No description available.

No description available.

Gideon Mendel’s ongoing photographic work documenting HIV/ AIDS, first started in 1993, has seen shifts not only in production but also in the author’s representation of his subjects. This paper looks at three texts of Mendel’s work, taken from three different stages of Mendel’s career and reads the shifting paradigm taking Mendel from photojournalist to activist armed with documentary photography as a tool of social change. This thesis explores how different positionings as an author and different representations of the subjects, living and dying, with HIV/AIDS influences meaning-making, and what that means for documentary photography as a tool of social change.

Trots att musik främst är ämnat för örat verkar dagens liveframträdanden mer visuellt stimulerande än någonsin. Livekonserten har utvecklats till en show för publiken att se på likväl som lyssna till, vilket ställer höga krav på visuell framställning. För att undersöka vilken roll seendet spelar för uppfattning av livemusik fick en publik uppleva det omvända, en konsert bakom ögonbindel. Om det visuella tas bort; hur uppfattas liveframträdandet då?Den här studien använder kvalitativa intervjustudier med både artist och publik. Resultaten visar på hur ögonen tenderar att fungera som medium inte bara för att uppfatta musiken, utan också för att förstå sig själv och sin roll i den sociala institution som bildas under en konsert. När visuell uppfattning inte är möjlig tvingas deltagarna omförhandla hur de ser på sig själva som individer och som en del av ett kollektiv. / Although music is primarily intended for the ear, today's live performances seem more visually stimulating than ever. Live performance has evolved into a show for the audience to watch as well as listen to, increasing the demands on visual representation. To further todays understaning of the role vision plays in perception of live music, an audience got to experience the opposite; a live concert behind the blindfold. If visual perception is removed; what does the audience make of the performance? By conducting qualitative interviews with both performer and audience it is possible to distinguish tendencies that show how the eyes act as medium not only to perceive the live performance, but also to aid audience perception of self during the social activity that consitutes a live concert. When visual perception is not possible, the participants are forced to renegotiate how they see themselves as individuals and as part of a collective.

The purpose of this study is to investigate meaning-making in pupils' multimodal narratives that have emerged in aesthetic learning processes. To, with the support of ethnographic methods and theories of narrative and multimodality, study the resources and strategies used by the pupils. The study also examines how teachers and educators make use of aesthetic learning processes and multimodal narrative in practice-based reality. The empirical material is based on four cultural and narrator projects that have been conducted in a collaboration between nine-year compulsory schools and Kulturskolan (School of Culture) in a municipality in northern Sweden. The projects included pupils from the preschool level up to and including 5th grade in the compulsory school level. These projects were monitored for a total of three semesters. The pervading goal in all projects was to stimulate language development and language use with the help of imagination and creativity, where the pupils' own creation was the key focus. The empirical material consists of observations, log book entries and interviews with teachers, educators and pupils, as well as the pupils' own pictures and texts. The results show that the pupils exemplify from the fictional world. Although they do not directly say that they draw inspiration from computer, television and film media, this is made visible in and embodies their narratives. The pupils' multimodal narratives show that they create meaning by mixing fiction with a world recognisable to them, where fictional characters live a life that they can identify with. The meaning-making strategies that emerge in the pupils' narratives are: identification, gender stereotypes, humour, structures from the horror and fairy-tale genres and remediation. In the interviews with the teachers it is noted that the use of narrative has declined in teaching. Reasons cited include a lack of time and the stress of everyday life, as well as the individualisation which has led to a reduction in the collaboration between pupils and thus the use of narrative. The teachers, however, expressed great enthusiasm for providing pupils with the tools to develop different narrative forms, a way to create meaningful contexts for the pupils. / Syftet med studien är att undersöka meningsskapande i elevers multimodala berättelser som har tillkommit i estetiska lärprocesser. Att med stöd av etnografiska metoder och teorier om berättande och multimodalitet studera vilka resurser och strategier eleverna använder. I studien undersöks också hur lärare och pedagoger använder sig av estetiska lärprocesser och multimodalt berättande i den praxisnära verkligheten. Det empiriska materialet bygger på fyra kultur- och berättarprojekt som bedrivits i samarbete mellan grundskolor och Kulturskolan i en kommun i norra Sverige. I projekten deltog elever från förskoleklass till och med årskurs 5 i grundskolan. Projekten följdes under sammanlagt tre terminer. Genomgående mål i samtliga projekt var att stimulera till språkutveckling och språkanvändning med hjälp av fantasi och kreativitet, där elevernas eget skapande stod i centrum. Det empiriska materialet består av observationer, loggboksanteckningar och intervjuer med lärare, pedagoger och elever samt elevernas egna bilder och texter. Resultaten visar att eleverna exemplifierar från fiktionens värld. Även om de inte direkt uttrycker att de hämtar inspiration från dator, tv och filmmediet, synliggörs och konkretiseras det i deras berättelser. Elevernas multimodala berättelser visar att de skapar mening genom att blanda fiktion med en för dem igenkännbar värld, där de fiktiva karaktärerna lever ett liv som de kan identifiera sig med. De meningsskapande strategier som framträder i elevernas berättelser är: identifikation, stereotypa könsmönster, humor, strukturer från skräck- och sagogenren samt remediering. I intervjuerna med lärarna framkommer att berättandet har minskat i undervisningen. Orsaker som lyfts fram är tidsbrist och stress i vardagen, och individualiseringen som medfört att samarbetet mellan eleverna har minskat och därmed också berättandet. Lärarna kände dock en stor entusiasm för att ge eleverna verktyg att utveckla olika berättarformer, ett sätt att skapa meningsfulla sammanhang för eleverna. / Godkänd; 2014; 20141015 (mart); Nedanstående person kommer att disputera för avläggande av filosofie doktorsexamen, Namn: Märtha Andersson Ämne: Svenska med didaktisk inriktning / Swedish and Education Avhandling: Berättandets möjligheter Multimodala berättelser och estetiska lärprocesser Opponent: Professor emerita Lena Kåreland, Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen, Uppsala universitet Ordförande: Professor Anders Öhman, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper, Umeå universitet Tid: Fredag den 12 december 2014, kl. 13.00 Plats: D770, Luleå tekniska universitet

The marginalisation of palliative and pastoral care practices by conventional approaches to care for terminally ill patients, motivated the research curiosity. The significance of terminal patient's spirituality, their language practices and communities of concern are endorsed as being the major contributing factor to meaningful 'living' with terminal illness. Listening to stories has been the qualitative research practice, revealing meaning-making, quest stories. Feminist theology and post-modern ideas and discourses have assisted me, and the participants, in the deconstruction of power, patriarchy and dualism as the primary contributing factors to marginalisation of people due to illness, race, gender, poverty, culture and education. Pastoral care practices and feminist theology have guided us to emphasise the necessity to recognise the God of Grace as an important part to ensuring holistic patient care. Recognising the 'God-Self, respectful narrative and pastoral care practices paved the way to honour sacred spaces and voice stories of terminal illness. / Practical Theology / M.Th (Specialisation Pastoral Therapy)

This postmodern dissertation examines three individual experiences of violence in South Africa, using the qualitative research method of heuristics. Using social constructionism as a lens for viewing the phenomenon, violence is seen as occurring within a specific ecology, which is part of the individual's fluctuating, subjective reality. This discussion proposes that the violent experience, to which meanings are attributed, is part of the individual's socially constructed ecology. This ecology can either be transformed or conserved through dialogue, specifically dialogue relating to the telling of the story of the violent experience. This is discussed in relation to therapeutic encounters. The primary objective of the research is the implication of ecological thinking generally and, more specifically, ecological thinking on violence, for therapeutic interactions and psychological theory. This discussion also refers to psychological ethics. / Psychology / MA (CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY)

Eingebettet in die Theorie der Weiterbildung nimmt die Dissertation die Forderung der bildungstheoretisch orientierten Biographieforschung auf, den transformatorischen Bildungsbegriff zu präzisieren. Aus der Diagnose einer Stagnation in diesem Bereich wird der Wechsel vom interpretativen zum relationalen Paradigma vorgeschlagen und eine relationale Entwicklungslogik als methodologische Basis relationalen Denkens eingeführt. Mit der Übertragung der Ergebnisse der informellen Axiomatisierung von Robert Kegans strukturaler Entwicklungstheorie auf den Bildungsbegriff wird unter Verwendung weiterer Referenztheorien aus dem Bereich der relationalen Kommunikationstheorien die Präzisierung des Begriffs möglich. Bildung wird als Prozess der Transformation der Regel der Bedeutungsbildung einer Person unter Konfrontation mit der Regel der Bedeutungsbildung nächsthöherer Ordnung definiert und als eine Struktur der Übergänge zwischen Kontext-Regeln beschrieben, die ein Beobachter der Person im Interaktionsprozess zuschreibt. Mit dem hier entwickelten Kontext-Ebenen-Modell der Bedeutungsbildung lassen sich zum einen Zeichen-Arten ZA definieren, die eine empirische Beschreibung des Bildungsprozesses einer Person zulassen, und zum anderen drei Typen von Kontext-Regeln XR bestimmen, die aus der relationalen Entwicklungslogik abgeleitet, die Prinzipien der Bedeutungsbildung als Regeln der Zeichenrelationierung darstellen. Das Kontext-Ebenen-Modell der Bedeutungsbildung steht als Ergebnis einerseits für eine erfolgreiche Präzisierung des transformatorischen Bildungsbegriffs, andererseits für die Leistungsfähigkeit der strukturalistischen Methode im Rahmen des Programms der relationalen Weiterbildungsforschung. / Embedded in the theory of adult education (andragogy) this PhD-thesis takes up the challenge proclaimed by the biography research based on the concept of Bildung and seeks to define the concept of transformational Bildung more precisely. To overcome the identified stagnation in this research field, this thesis proposes a change from qualitative research paradigm to relational paradigm and introduces the relational logic of development as methodology of relational thinking. The application of the results of the informal axiomatization of Robert Kegan’s theory of human development to the concept of transformational Bildung as well as the use of various approaches based on relational communication theories allowed to provide a more precise definition of the concept of transformational Bildung. In this thesis Bildung is defined as a process of transformation of individual’s rules of meaning making caused by a person’s confrontation with the rules of meaning making of a higher order. From the observer’s perspective the structure of the Bildung process can be described as a transition from one context rule to another. The developed model of context levels of meaning making allows defining types of signs (ZA) that enable to measure the levels in the process of Bildung. Furthermore, this model allows determining three types of context rules (XR), which – according to the relational logic of development – represent principles of meaning making seen as rules for relating signs. Thus, on the one hand, the model of context levels of meaning making has succeeded to specify the concept of transformational Bildung and, on the other hand, has proven the effectiveness of the structuralist method for the relational adult education research.

This dissertation investigates meaning-making in children's joint-reading transactions with literary apps. The analysis of meaning-making focuses on embodiment as a central aspect of literary app's texts and their reading and on children's negotiation of agency in the act of joint-reading. Meaning-making is understood through a multimodal social semiotics perspective, which considers that meaning is realised in the dynamic transaction between reader, text and social context. Therefore, the dissertation integrates the analysis of the apps and of the children's responses to capture the dynamics of meaning-making in such transactions. Case studies were conducted with six families, who read the apps The Monster at the End of This Book (Stone & Smollin, 2011) and Little Red Riding Hood (Nosy Crow, 2013) in an English public library. The central method of data collection involved video-recorded observations of parent-child joint-reading events, complemented by graphic elicitation, informal interviews and a questionnaire. The video data was analysed through multimodal methods. The findings indicate that the participant readers used their bodies not only as a material point of contact and activation of the interactive features but also as a resource for meaning-making in their transactions with the apps. The reader's body was essential in their engagement with the material and interactive affordances of the apps, in reader's expressions of their responses, and in the sharing of the reading experience with the parents. The body of the reader, through spontaneous and interactive gestures, is a mode of communication in the multimodal ecologies of both the text and the reader's responses. Furthermore, the child readers constantly negotiated their agency within the constraints posed by the text, which include the narrative itself and its interactive features, and those posed by the joint-reading situation. The bodies of the readers played an essential role in this dual negotiation of agency. Children's agency was scripted, that is, the readers exerted their agency within the limitations of a script. The script, however, allowed readers to improvise, and their performances also involved resistance to the script through playful subversion. In the joint-reading event, children's agency was foregrounded, positioning the children as protagonist readers, who performed most of the interactions and lived the aesthetic experience of the text fully, to the expense of their parents, who mostly participated as supporting readers, transferring their agency to the children through scaffolding.

The main purpose of the dissertation is to understand meaning-making practices used by people suffering from acquired brain damage with severe physical and communicative disabilities, in order to create and sustain their identity and personhood in relation to other people. The study emanates from the idea that identity and personhood, also in relation to disability, are created/sustained in ongoing interaction between people in everyday situations, and that the ability to narrate is central to such a creation of identity. Therefore, it is of particular interest to try to understand what communicative and storytelling abilities/possibilities people with severe acquired brain damage have in presenting their identity. The study is ethnographic and based upon a year-long field study of participant observations at a day centre for people with acquired brain damage. Gathered data consist of written field notes, informal interviews conducted with both participants and personnel and approximately 70 hours of video data. The study shows how an identity as ‘severely disabled’ is created in the co-created storytelling between participants and personnel and that this identity seems to mean that one is dependent upon others to get along in everyday life at least if one listens only to spoken stories. Yet the study also shows that there exist different opinions about what this identity as ‘severely disabled’ could mean that there is a wish among the participants to be able to present a desirable identity as “normal”, and that such an identity comes to mean to be independent and self-determined. Normality, however, must be understood in relation to surrounding society (and the grand cultural narratives that surround us). Thus the study shows that normality in relation to severe disabilities is almost impossible to achieve because normality in relation to illness/disease/body contains the hope of a cure or an improvement. The participants in this study, however, have all been labelled as incurable – there is no hope of such a cure or improvement. That, on the other hand, does not mean that the participants do not try to tell such stories anyway in their quest to achieve this desirable identity. However, in order to hear this story we need to listen to stories that usually remain untold. A palpable hierarchy between different modes of language use was identified, where verbal/spoken language is supreme, resulting in the disabled participants not being perceived as competent interactors/communicators due to their difficulties in using verbal communication. Hence their ways of creating/telling stories, through embodiment and enactment, are not recognised as valid ways to create/tell stories; this is discussed in relation to both practical implications for health care settings as well as for further narrative research. / Avhandlingens huvudsyfte är att förstå meningsskapande praktiker som personer som drabbats av förvärvad hjärnskada med grava såväl fysiska som kommunikativa funktionshinder använder för att skapa och upprätthålla sin identitet och sitt personskap i relation till andra människor. Studien utgår ifrån att identitet och personskap, också i relation till funktionshinder, är något som skapas och upprätthålls i det pågående samspelet mellan människor i vardagliga situationer och att förmågan att berätta är central för detta identitetsskapande. Därför är det av särskilt intresse att försöka förstå vilka möjligheter personer med grava förvärvade hjärnskador har när det gäller att kommunicera och använda berättandet som ett sätt att presentera sin identitet. Studien är etnografisk och baseras på ett årslångt fältarbete bestående av deltagande observationer på ett dagcenter för människor med förvärvade hjärnskador. Insamlade data består av fältanteckningar, informella intervjuer med både deltagare och personal och ca 70 timmar videomaterial. Studien visar hur en identitet som ’gravt funktionshindrad’ skapas i det gemensamma berättandet mellan deltagare och personal och att denna identitet verkar innebära att man är beroende av andra för att klara sitt vardagliga liv, åtminstone om man enbart lyssnar till talade berättelser. Likväl visar studien även att det kan råda delade meningar om vad denna identitet som ’gravt funktionshindrad’ kan innebära och att det bland deltagarna finns en strävan att kunna presentera en önskvärd identitet som ”normal” och att en sådan identitet innebär att vara oberoende och självbestämmande. Normalitet måste dock förstås i relation till omgivande samhälle (och de stora, kulturella berättelser som omger oss) och studien visar att normalitet i samband med grava funktionshinder är i det närmaste omöjligt att uppnå då normalitet i relation till sjukdom/kropp innefattar ett hopp om att bli frisk, eller åtminstone bättre. Deltagarna i denna studie har emellertid diagnostiserats som obotliga – det finns inget hopp om förbättring. Detta innebär inte desto mindre att deltagarna ändå försöker berätta sådana berättelser i strävan efter att uppnå en önskvärd identitet. Dock; för att höra denna berättelse krävs ett lyssnande på berättelser som vanligtvis förblir oberättade. En tydlig hierarki mellan olika former av språkanvändning identifieras, där det talade ordet och den talade berättelsen ses som överlägsen. Detta får till konsekvens att de funktionshindrade inte ses som kompetenta aktörer/kommunikatörer pga. av sina svårigheter att kommunicera verbalt och att deras sätt att skapa berättelser, genom förkroppsligande framställningar, inte erkänns som legitima sätt att berätta. Detta diskuteras både i relation till olika praktiska implikationer för vårdinstitutioner och för vidare narrativ forskning.