This thesis examines single-player video gaming. It is an analysis of video game play: what it is, how it functions, and what it means. It is an account of how players learn to play. This is done through a set of close readings of significant video games and key academic texts. My focus is on the mechanisms and forces that shape gameplay practices. Building on the existing fields of ludology and media-studies video-game analysis, I outline a model of video game play as a cultural construction which builds upon the player's existing knowledge of real world and fictional objects, scenarios and conventions. I argue that the relationship between the video game player and the software is best understood as embodying a precise configuration of power. I demonstrate that the single-player video game is in fact what Michel Foucault terms a 'disciplinary apparatus'. It functions to shape players' subjectivities in order to have them behave in easily predicted and managed ways. To do this, video games reuse and repurpose conventions from existing media forms and everyday practices. By this mobilisation of familiar elements, which already have established practices of use, and by a careful process of surveillance, examination and the correction of play practices, video games encourage players to take on and perform the logics of the game system. This relationship between organic player and technological game, I suggest, is best understood through the theoretical figure of the 'Cyborg'. It is a point of intersection between human and computer logics. Far from the ludological assumption that play and culture are separate and that play is shaped entirely by rules, I show video game play to be produced by an array of complex cultural and technological forces that act upon the player. My model of video game play differs from others currently in circulation in that it foregrounds the role of culture in play, while not denying the technological specificity of the video gaming apparatus. My central focus on power and the construction of player subjectivities offers a way to move beyond the simplistic reliance on the notion that rules are the primary shaping mechanism of play that has, to date, dominated much of video game studies.

This thesis offers an analysis of how white women experience racial privilege in the international development arena. Based on post-structuralist ideas of identity construction and subjectivity formation, I examine the narratives of six white middle class female development workers in order to gain a deeper understanding of white privilege. Using grounded theory to examine the data, I find that the development arena offers an occasion for white women to fulfill their socially mandated subject position and therefore reproduce hierarchical relations across race. Furthermore, the data indicates that white female development workers resist engaging in critical self-reflection that would compromise the “helping” and “good” narrative of self as a development worker, which portrays the self in heroic terms. The lack of critical self-reflection suggests that the performance of whiteness and denial of white privilege exists within the everyday lived experience of white female development workers. I argue that this performance of white subjectivity is problematic because it maintains inequality in the development arena by sustaining white dominance and non-white subordination. This pattern must be broken in order to re-establish relationships in the development arena that reflect equality and justice.

Thèse (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references: (p. 365-380). Also available online.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1985.

This compilation thesis examines parents' and teachers' approaches to curriculum objectives that involve shared responsibility between home and school regarding the children's upbringing and education. On the basis of four articles, the meanings of good teachers, good parents, and a good cooperation practice along with the meaning of gender in home-school relationships were examined. Questions were asked from both a teacher and a parent perspective about concrete practices and constructs with respect to this cooperation. The overall aim was to conduct an exploratory study on the importance of gender in the home-school relationship. The first article explores the use of gender and diversity in research on home and school relationships. In the second article, access to the research field of “home and school relationships” was problematized. Article 3 analyzes teachers´ and parents´ experiences regarding parents’ being resources in the primary school setting. The article focuses on what teachers expect from "ideal" mothers and fathers as well as what parents expect from "ideal" teachers. Article 4 analyzes the experiences that teachers and parents have with regard to the practical consequences of home and school cooperation. The theoretical starting point includes feminist poststructuralist theories and discourse analysis. Inductive qualitative interviews were executed in a mainstream district in Sweden with an increasing immigrant population; the interviewees included 25 parents and the eight teachers who taught their children. In order to interpret and to understand the meanings of the interviews, two context analyses were conducted. One involved the mapping of the local context and preconditions that surrounded the study's informants with respect to the socio-economic context, local school plans, action plans, and management of the educational activities. The second involved analyzing the rhetoric of governance and policy in the longer term, regarding the importance of gender in the home-school relationship with respect to the former Swedish elementary school and the current nine-year compulsory school. The thesis’ main results show that gender has great importance in homeschool relationships: Women/mothers bear the overall responsibility for engaging in cooperation, while this responsibility is largely made invisible in the research. In concrete home and school practices, the responsibility is also mostly not problematized. The study analyzes the construction of a cooperation practice that operates in two versions and affects performative practices at both home and school. Through a “mother responsibility” discourse in regard to home and school practices, mothers are expected to become teachers´ servants based on teachers´demands. The result indicates that both parents and teachers express attitudes that may raise questions regarding whether they, despite the curriculum mission to counteract traditional gender patterns, are truly dependent and reliant on a cooperation practice in which mothers are made particularly responsible and thus contribute to asymmetric gender patterns. The study’s results are surprising, given all government interventions in the Swedish compulsory school, which, since the 1960s, have focused on gender equality through education, training, and research. Both parents and teachers viewed the cooperation practice as a practical aid in their efforts to manage their own professional roles. The conditions for cooperation are based on the fact that the dominant discourse that emphasizes female care and responsibility is never challenged. Instead, the cooperation practice focuses on supporting those processes in which women are key leaders and where male teachers and fathers have only a limited responsibility for specific activities. In order to change this gendered situation, both the structural factors on the outside as well as the gender-blind approaches on the inside must be challenged in parallel so that sufficient strength can be mobilized to counter a normalization process that is reinforced by intersecting effects.

Derrida’s deconstruction of the philosophic tradition shows us not only the importance of pursuit of knowledge, but also the importance of questioning the assumptions on which such a pursuit is based. He argues that the metaphysical tradition is built from the privileging of the logos (speech, thought, and logic,) over it’s opposite, and while Derrida does not object to the societal results of such a privileging, he questions why we allow ourselves to make such an assumption in the investigation of the origin event, and in the nature of reality. I chose to study deconstruction because through the course of my studies at Claremont I found myself raising similar objections to the philosophic tradition, and have a great interest in the arts and culture resulting from deconstructionist philosophy. Through my study I’ve learned to better examine not only the reasons for my own interest in philosophy and the arts, but the importance (or un-importance) of such a pursuit. I believe Derrida’s work could be important in teaching us the absurdity of sacred pursuit, and the importance of finding said sacredness in everything.

In this thesis I claim that dominant realist, interpretive and postmodern research methodologies, taken together, provide necessary but not sufficient tools for use within educational research. Understandings of material, social and linguistic worlds do not, in themselves, cater for teachers' pragmatic needs to consider (a) the social consequences of educational practices, both their own and those of the institutions within which they work, and (b) the complexity of teaching in a postmodern world. I draw on ideas from pragmatism, post-structuralism, critical pedagogy, complexity theory, reflective practice, and personal experience in order to invite the emergence (or social construction) of new phenomena: these I hope, may enable teachers and other educationalists to take a vibrant part in ongoing debates and actions concerning educational policy and practice. I argue that the assumption that educational theory can be applied in practice is flawed and needs to be replaced by theory which recognises the dynamic nature of theory-in-practice: all theory is data within practice. This is a late-career thesis written by a practitioner with an unusually broad experience of the New Zealand educational system. I argue that the purpose of theory is to guide practice, that practice must drive theory, and that theory and practice need to join together to focus on the consequences of planned actions. This is neo-pragmatism, but, as stated thus far, it is not enough for my purposes because it does not include a commitment to social justice. Praxis is a term which ties emancipatory political goals to theory-and-practice. I invite the construction of the understandings of praxitioner activities where collective praxis and individual praxis might co-emerge in the interests of social justice. I promote the expansion of fresh discourses through research into collective praxis within teaching and teacher education.

This project explores the gender relations among a group of recyclers belonging to a consortium of nine recycling cooperatives in the ABC region of São Paulo, Brazil. Employing a feminist geographical lens and participatory research methodologies I examine these uniquely gendered spaces. This thesis is divided into four sections. Each section is written in an attempt to improve understandings of the ways in which the spaces of the recycling cooperatives are gendered. In the first section I provide information that frames the thesis and the larger research project. I begin this section by providing a geographical and socio-economic overview of the region where the research took place. This is followed by a discussion of my research methodology, a literature review of the relationship between women, solid waste, and labour in Brazil, and a look at my reflexive positioning as a researcher on this project. Section two explores the relationship between gender, empowerment and equity among cooperative recyclers involved with this study. This section poses the question: in what ways has the recycling cooperative allowed for women to inspire personal and social change and have the power to influence the institutions that affect their lives? I argue that the recycling cooperatives involved with this study are spaces where individuals who have traditionally lacked access to power are granted the opportunities to empower themselves. Section three is about performed social relations, specifically the role of hegemonic masculinity in shaping gendered space within the recycling cooperatives. Drawing from qualitative research data, this section critically explores the deployment of power within the lives of the cooperative recyclers. First, I explore the concept of hegemonic masculinity, and suggest its importance for understanding gendered space. Second, I draw on my personal research experiences and qualitative data to provide a spatial examination of the most salient aspects of hegemonic masculinity in the lives of the female cooperative recyclers. Third, I support the notion that masculine domination is not something only established by men and designed to oppress women, but women themselves can construct and reinforce hegemonic masculinities. Section four concludes the study by highlighting apparent shortcomings of the research and implications for future research. Concerned with apparent contradictions between the arguments in sections two and three, I provide a discussion of the multiplicities of space and explain that such contradictions are inherent to the nature of social space. Following this I offer a critical self-reflection of my methodology were I discuss my complicity in reproducing gender binaries and post-colonial research practices. / Graduate

This thesis explores the tensions between constitutional forms of democracy and the practice-based understanding of democracy found among ancient Greek and recent post-structural theorists. In drawing from Plato’s discussion of the constitutions of varying political regimes, this thesis hones in on his assertion that the democratic city does not have a single constitution due to the freedom of its citizens. Contemporary understandings of democracy, such as deliberative democratic theory, have largely overlooked the kind of power embodied in democracy by focusing attention on deepening the forms of participation in existing practices of government. By drawing from a practice-based understanding of democracy, this thesis responds to the problems of exclusion produced by statist accounts of democracy. Taking the example of First Nations in Canada, the thesis asks whether new forms of protest, such as Idle No More, embody the spirit of democratic practice outlined by the ancient Greeks. / Graduate

This thesis examines single-player video gaming. It is an analysis of video game play: what it is, how it functions, and what it means. It is an account of how players learn to play. This is done through a set of close readings of significant video games and key academic texts. My focus is on the mechanisms and forces that shape gameplay practices. Building on the existing fields of ludology and media-studies video-game analysis, I outline a model of video game play as a cultural construction which builds upon the player's existing knowledge of real world and fictional objects, scenarios and conventions. I argue that the relationship between the video game player and the software is best understood as embodying a precise configuration of power. I demonstrate that the single-player video game is in fact what Michel Foucault terms a 'disciplinary apparatus'. It functions to shape players' subjectivities in order to have them behave in easily predicted and managed ways. To do this, video games reuse and repurpose conventions from existing media forms and everyday practices. By this mobilisation of familiar elements, which already have established practices of use, and by a careful process of surveillance, examination and the correction of play practices, video games encourage players to take on and perform the logics of the game system. This relationship between organic player and technological game, I suggest, is best understood through the theoretical figure of the 'Cyborg'. It is a point of intersection between human and computer logics. Far from the ludological assumption that play and culture are separate and that play is shaped entirely by rules, I show video game play to be produced by an array of complex cultural and technological forces that act upon the player. My model of video game play differs from others currently in circulation in that it foregrounds the role of culture in play, while not denying the technological specificity of the video gaming apparatus. My central focus on power and the construction of player subjectivities offers a way to move beyond the simplistic reliance on the notion that rules are the primary shaping mechanism of play that has, to date, dominated much of video game studies.