This thesis is an examination of processes of the dealership regarding Aboriginal art and artists. I take the approach that the art dealership is situated at a nexus of relationships that contest and negotiate culturally informed values and categories of fine art, Aboriginality and commodities. I argue that dealers in Aboriginal art mediate categories of value through their particular practices of representation of the art and through the social relationships they foster with artists and buyers. Therefore, through the relationships formed in the exchange process, dealers both make and mark culture. In this study I acknowledge the agency of Aboriginal artists but approach the process of negotiation of cultural categories from the perspective of the non-Indigenous audience for which the art is intended. The research is specifically concentrated on a particular dealership, Fire-Works gallery in Brisbane. I begin with the premise that buyers are drawn to Aboriginal art for more than aesthetic reasons and that objects and artists’ cultural identities carry high value especially if judged authentically Aboriginal in the current art market. Both the art and the artists are made and marked as commodities in the art market; and while notions of authenticity are central to value, value is itself shifting and authenticity unstable. To establish the tensions and shifts in culture formation, I outline the historical biography of the acceptance of Aboriginal objects as fine art and the genesis of Fire-Works gallery within this socio-cultural and political milieu. In the latter chapters of the thesis I examine social relationships and situated practices chosen by the dealership to facilitate sales through the negotiation of valued cultural categories. The study provides an original examination of how shifting cultural categories are dynamically formed and reformed in the commoditisation of Aboriginal art by social agents.

This thesis is an examination of processes of the dealership regarding Aboriginal art and artists. I take the approach that the art dealership is situated at a nexus of relationships that contest and negotiate culturally informed values and categories of fine art, Aboriginality and commodities. I argue that dealers in Aboriginal art mediate categories of value through their particular practices of representation of the art and through the social relationships they foster with artists and buyers. Therefore, through the relationships formed in the exchange process, dealers both make and mark culture. In this study I acknowledge the agency of Aboriginal artists but approach the process of negotiation of cultural categories from the perspective of the non-Indigenous audience for which the art is intended. The research is specifically concentrated on a particular dealership, Fire-Works gallery in Brisbane. I begin with the premise that buyers are drawn to Aboriginal art for more than aesthetic reasons and that objects and artists’ cultural identities carry high value especially if judged authentically Aboriginal in the current art market. Both the art and the artists are made and marked as commodities in the art market; and while notions of authenticity are central to value, value is itself shifting and authenticity unstable. To establish the tensions and shifts in culture formation, I outline the historical biography of the acceptance of Aboriginal objects as fine art and the genesis of Fire-Works gallery within this socio-cultural and political milieu. In the latter chapters of the thesis I examine social relationships and situated practices chosen by the dealership to facilitate sales through the negotiation of valued cultural categories. The study provides an original examination of how shifting cultural categories are dynamically formed and reformed in the commoditisation of Aboriginal art by social agents.

This thesis is an examination of processes of the dealership regarding Aboriginal art and artists. I take the approach that the art dealership is situated at a nexus of relationships that contest and negotiate culturally informed values and categories of fine art, Aboriginality and commodities. I argue that dealers in Aboriginal art mediate categories of value through their particular practices of representation of the art and through the social relationships they foster with artists and buyers. Therefore, through the relationships formed in the exchange process, dealers both make and mark culture. In this study I acknowledge the agency of Aboriginal artists but approach the process of negotiation of cultural categories from the perspective of the non-Indigenous audience for which the art is intended. The research is specifically concentrated on a particular dealership, Fire-Works gallery in Brisbane. I begin with the premise that buyers are drawn to Aboriginal art for more than aesthetic reasons and that objects and artists’ cultural identities carry high value especially if judged authentically Aboriginal in the current art market. Both the art and the artists are made and marked as commodities in the art market; and while notions of authenticity are central to value, value is itself shifting and authenticity unstable. To establish the tensions and shifts in culture formation, I outline the historical biography of the acceptance of Aboriginal objects as fine art and the genesis of Fire-Works gallery within this socio-cultural and political milieu. In the latter chapters of the thesis I examine social relationships and situated practices chosen by the dealership to facilitate sales through the negotiation of valued cultural categories. The study provides an original examination of how shifting cultural categories are dynamically formed and reformed in the commoditisation of Aboriginal art by social agents.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-253) and index.

Thesis (M.A.T.) -- School for International Training, 2006. / Advisor --Bonnie Mennell Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-116).

En pojke på besök i Italien åt där pizza, men pizzan var inte italiensk pizza på riktigt, den smakade inte alls som den pizzan han hade fått i den stockholmsförort han var uppväxt i. Hur vi skildrar och uppfattar en destinations, eller en annan kulturs, måltid beror till stor del på vilka förutsättningar vi har för att utföra analysen. I den här uppsatsen så studeras begreppet autenticitet och hur det förhåller sig till Bourdieus teorier om habitus inom ramen för en måltidskontext. Studien har tagit avstamp ur netnografisk metod och naturligt förekommande data i form av reseskildringar som publicerats öppet på internet har använts för att analysera upplevd autenticitet i måltidskontext. Materialet har sedan analyserats med hjälp av kvalitativ innehållsanalys. I resultatet utkristalliseras tre huvudområden inom måltiden som förmedlare av autenticitet nämligen, mötet med den Andre, platsen och maten och drycken. Studien visar på att det kan finnas ett samband på hur vi upplever autenticiteten i en måltidskontext och hur våra förväntningar på måltiden möts av verkligheten. / When, as a young boy, I was consuming pizza, during a visit to Italy, I got the impression that the food I had didn’t taste like the pizza i was used to from my home in the suburbs of Stockholm, the pizza wasn’t genuine. How we interpret and perceive other cultures meals does largely depend on the understanding we have of the culture we are visiting. In this paper the term authenticity, within the context of a meal, was studied and how it related to the concept of habitus as described by Pierre Bourdieu. The methodology used to collect natural occurring data, to capture meal contexts, in the form of travel diaries, was netnography. The method of analysis used was qualitative content analysis. In the result, three categories were clearly identified, within the context of a meal, as carriers of authenticity. These categories were the food and drink, the meeting with the Other and the place. The study shows that there might be a connection between how we interpret authenticity in the context of a meal and how our expectations of the meal are met by reality.

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This thesis explores the afterlife of Raymond Carver in relation to a number of important writers and artists that claim Carver as an influence and who are working within countries or cultures that have recently made, or are in the process of making, the transition from embedded liberalism to neoliberalism. This project argues that while Carver's influence has been conventionally limited to what critic A.O. Scott calls 'a briefly fashionable school of experimental fiction', in recent years his writing has come to represent a 'return' to a more 'real' form of literature, one that, his advocates would argue, is more 'authentic' than other kinds of recent writing. Carver's 'authenticity' is closely tied to the idea that his fiction is a response to his own working-class experience and is seen to be more broadly synecdochic of the socioeconomic struggles faced by many other Americans during this period. Given the cultural and aesthetic differences between Carver's life and work, and those studied in the main chapters of this thesis - Jay McInerney, Haruki Murakami and Alejandro González Iñárritu - I argue that Carver's afterlife is best viewed as being a social phenomenon, born out of the social relations, historical circumstances and economic forms that resulted from the US's move to neoliberalism in the late-1970s. My introduction historicizes this transition and argues that while Carver may have struggled to make productive sense of his socioeconomic circumstance, it affected his life in very pointed and particular ways, trapping him between the conventional American dream of individual freedom and equal opportunity and the reality of inequality and social immobility. For those who claim Carver as an influence, his fiction represents a zone where the difference between hegemonic narratives and lived experience is explored and embodies a model of how to negotiate, for better or worse, the complex and shifting foundations of this recent political transition. My introduction then continues to argue that of equal importance to Carver's afterlife is the fact that, in his late-writing in particular, Carver's work represents a 'retreat' from the shortterm, competition-based notions of neoliberal labour towards a non-incorporated residual alternative that has particular artisanal tenets associated with craftsmanship. Carver's texts operate beyond their initial cultural and historical moment by becoming distinctive sites of resistance to the hegemonic norms of late-capitalism. In this way, I argue, Carver's 'authenticity' combines with a consolatory craftsmanship to become a coping mechanism that offers other writers and artists working in neoliberalism a way of navigating a world which seems to exceed the frame of conceptual mapping. By working through a series of short case studies on Stuart Evers, Denis Johnson and Ray Lawrence, and then moving on to more detailed explorations in my three central chapters, this thesis will consider how this is the case in relation to a number of important artists who claim Carver as an influence. Chapter one utilises my archival research to historicize the relationship between Carver and McInerney and argues that Carver's pedagogy pushed McInerney towards the idea that the writing process is connected to residual narratives of American craft. It also contends that many of the orthodox ideas that Carver held about literature proved particularly enabling for McInerney's novel Brightness Falls, which, through parody and satire, signals a retreat from postmodern experimentation towards a more 'Carveresque' realism. Chapter two similarly chronicles Carver's relationship with Murakami and argues that, for Murakami, Carver's fiction is an important example of writing that explores the difference between hegemonic narratives and lived experience. The chapter moves on to argue that what some critics view as Carver's reformed post-alcoholic fiction helped facilitate Murakami's own unorthodox spiritual response to the twin tragedies of the Kobe earthquake and Tokyo gas attack in 1995. Chapter three proceeds on slightly different lines in that it considers Iñárritu's Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and argues that while Iñárritu uses Carver as the foundation for his film, the film is particularly interesting because it is, itself, a study of Carver's afterlife. My final chapter suggests that while there is merit in viewing Carver as an 'authentic' artist (a kind of model for negotiating neoliberal culture), the totality of that solution is more ambivalent than his advocates might initially suggest.

Authenticity issues and fraudulent practices regarding animal products are affecting consumer confidence. Verifying the description, composition, processing or origin of foods can be challenging. To explore British and Kurdish consumers’ perceptions of kebab meat products, focus groups and questionnaire surveys were applied. About 40% of participants in the UK tend to purchase fewer processed meats after the European horsemeat scandal. Issues raised by participants indicated their concerns about the declaration of species, meat content, and other ingredients incorporated in kebab and other meat products. Lack of consumer trust has been linked to authenticity issues. Reactions towards the addition of fat-replacing inulin were positive by more than half of respondents. A further study aimed to investigate the effect of commercial inulin (CI) and Jerusalem artichoke (JA) tubers as fat replacers on the eating quality and overall acceptability of kebabs. Inulin flour prepared from JA by a simple protocol presented advantages with about 10% higher cooking yield and overall acceptability when compared with CI. Levels of inulin as low as 0.5% were detected in meat products using enzymatic assay, which could be relevant to detect additives and enforce labelling requirements. The authenticity (origin and species) was investigated in fish samples from commercial markets in Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The declared fish species was checked using DNA barcoding with Cytochrome b region. A 10 % rate of mislabelling occurred only for wild common carp (Cyprinus carpio), with 9 out of 12 discovered to be the related species goldfish (Carassius auratus), which was deemed to be accidental rather than deliberate fraud. Such occurrences were from street markets and fishmongers, while none were from supermarkets. Wild and farmed common carp samples were not discriminated by DNA barcoding. Further fingerprinting using compositional profile and nearinfrared spectroscopy (NIRS) together with chemometric analysis aimed to predict composition and discriminate between wild and farmed common carp and species identity. NIRS-predictions of composition and some macrominerals of fish have a strong correlation with the references. NIRS with chemometric analysis is promising, but were not satisfactorily accurate for micro-minerals. Even with no clear solution from principal component analysis (PCA), NIRS-PCA may contribute to discriminating sample groups, but not for authentication when used alone. Having reliable techniques for authentication of food of animal origin may discourage deliberate replacement in retail, wholesale and international trade, and may contribute to reductions in food mislabelling, therefore protecting consumers from fraudulent practices.

This PhD by publication draws on a range of publications from the last five years. These books, papers and chapters explore tourist motivation and experiences in a range of contemporary contexts. The body of work moves from mainstream discussion around sustainability and slow tourism in the tourist decision making process to the use of visual media to explore, understand and co-create tourist spaces, investigating related tourist subcultures and counter-cultural destinations. In particular the work focuses on Urban Exploration and, later, on cold war sites. My papers consider both tourist decision making in relation to planned visits, and the subsequent publication of images of places which have been visited. The work considers authenticity and visuality as components of the dissatisfaction with modern tourism, and the experiences it offers, I argue that this dissatisfaction is driving tourists to understand, engage with and experience tourist sites in new ways, seeking liminality and embodiment within the tourist experience. The study will develop this analysis through four key areas:  A clarification of the role of tourism within advanced societies and as a multidisciplinary field of research.  An evaluation of authenticity, visuality and urban exploration  A critical review of tourist consumption, prosumption and co-creation  A review of the methodologies adopted through the papers submitted for this PhD by publication to explore the mixed-method approaches to data collection and the centrality of visual methodologies and discourses in understanding tourism and tourism geography. An exploration of the role of real and virtual experiences in deconstructing and reconstructing urban tourist experiences to evaluate the factors which influence and inform tourist decision making.