Suchergebnisse

The link between population mobility and environmental change is fundamental for our understanding of how future global environmental changes will affect our societies, and also how the increased mobility will change our role in the Earth system. Climate change has been predicted as a major cause of human migration, both voluntary and forced, through for example increased storm and drought frequency, sea level rise, and reduced fresh water availability. On the other hand, contemporary migration patterns are part of processes that change the face of the Earth. Social, political, and natural processes have shaped the development of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KR-I) since the 1980's. This dissertation explores the environmental aspects of such changes by focusing on how population mobility relates to land systems in the Duhok governorate, KR-I. This dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach by combining household survey data with information extracted from satellite images. This enables analysis of patterns at both provincial and household levels. The findings of this work reveal that migration patterns are mainly explained by economic drivers. The environment as a driver of migration is not emphasized in the interview responses, and only a small share of households are economically dependent on agriculture. The 2007-2009 drought was severe in terms of precipitation decrease, vegetation anomalies, and from a socio-economic perspective. The analyses, however, show no evidence of increased migration during the drought period. Migration for other reasons, such as the Anfal genocide in the late 1980's, and the subsequent reconstruction program was found to influence land use activity. In times of migration and displacement the cropland area was reduced, while it increased during resettlement initiatives. The final part of this dissertation consists of a methodological discussion of how scale affects analyses of the environment-migration nexus. A review of the current literature reveals that common scale-problems in this field include the mismatch between different data types, generalizations, and neglect of spatial variability.

In this mixed methods study, we investigate the impact of digital gaming on school social life among young people (17–19 year old) by combining over-time data investigating friendships as they form, with subjective experiences of friendships. We draw on one full cohort of Swedish pupils surveyed on three occasions during their first year in upper-secondary school ( n = 115) and one interview sample of 10 game users.Results indicate that how much time young people spend on gaming is not a significant factor for friendship formation in the studied sample. Moreover, high-use did not make game users socially isolated or less popular in school. We discuss how young people adhere to ideals of responsible leisure in order to become adults; practising time-management strategies to make place for time-consuming leisure while not letting it impact personal relationships.

Recent attention to the question of preservation and exhibition of video games in cultural institutions such as museums indicates that this media form is moving from being seen as contentious consumer object to cultural heritage. This empirical study examines two recent museum exhibitions of digital games: GameOn 2.0 at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm (TM), and Women in Game Development at the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, Oakland (MADE). The aim is to explore how games are appropriated within such institutions, and thereby how they are configured as cultural heritage and exhibitable culture. The study uses actor-network theory in order to analyse heterogeneous actors working in conjunction in such processes, specifically focusing on translation of games and game culture as they are repositioned within museums.The study explores how games are selectively recruited at both institutions and thereby translated in order to fit exhibition networks, in both cases leading to a glossing over of contentious issues in games and game culture. In turn, this has led to a more palatable but less nuanced transformation of video games into cultural heritage. While translating video games into cultural heritage, the process of making games exhibitable lost track of games as culture by focusing on physical artefacts and interactive, playable fun. It also lost track of them as situated in our culture by skimming over or ignoring the current contentious nature of digital games, and finally, it lost track of games as being produced and experienced in a particular context, or games of culture.

Agriculture and rural life in the Middle East have gone through several changes in the past few decades. The region is characterized by high population growth, urbanization, and water scarcity, which poses a challenge to maintaining food security and production. This paper investigates agricultural and rural challenges in the Duhok governorate of Iraqi Kurdistan from biophysical, political, and socio-economic perspectives. Satellite data is used to study land use and productivity, while a review of government policies and interview data show the perspectives of the government and the local population. Our results reveal that these perspectives are not necessarily in line with each other, nor do they correspond well with the biophysical possibilities. While the government has been trying to increase agricultural productivity, satellite data show that yields have been declining since 2000. Furthermore, a lack of services in rural areas is driving people to cities to seek better opportunities, which means that the local population's incentive to increase agricultural activity is low. Governmental plans suggest land extensification to increase production and self-sufficiency, but the land use classification shows little available land. Instead, we recommend supporting small-scale traditional agriculture development as a more sustainable and feasible alternative. Additionally, more resources need to be focused on improving rural infrastructure and services to increase access to education and health care as a means of gaining support from the local population.

Anonymity on the Internet is a contentious issue; by some seen as an important freedom to be protected, while others argue for increased identification to protect groups at risk of exploitation. The debate reflects a dichotomous view of online anonymity; you are, or you are not anonymous. However, anonymity is a complex process played out on different levels and defined by various actors. While empirical studies show this, theoretical synthesis is lacking. This essay provides perspective on anonymity online by comparing two critical cases, online auctions and online gaming, we corroborate results from a 4-year interdisciplinary project with researchers from sociology, economics, and computer and system sciences. We argue that one should talk about anonymities in plural form, as online anonymity is not a state but a relational process. We put forth a conceptual model, which unpacks online anonymity as interdependent macro structures – legal, commercial, and technological – and micro/meso facets – factual, social group, and physical – to be used in future research.

What does the age of participation look like from the perspective of a museum visitor? Arguably, the concept of participative experiences is already so deeply ingrained in our culture that we may not even think about it as participation. Museum visitors engage in a number of activities, of which observing the exhibits is only one part. Since most visitors come to the museum together with someone else, they spend time and attention on the people they came with, and often the needs of the group are given priority over individual preferences. How can museums tap into these activities - and make themselves relevant to visitors? In this chapter we will try to approach this constructively, as a design opportunity. Could it be productive for the museum to consider itself not only as a disseminator of knowledge, but also as the facilitator of participative activities between visitors?In what follows, we will outline a range of practical design projects that serve as examples of this approach. These projects were part of the European Union funded Horizon2020 project GIFT, a cross-disciplinary collaboration between researchers, artists, designers and many international museums and heritage organisations, exploring the concept of interpersonal museum experiences (see https://gifting.digital/). What the projects have in common is that they build on visitors co-creating and sharing their own narratives in the museum context. We suggest that these projects demonstrate a spectrum of possibilities: From experiences that take place almost without any museum involvement, to those that give museums a role in curating these narratives.

What does the age of participation look like from the perspective of a museum visitor? Arguably, the concept of participative experiences is already so deeply ingrained in our culture that we may not even think about it as participation. Museum visitors engage in a number of activities, of which observing the exhibits is only one part. Since most visitors come to the museum together with someone else, they spend time and attention on the people they came with, and often the needs of the group are given priority over individual preferences. How can museums tap into these activities - and make themselves relevant to visitors? In this chapter we will try to approach this constructively, as a design opportunity. Could it be productive for the museum to consider itself not only as a disseminator of knowledge, but also as the facilitator of participative activities between visitors? In what follows, we will outline a range of practical design projects that serve as examples of this approach. These projects were part of the European Union funded Horizon2020 project GIFT, a cross-disciplinary collaboration between researchers, artists, designers and many international museums and heritage organisations, exploring the concept of interpersonal museum experiences (see https://gifting.digital/). What the projects have in common is that they build on visitors co-creating and sharing their own narratives in the museum context. We suggest that these projects demonstrate a spectrum of possibilities: From experiences that take place almost without any museum involvement, to those that give museums a role in curating these narratives.

Digital games have become a central part of contemporary culture and society. At the same time digital games provide numerous challenges for collections, preservation efforts, documentation, and exhibitions. This article investigates the challenges and opportunities implicit in LAM convergence and collaboration with actors outside of the LAM-sector itself. These actors are stakeholders of various kinds within game culture: game makers and industry, players, and rogue archives. More specifically, we turn to the collaboration in two Nordic museums in their work with digital games: The Finnish Museum of Games and the National Swedish Museum of Science and Technology. We draw on their actual efforts at collaboration between LAM-institutions and outside stakeholders and analyze them through the lens of political participation and agonistic pluralism. These concepts come from an interpretation of the participatory agenda in cultural policy that aims to resolve inconsistencies in the participatory agenda specifically around neoliberal logics of participation. The paper asks: How can the preservation of digital games be supported through participation of stakeholders inside and outside the LAM sector, and what policy changes would such collaborations require? This paper concludes that political participation and agonistic pluralism are useful concepts for the modeling and understanding of game preservation and provide a possible solution for the paradoxes of the participatory agenda in Nordic cultural policy. Our comparison of the work in two museums shows that approaches that empower participants can lead to successful and surprising exhibitions not possible without the sharing of curatorial power. Policy regulating LAM-institutions should change in order to accommodate players, makers, and rogue archives as participants in game preservation efforts. For the future the participatory agenda in cultural policy should be interpreted through the lens of political participation and agonistic pluralism as calling for truly empowering participants in order to elevate participation in game preservation from lucky accidents to a political participation policy.

Ponencias, comunicaciones y pósters presentados en el 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science "Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place", celebrado en la Universitat Jaume I del 3 al 6 de junio de 2014. ; The Anfal genocide campaign, carried out by the Iraqi government against the Kurdish population in 1988, has been reported to have severe consequences for agriculture and food security by causing large scale land abandonment. This study uses Landsat satellite data to detect agricultural changes that can be attributed to the Anfal genocide. Cultivated land were distinguished from other land cover types by focusing on crop phenology. Initial results show a strong decrease in cultivated land in the years after the genocide, especially in the areas that were targeted by the genocide campaign.