scholarly journals Mediating Climate, Mediating Scale

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Anne Pasek
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Double Bind ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
A Site ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Modes Of Engagement

Climate communication is seemingly stuck in a double bind. The problem of global warming requires inherently trans-scalar modes of engagement, encompassing times and spaces that exceed local frames of experience and meaning. Climate media must therefore negotiate representational extremes that risk overwhelming their audience with the immensity of the problem or rendering it falsely manageable at a local scale. The task of visualizing climate is thus often torn between scales germane to the problem and scales germane to individuals. In this paper I examine how this scalar divide has been negotiated visually, focusing in particular on Ed Hawkins’ 2016 viral climate spiral. To many, the graphic represents a promising union of political and scientific communication in the public sphere. However, formal analysis of the gif’s reception suggest that the spiral was also a site of anxiety and negative emotion for many viewers. I take these conflicting interpretations as cause to rethink current assumptions about best practices and desirable outcomes for scalar mediations of climate and their capacities to mobilize a wide range of reactions and interpretations—some more legibly political and some more complicatedly affective, yet all nevertheless integral to the work of building a holistic response to the climate crisis.

Neotoponymy, Appropriation of Space and Youth Political Expression in Tokombéré, Northern Cameroon (1970–2011)

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110638
Author(s):  
Baskouda S.K. Shelley
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
The Public ◽  
Northern Cameroon ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
A Site

Using the example of neotoponyms proliferation in Tokombéré (Northern Cameroon) between 1970 and 2011, this paper questions the banal tactics of naming places as a site of public patriarchy contestation. In fact, young people play a crucial role in reinventing local political power forms of interpellation, which enables them to symbolically reappropriate the space. This helps to establish their presence in the public sphere from which they have been side-lined by social elders. Even though it reflects a political expression, the fact remains that the attribution of toponyms does not really help to reverse their domination into social field.

Five dilemmas in public procurement

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford P. McCue ◽  
Eric Prier ◽  
David Swanson
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Flexible Structures ◽  
Government Reform ◽  
The Public ◽  
Best Value ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Operational Constraints ◽  
And Control

Procurement systems in democratic governments across the globe face competing demands, conflated values and goals, and are being called upon to address societies "wicked" problems under the rubric of government "reform." As a result, government purchasing professionals are being challenged to develop new flexible structures and processes that devolve purchasing responsibility, yet maintain accountability and control; limit the opportunity for fraud/mismanagement while reducing operational constraints; increase economic efficiency while satisfying political demands for minority/local/small and women owned business participation; increase open and transparent competition while achieving best value; and applying best practices while confronting legal limitations. Essentially these dilemmas have placed public procurement at the forefront of government reform efforts. The current study delineates the nature of five dilemmas that purchasing practitioners face, and the implications of these dilemmas for purchasing in the public sphere are explored. Given the complexity of these dilemmas, procurement professionals will be continually called upon to balance these inherent tensions with little guidance from policymakers or elected officials.

How Do We Take Real-World Action?

We the Gamers ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Karen Schrier
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Public ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Black Friday ◽  
The Revolution

Chapter 5 describes how games can support real-world action and change. How can knowledge be applied to the public sphere and serve communities? Why and how should games be used to enable ethics- and civics-in-action? What are the best practices and strategies for supporting connections among civics, ethics, and the real world using games? The chapter includes an overview of why it is necessary to engage in real-world action. It describes the benefits of applying learning to real-world contexts and processes, and why games may support this. It also includes the limitations of using games to apply knowledge, and how to minimize those limitations. Finally, it reviews strategies that teachers can take to use games to take action and make change. It opens with the example EteRNA, and also shares five examples-in-action: Reliving the Revolution, 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, Community PlanIt, Bay Area Regional Planner, and Thunderbird Strike.

Chick Noir: Surveilling Femininity and the Affects of Loss in Gone Girl

Noir Affect ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 197-221
Author(s):  
Pamela Thoma
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Young Women ◽  
First Century ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Surveillance Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
A Site

This chapter explores a surprising shift that has occurred in postfeminist popular culture and more specifically “chick culture” in the wake of the global economic crisis. Chick noir forms itself in opposition to those two standbys of twenty-first-century U.S culture, chick lit and the chick flick. If these latter genres perform a humorous remodelling of romance as the “happy object” around which young women should orient self-making or self-improvement projects for the promise of a good life and future feelings of happiness, chick noir has emerged across popular culture to chronicle widespread economic hardship and social decline under neoliberalism. Chick noir narratives are driven by negative affect and deal in the dark side of relationships, domesticity, and the public sphere for women. The chapter takes Gone Girl as its focus. This chapter pays particular attention to ways in which both texts shine a light on modern surveillance culture to explore the textual production of empathy and coercion and the ways in which these texts imagine femininity as a site of surveillance. What emerges is a form of noir affect that dramatizes the absolute lack of a stable or noncontradictory space for the contemporary female subject.

Flânerie for Cyborgs

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 209-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Shields
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Body ◽  
Work Place ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Literary Figure ◽  
Social Science Fiction ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
A Site ◽  
Clinic Hospital

As a literary figure or conceit, Haraway’s cyborg is kin to Dumas’ and Balzac’s flâneur. As a social science fiction, crossing and mixing categories, the cyborg is an abject quasi-body who does not fit the Enlightenment model of the political subject and actor. The ‘Manifesto’ has a geography of sites - Home, Market, Paid Work Place, State, School, Clinic-Hospital and Church - which this article updates and to which it adds the Body and the Web. However, Haraway’s ‘cyborg-analysis’ directs attention to the nanotechnological scale of biotechnology. The spatialization implied in the ‘Manifesto’ is more like a surface, a site of regeneration, not a space of the body or of rebirth or the space of institutions such as the Market or School. The cyborg cannot be an Enlightenment political actor, but challenges the traditions, scale and space of the public sphere even as she carries ethical qualities and potentials for less normative forms of politics.

scholarly journals Cities of "others" : public space and everyday practices

2009 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Vaiou ◽  
A. Kalandides
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Material Space ◽  
A Site ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
The City

Abstract. This paper deals with the concept of «public space». It works with the ambiguities embedded therein, contrasting material space/s – the streets, squares, parks, public buildings of the city – with the other spaces created through the functions and institutions of the «public sphere» as a site of public deliberation. Focussing on the ambiguities of the concept allow questions of access, interaction, participation, cultural and symbolic rights of passage to be posed. Public space is approached here as constituted through the practices of everyday life: it is produced and constantly contested, reflecting – among other things – relations of power. Differences in gender, ethnicity or sexuality often lead to binary thinking, such as inside/outside, inclusion/exclusion, local/stranger. The way that such categories intertwine in everyday life, though, unsettle easy categorisations and force a questioning of strict lines of division. It is in this context that a proposal is made to discuss the city of «others», drawing from research examples which cross over such lines.

scholarly journals Meganarratives of Supermodernism: The Spectre of the Public Sphere

PhaenEx ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 197
Author(s):  
Mark Kingwell
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Political ◽  
Architectural Theory ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
Large Research

Political-theoretic discussions of the public sphere, common at least since Habermas as a site of both crisis and justification, are rarely if ever animated by a sense of public spaces as what phenomenology calls 'real places.' Indeed, the space/place distinction is an important lever of critique for the transcendental rationalism operative in many political theories, even when unavowed. At the same time, architectural theory, even when itself informed by a laudable marriage of concrete and abstract, often seems uninterested in pursuing the political consequences of the built environment. This paper outlines the beginning steps in a large research project that might be labelled 'the political phenomenology of the city.'

scholarly journals Chinese Public’s Knowledge, Perceived Severity, and Perceived Controllability of COVID-19 and Their Associations with Emotional and Behavioural Reactions, Social Participation, and Precautionary Behaviour: A National Survey

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian-Bin Li ◽  
An Yang ◽  
Kai Dou ◽  
Lin-Xin Wang ◽  
Ming-Chen Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Participation ◽  
Latent Variables ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Cognitive Appraisal ◽  
Sleep Problems ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Perceived Severity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range

Abstract Background: The outbreak of the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) has caused enormous stress among the public in China. Intellectual input from various aspects is needed to fight against COVID-19, including understanding of the public’s emotion and behaviour and their antecedents from the psychological perspectives. Drawing upon the cognitive appraisal theory, this study examined three cognitive appraisals (i.e., perceived severity, perceived controllability, and knowledge of COVID-19) and their associations with a wide range of emotional and behavioural outcomes among the Chinese public. Methods: Participants were 4607 citizens (age range: 17–90 years, Mage=23.71 years) from 31 provinces in China and they took part in a cross-sectional survey online. Results: The results showed that the public’s emotional and behavioural reactions were slightly affected by the outbreak of COVID-19. Moreover, the public had limited participation in the events regarding COVID-19 but actively engaged in precautionary behaviour. In addition, results of structural equation model with latent variables revealed that the three appraisals were differentially related to the outcome variables (i.e., negative emotion, positive emotion, sleep problems, aggression, substance use, mobile phone use, social participation, and precautionary behaviour). Conclusions: The findings highlight the utility of cognitive appraisal, as a core process of coping stress, in explaining the public’s emotion and behaviour in the encounter of public health concern. Practically, the findings facilitate the government and practitioners to design and deliver targeted intervention programs to the public.

scholarly journals Public Service Media for Critical Times: Connectivity, Climate, and Corona

2021 ◽  
pp. 69-111
Author(s):  
Graham Murdock
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Advance Information ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Communication Approach ◽  
Climate Crisis

In this chapter, Graham Murdock analyses the role of public service media in the contemporary times of crisis that have been shaped by connectivity, the climate crisis, and the COVID-19 crisis. Using lots of examples, the political economy of communication approach, and Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, the chapter points out that Public Service Media is not something of the past, but is needed for guaranteeing a vivid and democratic public sphere in the digital age. The chapter points out the potentials of public service media for creating and maintaining digital public spaces that advance information, education, entertainment, and participation. This chapter is a written and amended version of a talk by Graham Murdock that he gave on 15 February 2021 at a webinar that was part of the AHRC project “Innovation in Public Service Media Policy” (https://innopsm.net/) and its research focus on “Envisioning Public Service Media Utopias”. A video of the talk is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4dJSzyW_GM.

Girl Power, Real Politics

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takiyah Nur Amin
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
First Lady ◽  
Girl Power ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Michelle Obama ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
A Site

This article argues that performance acts as a site where the power to extend, reaffirm, and complicate political ideas is enacted through embodied expression. The argument is supported by examining the ways in which the enduring legacy of negative stereotypes about black women’s femininity and sexuality circulate in the public sphere and how black women’s historical marginalization and dehumanization gave rise to a “politics of respectability” that continue to constrain and police black women’s bodies and voices, using both Michelle Obama (The First Lady) and Beyoncé as examples. In this chapter, contemporary performance is engaged at the location of popular dance on video.

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