1,720,978 research outputs found
Toward a Becoming Encounter: Arts-Based Research, Representation and Animal-Human Relations
Get PDFThis dissertation integrates philosophical concepts from Deleuze and Guattari’s Becoming-animal and Buber’s I-Thou Encounters to create a conceptual metaphor that I call A Becoming Encounter. Through an arts-based methodology, the production and examination of several art objects (my own and others), and the ways in which they relate to the lived experience of animals, (using Lefebvre and content analysis), a theoretical framework is developed aimed at informing future representation and shaping future relationships with nonhuman animals and environments. Toward A Becoming Encounter is a step toward an anti-anthropocentric ethics of representation and a way of being
Making Place Work: Site-Specific Socially Engaged Art in 21st Century Toronto
Get PDFSite-specific socially engaged art practices are on the rise, particularly in cities. Global migration, global networks and online communication notwithstanding, artists, curators and cultural institutions are increasingly working to “activate” audiences in and through local encounters premised on shared exploration of specific urban sites. What kinds of social engagement are made possible through these local encounters? And what kinds of engagement are precluded or overlooked when artists try to engage their publics site-specifically? This dissertation considers site-specific socially engaged art in the context of 21st Century Toronto, a city that is rife with multiple historical and ongoing displacements and that is also facing new challenges, including increasing spatial polarization along class and race lines and considerable political apathy. Drawing both on critical theories of place and contemporary literature on socially engaged art, I offer a new set of criteria for analysis of site-specific social engagement, as well as three in-depth examinations of site-specific socially engaged art practices. I look at the work of REPOhistory (New York, 1989-2000), Jumblies Theatre (Toronto, 2001- ) and DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC MEMORY (Toronto, 2011- ). My analysis suggests that social engagement premised on site-specificity is promising, in that it can foster new forms of civic dialogue, but is ideally approached with a fluid spatial imagination, relationally specific awareness of urban dynamics, and close attention to social conflicts. This dissertation contributes to the emergent literature on creative placemaking and to the burgeoning scholarship on socially engaged art
Confronting Hegemony A story of river defense in southern Costa Rica
Get PDFThis paper examines the historical Socialist Calculation Debate, some critiques of the command economies in the late 20th century as well as some New Socialist economic models. These models were assessed with regards to their feasibility for practice as well as their relation to a theorized historical trajectory in style of immanent critique. This trajectory can be broadly sketched in terms of the implicit dynamics of capital accumulation, the size of the state sector and relative class power. This paper finds that although critics of both socialist models and socialist historical economies present some significant obstacles to the prospects of central calculation and planning, their feasibility is likely to increase with greater data processing capacity and through the increasing feasibility of greater firm growth. It is contended that critics and some advocates misrepresent the obstacles confronting socialist states by assuming that various limited unidimensional criteria are the basis for decision making and economic organization in these states. For instance, one of the major assumptions they make is that shortterm institutional economic efficiency is the key target of decision making. These assumptions overlook key contingencies and neglect the dynamics of real decision-making, instead assuming habit or mere formalism can just be imposed without sufficient leverage. Despite their flaws, some of these critiques might reveal an unfolding rationalization mechanism that begins with less computational capacity, relying on more crude political direction to those that would rely on a more detailed form, which could progressively shrink the domain of the market. I argue that although many models might be presented as competitors, they might be better understood as highlighting different aspects that might be emphasized at different stages in a developmental progression towards greater economic centralization and greater class power in a progressively more socialist regime. Like Marx’s immanent critique of capitalism, the growing inefficiency of v lower forms should progress to more efficient detailed modes of calculation as is required by the scope of economic responsibility of the state. Their structural limitations do not invalidate them as potentially useful for a period of time, they just reveal the need for more nuanced forms of ex ante calculation that suits its economic breadth of responsibility as more of the economy comes under its purvie
Migrant Dreams: Documentary as Cultural Resistance for Social Change
Get PDFI made a documentary fifteen years ago that I still haven’t finished making. I
didn’t realize this until I starting writing this paper – but its become clearer to
me that the process of creating doesn’t obey spatial or temporal boundaries.
Fifteen years ago I made a documentary about migrant Mexican men working in
Canada called El Contrato. It was the first feature documentary I’d ever made.
I had no formal training in filmmaking and was largely unfamiliar with
documentary as a form. Somehow I made a watchable film and in the
subsequent years El Contrato has been used as a tool for discussion and
political engagement on migrant worker issues in Canada. With this project,
Migrant Dreams, I am able to revisit the political and creative goals of my first
film through a self-reflexive process that takes me back to the beginning but
with a new set of questions that are explored in this paper
Migrant Plants: Arts-Based Inquiry into Plant-Human Relations
No full textThis dissertation is a multi-layered exploration of the process of research and the creation of four main projects containing ten multimedia artworks. While probing plant-human and more-than-human relations in the context of colonization, I use arts-based participatory methodologies, acknowledging different ways of knowing and plant agency as well as critical plant studies. The context of the artworks originates in San Basilio de Palenque in the Caribbean area of Colombia. Following my own migration and the migration of plants, the final work is situated in Toronto, Canada, where I probe in-depth plant-human relations through the concept of migrant co-relations
Including Farmers' Voices in the Farm Labour Debate
Get PDFWhile promoting sustainable agricultural, it is important to both address the many challenges to farming sustainably in Ontario and envision a comprehensive food ethic. One of the greatest challenges and unjust aspects of farming pertains to farm labour. Working within a Gramscian perspective, inclusive of food justice and just labour frameworks, this paper will explore whether the systemic factors leading to vulnerable conditions for both farmers and farm workers can be addressed simultaneously. The naming the moment political analysis, inspired by Gramsci, requires the current conjuncture to be explored. This paper presents exploratory research, based on qualitative interviews with nine farmers operating small-‐ and medium-‐scale sustainable farms in Ontario. By including farmers in the discussion, and placing farm labour within the broader food and labour juncture, we can better understand the use of precarious workers in agriculture as indicative of a broken food system. Workers, activists and researchers must continue their attempts to define just farm labour within the current moment to suggest steps toward a desirable future. Recognizing the precariousness of farmers, in addition to workers, and seeking cross-‐sector alliances offers an example of a step towards more just farm labour conditions for all
Visualizing Absence: Memorializing The Histories Of The Former Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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