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This introductory article considers and questions exactly how materials and people constitute social worlds and relationships which sustain identity and memory and, in turn, the social and political structures or norms that these attachments invest in, stabilise and maintain.

react/review is a journal shaped by reactions. To react is to act in response, to reflect and return to a first actor. The term is active and encompasses the spirit of lively discourse and critical engagement. Perhaps it carries a connotation of hastiness, but we contend that this temporal association locates us firmly in the present. We envision this journal as a reaction to research trends and current global events, but we employ the term to also signal the discursive element of this project.In other words, react/review is a responsive journal. Our inaugural volume adopts the symposium's theme: "Representation, Materiality, & the Environment." This topic considers the way environments, landscapes, and the natural world have been represented by artists and architects as a means to ritualistic, scientific, political, leisure, or spiritual ends.

react/review is a journal shaped by reactions. To react is to act in response, to reflect and return to a first actor. The term is active and encompasses the spirit of lively discourse and critical engagement. Perhaps it carries a connotation of hastiness, but we contend that this temporal association locates us firmly in the present. We envision this journal as a reaction to research trends and current global events, but we employ the term to also signal the discursive element of this project.In other words, react/review is a responsive journal. Our inaugural volume adopts the symposium's theme: "Representation, Materiality, & the Environment." This topic considers the way environments, landscapes, and the natural world have been represented by artists and architects as a means to ritualistic, scientific, political, leisure, or spiritual ends.

Energy is increasingly used as a lens to study wider social processes. For political ecologists, 'energy' has usually been seen as a resource or socio-technical system that gives rise to contentious social relations. This article instead thinks of energy as a materiality with thermodynamic properties. At once, energy becomes an analytical concept with physical and political-economic dimensions. Developing this perspective, the article examines the notion of ecologically unequal exchange and unpacks discussions on how energy systems are co-productive of politicised environments. The outcome is an expanded definition of political ecology set out in relation to three modes of social power.

Recent scholarship has drawn attention to a ubiquitous 20th-century political space that was long overlooked – the bunker. This body of work draws on a variety of theoretical influences and explores multiple historical contexts, yet most remains wedded to the late Paul Virilio's influential 1970s study of the Nazi Atlantic Wall. Enlightening as his 'Bunker Archeology' is, Virilio's theorization has constrained contemporary debates around the function, materiality and temporality of the bunker. Here, we seek to counter this set of limitations in three ways. First, we contest the idea of the bunker as a simple space of human protection and argue for a more expansive conceptualization that is attentive to the bunker as a site of extermination. Second, we challenge the assumed concrete materiality of the bunker and suggest an expanded typology, utilizing a range of materials and milieux. Finally, we take to task readings of the bunker as an obsolete relic by highlighting the continued construction, re-appropriation and reimagination of this architectural form.

From SAGE Publishing via Jisc Publications Router ; History: epub 2021-03-02 ; Publication status: Published ; This article builds on the notions of thick and thin description elaborated by Geertz and looks at what descriptive methods have been used in the field of papyrology, a sub-discipline of classics that studies ancient manuscripts on papyrus fragments recovered through legal and illegal excavations in Egypt from the 19th century. Past generations of papyrologists have described papyri merely as resources to retrieve ancient 'texts'. In the article I argue these descriptions have had negative effects in the way this ancient material has been studied, preserved, and also exchanged through the antiquities market. Through a series of case studies, I offer an alternative description of papyrus fragments as things, which have a power that can be activated under specific circumstances or entanglements. In demonstrating papyrus manuscripts' unstable nature and shifting meanings, which are contingent on such entanglements, the article calls for a new politics and ethics concerning their preservation and exchange.

Speaking of Mauritius as an economic miracle has become a cliché, and with good reason: Its development since Independence in 1968 can easily be narrated as a rags-to-riches story. In addition, it is a stable democracy capable of containing the conflict potential inherent in its complex ethnic and religious demography. This book brings together some of the finest scholarship, domestic as well as foreign, on contemporary Mauritius, offering perspectives from constitutional law, cultural studies, sociology, archaeology, economics, social anthropology and more. While celebrating the indisputable, and impressive, achievements of the Mauritian nation on its fiftieth birthday, this book is far from toothless. Looking back inevitably implies looking ahead, and in order to do so, critical self-scrutiny is essential, to be able to learn from the mistakes of the past. The contributors raise fundamental questions concerning a broad range of issues, from the dilemmas of multiculturalism to the marginal role of women in public life, from the question of constitutional reform and the continued problem of corruption to the slow destruction of Mauritius' joy and pride, namely the beauty and purity of its natural scenery. Taking stock of the first fifty years, this book also looks ahead to the next fifty years, giving some cues as to where Mauritius can and should aim in the next decades.

In the audit evidence gathering process, the auditor uses a set of assumptions about audit risk factors and determines the level of material error and misstatement. In practice, questions arise as to how the auditor should avoid making mistakes in shaping its approach to the information that is relevant to users of financial statements. The aim of the study is to reveal the basic regulation of qualitative materiality factors. Tasks of the research are to analyze the regulatory provisions of international auditing standards, to identify issues regarding the assessment of qualitative factors of materiality and its influence on decision making process of the auditors. Methods of literature analysis, systematization, abstracting and grouping analysis are used in the article. The analysis of scientific and professional literature has shown that qualitative parameters of significance are not precisely defined in the regulatory provisions, therefore, the auditors are left with a wide range of qualitative materiality factors. These factors can fundamentally change the auditor's decision-making process choosing relevant audit procedures. The auditor must evaluate the qualitative data and information comprehensively and be able to identify qualitative factors of materiality. JEL klasifikacija:M42 ; Audito įrodymų rinkimo procese, auditorius naudojasi prielaidų rinkiniu apie audito rizikos veiksnius ir nustato reikšmingų klaidų ir iškraipymų lygį. Praktikoje kyla klausimai, kaip auditorius turėtų vengti klaidų formuodamas savo požiūrį į finansinių ataskaitų vartotojams reikšmingą informaciją. Tyrimo tikslas atskleisti pagrindines kokybinio reikšmingumo reguliavimo nuostatas. Tyrimo uždaviniai – išnagrinėti tarptautinių audito standartų nurodymus, reguliuojančius reikšmingumo vertinimą, identifikuoti dažniausiai kylančius klausimus dėl kokybinių reikšmingumo veiksnių vertinimo ir įtakos auditorių sprendimo priėmimui. Straipsnyje taikomi literatūros analizės, sisteminimo, abstrahavimo ir grupavimo analizės metodai. Mokslinės ir profesinės literatūros analizė parodė, kad kokybiniai reikšmingumo veiksniai nėra tiksliai detalizuojami reguliavimo nuostatose, todėl auditoriams paliekama plačios kokybinio reikšmingumo interpretavimo ribos. Kokybiniai reikšmingumo veiksniai gali iš esmės pakeisti auditoriaus sprendimus dėl nuomonės formavimo ir audito procedūrų pasirinkimo. Auditorius turi visaapimančiai vertinti kokybinius duomenis ir informaciją bei gebėti identifikuoti kokybinių reikšmingumo veiksnių požymius. JEL klasifikacija:M42

Informed consent law's emphasis on the disclosure of purely medical information – such as diagnosis, prognosis, and the risks and benefits of various treatment alternatives – does not accurately reflect modern understandings of how patients make medical decisions. Existing common law disclosure duties fail to capture a variety of non-medical factors relevant to patients, including information about the physician's personal characteristics; the cost of treatment; the social implications of various health care interventions; and the legal consequences associated with diagnosis and treatment. Although there is a wealth of literature analyzing the merits of such disclosures in a few narrow contexts, there is little broader discussion and no consensus about whether there the doctrine of informed consent should be expanded to include information that may be relevant to patients but falls outside the traditional scope of medical materiality. This article seeks to fill that gap. I offer a normative argument for expanding the scope of informed consent disclosure to include non-medical information that is within the physician's knowledge and expertise, where the information would be material to the reasonable patient and its disclosure does not violate public policy. This proposal would result in a set of disclosure requirements quite different from the ones set by modern common law and legislation. In many ways, the range of required disclosures may become broader, particularly with respect to physician-specific information about qualifications, health status, and financial conflicts of interests. However, some disclosures that are currently required by statute (or have been proposed by commentators) would fall outside the scope of informed consent – most notably, information about support resources available in the abortion context; about the social, ethical, and legal implications of treatment; and about health care costs.

By analysing trans embodiment and the dissociative narratives attached to 'the trans body', this research project demonstrates how abstraction offers a counter-reading of trans representation and therefore provides a way to discuss trans embodiment both with and without an image or trace of a body. This thesis asks how abstract art practices, when considered in the context of trans visibility and representation, can be a way of newly understanding the social, political and ethical forces that animate trans embodiment. The project situates itself at the intersection of abstract art practice and trans theory, employing an interdisciplinary and practice-led methodology to explore a phenomenology of transness, specifically, trans masculinity. Engaging with both materiality and embodiment, the project seeks to refute the demand for trans legibility as well as offer a way of thinking about trans representation that is grounded in relationality, recognition, autonomy and solidarity. Through sculpture, installation, leadlight, text and photography, my studio practice draws on material tactics of repetition, cuts/breaks, transformation, coded forms and language. I draw on the material qualities of these mediums to facilitate encounters and forge relations between bodily pressures and architectures of safety and exclusion. These issues have informed the development of several bodies of work made between 2017 and 2021 that will be analysed throughout the thesis alongside the practice of Edie Fake, Jos Charles and Jes Fan. The principal objective of this research is to position living within the space of social and political abstraction as a generative stance that is not only concerned with resisting or responding to terms that are imposed from elsewhere. For trans people these terms often require one to defend the right to access to care, legal protections, stable housing and employment; they also determine if one can occupy public space and if one has the right to live in the first place. Living within abstraction departs ...

This presentation is an explorative study on how materiality in design becomes the distinctive aspect of design practice compare to artistic practice in politically engaged creative actions. The presentation takes a short historical perspective on the notion of materiality in design, aiming to unfold how materiality itself can change the practice and definition of design. By looking to recent critical practices within design discourse, I examine the importance of materiality in critical practices in design as a distinction to critical artistic practices. To this end, the paper takes two examples of critical practice; one within design field and the other known as artistic work both performing on the subject of "undocumentedness."Therefore the paper tries to examine how much design is different from art in politically engaged works and particularly on works related to undocumented immigrants. Finally it argues that materiality of design generates new forms of action-interaction in coming communities.

In this dissertation, I look at the history of cloud computing to demonstrate the entanglement of history, metaphor, and materiality. In telling this story, I argue that metaphors play a powerful role in how we imagine, construct, and maintain our technological futures. The cloud, as a metaphor in computing, works to simplify complexities in distributed networking infrastructures. The language and imagery of the cloud has been used as a tool that helps cloud providers shift public focus away from potentially important regulatory, environmental, and social questions while constructing a new computing marketplace. To address these topics, I contextualize the history of the cloud by looking back at the stories of utility computing (1960s-70s) and ubiquitous computing (1980s-1990s). These visions provide an alternative narrative about the design and regulation of new technological systems. Drawing upon these older metaphors of computing, I describe the early history of the cloud (1990-2008) in order to explore how this new vision of computing was imagined. I suggest that the metaphor of the cloud was not a historical inevitability. Rather, I argue that the social-construction of metaphors in computing can play a significant role in how the public thinks about, develops, and uses new technologies. In this research, I explore how the metaphor of the cloud underplays the impact of emerging large-scale computing infrastructures while at the same time slowly transforming traditional ownership-models in digital communications. Throughout the dissertation, I focus on the role of materiality in shaping digital technologies. I look at how the development of the cloud is tied to the establishment of cloud data centers and the deployment of global submarine data cables. Furthermore, I look at the materiality of the cloud by examining its impact on a local community (Los Angeles, CA). Throughout this research, I argue that the metaphor of the cloud often hides deeper socio-technical complexities. Both the materials and metaphor of the cloud work to make the system invisible. By looking at the material impact of the cloud, I demonstrate how these larger economic, social, and political realities are entangled in the story and metaphor of the cloud. ; Doctor of Philosophy ; This dissertation tells the story of cloud computing by looking at the history of the cloud and then discussing the social and political implications of this history. I start by arguing that the cloud is connected to earlier visions of computing (specifically, utility computing and ubiquitous computing). By referencing these older histories, I argue that much of what we currently understand as cloud computing is actually connected to earlier debates and efforts to shape a computing future. Using the history of computing, I demonstrate the role that metaphor plays in the development of a technology. Using these earlier histories, I explain how cloud computing was coined in the 1990s and eventually became a dominant vision of computing in the late 2000s. Much of the research addresses how the metaphor of the cloud is used, the initial reaction to the idea of the cloud, and how the creation of the cloud did (or did not) borrow from older visions of computing. This research looks at which people use the cloud, how the cloud is marketed to different groups, and the challenges of conceptualizing this new distributed computing network. This dissertation gives particular weight to the materiality of the cloud. My research focuses on the cloud's impact on data centers and submarine communication data cables. Additionally, I look at the impact of the cloud on a local community (Los Angeles, CA). Throughout this research, I argue that the metaphor of the cloud often hides deeper complexities. By looking at the material impact of the cloud, I demonstrate how larger economic, social, and political realities are entangled in the story and metaphor of the cloud.

Interaction design is the definition of digital behavior, from desktop software and mobile applications to components of appliances, automobiles, and even biomedical devices. Where architects plan buildings, graphic designers make visual compositions, and industrial designers give form to three-dimensional objects, interaction designers define the digital components of products and services. These include websites, mobile applications, desktop software, automobiles, consumer electronics, and more. Interaction design is a relatively new but fast-growing discipline, emerging with the explosive growth of the World Wide Web. In a software-saturated world, every day, multiple times a day, billions of people encounter the work products of interaction design. Given the reach of their profession, how interaction designers work is of paramount concern. In considering interaction design, this dissertation turns away from a longstanding question of design studies: How does interaction design demonstrate a special form of human thought? And towards a set of questions drawn from practice-oriented studies of science and technology: What kinds of objects and subjects do interaction design practices make, and how do those practices produce them?Based on participant observation at three San Francisco interaction design consultancies and interviews with designers in California's Bay Area, this dissertation argues that performance practices organize interaction design work. By "performance practices," I mean episodes of storytelling and narrative that take place before an audience of witnesses. These performances instantiate — make visible and tangibly felt —the human and machine behaviors that the static deliverables seem unable on their own to materialize. In doing so, performances of the project help produce and sustain alignment within teams and among designers, clients, and developers. In this way, a focus on episodes of performance turns our concerns from cognition, in which artifacts assist design thinking, to one of enactment, in which documents, spaces, tools, and bodies actively participating in producing the identities, responsibilities, and capacities of project constituents. It turns our attention to questions of political representation, materiality and politics. From this perspective, it is not necessarily how designers think but how they stage and orchestrate performances of the project that makes accountable, authoritative decision-making on behalf of clients and prospective users possible.

Founded in San Francisco in 1998, Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern was launched by Dave Eggers in tandem with McSweeney's publishing house in an attempt to create a platform for up-and-coming writers, experimental literature, and other forms of writing that would be difficult to publish in a traditional magazine. Two representative examples of how McSweeney's attention to physical design, unfixed format, and interest in global literature overlap are McSweeney's 36 and McSweeney's 43. McSweeney's 36 includes an oral history of governmental oppression titled "Ma Su Mon," an excerpt from Nowhere to be Home, a text in the McSweeney's publishing branch oral history series titled Voice of Witness. On the other hand, McSweeney's 43 is comprised of "McSweeney's 43" and There is a Country: New Fiction from the New Nation of South Sudan. Where "McSweeney's 43" includes new fiction, letters, and nonfiction essays from well-known journalists, There is a Country is an anthology of fiction from South Sudanese writers. Both There is a Country and "Ma Su Mon"'s inclusion in McSweeney's 36 embodies the magazine's social consciousness, both of which are key facets to the editorial mission of all of Eggers's publishing ventures, including McSweeney's. The physical design of McSweeney's issues holds significance in an interpretation of the content of the magazine, especially in the case of McSweeney's 36 and McSweeney's 43 where there are clear efforts to shape the reading experience through the intentional use of non-traditional design elements and media platforms. Thus, this project aims to understand the relationship between McSweeney's efforts to serve as a platform for minority voices and McSweeney's material design utilizing Gérard Genette's theory of the paratext. This paper argues that the box head design of McSweeney's 36 invites the reader to attend to the ostentatiousness of the numerous pieces of the issue rather than focus on the literary content of any single item. This emphasis on the materiality of McSweeney's 36 works in tandem with the McSweeney's branding on the packaging of "Ma Su Mon" to speak over Ma Su Mon herself, obscuring her experiences of oppression. On the other hand, the more subtle and minimal McSweeney's branding on the covers of McSweeney's 43 and There is a Country's capacity to be independently distributed provides this issue with a substantial platform outside of the McSweeney's umbrella. However, There is a Country's independence within McSweeney's 43 is comprised by its complicated library cataloging, indistinguishable cover designs for "McSweeney's 36" and There is a Country, and removable back book cover blurb sticker. Through analysis of the material paratexts of "Ma Su Mon" in McSweeney's 36 and McSweeney's 43's There is a Country, this paper concludes that these particular issues of McSweeney's are imperfect vessels for minority voices.

Dioramas are at the crossroads of artistic, scientific and cultural practices. They bring together painters, sculptors, scientists, and collectors, thus providing an opportunity to reflect on the polyvalence of these actors and the definition of their expertise. In 1822, the painter and scientist Louis Daguerre coined the term "diorama" when describing his theater. The word diorama means literally "seeing through." In accordance with this etymology, dioramas embody a sense of transparency and life-likeness. In addition to providing theatrical and visual experiences, dioramas are multidimensional installations that incorporate paintings, objects, stuffed animals or mannequins. Habitat groups mixing taxidermy and painted backgrounds were designed for natural history museums, while anthropological dioramas were disseminated all over Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century. They were usually life-sized and site specific but they could also be reduced to maquettes. To date, these installations have been studied by scholars from various disciplines, mainly as side topics. Media historians have considered them primarily as proto-cinematic, whereas within the fields of anthropology, museum studies and postcolonial studies, they are generally analyzed as displays that reflect political taxonomies and stereotyped representations. However, dioramas are not merely images or displays: they are also physical objects made of multiple materials, such as plaster, wood, paper, paint, glass, fur, wax, and metal. The discipline of art history thus provides us with the opportunity to approach the materiality of these installations. Indeed, dioramas are composite and hybrid things, created through cultural interaction and physical encounter. Multiple hands as well as various visions are involved in the process of their creation – and later on, during their conservation. Dioramas therefore allow for the study of contact zones and material exchanges between private and public spheres, as well as between Western and non-Western contexts. Finally, dioramas as objects of study within the field of art history enable us to address values such as authenticity and realism in various contexts.