http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3113 2013-05-24T08:23:53Z http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6340 Title: Virtual and Physical Geographies of Social Activism The case study of Madrid’s Indignados Authors: Contarin, Nicola Abstract: The recent phenomenon of Occupy and of the Indignados has rekindled the fire of urban social movements in the last years: these movements surely represent the new prototype of social activism in the XXI century particularly for the step forward in the goals that they are determined to achieve, and in the way that is being used in order to accomplish these objectives. The particularity of these new social movements relies mainly in the large use of the Internet, new media and information technology that they do in order to communicate their ideas and organisational details, to recruit more members to their cause and to maintain a constant presence in the virtual space, from which they can conduct the guidelines for social activism in the urban space. In this research the relationship of the "Indignados" of Madrid, Spain, with the urban public space and with the virtual space is examined through the use of semi-structured interviews which allow to highlight what is the personal and direct understanding of this relationship according to the members of the movement themselves. It will show, then, how the movement is inserted in the two spatial dimensions of physical reality and virtual reality by the people who are actually the real protagonists of this phenomenon, and it will hopefully tell us in which direction is this movement going. 2012-10-15T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6330 Title: Soundings: Science and instrumental knowledge in British Polar Expedition Narratives, c.1818-c.1848 Authors: Millar, Sarah Louise Abstract: Measuring depth at sea in the early nineteenth century was a complicated affair. A single sounding event could take many hours and required the ship’s position to be accurately estimated throughout the duration of the investigation. Bad weather moved ships off course and curtailed sounding events in mid-flow. Overestimations were commonplace when underwater currents dragged the lead horizontally through the water, whilst the crewmen on board ship continued to pay out the line. To add to these difficulties was the issue of instrumentation: no one sounding device was universally agreed upon to provide reliable results. As a consequence the representation of the deep sea changed dramatically as the nineteenth century progressed. Whilst much has been written of Maury’s first bathymetric maps, this paper focuses on the lesser explored area of depth recording during the Arctic expeditions of Captains John Ross, William Parry and John Franklin. Testing of new scientific equipment was also one of the key goals of early nineteenth century polar expeditions organised and funded by the British Admiralty. I suggest in this thesis that the reason one piece of sounding equipment became favoured over another was its ease of use by the crew on board ship. I go on to consider Bruno Latour’s idea of transcriptions, and argue that rather than using sounding maps at this time as immutable mobiles, the expedition captains were forced to perform new soundings all the time, and construct new maps of the polar seas as they experienced them. This thesis draws on Actor-Network theory to suggest soundings in the Polar Regions at this time were part of a wider of network of scientific investigation and navigation, and that no network of technology, men and representations were constructed strong enough to withstand the dissociating forces of the polar seas and adverse weather at this point in time. 2012-11-29T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6329 Title: Making Tracks: Technologies of Access on the Highland Estate Authors: Garlick, Benjamin Abstract: This thesis is about getting into the Cairngorms. Specifically, it is about getting up a mountain on a highland estate for the purposes of hunting deer. The study asks the question “how is wilderness made accessible on the Highland Estate?” Drawing on the methodology of Actor-Network Theory, I examine the bulldozed estate tracks which, since the early 1960s, served as the primary technical means of entering the landscape for deer stalking. I argue that the estate track – a combination of people, animals, things, management strategies and the capabilities of the sporting enthusiast’s body – ‘aligned’ (Latour, 2005b) unruly hillside agencies to enable vehicular access to the high tops. I follow the story of a track on Beinn A’Bhuird from the earliest stalking on foot, through the use of Land Rovers, to the eventual restoration and wider changes that affected it. I demonstrate that access; the rendering of places such that they can be got to by particular means of travel, is a contingent and embodied characteristic of space, formed in the assembling of actors. 2012-10-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1842/5205 Title: Rethinking Regeneration in the PARC: Demolition, stock-transfer and consultation on Edinburgh's fringe Authors: Kallin, Hamish Abstract: This paper looks at a large-scale regeneration project in Craigmillar, a deprived area of Edinburgh. Through a critical perspective it aims to discuss the rationale behind the development - and the flaws with it - and place that within the wider issues evoked by such projects, with particular attention paid to stigma, place-marketing and tenure, aiming to link these together in the context of a city that is mostly dismissed from the attention of urban geographers. 2011-11-01T00:00:00Z