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 cicumstances. This work is also about the values given to objects and the way in which the function of objects change according to political circumstances. It highlights the memory 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 dem som var tvungna att göra sig av med kompromissande 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. Det 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.

In a dialogue with Catherine Dormor’s book, A Philosophy of Textile (2020), this paper argues that knitting has a unique position in the sphere of textile. To understand the technique as both practice and theory is not only to acknowledge its potency as expression and reflection, but also to perceive textile in a broader perspective. Starting with the article Offset, Buch- und Werbekunst (Offset, Printing, and Commercial Art) written by one of the key figures of the Bauhaus weaving workshop, Gunta Stölzl in 1926, I outline the historical context, and justify the significance of my research. Employing the concept—championed by the artist/psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger—, the Matrix, in particular together with (Inter)relationship, Techne as Dormor suggests, I navigate knitting in general as well as my own practice. By closely inspecting knitting as a mode of both making and thinking, this paper proves that knitting has a capacity to embody multiple layers of time and space, and by doing so, becomes a meaning-making device whose production questions, challenges and overturns hierarchical and binaristic modes of thinking.

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.

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. / Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). / Vol. II, which contains supplementary material files, is not available online.

The tourism industry is both large and growing, with private and public actors investing heavily in the commodification of places to travel to, supporting individuals with the wealth to do so, to be in different places for short time periods. Correspondingly, popular discourses and research within tourism studies have arisen, looking at attitudes and social and environmental impacts drawn along delineations of the tourist and the host and spatially enclosed tourist places or ‘destinations’.  In this thesis, I seek instead to focus on how we might be different in places. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of assemblage and a focus on embodiment, I offer a reflexive account of an onto-epistemological inquiry into becoming with a range of other beings and things that are co-constitutive of the harbour wall or ‘the rocks’ at the Visby marina. Over a 6 month period of participant observation, I seek to be responsive to the emergent properties and knowledge of the fluctuating actors amidst the place assemblage of the rocks. The essay I offer within this thesis is part of what is resulting from these relationships and becomings. Within the essay, one of many themes I take up is a problematic view of place as being filled with objects of matter as opposed to an entangled, relational web of beings and things. Tourism easily commodifies places when they are seen as containers for bodies and objects, and this creates a distinct view of ‘tourist places’. I follow with a call to disrupt the imagined difference between tourist places and places in which we lead our daily lives in the hope of living outside of the shadow of human exceptionalism.  Accordingly, this thesis calls us to re-think tourism as but one part of our lives, as entanglements of bodies and things in and as place.

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Like Art, Architecture has the potential to impact people. Art is often considered the process of consciously arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. Architecture can also be described similarly. However, the key difference between Art and Architecture is that while Art is pure personal expression, Architecture carries with it a certain accountability towards its immediate context and inhabitants. While a painting begins and ends on a canvas, Architecture cannot stop at a whim; it must transform from imagination to tangible reality. This process brings with it, a set of constraints imposed by structural, climatic, socio-economic aspects, construction methodologies and material properties, amongst others. These constraints call for fine-tuning of the design. The sophistication and elegance used to handle these constraints differentiate a "building" that poses as a mere visual sculpture in isolation, from "architecture" that evolves as a response to its context and people. Matthew Frederick (2007) says, "being genuinely creative requires something different from conventional, authoritarian control; a loose velvet tether". The "velvet tether" possibly represents the constraints that need to be navigated through, during the realization of the project. The central focus of this thesis is to explore how to address some of those constraints, through the design of a school campus for students of music and dance. The program includes practice, rehearsal and classroom spaces for music and dance, administrative spaces and a library. Themes explored as part of the design development process include architectural form, materiality and detailing. / Master of Architecture

The evolution of sustainability reporting demands increased transparency and scope. A pivotal aspect of this process is the determination of materiality for disclosure. The European Union, through its latest enactment, the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), has refined the interpretation of materiality criteria. This regulatory development motivates this study, which aims to explore the implications of the double materiality assessment (DMA). Specifically, investigating how the DMA is strategically utilized and if the generated output could lead to change in companies’ governance, operations, and practices.  To investigate this, the study examines eight Swedish companies across various industries, among the early adopters of ESRS. These companies serve as the focal point of the case study, utilizing a qualitative research approach where insights are derived from semi-structured interviews with key representatives of these firms. A conceptual framework, drawing from dynamic capabilities and institutional theory, help identifying patterns and themes related to dynamic skills and isomorphic tendencies.  The study reveals how the DMA shapes companies’ sustainability focus and operations. It enhances internal and external discussions, promotes sustainability awareness among colleagues, and facilitates knowledge sharing. The DMA emphasizes supplier transparency, fosters stakeholder engagement, and influences sustainability strategies, leading to organizational restructuring. Additionally, the study highlights the reliance on external consultants for DMA execution, reflecting resource constraints or regulatory complexity. Professional audits expedite compliance efforts but raise concerns about internal resource adequacy for sustainability reporting practices amidst new disclosure mandates.