What part does migration play in the construction and reconstruction of social identity? What kind of social relations are produced and reproduced through the migration process? What are the manifestations of power involved in the process of constructing and negotiating social identities through space? These are the central questions in this research. This research not only draws upon current literature on migrant women, but also expands it to address the complexity of construction of social identities and places through migration processes by incorporating critical social theories and feminist geography into the research. I examine embodied geographical experiences and the geography of emotions, by looking at current Taiwanese migrant women’s everyday practices in Toronto. This research provides concrete examples – from a substantial sample of individuals – to support feminist geographers’ arguments on women’s experiences in space. I employ Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to illustrate how personal and private space is constructed and reconstructed by a complex interplay between different discourses and practices, and how new spaces and practices are created for new identity claims. I also examine how the dynamics of habitus shifts through displacement. By looking at the generative aspect of habitus, this research extends the existing scope of the notion of habitus. Collecting more than 125 hours of in-depth interviews with Taiwanese migrant women in Toronto, I examine multidimensional re-configurations of the everyday practices of Taiwanese migrant women in Toronto. Research findings regarding the hidden geography of everyday language practice, the reconstruction of food culture and the exploration of culinary practice, the negotiation of home practice, and the creation of new spaces for new identity claims provide a complicated picture that grasps the contingency and fluidity of identity construction. In addition to concepts of ‘third space’ and ‘paradoxical space,’ my research shows that metaphoric expressions, what I call ‘glass wall’, ‘comfort zone’, ‘unlocked spaces’, ‘dialogical space’ and ‘provocative space’ are important to unveil dynamic pictures of geographical experiences along migration. Indeed, space plays an integral role in the making of social identity.

What part does migration play in the construction and reconstruction of social identity? What kind of social relations are produced and reproduced through the migration process? What are the manifestations of power involved in the process of constructing and negotiating social identities through space? These are the central questions in this research. This research not only draws upon current literature on migrant women, but also expands it to address the complexity of construction of social identities and places through migration processes by incorporating critical social theories and feminist geography into the research. I examine embodied geographical experiences and the geography of emotions, by looking at current Taiwanese migrant women’s everyday practices in Toronto. This research provides concrete examples – from a substantial sample of individuals – to support feminist geographers’ arguments on women’s experiences in space. I employ Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to illustrate how personal and private space is constructed and reconstructed by a complex interplay between different discourses and practices, and how new spaces and practices are created for new identity claims. I also examine how the dynamics of habitus shifts through displacement. By looking at the generative aspect of habitus, this research extends the existing scope of the notion of habitus. Collecting more than 125 hours of in-depth interviews with Taiwanese migrant women in Toronto, I examine multidimensional re-configurations of the everyday practices of Taiwanese migrant women in Toronto. Research findings regarding the hidden geography of everyday language practice, the reconstruction of food culture and the exploration of culinary practice, the negotiation of home practice, and the creation of new spaces for new identity claims provide a complicated picture that grasps the contingency and fluidity of identity construction. In addition to concepts of ‘third space’ and ‘paradoxical space,’ my research shows that metaphoric expressions, what I call ‘glass wall’, ‘comfort zone’, ‘unlocked spaces’, ‘dialogical space’ and ‘provocative space’ are important to unveil dynamic pictures of geographical experiences along migration. Indeed, space plays an integral role in the making of social identity.

In the 2002 national elections in Turkey, the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) won a majority of parliamentary seats and the leadership of all government ministries. Viewed by many voters as an alternative to both Turkey’s Kemalist establishment and the country’s Islamist political movement, this self described ‘conservative democratic’ party composed of former Islamist politicians and political neophytes sought to establish a Muslim political identity that was neither Islamist nor secular. This dissertation explores the discourse used by AKP politicians as they navigated several highly charged issues involving the religion-state relationship in Turkey. By examining what geographies AKP politicians articulated in discussing issues of religion and state, how they constructed Islam and the state through these articulations, and how these constructions compare to Kemalist and Islamist versions, this research strives to understand how these politicians are negotiating a moderate religious identity within a context of fundamentalist-secularist polarization. The research also presents an example of how recent changes observed in modern state spatiality are propagating beyond the economic dynamics usually studied. Drawing on statements made by AKP politicians in newspaper reports, legislative debates, and individual interviews, this project examines issues such as imam hatip schools, headscarves, the role of the Directorate of Pious Works, and Turkey’s geopolitical relationships to suggest answers to its research questions. The project concludes that a combination of religious and neoliberal logics is operating within the statements of the AKP politicians studied. By appealing to the individuality of religious choice, these AKP politicians differentiated their party from the deadlock of the Kemalist-Islamist polarity. Their appeal to individual choice suggests that the answer to providing the best welfare for the population is to reduce the state’s involvement in normal processes of everyday space and allow for God and the market to work their respective magics. Within their statements, the state retains a position as a source of knowledge, supporter of research, provider of information, and protector of order. However, the state loses its position as visionary leader and social engineer.

This thesis addresses the perennial difficulties faced by Queen’s University’s administration in its failings to recognize the importance of an adequate contemporary First Nations presence within any twenty-first century Canadian institution of higher learning. Paying attention to the requests and demands of the immediate First Nations campus and community population over the last twenty years, I re-visit university attempts to manage issues of ‘equity’ and ‘diversity’ through non-organic solutions. Using Edward Soja’s theory of Thirdspace, and his concept of a ‘trialectics of space’ I analyze a range of historical and contemporary cultural practices that include macro and micro governance and policy issues. I review the how the space of Queen’s is perceived; I follow how space is conceived in recommendations and requests made to Queen’s administration by First Nations university and community members; and finally I write about how transformations of lived space can bring about institutional change. By pairing feminist and Indigenous methodologies, I suggest that until the Thirdspace is recognized as part of an important cycle of educational and cultural change, the University space will remain inaccessible for many First Nations students, staff and faculty. I also include a background of legislation in Canada; the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Indian Act of 1876, and the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988. These legal documents each served to define, restrict or contain the space in which First Nations live and work, and they need to be included as further background to what Toby Miller refers to as the structural limits of legislating difference in cultural-capitalist nation-state spaces. / Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2012-02-03 11:23:13.403

This dissertation analyzes the interactive relationship between narrative and spatiality in contemporary novels and films set in the southwestern region of the United States. While space and place have sometimes been regarded as static backgrounds of narrative events, what supports the entire study is the view of spatiality as an essential constitutive element of every fictional narrative and as a dynamic product of intersecting relations observed at the intratextual, intertextual, and extratextual levels. In Larry McMurtry’s and Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, the circular pattern repeated in the narrative prevents it from developing into a Bildungsroman and constructs a claustrophobic space, which can be opposed to the open space of freedom often identified with the West. Max Evans, in Bobby Jack Smith, You Dirty Coward!, constructs a parodic post-Western narrative and remaps the mythic West by juxtaposing various social relations that have often been repressed in classic Westerns. Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead merges historiography with cartography in its attempt to retrieve the fragmented past and construct a space in which everything converges in the present. While the narrative space of Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing emerges as a meshwork of intersecting lines of narrative that is always in the state of becoming, McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men and its film adaptation by Joel and Ethan Coen create a closed space of which there is no way out by mapping the narrative space with various signs, signals, and traces that always point at what remains off the map. And the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in Tommy Lee Jones’s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada are an uncanny space in which the familiar and the strange, the homely and the unhomely, and the real and the imaginary become inseparable. By juxtaposing these heterogenous fictional cartographies, this study aims to map the polyphonic narrative space of the contemporary Southwest. The reading of individual texts here is partly informed by theories of spatiality developed in various fields. This study hopes to situate itself in the growing interdisciplinary field of literary geography as well as to make a contribution to the understanding of the individual works.

Sarajevo’s longstanding image has been one of a functioning multiethnic spatiality where diverse identities harmoniously co-exist and share common public spaces in their everyday life. The ethnically mixed urban population of prewar Sarajevo lived multiethnic spatiality as ‘zajednicki zivot’ (common life). This notion referred to neighborliness, cooperation and trust within and across groups. The structural factors which fostered this condition of neighborly spatiality are assessed through a study of a residential building in central Sarajevo. The thesis argues that the apartment building under study was a concrete manifestation of the ideology and political economy of Tito’s Yugoslavia. It was a space made possible by an authoritarian political system and an economic order subordinated to the interest of the Yugoslav League of Communists. However, the war shattered this world and dispersed the multiethnic spatiality that characterized it. The ensuing disruption of the social, institutional and economic fabric marked the state’s transition from a socialist to a capitalist society. It led to heightened ethnic awareness as well as isolation and alienation that altered the prewar multiethnic spatiality of the city in ways that are still unfolding. / Master of Public and International Affairs

This essay explores the Swedish state’s geopolitical view and creation, of the spatial spaces in and of the Arctic. With a critical geopolitical framework, a discourse analysis is conducted on the Swedish strategy for the arctic region, with the ambition to unfold the underlining spatial spaces, actors and dramas that this discourse creates. The result of this analysis shows that Sweden creates three different Arctic spaces within its geopolitical discourse; a Swedish Arctic, a Nearby Arctic and a Regional Arctic. This has major political consequences, which will be illuminated in the essay. Perhaps the most noteworthy being the ulterior theoretical view of the Swedish state regarding the environment and the relationship between the global space and the Regional Arctic, in relation to the threat of global and regional environmental deterioration.

A pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar os usos do espaço agrário como um dos elementos centrais para os mecanismos de dominação senhorial e também para as estratégias de resistência escrava. Tendo como base os processos criminais do município de Bananal, o trabalho procura entender que o espaço foi vetor fundamental para produzir o controle senhorial sobre o conjunto dos homens livres e dos escravos. No entanto, o desejo de ordem e disciplina imposto pelos senhores era constantemente burlado pelos cativos, que se valiam dos conhecimentos adquiridos dos espaços e dos tempos permitidos e proibidos para realizarem um grande número de ações de resistência. Nesta pesquisa, a geografia da escravidão refere-se à dialética existente entre os usos alternativos ou não que os escravos faziam do espaço de plantação e os controles realizados por feitores, administradores e senhores sobre a mobilidade e o corpo dos cativos. Dos conflitos que se originavam desses embates tem-se a possibilidade de se compreender uma nova dinâmica para a resistência escrava. A pesquisa procurou também ultrapassar a escala do município e ampliar os horizontes. Desse modo, conseguiu-se entender a localidade de Bananal não como um estudo de caso , mas como um município articulado a um quadro mais amplo de consolidação, transformação e crise do Estado Imperial. Deste modo, a escravidão e seus corolários geográficos estavam interligados com o momento de crise da escravidão no plano nacional. Por esta razão, foi possível delinear uma nova dimensão da geografia, relacionada com as redes desenvolvidas pelos sujeitos para além dos limites do município / The aim of this research is to investigate the uses of plantation space as a central tool to slaveholders domination and the strategies used by slaves to resist it. Studying the county of Bananal, an important town of coffee production in the nineteenth century, the work focuses on the understanding of the space as a crucial vector to produce control over free men and slaves. Nonetheless, slaves usually challenged slaveholders. In this way, they used to apply their knowledge about the uses of the permitted and prohibited times and spaces in order to act against and resist slaveholders impositions. In this work, the Geography of slavery is related to the dialectic between slave uses of plantation space and the controls made by slaveholders and their agents. This relation provoked many conflicts and this shed light to the issue of slave resistance and their reaction to power. Therefore, it is possible to comprehend a new dynamics of slave resistance. On the other hand, the research is not simply a case study, because slavery in Bananal and its geographical corollaries were intertwined with the moment of crisis of slavery in Imperial Brazil. For this reason, it was possible to figure a new dimension of geography, related to the networks developed by the subjects beyond the limits of the municipality

Thesis advisor: Lisa Patel Stevens / This study uses the construct of design to examine the interplay of texts, tools, and participants to ask, "How are educational environments designed and how do participants interact with designs to create spaces." I approached this question from the theoretical stance that material settings (e.g., schools, classrooms) may be designed for particular uses through institutional norms and purposeful thought (e.g., curriculum guides, technologies, architectural designs), but the way participants take up designs is not given a priori. Using ethnographic methods and spatial theories, I studied the literacy practices of a high school class designed for learning with and through multimodal textual practices, focusing on how this design of learning operated within the institutional norms of a comprehensive urban high school. Data included participant observation, qualitative interviews, and analysis of cultural artifacts, but spatial theories (de Certeau, 1984; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Lefebvre, 1991; Soja, 1989, 1996) and theories of design (Kress, 2003; New London Group, 1995) guided the selection and analysis of the data. Stylistically, this dissertation uses video and hyperlinks as a representational tool to illustrate the connections between conceptual fields and to illustrate how meaning is made and conveyed through the added dimensions of multimodality. The dissonance that the teacher's designs caused with the school's available designs is one of the most interesting findings. By breaking temporal and spatial boundaries of what constitutes a class, an academic discipline, and a teacher/student relationship, the teacher and the students used multimodal literacy practices in ways that offered fewer opportunities to assimilate understandings of what and how it means to learn and teach in school into available designs. The participants' interactions with the designs were mediated, however, by their cultural understandings of the purpose of school, their place in the school, and the potential of learning in school. In other words, the rules and grammars of available designs of school were co-constructive in the active designing by the participants. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Esta dissertação apresenta uma exploração teórica sobre o tema da qualidade espacial na arquitetura em suas diferentes escalas, tendo em conta o ponto de vista de um caminhante sensível ao meio que o envolve. Entende-se, no contexto teórico a ser apresentado, que o tema da qualidade do espaço público urbano tem particular relevância no atual momento das cidades, em função da prioridade destinada a automóveis e veículos automotores nas soluções da espacialidade urbana, normalmente em detrimento daquele que usa a cidade a pé. O trabalho busca fundamentação na produção literária e nas teorias de um grupo de autores com produção reconhecida no tema da espacialidade na arquitetura e nos estudos da cidade. A investigação sobre a qualidade espacial da arquitetura a ser apresentada fundamenta-se em três pilares, dois descritivos e um metodológico. De um lado estarão as descrições da configuração espacial e, de outro, em paralelo, as descrições da percepção espacial, ou seja, o modo como as situações espaciais são vividas e apreciadas pelo observador, quando o corpo e os sentidos do usuário ocupam um papel principal. Trabalhar-se-á com a hipótese de que os efeitos de configuração, sobre a qualidade espacial, ocorrem simultaneamente nas escalas local e global (AGUIAR, 2016a). Na escala global, a configuração espacial será abordada, inicialmente, através da descrição morfológica e, num segundo momento, a partir da condição de acessibilidade/sintaxe espacial e seus impactos na dita vitalidade urbana. Na escala local, a configuração espacial será examinada através tanto das características de delimitação espacial/enclausuramento quanto das características da constituição do espaço. Na sequência, tomando o corpo como categoria de percepção, o trabalho examinará as condições de legibilidade, entendida como funcionalidade visual, e de comodidade, entendida como funcionalidade háptica. Tendo em conta as descrições da qualidade espacial acima delineadas, o trabalho aborda, ao final, o tema do movimento como categoria metodológica. Seguindo esse roteiro, busca-se trazer à luz um conjunto de descrições da cidade relevantes no entendimento daquilo que se entende como qualidade espacial urbana, esperando assim contribuir para o debate sobre esse tópico, tão relevante no momento atual nos meios acadêmico e profissional. / This dissertation presents a theoretical exploration of the subject of spatial quality at different scales in architecture, taking into account the point of view of a walker sensitive to his/her surrounding environment. It is understood in the theoretical context to be presented hereafter that the subject of the quality of an urban, public space is particularly relevant to the cities of today, given the prioritization of cars and other motor vehicles in the designs of urban spaces, usually at the expense of those favored by walkers. This work is grounded in the literary production and the theories of a group of authors recognized for their authority in the field of spatiality in architecture and in the study of cities. The investigation of the spatial quality of architecture to be presented here is based on two descriptive pillars and one methodological. On the one hand, there are the descriptions of the spatial configurations and, on the other hand and in parallel, there are the descriptions of the spatial perception, namely how the observer is living and appreciating spatial situations in which the user’s body and senses play the main role. We will work on the hypothesis that the effects of configuration on the spatial quality occur simultaneously at the local and global scales (AGUIAR, 2016a). At the global scale, we will initially approach the spatial configuration through the morphological description and, in a second phase, from the condition of spatial accessibility/syntax and its impacts on the urban vitality. At the local scale, we will examine the spatial configuration on the one hand through the characteristics of the special delimitation/enclosure and, on the other hand, through the characteristics of the space’s constitution. Then, taking the body as the category of perception, our work is looking at the conditions of legibility, understood as the visual functionality, and of commodity, understood as the haptic functionality. Taking into account the descriptions of the spatial quality outlined above, we eventually address the theme of the movement as a methodological category. Following this roadmap, we aim to bring light to a series of descriptions of the city that are relevant to the comprehension of what is understood as urban quality. We hope this will contribute to the debate on this issue, which is so important currently among both academic and professional circles.