This dissertation, flying between aesthetics, visual arts, and political/cultural/historical issues, traverses lines of stratification, and (de/re)territorialization to examine uncertainties in making and teaching art. In keeping with a conviction that nothing is unitary, that everything is always connected to countless others, Deleuze and Guattari’s metaphor of rhizome is the central organizing element in my work. My research questions what is meant by creativity, whether assumed to be a gift, talent, or innate quality, and what is meant by teaching art in university, which assumes creativity can be organized and developed. Differing discourses of creativity exhibit a general continuity of agreement that creation takes place within chaos, and forms where chaos and order meet each other. I posit that contemporary discourses of creativity hegemonically reinforce capitalism as a system of nomadic power and of constant de/reterritorialization. All, in a capitalist system, is linked to the construction of the urge to consume, and therefore the acceleration of capitalism necessitates an increase in the rate at which we manufacture venues for consumption, even in such innovative ways as by making creativity itself a consumable package. How do we resist this? From a Deleuzian point of view, creation is a becoming event, as destructive as productive. Creativity, which is about freedom, occurs on a plane of immanence which sifts chaos and multiplicity together to break lines. Teaching, however, is on a “plane of organization” where rigid and dichotomous segmentarities of personal and social life operate. I suggest that artistic knowledge can be theorized and taught, in the Schönian sense, but creativity, a matter of “lines of flight,” is fundamentally unrelated to artistic knowledge. I argue that what can be taught is technique, theory, and the material language of media, and that these should be taught as explicit professional objectives, not as “creativity.” We can teach the value of breaking away from the false seriousness of creativity, with reference to Dada. We can teach the enjoyment of chaos and the confrontation of it. We can teach resistance. We can teach a love of complexities. We can teach play. / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2008-05-16 09:14:08.09

No / In many respects, the so-called dementia community has arrived rather belatedly at a debate on rights and citizenship in relation to dementia. Only recently have we begun to witness the emergence of policy and analysis where questions concerning rights, equality and social participation are being explicitly addressed. In this context, much can potentially be learned from the earlier campaigns for equality and the critical response they have subsequently engendered. Indeed, it might be argued that a more critical level or layer of analysis is largely missing from the field of dementia studies that only becomes clear when we draw comparisons to these other struggles for emancipation. It is this gap, or critical silence, in the field of dementia studies that we wish to consider in this symposium. Our intention is to make the case for a more radical critique of the social construction, conditions and politics of dementia. The papers in this symposium represent an effort to open up a critical space to reflect upon the positioning of people with dementia as part of a wider social, historical and cultural response to debility in later life. This wider context provides the basis to examine a discourse that remains saturated with a medicalised logic of individual deficit, and is increasingly cast in a binary relationship to notions of ‘healthy ageing’ and to an unspecified and unmarked norm of ‘able-mindedness’. We are interested in the ways that particular discourses surrounding dementia have closed down or circumvented ‘alternative realities’. How, for example has the recent struggle for acceptance and inclusion driven by a neoliberal politics of normalisation overshadowed a politics of ‘anti-normalisation’ that has previously marked the emergence of queer studies, radical feminism and crip/critical disability studies, all of which have evolved at the margins of an increasingly mainstream discourse of rights and recognition? This symposium is then a first step toward a more critical approach within dementia studies and will stake out new territory for the field while illustrating the benefits of learning from other radical and critical movements. / Conference website: http://www.aginggraz2017.com/conference-schedule

Yes / In recent years there has been a growing interest in person-centred, ‘living well’ approaches to dementia, often taking the form of important efforts to engage people with dementia in a range of creative, arts-based interventions such as dance, drama, music, art and poetry. Such practices have been advanced as socially inclusive activities that help to affirm personhood and redress the biomedical focus on loss and deficit. However, in emphasizing more traditional forms of creativity associated with the arts, more mundane forms of creativity that emerge in everyday life have been overlooked, specifically as regards how such creativity is used by people living dementia and by their carers and family members as a way of negotiating changes in their everyday lives. In this paper, we propose a critical approach to understanding such forms of creativity in this context, comprised of six dimensions: everyday creativity; power relations; ways to operationalise creativity; sensory and affective experience; difference; and reciprocity. We point towards the potential of these dimensions to contribute to a reframing of debates around creativity and dementia.

This study contributes to the available knowledge on the difficulty of using the Bible as a source in Christian ethics. In the study, the use of the Old Testament in Christian ethics is explored and analysed. The central research question is: What makes the use of the Old Testament in Christian ethics so difficult? The research findings reveal that the relationship between ethics and culture is problematic and contributes to the challenge of using the Old Testament in Christian ethics. The study is descriptive and is informed by research that has been done in the fields of Biblical Criticism and Christian ethics. The study focuses on methods and traditions of Biblical Criticism and Christian ethics that can play a role in interpreting biblical narratives in the Old Testament. It is important to look at the various tools and methods of Biblical Criticism to interpret biblical narratives and broaden our knowledge of biblical texts. Relevant approaches in Christian ethics can be useful in making pertinent contributions on moral issues since the focus is on character and community, and biblical texts can be used to shape moral identity. To demonstrate how a specific text in the Old Testament can be used in Christian ethics, the narrative of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 is discussed in terms of character and community. The objective of this part of the study is therefore to show how Biblical Criticism and Christian ethics can be used when interpreting a text. The main argument is that Christians often find it difficult to integrate ethics and culture because the relationship between ethics and culture is problematic. The challenge is how one should interpret ethics, in this case Christian, in a particular culture as it plays an integral part in identity and moral formation. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / lk2014 / Dogmatics and Christian Ethics / MA / Unrestricted

The aim of this study is, from a norm-critical approach, to find, investigate and analyse human representation in the visual culture of one preschool in order to understand if the children enrolled are represented or not. The research questions are: In what ways is there imagery of human representations in images and materials designed for play? What skin-colors and origins are dominant in the data collected? We carried out a qualitative study in the form of visual ethnography. This method allowed us to use a combination of different data collection tools such as photography and ethnographic field notes to collect our data. The photographs we took of images and material used for play, was then analysed through semiotic picture analysis. The focus was to see which skin-color and origin that was dominant in the photographs of human representations. The result of the study, show that human representation is found in many variations such as, books, board games, puzzles and materials for educational use. The study also show that the vast majority of representations, displayed people of white skin and Swedish origin. In discussing these results we argued that the selected preschool is imbued by the norm of whiteness that is also dominant in the Swedish society. From a postcolonial perspective, we find that this norm and its underlying assumption of racial differences forms part of a historically rooted structural system of values that has evolved in Sweden during hundreds of years. The impact these results have in a preschool context is that children don’t have the same opportunity to identification through the visual culture at the preschool. We conclude that this can, in the long run, create problems since representation or lack of representation is linked to marginalization of whole social groups due to not having the same requisites to take on for example positions of power. We have a strong believe that if the topic of human representation can be enlightened in preschools and schools, teachers can work towards offering all children the same potential for positive identification in preschool.

Submitted by VINÍCIUS ALEIXO GERBASI null (vinicius.gerbasi@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-05-23T15:30:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Vinicius Dissertação 22.03-FINAL------.pdf: 1316323 bytes, checksum: eb94df6b2fecfb215c054cd4cc2d4a92 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Felipe Augusto Arakaki (arakaki@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-05-24T12:22:35Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 gerbasi_va_me_mar.pdf: 1316323 bytes, checksum: eb94df6b2fecfb215c054cd4cc2d4a92 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-05-24T12:22:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 gerbasi_va_me_mar.pdf: 1316323 bytes, checksum: eb94df6b2fecfb215c054cd4cc2d4a92 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-05-10 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Apresenta uma discussão teórico-crítica sobre a informação e o conhecimento no contexto de reestruturação produtiva, utilizando-se, para tanto, o referencial teórico da Economia Política da Comunicação (EPC), bem como as contribuições de outros teóricos de áreas afins, como o capitalismo cognitivo. Os conceitos de trabalho vivo e de informação e conhecimento como insumos econômicos serão mostrados. Discute os novos formatos organizacionais e produtivos baseados nas tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TIC), esses, por sua vez, caracterizam o paradigma de acumulação do capital. Realiza uma reflexão acerca da implementação do programa Sociedade da Informação no Brasil. Esse programa se deu a partir de profundas transformações advindas da necessidade de abertura de capitais com a reestruturação dos mercados, em contraposição à inclusão de indivíduos dos países emergentes, como o Brasil. Ante o novo paradigma de acumulação do capital discutido no texto, verifica-se que as relações de produção e consumo, como setores de telecomunicações e outras tecnologias, baseadas na importância dos ativos intangíveis, levam à exclusão e à desigualdade entre países e regiões de um mesmo país. / This work propose a critical and theoretical discussion about information and knowledge in context of restructuring productivity. To achieve this objectives, discuss two distinct theoretical references: the Political Econonomy of Communication (EPC) and Cognitive Capitalism. The concepts of living labor and knowledge and information as economics inputs are regard. The discussion aim to new organizational and prodution formats based on information and communication Technologies (ICT), characterize the capital accumulation paradigm. In order to demostrate this considerations, propose a reflection of the implementation of Information Society program in Brazil. This program took place from profund changes from the need for openness of capital to the restructuring of markets, as opposed to the inclusion of individuals in emerging countries like Brazil. Therefore, the accumulation of capital paradigm discussed in the text, shows how relations of production and consumption, such as telecommunications and other technologies based on the importance of intangible assets, lead to exclusion and inequality between countries and regions.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’étudier les discours et les idéologies linguistiques présentes dans l’enseignement du français à l’Université de Moncton, en Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick (Canada), région francophone minoritaire. A travers les concepts clés que sont les « idéologies », le « discours », les « normes linguistiques », l’objectif est de comprendre quels sont les discours et les idéologies qui circulent dans l’enseignement du français. Quels discours sont légitimes, dominants ? Comment et pourquoi certains deviennent hégémoniques ? Quels enjeux de pouvoir, quels intérêts, des acteurs sociaux (professeurs, étudiants, personnels) révèlent-ils ? Et de quelles idéologies sont-ils les actualisations ? Comment et pourquoi ces idéologies sont investies par ces acteurs, qui en a le bénéfice ? De manière générale, il s’agit d’interroger le rôle de l’enseignement du français dans la construction idéologique : c’est-à-dire quelles idéologies l’enseignement contribue-t-il à construire / diffuser / reproduire ? Il s’agit aussi d’interroger le rapport à la langue des personnes, en regard des changements certes linguistiques, mais aussi économiques, sociaux, politiques.Ces questions ont été investiguées au moyen d’une enquête ethnographique d’un an dans les locaux de l’Université de Moncton. Différentes méthodes de recueil de données ont été mises en place : observation participante (notamment des cours de français obligatoires, qui ont été suivis durant un semestre), entretiens avec les étudiants et les professeurs, collecte de documents et de rapports internes (pour saisir les aspects institutionnels). L’ensemble des données forment un corpus de discours analysé au moyen de l’analyse critique de discours et de l’analyse argumentative de discours. Il s’agit donc d’une démarche interprétative, la mieux à même selon moi, de proposer une vision fine de dynamiques sociolinguistiques complexes.Les analyses révèlent une volonté d’enseigner un français dit standard, forme idéalisée, supposée stable et plus ou moins universelle, ce qui lui confèrerait une importance et une utilité plus grande dans l’espace public. Or, dans le même temps, la conscience aigüe des enjeux identitaires derrière les questions linguistiques impose aux professeurs de traiter la question des vernaculaires, et notamment du chiac. Quelle place leur faire ? Comment les gérer en classe ? En d’autres termes, la présence à la fois d’une idéologie du standard très implantée et de discours liés à la diversité linguistique et à la protection des identités, crée une série de tensions et de négociations qui sont analysées dans cette thèse.Suivant l’orientation que je donne à l’étude des idéologies, ces tensions sont analysées en termes de rapports de pouvoir institutionnalisés et de processus de domination, et vues comme potentiellement créatrices de discriminations et d’inégalités. Ces dynamiques sont observées dans leur rapport avec une situation de minorisation, c’est-à-dire en ce que la minorité (au sens démographique du terme) peut être le résultat de rapports de forces, mais aussi dans sa capacité à en générer d’autres ou à en dissimuler. / The purpose of this thesis is to study the discourses and the linguistic ideologies present in the teaching of French at the Université de Moncton, in New Brunswick’s Acadia (Canada), a francophone minority region. Through the key concepts that are “ideologies”, “discourses” and “linguistic norms”, the aim is to understand what discourses and ideologies are circulating in French teaching. What discourses are legitimate, dominating? How and why do some of them become hegemonic? What stakes, interests, do the social actors reveal (professors, students, and staff)? Of what ideologies are these discourses the actualization? How and why are these ideologies invested by these actors, who benefits from them? In general, it is a matter of questioning the role of French teaching in the construction of ideologies: that is to say what ideologies teaching participates to build / spread / reproduce? Furthermore, the relation of people to language should be questioned, in regards to the changes that are indeed linguistic, but also economic, social, political.These questions have been investigated by a year-long ethnographic inquiry in the premises of the Université de Moncton. Different methods of data gathering were set up: participant observation (especially of the obligatory French courses during a whole semester), interviews with students and professors, collecting documents and internal reports (to grasp the institutional aspects). All these data form a corpus of discourses, analysed using critical discourse analysis and argumentative discourse analysis. It is, then, an interpretative approach, which is in my opinion, the best to offer an accurate view of complex sociolinguistic dynamics.These analyses reveal a willingness to teach a French called “standard”, an idealized form, supposed to be stable and more or less universal, which could grant it an importance and a greater utility in public space. But at the same time, the acute awareness of identity issues behind linguistic subjects requires teachers to address the “vernaculars” issue, especially the Chiac. What place could they have? How to handle them in class? In other words, the presence of both a very implemented standard ideology and discourses about linguistic diversity and the protection of identities, creates a series of tensions and negotiations that are analysed in this thesis.Following the orientation I give to the study of ideologies, these tensions will be analysed in terms of institutionalized power relations and domination processes, and seen as potentially generative of discriminations and inequalities. These dynamics are observed in their link to a situation of minorization. That is to say, the way minority (in its demographic meaning) can be the result of power relations, but also has a capacity to generate or dissimulate other power relations.

The purpose of this study is to examine how female soldiers view their role as soldiers and what they perceive as good soldier qualities to see if it differentiates from the traditional view of what a soldier perceived as. The study will also deal with the female soldier’s perception of equality within the Swedish military. To gather empirical material the study has uses a qualitative method consisting of five semi structured interviews with the female soldiers. All respondents work in the same group as medic soldiers and are at the start of their soldier career. The theories that have been used to analyse the material gathered from the respondents are of hegemonic masculinity and critical vs gender neutral approach. Within hegemonic masculinity different archetypes exist in a hierarchy, for this study the archetypes have been stripped down to the warrior hero to fit the framework of the military organisation. The warrior hero will be used to analyse the respondents view of themselves as soldiers and the qualities that should be expected of a soldier. Critical vs gender neutral theory will be used to examen the responder’s relation to the organisation.The result for the study is that the view of the female soldiers differed in some aspects from the traditional view of the warrior hero. The respondents also had a joint view of the Swedish military as gender neutral.

I dagens samhälle matas barn med texter i olika format, både i skolan och på fritiden. Det är därför betydelsefullt att lärare i grundskolan blir medvetna om hur de kan lära elever att skapa ett kritiskt förhållningssätt, critical literacy, med utgångspunkt i elevnära texter. Syftet med studien är att bidra med kunskap om hur verksamma lärare i grundskolan förhåller sig till begreppen critical literacy och elevnära texter. Fem lärare har deltagit i en intervjustudie och med hjälp av följande frågor har syftet besvarats: - Hur uppfattar lärarna critical literacy? - Hur uppfattar lärarna elevnära texter? - Vilka elevnära texter använder sig lärarna av i undervisningen? - Hur arbetar lärarna med critical literacy med utgångspunkt i elevnära texter? Resultatet visar att både critical literacy och elevnära texter är begrepp som är svåra att definiera och kan tolkas på olika sätt, därför blev svaren varierande. Men det ansågs viktigt att ge elever critical literacy, kritiskt förhållningssätt, både mot elevnära texter men även mot exempelvis läromedelstexter. / In today's society, children are fed with texts in different formats, both in school and at leisure. It is therefore important that teachers in primary school become aware of how they can teach students to create a critical attitude, critical literacy based on student related texts. The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge of how primary school teachers relate to the concepts critical literacy and student-related texts. Five teachers have participated in an interview study and with the help of the following questions the purpose has been answered: - How do the teachers perceive critical literacy? - How do the teachers perceive to student - related texts? - Which student texts do the teachers use in the classroom? - How do teachers work with critical literacy based on student-related texts? The result shows that both critical literacy and student-related texts are hard-defined and interpreted in separate ways and therefore the answers were varied. However, it was considered that it is important to give the students critical literacy, critical attitude, both towards student-oriented texts, but also against, for example, teaching material texts.

The purpose of this study is to reach a deeper understanding of what constitutes the critical approach, this by exploring the variations of teachers’ perceptions of the critical approach, specifically teachers of Social Studies at Swedish Upper Secondary School. The critical approach is expressed in Curriculum for the Upper Secondary School (2011) under the section Aim of the subject for Social Studies. The importance of a critical approach is seen in the light of the development of digitalization and the extent of the flow of information. Teachers have a vital role in how the curriculum is interpreted; interpretations which in turn are significant for how it is put into practice in their teaching. Accordingly, I argue that this requires surveys were teachers’ perceptions of the curriculum are distinguished. The research questions in this study are: I) how do teachers in Social Studies at Swedish Upper Secondary School perceive the critical approach? II) What didactic methods are used in teaching to develop students’ critical approach? This study applies a phenomenographic method and theory, which is based on examining different perceptions of phenomena, in this case the critical approach. To distinguish the different perceptions of the phenomena in question, four teachers in Social Studies have been interviewed. The aim of a phenomenographic study is to establish description categories that capture the inherent core of different perceptions of phenomena and the variations between them. The study results in three description categories: I) a critical approach as a result of scientific assessment and credibility examination, II) a critical approach as a recurring process of reflection regarding individual and context and III) a critical approach as expressed through active participation and meaningful social life. The result reveals that there are different ways of perceiving a critical approach in Social Studies at Swedish Upper Secondary Schools, which affects how it is taught in the classroom.