Ecosexual digital war machines: minoritarian environmental desires in the age of new media
- Authors: Weideman, Lisa
- Date: 2021-04
- Subjects: Port Elizabeth (South Africa) , Eastern Cape (South Africa) , South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/54828 , vital:47915
- Description: Today the (Transnational) State Apparatuses of neoliberal capitalism, ranging from educational institutions to mass media and financial institutions, have effectively created and channelled desires towards consumerism, predicated on resource-extractive practices, within the context of what Gilles Deleuze calls societies of control. This control has also intensified in the digital era, particularly through Internet-based technologies which provide increasingly efficient platforms for the escalation of commodification – ironically, despite the reality of ecological crisis being precipitated by the related extractive practices to the point where it now threatens the continued existence of life on earth. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Language, Media and Communication, 2021
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2021-04
Investigating the Cuban Revolución Agricola as a model for the post-'peak oil' age
- Authors: Weideman, Lisa
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Sustainable agriculture -- Cuba , Agriculture and state -- Cuba , Green Revolution -- Cuba , Agriculture -- Economic aspects -- Cuba , Cuba -- Economic conditions
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/4998 , vital:20777
- Description: In this dissertation, the socio-ecological transformations that occurred during Cuba’s Revolución Agrícola are explored, against the backdrop of the historical subalternisation of the country as a consequence of Spanish and American imperialism, and in relation to the continuing subalternisation of the country and its people through the neoliberal mass media. To contextualize such exploration, the origins of large-scale privatization of common land, and the subsequent process of urbanization in the West, are investigated, before Cuba’s similar developmental path – as a result of Spanish colonialism, U.S. imperialism, and communist influence – is detailed. Thereafter, the way in which Cuba established an alternative food paradigm, characterised by local, communal, and urban production during the country’s ‘Special Period’ in the 1990s, is discussed, with a view to illustrating how this eco-socialist model of food production, in both rural and urban areas, led to new relations between people and nature. This Cuban model is then posited as a socio-ecologically sustainable model of food production, deserving of the attention of communities around the world, who seek to gain a degree of autonomy from neoliberal agribusiness. Conversely, the efforts of mainstream neoliberal mass media to silence the immensely positive characteristics of the revolution are also investigated, and framed in terms of the historical subjugation of Cuban voices in the American mass media, and the contemporary marginalisation of the country and its people in the neoliberal mass media. Finally, the dissertation concludes by examining the alternative media response, on the part of several prominent Cubans and those sympathetic to their cause, to bring attention to the value of the socio-ecological transformations that have occurred on the island, against the backdrop of various theorisations of the importance of alternative media platforms as a radical counterforce to neoliberal mass media hegemony.
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- Date Issued: 2015