We have to stop inventing disorders for every human experience that challenges the status quo… I dream of a world where people can peacefully co-exist… [where] differences are accepted… [and where] I, and everybody else, has a place (Jackie, psychiatric survivor and mad person). The thesis is a critical ethnography of a political community in Toronto, Canada whose members are challenging the theories and interventions of biological psychiatry and developing approaches to understanding and responding to human experience in alternative ways that empower people who are conceived of as “mad”. Based on the emerging ideological and practical differences among participants, a model of the community was developed that includes three main constituencies: the psychiatric survivor constituency, the mad constituency, and the antipsychiatry constituency. This thesis includes descriptive accounts of the philosophical understandings, priorities, goals, actions, and strategies emerging from each of these constituencies; some tensions and conflicts that arise in the community around working across difference; the genuine attempts made by community members to build alliances, the challenges they face, and the notable progress they have made. The thesis grapples with how community members might work towards building a paradigm for solidarity work with others who share a stake in building communities that are free of sanism and psychiatric oppression. The dissertation ends with an exploration of how clinical and counselling psychologists might proceed in their work taking into consideration the experiences and perspectives shared by participants.

We have to stop inventing disorders for every human experience that challenges the status quo… I dream of a world where people can peacefully co-exist… [where] differences are accepted… [and where] I, and everybody else, has a place (Jackie, psychiatric survivor and mad person). The thesis is a critical ethnography of a political community in Toronto, Canada whose members are challenging the theories and interventions of biological psychiatry and developing approaches to understanding and responding to human experience in alternative ways that empower people who are conceived of as “mad”. Based on the emerging ideological and practical differences among participants, a model of the community was developed that includes three main constituencies: the psychiatric survivor constituency, the mad constituency, and the antipsychiatry constituency. This thesis includes descriptive accounts of the philosophical understandings, priorities, goals, actions, and strategies emerging from each of these constituencies; some tensions and conflicts that arise in the community around working across difference; the genuine attempts made by community members to build alliances, the challenges they face, and the notable progress they have made. The thesis grapples with how community members might work towards building a paradigm for solidarity work with others who share a stake in building communities that are free of sanism and psychiatric oppression. The dissertation ends with an exploration of how clinical and counselling psychologists might proceed in their work taking into consideration the experiences and perspectives shared by participants.

The purpose of this research was to document how racial ideologies were expressed in relational organizing practices in a working class Latino Elementary school in Texas. By identifying dominant and subjugated racial ideologies, this research contributes to effort to challenge inequitable racial systems in schools through community organizing for school reform. I employed a participant ethnographic approach by becoming a volunteer relational organizer with a community organizing institution at Walnutbrook Elementary. I worked with working class Latino parents and the school staff to identify and challenge inequitable racial systems at the school. Using a racial systemic framework, I describe how dominant racial ideologies shaped relational organizing practices through racial narratives repeated throughout the organizing actions. I also document how some working class Latina leaders were able to counter narrate subjugated ideologies by using differential techniques as their organizing practices. Through microethnographic case studies, I am able to tell the stories of how schooling institutions continued inequitable racial systems by narrating dominant racial ideologies while local community leaders created spaces through which to challenge these systems and ideologies by privileging their Latina epistemologies. / text

School-to-prison pipeline research and scholarship point to a need for parent and community involvement in addressing school discipline policies and culturally sensitive approaches to reducing disparities in school discipline. My research examined how members of a parent community organization worked to raise parents' awareness about and engage them in school discipline reform, including culturally sensitive approaches. I developed a culturally centered research study that privileged my participants’ cultural and epistemological positions. The primary data sources were qualitative interviews and documents. A thematic analysis revealed that the participants’ cultural heritage formed the foundation for the organization’s work. Key organizational processes identified include raising awareness by learning new information, linking to community resources to engage in advocacy and build power, and leading parents through inquiry-based activism. Organizational learning and program adjustments showed promise of parents’ ability to influence local school district educational practices.

An individual's initial acceptance of a recruitment pitch from a community-based social movement organization is usually based upon minimal information about the group and its efforts. It is only during the subsequent period of orientation that new members begin to learn more about the organization. During this period, the retention of new members is dependent on the successful alignment of individual and organizational frames. The failure to achieve such an alignment is likely to result in the new member's departure from the organization. This study explores the frame alignment process during early orientation to community-based SMOs. Using nineteen qualitative interviews with three different community organizing efforts in Baltimore, the study suggests that organizational members feel most motivated to continue involvement when they feel that the organization is effective.

What happens in the case of immigrant groups who have had such pre-migration experiences as to require specialized assistance in the adaptation process, and yet whose population is not substantial enough to convince governmental sources of funding their demands? The wave of Burmese refugees fleeing the 1988 crackdown in their country is one such example. Drawing from perspectives of Participatory Action Research (PAR), this study has several objectives. First, it explores the current settlement needs of the Burmese population by way of relating it to the pre-migration context. By identifying those characteristics which influence the ability of this group to effectively compete for resources among organized ethno-cultural groups in Canada, this study hopes to highlight barriers to full participation. Second, a related objective is the documentation of the settlement and integration issues faced by the Burmese population, namely through an exploratory study of experiences of Burmese communities in Winnipeg and Toronto. Third, it seeks to explore the question of social capital within the Burmese population and its possible implications for resettlement and integration process. Fourth, it will attempt to contribute to the testing of Participatory Action Research as a methodological tool in improving our understanding of refugee resettlement. And fifth, it seeks to generate recommendations that will improve the settlement and integration of this target population within Canadian society. Broadly, it is hoped that this study might demonstrate how the particular needs of immigrant groups, in this case statistically small ethno-cultural groups arriving with traumatic refugee experiences, require careful consideration in seeking to facilitate integration through enhanced social capital and self-help.

What happens in the case of immigrant groups who have had such pre-migration experiences as to require specialized assistance in the adaptation process, and yet whose population is not substantial enough to convince governmental sources of funding their demands? The wave of Burmese refugees fleeing the 1988 crackdown in their country is one such example. Drawing from perspectives of Participatory Action Research (PAR), this study has several objectives. First, it explores the current settlement needs of the Burmese population by way of relating it to the pre-migration context. By identifying those characteristics which influence the ability of this group to effectively compete for resources among organized ethno-cultural groups in Canada, this study hopes to highlight barriers to full participation. Second, a related objective is the documentation of the settlement and integration issues faced by the Burmese population, namely through an exploratory study of experiences of Burmese communities in Winnipeg and Toronto. Third, it seeks to explore the question of social capital within the Burmese population and its possible implications for resettlement and integration process. Fourth, it will attempt to contribute to the testing of Participatory Action Research as a methodological tool in improving our understanding of refugee resettlement. And fifth, it seeks to generate recommendations that will improve the settlement and integration of this target population within Canadian society. Broadly, it is hoped that this study might demonstrate how the particular needs of immigrant groups, in this case statistically small ethno-cultural groups arriving with traumatic refugee experiences, require careful consideration in seeking to facilitate integration through enhanced social capital and self-help.

This dissertation examines the interactions between social movement organizations and a variety of state and municipal targets of movement activity during the construction of the Illinois Hydraulic Fracturing Regulatory Act (HFRA). Hydraulic fracturing is a controversial method of oil and gas extraction which created an unusual amount of public interest and participation in policy construction. This dissertation provides an overview of the political environment in Illinois during the legislative negotiations for the HFRA, outlining the playing field of political negotiations, and the relative positioning of social movement actors competing for influence in that field. Additionally, I examine the causes and consequences of conflict between coalition partners opposed to fracking, focusing on the impact of differential resources, expertise, and institutional legitimacy. Using data from interviews with organization leaders from industry and environmental coalitions, key informants from government bureaus, and participant observation at public meetings, my research contributes to the political process literature by elaborating the heterogeneity of the state’s interests in political challenges and revealing cleavages within social movement coalitions.

Cette thèse, oeuvrant entre les champs (inter)disciplinaires de la sociolinguistique urbaine et de l’analyse du discours, s’efforce de rendre compte des phénomènes glocaux ségrégatifs et discriminatoires à Rennes et en France lorsqu’il s’agit de parler de personnes hétéro- ou auto-designées de par leur mobilité ou leurs « origines ». Elle traite ainsi de multiples points de vue « discursifs » sur la ville ; tous semblant relever cependant d’un phénomène de dominance – processus lie, en Sociolinguistique urbaine, a la hiérarchisation des personnes et des langues sur un territoire donne – dans les discours sur la migrance ou, autrement dit, dans les discours hégémoniques sur la mobilité.Notre recherche se décompose ainsi en deux temps. D’une part, il s’agit d’analyser les discours politico-médiatiques actuels Sur la migration et les « migrants » à travers une approche lexicométrique d’un corpus de presses nationale, régionale et locale. D’autre part, il s’agit de percevoir comment ces discours sont repris, critiqués, réinterrogés, ignorés… et pourquoi ils le sont ; comment les catégories dominantes sont reprises ou évacuées… ; comment les frontières sont reproduites en ville dans l’examen de la question de la « légitimité » des personnes perçues comme migrantes à être présentes dans l’espace urbain de la ville. Ce second travail s’est réalisé à travers des observations participantes et des entretiens semi directifs réalises dans le cadre d’un projet relevant d’une organisation citoyenne, participative / Overlapping the (inter)disciplinary fields of urban sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, this dissertation displays the glocal domination phenomena in Rennes, and in France, in discourses focusing on persons hetero- or self-designated by their mobility or “origins”. The research thus examines a variety of discursive points of view on the city ; yet, all of them seem to reveal a domination phenomena – a process linked, in urban sociolinguistics, to the hierarchization of persons and languages on a given territory – in discourses on migration, or in other words, in hegemonic discourses on mobility.Our research divides into two parts. First, it consists in an analysis of current political media discourses on migration and “migrants”, by a lexicometric analysis of a corpus composed of national, regional and local press articles. Secondly, we analyze how and why these discourses are reproduces, criticized, questioned or ignored, and how are dominant categories reproduced or left behind. We study how frontiers are reproduced in the city when the “legitimacy” of the presence of persons perceived as “migrants” is debated. This second aspect of our work, relies on participant observations and semi-directed interviews in the context of a community and participative project

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