This study primarily aims to examine the ways in which the social and cultural meanings are utilized to construct a narrative around a product. Thus, a narrative analysis is employed by conducting a case study on Tupperware products, mainly due to the recognition that a comprehensive narrative, which is elaborated by social and cultural meanings, is constructed around Tupperware products because of the unique retailing technique.

Entrepreneurship is a booming phenomenon in Taiwan and there are quite many research focusing on this domain continually. This research¡¦s aim is that entrepreneurship not only can create economical profits, but also is a link between social networks and interpersonal relationships. Emergence of entrepreneurial opportunities, change of social environment, establishment and maintenance of interpersonal and organization¡¦s network, knowledge learning and accumulation, are some of the indispensable factors for a successful entrepreneurship. In addition to the above, Taiwan depends heavily on its foreign trade; trade related industry holds quite a big contribution to the Taiwan economic growth. Therefore, this research adopts a trading company in gardening industry for case study, so as to know the problems and solutions, also to find out if there are any hidden implications from the story. This research is written in a narrative analysis method just to reorganize and annotate the hidden context throughout the presentation of episodes in one¡¦s life story. It is a story of an entrepreneur that grows out of nothing. Key words: Entrepreneurship, emergence of opportunities, interpersonal network, learning, gardening, narrative analysis method.

This qualitative study was aimed at developing an understanding of how persons involved in the investigation or deliberation of child abuse and neglect cases think and feel about the process of weighing evidence and drawing conclusions from it. Twenty investigators, supervisors, and administrators employed by the Child Protective Services agency in Texas were asked to describe cases they had investigated or reviewed that had been particularly difficult because of conflicting or ambiguous evidence. They were also asked opinion questions about the agency's actuarial risk assessment instrument and the concept of preponderance of evidence. Finally, participants were asked to respond to two short case vignettes describing allegations of sexual abuse. Constant comparative and narrative analysis of interview data revealed that the process of case deliberation in CPS makes use of both intuitive and analytic decision-making styles, and there is a general movement from intuition to analysis as a case ascends the decision-making hierarchy. This movement entails a shift from narrative forms of thought and an outcome-oriented ethic to analytic forms of thought and a rule-based ethic. Though intuitive decision making is at least partly guided from personal experience and personal values, and does produce error because of that, it is nonetheless a form of rationality as capable of being guided by scrupulousness and fidelity to truth as analysis is. The personal value and outcome-oriented ethic that intuition brings to the decision making process not only cannot be eliminated, it is necessary to the program's achievement of its mission. It is recommended that the training of new investigators should, first, acknowledge the large role that intuitive thinking plays in CPS decision making and, second, develop ways to help decision makers discipline intuition, in the words of one participant, and to create conditions that foster its optimal functioning.

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Sexual representations in Seba al-Herz’s Saudi Arabian novel The Others span various kinds of sexual identification and experience. Surface level readings of the novel find examples of lesbian identities and encounters, but a deeper, more nuanced examination of the novel unearths a complex set of queer desires, practices, sexual encounters, and relationships that do not fit neatly in to regulated sexual identity categories. Through literary analysis, I argue that through ambiguities in the novel’s construction and narration, and through the Narrator’s sexual experiences, The Others offers a kind of sexual expression that opens up possibilities of de-territorializing and re-territorializing sexual experience beyond static identity labels.

In 2002, Canada ratified the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. Nearly a decade later, it released its first National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking, designated a government-led task force, and approved a budget specifically allocated for human trafficking initiatives and programming. The main objective of this thesis is to determine the kind of approach the Government of Canada has implemented to address the issue of international sex trafficking into Canada, to determine whether anything is exempted or neglected from this approach, and to explore what this could mean for victims of sex trafficking. I use a qualitative narrative analysis of the Canadian government’s publications on the issue of human trafficking including policy, programming, and research-related documents. The findings reveal that Canada has implemented an approach which emphasizes the safety and security of the country which is indicative of a narrative that frames international sex trafficking as a threat. These findings further reveal a negative impact of such framing on trafficking victims. In employing an approach which prioritizes the safety and security of the state, Canada neglects the notion that human trafficking violates a person’s human rights, overlooks a consideration of the root causes of trafficking, and under-prioritizes the notion of ‘victim’ despite the phenomenon continuing to produce new victims each year in Canada.

How we come to know about social phenomena is an important sociological question and a central focus of this thesis. How knowledge is organised and produced and becomes part of ruling relations is empirically interrogated through an institutional ethnography. I do this in the context of explicating the construction of a public history concerning Aboriginal Australian child separations over the 20th century, and in particular as it arose in the 1990s as a social problem. Particular attention is given to knowledge construction practices around the Australian National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal Children from Their Families (1996-1997) and the related Bringing Them Home Oral History Project (1998-2002). The once separated children have come to be known as The Stolen Generation(s) in public discourse and have been represented as sharing a common experience as well as reasons for the separations. Against the master narrative of common experience and discussion of the reasons for it, this thesis raises the problematic that knowledge is grounded in particular times and places, and also that many people who are differently related and who have experiences which contain many differences as well as similarities end up being represented as though saying the same thing. Through an institutional ethnography grounded in explicating the social organising activities which produced the Bringing Them Home Oral History Project, I examine how institutional relations coordinate the multiplicity and variability of people’s experiences through a textually-mediated project with a focused concern regarding the knowing subject, ideology, accounts, texts and analytical mapping. Through this I show how ruling relations are implicated in constructing what is known about the Aboriginal child separation histories, and more generally how experience, memory, the telling of a life and the making of public history are embedded in social organising practices.

In 2002, Canada ratified the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. Nearly a decade later, it released its first National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking, designated a government-led task force, and approved a budget specifically allocated for human trafficking initiatives and programming. The main objective of this thesis is to determine the kind of approach the Government of Canada has implemented to address the issue of international sex trafficking into Canada, to determine whether anything is exempted or neglected from this approach, and to explore what this could mean for victims of sex trafficking. I use a qualitative narrative analysis of the Canadian government’s publications on the issue of human trafficking including policy, programming, and research-related documents. The findings reveal that Canada has implemented an approach which emphasizes the safety and security of the country which is indicative of a narrative that frames international sex trafficking as a threat. These findings further reveal a negative impact of such framing on trafficking victims. In employing an approach which prioritizes the safety and security of the state, Canada neglects the notion that human trafficking violates a person’s human rights, overlooks a consideration of the root causes of trafficking, and under-prioritizes the notion of ‘victim’ despite the phenomenon continuing to produce new victims each year in Canada.

The Chilean women’s movement has a long history of challenging state power. The role women played in the opposition against Augusto Pinochet’s authoritarian regime has fascinated researchers. There also seems to be a consensus, whereby the contemporary movement is considered to be divided. Yet, recent developments in Chile have seen a resurgence of women’s activism that has not been studied. The need for re-mobilization points to the idea that women’s concerns and needs have not been adequately addressed in the past, despite their strong presence in civil society. This study explores how women have experienced social action in the Chilean women’s movement, through narrative analysis. Analysing own voices accounts of collective action provided insight into how women organize in Chile; the origins of divisions present in the contemporary women’s movement; important differences and parallels with the women’s movement that opposed the dictatorship; and the presence of vertical structures in Chilean society. In focusing on the experiences of women who were active in the opposition to the dictatorship, as well as the largely untapped voices of women active in the contemporary movement, this project will contribute to future research on similar subjects.

Coping during stress has been a very researched topic within the field of religion and religious psychology. During the Syrian civil war, female journalist Waad al- Khateab decided to film her experience as part of the opposition which turned into the documentary film For Sama. The aim of this study has been to analyze how coping is portrayed in the documentary film. The research questions for this study are the following: How is Waad Al-Khateabs coping process portrayed in her story and documentary film For Sama? How can the portrayal of Waad Al-Khateabs coping process be understood through religious coping theory? The method for this study has been qualitative narrative analysis, while Pargament’s (1997) coping theory has been applied on the material as well. The result of the study showed that Waad’s copingprocess primarily changes due to her new role as a wife and a mother. Her coping process could be understood through religious coping theory in different ways. Not knowing the future was mentally stressful for her, and religion was a part of the coping process while other strategies were also involved.