Growing Community
Asynchronous Session
Dance Is For Every BODY - Using Dance And Video to Create Inclusivity and Motivation for Those with Parkinson's Disease: An Interdisciplinary Collaboration between the Arts and Medicine View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Andrew Carroll
In 2010, University of South Florida Dance Professor Andrew Carroll was approached by The Florida Department of Health to develop a dance video intended as a new vehicle to depict correct procedures of effectively cleaning a hospital room. Carroll, who is a former soloist with The Philadelphia Ballet, was intrigued in ways to use dance in a collaborative and interdisciplinary fashion for the better good of society. To date, Professor Carroll has now produced nine dance videos on behalf of medical or social justice issues including bullying, suicide awareness and human sex-trafficking among others that have been used globally by organizations eager to use the video format to educate and advocate on behalf of their respective issues. The videos were lauded for their ability to capture and engage interest, as well as providing a conduit for discussions. Professor Carroll’s interest in bettering society continued when he became certified as a Dance for Parkinson’s teacher, establishing the first Dance for Parkinson’s disease program in Tampa. Due to the overwhelming comments of his Parkinson’s participants in regards to how dance both benefits their physical well- being and creates a community, Carroll produced a motivational video documentary as seen through the lens of his Parkinson’s participants.It is now used by Parkinson’s organizations to inspire passion, inclusivity and demonstrates the ability of having a seat at any table. It also creates a new landscape as to “who can dance?” The paper highlights the creative aspects of these projects and the outcomes which ensued.
Self-managed Media in Argentina: Innovation and Sense of Belonging
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carolina Escudero
The situation for journalism in Argentina represents a great challenge due to the continuous economic changes linked to inflation and labor precariousness. For this explorative study, based on journalists’ innovation and sense of belonging, we conducted a focus group and a survey to analyze the self-managed media composed by recovered, cooperatives, community, popular and alternative. To do this, we have chosen a triangulation of both qualitative and quantitative approaches in the following order: first a focus group was held with 10 communicators to better understand their current situation; second, 60 journalists were consulted about their roles and innovations. The findings reveal the presence of innovative actions (90%) related to the transfer of experiences and knowledge; 70% of the consulted journalists assumed new roles –management and administration activities–. In addition, 80% of the journalists have positively highlighted community work, characterized by a sense of belonging and its benefits in motivation and freedom. This sense of belonging could be included in the fifth area of innovation in journalism, which refers to the social factor.
Learning from the Lives of Cusco's Community Street Dogs
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Bjørn Ralf Kristensen
I explore Val Plumwood’s account of more-than-human agency in the context of human-dog relations in Cusco, Peru. I use Plumwood’s concept of an intentional recognition stance to consider how intentionality operates in both subjective and unintentional acts. Discussing my fieldwork on street dog agency in Cusco, I show that the city’s street dogs co-construct the political possibility of a multispecies city. I focus on the concept of “perro comunitario” or “community dog,” recognized under Peruvian law 31311 and defined as a dog who does not belong to anyone or have a home. This law also recognizes the humans who feed and support the community dog and maintain coexistence with them. This legal definition builds on an existing reality about daily human interactions with street dogs. Despite the human-controlled legacy of dogs, this is a recognition that some dogs are not owned. Rather, community dogs are recognized as being independent and autonomous. They demonstrate their autonomy in through daily choices outside of direct human control, and their coexistence is maintained through communal relations of care, feeding, and other interactions with humans. Community dogs thus demonstrate themselves as what Plumwood (2002) refers to as “independent centre(s) of value” and “originator(s) of projects” demanding our respect. Such recognitions stand in contrast to domesticated dogs living in much of the Global North, who are generally understood as lacking proper care without an official caretaker. The lives of Cusco’s community dogs profoundly demonstrate who dogs can be in ways that radically differ from dominant narratives.
False Labeling and Double Standards in Populist Discourse
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ewa Jakubowska, Nika Bogdanowska
Politics, in general, and the quality of the nation’s governance has a great impact on the society. Populist rule spoils social relations. Populists antagonize citizens, presenting one group as enemies of the other. However, ending their rule does not entirely stop their detrimental impact on the society. In October 2023, after eight years in power, the populist Law and Justice party, and its coalition the United Right, lost the parliamentary election in Poland. They have not accepted the fact of becoming the opposition and now try to prevent the new government from restoring the rule of law and “repairing” the country. Having broken constitutional order (e.g. freedom of the media and the independence of the legal system), they accuse the ruling coalition of such breaches and “the terror of the rule of law”. False labeling and double standards are characteristic features of the discourse of the “new” opposition. The study analyzes their populist rhetoric. The data used in the study come from our corpus of Polish political discourse, which includes texts representing various genres, e.g. political speeches, mass-media texts (e.g. TV and radio interviews, newspaper articles) and various types of Internet data (e.g. social media posts). A theoretical framework within which the analysis is conducted is the Discourse-Historical Approach, one of the main approaches to Critical Discourse Studies.
