The purpose of this study is to examine the social and political functions of the video halls in Kampala, Uganda, based on a field study conducted during two months in the end of 2011. 13 video halls in nine different areas of Kampala form the basis of this study, and the methods being used are observations and structured and semistructured interviews with video hall owners, attendees, street vendors and "people on the street". The video halls are then problematized and discussed through theories on (social) space: Michel Foucault's (1967/1984) concept of "other spaces" and heterotopia; David Harvey's (1996) dialectical approach to the production of space, and; Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy's (2004) volume on the concept of MediaSpace. The study finds that the social space of the video hall is closely linked with questions of morale and “otherness”: the video hall is by many regarded an immoral place, where thieves gather and people do drugs. This frames the video hall outside of the "normal" social imaginary, even by many of the people attending the hall. The study also finds that the potential for political resistance or an alternative public sphere – one of the main features of Foucault's heterotopia – as seen in the video parlors in Nigeria (Okome 2007) do not seem to have any bearing in the Ugandan context. Factors such as the lack of educational films, and the moral contestation of the social space, is argued to be the cause of this, however the study also makes the argument that the video hall itself, as well as the academic field of film in general, has to be taken more seriously by the academia in Uganda in order to make sense of the functions and implications of this "othering" of the social space that is the video hall.

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Framed by insights from critical human geography, political economy, and educational studies, this dissertation offers a critique of the contemporary education reform movement in the United States (hereafter U.S.). The overarching argument made here is that the powerfully positioned individuals and groups at the head of this movement have been less motivated by a desire to actually pursue social justice than by the political expediency that comes with appearing to be doing so. The three papers that follow speak to the existing critical literature on public schooling in the U.S., which argues that the perpetual discussion about how to 'fix' the U.S.'s educational system should be seen as an attempt by its powerfully positioned interlocutors to collapse popular discontent with a variety of persistent social injustices into a focused dissatisfaction with the public schools. This literature has also argued that although the public education system in the U.S. is indeed quite inequitable as it presently exists, and thus an appropriate target for transformation, the education reform movement's efforts to that end have actually reproduced many of the social and pedagogical causes of educational inequity. This dissertation builds on the literature just summarized by demonstrating that the rhetoric of the individuals and groups associated with the education reform movement coalesces around a spatial discourse through which the causes of a variety of social ills are presented as endogenous to the spaces inhabited by the individuals and groups that suffer them with the greatest frequency and intensity. Further, the artificially discrete, enclosed spaces conjured in the name of education reform are enrolled as part of a broader project of legitimizing coercive, individualizing, and competitive-rather than supportive, dialogic, collaborative-forms of pedagogy, and governance more generally.

A Barra Funda, um dos bairros mais antigos e tradicionais de São Paulo, vem sendo objeto de transformações no seu espaço urbano desde sua formação, no final do século XIX. O trabalho aqui apresentado busca reconstituir a trajetória do bairro, sob o ponto de vista dos processos de planejamento urbano, descrevendo e identificando o que motivou suas transformações físicas, sociais e econômicas. Foram analisados os documentos compostos por planos, programas, projetos, leis, estudos, ações e plantas elaborados para o desenvolvimento urbano de São Paulo, fazendo um recorte sobre as disposições para a Barra Funda. Procura-se, por um lado, analisar como a implementação destes planos, programas, projetos e ações interferiram na conformação do ambiente construído do bairro e, por outro, identificar o papel de cada agente do espaço urbano e suas formas de atuação e intervenção, ou seja, o papel do Estado e, da iniciativa privada nos processos de planejamento urbano. / Barra Funda, one of the oldest and most traditional boroughs of São Paulo has been the object of transformations in its urban space since its creation by the end of the 19th century. The work presented here tries to rebuild the boroughs trajectory from the urban planning processes perspective, describing and identifying what drove its physical, social, and economic changes. Documents made up of plans, programs, projects, laws, studies, actions, and blueprints prepared for the urban development of São Paulo were analyzed, with emphasis on provisions regarding the Barra Funda borough. The intent is, on one side, analyzing how the implementation of these plans, programs, projects, and action interfered in the conformation of the environment built in the borough, and, on the other, the forms of action and intervention, that is, the role of the State and private initiatives in the urban planning process.

Este trabalho foi desenvolvido na favela da Rocinha (RJ) e utilizando-se de observações de campo, procurou sistematizar a noção de produção política do Espaço, suas implicações sobre os metamorfismos vividos por sua população. Enumera as formas pelas quais se estabelecem sucessivos processos de alienação, apoiando-se na dialética sócio-espacial. Procedeu-se ao desvendamento desses processos de alienação, indicando os distintos mecanismos em que estes se manifestam. A preocupação fundamental era a de partir do concreto chegar às abstrações e por fim formatar a compreensão do complexo e fragmentado cotidiano dos residentes na Rocinha. / This study was conducted in the slum of Rocinha (RJ), and using field observations, we tried to systematize the notion of political production of space, its implications on metamorphisms experienced by its people. It lists the ways in which they lay successive processes of alienation, drawing on socio-spatial dialectic. Proceeded with the unveiling of these processes of alienation, indicating the different mechanisms by which these are manifested. The main concern was to get from the concrete and in abstractions, and finally format the understanding of the complex and fragmented daily life of residents in Rocinha.

A Barra Funda, um dos bairros mais antigos e tradicionais de São Paulo, vem sendo objeto de transformações no seu espaço urbano desde sua formação, no final do século XIX. O trabalho aqui apresentado busca reconstituir a trajetória do bairro, sob o ponto de vista dos processos de planejamento urbano, descrevendo e identificando o que motivou suas transformações físicas, sociais e econômicas. Foram analisados os documentos compostos por planos, programas, projetos, leis, estudos, ações e plantas elaborados para o desenvolvimento urbano de São Paulo, fazendo um recorte sobre as disposições para a Barra Funda. Procura-se, por um lado, analisar como a implementação destes planos, programas, projetos e ações interferiram na conformação do ambiente construído do bairro e, por outro, identificar o papel de cada agente do espaço urbano e suas formas de atuação e intervenção, ou seja, o papel do Estado e, da iniciativa privada nos processos de planejamento urbano. / Barra Funda, one of the oldest and most traditional boroughs of São Paulo has been the object of transformations in its urban space since its creation by the end of the 19th century. The work presented here tries to rebuild the boroughs trajectory from the urban planning processes perspective, describing and identifying what drove its physical, social, and economic changes. Documents made up of plans, programs, projects, laws, studies, actions, and blueprints prepared for the urban development of São Paulo were analyzed, with emphasis on provisions regarding the Barra Funda borough. The intent is, on one side, analyzing how the implementation of these plans, programs, projects, and action interfered in the conformation of the environment built in the borough, and, on the other, the forms of action and intervention, that is, the role of the State and private initiatives in the urban planning process.

The contemporary Western city is a space of capitalism, realized on a personal level through the lived realities of work and consumption. Elevation of these twin activities is contributing to ongoing social and environmental problems, both within the city and the larger interconnected world. As an alternative, play represents a way to de-emphasize the importance of work and consumption and their pervasive monetary components. Uncommodified, non-commercial play can open up more urban space and time for use value, above the exchange value that capitalism so efficiently emphasizes. Henri Lefebvre’s ideas about the ongoing production of social space, explicated in his spatial triad, alongside his ideas surrounding a resurgent and possibly revolutionary festival are used to explain how play can unsettle current capitalist norms. Urban exploration, an activity that sees people venture into all parts of the city, particularly those where one is not meant to go, is used as a form of play in support of this argument. This pastime interacts with the city in multiple spatial and temporal ways, helping to counteract some of the negative aspects of modern life. By entering various areas with unique perspectives, urban explorers recast working, consuming and forgotten spaces into sites of play and fun. Urban space itself becomes less alienated, more dynamic, and the possibilities within it evermore exciting. Exploration also reveals the uneven nature of contemporary urban space. By revealing certain problems urban exploration might act as a first step towards countering them, in turn encouraging different urban spaces and a diversified more livable city full of opportunities for use, self-expression and growth. / Thesis (Master, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2008-02-25 13:28:32.156

The central argument advanced in this dissertation is that the production of totalitarian space relies on the systematic destruction of spatial aura. I begin by critically studying the term “totalitarian” with references to Hannah Arendt and Robert Conquest, and re-appropriating it based on relevant insights from Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Georg Lukács, and Slavoj Žižek. In the meantime, I introduce the Baath state in Syria and Iraq as an example of totalitarianism, and present a concise account of its ideological history. Here I also shed light on important aspects of Critical Theory, which will have a recurring role throughout the project. I then discuss spatial production by critically explicating Henri Lefebvre’s dialectical theory of the production of space, which claims that space is produced according to the dominant modes of production. However, despite its critical significance to my project, Lefebvre’s theory alone cannot account for totalitarian space. Therefore, after pausing on Lefebvre’s concepts of appropriated versus dominated spaces, I move to Michel Foucault’s work on the Panopticon as a major spatial technology of power and a generalizable formula in societies of control and discipline. I also introduce Foucault’s heterotopia and Gaston Bachelard’s poetic space as counter examples to totalitarian space. Indeed, I argue that Lefebvre’s appropriated space, Foucault’s heterotopia, and Bachelard’s poetic space all have something in common. Aura, with its inherent negativity, is precisely the concept to indicate such spatial uniqueness, the systematic elimination of which is definitive of totalitarian space. In addition to critically exploring Walter Benjamin’s definitions of aura and developing his secularized notion of it, I also focus on his claim that mechanically reproduced works of art lack aura. This then brings me to the last stage of my project where I argue that mechanically reproduced images are not just auraless; they also destroy the aura of space. Finally, by way of illustration, I turn back to the example of the Baath state and analyze the use of mechanically reproduced images of the leader as destroyers of spatial aura and thus crucial components of the production of totalitarian space.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:28:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-05-09Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:58:09Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 catao_rc_me_prud.pdf: 3195701 bytes, checksum: 407675649dada8ff4471a0d5022d59de (MD5) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / As inúmeras transformações socioespaciais advindas da expansão e consolidação desigual do Meio Técnico-Científico-Informacional desde o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial tiveram efeito em todo o globo. Devido a essas transformações, o dengue se modificou, adaptando-se a esse novo meio. O aumento do número e do tamanho das cidades, que ocorreu de forma perversa, o rápido e intenso fluxo de pessoas e materiais e a degradação da saúde pública em todo mundo contribuíram para que essa doença se tornasse uma pandemia global em meados do século XX. No Brasil, ela retornou após 60 anos depois de erradicada, causando muitos problemas e a morte de várias pessoas. A hipótese do trabalho é que a distribuição e a incidência do dengue no Brasil foram, e estão sendo afetadas pelas transformações socioespaciais advindas da consolidação desigual do meio atual, que propiciou sua reemergência no território nacional e a emergência do dengue hemorrágico como um grande problema de saúde pública. O objetivo principal constitui em analisar a reemergência do dengue no Brasil e sua relação com as mudanças socioespaciais advindas da expansão desigual do Meio Técnico-Científico-Informacional e os processos de globalização no país, comparando diversas escalas geográficas. Também foi analisado os principais determinantes em escala nacional, bem como uma proposta de tipologia do dengue no Brasil, elecando as principais variáveis explicativas da doença no território / The several socio-spatial transformations brought by the uneven expansion and consolidation of the technical-scientific-information environment since the Second World War had an effect in the whole world. Due to these transformations, dengue has changed to adapt to this new environment. The disease's etiological agent is a virus, and the main vector is an urban mosquito with preference of human blood and extremely adapt to the social space. The perverse way that the growth of cities occurred, in both, number and size, the intense and fast flow of peoples and goods and the degradation of public health in whole world contributed to make that this disease became pandemic worldwide in the middle of the twenty century. In Brazil, it returns sixty years after been eradicated, causing many problems and the death of several people. The work hypothesis is that distribution and incidence of dengue was, and still is been affecting by socio-spatial transformations brought by the uneven consolidation of the actual environment, that has provided it's re-emergency in national territory. The main objective is to analyze the re-emergency of dengue in Brazil and its relations with the socio-spatial changes brought by the uneven expansion of the technical-scientific-information environment and the globalization's process in the country, comparing several geographical scales

Este trabalho foi desenvolvido na favela da Rocinha (RJ) e utilizando-se de observações de campo, procurou sistematizar a noção de produção política do Espaço, suas implicações sobre os metamorfismos vividos por sua população. Enumera as formas pelas quais se estabelecem sucessivos processos de alienação, apoiando-se na dialética sócio-espacial. Procedeu-se ao desvendamento desses processos de alienação, indicando os distintos mecanismos em que estes se manifestam. A preocupação fundamental era a de partir do concreto chegar às abstrações e por fim formatar a compreensão do complexo e fragmentado cotidiano dos residentes na Rocinha. / This study was conducted in the slum of Rocinha (RJ), and using field observations, we tried to systematize the notion of political production of space, its implications on metamorphisms experienced by its people. It lists the ways in which they lay successive processes of alienation, drawing on socio-spatial dialectic. Proceeded with the unveiling of these processes of alienation, indicating the different mechanisms by which these are manifested. The main concern was to get from the concrete and in abstractions, and finally format the understanding of the complex and fragmented daily life of residents in Rocinha.