Digital Commons Network^™

Networks Of Users And Powers: Blackboard Software Roadmap As Cultural Practice, Diana Gellci

Wayne State University Dissertations

With the rapid growth of eLearning applications - the software providing for learning through the Internet - it has become commonplace to describe those technologies as both simple tools and user-friendly. These two vague yet suggestive terms make the operating of the technology appear as social value and any related issues as a user's problem. Interested neo-liberal groups take a step further when considering eLearning technologies as the solution for the problems faced in the field. STS studies recognize that technology fetishism is strategically employed to justify the latest developments of capitalism as technological and logical.

This doctoral study examines …

Crossing The Valley Of Death: A Multi-Sited, Multi-Level Ethnographic Study Of Growth Startups And Entrepreneurial Communities In Post-Industrial Detroit, Marlo Rencher

Wayne State University Dissertations

The intention of this research is to reveal the humanity of the startup experience for American growth companies. What is it about the growth entrepreneurship experience that has been hidden from view? Can we begin to articulate a holistic view of entrepreneurship--including those human universals and culture-bound particulars that must be successfully navigated?

This study is an ethnographic account of three Detroit-based entrepreneurial communities and the people within them. This research examines the sociocultural features of entrepreneurship on three levels. The first level of context for growth businesses to be studied is that of their entrepreneurial community. These communities have …

Doing Ethnography In An Urban Hospital Emergency Department Setting: Understanding How Culture Was Related To Emergency Physician Habitus, Renady Hightower

Wayne State University Dissertations

This hospital ethnography focused on the relationship between culture and emergency physician habitus. The habitus of these physicians was defined as those routine, patterned forms of behaviors and practices performed by the physicians while in the emergency department and while interacting with the patient during the physician-patient interaction. Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory was used to address how culture was related to the habitus of the emergency physician. The researcher found that culture was not only related to the habitus of these physicians, but it reproduced, and at times created, aspects of the habitus through the practices performed while in the …