1,721,048 research outputs found
Plastic and the work of the biodegradable
Full text linkThis chapter was originally presented at the seminar, 'Accumulation: The Material Ecologies and Economies of Plastic, co-organised with Gay Hawkins at the University of Queensland and Mike Michael through the Centre for Invention and Social Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London (21 June 2011).
Plastics are material substances often condemned for their inability to biodegrade in the environment. New forms of plastics have been developed with capacities for biodegradability, a material strategy that is meant to remedy the (visible) problem of plastics accumulation. This paper discusses the distinct types of work undertaken by humans and more-than-humans in the material processes of bio-degrading plastics. The paper focuses on three distinct examples of biodegradable practices and processes, including EU fisherman paid to fish plastic from European seas, the accumulation of plastics and plasticizers in marine organisms’ bodies, and the discovery of ‘plastic-munching’ bacteria in oceans.
The concept and practice of work in relation to plastics indicates the ways in which it may be possible to re-conceptualize the notion of “carbon workers,” a term used in relation to climate change that points to the diverse if at times problematic ways in which any number of humans and more-than-humans are enrolled in the work of mitigating climate change. Here, I extend and translate this notion of “carbon workers” toward plastics. Plastics are composites of carbon, both in their physical form as petro-chemical hydrocarbons, and in the carbon energy used to manufacture them. I focus on biodegradability as a specific form of carbon work that involves site work, as well as processes of transformation, deformation and generation of materials and bodies. From this study, I then ask: How might plastic accumulation and biodegradability point toward specific types of carbon work that allow for new understandings of material politics through more-than-human material processes? What types of carbon work become identifiable in relation to plastics as they biodegrade, and what types might be imagined in order to engage new material political practices
Automatic sensation: environmental sensors in the digital city
No full textThis paper discusses the use of environmental sensors, wireless networks and mobile media as technologies of sensation in the city. While these devices enable a “digital city,” in many respects they appear to be immaterial, operating beyond sense. Further, drawing on two case studies presented by the Digital Cities project in Montreal, the paper considers how applications of environmental sensors and mobile media give rise to new conditions and questions for how we configure sense in the “digital city.” The paper ultimately finds that sensors direct us toward new sites, assemblages and practices of sensation within the urban sensorium. (Abstract)
Introduction: From Materiality to Plasticity
No full textFrom food punnets to credit cards, plastic facilitates every part of our daily lives. It has become central to processes of contemporary socio-material living. Universalised and abstracted, it is often treated as the passive object of political deliberations, or a problematic material demanding human management. But in what ways might a 'politics of plastics' deal with both its specific manifestation in particular artefacts and events, and its complex dispersed heterogeneity?
This book explores the vitality and complexity of plastic. This interdisciplinary collection focuses on how the presence and recalcitrance of plastic reveals the relational exchanges across human and synthetic materialities. It captures multiplicity by engaging with the processual materialities or plasticity of plastic. Through a series of themed essays on plastic materialities, plastic economies, plastic bodies and new articulations of plastic, the editors and chapter authors examine specific aspects of plastic in action. How are multiple plastic realities enacted? What are their effects
Made to be wasted: PET and topologies of disposability
No full textFrom food punnets to credit cards, plastic facilitates every part of our daily lives. It has become central to processes of contemporary socio-material living. Universalised and abstracted, it is often treated as the passive object of political deliberations, or a problematic material demanding human management. But in what ways might a 'politics of plastics' deal with both its specific manifestation in particular artefacts and events, and its complex dispersed heterogeneity? Accumulation explores the vitality and complexity of plastic. This interdisciplinary collection focuses on how the presence and recalcitrance of plastic reveals the relational exchanges across human and synthetic materialities. It captures multiplicity by engaging with the processual materialities or plasticity of plastic. Through a series of themed essays on plastic materialities, plastic economies, plastic bodies and new articulations of plastic, the editors and chapter authors examine specific aspects of plastic in action. How are multiple plastic realities enacted? What are their effects? This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, human and cultural geography, environmental studies, consumption studies, science and technology studies, design, and political theory
Voice, representation, relationships: Report of the open qualitative research working group
No full textThere is strong support for the open research agenda among qualitative researchers. This report broadly defines qualitative research as the exploration of communities’ and individuals’ perspectives and lived experiences and how people meaningfully construct and negotiate social worlds in specific contexts. Such research typically involves natural-language descriptions, rather than numerical measurements. However, University advocates of open research and funders’ open research policies tend to frame key tenets and desired outcomes in terms of the priorities, methodological approaches and quality markers of STEMM fields and the quantitative social sciences. Qualitative research is heterogeneous, and STEMM-oriented open-data policies can be at odds with qualitative researchers’ values. Instead of building trust and transparency into the research process, such policies can undermine or inhibit collaboration and engagement that are crucial for ongoing qualitative work. Nevertheless, many qualitative researchers – and we as a working group – feel that open research presents huge opportunities for innovation in our fields and, therefore, hope to make discussions about open research at Cambridge University more inclusive of qualitative researchers’ viewpoints. This report includes a number of concrete recommendations that respond to the dialogic, emergent, abundant and relational aspects of qualitative research by proposing context-specific guidelines, infrastructures and training resources
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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