Governance, Governments and Legislation

The mandate for policy action on ocean acidification falls under the remit of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change (UNFCCC) since, like climate change, ocean acidification is a result of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The international community dealing with climate change must play a decisive role in encouraging national and local governments to scale-up efforts to mitigate CO2 emissions thereby reducing the impact of both climate change and ocean acidification. The annual UNFCCC meeting, Conference of the Parties (COP) represent pivotal opportunities for the ocean science community to provide the international community dealing with climate change with information and recommendations leading to informed solutions and policy guidelines that address ocean acidification. The objective is to develop a comprehensive message about the relevance of ocean acidification in current and future governance agendas. The target audiences include the international community dealing with climate change, climate negotiators, national leaders, UN agencies and Non-governmental Organisations, as well as the parties involved in the UNFCCC process.

Narratives Around Iberian Culture at Valencia Museums and Archaeological Sites: From Official Discourses to Social Perceptions

Museums and archaeological sites are considered the most authoritative places for talking about the past and the heritage from a scientific perspective. In fact, visitors assume their discourses as reliable and indisputable. In spite of that, professionals of archaeology must critically analyse the production of narratives at heritage sites, since they often reflect social, political and identity issues related to the present-day realities. The aim of this paper is to study official and popular discourses about the Iberian culture (Iron Age) collected in museums and archaeological sites from Valencia region.

Ecohumanists. Protection of physical ecology demands respect human ecology

What is the human being? Which is its origin and its end? What is the influence of the nature in the man and what is his impact on nature? Forthe animalists, men are like other animals; freedom and rationality are not signs of superiority, nor having rights over the animals. For the ecohumanists, human beings are part of nature, but is qualitatively different and superior to animals; and is the creator of the civilization. We analyze these two ecological looks. A special point is the contribution ofecohumanists -from the first half of the Renaissance, who dealt in extenso the dignity and freedom of the human being-, of Michelangelo and finally, of Mozart, through his four insurmountable operas, which display the difficulty of physical ecology to engender so much beauty, so much wealth, so much love for the creatures and so much variety.

Formal Aspects in SDH for Children in Spanish Television: A Descriptive Study

The comprehension of a subtitle goes far beyond the understanding of the meaning of the words it comprises. Formal aspects of subtitles for the d/Deaf and the hard-of-hearing (SDH) can be crucial in the cognitive effort necessary to process the subtitle within its audiovisual context (Perego 2008). The present article studies common practices of formal aspects in SDH for children, focusing on three parameters: layout and positioning of the subtitle; orthotypographic conventions; and resources for the identification of characters in the three TV channels dedicated exclusively to the youngest audiences in Spain. The present piece of research was carried out by analysing and evaluating these three parameters in comparison with the current UNE Standard 153010 (AENOR 2012) and with previous theoretical studies in the field.

Assessing the Societal Impact of Research: The Relational Engagement Approach

Marketing and policy researchers seeking to increase the societal impact of their scholarship should engage directly with relevant stakeholders. For maximum societal effect, this engagement needs to occur both within the research process and throughout the complex process of knowledge transfer. A relational engagement approach to research impact is proposed as complementary and building upon traditional approaches. Traditional approaches to impact employ bibliometric measures and focus on the creation and use of journal articles by scholarly audiences, an important but incomplete part of the academic process. The authors suggest expanding the strategies and measures of impact to include process assessments for specific stakeholders across the entire course of impact: from the creation, awareness, and use of knowledge to societal impact. This relational engagement approach involves the co-creation of research with audiences beyond academia. The authors hope to begin a dialogue on the strategies researchers can make to increase the potential societal benefits of their research.

Sound Art and Public Engagement in the Built Environment: Reflections from an Architecture Center

This article explores the deployment of sound in architectural-curatorial and community engagement contexts through the work of PLACE, a multidisciplinary not-for-profit architecture center in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The author, who worked with PLACE and contributed to the projects discussed here, contextualizes architecture centers and their relationship with sound before examining the specific case of sound and sound art in Northern Ireland and case studies of projects delivered by PLACE. Specifically, the article evaluates two sound installation artworks and three community engagement projects for young audiences. As a means of curating urbanism and architecture, sound-art-as-public-art affords useful strategies to examine, describe or critique the environment as alternatives to traditional architecture exhibition formats. Sound’s temporality and materiality allow sound art works to exist as temporary sculptural interventions in the urban sphere, with attendant implications for public art procurement and urban acoustics. Rich territories of engagement are opened when using sound in a community participatory context.

The Republican Movement, 'Disappearing' and Framing the Past in Northern Ireland

Despite a rich body of research on the conflict and peace process in Northern Ireland, the ‘disappearances’ carried out by Republican armed groups have so far escaped scrutiny. In this article I examine how the Republican movement has framed the rationale behind ‘disappearing’ as a rational response to informing and as an example of historical continuity. In doing so, Republicans appear to attempt to confer legitimacy on their choice of target and normalize the use of the practice within a Republican framework. However, these rationales incorporate techniques of neutralization and attempts to contextualize the ‘disappearances’ in such a way as to distance the Irish Republican Army from agency. Such distancing speaks to a third, overarching rationale for ‘disappearing’: the avoidance of an embarrassment that has continued into the postconflict period. I consider why Republicans persist in claiming the ‘disappeared’ were legitimate targets, killed by a method for which there is historical precedent, when such framing left them open to criticism at a time when they were seeking to demonstrate that they had left violence behind. I conclude that Republican attempts to satisfy two audiences resulted in a gulf between their engagement in the process of recovering remains and their rhetoric surrounding this issue. In so doing, light is shed on some of the challenges the Republican movement faced in their transition away from violence. More broadly, the value of unpicking the framing of key actors in transitional processes is illuminated.

Through Class Darkly: Class in the British TV Noir

Class has always been at the heart of the television crime drama. Whether it is the post-war paternalism of Dixon of Dock Green (1955 – 1976), the harsh social realism of The Sweeney (1975-1978), or the almost mythical evocations of Britain in Heartbeat (1992 – 2010) and Midsomer Murders (1997- present), class and crime have always been seen as being inextricably linked. Since the 1990s, the British crime drama has been influenced by successive waves of cultural imports from, firstly, the US and then from Scandinavia. There is now a recognisable ‘genre’ for what we might think of as British TV Noir. Beginning with shows such as Cracker (1993 – 2006), Prime Suspect (1991 – 2006) and Messiah (2001) and continuing with dramas like Red Riding (2008), Southcliffe (2013) and Hinterland (2013 – present), the British TV Noir employs narratives and stylistic tropes that might usually be associated with the cinema of the 1940s. Although drawing influence from high profile shows such as Twin Peaks (1990 – 1991), Millennium (1996) and (latterly) The Wire (2002 – 2008), CSI (2000 – present) and The Killing (2007) these British Noir shows also articulate the nation’s shifting class system. As Susan Sydney-Smith has ably demonstrated, the crime drama is “historically contingent” (Sydney-Smith, 2002, p. 5) and shaped by the surrounding socio-political, as well aesthetic, context. To this end, this chapter traces the depiction of class in three key crime series – Prime Suspect, Red Riding and Southcliffe - and explores how social class, and more importantly, its changing face provides a constant background to the narratives and characterisations. These three texts were each produced at pivotal moments in Britain’s relationship to class – Prime Suspect was shown 6 months after Margaret Thatcher vacated office; Red Riding was produced in the midst of the global recession in 2008 and Southcliffe was made in the shadows of stringing welfare and immigration reforms. These texts span three successive political administrations and over two decades of social and political change. Understanding the relationship between criminal activity and class in these dramas however is far more complicated than simply reading the historical context through the text. Commensurate with its cinematic incarnation, TV Noir is both reflective and productive, employing visual and narrative tropes to manipulate, as well reflect, its audience’s moral and social positioning. The picture that emerges from an examination of class and the British TV Noir is one of suspicion and discontent. As Andrew Spicer suggests (with reference to British cinema) the Noir sensibility both depicts and critiques a society that it sees as being “class-ridden, racist and misogynist” (Spicer, 2002, p.202). This is certainly the case with the texts that are being examined here, as social positions and taxonomies are constantly being redefined and renegotiated.

Intervenção Social - Arte ou Ciência?: O Assistente Social como agente de mudança numa autarquia de interior.

O presente trabalho baseia-se na pesquisa documental e na análise crítico-reflexiva sobre o serviço social no Poder Local, a sua evolução, influências e implicações no trabalho desenvolvido no (pelo) Gabinete de Ação Social do Município de Pampilhosa da Serra. O serviço social assume, durante o Estado Novo, um papel de controle, com uma prática associada essencialmente ao Estado e a algumas entidades da sociedade civil, nomeadamente à Igreja Católica. Com a Era Democrática, assiste-se ao crescimento da intervenção do Estado e à descentralização da sua atuação para as Autarquias, assumindo-se o SAAL (1974) como um marco histórico. A intervenção ganha, assim, um caráter “territorial” crescendo as responsabilidades das autarquias, quer no âmbito das transferências de competências por parte do Poder Central, quer ao nível da dinamização de serviços de âmbito municipal e da criação de respostas sociais específicas. O PRS (1997) e a RLIS (2013), apresentam-se como exemplos dessa territorialização, reforçando as atribuições das Autarquias ao nível da ação social. O primeiro, implementado a nível nacional, visa a articulação de recursos e uma intervenção integrada. Tem como princípios, a promoção a participação da população e dos agentes locais quer na elaboração de diagnósticos sociais, quer na criação de respostas adequadas às necessidades. A segunda, em fase de implementação, visa a criação de uma metodologia de trabalho ao nível do atendimento e acompanhamento social. Destaca-se o papel das Autarquias e da Sociedade Civil, na efetivação de uma intervenção social de proximidade. A crescente desresponsabilização do Estado na intervenção social, em particular do Poder Central, motivada pela Crise Económica, provoca alterações nas políticas sociais. Surgem as políticas de inserção direcionadas para públicos específicos, tendencialmente contratualizadas e centradas no sujeito. Estas alterações tiveram, também, implicações na atuação do Município de Pampilhosa da Serra, onde o serviço social se desenvolveu a par da implementação dos programas de âmbito comunitário, nomeadamente do PDIAS e PLCP (1996) e do projecto-piloto do RMG (1997). Sistematizou-se com a implementação das Redes Sociais e operacionaliza-se no Gabinete de Ação Social, atuando em três dimensões: mediação, promoção e execução. Da análise e reflexão em torno da atuação do GAS, no qual inscrevemos a nossa intervenção profissional, consideramos que esta se desenvolve numa relação sociopolítica e operacional, assumindo a Autarquia um papel ativo ao criar e/ou reforçar medidas de apoio socioeducativo e económico, de forma a garantir o bem-estar social e a qualidade de vida dos cidadãos Pampilhosenses. O município assume-se como o patamar de atuação de proximidade por excelência, onde o local se perspetiva como o espaço onde a intervenção social se operacionaliza, enquanto que o Poder Local, em conjunto com a sociedade Civil, assumem o poder de co construir a mudança social. / This work is based on documentary research and critical and reflective analysis of the social service in Local Government, its evolution, influences and implications on the work of the (at) Social Action Office of the municipality of Pampilhosa da Serra. The social service assumes, during the Estado Novo, a paper control, primarily associated with a practice the state and some civil society organizations, including the Catholic Church. With the Democratic Era, we are witnessing the growth of state intervention and the decentralization of its activities to the local authorities, assuming the SAAL (1974) as a historical landmark. Intervention win, so a character "territorial" growing responsibilities of local authorities, or within the transfer of responsibilities from the Central Power, both in terms of promotion of municipal services and the creation of specific social responses. The PRS (1997) and the RLIS (2013), are presented as examples of territorial, strengthening the powers of local authorities to the level of social action. The first, implemented nationally, aimed at articulating features and an integrated intervention. Its principles, promoting the participation of the population and local actors when developing social diagnosis, whether the creation of appropriate responses to the needs. The second, under implementation, aims to create a working methodology in terms of care and social support. It highlights the role of local authorities and civil society in the execution of a social intervention proximity. The growing irresponsibility of the state in social intervention, in particular the Central Power, motivated by the economic crisis, causes changes in social policies. Arise inclusion policies targeting specific audiences tend contracted and centered on the subject. These changes have also implications for the work of the municipality of Pampilhosa da Serra, where the social work developed together with the implementation of Community-wide programs, including the PDIAS and PLCP (1996) and the pilot project of RMG (1997). Systematized with the implementation of Social Networks and made operational in the Social Action Office, working in three dimensions: mediation, promotion and implementation. Analysis and reflection around the GAS operation, in which we inscribe our professional intervention, we believe that this is developed in a socio-political and operational relationship, assuming the Municipality an active role to create and / or strengthen measures of socio-educational and economic support, to ensure the welfare and quality of life of citizens Pampilhosenses. The municipality is assumed as the proximity actuation level par excellence where the location is perspective as the space where social intervention made operational, while the Local Government, together with civil society, assume the co power build social change.

Violetta Undone: Getting Closer to Opera By Not Making Opera

In early 2016 students at the University of Worcester were set the task of creating an adaptation of Verdi’s La traviata, a work which they knew from having seen the production by Richard Eyre live streamed from the Royal Opera House, at the Odeon Cinema in Worcester. The majority of students attested that this was their first encounter with opera and many were not looking forward to the project. This paper will describe and examine the process of adaptation and will reflect on how the mediated experience of the opera informed the final live production. It will also examine how the devisers of a new work, called Violetta Undone, considered the inclusion of musical and dramatic themes from the opera, as well as how they considered matters of relevance to contemporary audiences. The paper will furthermore consider how this process of undoing the opera not only fulfilled the requirements of the module (to learn about the processes of adaptation) but also brought the students closer to opera as an art-form. The paper will reflect on how, what was ultimately produced, not only radically deviated from what we understand as opera (as represented by the production which acted as a stimulus) but simultaneously adhered closely to the theoretical notion of gesamtkunstwerk which lies at the heart of opera theory. Additionally, questions that will be considered include: What lessons might be learned about educating drama students about opera? And how might undoing opera in a collaborative way inform dramaturgical explorations of operas?

The Glow of Unwork? Issues of Portrayal in Networked Learning Research

In this paper, we suggest that portrayal of research is often undervalued and seen as ‘unwork’ (Galloway, 2012). Portrayal is often seen as an issue that is relatively straight forward by qualitative researchers, and invariably refers to putting the findings of the study together with excerpts from participants and usually, but not always, some interpretation. It tends to be seen as the means by which the researcher has chosen to position people and their perspectives, and it is imbued with a sense of not only positioning but also a contextual painting of a person in a particular way. Yet there are an array of issues and challenges about what portrayal can or might mean in digital spaces. In this paper we argue that researching education in a digital age provides greater or different opportunities to represent and portray data differently and suggest that these ways are underutilised. For example, for many researchers legitimacy comes through the use of participants’ voices in the form of quotations. However, we argue that this stance towards plausibility and legitimacy is problematic and needs to be reconsidered in terms of understanding differences in types of portrayal, recognizing how researchers position themselves in relation to portrayal, and understanding decision-making in relation to portrayal. We suggest that there need to be new perspectives about portrayal and concept, and ideas are provided that offer a different view. Three key recommendations are made: Portrayal should be reconceptualised as four overlapping concepts: mustering, folding, cartography, and portrayal. Adopting such an approach will enable audiences, researchers and other stakeholders to critique the assumptions that researchers on tour bring to portrayal and encourage reflexivity. Researchers on tour should highlight the temporal, mutable and shifting nature of portrayed research findings, emphasising the need for continued and varied research to inform understanding. There is a significant need for greater insight into the influence of portrayal, as well as the difference between representation and portrayal. Future studies should prioritise this, and ensure that portrayal is considered and critiqued from the outset.

Feminista Frequencies: Tuning In to Chicana Radio Activism in the Pacific Northwest, 1975-1990

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Sunray etched Visors for the Jamaican Olympic Team in three colours: yellow, green and black

Design for visors for the delegation from Jamaica to the London Olympic Games 2012. This design was commissioned by PUMA 2012 based on McLean's designs featured in the website House of Flora, which functions as a space of display, archive, folio, point of sale and dissemination. The McLean standard design for visors is a component of the avant garde, pret a porter millinery, accessory design collections, and stylistically customised for the Jamaican team. McLean's oeuvre is original in its integration of the experimental traditions of art school workshop culture with the professional demands of fashion manufacture and trade culture. Combining the innovation of the postmodern urban artisan with the exacting demands of industrial production, dissemination and distribution McLean's design work spans the disparate worlds of national art collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum (A Hat Anthology Exhibition, and catalogue 2009), London Design Museum ( Fifty Hats that Changed the World 2009). Integrating design considerations of multiple and mass production with the stylistic considerations of the studio workshop McLean brings the wit of the avant garde urban artisan to the structures and systems of fashion industry. The designs reach to a global audience as product users, as well as to the international connoisseurship of crafts and design specialists. The rigour of McLean's research and innovation is evident in the specificity of the stylistic references made through her selection of materials, processes, form, colour and symbolism. A range of cultural references cite the rich fusion of early twentieth century modernist culture in which the disparate worlds of popular, proletarian, culture fertilised the stylistic austerity of high modern formalism. McLean here considers the relationship between millinery and coiffure, following from the millinery piece featured in (Marcel bobbed hairpiece hat), and now brings the considerations of ethnic difference to bear on her design. Afro hair brings user group specificity to the milliner, and the visor design is a resolution of function and style for both protection and display. Connoting the sartorial conventions of workwear headgear, rather than the nineteenth century colonial 'cricketer's' cap, or the twentieth century US 'baseball' peaked cap, McLean's 'Jamaican Olympic Visor' brings distinctively postcolonial meaning to the cultural profile of the heterotopic media space. Designing for the popular culture of Olympic sports, televised and broadcast to global audiences, brings new forms of agency to the fashion designer, and McLan's design deploys a style that is widely recognisable from other popular culture's film and TV depictions of workwear to mark the distinctive tradition of supremacy that black athletes bring to the European traditions of cultural heritage. Supplanting the Arcadian 'laurels' with which winners are, traditionally, crowned, McLean's visor design innovation, suggests that it is not impossible to challenge and transform apparently timeless hierarchies of power and supremacy, so that ex-slaves may also become victors. McLean's fashion designs all work within this reach of fashion towards the carnivalesque inversion of social orderliness through play, display and sartorial activism.

The Undersea World of the Sound Department: the Construction of Sonic Conventions in Sub-aqua Screen Environments

The availability of new underwater cameras and sub-aqua diving gear in the immediate post-war era opened up exciting possibilities for both narrative and documentary filmmakers. While the visual elements of this new world could now be more easily captured on film, the sound elements of the sub-aqua environment remained more elusive. What did, or should, this undersea world sound like? This article examines the use of sound in the sub-aqua scenes of both fictional and documentary films in the 1950s and asks questions about the methods used in the sonification of these worlds. Comparing the operation of underwater sound and human hearing with the production and post-production strategies used by filmmakers, I seek to identify the emergence of a sound convention and its implications for issues of cinematic realism. Central to this convention is the manipulation of sonic frequencies. The sound strategies adopted also raise questions about the malleability of viewer perspective and sound-image relationship in terms of a realist mode of address. Linked to this is the use of sound to enhance audience experience on an affective level. As well as underpinning cinematic realism, these new sound environments offered fresh experiences to audiences seeking new reasons to visit the cinema in an era of widening forms of entertainment.

May the Giant Be With You: Twin Peaks Season Two, Episode One and the Television Auteur

The premiere of Season Two of Twin Peaks garnered some of the highest ratings of the series, with celebrated filmmaker and co-creator David Lynch stepping back into the director’s chair. Yet, within this episode many traditional television conventions are flouted, and in response the following week the ratings dropped dramatically. From its slow-paced opening scenes in which an old man admonishes the wounded, bleeding protagonist to drink his warm milk before it gets cold, followed by a vision of a giant speaking in riddles, this episode not only tested its audience’s patience but also seemed to set out to deliberately confuse them. In this essay I will explore how this episode is an example of auteur television, an episode in which the director expresses a consistency of style and theme that is similar to their other work, as well as examine how Lynch’s approach to televisual aesthetics has influenced the way that contemporary film directors have crossed over into the television medium. However, when taking into account the differences in the two media of film and television notions of authorship, with regards to the position of the director, become complicated, especially when considering contemporary television and the rise of the showrunner as key creative force. Even when looking back at Lynch’s contribution to Twin Peaks it becomes clear that the series was deeply collaborative, with Lynch absent during parts of the filming. Yet, when examining the extensive material that has been written about Twin Peaks there is still a continuing tendency to place Lynch as the sole author. The placement of Lynch as author can be argued in relation to the episodes he directed (as will be explored below in relation to the first episode of Season Two), but cannot be attributed to him alone when considering the series as a whole. Finally, I will discuss how the figure of the television auteur has become a central element of television reception rather than production, an integral part of a viewer’s search for narrative meaning in a medium where complexity and mystery are now expected and enjoyed. Just as fans scrambled to uncover the many secrets and mysteries of Twin Peaks by looking to Lynch’s other works for answers, a similar process is experienced by fans of television shows existing today.