Search results

This chapter draws on Michel de Certeau's work on strategies and tactics to critique the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and, importantly, suggests a form of creative resistance to it. The TEF operates as a strategy of English higher education to reduce teaching and learning to quantifiable proxy measures which are then used to hold academics' performance to account. The selection and use of these proxy measures introduces a specific relationship between academics and students rooted in the underlying neoliberal principles of exchange and private gain, reducing HE teaching and learning to a provider–consumer relationship. In defiance of this academics need to utilise increasingly creative tactics to enable them to conform to the requirements of the TEF while simultaneously resisting and subverting this provider–consumer relationship. De Certeau's work on la perruque, or wiggery, as alternative tactics disguised as work for an employer offers us a way to counter the pervasive presence of TEF. La perruque encourages us to make use of the structures and places provided to us by higher education institutions to make something alien to them, for example, reorganising classroom spaces in such a way that does not prioritise the presence of the lecturer or designing sessions and modules starting from existing student knowledge rather than assuming a deficit to be addressed. Each of these tactics of resistance is fleeting and temporary, but each provides academics with a creative possibility to navigate the tensions of neoliberal provider–consumer relationships on the one hand and collaborative knowledge production on the other.

The main objective of this chapter is to propose an alternative framework to analyze Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – which we call a “non-strategic” approach to CSR– that stems from a criticism of the normative perspective of Public Relations (PR) and the competitive corporate strategic mindset. Inspired by Certeau’s tactical take on the everyday life of common people and the Latin American critical school of “alternative communication,” we set the foundations of a theoretical and practical overture that could lead to a set of possibilities in the area of CSR. The conceptualization of this alternative view about CSR is based on both a critical discussion of fundamental notions of PR, communication and management, and the empirical insights stemming from the practice in the field, mainly in the Latin American region. The non-strategic approach to CSR challenges both theoretically and practically the very idea of socially accountable corporation and its relation with society. Conceptually, the non-strategic approach considers all the parties engaged in the process are responsible for bringing out emerging value and translating it into a shared destination through experimentation. Practically, being non-strategic, which emphasizes the tactical actions that are rooted in the daily life of people, entails the creation of social innovation spaces or labs and networking that could become tools for problem solving and increase the possibilities for creative collaboration between corporations and communities. The non-strategic approach offers an analytical framework to assess the ethical and practical implications of CSR initiatives.

According to the critic Tom Lubbock, ‘Cloth is the universal free element. It doesn't have to explain itself. It performs’ (Lubbock, 2002). Cloth drapes and folds, becoming a membrane separating what is outside from what is inside. In this chapter, I draw on the writings of de Certeau, Rendell, Tschumi, etc. to develop ideas concerning the ways in which the use and understanding of textiles may move our perceptions of the boundaries of space, and the location of place. I argue that cloth may contain the identity of place, and that lace and lace net-works provide a starting point for the exploration of fluid space as described by Isozaki, Ishigami, etc. ¹ I also discuss those structures/mise-en-scène which frame our awareness and interpretation of place and space. Examples of work drawn from art, cinema and architecture are used to illuminate those ideas which question the materiality and purpose of form and enclosure.

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of institutional logics which I have sought to develop as a religious sociology of institution. I examine how Schatzki and I both differently locate our thinking at the level of practice. In this essay I also explore the possibility of appropriating Heidegger’s religious ontology of worldhood, which Schatzki rejects, in that project. My institutional logical position is an atheological religious one, poly-onto-teleological. Institutional logics are grounded in ultimate goods which are praiseworthy “objects” of striving and practice, signifieds to which elements of an institutional logic have a non-arbitrary relation, sources of and references for practical norms about how one should have, make, do or be that good, and a basis of knowing the world of practice as ordered around such goods. Institutional logics are constellations co-constituted by substances, not fields animated by values, interests or powers.

Because we are speaking against “values,” people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity’s best qualities. For what is more “logical” than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (2008a, p. 249).

This chapter is concerned with examining the families that play Pokémon Go together within the context of spatial practices. The chapter begins by outlining the general approach to spatiality that we adopt throughout this book, which is predicated on the ‘spatial turn’ within the social sciences. Here, spatial practices are understood as being socially constructed in day-to-day live, as opposed to being something simply given. In other words, ‘the concept of the city’ and the ‘urban fact’ (de Certeau, 1984, p. 1, italics in original) are not one and the same thing. Instead, the phenomenology of space is moulded in the social realm as part of the practice of everyday life, which has consequences for hybrid reality games (HRGs) like Pokémon Go. After delineating between ‘space’ and ‘place’ à la the ‘mobilities turn’, we shift our attention to embodied approaches to urban life. This begin with an examination of the art of the flânerie, which has been reimagined to account for the ubiquity of mobile media, and more recently, locative games. A review of the literature surrounding locative games demonstrates that, for the most part, concerns about spatiality have not extended to the kind of intergenerational play that is the focus of this book. Drawing on our original study of Pokémon Go, as outlined above, then, the chapter is driven by the following research questions. First, to what extent does Pokémon Go lead to families spending more time outside and how is this reshaping experienced. Second, what effect does this HRG has on the routes and pathways families choose to follow while traversing their physical setting, as well as the sites they frequent. Third, to what extent do families engage with the various elements of Pokémon Go and what does this suggest about the evolution of locative play in the context of earlier location-based social networks (LBSNs).

While bilinguals frequently mix languages in everyday conversation, these hybrid language practices have often been viewed from a deficit perspective, particularly in classroom contexts. However, an emerging literature documents the complexity of hybrid language practices and their usefulness as an academic and social resource for bilingual students. This chapter examines hybrid language practices among English- and Spanish-speaking high school students in an astronomy/oceanography classroom in southern Arizona. Microethnography, or fine-grained analysis of video recordings from long-term ethnographic observation, is used to reveal what bilingual students accomplished with hybrid language practices in the classroom and to outline implications for teachers who want to engage their students’ hybrid repertoires. Specifically, the analyses reveal that careful attention to hybrid language practices can provide teachers with insights into students’ academic learning across linguistic codes, their use of language mixing for particular functions, and their beliefs about language and identity. The research is necessarily limited in scope because such in-depth analysis can only be done with a very small amount of data. Nevertheless, the findings affirm that hybrid language practices can enrich classroom discourse, academic learning, and social interaction for emergent bilinguals. The chapter highlights a teacher’s story in order to offer practical guidance to other teachers who seek to capitalize on the promise of hybrid language practices in their own classrooms.

Economics laboratories have become the primary locations of experimental economics research by the 1990s. They were a result of a decade long development from ad hoc opportune places to dedicated, purpose designed spaces. The distinctive feature of the economics laboratory and its key instrument became networked computers running custom-built software. However, the history of the economics laboratory is not just a history of evolving technology. I argue in this article that it is mainly a history of learning how to build an experimental economics community. Only a functioning community was able to change a physical place to a laboratory space. The distinction between place and space originates in the work of Michael de Certeau and I use it to analyze the evolution of economics laboratories. To this end, I analyze the case of Austin Hoggatt’s Management Science Laboratory at Berkeley in the 1960s as it illustrates the indispensability of creating a community centered on the laboratory. In contrast, the laboratories in Arizona and at Caltech since the 1980s, and in Amsterdam since the 1990s have become successful spaces, because, unlike Hoggatt, they focused equally on community building as on infrastructure and technology. This gave rise to social infrastructure and division of labor in the laboratory space.

City identity is a distinct form of collective identity based on the perceived uniqueness and meanings of place, rather than group category and membership. A city’s identity is constructed over time through architecture, which involves three sign systems – material, visual, and rhetorical – and multiple institutional actors to communicate the city’s distinctiveness and identity. We compare Barcelona and Boston to examine the identity and meaning created and communicated by different groups of professionals, such as architects, city planners, international guide book writers, and local cultural critics, who perform the semiotic work of ­constructing city identity.

The Marquis de Sade wrote that people behave differently in separate spaces and that, in different environments, they more easily reveal their true predilections. Throughout de Sade's writings, he reveals ways that hidden rooms, closets, castles, brothels, and monasteries can be used as spaces to unleash inner evil. Conveyed within de Sade's writings are ways in which characters actively change their settings in order to create these heterotopias – or spaces that are separate from normal routines. The role that separate spaces play in maintaining alternative behaviors has not been adequately examined in either de Sade's writings or in heterotopia literature. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the inner workings of a heterotopia frozen in time and space – a small town family business. This query merits exploration because the incestuous, atemporal behaviors that de Sade enacted can manifest themselves in family businesses. To examine this facet of family business, a customized methodology will be introduced – the Sadean duography. This manuscript is beneficial to practitioners in family businesses who seek to understand the hazards of inherting or purchasing new businesses, and to scholars in entrepreneurship and organizational studies seeking a deeper understanding of the role of heterotopias, also known as third spaces.

In port cities with declining industries, waterfront redevelopment is one major part of the competitive agenda. The increasing economic importance of service, leisure, and tourism industries created an opportunity to reuse urban waterfront areas no longer considered profitable. Parque das Nações in Lisbon is a product of such a process: It’s a newly built mixed-use waterfront neighborhood, planned, and developed, first and foremost, to be the site of Expo ’98. This former industrial and port area has been emerging in the last 15 years as a “showcase” for Lisbon: a piece of the competitive strategy of the Portuguese capital. Its public spaces are an important part of that strategy and have been managed in order to remain particularly safe and clean.

On one hand, Parque das Nações is a socially homogenous elite residential neighborhood, on the other hand, it is emerging as a new metropolitan centrality characterized by an intense mobility and by an increasing concentration of urbanites carrying on work and leisure related activities. It is the coexistence of these two complementary and contradictory dynamics that shapes the interactive logic of public life in the area.

This chapter explores the use, appropriation, and interaction patterns afforded by the public spaces of Parque das Nações. I discard both the idealized conception of public spaces that characterizes them as havens of diversity and accessibility and the more contemporary idea of public spaces as empty spaces that no longer promote encounters with others, serving exclusively as marketing tools for real-estate developers. Instead, I argue that the production of urban areas such as Parque das Nações is a socially unequal process resulting in excessively planned and controlled public spaces. However, when they attract different populations for different reasons, these spaces might foster unexpected, emergent, or even transgressive uses and interactions that promote public space vitality.