Iconoclastic discourse, as a critique of ‘idols’ of various kinds, has been appropriated by a range of different thinkers and traditions – often not always explicitly religious – throughout history. One of the more recent targets of iconoclasm is metaphysics, understood as a way of doing philosophy that appeals to an ideal or transcendent ground that is used to offer a totalising explanation of ‘reality’. For some reason, the issue of ‘metaphysical idolatry’ has become entangled with the problem of ‘writing’, or ‘representation’ more generally, which is pictured in some rather strange ways by a range of thinkers and theorists – including philosophers and theologians such as Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, and Catherine Pickstock – in order to either challenge, or to be held accountable for, the ‘idolatry’ of metaphysical thought. It seems, however, that these strange pictures of writing compound rather than solve the problem of metaphysics, and it is towards pictures such as these that we direct our own iconoclastic critique. What many critics of metaphysics have failed to comprehend, we argue, is that metaphysics is a certain type of philosophical practice, and it must therefore be judged from this perspective. Idolatry itself has, since biblical times, been understood as a form of sinful practice, and unless we understand iconoclastic problems in a praxeological way, we risk basing our critical arguments on delusional assumptions. We turn to the work of thinkers as diverse as Marx, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ryle, Bourdieu, Ingold, and others, who have challenged metaphysics, and the strange pictures that metaphysical thought has inspired, through the adoption of what we call a praxeological approach. It is from this perspective, we argue, that we can make iconoclastic judgements, and justify these judgements, in a way that avoids the speculative conundrums of some other more problematic approaches.

THE DEBATES CONCERNING IDEOLOGY AND DISCOURSE HAVE A RICH AND COMPLICATED HISTORY. MOVING FROM THIS HISTORY, THIS THESIS AIMS TO INVESTIGATE HOW PIERRE BOURDIEU, ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SOCIOLOGISTS IN EUROPE, CAN BE READ ON THE DEBATES CONCERNING IDEOLOGY AND DISCOURSE.ALTHOUGH THE TERM IDEOLOGY IS NOT PARTICULARLY CENTRAL TO BOURDIEU&#039 / S WORK, WE ASSERT THAT HIS CONCEPTUAL WORLD TELLS US A STORY WHICH IS PERTINENT TO THE ONES IN IDEOLOGY AND DISCOURSE DEBATES.MOVING FROM THIS AXIS, WE SHED LIGHT UPON BOURDIEU&#039 / S CONCEPTS SUCH AS HABITUS, DOXA, FIELD, SYMBOLIC POWER AND SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE. WE EXAMINE BOTH THE ANATOMY OF THE CONCEPTS MENTIONED AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS WITH EACH OTHER.WE SHOW THAT HOW THESE CONCEPTS CAN BE OPERATIONAL FROM THE ANGLE OF THE DEBATES ON IDEOLOGY AND DISCOURSE. IN OUR STUDY, WE ARGUE THAT BOURDIEU&#039 / S CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK EXTENDS THE SOCIOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF THE DEBATES CONCERNING IDEOLOGY AND DISCOURSE AND PIERRE BOURDIEU CAN BE READ WITH THE OTHER MONUMENTAL NAMES, FROM MARX TO FOUCAULT, IN THE HISTORY OF THE DEBATES.

The main theme of this thesis is the contradiction between discourse and practice in health promotion. Many health promoters continue to exert power-over the community through top-down programming whilst at the same time using an emancipatory discourse. The thesis has addressed this contradiction in three parts. The first part determines how the emancipatroty discourse has evolved and eplores the role of social movements in the development of contemporary health discourses and their influence on the legitimisation of empowerment. Central to this discourse is the empowerment of communities. To understand the role of this concept the thesis provides an interpretation of the different meanings of power and community, and the different levels of analysis of empowerment in the context of health promotion programming. The second part identifies the nature of health programming and the dominance of top-down, and to a much lesser extent, bottom-up approaches. The thesis argues that these two approaches are not, and do not have to be, mutually exclusive. To address this issue the thesis presents a new methodology is situated within a framework developed for the accomodation of empowerment goals within health promotion programmes. The study also identifies the organisational areas of influence on the processs of community empowerment and it is these which are used for the assessment of this concept. Both the framework and the methodology address the contradiction in health promotion by making community empowerment operational within a programme context. The third part of the thesis supports the rationale for the design of the methodology with field work in rural Fijian communities. The findings are presented as a composite case study to highlight the experiences of implementing the methodolgy and the main themes that emerged during the field work. the final chapter of the thesis brings together the central themes of the study and draws from these and 'emergent agenda' as a way forward for health promotion research and practice.

It is being observed that there has been an increase in the number of urban design competitions in the last decade in Turkey. Competitions are crucial methods of enriching theoretical and practical frameworks of the disciplines by creating a platform for discursive attitudes. That reveals the importance of the notion of competition as a process covering from the decision for organizing a competition to the decision of the jury for the winner and also post-competition events such as colloquium. Due to these facts, competition process as a whole can be considered as a discursive practice where diverse discursive approaches are represented via design brief, submitted projects and colloquiums that enrich and develop both theory and practice of urban design. There is not a single definition for urban design rather there are some approaches to the field mostly pointing to its interdisciplinary features. This fact makes urban design field vulnerable and open to critiques but at the same time enables contributions from diverse disciplines. It reveals the importance of competitions which forms a platform for new ideas and perspectives. Competition, with its definite structure of rules, definite role players from diverse disciplines who are involved in the process, documents produced throughout the process by different discourses, can be conceptualized as a dimension in space-time that makes it possible to observe different discourses in the same place and at the same time, sometimes in conflict with each other, sometimes overlapped onto each other and sometimes juxtaposed. Therefore competition is a platform where different discursive formations, with their objects, enunciative modalities, concepts and strategies, are exercised and practiced by human subject. When considered from that point of view, instead of focusing on the inception of urban design in Turkey, when the term is conceptualized, how and when competitions were utilized and instrumentalized in spreading the term, as a consequence how this struggle enabled positions for the field can be diagnosed more explicitly. The aim of this dissertation is to analyze urban design competition processes via design briefs, questions-answers, winning projects, jury reports and if available evaluation articles and colloquium reports with the adoption of archaeological methodology of Michel Foucault, discursive formation. His methodological approach in his book Archaeology of Knowledge(1972), has been adopted to construct a conceptual framework within that context, the study has focused on national, open, single phase competitions containing the term &ldquo / urban design&rdquo / in its announced title and it has been found that there are 35 cases starting from the year 1980. Design briefs, questions-answers, prize-winning projects and jury reports were analyzed, in addition survey and interview methods are utilized to reveal the discursive formations within the competition process. It is found that this is an ongoing process of forming a discursive formation when urban design is concerned and competitions play a significant role in framing such attitudes. Such a discursive analysis made within the context of competitions will help us to draw a general framework to reveal the discursive formations in the field that will help us to understand its position, grasp the underlying facts behind these processes of Urban Design Competitions in Turkey and this will give us the chance to rethink and define new frameworks and discursive formations to establish new perspectives and understandings of urban design in Turkey in the context of competitions.

Le quartier Saint-Henri dans le sud-ouest de Montréal est marqué depuis plusieurs décennies par un processus de gentrification aux conséquences néfastes pour les populations vulnérables, ainsi que plus récemment d’une importante croissance des espaces verts durable afin de favoriser leurs accessibilités à ces mêmes populations. Or, en cherchant à répondre au problème d’inégalité environnementale lié à l’accessibilité, ces espaces verts influencés par l’idéal de durabilité peuvent aussi contribuer à un phénomène d’(éco)gentrification qui à son tour peut engendrer une injustice environnementale attachée aux déplacements des populations vulnérables. Pour comprendre cette problématique, ce mémoire illustre la relation entre (éco)gentrification, développement durable et verdissement des espaces urbains et les conséquences de celle-ci sur les populations vulnérables. La réflexion entourant cette triple relation permet aussi de mettre en lumière un écart entre discours et pratiques d’accessibilité aux espaces verts à partir de la mobilisation d’une approche de justice environnementale critique. En conséquence, la méthodologie de recherche est construite pour vérifier la présence de cet écart dans le contexte spécifique de Saint-Henri et plus particulièrement du triangle vert observé lors du terrain de recherche. Cette dernière mobilise une analyse qualitative transversale des discours et des observations de comportements non verbaux. L’analyse et l’interprétation des données collectées démontrent la présence d’un écart entre les discours et les pratiques d’accessibilité aux espaces verts causés par le phénomène d’(éco)gentrification. Cet écart ancré dans une injustice environnementale vient paradoxalement favoriser le renforcement d’une inégalité environnementale lié à la limitation de l’accès des espaces verts aux populations vulnérables et donc à l’amélioration de leurs conditions de vie. / The Saint-Henri district in the southwest of Montreal has been marked for several decades by a process of gentrification with harmful consequences for vulnerable populations, as well as more recently by an important growth of sustainable green spaces in order to favour their accessibility to these same populations. Yet, in seeking to address the problem of environmental inequity related to accessibility, these green spaces influenced by the ideal of sustainability may also contribute to a phenomenon of (eco)gentrification, which in turn may create environmental injustice related to the displacement of vulnerable neighborhood populations. To understand this issue, this brief illustrates the relationship between (eco)gentrification, sustainable development and greening of urban spaces and the consequences of this on vulnerable populations. The reflection surrounding this triple relationship also allows us to highlight a gap between the discourse and practices of accessibility to green spaces by mobilizing a critical environmental justice approach. Consequently, the research methodology is built to verify the presence of this gap in the specific context of Saint-Henri and more particularly of the green triangle observed during the research fieldwork. It mobilizes a cross-sectional qualitative analysis of discourses and observations of non-verbal behaviors. The analysis and interpretation of the collected data demonstrate the presence of a gap between the discourses and the practices of accessibility to green spaces caused by the phenomenon of (eco)gentrification. This gap, rooted in environmental injustice, paradoxically favors the reinforcement of an environmental inequality linked to the limitation of access to green spaces for vulnerable populations, and thus to the improvement of their living conditions.