This paper explores the artistic theories of social practice and examines the artwork of Michael Rakowitz, Carmen Loch and Ernesto Neto to observe the ways artists can expand traditional understandings of art. Looking at art therapy and the ways that participation in art can make art more accessible and functional, this paper also outlines a project which functions to bring comfort to participants and expand boundaries of art through individually shaped personal experiences.

Magister Artium - MA / Terminology such as mother tongue, first language and second language remain prevalent in South African schools’ language policies. These monolingual terms seem out of place within our multilingual landscape (Banda, 2018). With the emergence of the concept of translanguaging (Garcia, 2009, 2014; Banda, 2018), the linguistic practices that people of the Western Cape (and elsewhere in South Africa) have now been legitimised as a useful communicative tool within multilingual spaces. Despite research showing the advantages of using translanguaging in classrooms to enhance comprehension (Banda, 2018), language policies remain monolingual in nature. By conducting research at two schools in Delft, Western Cape, I am able to show how learners and teachers defy the monolingual structure of the language policy, by translanguaging, to make learning and teaching more comprehensible. Using Heller’s (2007) concept of language as social practice, it becomes apparent how learners become social actors within the classroom, by languaging to make meaning. In addition to looking at classroom practices, I use supplementary data, an analysis of the school’s language policy, observations of and commentary on linguistic practices outside of the classroom, to further support the idea that school’s confinement of language is incongruous with the language practices in the area. Finally, I propose that translanguaging be legitimised as classroom practice and teaching materials also be adapted likewise, by producing trilingual posters, showing Afrikaans, English and isiXhosa terms, for the Western Cape.

This thesis examines the trajectory of the ‘social document’ in contemporary art since 1989. Though art’s turn towards documentary modes has now been widely noted, this study establishes a longer, more complex engagement with the dialogue between the lens and the situational immediacy of artists’ social interventions. I argue that the social documents that arise through the reconfigured artwork can be connected with the demand for the circulation of social knowledge and increasingly urgent questions of realism, a methodology that divided the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde of the 20th century. Central issues broached by the thesis include the demand for the extraction and re-articulation of truth, the role of visual representation in the address to totality and the emergence of (independent) knowledge and (critical) pedagogy as key sites of struggle. My analysis begins, in Part I, with a selective mapping of the historical terrain through which I offer re-readings of prescient works produced in the 1960s and 1970s in a range of capitalist and state socialist contexts including Mary Kelly, Grupo de Artistas de Vanguardia and Sanja Iveković. I then move on to a more detailed appraisal of the ascendancy of the social document in art following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the consolidation of global capitalism, situating its various calibrations in relation to what I call biopolitical globalisation. Part II takes a thematic approach to the material, using case studies to examine a) the curatorial narrativisation and production of social documents, b) the relevance of feminist elaborations on theories of social reproduction to analyses of the social document and art history, c) the persistent invocation of ethics in discussions of works that document the social subjects of the new economy, d) the implications of addressing the social document as a realist enterprise. Artists discussed in Part II include Anton Vidokle, Martha Rosler, WochenKlausur, Dani Marti and Pilvi Takala.

Shoal Lake, Ontario has a complex history of resource developments and policy and legislation that has impacted Iskatewizaagegan No. 39 Independent First Nation (IIFN) socially, economically and culturally and continues to influence the community’s contemporary fishing practices. The purpose of this research is to explore the linkages between contemporary fishing practices and IIFN members’ well-being. The study employs a mixed-method approach by utilizing a combination of household survey, semi-structured and open-ended interviews with expert IIFN fishers as well as participation in contemporary fishing practices. It presents both material and non-material benefits of contemporary IIFN fishing practices. Results indicate that IIFN members actively partake in fishing activities and continue to rely on fish as an essential part of their diet. Fishing practices also provide avenues for IIFN to convey cultural knowledge, strengthen social cohesion and help articulate a sense of Iskatewizaagegan identity. As such, they are integral to the community’s physical and psychological health as well as Iskatewizaagegan culture and spirituality.

Shoal Lake, Ontario has a complex history of resource developments and policy and legislation that has impacted Iskatewizaagegan No. 39 Independent First Nation (IIFN) socially, economically and culturally and continues to influence the community’s contemporary fishing practices. The purpose of this research is to explore the linkages between contemporary fishing practices and IIFN members’ well-being. The study employs a mixed-method approach by utilizing a combination of household survey, semi-structured and open-ended interviews with expert IIFN fishers as well as participation in contemporary fishing practices. It presents both material and non-material benefits of contemporary IIFN fishing practices. Results indicate that IIFN members actively partake in fishing activities and continue to rely on fish as an essential part of their diet. Fishing practices also provide avenues for IIFN to convey cultural knowledge, strengthen social cohesion and help articulate a sense of Iskatewizaagegan identity. As such, they are integral to the community’s physical and psychological health as well as Iskatewizaagegan culture and spirituality.

This thesis aims to develop an analytical framework that will combine the insights of critical discourse analysis and a range of feminist perspectives on discourse as social practice. This framework is then employed in an investigation of women's participation in a number of 'communities of practice('Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992) previously monopolised by men. Comparisons are also made with women's involvement in organisations where they are in a majority and where a feminist ethos prevails. I argue that women often find themselves at odds with the masculinist discursive norms that masquerade as gender-neutral professional norms. This, in turn, has implications for the way in which women are perceived and judged by others, as well as for the roles they are assigned within the public sphere. With reference to selective transcripts of in-depth structured interviews with women in each of the domains under investigation, I suggest that the complex negotiations in which they engage in order to manage contradictory expectations about how they should speak and behave cannot easily be accommodated within a dichotomous model of gendered linguistic styles. Nonetheless, this is precisely how their linguistic behaviour is often 'fixed' and evaluated by others, especially by the mass media. I make reference to a wide range of texts from a variety of media in order to illustrate the role the media, in particular, play in mediating the perception of women's involvement in the public sphere and in (re)producing normative gender ideologies. The first case study focuses on women Labour MPs in the House of Commons. It includes a detailed analysis of the media coverage of Margaret Beckett's bid for the Labour leadership in 1994. It also considers whether the record increase in the number of women MPs in the wake of the 1997 general election has helped to make the Government's policy priorities more woman-friendly and/or has changed the culture of the House. The second case study on women's involvement in devolved politics briefly considers their contribution to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, before focusing in detail on the contribution made by the Northern Irish Women's Coalition to framing the Good Friday Agreement and to the structures of the new Northern Irish Assembly. The third case study compares the structure and rhetoric of the London-based Women's Environmental Network and those of male dominated environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace and the relative media coverage these groups receive. The final case study compares women's involvement in the Church of England as outsiders, campaigning for women to be admitted to priesthood, and as recently ordained insiders, whose subordination within Church structures is sanctioned by canon law. A central thesis of this study is that both the institutional constraints with which women have to negotiate and the stereotypical evaluations of their performance of public sphere roles have contributed to a process of discursive restructuring, whereby the gendered nature of the public/private dichotomy has been reproduced within the public sphere. However, women are not passively positioned in relation to the institutional and other discursive constraints that operate on them. I suggest that, they, in their turn, have helped to promote a counter tendency whereby the discursive boundaries between the traditional public and private spheres are becoming increasingly weakened and permeable. The study concludes by arguing for a more socially situated theory of language and gender to account for the constant tension that exists between the freedom of individuals to make choices within discourse and the normative practices that function to limit these choices.

The study, Mind the Gap between Grade Three and Four is written within the research fields of Mathematics Education. The research interests in the study concerns how to achieve a smooth transition between grade three and four in compulsory school. As a mathematics teacher I found out that the transition from one grade to another in compulsory school affects both the pupil and the mathematics teacher and not always in a satisfactory way. Formal meetings concerning handing over information about pupils are not sufficient, and there is a definite difference between what is said about the pupils during a formal meeting and what is said in more informal settings. Are their gaps that occur? The aim of this study is to listen to mathematics teachers´ and to illuminate their stories about handing over pupils from grade three and taking over pupils in grade four. I am searching for gaps in their stories. My goal is to safe guard the continuity concerning the changes of grades between grade three and four in compulsory school. The research questions are: What are the important factors for mathematics teacher´s concerning the transition between grade three and four? What themes and gaps concerning the transitions are revealed in their stories? The study is based on a theoretical framework made of; Gees (1999) theory about "language-in-use" and "the seven building blocks of language". Social constructions because the idea is to criticize and change the established order regarding the transition between grade three and grade four. I also made a choice to look at the difficulties concerning the transition as external factors and not as the shortcoming of the mathematics teachers´ therefore I use the critical perspective. Discourse is used because this study is about communication, both spoken and written. In order to investigate important factors for mathematics teachers concerning the transitions I interview six mathematics teachers. They are asked about the existent transition between grade three and four at their schools and what they think are important factors for transitions overall. I also videotape one formal meeting because when different methods are used it helps me verify 2 the outcome. The transcriptions from the interviews and the formal meeting are analyzed with help from the discourse analysis based on Gee (1999). The analysis/result shows themes that are important and signal about gaps that could be filled by further research. Themes revealed concerns: school organization, formal/informal meetings, teaching, assessment and special pedagogy. Gaps that are visible concern the teachers’ different educations, the school-web and the curriculum, time, relations, communication, assessment, feedback, teaching methods, teaching materials, and pupils in special needs. I argue that its´ necessary to create a structure and make guidelines for formal conferences concerning the transition between grade three and four to minimize the discontinuity. It should also be of interest that the gaps mentioned in this study are filled, and one way to begin could be to plan for collegial work between teachers’ in different grades.

Les mesures d’efficience énergétique sont généralement promues pour combattre le changement climatique, assurer la sécurité énergétique, augmenter la compétitivité et en raison de leur bon retour sur investissement. Toutefois, si l’efficience énergétique des différents secteurs de la société (industrie, bâtiments, transports, appareils, etc.) s’améliore, la consommation d’énergie ne cesse également d’augmenter. Ce constat contrariant peut être partiellement expliqué par ce qu’on appelle l’« effet rebond ». Cet effet est traditionnellement défini comme le changement de comportement d’un utilisateur suite à l’amélioration de l’efficience énergétique de telle sorte que sa consommation d’énergie est supérieure à ce qui est prévu par un modèle d’ingénieur. L’amplitude de cet effet, particulièrement au niveau macro-économique, est toutefois controversée. De même, il n’y a pas d’accord sur la classification des effets rebonds. Cette thèse part de l’hypothèse que les controverses sur les effets rebonds proviennent du fait qu’ils peuvent se produire à différentes échelles temporelles et spatiales, et que diverses disciplines capturent certains mécanismes car elles cadrent différemment leurs objets d’étude. Je montre que les mécanismes des effets rebonds peuvent être décrits comme la combinaison de deux efficiences. Premièrement, l’efficience énergétique mesure un rapport de production/consommation d’un individu (une machine ou un être vivant, par exemple). Deuxièmement, l’efficience temporelle mesure la vitesse à laquelle les activités de production/consommation sont menées (par une entité ou un ensemble d’entités). Lorsque les corps sont liés entre eux, notamment par des échanges de matière et d’énergie, une amélioration de l’efficience énergétique implique une augmentation de l’efficience temporelle. Cette augmentation n’est pas immédiate, mais elle est d’autant plus rapide que les corps ont à leur disposition des infrastructures qui permettent d’accéder à l’énergie. La combinaison des deux efficiences s’observe dans quatre cadres disciplinaires :écologie, technologie, économie néo-classique, sociologie des pratiques. En écologie, les deux efficiences procurent des avantages évolutifs, et sont appelés principes de la « production minimale d’entropie » et « puissance maximale ». Le développement technologique nous montre comment les deux efficiences se renforcent mutuellement via des réseaux de distribution et autres infrastructures. En économie néo-classique, l’efficience énergétique répond à la maximisation d’une fonction mal identifiée (profit ou utilité). En sociologie des pratiques, l’efficience temporelle joue un rôle majeur dans la multiplication des tâches déléguées à des machines — qui existent grâce à l’amélioration de leur efficience énergétique. En conclusion, ce n’est pas uniquement l’efficience énergétique qui est responsable des effets rebonds, mais sa combinaison avec l’efficience temporelle. Les effets rebonds dépendent de l’intensité des couplages colatéraux entre les machines et les corps. Habituellement ce couplage est estimé petit (il est totalement absent dans le cadre néo-classique). On peut pourtant contester cette hypothèse dans la mesure où ce couplage crée et multiplie les activités humaines. La part de la consommation exosomatique en comparaison à la consommation endosomatique montre l’ampleur de ce couplage. Pour limiter les effets rebonds, il convient de déconnecter les deux efficiences et les relations qui les renforcent. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In the field of alternative journalism, my work seeks to build empathy and combat inequalities of representation within a specified community of viewer-participants. Through MA thesis work, I built flexible, minimalist design systems that succeeded by receding—by eliminating expressive elements and pushing contributor content (visual and literary work in a variety of styles) to the foreground. In response to the highly technological, reductive mindset that had come to dominate my creative life, I engaged in exploratory exercises that were antithetical to this prior work. Through expressive engagement with analog materials, I isolated the skill of making and responding to a range of personal marks that were free of the constraints associated with developing marketing materials or periodicals for a general audience. Slowed into a more contemplative mindset, I explored abstraction, symbolism and personal history in works that engaged on different levels, and became more open to discovering images through the process. I found that at the heart of my work—from clean, legible layouts for books and magazines to the most abstract, personal or expressive wall-hanging pieces—is a desire to connect, to bring about preferred (clearer, deeper) states of information transfer by fusing content, form, and viewer participation into moments of contemplative engagement. Whether in pictures, objects, publications, or the user interfaces and platforms of the future that are yet unknown, this understanding will help me respond to changing media environments with work that connects and resonates.

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