The purpose of this research was to describe technopolitics on a permaculture farm. The literature on technology and technopolitics is beginning to take shape around a series of unanswered questions regarding the role and potential of objects in social life. Using an actor-network theory framework and relying on Callon's (1984) sociology of translation and its principles, I identified the concept of defect and tracked how it was mobilized at Manitoulin Permaculture through participant observation across two summers. The concept of defect incorporated both sociopolitical as well as technological factors. The makers at Manitoulin Permaculture made sense of their choice to defect to a new life at Manitoulin Permaculture. In addition, their technologies, both new and old, became defective, animating their community in new and unforeseen ways.

This thesis proposes a new genre of theater that combines participatory and interactive narratives with virtual reality technologies and traditional theatrical elements to create a form that is capable of responding to the growing desire for interactive entertainment mediums. A series of participatory narrative events, including traditional theater productions, interactive narrative/drama and role-playing games, are analyzed for their potentialities and limitations. These elements are then used to respond to scholarly writings concerning the problems of participatory narrative forms. From this analysis conclusions are drawn about the necessary elements needed to create this new genre of theater, termed interactive virtual theater, or IVT. The elements are then synthesized into a hypothetical picture of what the IVT of the future might look like.

No description available.

The thesis provides an account of the development and the eventual elimination of the illegal horserace gambling market. Prior to the introduction of totalisators in 1870 bookmakers (bookies) provided the only option for legal on-course horserace gambling. Using an Actor-Network approach (Latour 1986) I track the transformations of totalisators across times and places to provide a historical account of the development and the co-existence of both legal and illegal horserace gambling markets, documenting the 100 year struggle by racing clubs and successive Governments to remove illegal bookmakers from horserace gambling markets. My argument is that the illegal gambling market survived for as long as it did because bookmakers' constructed extensive actor-networks that enabled them to provide a faster and more accessible betting service to punters. A significant feature in their survival was also the public and police tolerance of their presence. I argue that no one actually 'kills the bookies'. At each stage in the transformation of the scale and operation of totalisators, punters gradually began to use the services provided by a legal market. I document how the drift of legislation, coupled with technological changes and the establishment of new legal gambling sites, led to the expansion of global legal gambling markets that included sport bookmakers and legal horse racing bookmakers. These developments, especially computerisation, enabled the legal market to expand and reconfigure networks providing flexible, real and online access points for betting. These developments ultimately eliminate the comparative advantages of the local illegal bookmakers and bring to an end the illegal horserace gambling market.

No description available.

No description available.

Actor-observer bias är benägenheten för människor att attribuera sitt eget beteende utifrån omständigheter och andras beteende utifrån deras person. Vi tenderar dessutom att favorisera och vara mer förlåtande i attributionerna till de som tillhör vår ingrupp. Studiens syfte var att undersöka huruvida graden av tillhörighet till ingruppen, kön, påverkar hur vi attribuerar. Studien genomfördes med 102 deltagare, 51 kvinnor och 51 män. En konfliktsituation mellan ett par presenterades för deltagarna där den ena parten i förhållandet (X) beter sig illa mot den andra. Enkäten förekom i tre versioner med X som kvinna, man eller deltagaren själv. Det predicerades bl a att deltagare som upplever hög identifiering med sin ingrupp kommer attribuera övervägande externt då X hör till dennes ingrupp. Resultatet visade inget signifikant stöd för denna hypotes. Tendenser för att kvinnans beteende bedömdes hårdare kunde dock urskiljas. Betydelsen av detta, den eventuella inverkan av könsroller samt framtida forskning diskuteras.

This report forms part of the research project “Sustainable Energy and Climate Strategies – development and potential”, which is financed by the Swedish Energy Agency’s Sustainable Municipality programme. In this research project, case studies of the processes to develop energy strategies in five municipalities were prepared. The five municipalities were participants in the Sustainable Municipality programme’s second phase, which began in 2008, and represent different types of municipality, in terms of geography and population. This report presents analysis of the five case studies, using a policy theoretical perspective to focus on issues including how problems and solutions are identified and formulated, which solutions are proposed, which actors are included or excluded from the process, and which local resources are used or not used in the process. The report reflects on the implications of increasing stakeholder cooperation in energy planning processes and using different types of organisational approaches during the development of energy and climate strategies. Each case study began with an inventory of publically-available documents shaping the context for energy and climate strategies in each municipality. These documents were compiled in time lines showing the documents or decisions influencing energy planning in each municipality. Subsequently, group interviews were held with participants in planning processes in each of the five municipalities. In addition, individual interviews took place with stakeholders who had been active in the processes. Interviews were recorded and then transcribed. The results from the document study and interviews were then compiled in a summary of each municipality’s energy planning process, forming the basis for the analysis in this report. The case studies highlight both similarities and differences with regard to the organisation of work to develop and introduce energy strategies. All municipalities established, at an early stage, internal organisations for the process and throughout the processes, the organisational form, participants and their role, and division of tasks and responsibilities were fairly clear. For example, all five municipalities made use of Steering Groups and Working Groups, although the extent of the roles which these groups played – and the background of their members - varied. Four municipalities had a Reference Group in which external stakeholders were represented. A number of other constellations, including thematic working groups, were present in some but not all municipalities. The municipalities also took different steps in their energy planning processes and identified different drivers stimulating their activities. Participants from one municipality considered the Sustainable Municipality programme as a pivotal moment in their strategic energy work, whereas others felt the programme did not significantly influence their approach or outputs. The report identifies a number of factors influencing the development and implementation of municipal energy strategies, as well as a strategy’s scope and content. / Hållbara Energi och klimatstrategier- lärdomar och potential

Mobility on a global scale as a product of increased interconnectivity has been a subject of interest for writers working within various disciplines in the social sciences and beyond. Few accounts, however, examine how mobility is performed by the operations of international airports. Through data acquired in interviews conducted with the management of an international airport administration, this project adds to existing accounts of mobility with an examination of the strategies, techniques, and performances that allow an international airport to operate, and which in turn, enable transportation worldwide. To analyse an airport as an organisation, this project employs a model advocated in John Law's (1994) influential study Organizing Modernity. Law's (1994) framework focuses attention on the often hidden performances within organisations that strain towards governance, regulation, durability, and routine. Incorporating Law's (1994) framework, this project illuminates aspects of an airport's operation in four thematic chapters, 'Ordering'; 'Communication'; 'Materials'; and 'Space'. Overall, this project depicts the international airport as a complex socio-technical assemblage that requires multiple, varied, and interwoven ordering performances to operate effectively.

Sustainability responds to crises of ecology and human development and the relationships between them. Sustainability cannot be adequately described using disciplinary categories arising from the modern dichotomy between nature and culture. Sustainability research requires a methodology that reflects the reality of its subject. This thesis presents material semiotics as a methodology for sustainability research. Material semiotics refers to the work of actor-network theorists and latter developments of alternate spatial metaphors for material relationality. Actor-network theory is a methodology that describes human and non-human actors in the same terms. It follows actor through networks of material relationships that they constitute and are constituted by, depicting heterogeneous objects without recourse to prior categories of nature or culture. The description of material relationships in fluid and regional, as well as network, spaces expands the descriptive power of material semiotics to include Others and to better represent complexity. The Oil Mallee Project is a case study of sustainability in the Western Australian wheatbelt. Indigenous eucalypts, oil mallees, are planted on land that was cleared for agriculture. The above ground biomass can be processed for eucalyptus oil, electricity and activated carbon, and the rights to carbon stored in the extensive mallee roots, or in unharvested trees, can be sold. The Project responds to a number of sustainability issues, including ozone depletion, land degradation, climate change and rural decline. This thesis follows the actors that comprise the Oil Mallee Project to describe its complexity, multiplicity and sustainability. Qualitative interviews with actors in the Project and the wheatbelt provided the primary data, which is supported by documentary material. Three contingent phases can be identified in the history of the Oil Mallee Project – eucalyptus oil industry, dryland salinity management, and greenhouse response. The Project has persisted because it is simultaneously a regional, network and fluid object. Mallees grow well in the tough conditions of the wheatbelt. Mallees can be integrated with existing networks of industrial agriculture. The Project has achieved contingent stability in policy documents and the networks of scientific research. The fluidity of the Project has enabled it to change shape and identity in response to threats and opportunities, and as relationships break and form, without complete disruption. Specific humans have been central heroes in different phases of the Project. The mallees themselves are the only actors that have been consistently central to the identity of the Project. Sustainability requires knowledge of the relationships between humans and non-humans that constitute the multiple crises of ecology and human development. Sustainability is the re-ordering of those relationships in ways that make possible ecological integrity and human fulfilment. Material semiotics is a methodology for knowing sustainability in ways that reveal the possibilities for such re-orderings.