive to three aspects of the human person that tend to be given short shrift in consumer culture: the person's role as a creative producer, the person's inherent relationality, and the person's need embrace finitude, the limitations of human capability. The Church should be utilizing communities of practice to overcome the sterility of imagination and contribute to a culture of what might be called humanizing plenitude. This culture supports the fullness of human thriving by re-imagining what that thriving entails and engaging in practices to facilitate it. The Church as teacher can be involved in this education for the purpose of cultural transformation to enhance human flourishing in various arenas. Finally, this dissertation particularly proposes that this education can happen in higher education, in parishes, and in collaboration with the wider community. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.