This essay argues that the semi-biographical film 8 Mile represents Eminem as being both racially distinctive and as possessing universal commercial appeal. 8 Mile accomplishes this paradoxical construction by portraying ‘‘Rabbit’’ as ‘‘white trash,’’ a discursively ‘‘dark’’ (white) object, and as an American mythological white subject. The film makes whiteness hyper-visible by subjecting it to...

This paper presents CKS–Net, a conceptual and computational framework for the acquisition, representation and use of complex and heterogeneous knowledge. The framework aims to support effectively informal groups of workers in their daily activities. A typical example of such groups are Communities of Practice, which can be considered the most important centers for the creation of knowledge in a...

In order to understand any social phenomenon in depth, it is necessary to place it in a historical context. Nowhere is this truism more valid, and nowhere is it more often ignored, than in current discussions of 'the drug problem'. Here, arguments have become so heated, and so politically charged, that we are in danger of losing the ability to stand back from the problem and consider objectivel...

In this paper, the question is addressed which patterns in world dynamics are an indication for a conceptualisation of a world’s process as an agent. Six criteria are discussed that provide an indication for the world to show a form agency, and allows for suitable agent-based conceptualisation. The criteria take the form of relationships between the occurrence of certain patterns in the world’s...

Folklore has, until very recently, been at the fringes of archaeological research. Post-processual archaeology has promoted plurality in interpretation, however, and archaeology more widely is required to make itself relevant to contemporary society; so, contemporary folkloric practices vis-à-vis archaeological remains are once again receiving attention. In this paper we examine contemporary Pa...

The paper deals with a gamified approach developed to support teachers’ reflection and awareness on a set of specific behaviours that can support informal learning. The approach adopts a metaphor, vegetable gardens to be grown, to represent the teachers’ participatory practice and is enriched with specific game mechanics (tasks, goals and badges). The metaphor was reified in two different modal...

The Knowledge Management (KM) literature is reviewed with a focus on theory, finding a core issue in the lack of a widely accepted and understood definition of knowledge. Theories are categorised on the bisecting continua of personal vs. organizational knowledge, and reified knowledge vs. knowledge as social action. It is argued that a fresh approach based on the Discourse Psychology framework,...

In this paper we look into a simple approach for generating characterbased stories using planning and the language of PDDL. A story often involves modalities over properties and objects, such as what the characters believe, desire, request, etc. We look into a practical approach that reifies such modalities into normal objects of the planning domain, and relies on a “mood” predicate to represen...

tion. Over the centuries, it has become reified in that analogical reasoning has sometimes been regarded as a fundamental cognitive process. In addition, it has become identified with a particular expressive format. The limitations of the modern view are illustrated by monster analogies, which show that analogy need not be regarded as something having a single form, format, or semantics. Analog...

This paper uses aspects of Jurgen Habermas’s critical theory of societal development as the evaluative stance for the introduction, application and implications of evaluation of teaching quality in universities. It argues that the practice of student evaluation of teaching or Student Ratings of Teaching (SRT) is clearly designed to position students as consumers in their educational experience....