Mirrors of Change is a cross-sectional study of micro and macro institutional environments that envisages to analyse shifts in the sources of institutional legitimacy since the 1960s. The main aim is to understand whether homogenising macro institutions are adopted at the micro institutional levels. In order to do this, the study examines the heterogenising elements that are specific to local environments. At the micro level, the focus is on two industry associations, namely, the Cámara de Industrias del Uruguay (CIU) and Sociedad de Fomento Fabril (SFF). At the macro level, the investigation is centred on what is termed in this study as ‘World-Culture’, composed of a group of global institutions. As the study shows, World-culture is a source of new social identities, norms, rules and values through which individuals and organisations rationally organise and pursue their interests. An important question is whether the role of the nation-state in Chile and Uruguay has changed since the 1960s. The study concludes that there is a clear shift from national to global and regional sources of legitimacy. In both cases, the intensity of interaction with macro institutions (World-culture) has been greater in the 1990s compared to the 1960s. The role of the state as prime source of institutional legitimacy at the national environmental level has decreased since global institutions through carriers like International Organisations that are beyond the reach of the state. While the homogenising exogenous institutions wielded greater influence in Chilean and Uruguayan environments, the clashes with traditional domestic institutions had a different character that stimulated new and particular forms of ‘remix’. The CIU went through a process of NGOisation, while the SFF increased its interaction with the state and the region. The two cases examined in this study show distinct responses to common problems owing to different cultural environments.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has been running the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) for almost twenty years and is widely recognised as an influential actor in education policy internationally. Much research investigates the extent to which the OECD’s education policy recommendations are implemented. However, the parliamentary process that mediates the space between the PISA studies and consequent school reforms is less well understood. This thesis tracks the mention of ‘PISA’ in parliamentary debates in Sweden and Germany between 2000 and 2018 and applies content analysis to identify changes within and between the two countries over time. The data shows that in both parliaments, the PISA studies are received largely without questioning the underlying methodology or test design. Members of parliament mostly refer to PISA as an ‘objective piece of evidence’ that supposedly captures the current state of the education system. PISA is also mentioned to discredit political opponents by blaming them for poor results. Understanding how members of parliament discuss PISA is important to explaining PISA as a phenomenon and contributes to a growing body of research concerned with the influence of the OECD on national education policy borrowing and lending.

Ce mémoire traite de l’enseignement de la danse africaine en France et au Canada. Cette recherche a débuté en 2007, lorsque l’auteur a participé à un échange étudiant. À la fin de cette expérience, l’auteur en était arrivé à la conclusion que la danse africaine au Québec était abordée comme un bien de consommation et/ou une production socioculturelle relevant de l’imaginaire. La présente analyse explore les avantages et les limites de l’approche méthodologique adoptée par l’anthropologue (qui est, dans ce cas-ci, une ancienne danseuse classique), et les conditions de la rencontre entre les Africains et les occidentaux par la danse. Tandis qu’il reste à démontrer que les critiques postmodernes de l’art de masse s’appliquent dans ce cas-ci, l’analyse montre ici clairement que l’on trouve dans les cours de danse africaine au Québec une forme de conscience professionnelle. Les critiques de la danse et de d’autres formes de démocratisations artistiques tendent à se confondre dans la peur du discours populaire. L’objectif principal de cette recherche est par conséquent d’établir les limites du fétichisme par rapport à la danse africaine et d’explorer en détail les implications de la « hantise du Troisième Homme » communiquée par la recherche ethnographique et l’analyse anthropologique / This thesis deals with the teaching of African dance in France and in Canada. The research for this thesis began in 2007, when the author took part in a student exchange and ended with a consideration of African dance in Quebec as a consumer good and/or an imaginary sociocultural production. The analysis explores the benefits and the limits of the methodological approach embraced by the anthropologist (who is, in this case, a former dancer with training in classical dance), and the terms of the encounter between Africans and Westerners through dance. While it remains to be shown that the post-modernist critiques of mass art apply to this context, the analysis here points to the presence of a professional consciousness in African dance lessons in Quebec. Critiques of dance and other arts as democratization tend to get lost in the fear of popular discourse. The main objective of this research is therefore to establish the limits of the fetishism associated with African dance and to discuss in further detail the « hantise du Troisième Homme », communicated by ethnographic research and anthropological analysis

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:12:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Vanessa Lopes.pdf: 56523681 bytes, checksum: aaa38252f6f27a23581572c5ac834093 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-12-10 / The technological, material and economical transformations that have marked the last decades changed the way that people create, store and share information due to the progress achieved by ICT (Information and Communication Technology). The objective of this dissertation is to test the new paradigm of Cloud Computing, from which new virtual architectures are built as on-­‐demand services, involving creative processes and new communication procedures in digital environments. To do so, the dissertation proposes the principle of AaaS (Art as a Service) as an update to the discussions about art and media, exposing the recent transformations operating in the boundaries of media derivatives. The research presents an interdisciplinary bibliography which transits between studies in communication, art and culture. In conceptual terms, it departs from the understanding of artmedia, proposed by Arlindo Machado (2009), from the concepts of world-­‐culture and hypermodernity pointed by Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy (2010) and from the studies of the post-­‐media condition, elaborated by art critic Rosalind Krauss (2000). The research corpus is composed by experiments on ambient, materiality and image but without holding on to specific media or genres. These are analysed, not only from a theoretical point of view, but also from a practical methodology which testing the cloud-­‐map configuration in the second chapter. In line with these movements, we sought to collaborate with the network of critics, curators, artists, producers and institutions that have launched a new view on the theme, identifying the confluences and incompatibilities between the diverse fields involved / As transformações tecnológicas, materiais e econômicas que marcaram as últimas décadas, mudaram a forma como as pessoas criam, armazenam e compartilham informação por conta dos avanços encabeçados pela ITC (Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação). O objetivo desta dissertação é testar o novo paradigma da Cloud Computing, a partir do qual novas arquiteturas virtuais são construídas na forma de serviços sob demanda, envolvendo processos de criação e novos procedimentos para se comunicar em ambientes digitais. Para tanto, a dissertação propõe o princípio AaaS (Art as a Service) como um update para as discussões sobre a relação entre arte e mídia, explicitando transformações recentes que operam nas fronteiras dos derivados da mídia. A pesquisa apresenta uma bibliografia interdisciplinar que transita entre autores da area de comunicação e dos estudos da cultura e da arte. Em termos conceituais, parte do entendimento de artemídia, proposto por Arlindo Machado (2009), dos conceitos de cultura-­‐mundo e hipermodernidade, apontados por Gilles Lipovetsky e Jean Serroy (2010) e dos estudos da condição pós-­‐mídia, elaborados pela crítica de arte Rosalind Krauss (2000). O corpus da pesquisa é composto por experimentos que exploram a relação entre ambiente, materialidade e imagem, sem se ater a suportes ou gêneros específicos. Estes são analisados, não apenas do ponto de vista teórico, mas a partir de uma metodologia prática que testa a configuração de mapas-­‐nuvens no segundo capítulo. Em sintonia com estes movimentos, buscamos colaborar com a rede de críticos, curadores, artistas, produtores e instituições fomentadoras que vem lançando um novo olhar sobre o tema, identificando as confluências e incompatibilidades entre os diversos campos envolvidos

Ce mémoire traite de l’enseignement de la danse africaine en France et au Canada. Cette recherche a débuté en 2007, lorsque l’auteur a participé à un échange étudiant. À la fin de cette expérience, l’auteur en était arrivé à la conclusion que la danse africaine au Québec était abordée comme un bien de consommation et/ou une production socioculturelle relevant de l’imaginaire. La présente analyse explore les avantages et les limites de l’approche méthodologique adoptée par l’anthropologue (qui est, dans ce cas-ci, une ancienne danseuse classique), et les conditions de la rencontre entre les Africains et les occidentaux par la danse. Tandis qu’il reste à démontrer que les critiques postmodernes de l’art de masse s’appliquent dans ce cas-ci, l’analyse montre ici clairement que l’on trouve dans les cours de danse africaine au Québec une forme de conscience professionnelle. Les critiques de la danse et de d’autres formes de démocratisations artistiques tendent à se confondre dans la peur du discours populaire. L’objectif principal de cette recherche est par conséquent d’établir les limites du fétichisme par rapport à la danse africaine et d’explorer en détail les implications de la « hantise du Troisième Homme » communiquée par la recherche ethnographique et l’analyse anthropologique / This thesis deals with the teaching of African dance in France and in Canada. The research for this thesis began in 2007, when the author took part in a student exchange and ended with a consideration of African dance in Quebec as a consumer good and/or an imaginary sociocultural production. The analysis explores the benefits and the limits of the methodological approach embraced by the anthropologist (who is, in this case, a former dancer with training in classical dance), and the terms of the encounter between Africans and Westerners through dance. While it remains to be shown that the post-modernist critiques of mass art apply to this context, the analysis here points to the presence of a professional consciousness in African dance lessons in Quebec. Critiques of dance and other arts as democratization tend to get lost in the fear of popular discourse. The main objective of this research is therefore to establish the limits of the fetishism associated with African dance and to discuss in further detail the « hantise du Troisième Homme », communicated by ethnographic research and anthropological analysis

The aim of this paper is to inspect the work of Louise Erdrich with the optics of semiotics, literary theory and cultural anthropology and to find topics related to the cultural conflict of Native American and Christian tradition. The theoretical part is devoted to the theories of the ontological definition of the fictional world, its relation to culture and its construction within a literary piece. In the practical part, we will deal with the cultural features associated with nature, religion, space and social ordering, as they are illustrated in the novels. The paper is not an anthropological material dealing with Native American culture as such. Here we perform a literary analysis and examine the anthropomorphic dimension of the unique fictional world.