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Adu Boahen’s books: an intellectual’s legacy and the making of the Adu Boahen Memorial Library and Archive
No full textA fork in the road: perspectives on sustainability and decentralised governance in digital institutions
No full textA digital institution is a set of computer-based rules that perform intermediating roles upon which one or more person’s well-being depends. This article argues that governance, the processes and customs by which rules are agreed, is critical to the sustainability of the digital institution and therefore of society more broadly. The objective of this work was to interrogate whether emerging decentralised architectures (blockchain) can offer new perspectives on digital sustainability in the form of decentralised governance. Firstly, the literature on decentralised modes of governance was synthesised. Then, existing digital institutions were reviewed, categorised and mapped onto a multi-domain layered conceptual framework that draws out three distinct modes for enactment of changes to digital institution rules; direct, integrated, and fork-based. We concluded that the coupling of decentralised governance approaches with fork-based or integrated enactment stands to enhance digital sustainability through increased perception of trustworthiness afforded through independently verifiable and cryptographically secure audit trails
Towards a quantum theory of musical creativity
Get PDFIn putting forward a case for a quantum theory of musical creativity, this chapter is designed to recognise that such a theory is not only simply a contention, rather than an explanatory formulation that can stand for all time, but also, that it is only 'a snapshot of a snapshot'. Karen Barad's project presents a set of technical terms and concepts that are drawn from quantum physics and uses them as a basis for building her own epistemological and ontological model of 'agential realism'. Barad makes a sustained engagement with the concept of diffraction, which for her, denotes the way in which waves overlap and disturb each other: Diffraction is a phenomenon that is unique to wave behaviour. The nature of entanglement is central to the model of quantum physics that Barad builds, and another foundation for her approach is the idea that 'space, time and matter do not exist prior to the intra-actions that reconstitute entanglements'
A vulnerable Russia: militarisation through anxiety in 1990s Russian historical textbooks
No full textRussia’s military in the 1990s was physically and morally fragile. Culturally, however, the militarisation of society persisted because of the prominence of militarised discourses in various discursive spaces. Militarised themes were dominant in Russia’s historical education, with Russia’s vulnerability serving to underscore the militarisation of Russia’s youth during this period because it drew upon notions of paranoia and anxiety, which formed the foundations of Russian identity. This article examined 16 Russian historical textbooks published in the 1990s. Adopting Robert Sutherland’s schema for identifying ‘ways in which inherent ideologies are expressed’ in literature for children, including; ‘Politics of advocacy’ and ‘Politics of attack,’ this article found that Russia’s vulnerabilities were used to equip its youth with militarised worldviews. Historical victories were often framed as ‘victory despite weaknesses, because of the patriotic, united efforts of the Russian peoples. On the other hand, loss at war was often characterised by ‘unequal and heroic battle[s]’ followed by military reform, with emphasis on need to improve weapon procurement, combat readiness and strategy. Through these discourses, students were told that Russia would be safe and militaristically successful if 1) society remained united and 2) Russia’s military institution was technologically and strategically superior. These textbooks maintained the militarisation of society by sustaining the narrative that Russia constantly needed to defend itself, evidenced well with a historical trail of invasion from belligerent nations, where Russia has not always been able to defend itself
Landlinks: Landscape and Attachment [group exhibition]
No full textThe exhibition and events aim to examine our collective response to landscape and place, how we react to exterior spaces and the impact of our changing environment. Through engagement with various art media, practises and approaches, we wish to encourage discussion and observation between artists and community. Contributing artists review encounters with our various environments, examining the polar notions of ‘attachment’ and ‘unattachment’.
The project was initiated as a result of the pandemic and the inevitable lock downs that followed. As we found our movements restricted and any collective walking projects untenable, we instead decided to initiate walks that were made together, but alone.
Work made by over 20 walking artists is represented in the exhibition. It was the result of walks synchronised to take place at the same time, over several continents. Artists responded to a ‘time/distance walking script’ – adhering to various ‘prompts’ that governed their progress and choices, forcing them to let go of the desire to find the definitive subject to explore unattachment and to leave that choice to chance
Redefining the clerical man: clerical manhood and masculinity in religious polemical works in Reformation England c.1520-1570
No full textDuring the sixteenth century clerical masculinity underwent a fundamental transformation. The reverberations of the social and cultural change to the status of the clergy was felt not only within the Church, but throughout the rest of society. This thesis provides a case study of how clerical manhood and masculinity was redefined during the period from 1520 to 1570, through the examination of printed polemical works produced to debate clerical marriage and celibacy.
A close examination of the marriage versus celibacy debate during this period contributes new knowledge by providing an understanding of the subtle differences which formed during the process and the substance behind them, as well as explaining how positions on both sides became more polarised and well defined over the course of the argument. It also contributes further by seeking to bridge the historiographical divide between the study of theological debates such as clerical marriage, and the study of gender, marriage, and the family.*
Clerical marriage was not simply an abstruse theological matter but a profound social and cultural change whose real and imagined practical implications exercised the pens and imaginations of many sixteenth-century authors. This study makes further contributions to scholarship in a number of areas. Specifically, these include, the influence of Europe on the English Reformation, Elizabeth I's religious conservatism, the Marian Counter-Reformation, and ideas of 'commonwealth'.
From 1570, the clerical man could choose to be a husband and a father, whose masculinity resembled closely that of his neighbours. No longer perceiving the need to partake in a debate to establish their right to clerical marriage, the clergy turned their attention to articulating the value of the clerical household through conduct literature.** This thesis extends this argument by suggesting this is why the polemical debate on clerical marriage fell from prominence after 1570 in the English context, as the clergy focused their energy on gaining further levels of gentility and civility
I’m Sian, and I’m a fossil fuel addict: on paradox, disavowal and (im)possibility in changing climate change
Get PDFIn recent years I have returned to west Namibia to work with elders of families I have known for more than two decades. Oral histories, recorded as we find and revisit places my companions knew as home, have increasingly struck a chord as a record of lives lived largely untouched by fossil fuels. As the complexity of these pasts has come further into focus, it has become impossible to avoid the gulf between this kind of attunement to environmental contexts and my own life, especially the reality that I am completely dependent on fossil fuels and the products they make possible. This essay is an attempt to fully face this paradox of maintaining hope for binding international climate agreements that have teeth, whilst being aware of my dependence on the fossil fuel extracting and emissions-spewing juggernaut that permeates all our lives. Drawing critically on twelve-step thinking and psychoanalysis literatures I reflect on fossil fuel addiction, and the destructive paradox of not being able to live up to internalised but unreachable values regarding environmental care in a fossil-fuelled world
Young children’s creativity in science enquiry: a diffractive analysis of empirical and theoretical understandings
Get PDFLittle attention has been paid to the materiality of children’s creative knowledge making practices in science enquiry. Conflicting discourses have instead shaped a narrow understanding of how children come to know in early childhood science education. This thesis draws on new materialist philosophy to offer a new approach to diffractive analysis by showing how critical points of difference are created when empirical data encounter theoretical perspectives diffractively. In doing so, conflicting discourses are challenged as limiting, and points of difference illuminated as crucial in affecting connections which can convincingly reconfigure dominant ways of seeing.
The thesis firstly presents empirical data which illustrates shared understandings of creativity in science enquiry held by early childhood practitioners, gathered using Video Stimulated Reflective Dialogues (Moyles et al., 2003) and analysed using a grounded theoretical approach. This data was found to be largely representative of existing perspectives on young children’s creativity in science enquiry and the analysis restricted by theoretical, ontological and axiological norms within the interpretivist paradigm. The empirical data was subsequently ‘re-turned’ in a diffraction together with i) existing research on early childhood science education, and ii) conceptualisations of creativity in the domain of art, to reveal critical points of difference which, in superposition, create the possibility for a new conceptualisation of young children’s creativity in science enquiry. Consideration is given to the role and ethics of what is excluded in reading diffractively.
A diffractive reading found children’s creativity in science enquiry to be enacted at once through talk and materials. Cutting together and apart child-material revealed children as decentred and coming to know through the materiality of materials. This opens possibilities to explore children’s co-constitutive and affective ways of knowing in science enquiry. Attention is drawn to both video camera and footage as more-than-human matter and the need for further research into the significance of points of difference potentially emergent from the spaces in-between children’s encounters with materials in science enquiry