A dissertação narra o percurso da pesquisadora em torno do conceito “materialidade", a fim de discutir e ilustrar uma proposta de abordagem imagético-apresentativa, à luz da psicologia analítica. O conceito é cotejado com termos correlatos utilizados por autores que também se ocuparam do tema, como Gaston Bachelard, Alvaro Gouvêa e outros mais alinhados ao pensamento de D. W. Winnicott. Explora, também, aproximações e distanciamentos semânticos em relação a termos similares, como “matéria" e “matéria-prima", para especificar o sentido atribuído à materialidade neste trabalho. A discussão avança com a apresentação de alguns conceitos da psicologia analítica, principalmente sobre a consciência e o aspecto dinâmico da psique na concepção de C. G. Jung. Além disso, tece considerações sobre o processo de individuação numa perspectiva alquímica, tomando a materialidade como uma opus cum natura. A seguir, apoiada em conceitos de James Hillman, propõe o resgate da noção de anima mundi e aisthesis para fundamentar o aspecto apresentativo da materialidade numa relação dialética com a consciência. Preocupa-se em questionar a postura interpretativa em relação à materialidade, quando tomada em termos exclusivamente representacionais, e retoma o método proposto por Jung – pautado numa postura fenomenológica frente às imagens psíquicas – para sustentar a abordagem imagético-apresentativa, diferenciando-a das práticas de terapia com arte ou arteterapia, que abordam a materialidade como recurso expressivo. A dissertação também faz uma breve incursão no tema “processo grupal" no campo da psicologia analítica, uma vez que são utilizados relatos de sessões de um grupo terapêutico-vivencial para ilustrar a discussão. Embora não proponha um estudo de caso do grupo, identifica alguns temas que se constelaram no atendimento. Finalmente, aponta transformações observadas simultaneamente no grupo e na identidade da pesquisadora – que culminaram na elaboração de uma nova proposta de abordagem da materialidade no setting individual e/ou grupal, aqui denominada imagético-apresentativa. / This dissertation relates the path followed by the researcher around the notion of “materiality" in order to discuss and illustrate an imagetical-presentative approach in the light of the Analytical Psychology. This notion is compared to correlative terms used by authors that also worried about it, like Gaston Bachelard, Alvaro Gouvêa and others closer to Winnicott´s thoughts. It also explores semantic similarities (approximations) and differences that refer to some similar terms like “material" and “raw-material" in order to specify the meaning attributed to “materiality" in this research. The discussion moves forward to the presentation of some notions in the Analytical Psychology field – mainly about consciousness and the dynamic aspect of the psyche, according to C.G.Jung. Besides, the research makes some considerations about the individuation process under an alchemical perspective, taking “materiality" as an "opus cum natura". Afterwards, supported by James Hillman, it proposes the recuperation of "anima mundi" and "aisthesis" notions in order to sustain the presentative aspect of materiality in a dialectical relation with the consciousness. The research aims at questioning the interpretative posture related to materiality when taken exclusively as representational terms and reviews the method proposed by Jung, under a phenomenological point of view towards the psychic images in order to support the proposal of an imagetical-presentative approach, distinguishing it from the therapy practices with arts or art therapy – that consider materiality as an expressive resource. It also makes an incursion in the topic “group process" in the Analytical Psychology field – as some reports of sessions of an experiential group are used in order to illustrate the discussion. Although it does not propose a case study of the group, this dissertation identifies some topics that were constellated throughout the sessions. Finally, this research points transformations observed simultaneously in the group and in the identity of the researcher that ended up in the elaboration of a new proposal towards materiality in the individual/group setting – that here is called imagetical-presentative.

La critique de la romancière américaine Amy Tan se concentre principalement sur la dimension humaine de ses romans, négligeant la dimension matérielle de l’existence qui occupe une place prépondérante dans ses romans. Sous l’influence d’une conception anthropocentrique qui privilégie l’être humain ou le sujet, la critique s’est concentrée essentiellement sur la relation mère / fille, sur l’importance du langage et de la mémoire et sur les conflits entre les cultures chinoise et américaine. Néanmoins, dans le contexte de ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler le “retour aux choses” et l’accent nouveau mis sur le “non humain”, mouvement qui s’est mis en place dans la critique des années 1990, je porte mon attention sur les choses, plus particulièrement sur les interactions entre humains et non-humains dans ses romans. Sous la double influence des cultures chinoise et américaine, Tan dépasse l’opposition binaire, qui caractérise la tradition occidentale, selon laquelle le sujet est supérieur à l’objet. Les humains et les non-humains ainsi que les entités naturelles et spirituelles sont tous des choses-Qi dans l’univers textuel. En mettant en dialogue la réflexion occidentale contemporaine sur les choses avec les philosophies chinoises, notamment le taoïsme, cette thèse examine les caractéristiques des choses-Qi et leurs interactions de nature à provoquer un retour écologique à l’harmonie entre les humains et les non-humains, entre le microcosme et le macrocosme dans l’ordre textuel. / Comments on Amy Tan's novels mainly focus on what we associate with human culture, ignoring the material dimensions of existence that figure prominently in her novels. Influenced by the anthropocentric idea that the human being/the subject is superior to things/the object, critics mainly focus on the mother-daughter relation, the importance of language and memory and the conflicts of Chinese and American culture. However, in the context of the so-called “return to things,” “back to things,” and “turn to the non-human” which has become visible in the humanities since the 1990s, I concentrate on things, specifically on the interactions between humans and nonhumans in her novels. Under the influence of both American and Chinese culture, Tan breaks with the western tradition of binary opposition in which the subject is superior to the object. Qi-things include natural and man-made things, human beings, and even spiritual things and things in the textual world. Bringing the twenty-first century western revision of things into dialogue with Chinese philosophies, especially Taoism, this dissertation discusses the traits of Qi-things and how they interact with each other to foster an ecological return to harmony within the textual world that reconciles humans and non-humans, microcosm and macrocosm.

Through the concept of longing, this study aims to explore non-binary embodiment and becoming, with a focus on examining how non-binary embodiment makes and is made possible. The study takes it departure in Karen Barads theories and concepts such as intra-action, and it is also from Barad the concept of longing is inspired. Longing is understood as the drive that is and makes possible life and the livable life. Longing is not reserved for humans but is rather tangent a posthuman understanding of matters agency, where matter is understood as an active agent in its own creation. The study is based on a combination of go-along interviews and semistructured interviews with six non-binary people.The study can be understood as an effort to make possible new or other ways to understand sex/gender, embodiment and becoming. Ways that is not based on a framework of understanding that in its foundational structure reduces the non-binary as something unintelligible. In the study longing is used as a means to create order and direction in the analysis of the participants stories. Longing has the benefit of being in constant movement and change, as such it contributes as a way of understanding that do not limit the participants stories of sex/gender, embodiment and becoming.

Syftet med uppsatsen har varit att genom kvalitativa intervjuer lyfta fram motpolerna kringdagens konsumtion av digital underhållningsmedia och fastställa om konsumenters syn på värdekan relateras till deras val av att antingen betala för ägandet eller för tillgänglighet av den. Metoden har bestått av åtta stycken kvalitativa intervjuer där respondenter fått frågor om sinkonsumtion av digitala underhållningsmedia inom; musik, video, spel och podcasts. Uppsatsen kommer fram till att konsumenter ser värdet i användningen av mediet och inte iägandet av det. Konsumenterna vill således hellre strömma sin media än att ladda ner den. Deväljer därför mer eller mindre obehindrat den tjänst som har bäst utbud. Konsumenterna menardock att det i dagsläget finns en viss otrygghet i strömningstjänsterna. Otryggheten växer ju merengagemang mediet kräver, vilket gör att spel och video som enligt respondenterna var primäraaktiviteter, vilka kräver högre engagemang, har en tendens att hellre vilja laddas ner avkonsumenterna medan musik och podcast, vilka kräver lägre engagemang, sekundära aktiviteter, hellre strömmas. / Purpose/Aim: The purpose of the thesis was to examine if consumers perceived the value of digital media entertainment in the access of the media and/or the ownership of it. Material/Method: The material consisted of 8 qualitative interviews which was presented in anarrative form. The interviews investigated consumers digital media entertainment habits and inparticular if the consumers downloaded or streamed their content. Main results: Consumers perceived the value of digital media entertainment through the accessof it, value-in-use, rather than in the ownership of it, value-in-exchange. On the other hand, themore engaged the consumers were in their use of the media, the more concerned they were withdownloading the content rather than streaming it.

The dynamic development of new technologies influences consumers in many different ways reaching far beyond the shift in consumption patterns, challenging the way consumers live their lives. The role of new information technologies is continually growing in our daily lives changing the way we see the self and the world around us. Consequently, the advent of the computer culture incites a radical rethinking of who we are and the nature of being human, which clearly illustrates the postmodern age. As a result, over the past decades consumer research has moved away from simply viewing consumers as information processors to consumers as socially conceptualized beings. This Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) movement views consumers and consumer behaviour as articulations of meanings and materiality within the productive of complex cultural milieu. This ethnographic thesis focuses on the three-dimensional virtual world of Second Life, which is a 'Real Life' simulation and where the residents represent themselves through 'avatars', creating a kind of virtual materiality. This raises interesting questions for consumer researchers, not just about how consumption is enacted, produced and articulated within this environment, but also in relation to theoretical and methodological issues. More specifically, this thesis critically examines the development of interpretive consumer research and the emergence of the Consumer Culture Theory framework in the context of the juxtaposition of reality and hyperreality and takes a position which goes beyond the 'body in the net/physical body' binary. Therefore, this thesis places the 'avatar-as-consumer' at the centre of the research focus. The current thesis develops a theoretical framework which examines the role of consumption in resolving key paradoxes. Moreover, it extends the netnography framework from mainly text based research to the visual characteristics of virtual worlds so that it can be useful for the study of complex online environments and as a result, how the role of the researcher goes beyond netnography to virtualography is discussed.

How did Romantic poets react to Wordsworth's preoccupation with immateriality, an illusion of poetic experiences in which the form of poetry itself becomes ironically unnecessary? To what extent is Romantic poetry involved with a counter-tradition of self-exposure, with an awareness of literary experience and meaning as essentially inseparable from its physical form? To address these questions, my dissertation looks in three directions: first, at the evidence of contradictions in Coleridge's lyric poems and, second, at Keats's reflexive alertness to the techniques that Wordsworth often uses to achieve the lyric effects of immediacy and, third, at the changing nature of the Romantic notions of the self and the materiality of text in the wake of Charlotte Smith's experiment with paratext. Chapter I explores the critical implications of Wordsworth?s emphasis on the mind and individual subjectivity, which involves a myth of Romanticism that genuine poetry can be attained when its production and existence in the material world become paradoxically invisible. Examining the publishing history of Coleridge's poems of poetic failure, and his conflicting motives for re-writing them, Chapter II argues that Coleridge's self-conscious poems have been considered, erroneously, in terms of a deeply private genre in which the poet describes a moment of personal crisis involved with the breakdown of his creative power. In Chapter III, I show how Keats debunks Wordsworthian notions of solitary authorship in the Hyperion poems via his persistent references to the act, artifice and materiality of writing. Reading Beachy Head as a challenge to the Romantic fiction of a unified self, Chapter IV argues that Smith's preoccupation with print apparatuses and discursive modes highlights her refusal to integrate the competing voices and styles she displays in the poem, preventing readers from easily associating the hybrid poetic persona with her earlier lyric ethos. Chapter V builds on the concept of hypermediacy, an awareness and artistic representation of mediation, in order to argue that the ways in which Coleridge, Keats and Smith represent the act, process and materiality of writing indicate a counter-tradition in Romantic literary culture that challenges the predominant Wordsworthian logic of immateriality.

Despite the dynamic portrayal of clothes in the Hebrew Bible scholars continue to interpret them as flat and inert objects. They are often overlooked or reduced to background details in the biblical texts. However, this thesis will demonstrate that the biblical writers’ depictions of clothes are not incidental and should not be reduced to such depictions. This thesis employs a multidisciplinary approach to develop and challenge existing approaches to the clothing imagery in the Hebrew Bible. It will fall into two main parts. In the first part, I draw insights from material-cultural theories to reconfigure ways of thinking about clothing as material objects, and reassessing the relationships between people and objects. Having challenged some of the broader conceptions of clothing, I will turn to interrogate the material and visual evidence for clothing and textiles from ancient Syro- Palestinian and ancient West Asian cultures to construct a perspective of the social and material impact of clothing in the culture in which the biblical texts were constructed and formed. In the second part, I will examine the biblical writers’ depiction of clothing through two case studies: Joseph’s ketonet passim (Genesis 37) and Elijah’s adderet (1 Kings 19 and 2 Kings 2). These analyses will draw from the insights made in the first part of this thesis to reassess and challenge the conventional scholarly interpretations of clothing in these texts. In this thesis, I argue that clothes are employed in powerful ways as material objects which construct and develop the social, religious and material dimensions of the text. They are also intimately entangled in relationships with the characters portrayed by the biblical writers and can even be considered as extensions of the people with whom they are engaged. Clothes manifest their own agency and power, which can transform other persons and objects through their performance and movement in a biblical text.

Materiality has been one of the most frequent topics of discussion for generations of architecture researchers, and also in the area of architectural history study. Numerous researchers are fascinated by the idea of development (or evolution) of architecture in order to understand how architecture has changed from ancient to “contemporary” for them. This discussion can trace back from Vitruvius, through Marc-Antoine Laugier, Banister Fletcher, Auguste Choisy, Karl Bötticher, John Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc, Gottfried Semper, and it is still a meaningful topic for contemporary scholars to study architectural history. As the basic substance of architecture, the issue of building materials has been an unavoidable question in the evolution of architecture. This thesis approaches Taiwanese architecture from the perspective of one building material – brick. It explores the development of brick and its tectonics in Taiwan, between 1624 and 1945, through four different architectural culture periods - Dutch (1624-1662), Min-nan Chinese (1662-1895), Western (1860-1895), and Japanese culture period (1895-1945) -to understand the process of brick from being an “imported” building material to becoming a “local’ one. This thesis adopted the perspective that both building materials and tectonics are the products of human thought. With this perspective, this study started by identifying the relative “agents”, including material manufacturers, builders, designers, patrons, and ruling authorities The thesis showed that often the ruling authority played an important role, even as the game changer. Thus, it argued that the evolution of architecture tectonics and building materials was not a process but rather the result of actions of key participants in the case of Taiwan. Otherwise, this thesis is also the first research to construct a Taiwanese architectural history by connecting the building material – brick -, the tectonics of architecture, and identifying key influencing events and persons in a relatively large time scope, between 1624 and 1945, passing through four architectural cultural periods. It attempts to present a coherent overview approach to Taiwanese architectural history starting from a single building material, and aims to contribute to enhancing our understanding of the development of architecture and construction history up to the modern period, especially in the context of East Asia.

This study provides chemical confirmation for the use of resinous plant exudates in mortuary contexts in Roman Britain. Analysis of amorphous masses, adhering residues and grave deposits using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry has revealed terpenoid biomarkers in sixteen inhumation and two cremation burials. The natural products characterized include European Pinaceae (conifer) resins, Pistacia spp. (mastic/terebinth) resins from the Mediterranean or the Levant and Boswellia spp. (frankincense) gum-resins from southern Arabia or eastern Africa. In addition, traces of a balsamic resin, probably Liquidambar orientalis, have been identified. A correlation between the use of these exotic exudates and interment in substantial, often multiple, containers with high-quality textiles and grave goods was observed. Theoretical consideration of this imported rite illuminates the multiplicity of roles played by resins/gum-resins in the mortuary sphere. The material properties of these highly scented substances speak to the biological reality of the decomposing body and to the socially constructed identity of the individual. On a practical level, they acted as temporary preservatives and masked the odour of decay. As social signifiers, they denoted the status of the deceased and promoted remembrance through conspicuous consumption and sensory impact. Encoded with ritual meaning, they purified the body and facilitated the final rite of passage to the afterlife. The recovery of these resinous traces provides us with new insights into the treatment of the body in the Roman period and establishes fresh links between the remote province of Britannia and the remainder of the Empire.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze the substantive tests focused on revenue of selected companies and to evaluate identified risk areas. This thesis is divided into two parts. The first, theoretical part contains the definition, aim, function and types of audit. Then the auditing legislation is defined and the profession of auditor is presented. At the end of the first part, the phases and activities that are performed during the audit of the financial statements are described. The first part is completed by a short chapter dedicated to the forensic audit. The second part is devoted to practical application. Firstly, the selected companies are shortly presented and consequently a materiality level is set for each of them. Then, the level of the internal control system is assessed and the audit risk determined. After that, external and internal risk areas, that may affect reported revenue, are identified. Finally, the impact of identified risk areas on the audit risk and the possible adjustment of the materiality levels are assessed.