Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-58).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-285)

This project documents the complex and interwoven relationship between mediated representations and lived experiences of white working-class people—a task inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in a white working-class family and neighborhood and how she came to understand herself through watching films and television shows. Theoretically guided by Foucault’s recognition that people are constituted in and through discourse, the author specifically analyzes how reality television articulates certain ideas about white working-class people and how those who identify as members of this population, including the author, negotiate such articulations. A focus on white working-class people is important considering their increasing presence in reality television and the ways in which they are frequently ridiculed in U.S. cultural discourse. Through a combination of qualitative methods, including critical autoethnography, interviews, interactive focus groups, and close textual analysis, the author focuses on three findings: (1) the lived experiences of white working-class people are complex and can be used to challenge essentializing stereotypes about this population prevalent in the media; (2) films and television shows are polysemic as evidenced by the varied responses of white working-class people; and (3) listening to those who are implicated in media sites can render more complex the analyses and critiques scholars provide as well as contribute to the recent increase of media studies that speak across multiple methods and boundaries.

There is a strain of curriculum theory especially since the reconceptionalist movement that applies existential philosophy to educational issues and questions. There is also a related branch of curriculum theory that looks especially at existentialist theology to cast light on curriculum issues from a more religious slant. Both of these strains of analysis are rooted in Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism and existential theology (Huebner, 1999; Tillich, 1948). The educational implications of the works of Kierkegaard are a subject that has been virtually unexamined in either educational or Kierkegaardian scholarship except by two scholars whose works are already 40 years old. A pedagogy of liminality aims at empowering the teacher and student to make what is being studied in the classroom something that each student will appropriate in her own way. The teacher facilitates this process by never letting the student rest for very long in any particular solution to a problem. Rather the teacher positions the student on a landscape which is filled with paradoxes. Each solution breeds a new set of questions and often equally viable though opposite solutions. The teacher thus constantly places herself and her student between dialectical poles, always reaching higher and higher syntheses in recursive process. The purpose of a pedagogy of liminality is twofold. First, it prevents the curriculum from becoming an inert object. It becomes a dynamic growing thing. Second, it requires the student to never rest in any so-called objective answer but to always be striving towards a higher answer and an even better set of questions. In this way the teacher and student in collective discourse are each appropriating the discourse uniquely in enriching their life narratives. This is consistent with Kierkegaard's primary emphasis on subjectivity and his view of objectivity as secondary and always ideally in the context and service of subjectivity. This dissertation is done in the hybrid style. The main part of the work is designed as a journal article.

Ancient Maya iconography primarily depicted elite individuals in idealized states of being and rationalized their power and authority through ideological concepts and otherworld beings. This study aims to reexamine previous assumptions made concerning the Quadripartite Badge. This motif is examined based on iconographic associations and contexts, as well as temporal and spatial distributions. The dataset was created from currently identified examples of the Quadripartite Badge, although only a select group is extensively examined. The spread of this motif is demonstrated through time and its spatial dispersals are noted for their political consequences. Indicating the liminal status of its user, the Badge is frequently placed in scenes of transformation, accompanying rites of passage. It is also established that as elite women became more prominent, women from Tikal and Calakmul circulated this iconography through marriage alliances, as seen in the number of newly ‘arrived’ women carrying the Badge. Other iconographic associations of the Badge revealed strong ties with the Maize God and the cyclical nature of agriculture. For the continuation of the maize cycle and renewal of universal forces, sacrifice was required; the completion of ritual sacrifice was demonstrated through the depiction of the Quadripartite Badge. This one expression of power simultaneously validated earthly and otherworldy authority, ensuring the continuation of the cosmos and the perpetuation of the sun and maize cycles

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The peaks and dips of the week has been the focus of both research, folk lore and popular culture. Research has been carried out in many different disciplines such as psychology, economics and medicine just to name a few and spawning the Day-of-the-week-effect, the Thank God it’s Friday-phenomenon and the Blue Monday-hypothesis. However, research concerning these weekly matters set in a preschool context is scarce or nonexistent. The present state of the Swedish preschool bear hard on both personnel and children. Using the rhythm of the week as a starting point for discussions can be a fruitful way to address these matters.The aim of this study is to reach an understanding of weekly rhythms in preschool by focusing on Mondays and Fridays. The research questions of the study is: 1) Which are the characteristic features of the preschool planning that is prominent in Mondays and Fridays? 2) How do preschool personnel reason about Mondays and Fridays? 3) How are Mondays and Fridays made in the preschools organizing of activities and in the interaction between children and colleagues?This study’s empirical material consists mainly of group interviews with preschool personnel but also written weekly plans from the preschool groups. The theoretical framework for the analysis is built on the concepts of rhythm, liminality and schedule provided by Lefevbre, Zerubavel, Fraenkel and Turner. The study indicates that the days of the week are affecting the preschool personnel and also how the organizing of the week is made. Much of the planned groups and activities are scheduled for Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, thus leaving Mondays and Fridays on their own on each side of the weekend. This way Mondays and Fridays stands out, whether it has to do with the Blue Monday/Thank God it’s Friday-phenomenon’s or not. Perhaps Stormy Monday would be a more accurate description of the Monday in a preschool setting? This study has merely scraped the surface of the subject, which could be further looked into by examining the children’s view or making a more in-depth examination of how the rhythms of the preschool week is appearing in the daily activities.

This doctoral thesis addresses how mobile project workers; technical consultants working in projects, experience and deal with project-based work. The thesis consists of a compilation of five papers and an extended summary. It is based on three qualitative studies including methods like interviews, diaries, and observations. The thesis adopts and develops the conceptual lens of liminality. The results of this thesis show that mobile project workers use four different practices to deal with liminality at work. Furthermore, the thesis develops the framework of “liminality competence,” indicating that some mobile project workers are better at utilizing their liminal positions than others. The thesis also studies how liminality competence is developed and how formal training programs influence the liminal position for mobile project workers. / I denna avhandling studeras hur mobila projektarbetare, i detta fall teknikkonsulter som utför arbete i kundprojekt, upplever och hanterar projektbaserat arbete. Avhandlingen presenterar tre kvalitativa studier som bygger på intervjuer, dagboksanteckningar och deltagande observationer. Avhandlingen består av fem artiklar och en kappa. För denna studie används begreppet liminalitet som fångar den mobilitet och organisatoriska tvetydighet som föreligger i mobila projektarbetares arbetssituation. Avhandlingen utvecklar liminalitetsbegreppet ytterligare relaterat till liminella positioner i arbetslivet. Analysen identifierar fyra liminalitetspraktiker som mobila projektarbetare använder för att hantera sin arbetssituation. Dessutom utvecklas begreppet liminalitetskompetens. Detta begrepp används för att förstå hur mobila projektarbetare hanterar sin liminella arbetssituation och vilka skillnader som finns vad gäller förmågan att hantera liminalitet i arbetet. Avhandlingen undersöker också hur sådan kompetens utvecklas och hur formella lärandeprogram kan påverka liminalitetssituationen och liminalitetskompetensen hos mobila projektmedarbetare.

This thesis explores the experiences of applicants for Refugee Status in the United Kingdom who had, at the time of the research, waited for between two and nine years for the conclusion of the asylum process. Despite extensive lamentation of the delays endured by asylum applicants in having their claims assessed, little social scientific scholarship has substantively and critically engaged with this phenomenon, or even with waiting as a universal condition. The present study fills this gap in knowledge, conceptualising waiting as an informative, consequential phase in the quest for protection, hope and security. The study is based on twelve months of participant observation among asylum seekers living in Glasgow under the dispersal regime. Narratives and tacit aspects of everyday life are presented to both draw a multi-dimensional ethnographic picture and acknowledge the asylum seekers’ agency. Their waiting entails a focus on negative and positive, concrete and symbolic objects, which are located in the future. However, their inability to affect or predict the arrival of these objects produces uncertainty and passivity. Asylum seekers narrate overwhelmingly negative experiences of asylum policies, such as dishonouring encounters with immigration authorities; social dislocation; enforced poverty; interrupted life cycles; and an inability to settle and belong in the UK. Yet despite the mutually reinforcing effects of UK policy and of waiting, asylum seekers have benefited from formal support structures provided under Scottish policy. Individuals have been able to re-construct social ties; pursue educational opportunities; enhance personal security; gain greater control over their ‘cases’; and undertake selective socio-cultural adaptation. They have also utilised a discourse of ‘integration’ circulating in Scotland to garner public support for their struggles for recognition and the right to remain. The thesis concludes by reflecting on changes occurring after a form of Leave to Remain was granted, and assesses the extent to which people were able to realise the ‘normal lives’ for which they had been waiting.