Browsing by Subject "globalization"
Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Defining a changing world: the discourse of globalization(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Teubner, GillianGlobalization has, within academic, political and business circles alike, become a prominent buzzword of the past decade, conjuring a diversity of associations, connotations and attendant mythologies. The literature devoted to the issue of globalization is both vast in scope and diverse in nature, becoming increasingly prominent not only in academics and politics, but in the popular press, as well. The goal of this dissertation is to provide the reader with a map of themes, narratives, and characterizations related to globalization circulating in the United States in order to demonstrate the potential ways that individual thought on the issue is shaped by public discourse. A secondary goal is to critically examine specific texts to identify areas where their arguments overlap, conflict, or may be misconstrued due to weak or inaccurate evidence. By better understanding the map of rhetorical formations in widely-read texts regarding globalization, it may be possible for people to be better able to understand the concerns and intentions of those voicing various and often competing viewpoints.Item From Aural Places to Visual Spaces: The Latin/o and General Music Industries(2012-10-19) Westgate, Christopher JosephThis manuscript tells the stories of the Latin/o and general music industries in the United States from 1898 to 2000. It argues that performers transformed the local identities of aural industries based in place and melody into global industries of visual identities designed for space and celebrity. Both the Latin/o and general music industries shifted back and forth along a local-sound-to-global-sight spectrum more than once, from sounds of music rooted in specific places to sights of musicians uprooted across universal spaces between 1898 and 2000. This claim is supported by a textual analysis of archival materials, such as trade press articles, audio recordings, still photographs and motion pictures. While the general music industry's identity changed, the Latin/o industry's identity stayed the same, and vice-versa. Specifically, when the general industry identified with transnational performers and images between 1926 and 1963, the Latin/o industry retained its identification with the sounds of music rooted in specific places. From 1964 to 1979, as the Latin/o industry moved from one end of the spectrum to the other, only to return to its initial position, it was the general industry that maintained its identification with the midpoint of the spectrum. During the 1980s, the general industry zigzagged from the midpoint to the global-visual end and back again, while the Latin/o industry remained at the local-sonic end of the spectrum. In the 1990s, the Latin/o industry's local and sonic identity continued, and the general industry moved from the midpoint to the global-visual end of the spectrum with the Latin boom. The general industry's identity changed during each interval except 1964-1979, the only period in which the Latin/o industry's identity fluctuated. From Aural Places to Visual Spaces: the Latin/o and General Music Industries should be of interest to anyone invested in the relations between creativity and commerce, substance and style, or geography and genre.Item Managing Tensions In A Globalizing Environment(2010-10-12) Shoemaker, Martha McArdellGlobalizing processes often place the social cohesion of organizations at risk when multinational people experience and exhibit tensions from their diverse cultural and language norms. This study uses discourse analysis and dialectical theory to understand the intersection of organizational tensions and multinationalism as they appear at a bilingual Swiss higher education institution. I define multinationalism as the intersection of communities who self identify with a national heritage and perpetuate that identity through daily communication and interaction. This case study is approached from a social constructionist perspective. I use grounded theory and dialectical analysis to analyze the fifty-nine interviews in order to identify the tensions that intersect with multinationalism and how they are managed. The tensions identified include: choosing a language where two are privileged, providing an intercultural environment as described by the mission statement, and managing pedagogy/co-teaching practices. Choosing a language is often described in a dual dimension between choosing French/choosing English where language groups are sometimes seen as oppositional and vying for privileged status even though the organization privileges both languages. Providing an intercultural environment is described as a global endeavor and yet sometimes becomes dialectical when balancing how the organizational environment is actually managed/not managed based on national and organizational cultural perspectives. Practicing pedagogy/co-teaching activities are often framed as oppositional and dialectical when trying to reconcile French pedagogy/Anglo-Saxon pedagogy and co-teaching practices, especially in regard to American influence. Multinationalism emerges when participants use group identity descriptors and intersects in a variety of ways depending on the intensity of the tensions. Managing tensions result in ambiguity because of undefined language fluency and competency. While ambiguity allows for social cohesion and time for interpreting messages, it sometimes is used strategically to deny messages and retain privileged positions. Disorienting interactions for some employees result in paradoxical situations, and in some extreme cases, participants reported schizophrenic behavior when paranoid statements are made which reflect their paralysis, uncertainty and loss of power. This study advances dialectical theory by redefining totality as including regional, national, and global contexts that also influence organizational agency and discourse. In addition this study adds to the understanding of knots of contradictions by illustrating how tensions evolve in their own right and also spin off simultaneous and interconnected tensions. Finally, results from this study suggest that using ambiguity could be seen as another management option as well as a result when dealing with dialectical and paradoxical tensions.Item Urban-Architectural Design After Exile: Communities in Search of a Minor Architecture(2012-08-30) Angell, Bradley 1976-This dissertation analogically applies a framework of minor literary analysis to uniquely political units of the built environment. As urbanism is conventionally understood to be executed per the greatest utility of established communal objectives, an underlying politicization is inherent as such forms must adhere to dominant norms of development which potentially marginalize those who practice cultural methods outside normative standards. Employing a uniquely architectural method of environmental justice advocacy, select communities facing disenfranchisement react by self-producing urban-architectural forms ("UAFs") to protect threatened cultural values from marginalization. Installed to subvert the existing power dynamic, such UAFs are potential exhibitions of minor architecture. Adopting the analytical standards established by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari for evaluating Franz Kafka's literature, this paper tests six UAFs to discover if a minor architecture is possible under contemporary globalization. Employing an enumerated framework of minor production characteristics, an interpretive-historical analysis is the primary method of judgment regarding each unit's execution of minor architecture. Two secondary tests are undertaken to validate the primary findings, the first of which is a physio-logical evaluation that characterizes and measures urban resource utility as per collective minority aims. Second, a newspaper correlation test is undertaken so as to judge the enunciative effectiveness of each community per issues of minority politics. Of the six cases examined, two have their source in cinema including "Bartertown" of MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME (1985) and the "House on Paper Street" of FIGHT CLUB (1999). The four remaining cases include the Tibetan Government-in-Exile of Dharamsala, India; Student Bonfire of Robertson County, Texas; Isla Vista Recreation & Park District of Santa Barbara County, California; and the Emergent Cannabis Community of Arcata, California. Of all the cases studied, only the Tibetan Government-in-Exile met both the conditions of minor architecture and was validated in terms of practiced urban resource use as well as effective representation in mainstream newsprint. Both cinematic cases failed as minor productions of the built environment. Although they did not find full validation, the three remaining real-world UAFs each were found on a course of minor architectural expression at varying stages of execution.