Contemporary Studies

Abstract:
This Master’s Dissertation is divided into a theoretical and an empirical research component.  The first component develops in a general way by approaching the present globalization procedures and the development model, of an economic nature, associated with it.  Considering the issues that this model has caused on the whole globe, namely in the scope of education, new procedures of human and social development, based in a new concept of citizenship are discussed.  Specifically, some ideas about a school model, that could work towards constructing a more cohesive and plural society, are developed.  Within these parameters, the education institution will have as one of the main guidelines the intercultural education.  After a short definition of the concepts and a detailed history, various elements based on the management of a multicultural school curriculum, are approached.  The first part of this task closes with intercultural topics in the educational manuals for the subjects of History and Geography.  This topic is the link to the empirical research made.  As a requirement to standardize the Portuguese educative reality, we analyse, in the first instance, the representation of the various cultural groups in the books of Portuguese History and Geography used by the Portuguese education system.  The main objective of such analysis is to know if, at least in this case, the educational practices in Portugal comply with the principles of visibility and equality among cultures.
Resumo:
Esta dissertação de mestrado encontra-se dividida numa componente teórica e numa componente de investigação empírica. A primeira componente começa por se desenvolver num plano geral onde aborda os actuais processos de globalização e o modelo de desenvolvimento, de cariz economicista, a eles associado. Perante as problemáticas, nomeadamente no campo educativo, que este modelo tem provocado por todo o globo, são discutidos novos processos de desenvolvimento humano e social assentes num novo conceito de cidadania. Em particular, desenvolvem-se algumas ideias sobre o modelo de escola que poderá trabalhar para a construção de uma sociedade mais coesa e plural. Dentro destes parâmetros, a instituição educativa terá como uma das suas orientações principais a educação intercultural. Após uma breve definição de conceitos e de uma resenha histórica, são abordados os vários elementos em que assenta a gestão multicultural de um currículo escolar. A primeira parte deste trabalho encerra com o tema da interculturalidade nos manuais educativos das disciplinas de História e de Geografia. Tal tema serve de ligação à investigação empírica desenvolvida. Como necessidade de aferição sobre a realidade educativa portuguesa, são analisadas, num plano principal, as representações de diferentes grupos culturais nos manuais da disciplina de História e Geografia de Portugal do sistema educativo português. O objectivo principal de tal análise consiste em saber, se pelo menos neste particular, as práticas educativas em Portugal estão em consonância com os princípios da visibilidade e da igualdade entre culturas.

“Writing Home: Vocational Labor and Literary Production in Contemporary American Homesteading”
By Amanda McLoughlin
Advisor Una Chaudhuri
New York University, 2014

This thesis examines literary production in contemporary American homesteading. Homesteaders choose for ideological or ethical reasons to lead lives that are centered around the home, producing for themselves the food, household goods, and other items that most people typically buy. Many are also prolific writers who define the politics, meaning, and community context of their lifestyles through literary production. The bulk of my analysis focuses on the significance of labor and the construction of selfhood in this body of work.

The first section of this thesis focuses on homesteaders’ innovative perspective on the relationship between people and objects. Homesteaders reject mainstream American cultures of consumerism and materialism, imploring readers to pay closer attention to the things they use rather than buying and disposing of mass-made objects indiscriminately. I find in each of my five primary texts, memoirs published by homesteaders between 2008 and 2013, that objects are not rejected or treated as necessary evils (as in asceticism or minimalism) but highly valued and symbolically charged. I theorize homesteaders’ “conscious materiality” using close readings of textual and paratextual elements of homesteading memoirs, along with New Materialist Jane Bennett’s concept of “vibrant matter.”

In section two, I begin my analysis of homesteaders’ work by engaging with the questions of scale and labor raised in environmentalist writer Paul Kingsnorth’s essay “Dark Ecology.” Homesteaders fulfill Kingsnorth’s recommendation to return to an intimate, “human-scale” relationship with nature and objects. They voluntarily produce goods that most people purchase from others, and reap personal and spiritual benefits from this production-oriented lifestyle. I call their particular kind of work “vocational labor,” a term that indicates the inextricability of work and identity in homesteading. Literary production is an important part of this vocational labor, especially as a way for homesteaders to explain and codify their self-definition through work. Author-homesteaders use a variety of rhetorical and literary devices to accomplish this, including contemporary versions of the counterforce identified by Leo Marx in pastoral literature.

Finally, I analyze how homesteading literature constructs a collective selfhood for the homesteading community. As a group of people linked by ideology rather than physical proximity, I characterize the network of American homesteaders as an imagined community. In printed literature author-homesteaders establish historicity through references to established traditions and cultural movements, and websites allow homesteaders to socialize, share knowledge, and even conduct commerce regardless of their physical distance from one another.

In my conclusion I describe contemporary American homesteaders as “The New Pioneers.” They see the home as the final American frontier, a space in which they can reclaim objects, work, and identities from dominant cultural forces like globalization. As in early American frontier writing this genre affords individuals almost limitless opportunity to reinvent themselves, but a twenty-first century frontier is more accessible to historically disempowered groups than its predecessor. Through vocational labor and literary production, homesteaders discover themselves and construct a community in service of a more sustainable way of living.

"This essay has a twofold purpose: to display (i.e. to introduce) the very notion of the contemporary as a historical and aesthetic category, and to introduce it as a question of display. When we look back on how the word ‘contemporary’ was established as a broadly recognized historical identifier, we can see that the transformation of the public spaces of art played a major role."

PROFILE AND PERCEPTION ABOUT THE USE OF ELECTRONIC GAMES FOR ELEMENTARY STUDENTS: RELATIONS WITH PHYSICAL EDUCATION ´ Abstract In the present times of Information and Communication Technologies it is possible that the school might be a suitable place for the enlightened and creative appropriation of Electronic Games. The objective of this research was to identify the profile of the use of Information and Communication Technologies for elementary school students and the relation between the values perceived by these students in the practice of Electronic Games with the values developed in the Physical Education classes. A questionnaire validated by two physical education teachers with doctorate and two specialists in Informatics area was applied to 348 students. The results showed the insertion of Information and Communication Technologies use in the culture of the students, and the values perceived by these students in the practice of Electronic Games were related with the values of sport developed in the practice of Physical Education. The results seem to suggest a possibility of developing sport values integrating the practice of physical education with Electronic Games that are part of these students’ culture. Keywords: New technologies for teaching; Electronic games; Physical education; Values; Human development.

The paper identifies significant fault-lines both within the policy making and policy implementation which obstruct the much desired virtue of national harmony and integration in Pakistan. Normally, it appears that most of the federating units, socio-cultural entities and groups offer a very strong sense of nationalism and patriotism with the state of Pakistan but there are some gray areas which need serious consideration. Nevertheless, a level of uneasiness and frustration on the part of some groups and units in respect of the mode and method of governance and policy directions can be felt in one way or another. For example, Balochis, Sindhis, Saraikis of South Punjab, and Pakhtuns question the policies of federation and seek their due shares and rights as enshrined in the constitution of Pakistan. The history of the centre-province relations in Pakistan does contain some bitter memories, where the rights of the smaller provincial unites were compromised and subjugated in favour of...

Django Unchained, an American western launched in 2012, can be perceived in many different ways. The aim of this study is to look at Quentin Tarantino’s western from the point of view of its genre tradition. Taking into account the poetics of Tarantino’s films I consider Django Unchained as a work of art in which the tradition of the western serves as a kind of matrix to create the afterlife of a text to satisfy contemporary audiences. I try to show that Tarantino treats the western as a work of historical costume to touch difficult social problems of the contemporary world. He does this with the eclectic use of elements of kitsch, hyperbole, theatralization of gesticulation, and a patchwork of cultural traditions, which allows him to juggle with the categories both of profanum and sacrum at the same time.