In 1997, Governor Paul Patton of Kentucky asked the state Cabinet of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection to develop administrative regulations for industrial hog farms in the state. The regulatory process has been contentious. From 1997 through 1998, the Cabinet held five public hearings to elicit comments on the proposed regulations. This study is designed to answer two questions. First, how, within parameters of participation established by the Kentucky Cabinet of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, have participants in the debate deployed notions of risk to privilege certain gendered and sexualized farming identities, farming practices, and notions of rurality? Second, how will the spatial arrangements proposed by participants alter social relationships? A theoretical framework that draws from Foucaults work on governmentality and power/knowledge, feminist theories and Latours actor network theory was developed for this analysis which combines discourse analysis with participant observation. The study examines texts produced by the Cabinet and three groups: the Kentucky Farm Bureau Federation, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Community Farm Alliance. Texts include transcripts of hearing comments, published histories, newspapers and web sites produced by three studied, law suits related to the debate, and newspaper coverage of the debate. Participant observation was conducted at public hearings and meetings of the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Community Farm Alliance. Results from this project suggest that gender and sexualization play very important roles in establishing hierarchies between organized groups and government agencies. Results also indicate that the constructions of farmers, farming and rurality produced by hierarchical relationships are largely dependent on distinct spatial arrangements which have very real effects on human-human, human-environment and human-animal relationships.

Loss of native biological diversity is a world-wide problem of growing international concern. One of the main causes of native biodiversity loss is destruction and degradation of native habitat through land development for agriculture. The Waikato region is an example of the destruction and degradation of native habitat in association with the development and intensification of farming, including dairy farming. This thesis explores cultural reasons for the loss of native forest in the Waikato region, and reasons why fragments of native forest remain. The research involves a participant observation study of 'typical' dairy farm families for 9 months of the dairy year, in-depth interviews of dairy farmers who have protected a significant proportion of their land for conservation of native habitat, a questionnaire of dairy farmers, and an examination of dairy farm magazines and other literature to identify the values and attitudes that motivate dairy farmers in relation to land management and protection of native habitat. The title of the thesis suggests two elements that are important for understanding the loss and persistence of native forest in Waikato's farmed landscapes. Symbolic reason refers to the values, attitudes and perceptions of farmers that derive from socio-political and economic forces which encourage productivist practises that leave little opportunity for native forest to survive. Material agency refers to the local circumstances of particular farms and individual people which enable native forest to persist. The thesis argues that persistence of native forest depends on the idiosyncrasies of material circumstance in the face of relentless pressure to transform the production landscape for economic purposes. The thesis concludes with a suggestion that policies to assist survival of native habitat in farmed landscapes need to include ones that encourage the odds in favour of fortuitous circumstance. In the face of globalised economic pressures, policies for conservation of native biodiversity need to involve a 'portfolio' of measures that apply to individual landowners and the wider rural community by recognising, assisting and rewarding management for non-production values.

This constructive design research dissertation aims to understand how design can be used as part of a composite research approach to generate knowledge about how complex phenomena are composed through their interactions and relationships with various actors, both human and non-human. It has done this by investigating a single phenomenon, the patient experience of radiotherapy. Through the purposeful selection and application of methods, theories, and existing research from design, nursing, and STS, this thesis utilizes a mixed-method approach comprised of qualitative, quantitative methods, and design experimentation, across multiple research sites and patient populations, in three research projects – PERT, DUMBO, and POIS – to generate rich and layered knowledge of the patient experience. Experience prototypes are used to challenge, through intervention or provocation, the relationships between the various radiotherapy actors identified through the empirical methods. Together, the research generated in PERT, DUMBO, and POIS construct a map of the networked, interdependent actors which shape the patient’s emotional experience of radiotherapy: the staff, technology, information, environment, and institutions. It also calls attention to the problematic relationship between radiotherapy patients and the technologies used to treat them, which can lead to anxiety, worry, and fear. This thesis offers contributions related to both improving patient experience and designing for complex social issues. First, this research suggests that individuals, other than primary users, need to be acknowledged in the design of medical technologies. It proposes calling attention to patients by naming them as interactors in their relationships with the aforementioned technologies, removing them from the role of implicated actor. Second, this thesis problematizes treating the actors within a network as independent entities, which medical research and user-centered design often does, and calls for a new type of design practice which attends to these networked relationships. Third, this thesis suggests two ways in which design research practice should be shifted methodologically if it wants to engage with and design for complex social issues like patient experience; widening the researcher’s perspective on the issue through the use of a composite methodology, and having the researcher maintain this scope by remaining closely connected to their research context. The implications of this work concern how design research, design education, and design practice might shift their approaches to fully acknowledge and attend to the complexity of systems like healthcare.

This thesis focuses on the practice of local learning centres in Sweden. The aim is to describe and to establish an understanding of relations and the actor-networks that surround the practice. The thesis is based on four different studies. The first two studies focus on the organisation of the local learning centres and scrutinises the relation between the local learning centres, municipal administration and business in the region. What types of relations exist and what strategies are used by the local learning centres to enrol actors into the actor-network? The two latter studies investigate videoconference in the context of local learning centres. Videoconference is described as a socio-technical environment. The studies focus on interaction and communications asking what kind of relations are created between environment, material design and people? The theoretical framework consists of actor-network theory and the notions of space and spatial relations. The methods used in the four studies are interviews and observations. Informants that have contributed to the study are headmasters, teachers and students as well as project managers, politicians and businessmen. The results of the studies show how the local learning centres fails as brokers on an educational market. The reasons are many. The main results of the studies stress a number of obstacles of involvement and shed light on different strategies of enrolment. The results connected to videoconference show how material design and technology impacts the practice. Different strategies are developed by participants to manoeuvre in the videoconferencing classrooms. In conclusion the four studies show how actor-networks influence the practice of local learning centres by representations. / Denna avhandling är en studie om lärcentra i Sverige. Syftet är att beskriva och öka kunskapen om de relationer och de aktörsnätverk som omger praktiken. Avhandlingen bygger på resultat från fyra olika delstudier. Fokus i två av dessa ligger på lärcentra som organisation. Hur ser relationen mellan lärcentra och omgivande aktörer ut i regionen och vilka strategier används för att skapa aktörsnätverk? De övriga två studierna handlar om videokonferens där fokus ligger på hur relationer skapas mellan miljö, teknik och människor. Särskilt studeras interaktion och kommunikation mellan dessa aktörer i en utpräglat socioteknisk lärandemiljö. Den teoretiska ramen för de olika delstudierna är aktörsnätverksteori som används tillsammans med begrepp som spatiala relationer. De fyra studierna använder sig i huvudsak av kvalitativa metoder som intervjuer och observationsstudier. Datainsamlingen berör en bred samling informanter som rektorer, lärare och studenter tillsammans med projektledare, politiker och företagare. Studiernas resultat visar att det finns skilda synsätt på utbildning och kompetens mellan olika grupper av aktörer. Trots involveringsstrategier av aktörer från omgivande aktörsnätverk lyckas man inte agera som en mäklare på en utbildningsmarknad. Resultaten visar vidare att miljö tillsammans med teknik har stort inflytande på hur studenter och lärare agerar i videokonferensklassrummen. Det är den materiella designen och den tekniska logiken som styr praktiken. Resultaten visar också på hur olika studerandestrategier utvecklas för att stå utanför interaktion i klassrummet tillsammans med hur lärares kommunikation utvecklas för att överbrygga avståndet till de studerande. Sammantaget visar de fyra studierna på hur olika aktörsnätverk inverkar på praktiken genom representationer.

Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks (WSANs) are distributed systems of heterogeneous devices, referred to as sensors and actors, which sense, control, and interact with the physical environment. Sensors are low-cost, low-power, multi-functional devices that communicate untethered in short distances. Actors are resource-rich devices that collect and process sensor data and consequently perform actions on the environment. This thesis is concerned with coordination and communication problems in WSANs, in datacentric and multimedia application scenarios. First, communication and coordination problems are jointly addressed in a unifying framework for the case of static actors. A sensor-actor coordination model is proposed, based on an event-driven partitioning paradigm. Sensors are partitioned into different sets and each set is associated with a different actor. Data delivery trees are created to optimally react to the event and timely deliver event data with minimum energy expenditure. The optimal partitioning strategy is determined bymathematical programming, and a distributed solution is also proposed. Furthermore, the actor-actor coordination problem is formulated as an optimal task assignment problem, and a distributed solution of the problem based on an analogy with a one-shot auction is presented. Application scenarios for WSANs with mobile actors are then studied. A location management scheme is introduced to handle the mobility of actors with minimal energy consumption for resource-constrained sensors. The proposed scheme, which is the first localization scheme specifically designed for WSANs, is shown to consistently reduce the energy consumption with respect to existing localization services for ad hoc and sensor networks. An optimal energy-aware forwarding rule is then derived for sensor-actor communication in fast varying Rayleigh channels. The proposed scheme allows controlling the delay of the data-delivery process based on power control, and reacts to network congestion by diverting traffic from congested to lightly-loaded actors. The mobility of actors is coordinated to optimally accomplish application-specific tasks, based on a nonlinear optimization model that accounts for location and capabilities of heterogeneous actors. The research challenges for delivery of multimedia traffic in wireless sensor and actor networks are then outlined. Finally, a cross-layer communication architecture based on Ultra Wide Band communications is described, whose design objective is to reliably and flexibly deliver QoS to multimedia applications in WSANs, by carefully leveraging and controlling interactions among layers according to application requirements. Performance evaluation shows how the proposed solution achieves the performance objectives of wireless sensor and actor networks.

Internet Memes transverse and sometimes transcend cyberspace on the back of impossibly cute LOLcats speaking mangled English and the snarky remarks of Image Macro characters always on the lookout for someone to undermine. No longer the abstract notion of a cultural gene that Dawkins (2006) introduced in the late 1970s, memes have now become synonymous with a particular brand of vernacular language that internet users engage by posting, sharing and remixing digital content as they communicate jokes, emotions and opinions. For the purpose of this research the language of Internet Memes is understood as visual, succinct and capable of inviting active engagement by users who encounter digital content online that exhibits said characteristics. Internet Memes were explored through an Arts-Based Educational Research framework by first identifying the conventions that shape them and then interrogating these conventions during two distinct research phases. In the first phase the researcher, as a doctoral student in art and visual culture education, engaged class readings and assignments by generating digital content that not only responded to the academic topics at hand but did so through forms associated with Internet Memes like Image Macros and Animated GIFs. In the second phase the researcher became a meme literacy facilitator as learners in three different age-groups were led in the reading, writing and remixing of memes during a month-long summer art camp where they were also exposed to other art-making processes such as illustration, acting and sculpture. Each group of learners engaged age-appropriate meme types: 1) the youngest group, 6 and 7 year-olds, wrote Emoji Stories and Separated at Birth memes; 2) the middle group, 8-10 year-olds, worked with Image Macros and Perception memes, 3) while the oldest group, 11-13 year-olds, generated Image Macros and Animated GIFs. The digital content emerging from both research phases was collected as data and analyzed through a hybrid of Memetics, Actor-Network Theory, Object Oriented Ontology, Remix Theory and Glitch Studies as the researcher shifted shapes yet again and became a Research Jockey sampling freely from each field of study. A case is made for Internet Memes to be understood as an actor-network where meme collectives, individual cybernauts, software and source material are all actants interrelating and making each other enact collective agencies through shared authorships. Additionally specific educational contexts are identified where the language of Internet Memes can serve to incorporate technology, storytelling, visual thinking and remix practices into art and visual culture education. Finally, the document reporting on the research expands on the hermeneutics of Internet Memes and the phenomenological experiences they elicit that are otherwise absent from traditional scholarly prose. Chapter by chapter the dissertation was crafted as a journey from the academic to the whimsical, from the lecture hall to the image board (where Internet Memes were born), from the written word to the remixed image as a visual language that is equal parts form and content that emerges and culminates in a concluding chapter composed almost entirely of popular Internet Meme types. An online component can be found at http://memeducation.org/

No description available.

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) are distributed systems of sensor nodes and actors that are interconnected over the wireless medium. Sensor nodes collect information about the physical world and transmit the data to actors by using one-hop or multi-hop communications. Actors collect information from the sensor nodes, process the information, take decisions and react to the events. This dissertation presents contributions to the methods of routing, localization and positioning in WSANs for practical applications. We first propose a routing protocol with service differentiation for WSANs with stationary nodes. In this setting, we also adapt a sports ranking algorithm to dynamically prioritize the events in the environment depending on the collected data. We extend this routing protocol for an application, in which sensor nodes float in a river to gather observations and actors are deployed at accessible points on the coastline. We develop a method with locally acting adaptive overlay network formation to organize the network with actor areas and to collect data by using locality-preserving communication. We also present a multi-hop localization approach for enriching the information collected from the river with the estimated locations of mobile sensor nodes without using positioning adapters. As an extension to this application, we model the movements of sensor nodes by a subsurface meandering current mobility model with random surface motion. Then we adapt the introduced routing and network organization methods to model a complete primate monitoring system. A novel spatial cut-off preferential attachment model and iii center of mass concept are developed according to the characteristics of the primate groups. We also present a role determination algorithm for primates, which uses the collection of spatial-temporal relationships. We apply a similar approach to human social networks to tackle the problem of automatic generation and organization of social networks by analyzing and assessing interaction data. The introduced routing and localization protocols in this dissertation are also extended with a novel three dimensional actor positioning strategy inspired by the molecular geometry. Extensive simulations are conducted in OPNET simulation tool for the performance evaluation of the proposed protocols

This dissertation ethnographically explores the social concerns related to the global, agro-industrial system's impact on many communities' potential for livelihood and health. At the core of this study is the desire to understand the complex and dynamic ways that communities strive to develop, and make sense of, networks that address these wicked problems and to understand how these strategies might aggregate to promote community resiliency. An investigation of alternative food networks (AFNs) was contextualized in one province in Western Turkey. The AFNs were articulated by an ethnographic design that utilized tools from different fields of study. Integrating actor-network theory, new social movements theory, and the nourishing networks framework allowed for robust triangulation of data. I conclude that AFNs in this province are nascent and remain fragmented. At present, AFNs have not been leveraged for community resiliency efforts. However, they hold the seeds of what may become a food sovereignty social movement. This ethnography reveals that the province has assets, including numerous affinity groups, and a durable connection to heritage with strong reverberations of a nature-culture. I illuminate the broad spectrum of submerged and visible actants and actors that prime the AFNs' development. The wide variance creates diffuse and contradictory cultural implications. Actors report they constantly negotiate cultural aspects related to AFNs. They conceptualize this work as a polymorphous phenomenon of fragmented communities and a culture of dependency; but they show fortitude by negotiating multi-phasic actions and multi-vocal resistance messaging. By way of this study I illustrate that their cultural politics take place where economy and identity interface. Actors seek legitimization. They speak of infusing heritage-based ideals into projects. They are firm that agricultural modernization must come from Turkish values. And, they are formulating and strengthening ideological-based discourses. I further clarify their development strategies by showing how AFNs are experimenting with new governance strategies and focusing on social embedding. Promotion of niche markets has begun. However, public and private resources are limited, which hinders the momentum of AFNs. Additional research is needed to better understand the processes for high functioning AFNs in Turkey. / Ph. D.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.