This paper investigates metaphorical and phenomenological aspects of shimmer, reflection, membrane and movement. By exploring the interface of knowledge through the lens of materiality, the aim is to examine how the plasticity of light and shadows might create animating reflections and dissolving surfaces. Of particular interest is the undefined quality of shimmer and how it can be interpreted as a transitional in-between stage of displaced and fluid boundaries. Further on, the work explores the power of portals – both visually but also in the physical and emotional engagement with materials and techniques. The installation Mystery of Matter and Magic of Presence  is based upon a dialogical method where the atmosphere might be understood as a space-filling materiality itself. The work expresses the material’s state as well as the ephemeral qualities around it. It offers a counterweight to a hard, violent and narcissistic aspect of the material biographies of metals in general, and aluminum in particular.  The research consists mainly of sources on Byzantine and Medieval Art history. Sources that also engage with the role of language, poetry and etymology for our understanding of material culture and history.

This work deals with objects suppressed by individual people after the 1973 coup in Chile, due to the repression exerted by the installed civic-military dictatorship. It collects the memories of those who had to get rid of compromising objects to save their lives, pointing out the strategies chosen for this purpose, as well as the places to carry them out. It shows that the strategies varied and depended on different circumstances. This work is also about the value given to objects and the way in which the functions of objects change according to political circumstances. It highlights the memories created in contrast to the discourses of official history and to forced oblivion. / Detta arbete handlar om de föremål som förtrycktes av enskilda människor efter statskuppen i Chile 1973, på grund av förtrycket som den installerade civil-militära diktaturen utövade. Det samlar in minnen av de som var tvungna att göra sig av med kmpromissande föremål för att rädda sina liv, och pekar ut de strategier som valdes för detta ändamål, såväl som platserna för att utföra dem. Det visar att strategierna varierade och berodde på olika omständigheter. Dat här arbetet handlar även om de värderingar som ges till föremål och hur föremålens funktioner förändras beroende på politiska omständigheter. Det lyfter fram minnet som skapats i kontrast till den officiella historiens diskurser och till påtvingad glömska.

[pt] Esta dissertação tem por propósito investigar a violência no Complexo da Maré em sua relação com a Escola Municipal da Paz. Tomando a referida escola como epicentro, busca-se analisar de que forma os objetos ou coisas, em sua agência, se afirmam como marcadores de um estado de paz ou violência, mediante um engajamento de percepção dos sujeitos envolvidos nesse contexto. A fim de considerarmos as ações em rede, pensamos em como coisas e pessoas se articulam nessa relação. Na primeira parte do trabalho, encontra-se a discussão sobre as favelas em seu percurso de criação e afirmação no espaço da cidade, focalizando, em seguida, a Maré em suas múltiplas potências. Discute-se ainda de que forma as vivências da pesquisadora se entrecruzam com a história do referido espaço. A segunda parte da dissertação traz ao plano central um debate sobre o diálogo entre Antropologia e Educação, com especial ênfase à educação da atenção, realizando ainda uma apresentação da Escola Municipal da Paz. O terceiro capítulo discute a noção de violência, com posterior investigação etnográfica das coisas, apontando um saber da violência feito e refeito no fluxo entre coisas e pessoas. / [en] This dissertation aims to investigate violence in Maré Complex of favelas considering its relationship with Escola Municipal da Paz. It focuses on this school as an epicenter of discussion and tries to analyze how objects or things, in their agency, assert themselves as markers of peace or violence states, through the engagement of the perception of the subjects involved in this context. In order to examine network actions, we take into consideration how things and people evolve in this relationship. In the first part of the work, there is a discussion about the journey of favelas creation and their affirmation inside the urban space. Then, it focuses on the multiple powers of the Maré complex. It also discusses how the experiences of the researcher dialogue with the history of that territory. The second part of the paper highlights the debate between Anthropology and Education, with special emphasis on the education of care. We also have a presentation of Escola Municipal da Pazin this chapter. The third chapter discusses the notion of violence, with subsequent ethnographic research of things, pointing out the knowledge of violence, which is done and redone in the flow of things and people.

This dissertation presents the results of a two-year ethnographic study among individuals who practice yoga and/or chiropractic care in Victoria, British Columbia, focusing on their experiences of their musculoskeletal systems. Anthropological research has examined the ways in which we live and experience our bodies as part of how we are in the world (cf. Csordas 1994, 1990; Merleau-Ponty 2007). In comparison with fleshed bodies, skeletons, as foundational aspects of living, breathing corporeality, have remained under-theorised and under-examined as essential aspects of how we perceive our everyday lives. I approach the skeleton as a critical space of bodies, a part of the internal material world that shapes not only the body as an object, but how we are in the world as subjects. Observations at two yoga studios and interviews with 21 individuals enable me to explore the skeleton’s space and place in the lived experiences of embodied selves. My analysis of interview narratives draws principally from theories of materiality and material(s) (Sofaer 2012; Ingold 2007), Mol’s “the body multiple” (2002) and Taylor’s notion of “surfacing” (2005). I argue that skeletal embodiment is deeply material, sensory and sensorial, personal, and critical in the formation of what I am calling the “skeletal subjectivity” of an individual. Specifically, I suggest how, skeletally, bodily-ness is experienced by participants as a means to se prendre en main, that is, ‘taking hold’, ‘taking care of one’s self’, ‘taking one’s self in one’s hands.’ I argue that, among these yoga and chiropractic practitioners, skeletal embodiment and subjectivity is navigated through materiality—that bodies “surface” in various ways through participants experiences and stories (Taylor 2005). My analysis contributes to the anthropology of the body by including skeletal lives as part of our embodiment without discounting previous notions of embodiment or of bodies in general. My idea of se prennent en main is a novel addition to conceptualizing embodiment, encouraging researchers to consider closely how individuals may respond to their sensorial and material body in living their lives. / Graduate

Hur fungerar bildämnet i dagens skola? I relation till skolämnenas snarlika strukturer, där ett slutresultat bedöms, särskiljer sig bildämnets metoder och lärande som mer processorienterat. Traditionella, hantverksmässiga arbetssätt kompletteras med nya digitala medier och arbetssätt, som resulterar i urvalsproblem och stoffträngsel. Dessa faktorer bidrar till stora klyftor mellan kunskapsnivå, betygssättning och en likvärdig bildundervisning. Syftet med denna studie är att bidra med kunskap om hur bildämnet påverkar och påverkas av att samexistera i skolan. Genom att analysera formulärsvar från tolv bildlärare dels utifrån våra egna erfarenheter och dels mot bakgrund av en posthumanistisk teoretisk ansats fick vi syn på bildämnets nomadiska funktioner. Bildämnet, liksom bildlärare, fungerar likt en kil i skolans kontext, både förenande och separerande. I bildämnet kan det genom friktion skapas rörelse mot olika typer av tillblivelser som möjliggör för nya arbetssätt. Slutsatsen visar på att en målinriktad undervisningsstruktur och seglivade traditioner i skolan riskerar att kila fast bildämnet i ofördelaktiga normer, där friktion behövs allra mest för att bildämnet ska utvecklas och dess status höjas.

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The thesis is based on the ethnographic fieldwork done during February 2015 in a place where aspects of transitory life are configured in an effort to (re)humanize those migrants that have been exposed to harm and (dis)possession, and thus entangled within an undesirable physical reality. Empirical attention is dedicated to the ways and means in which a particular migrant shelter located in the border region of Mexico-US operates and fulfills its purpose. The theoretical framework relates to being of transit as the composition of the migrants’ emergent state of uncertainty and instability within their continuous transitory experience. This is juxtaposed with Karen Barad’s (2007) posthumanist performativity analysis of how discourse and the material markers that make up transitory Mexico-US are a composition of assembled actions of (dis)possession processes of social, political, and historical power relations constantly becoming in practice. Additionally, the focus expands on how more-than-human elements and material possessions are intra-acting with the migrants that became part of the study. Therefore, through the politics of mobility and violence, the thesis explores how the people, places and things that assemble transitory Mexico-US evidence such undesirable physical reality. That is to say, a ceaseless diffracting ebb and flow of co-constituted intra- acting humans and non-humans in constant momentum and positionality conceptualizing the phenomenon of being a migrant, thing, or place of transit.

The mobile cooling and climate control industry provides a range of diverse solutions concerning the maintenance of temperature for comfortable living and safe transportation of goods over long distances. One of the major focuses of the industry is the transport sector for which products like cooling boxes and mobile air conditioners are exclusively designed for commercial and leisure purposes. However, the associated emissions released due to their use and the impact they have in the wake of the global climate crisis has led the industry to initiate activities and set targets to address this issue. This study aims to draw sustainable strategy recommendations to the mobile cooling and climate control industry by conducting a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of four products and a materiality assessment for a company manufacturing cooling boxes and mobile air conditioners, therefore accelerating the industry’s transition towards sustainability. The objectives are to identify potential material and process-related environmental hotspots over the life cycle of the products and carry out a materiality assessment that identifies topics of materiality for the company, this to outline strategies based on the results of both the LCA and the materiality assessment to improve the company’s sustainability in its operations. The results of the LCA highlighted the role of the use phase as one of the main contributors to the environmental impact from the use of cooling boxes and mobile air conditioners, while the manufacturing of the products and the end-of-life phase are shown to contribute also to the overall impact. Furthermore, different sensitivity scenarios revealed the potential that different materials, the use of batteries and the implementation of a take-back system have to decrease the environmental impacts of the products. From the materiality assessment fourteen material topics were identified to have significance and priority to the company. Based on these results, a total of nine strategies addressing the sustainability of the company and its products were outlined. Across the assessment, three key focus aspects were observed which can facilitate the sustainability transition of the company and industry: energy both in products and operations, collaboration with stakeholders, and circular economy principles and product innovation. Efforts within these areas can potentially improve the industry’s ability to tackle pressures from climate change and the increasing future demand. This study also exemplifies the potential benefits of a synergy between LCA and materiality assessment. It was observed that aiding the materiality assessment with the LCA results provides more tangibility to the results and decreases the subjectivity from the assessment in order to set future sustainability targets. / Mobilkylnings- och klimatkontrollsindustrin erbjuder många lösningar till temperaturhållning för bekvämt boende och säker transport av gods. Ett viktigt fokus för industrin är transportsektorn där produkter som kylboxar och mobil luftkonditionering specialkonstruerad för kommersiell och rekreationell användning. Växthusgasutsläppen från produkterna under användning har mot bakgrund av den globala klimatkrisen fått industrin att sätta mål och starta ett arbete för att minska utsläppen. Den här studien avser att ge hållbara strategier och rekommendationer till mobilkylnings- och klimatkontrollsindustrin genom att genomföra livscykelanalys (LCA) av fyra produkter och en materialanalys till ett företag som tillverkar kylboxar och mobila luftkonditioneringar för att driva industrins övergång till hållbarhet. Målen är att identifiera material- och processrelaterade miljöbelastningar över hela livscykeln av produkterna och genomföra en materialitetstsanalys för att identifiera materialitetsämnen. Utifrån LCA och materialitetsanalysen går att göra strategier att förbättra företagets hållbarhetsarbete. Resultat från LCAn visade vikten av användningsfasen som stod för den största miljöpåverkan från kylboxar or mobil luftkonditionering. Tillverkning och end-of-life hade också påverkan. Känslighetsanalyser visade också den potential materialval, batterianvändning och retursystem har att minska miljöpåverkan från produkter. Fjorton materialitetsämnen utpekades från materialitetsanalysen som viktiga för företaget. Dessa hanteras genom nio strategier som togs fram. Genom analys var tre övergripande fokusområden identifierade som kan underlätta företagets och industris hållbarhetsövergång. De är: energianvändning i både produkterna och företagets arbete, samarbeten med stakeholders samt cirkulär ekonomi och produktinnovation. Ansträngningar inom dessa områden kam förbättra industris förmåga att tackla trycket från klimatkrisen och ökad framtida efterfrågan. Studien visar också på synergin mellan LCA och materialitetsanalys. Att använda resultat från LCA i materialitetsanalysen gav tydligare resultat och minskar subjektiviteten vilket ger bättre förutsättningar när hållbarhetsmål ska sättas.