Understanding the very nature of Project Management : a praxiological approach

Foreword: In this paper I call upon a praxiological approach. Praxeology (early alteration of praxiology) is the study of human action and conduct. The name praxeology/praxiologyakes is root in praxis, Medieval Latin, from Greek, doing, action, from prassein to do, practice (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Having been involved in project management education, research and practice for the last twenty years, I have constantly tried to improve and to provide a better understanding/knowledge of the field and related practice, and as a consequence widen and deepen the competencies of the people I was working with (and my own competencies as well!), assuming that better project management lead to more efficient and effective use of resources, development of people and at the end to a better world. For some time I have perceived a need to clarify the foundations of the discipline of project management, or at least elucidate what these foundations could be. An immodest task, one might say! But not a neutral one! I am constantly surprised by the way the world (i.e., organizations, universities, students and professional bodies) sees project management: as a set of methods, techniques, tools, interacting with others fields – general management, engineering, construction, information systems, etc. – bringing some effective ways of dealing with various sets of problems – from launching a new satellite to product development through to organizational change.

Grandiflora : Recent Paintings by Daniel Mafe

Grandiflora: Recent Paintings by Daniel Mafe The paintings of Grandiflora are improvised around a range of different flower motifs culled from medieval textiles and botanical illustrations. Each of the paintings is constructed upon a ground of flat, palely luminous yellow occasionally supplemented by additional areas of high-keyed pastel. Pink, blue, green and mauve together with the yellow, generate a shimmering and even incandescent glow. The graphic images of the flowers with the flat colour areas are then contrasted and worked over with richly sensual, abstract gestures of paint. Within the work there is a pronounced almost rococo-esque opticality as it operates between these different visual codes of flat colour, recognizable floral forms, and gesture. These codes combine to produce a definite visceral impact on the viewer, a pronounced and tactile sense of the experience and ambiguity inherent in perceiving. This ambiguity is interestingly at odds with the apparently clean and crisp quality each painting demonstrates as an integrated whole. Indeed each piece goes on to reveal, despite the use of overt figurative quotations, a sense of the purely abstract which in its turn concretely establishes the ornamental.

The Icelander abroad: Hjalti Skeggjason’s Swedish mission

This chapter analyses the characterization of Hjalti Skeggjason in the medieval Icelandic text Heimskringla. It argues that Hjalti is developed as an exemplary character who is able to adapt to life at the Norwegian court while exerting his own influence on how that court functions.

Living the indie life : mapping creative teams in a 48 hour game jam and playing with data

In contemporary game development circles the ‘game making jam’ has become an important rite of passage and baptism event, an exploration space and a central indie lifestyle affirmation and community event. Game jams have recently become a focus for design researchers interested in the creative process. In this paper we tell the story of an established local game jam and our various documentation and data collection methods. We present the beginnings of the current project, which seeks to map the creative teams and their process in the space of the challenge, and which aims to enable participants to be more than the objects of the data collection. A perceived issue is that typical documentation approaches are ‘about’ the event as opposed to ‘made by’ the participants and are thus both at odds with the spirit of the jam as a phenomenon and do not really access the rich playful potential of participant experience. In the data collection and visualisation projects described here, we focus on using collected data to re-include the participants in telling stories about their experiences of the event as a place-based experience. Our goal is to find a means to encourage production of ‘anecdata’ - data based on individual story telling that is subjective, malleable, and resists collection via formal mechanisms - and to enable mimesis, or active narrating, on the part of the participants. We present a concept design for data as game based on the logic of early medieval maps and we reflect on how we could enable participation in the data collection itself.

Narratives of possession : reading for saga authorship

The aim of this thesis is to show how character analysis can be used to approach conceptions of saga authorship in medieval Iceland. The idea of possession is a metaphor that is adopted early in the thesis, and is used to describe Icelandic sagas as works in which traditional material is subtly interpreted by medieval authors. For example, we can say that if authors claim greater possession of the sagas, they interpret, and not merely record, the sagas' historical information. On the other hand, tradition holds onto its possession of the narrative whenever it is not possible for an author to develop his own creative and historical interests. The metaphor of possession also underpins the character analysis in the thesis, which is based on the idea that saga authors used characters as a vehicle by which to possess saga narratives and so develop their own historical interests. The idea of possession signals the kinds of problems of authorship study which are addressed here, in particular, the question of the authors' sense of saga writing as an act either of preservation or of creation. While, in that sense, the thesis represents an additional voice in a long-standing debate about the saga writers' relation to their source materials, I argue against a clear-cut distinction between creative and non-creative authors, and focus instead on the wide variation in authorial control over saga materials. This variation suggests that saga authorship is a multi-functional activity, or one which co-exists with tradition. Further, by emphasising characterisation as a method, I am adding to the weight of scholarship that seeks to understand the sagas in terms of their literary effects. The Introduction and chapter one lay out the theoretical scope of this thesis. My aim in these first two sections is to inform the reader of the type of critical questions that arise when authorship is approached in relation to characterisation, and to suggest an interpretive framework with which to approach these questions. In the Introduction this aim manifests as a brief discussion of the application of the term "authorship" to the medieval Icelandic corpus, a definition of the scope of this study, and an introduction to the connections, made throughout this thesis, between saga authors, the sagas' narrative style, and the style of characterisation in the sagas. Chapter one is a far more detailed discussion of our ability to make these connections. In particular, the chapter develops the definition of the analytical term "secondary authorship" that I introduce in order to delineate the type of characterisation that is of most interest in this thesis. "Secondary authorship" is a literary term that aims to sharpen our approach to saga authors' relationship to their characters by focusing on characters who make representations about the events of the saga. The term refers to any instance in which characters behave in a manner that resembles the creativity, interpretation, and understanding associated with authorship more generally. Character analysis cannot, however, be divorced from socio-historical approaches to the saga corpus. Most importantly, the sagas themselves are socio-historical representations that claim some degree of truth value. This claim that the sagas make by implication about their historicity is the starting point of a discussion of authorship in medieval Iceland. Therefore, at the beginning of chapter one I discuss some of the approaches to the social context of saga writing. This discussion serves as an introduction to both the culture of saga writing in medieval Iceland and to the nature of the sagas' historical perspective, and reflects my sense that literary interpretations of the sagas cannot be isolated from the historical discourses that frame them. The chapter also discusses possession, which, as I note above, is used alongside the concept of secondary authorship to describe the saga authors' relationship with the stories and characters of the past. At the close of chapter one, I offer a preliminary list the various functions of saga authorship, and give some examples of secondary authorship. From this point I am able to tie my argument about secondary authorship to specific examples from the sagas. Chapter two examines the effect of family obligations and domestic points of view in the depiction of characters' choices and conception of themselves. The examples that are given in that chapter - from Gisla saga Súrssonar and Íslendinga saga - are the first of a number of textual analyses that demonstrate the application of the concepts of secondary authorship and possession of saga narratives. The relationship between narratives about national and domestic matters shows how authorial creativity in the area of kinship obligation provides the basis for the saga's development of historical themes. Thus, the two major case studies given in chapter two tie authorial engagement with characters to the most influential social institution in early and medieval Iceland, the family. The remaining chapters represent similar attempts to relate authorial possession of saga characters to central socio-historical themes in the sagas, such as the settlement process in early Iceland and its influence on the development of regional political life (chapter three). Likewise, the strong authorial interest in an Icelander's journey to Norway in Heimskringla is presented as evidence of the author's use of a saga character to express an Icelandic interpretation of Norwegian history and to promote a sense that Iceland shared the ownership of regal history with Norway (chapter four). In that authorial engagement with the Icelander abroad, we witness saga characterisation being used as a basis for historical interpretation and the means by which foreign traditions and influence, not least the narratives of royal lives and of the Christianisation, are claimed as part of medieval Icelanders' self-conception. While saga authors observe the conventions of saga narration, characters are often subtly positioned as the authors' interpretive mirrors, especially clear than when they act as secondary authors. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Brennu- Njáls saga, which contains many characters who voice the author's claim to interpret the past. Even Hrútr Herjólfsson, through his remarkable perception of events and his conspicuous comments about them, acts as a secondary author by enabling the author to emphasise the importance of the disposition of characters. In Laxdœla saga and Þorgils saga ok Hafliða, authorial interest in characters' perception is matched by the thematising of learning, from the inception of knowledge as prophecy or advice to complete understanding by saga characters (chapter six). In Þorgils saga skarða, a character's inner development from an excessively ambitious and politically ruthless youth to a Christian leader killed by his kinsman allows the author to shape a political life into a lesson about leadership and the community's ability to moderate and contain the behaviour of extraordinary individuals. The portrayal draws on methods of characterisation that we can identify in Grettis saga Ásmundarson, Fóstbrœðra saga, and Orkneyinga saga. A comparison of the characterisation of figures with intense political or military ambitions suggests that saga authors were interested in the community's ability to balance their strength and ability with a degree of social moderation. The discussion of these sagas shows that character study can be used to analyse how the saga authors added their own voice to the voices passed down to medieval Icelanders in traditional narratives. Authorial engagement with characters allowed inherited traditions about early Norway and Iceland and records of thirteenth century events to be transformed into sophisticated historical works with highly creative elements. Through secondary authorship, saga authors took joint-possession of narratives and contested the power of tradition in setting the interpretive framework of a saga.

Sweden of the Sagas

In this paper, I discuss the representation of Sweden and Swedes in the Íslendingasögur, with an emphasis on identifying patterns across the works, both in terms of narrative structure and content. The aim in doing so is to shed light on modes of representing non-Icelanders in the Íslendingasögur, as well as on medieval Icelandic conceptions of Sweden as a distinct region within Scandinavia. I also aim here to add to a longer-term project that examines the place of foreign visitors to Iceland in the saga corpus more generally. As the scope of this paper is limited to Swedish characters, I am cautious about drawing broad conclusions about their representation – observations given here will need to be framed by a wider study, and one that reads for the characterisation of Swedes in the context both of other genres of saga literature and representations of characters from other regions beside Sweden. However, it is clear that some similarities exist in saga episodes involving Swedish characters: in four of the Íslendingasögur, Swedes are given roles as intruders or outsiders who threaten the community of the saga and whose deaths bring about a change in the for- tunes of their killers.

Qaphqa : fresh cut 2013 Part 1

'Qaphqa' was an outdoor artwork exhibited in the forecourt of Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art as part of Fresh Cut exhibition series. The work took the form of a three-storey-high series of stacked 'outhouses', the seat of each opening onto the cubicle below to form what the artist referred to as a 'long drop'. Assembled in untreated pine and plywood and festooned with mock-medieval ensigns and flags, the work included a flyer containing a poem by Jorge Luis Borges and was accompanied by a published catalogue.

The fantastic in the family sagas : implications for saga authorship

There is increasing acceptance that characterisation in the family sagas is complex enough to include the subtle incorporation of protagonists’ inner lives. Thus, despite saga authors’ apparent desire to pass on traditional stories, saga characterization brings with it the possibility of a connection between the medieval author and the early Icelandic community represented in the sagas, a break in the saga code of objective narration that adds further weight to recent arguments that saga authorship was conceived in broader terms than merely the preservation of oral tales. One such break in objectivity occurs in the range of responses to the fantastic, when characters are forced to interpret the supernatural or strange events in their lives. At such times, the author allows glimpses of the inner lives of characters, focussing our attention on the way in which characters perceived and dealt with extraordinary occurrences, but also highlighting and thematising the distinctive social context of the early Icelandic community.

Regards, the Pit

A solo exhibition by Joseph Breikers included in the MetroArts 2011 galleries Program. The exhbition comprised a series of predominantly sculptural works that reflected the artists ongoing interest in medieval, gothic and death metal visual motifs. The exhibition thus acted as a ironic meditation on ritual, belonging and cultural identity.

Institutionalization

During the 18th and 19th centuries, prostitution came to be understood as a potentially disruptive element in the management of society. New forms of social control developed that sought to transform the souls of prostitutes to better control their bodies. Institutions for managing prostitutes, such as Magdalen Homes and lock hospitals, were introduced or increased in number throughout the British Empire, North America, and Western Europe. Often these institutions had as their stated objective the physical purification and moral reform of prostitutes, appearing to make a dramatic break with earlier methods of social control that had relied on practices of physical punishment and spatial segregation. Emergent institutions for the social control of prostitutes used a regimen of religious training, hard labor, and medical expertise. The objective of the Magdalen Home was not to punish sin but to absolve it, while the function of the lock hospital was not simply to confine the ill, but to confine the ill to "cure" them. The role of these institutions was not only symbolic, mirroring in some way the operation of earlier forms of social control, but was also practical and transformative. The mass institutionalization of prostitutes that occurred during the 18th and 19th centuries produced and emphasized sexual, class, and gender boundaries, grounded in the broad distinction between "pure" and "impure" women. Because of its association with sin, prostitution before the 18th century had been constructed as a religious problem relating to salvation and penitence. Throughout Western Europe during the Middle Ages, prostitutes, like the medieval leper and the Jew, were subject to restrictions designed to distinguish and isolate them from other members of their communities. The repression of prostitution during the Middle Ages was neither systematic nor highly organized, although it reinforced the image of the prostitute as sinful "other".

Working the iceberg : a staffroom morality play

This play comes from a research project about how teachers understand and sustain their work in challenging secondary school classrooms. The research asked “How DO teachers work in these classrooms?” not “How SHOULD they?” In the play you meet three teachers who speak candidly about their principles, priorities and vulnerabilities to a pre-service teacher as they move between classes and staffroom. These are real people, real quotes and real feelings taken from real interview data, not idealised guidelines for ‘best practice’. Rather than templates for practice, the play offers a variety of models, issues and food for thought to discuss in teacher education programs. The project was interested in the moral dynamics of classrooms created under the Council of Australian Governments’ 2009 Compact with Young Australians, a policy move that required students to be ‘earning or learning till 17’ across all Australian states. By removing the unemployment benefit for this age group, and tying school attendance to family welfare entitlements, these policies effectively raised the minimum school-leaving age. The risk in this well-intended policy move is that a lack of suitable job opportunities will keep young people at school longer than they want to be there. The effects of this ‘earning or learning’ policy will impact some communities, schools and classrooms much harder than others. The title uses the metaphor of an iceberg to refer to the complex community-school relations that lie below classroom interactions. The idea of a morality play in the play’s title refers back to a medieval form of popular play that used characters to instruct the audience in virtues and values. In the same way, this play seeks to bring to the surface and embody the different moral principles that can inform teacher’s work. The research involved classroom ethnographies of classes for 16 to 17 years olds in non-academic pathways. Eight different teacher/ class combinations were sampled across 2 high schools, 2 TAFE colleges and I hybrid TAFE/school program in three towns experiencing chronic youth unemployment. Their timetabled lessons were observed across 3 to 4 weeks and the teachers and some students were interviewed in each site. The project was funded by an ARC Discovery Early Career Award, 2012-214.

Information feudalism: Who owns the knowledge economy? A book review

Back in 1995, Peter Drahos wrote a futuristic article called ‘Information feudalism in the information society’. It took the form of an imagined history of the information society in the year 2015. Drahos provided a pessimistic vision of the future, in which the information age was ruled by the private owners of intellectual property. He ended with the bleak, Hobbesian image: "It is unimaginable that the information society of the 21st century could be like this. And yet if abstract objects fall out of the intellectual commons and are enclosed by private owners, private, arbitrary, unchecked global power will become a part of life in the information society. A world in which seed rights, algorithms, DNA, and chemical formulas are owned by a few, a world in which information flows can be coordinated by information-media barons, might indeed be information feudalism (p. 222)." This science fiction assumed that a small number of states would dominate the emerging international regulatory order set up under the World Trade Organization. In Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?, Peter Drahos and his collaborator John Braithwaite reprise and expand upon the themes first developed in that article. The authors contend: "Information feudalism is a regime of property rights that is not economicallyefficient, and does not get the balance right between rewarding innovation and diffusing it. Like feudalism, it rewards guilds instead of inventive individual citizens. It makes democratic citizens trespassers on knowledge that should be the common heritage of humankind, their educational birthright. Ironically, information feudalism, by dismantling the publicness of knowledge, will eventually rob the knowledge economy of much of its productivity (p. 219)." Drahos and Braithwaite emphasise that the title Information Feudalism is not intended to be taken at face value by literal-minded readers, and crudely equated with medieval feudalism. Rather, the title serves as a suggestive metaphor. It designates the transfer of knowledge from the intellectual commons to private corporation under the regime of intellectual property.

Child-centered teaching, redemption, and educational identities: A history of the present

Child-centeredness runs a familiar route in educational narratives. From Rousseau to Pestalozzi to Froebel to present day systems of childcare and schooling, childcenteredness is thought to have shifted the treatment of children into closer harmony with their true nature and hence into more sensitive and civilized forms of rearing. The celebratory air surrounding its deployment in education has been pervasive and difficult to contest partly because of the emotive alliances that have been drawn between child-centeredness and progressivism. That is, child-centeredness has been positioned as superseding a harsh, medieval ignorance of children while preventing present-day authoritarian strategies of domination. Child-centeredness is thus presently constituted as a soft space, as a deeply sensitive middle ground, between ignoring children and dominating them completely.

From the genius of man to the man of genius, part two: Inheriting (ideas about) genius

In Part One of ʻFrom the Genius of the Man to the Man of Geniusʼ I argued that classical and medieval inscriptions of genius figures suggest a coevalence between characters in their respective cosmologies, making it relatively more difficult to delineate Man from “spirits” and “other organisms”. The labour that genii performed flowed around two significant tropes of production and reproduction whose specificities were inflected in and across sources. In medieval poetry, for instance, genius figures took up a new role in regard to the reproduction trope, as promoter of virtue (in the form of censuring the seven deadly sins) and condemner of vice (in the form of prohibition against same sex intercourse). The sedimentation (complex processes of character-formation), directionality (patterns of descent) and sexual ecology (emergence of a field of ethics) that the medieval literature embodies also indexes an opening disarticulation of Man from universe and the possibility of grounding “morality” in and as His love choices. Through a series of narrative structures, binary concepts and new sources of authority under Christianity the figure now referred to in philosophy as “the subject” is given early grounds upon which to form in the medieval poems.

The use of tin and bronze in prehistoric southern Indian metallurgy

The medieval icons of southern India are among the most acclaimed Indian artistic innovations, especially those of the Chola Tamil kingdom (9th–10th centuries), which is best known for the Hindu iconography of the Dance of Siva that captured the imagination of master sculptor Rodin.1 Apart from these prolific images, however, not much was known about southern Indian copperbased metallurgy. Hence, these often spectacular castings have been regarded as a sudden efflorescence, almost without precedent, of skilled metallurgy as contrasted with tin-rich China or southeast Asia, for instance, where a developed copper-bronze tradition has been better appreciated.