Ethnographic collections in western museums such as the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) carry many meanings, but by definition, they represent an intercultural encounter. This history of this encounter is often lost, overlooked, or obscured, and yet it has bearing on how the objects in the collection have been interpreted and understood. This thesis uncovers the hidden history of one particular collection in the RAMM and examines the multiple meanings that have been attributed to the objects in the collection over time. The Richard Dennett Collection was made in Africa in the years when European powers began to colonise the Congo basin. Richard Edward Dennett (1857-1921) worked as a trader in the Lower Congo between 1879 and 1902. The collection was accessioned by the RAMM in 1889. The research contextualises the collection by making a close analysis of primary source material which was produced by the collector and by his contemporaries, and includes publications, correspondence, photographs and illustrations which have been studied in museums and archives in Europe and North America. Dennett was personally involved with key events in the colonial history of this part of Africa but he also studied the indigenous BaKongo community, recording his observations about their political and material culture. As a result he became involved in the institutions of anthropology and folklore in Britain which were attempting to explain, classify and interpret such cultures. Through examining Dennett’s history this research has been able to explore the Congo context, the indigenous society, and those European institutions which collected and interpreted BaKongo collections. The research has added considerably to the museum’s knowledge about this collection and its collector, and the study responds to the practical imperative implicit in a Collaborative Doctoral Project, by proposing a small temporary exhibition in the RAMM to explore these histories and meanings. In making this proposal the research considers the current curatorial debate concerning responsible approaches to colonial collections, and assesses some of the strategies that are being employed in museums today.

Le retour de l'Art mural à l'époque contemporaine" tourne autour de la problématique suivante: en quoi l'Art Mural est-il une nouvelle forme de métaphysique puisqu’elle permet à l'homme de projeter son âme sur un support et se retrouve ainsi dévoilée aux yeux de tous sous cette forme qui s’apparente à l" ekstase "soit un au dehors mis en mouvement par une "corporéité habitée" car le peintre muraliste est celui qui revendique l'esprit d'une époque et fusionne avec le mur pour créer une image, celle de l'invisible rendue visible. Le concept de « mur » sera abordé comme une pierre angulaire au travers des âges, comme support dans l’art moderne, art qui permet de faire un lien avec le passé mais surtout se démarque des arts contemporains car il sera nécessaire d’approcher les œuvres murales et le graffiti en général qui sera défini et fera l’objet d’une étude approfondie. Ainsi l’art rupestre qu’il est possible de comprendre d’après les études de Henri LHOTE, d’André LEROI-GOURHAN et de l’Abbé BREUIL pourra être mis en lumière notamment en décrivant les peintures pariétales retrouvées dans la grotte de Niaux, de Kapova, de Altamira, de Lascaux et de Chauvet qui représentent la première forme d’art humain et le commencement d’une spiritualité naissante. Le lien pourra être fait avec le symbolisme de l’Art égyptien et sa construction de l’image pour arriver à l’art décoratif des fresques de Pompéi et d’Herculanum où les graffitis de ces villes ont été étudiés par Eva CANTARELLA. De manière chronologique il sera intéressant de rappeler que le Moyen Age fut l’époque de la naissance des fresques romanes en vue de promouvoir une spiritualité qui évolue au cours des âges. Il existe aussi des techniques selon Cennino CENNINI qui explique les procédés de l’« intonaco » et de la fresque « a fresco » associés au père Ignazio POZZO. Enfin la période contemporaine fera l’objet de cette réflexion car les mouvements en peinture sont faits de liens mais surtout font rupture avec ce qui précède pour s’établir dans le temps selon l’expression de Valérie DUPONT, historienne de l’Art. / The return of Mural Art in the contemporary period” revolves round the following issue: In what way can one consider art to be a new form of metaphysics, since it allows man to project his soul on a support thus unveiling it to all in this form, which is close to a kind of “ecstasy”, i.e. an outside that is made to move through a “lived-in corporality”, for the mural painter claims the spirit of a period and merges with the wall so as to created an image – that of the invisible made visible. The “wall” concept will be examined as a foundation stone through the ages, as a support in modern art, a type of art that can create a link with the past but which especially stands out from contemporary art types, since we'll be studying mural works made by muralists as well as graffiti in general, which will be defined and studied in depth. Thus, rupestral art, which may be understood through the studies of Henri LHOTE, André LEROI-GOURHAN and Abbot BREUIL, can be explained most notably by looking at parietal paintings found in the Niaux, Kapova, Altamira, Lascaux and Chauvet caves, which represent the first form of human art and the beginning of a nascent spirituality. A link may be made to the symbolism of Egyptian art and its construction of image before reaching the decorative art of the Pompei and Herculanum frescoes – graffitis in those cities were studied by Eva CANTARELLA. It will be interesting, from a chronological point of view, to remember that the Middle Ages were the period when romanesque frescoes were born in order to further foster that age-old evolving spirituality. Such art was considered by Cennino CENNINI, who, along with father Ignazio POSSO explains the processes of “intonaco and the “a fresco” fresco. Finally, we'll have to study the modern period, since painting movements are made up of links and, more importantly, make a break with what preceded them, in order to last in time, as Valérie DUPONT, an arti historian, says.

ABSTRACT Although Cotton Mather, as the official chronicler of the 1692 Salem witch trials, is infamously associated with those events, and excerpts from his apologia on Salem, Wonders of the Invisible World, are widely anthologized today, no annotated critical edition of the entire work has appeared in print since the nineteenth century. This present edition of Wonders seeks to remedy this lacuna in modern scholarship. In Wonders, Mather applies both his views on witchcraft and on millennialism to events at Salem. This edition to Mather's Wonders presents this seventeenth-century text beside an integrated theory of the initial causes of the Salem witch panic. The juxtaposition of the probable natural causes of Salem's bewitchment with Mather's implausible explanations exposes the disingenuousness of his writing about Salem. My theory of what happened at Salem includes the probability that a group of conspirators led by the Rev. Samuel Parris deliberately orchestrated the "witchcraft" and that a plant, the thorn apple, used in Algonquian initiation rites, caused the initial symptoms of bewitchment (39-189). Furthermore, key spectral evidence used at the Salem witch trials and recorded by Mather in Wonders appears to have been generated by intense nightmares, commonly thought at the time to be witch visitations, resulting from what is today termed sleep paralysis (215-310). This dissertation provides a detailed look at some of the testimony given in the Salem court records and in Wonders of the Invisible World as it relates to the interpretation in folklore of the phenomenology of nightmares associated with sleep paralysis. The third chapter of this dissertation focuses extensively on Mather's text as a disingenuous response to the Salem witch trials (320-456). The final section of chapter three posits a "Scythian" or Eurasian connection between Swedish and Salem witchcraft. Similarities in shamanic practices among respective indigenous populations of Lapland, Eurasia, Asia, and New England, caused the devil's involvement in both the visible and invisible worlds to appear more than theoretical to writers like Jose Acosta, Johannes Scheffer, Nicholas Fuller, Joseph Mede, Anthony Horneck, and Cotton Mather, inducing Mather to include a lengthy abstract of the Swedish account in Wonders (404-449).

Das Aufwachsens von Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Stadt im Rahmen des Strukturwandels der kapitalistischen Arbeitsgesellschaft und die damit verbundenen radikalen Veränderungen der sozialräumlichen Bedingungen führen zur Notwendigkeit eines Perspektivenwechsels in der Pädagogik des Kinder- und Jugendraumes, da die biographischen Bewältigungsaufgaben von Heranwachsenden in der Unsichtbarkeit zu versinken drohen. In einem Überblick der Entwicklung der sozialräumlichen Theorie in der Jugendpädagogik werden zunächst die Gedanken der wichtigsten Vertretern dargestellt werden, um damit die Probleme der aktuellen theoretischen Diskussion in der sozialräumlichen Forschung verständlich zu machen. Die Aneignungstheorie aus dem aktuellen sozialpädagogischen Diskurs hat den aufklärerischen Anspruch, für Heranwachsende in einer durchfunktionalisierten und entfremdeten Welt aneigenbare (pädagogisierte) Räume zu schaffen, kann aber die aus der Freisetzungsproblematik heraus entstehenden sozialräumlichen Probleme des Aufwachsens, sogenannte "wilde Aneignungsformen" nicht erfassen. Der sozialgeographische Ansatz der "Alltäglichen Regionalisierungen" des schweizer Sozialgeographen Benno Werlen reiht sich mit seinem Begriffssystem in die Giddens-Becksche-Tradition ein. Er zielt darauf ab, durch die Aufdeckung von Verregelungen und Machtsystemen (vor allem physisch-materielle) Handlungsbedingungen zu schaffen, die ein rationales "Geographie-Machen" im Sinne einer "Politik der Lebensführung" zwischen Chancen und Risiken auf pluralisierte und individualisierte Art ermöglichen. Dass es jedoch unter den Bedingungen der segmentierten Arbeitsgesellschaft nicht um diese rationale Idee der Handlungen geht, sondern gerade durch die erlebten Unsicherheiten und anomischen Zustände um das ständige Streben nach Handlungsfähigkeit im sich wandelnden Kontext, wird mit diesem Ansatz nicht sichtbar. Um die heutigen sozialräumlichen Bedingungen und Herausforderungen des Aufwachsens von Kindern und Jugendlichen im Rahmen des Strukturwandels der Arbeitsgesellschaft aufzuschliessen zu können, ist ein Perspektivenwechsel notwendig. Die aktuellen Vergesellschaftungsformen von Kindheit und Jugend und die damit verbundene Notwendigkeit der Verschiebung des Fokus in der sozialräumlichen Forschung stehen im Zentrum des zweiten Teils des theoretischen Teils der vorliegenden Arbeit. Im empirischen Teil der Arbeit wird mit verschiedenen Zugängen in drei marginalisierten Stadtteilen von spanischen Städten (La Coruña, Madrid und Barcelona) über die Methode der "Grounded Theory" eine spezifische "Empirie der Aneignung" erarbeitet. / Growing up in urban environments is increasingly characterized by living conditions that become more and more globalized. The commonly used approaches of sociospatial children and youth research apply social and action models which were developed in past urban realities and can therefore not detect the problems of children and adolescents living in the global city. In my doctoral thesis, I am going to give a critical description of the predominant German theories in the field of action-oriented socio-geography and of the appropiation approach in the field of socio-educational theory. Further on I am going to demonstrate that it is inevitable to look at modern socio-geographic research in the cities of today from a new angle. The approach of the invisible coping maps starts from the fact that children and youths growing up in the digital capitalist world tend to solve their problems outside the traditional socialization institutions (family, schools, social system). They write invisible coping maps when following their policy of coping and searching for orientation, the meaning of life, acknowledgement and self-esteem. The basic idea is that the individuals (following the idea of making geographies) write their social (coping) maps daily in order to maintain their ability to act even in a world in which more and more people become superfluous.

In this dissertation I argue that invisible characters, as they appear in Paul Auster’s novels, serve a very specific function within the interpretative framework of a text and that they should be considered to play a functional role, in order to arrive at a more holistic interpretation of the text and a more accurate analysis of said texts. I argue that Auster knowingly includes these characters in his novels as part of his narrative technique, in order for them to serve specific functions and to contribute to the structure of postmodern fiction. I make use of a contextualized close reading of five of Auster’s novels and attempt a hermeneutic interpretation of these novels to arrive at a hermeneutic circle when combining these novels into an integrated whole, individual, work of fiction. Certain parallels can be drawn between Auster’s various novels and these parallels contribute to the various motifs and themes found throughout his work. The importance of space in Auster’s novels is also highlighted with emphasis on liminality which serves as an instigator for transgression to occur between different fictive worlds. / Thesis (MA (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

In this dissertation I argue that invisible characters, as they appear in Paul Auster’s novels, serve a very specific function within the interpretative framework of a text and that they should be considered to play a functional role, in order to arrive at a more holistic interpretation of the text and a more accurate analysis of said texts. I argue that Auster knowingly includes these characters in his novels as part of his narrative technique, in order for them to serve specific functions and to contribute to the structure of postmodern fiction. I make use of a contextualized close reading of five of Auster’s novels and attempt a hermeneutic interpretation of these novels to arrive at a hermeneutic circle when combining these novels into an integrated whole, individual, work of fiction. Certain parallels can be drawn between Auster’s various novels and these parallels contribute to the various motifs and themes found throughout his work. The importance of space in Auster’s novels is also highlighted with emphasis on liminality which serves as an instigator for transgression to occur between different fictive worlds. / Thesis (MA (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

This dissertation examines the reconfiguration of the limits of representation in reference to the intermediary function of angels. The Modernist engagement with the figure of the angel entailed, primarily, a reconsideration of the problem of representation as well as an attempt to trace the contours of a poetics that plays itself outside the mimetic understanding of representation. My contention is that this transformation of literary referentiality was not simply a disengagement of art from reality but, rather, from the truthfalsity, reality-fiction, subject-object dichotomies. The angel, defined as the figure of passage par excellence, but also as the agency that induces the transformation of the visible in the invisible and vice versa, appears both as a model/archetype and as a guide towards the illumination of this intermediary aesthetic. Working with the joined perspectives from angelology, contemporary phenomenology, and poetics, this dissertation is an extended overview of the notion of intermediary spaces, as well as an attempt to probe the relevance of this concept for the field of literary studies. In the first case, this dissertation offers a theoretical background to the concept of intermediality, seen in its theological, phenomenological, aesthetic and ethical significances. In the second case, it presents the reader with a heuristic apparatus for approaching this problematic in the field of literary interpretation and provides examples of ways in which such an analysis can become relevant. The primary texts discussed here are all examples of attempts to redefine the notion of representation away from the truth-falsity or subject-object oppositions, as well as to create an aesthetic space with its own particularities, at the limit between visibility and invisibility, excessive presence and absence. Nicholas of Cusa’s “Preface” to The Vision of God proposes an ethics of reading defined by admiratio (the consubstantiation of immediacy and distance) under the aegis of the all-seeing icon of God. Louis Marin’s reading of the episode of the Resurrection reveals that history and narrative arise from the conjunction of the excessive absence of the empty tomb of Jesus and the excessive presence announcing the resurrection of Christ. Sohravardî’s “Recital of the Crimson Angel” is a presentation of the space-between of revelation, between cognitio matutina and cognitio vespertina. Walter Benjamin’s “Agesilaus Santander” restores the connections between the exoteric and the esoteric under the patient gaze of “Angelus Novus”. Paul Valéry’s Eupalinos, ou l’Architecte explores the aesthetic of “real appearance” in the space-between the image and the perceiving eye. Poe and Malamud’s short stories reveal the affinities between poetic language and angelophany. Elie Wiesel’s Les portes de la forêt expands the apophatic itinerary from the self to the radically other in a hermeneutical gesture which has the angel as its initial and final guide. Finally, Rafael Alberti’s Sobre los ángeles shows that the aphaeretic function of poetic language is very similar to the apophatic treatment of the world as representation; in this last sense too, the angels are indispensible guides.

Although it is broadly acknowledged that democratic politics should operate through the public competition of binding positions, the careful development of these positions is commonly neglected. Providing ethnographic analysis of the work of staff advisers in parliamentary groups, the paper explores the invisible work invested into these competing positions. We argue that the invisibilization of work serves to accomplish a central tenet of democratic political discourse: the demonstration of resonance between constituents and elected politicians. The latter may be assisted by – but must not depend on – non-elected staff. Against this ‘sacred’ premise of representative democracy, the paper shows that and how political positions are based on invisible work and the work of invisibilizing. Building on laboratory and workplace studies, we specify the shape and function of invisibility by contrasting studies on invisible work in the natural sciences, in case law, and in party politics. In these instances, invisible work serves different discursive objects-in-formation: scientific facts, legal cases, and binding positions. Understanding invisible work, thus, leads us to consider different constitutive relevancies. In turn, these serve to specify established concepts in STS, such as ‘controversy,’ to better distinguish the day-to-day conduct of natural science from that of politics or law.

Abstract The present thesis investigated children farmworkers' perspectives on having a job and balancing work and school. It also investigated parents' perspectives about their children's jobs and how they handle work and school. A qualitative approach has been used to investigate children farmworkers' experiences on how they handle work and school. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with three children farmworkers between the ages of 12 and 17 years old and two adults that were parents of the children farmworkers residing in a rural area in the United States. Due to the current pandemic COVID-19, the research was carried out online through the Zoom platform. A thematic method was used to analyze the data collected. Through a critical analysis of transcripts, key concepts were obtained, decomposed into themes, and then organized into two sections for each theme. The themes were labeled: "Importance of the job," "Economic independence," "Impact on the future," "Job satisfaction," and "Compatible with school." The sections for each theme were labeled children's perspectives and parents' perspectives. There is a misconception that children work only in developing countries. Contrary to what has often been assumed, children work worldwide in developing countries and developed countries like the United States and Sweden. Results of this research showed that these children farmworkers want to work because they want to become personally and economically autonomous. Children and childhood are part of the consumer culture society. The study also found that the jobs of these children farmworkers did not affect their schooling and education. A call is made to consider children’s work as an expression of their agency and refrain from perceiving children as vulnerable beings in need of protection but instead, consider their perspective. Further research is needed in an ethnographic field with a more significant sample, including the teachers’ standpoint.

Das Aufwachsens von Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Stadt im Rahmen des Strukturwandels der kapitalistischen Arbeitsgesellschaft und die damit verbundenen radikalen Veränderungen der sozialräumlichen Bedingungen führen zur Notwendigkeit eines Perspektivenwechsels in der Pädagogik des Kinder- und Jugendraumes, da die biographischen Bewältigungsaufgaben von Heranwachsenden in der Unsichtbarkeit zu versinken drohen. In einem Überblick der Entwicklung der sozialräumlichen Theorie in der Jugendpädagogik werden zunächst die Gedanken der wichtigsten Vertretern dargestellt werden, um damit die Probleme der aktuellen theoretischen Diskussion in der sozialräumlichen Forschung verständlich zu machen. Die Aneignungstheorie aus dem aktuellen sozialpädagogischen Diskurs hat den aufklärerischen Anspruch, für Heranwachsende in einer durchfunktionalisierten und entfremdeten Welt aneigenbare (pädagogisierte) Räume zu schaffen, kann aber die aus der Freisetzungsproblematik heraus entstehenden sozialräumlichen Probleme des Aufwachsens, sogenannte "wilde Aneignungsformen" nicht erfassen. Der sozialgeographische Ansatz der "Alltäglichen Regionalisierungen" des schweizer Sozialgeographen Benno Werlen reiht sich mit seinem Begriffssystem in die Giddens-Becksche-Tradition ein. Er zielt darauf ab, durch die Aufdeckung von Verregelungen und Machtsystemen (vor allem physisch-materielle) Handlungsbedingungen zu schaffen, die ein rationales "Geographie-Machen" im Sinne einer "Politik der Lebensführung" zwischen Chancen und Risiken auf pluralisierte und individualisierte Art ermöglichen. Dass es jedoch unter den Bedingungen der segmentierten Arbeitsgesellschaft nicht um diese rationale Idee der Handlungen geht, sondern gerade durch die erlebten Unsicherheiten und anomischen Zustände um das ständige Streben nach Handlungsfähigkeit im sich wandelnden Kontext, wird mit diesem Ansatz nicht sichtbar. Um die heutigen sozialräumlichen Bedingungen und Herausforderungen des Aufwachsens von Kindern und Jugendlichen im Rahmen des Strukturwandels der Arbeitsgesellschaft aufzuschliessen zu können, ist ein Perspektivenwechsel notwendig. Die aktuellen Vergesellschaftungsformen von Kindheit und Jugend und die damit verbundene Notwendigkeit der Verschiebung des Fokus in der sozialräumlichen Forschung stehen im Zentrum des zweiten Teils des theoretischen Teils der vorliegenden Arbeit. Im empirischen Teil der Arbeit wird mit verschiedenen Zugängen in drei marginalisierten Stadtteilen von spanischen Städten (La Coruña, Madrid und Barcelona) über die Methode der "Grounded Theory" eine spezifische "Empirie der Aneignung" erarbeitet. / Growing up in urban environments is increasingly characterized by living conditions that become more and more globalized. The commonly used approaches of sociospatial children and youth research apply social and action models which were developed in past urban realities and can therefore not detect the problems of children and adolescents living in the global city. In my doctoral thesis, I am going to give a critical description of the predominant German theories in the field of action-oriented socio-geography and of the appropiation approach in the field of socio-educational theory. Further on I am going to demonstrate that it is inevitable to look at modern socio-geographic research in the cities of today from a new angle. The approach of the invisible coping maps starts from the fact that children and youths growing up in the digital capitalist world tend to solve their problems outside the traditional socialization institutions (family, schools, social system). They write invisible coping maps when following their policy of coping and searching for orientation, the meaning of life, acknowledgement and self-esteem. The basic idea is that the individuals (following the idea of making geographies) write their social (coping) maps daily in order to maintain their ability to act even in a world in which more and more people become superfluous.