From all cultures of people arises a worldview that is utilized in preserving societal order and cultural cohesiveness. When such worldview is distorted by a calamity such as enslavement, the victims of that calamity are left marginal within the worldview of the oppressive power. From the European Enslavement of Africans, or to use Marimba Ani’s term, the Maafa, arose the notion of European or White Supremacy. Such a notion, though emphatically false, has left many Africans in the Americas in a psychological state colloquially termed as “mental slavery”. The culprit that produced this oppressive condition is Eurocentricity and its utilization of the social theory white supremacy, which has maturated from theory into a paradigm for systemic racism. Often among African Americans there exists a profound sense of dislocation with fragmentary ideas of the correct path towards liberation and relocation. This has engendered the need for a paradigm to be utilized in relocating Africans back to their cultural center. To be sure, many Africans on the continent have not themselves sought value in returning to African ways of knowing. This is however also a product of white supremacy as European colonialism established such atmosphere on the African continent. Colonization and enslavement have impacted major aspects of African cultural and social relations. Much of the motif and ethos of Africa remained within the landscape and language. However, the fact that the challenge of decolonization even for the continental African is still quite daunting only further highlights the struggles of the descendants of the enslaved living in the Americas. The removal from geographic location and the near-destruction of indigenous language levied a heavy breach in defense against total acculturation. Despite this, among the African Americans, African culture exists though languishes under the pressures of white supremacy. A primary reason for such deterioration is the fact that, because of the effects of self-knowledge distortion brought on by the era of enslavement, many African Americans do not realize the African paradigms from which phenomena in African American cultures derive. Furthermore, the lack of a nationalistic culture impedes the collective ability to hold such phenomena sacred and preserve it for the sake of posterity. Today, despite the extant African culture, African Americans largely operate from European paradigms, as America itself is a European or “Western” project. The need for a paradigm shift in African-American cultural dynamics has been the call of many, however is perhaps best illuminated by Dr. Maulana Karenga when he states that we have a “popular culture” and not a nationalistic one. Black nationalism has been presented to Black People for over a century however it has varied greatly between different ideological camps. The variation and many conflictions of these different ideologies perhaps helped the stagnation of the Black Nationalist movement itself. An Afrocentric investigation into African paradigms and the Black Nationalist movements should yield results beneficial to African people living in the Americas. / African American Studies

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The aim of this study is to outline inequalities which exist in Botswana's urban areas by addressing Government Policy in Land and Housing Development, in Gaborone. Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana, which has experienced one of the highest rates of urbanization, was chosen to be a case for this study. Since the attainment of political independence the state of Botswana has been promoting the processes of capital accumulation and legitimation. The state has succeeded in the process of capital accumulation by forging an alliance with foreign mining capital. It has, however, been less successful in its quest for legitimacy. To placade low income classes, the state has intervened in land and housing sectors with the Self Help Housing Agency (SHHA) program. SHHA, a program which ostensibly appears to be suitable for low income people is revealed, through empirical evidence, to be inadequate. Its tenure is limited, and services it provides are lacking in many respects, and relegate the program to a mere propagation of slum conditions. The analyses and conclusions that this dissertation has reached are that, through land and housing policies the state has promoted class inequalities; in the form of tenure, and access to finance and credit facilities. / 2999-01-01

<p> With the goal of eliminating mother-to-child transmission by 2015, a wide range of governmental and other efforts within low- and middle-income countries have sought to provide services for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) to the estimated 1.2 million pregnant women in need. In support of this goal, the World Health Organization (WHO), as the leading normative international body in the area of evidence-based clinical guidelines, issued policy recommendations on the use of antiretroviral drugs for PMTCT. Through various mechanisms, including guidance notes and dissemination workshops, WHO supports countries to adopt and adapt the guidelines within their national policy frameworks. Through three analyses, this dissertation examines the diffusion of WHO PMTCT guidelines in five Eastern and Southern African countries over a 16-year period (1998-2013) and estimates the effect of PMTCT policy adoption on delivery of key services. </p><p> <b>The first analysis</b> of the adoption of specific PMTCT guideline updates between 1998 and 2013 seeks to ascertain which internal factors may explain why and when countries decided to adopt new technical guidance. The policy analysis shows that the five countries adopted a majority of the key international PMTCT technical guidance updates. It can be concluded that international to national policy diffusion was taking place and that national policies converged to be more similar and more in line with international guidelines over the time period studied. Variation in adoption and in the internal determinants at play in each country was minimal, making it difficult to assess the influence of determinants qualitatively. The three internal determinants that appeared to most influence adoption of key PMTCT updates were: 1) the severity of the MTCT problem 2) governance effectiveness, and 3) prior PMTCT policy adoption. The lag between adoption and implementation in these countries is discussed. The findings indicate that in the countries studied, policies promoted by WHO and other international bodies can play a critical role in supporting national policy adoption for program advancement in the area of PMTCT. </p><p> <b>The second and third analyses</b> investigate whether the completeness of a country&rsquo;s body of PMTCT-supporting policies was associated with the delivery of two key PMTCT services &ndash; the offer of an HIV test and the receipt of HIV counseling as a part of antenatal care (ANC) &ndash; in four of the five countries included in the first analysis. Two nationally representative surveys per country were used to conduct a quasi-experimental fixed-effects analysis of the role of policy in predicting a woman&rsquo;s probability of being offered an HIV test or receiving HIV counseling in ANC, controlling for other key individual- and country-level covariates. </p><p> According to the &lsquo;testing&rsquo; model, a one-unit increase in policy score was associated with a 0.042 (p&lt;0.000) increase in the probability that a woman was offered an HIV test as a part of antenatal care. According to the &lsquo;counseling&rsquo; model, a one-unit increase in policy score was associated with a 0.014 (p&lt;0.001) increase in the probability that a woman received HIV counseling as a part of antenatal care. In both the testing and counseling models, the policy/education interaction was statistically significant in the final model, with a greater policy effect estimated at among those with higher education levels. Time statistically significantly influenced the probability of the outcome, as did government health spending, governance effectiveness, and donor health spending. Further study is needed to identify the policy elements that have the most impact on improving service delivery. </p><p> <b>The three analyses</b> presented here support the premise that international health policies influence national-level policy adoption, and that national-level policy adoption in turn influences national service outputs. As countries and their development partners mobilize for the Sustainable Development Goal era, policy adoption at the international level will continue to be an important influence in national policy adoption in the area of PMTCT. This research has described a number of potential internal and external determinants that will influence national adoption in this next round of global health policy advocacy. Looking forward, this study shows that countries and their development partners should continue to invest in the work of policy adoption to complement other efforts to reach health goals, including increased government health spending.</p>

No description available.

This paper investigates the influence of readers' linguistic proficiency level and working memory functions on the reading behaviors and processes of readers of Arabic as a foreign language (henceforth RAFL). Two aspects of reading comprehension, speed and accuracy, are examined in light of readers' word decoding efficiency, recall performances, response times, scores, and readers' responses to two quantitative tests: a questionnaire and an interview. Twenty-four subjects participated in this study and were divided into two subgroups based on their proficiency level. The proficiency of these subjects was determined based on their academic level and their overall GPA in Arabic. All subjects completed a series of reading passages, in two separate sessions, followed by comprehension questions. Reading and answer time on the reading passages and questions were timed and scored. Data was also collected retrospectively using a questionnaire and an interview. The results suggest that reading comprehension and the ability to select and implement specific reading processes are impacted by the proficiency level of subjects as well as their word decoding skills. A strong correlation between comprehension outcomes and working memory functions was also found. That is, working memory capacity was found to be influential on the reading behaviors of readers especially at the sentence level with better performances reported for readers with larger and more elaborate vocabulary repertoire. Based on these results, some implications and conclusions are discussed for both Arabic reading research and foreign language classroom.

<p>The needs of South African men with HIV are often overlooked in providing healthcare for people living with HIV/AIDS, leading to unique needs and experiences for men seeking HIV/AIDS healthcare. Compounding this phenomenon are norms of masculinity guiding these men's behaviors as they navigate health and healthcare systems. The aim of this study is to provide new insight on which components of masculinity interplay with healthcare access in South Africa. The study took place at one primary health care clinic in a peri-urban township in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In-depth individual interviews were conducted with 21 HIV-positive men recruited from the clinic. Direct observations of the HIV clinic waiting area were also conducted. Data was analyzed using a grounded theory-informed memo-writing approach. Participants expressed a range of ways in which masculine ideals and identity both promoted and inhibited their willingness and ability to engage in HIV care. Notions of masculinity and social identity were often directly tied to behaviors influencing care engagement. Such engagement fostered the reshaping of identity around a novel sense of clinic advocacy in the face of HIV. Our findings suggested that masculinities are complex, and are subject to changes and reprioritization in the context of HIV. Interventions focusing on reframing hegemonic masculinities and initiating treatment early may have success in bringing more men to the clinic.</p> / Thesis

<p> A significant number of Liberian ex-militants are unemployed and underemployed despite the job skills, formal education, and entrepreneurial training they received as participants in the Formal Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) program that was established to reintegrate combatants into civilian society at the end of the two civil wars in Liberia in 2003. The purpose of this study was to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the vocational training offered by the DDR program. Informed by the theories of Human Capital, Peace Building, and Bronfrenbrenner, the research questions for this study assessed the benefits of the educational component of DDR. A phenomenological study design was employed with a purposeful sample of ex-militant participants that included 12 ex-militants and a focus group of 6-ex-militants drawn from the 12 who completed vocational training at the Monrovia Vocational Training Center in Monrovia (MVTC). All data were inductively coded and analyzed using a constant comparative method. Data analysis uncovered five textural themes: motivation for disarmament, hope to rebuild lives through vocational training, dissatisfaction with reintegration, perception of reintegration, and perception of future combat participation. Findings support human capital, peace building, and ecological systems theories in that ex-militants perceived the benefit of education in their transition to peacetime endeavor, but consider themselves only partially reintegrated since all consider themselves unemployed with no means to survive economically. This study is significant because it provides recommendations to policymakers on how such a program can improve the vocational training offered and provide follow-up life-skills counseling. </p>

<p> The Republic of Ghana is the legacy of the colonial amalgam of multiple, and previously distinct, ethnic homelands. The Trans-Volta Togoland became the Volta Region of Ghana following a Plebiscite in 1956. The dominant ethnic group in this region; the Ewe, has long maintained a claim of neglect of the Volta Region and the marginalization of its people in this postcolonial state. Protests in the street and at media houses ensued against the State. This qualitative case study explores the undercurrents of this conflict in the context of the Ewe group&rsquo;s identity and their experiences of neglect and marginalization in the postcolonial state. The main objective of the study was to understand why the Ewe group has not revolted despite the perceptions of deprivation. This study focused on the Ewe group in the Volta Region of Ghana a as sub-colonial construct that has managed its perceptions of deprivation without revolting against the host State.</p>

<p>Agricultural system in Ghana underperformed because of limited financing, which constrained some small-scale maize and cassava farmers. The purpose of this case study design was to explore the methods that some small-scale maize and cassava farmers in Amankwakrom Subdistrict used in obtaining farm financing. Two themes from the literature review were a lack of collateral for small-scale farm financing and the small-scale farmers cooperative associations? role in farm financing. Regional-scale management sustainability index formed the conceptual framework for this study. Data collection included semistructured face-to-face interviews with 8 fluent English speaking small-scale maize and cassava farmers who have obtained farm financing in the previous years. Using the Microsoft Excel and Non-numerical unstructured data indexing and theorizing software program for data analysis method, 3 major themes emerged: the farmer?s membership benefits of working in cooperative associations; farmer?s ability to provide the collateral requirements for the financial institutions; and farmer?s good loan repayment history. The study findings indicated that some small-scale maize and cassava farmers obtained farm loans because they used the cooperative associations as their collateral assets in order to satisfy for the requirements of the financial institutions. Social implications include the potential to guide the small-scale maize and cassava farmers to access farm credits to use in expanding their farm sizes. Expansion in farm sizes may result in more maize and cassava production that can help eliminate hunger and reduce poverty in the Amankwakrom Subdistrict of Ghana.

Previous research has shown that the English article system poses a great challenge to second language learners of English. Thus, this current study aims at understanding the difficulties first year Libyan students have in acquiring the English article system by using the following three steps. First, the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) was adopted to compare the article system in both English and Arabic. This procedure was employed in order to predict the difficulties that Libyan learners might be confronted by. Therefore, based on CAH, several difficulties were predicted. Moreover, because there are different opinions between researchers from the Arabic world and those from the west regarding the effect of L1 in the acquisition of grammatical items, this study tests what role L1 may play when L2 Libyan learners of English acquire the English article system. The second part aims to investigate the effectiveness of two kinds of article instruction: an implicit teaching strategy (i.e. textual enhanced input) and an explicit teaching strategy (deductive teaching) with an evaluation of the long-term effects. These teaching strategies were compared in order to: 1. Measure the effectiveness in using the English article system appropriately, 2. Measure grammatical development using t-unit, 3. Measure lexical diversity using TTR. The experiment was administrated to three groups of ESL first year students at Garyounis University in Libya. One group (TEI) received instructions based on an input enhancement strategy. In order to direct the learners’ attention to the target features, the researcher manipulated the learners’ input with the aim of provoking development by deliberately engaging awareness and trying to increase the learners’ attention. The second group (DT) was instructed based on the deductive teaching strategy. It was instructed in accordance with two popular grammar books, specifically ‘Essential Grammar in Use’ by Murphy (1998) and ‘Oxford Practice Grammar’ by Eastwood (1999). The third group, the (CG) served as the control group and received exposure to language through reading passages. The procedure of this group was similar to that of the (TEI) group, with the only difference being that the articles in the texts for this group were not enhanced. All three groups were given a similar article test three times as the pre- test, post- test 1 and post-test 2. The pre-test was given prior to the treatment so that the results of the test served to ascertain a baseline for all groups. Then, eight weeks later, after the treatment was finished, post-test 1 was immediately given, in order to measure proficiency gains; post-test 2 was given to the students six months later to distinguish the long term effects on the learning process. With regards to the effectiveness of using the English article appropriately, the results showed that group DT improved from pre-test to post-tests 1& 2. The scores that were above chance in post-test1 & 2 were better than those in the pre-test. In the TEI group, the scores which were above chance, slightly improved from pre-test to post-tests 1 & 2. For the CG group, the scores in post-test 1 which were above chance, improved slightly from pre-test and that the scores in post-test 2 reduced from those of the pre-test. The measurement of lexical diversity was undertaken using TTR. The results showed that both groups TEI and CG presented better results (i.e. development in students’ writing) than the DT group in post-test 1. In post-test 2, only the TEI group improved significantly. This result suggests that the TEI group remained unchanged after 6 months of instruction. The third part of this study analyzed and classified learners’ errors. It confirmed the types of errors predicted previously in chapter 3: omission of a/an/the, unnecessary insertion of a/an / the and confusion between a and an. The results revealed that the percentage of omission of a/an was higher than the omission of ‘the’, and that the percentage of unnecessary insertion of a/an/the was less than the omission of a/an/the.