Participatory approaches to international and community development have gained significant popularity, and are commonly held to be intrinsically empowering processes. In the context of development, both participation and empowerment were borne of radical claims and democratizing goals, but over time, both concepts have been confused and misappropriated. The popularity of the terms participation and empowerment, coupled with the ambiguity of their meanings, illustrates a symptom of their co-optation away from their radical and political roots. This ethnographic case study explored the mechanics of the participatory approach and claims of empowerment within the experience of a non-governmental organization based in Chiapas, Mexico. This study aimed to investigate the linkages between participation and empowerment, in their original radical and theoretical forms, as well as in practice—addressing questions of whether and how participation may lead to empowerment. The organization's endeavors to create space for participatory learning for critical consciousness and self-sufficiency, as understood through 30 semi-structured interviews and three months of participant observation, provided insight into these questions and their conceptual underpinnings. I analyzed data by drawing upon Freirean critical pedagogy, critical theory, and theories of participation and participatory learning. Findings examine the influence of clientelism, Catholic liberation theology, and the Zapatista uprising on the ways rural campesinos develop critical consciousness and organize to dismantle systems of oppression. Findings illustrate examples of interactive participation and self-mobilization. The study serves to demonstrate the importance of cultural and historical contexts, and of solidarity and downward accountability within the praxis of participation and empowerment. / Master of Science in Life Sciences

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND: Traditionally, patient referral occurs from a primary healthcare facility to a secondary or tertiary healthcare facility. Despite these formalised procedures in place, it has been reported within the global context that patients often circumvent these procedures and apply various forms of selfreferral to tertiary hospitals. Through self –referral to the high level of care, patients’ diagnoses and care are interrupted and get lost along the way. AIM/ OBJECTIVES: The overall aim of this study was to develop strategies for patients’ self-referral in tertiary hospitals in Gauteng. In order to achieve this aim, the specific objectives of the study were: Phase 1 Objective 1: To explore and describe current patients’ self-referral patterns from patients and healthcare professionals’ perspectives in tertiary hospitals in Gauteng Province. Phase 2 Objective 2: To develop strategies for managing patients’ self-referral in tertiary hospitals in Gauteng Province. METHODOLOGY: A qualitative research approach using critical ethnography was used. Purposive or judgment sampling was used as the researcher considers the participants to have a profound knowledge and in-depth information on the phenomenon. Data was generated through three phases: in-depth interviews with patients and healthcare professionals (registered nurses and doctors) rendering services to self-referred patients in Gauteng Chronic clinics based in tertiary hospitals; reviewing of relevant site documents; and imbizo as policy discussion forum between the service providers and users of the services were held for the development of patient self-referral strategies. Data was analysed through the analytic five steps framework as advocated by the nurse ethnographers Roper and Shapira (2000: 98). FINDINGS: From the analysis of data five themes emerged as the pathways.. These pathways are emergency admissions, word of mouth, admissions in disguise, enabling patients to pay for admission, human rights, and sense of belonging. CONCLUSION: This study provided a baseline data on self –referral of chronic disease patients in tertiary hospitals in Gauteng Province. Given the epidemiology of chronic disease in South Africa, there is a need for innovative ways of bending the costs for treatment of such. The implementation of National Health Insurance (NHI) will address this problem as NHI has to have a self –referral scheme. The use of the hybrid (new technology and traditional) strategies will facilitate access to care and empowerment of patients to initiate self –referral. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Nursing Science / PhD / Unrestricted

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Aubrey A. Huber, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Speech Communication, presented on March 29, 2013 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: HELP AS COMMUNICATIVE PRACTICE: A CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF A TEACHER EDUCATION CLASSROOM MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Nathan P. Stucky As a scholar studying critical communication pedagogy, I am interested in the ways help is produced in communication by future educators. I take Stewart's (1995) claim seriously that words are not merely representational, but instead produce reality. Working from this paradigm, I examined help-producing communication and its implications to theorize help and generate strategies to improve help practices, specifically between teachers and students. To collect data for this project I conducted an ethnography of the teacher education course, "Schooling in a Diverse Society," EDUC311. I was interested in future teacher discourse because teaching often is articulated as a helping profession. For example, a common argument from my research was that to teach is to help students learn content, skills, and particular worldviews. Schein (2009) argues that help is a process that cannot be easily explained. He asserts, "Helping is a common yet complex process. It is an attitude, a set of behaviors, a skill and an essential component of social life" (p. 144). However, very little work has been done to theorize or analyze the implications of help, particularly in terms of communication and educational contexts. In this dissertation, I examined how future teachers articulate and produce help in and through communication. In my experience as a former teacher education student, I found that the help articulated in teacher education classes, that focus on democracy and social justice was remarkably different than the help articulated in everyday experience. Hunt (1998) resolves, "A focus on teaching for social justice reminds us that our children need not only a firm grounding in academics but also practice in how to use those academics to promote a democratic society in which all get to participate fully" (p. xiii). Social justice educators recognize students have the ability to enact change. They recognize inequity and actively work with their students to understand their subject positions in order to work against systems of oppression. In social justice education, help is a process "with" students instead of "help for" students. EDUC311 explores the relationship between social justice and democracy. As a required course for all teacher education students at Southern Illinois University, this course provided me with an ideal population of future educators. By studying the communication of future educators in a course that emphasizes social justice, I analyzed the ways they produced notions of help, generated a definition of social justice-oriented help, and provided strategies that current and future educators could use to better help their students.

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As wild edibles gain in popularity both on restaurant menus and as a form of recreation through their collection, research on contemporary foragers/wildcrafters/gatherers of wild edibles has so increased from varied disciplinary perspectives. Through an exploration of gatherers in Vermont, I examine the relationships between practice and identity. By employing intersectionality through feminist ethnographic methods, this research recognizes the complex intersections of individuals' identities that challenge a more simplified, additive approach to definitions of race, class, gender and the myriad identities that inform one's experience of privilege and oppression. As prior scholarship has established, people from diverse ethnicities, genders, religions, class affiliations, rural and urban livelihoods, and ages gather wild edibles. This thesis draws connections between the intersectional identities of gatherers and the diversity of their gathering practices. This project includes a discussion of how intersectionality may be applied and employed as analytical theory and as methodological foundation to better approach connections between identity and practice. Key questions driving the analysis are: what are the intersectional identities of gatherers of wild edibles in Vermont, and to what extent are these intersectional identities informing, or informed by, harvest and post-harvest practices? This research contributes to scholarship on foragers from a qualitative methodological perspective and attempts to support the body of literature on intersectionality as methodology as well as research that focuses on the connections between people, practice, and wild foods.

Although evidence of health inequities abound, why people in lower socio-economic classes have poorer health has not been sufficiently explored. The purpose of this study is to examine day labourers’ pathways to health inequities in a segregated, urban district in Japan. Critical ethnography was employed to investigate day labourers’ social environments and cultural behaviours in order to reveal the ways that social inequalities embedded in mainstream society and the day labourers’ sub-culture produce and sustain day labourers’ disadvantages, leading them into poorer health than the average population. Data were collected through observations of day labourer’s daily activities, events within the district and their interactions with social workers at a hospital. In addition, interviews were conducted with 16 day labourers and 11 professionals and advocates. The study found several components in the pathways to health inequities of day labourers. First, certain people in Japan are ostracized from the social, economic and political mainstream due to an inability to enact traditional Japanese labour practices. Commonly such exclusions make men become day labourers to survive. In a day labourer district, they are exposed to further social inequalities embedded in the work system and their living circumstance. Living and working as a member of the day labour community, they develop collective strategies in order to survive and preserve their social identities as day labourers. However, such strategies do not provide people with opportunities to lead healthy lives. The study also identified several social determinants of health for day labourers, including: 1) employment, 2) working conditions, 3) temporary living, 4) housing quality, 5) social networks and support, 6) marginalized neighbourhood, 7) access to health care, and 8) gender. The findings contribute to a better understanding of social construction of health inequities, which provides insight on the impact of precarious work in the Japanese society at large. Implications of these findings for public health policy and practice are also discussed.

Following critical/post-structural perspectives in conducting ethnographic research on the political dimension of language learning, this study examines language learners’ identity and investment in a post-secondary Korean language classroom in Canada. First, this study explores the ways in which Korean-ness is produced through the curriculum, how an instructor’s linguistic and teaching practices in the Korean language classroom function to include some students and exclude others, and how the students on the periphery cope with their marginalization. I argue that peripheral students’ coping strategies are strongly tied to their investment into certain aspects of Korean language and culture, as well as their desire to gain symbolic resources in the Korean language. Second, my study examines the ways in which Korean heritage language learners (re)negotiate their hyphenated Korean Canadian identities by looking at three different discourse sites - Korean home, Korean church, and Canadian schools - and how their hyphenated identities are connected with their investment in maintaining their heritage language. The data for this study includes classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, bi-weekly written journals and focus group interviews. By adopting critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a means of analyzing the data, this study shows that language learners’ race, ethnicity and gender are salient parts of their identities, and thus impact their learning experiences to varying degrees and levels. My research findings also suggest that the ethnic identity capital that the heritage language learners embrace in relation to their perceptions of their native speech community as well as its status, is intertwined with the maintenance of their heritage language. Pedagogical implications from this study enable educators to equally empower students from diverse backgrounds, and help them to be sensitive to the relations between ideologies and power in the language classroom. Central to these pedagogical implications is that it is the role of the teacher to adequately capitalize on the multilingual and multicultural practices that each student brings to the language classroom, and to identify the social and cultural voices present in the class.

In 2003, the town of Craik initiated a unique renewable energy project with the dual goals of addressing both the environmental and the rural economic crisis. This Masters thesis provides an exploration of the factors that both facilitate and constrain the advancement of this project. The research focuses on the question: What are the cultural and social factors that inhibit the Craik project from meeting its environmental and economic goals? New social movement theory provides a theoretical framework for explaining contradictions within social movements, while a critical ethnographic methodology is used to uncover specific underlying contradictions that exist at Craik. This thesis analyzes the dynamics of facilitating and non-facilitating factors to make visible the deeper sources of conflict, to contribute to theoretical models of social change and understandings of community development. Furthermore, the thesis provides direction for the Craik eco-project that can further the implementation of practices that will facilitate both its economic and environmental goals. Finally, the study provides valuable insights to other communities working to facilitate similar eco-projects and influence public policy in response to global warming

Although evidence of health inequities abound, why people in lower socio-economic classes have poorer health has not been sufficiently explored. The purpose of this study is to examine day labourers’ pathways to health inequities in a segregated, urban district in Japan. Critical ethnography was employed to investigate day labourers’ social environments and cultural behaviours in order to reveal the ways that social inequalities embedded in mainstream society and the day labourers’ sub-culture produce and sustain day labourers’ disadvantages, leading them into poorer health than the average population. Data were collected through observations of day labourer’s daily activities, events within the district and their interactions with social workers at a hospital. In addition, interviews were conducted with 16 day labourers and 11 professionals and advocates. The study found several components in the pathways to health inequities of day labourers. First, certain people in Japan are ostracized from the social, economic and political mainstream due to an inability to enact traditional Japanese labour practices. Commonly such exclusions make men become day labourers to survive. In a day labourer district, they are exposed to further social inequalities embedded in the work system and their living circumstance. Living and working as a member of the day labour community, they develop collective strategies in order to survive and preserve their social identities as day labourers. However, such strategies do not provide people with opportunities to lead healthy lives. The study also identified several social determinants of health for day labourers, including: 1) employment, 2) working conditions, 3) temporary living, 4) housing quality, 5) social networks and support, 6) marginalized neighbourhood, 7) access to health care, and 8) gender. The findings contribute to a better understanding of social construction of health inequities, which provides insight on the impact of precarious work in the Japanese society at large. Implications of these findings for public health policy and practice are also discussed.

Following critical/post-structural perspectives in conducting ethnographic research on the political dimension of language learning, this study examines language learners’ identity and investment in a post-secondary Korean language classroom in Canada. First, this study explores the ways in which Korean-ness is produced through the curriculum, how an instructor’s linguistic and teaching practices in the Korean language classroom function to include some students and exclude others, and how the students on the periphery cope with their marginalization. I argue that peripheral students’ coping strategies are strongly tied to their investment into certain aspects of Korean language and culture, as well as their desire to gain symbolic resources in the Korean language. Second, my study examines the ways in which Korean heritage language learners (re)negotiate their hyphenated Korean Canadian identities by looking at three different discourse sites - Korean home, Korean church, and Canadian schools - and how their hyphenated identities are connected with their investment in maintaining their heritage language. The data for this study includes classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, bi-weekly written journals and focus group interviews. By adopting critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a means of analyzing the data, this study shows that language learners’ race, ethnicity and gender are salient parts of their identities, and thus impact their learning experiences to varying degrees and levels. My research findings also suggest that the ethnic identity capital that the heritage language learners embrace in relation to their perceptions of their native speech community as well as its status, is intertwined with the maintenance of their heritage language. Pedagogical implications from this study enable educators to equally empower students from diverse backgrounds, and help them to be sensitive to the relations between ideologies and power in the language classroom. Central to these pedagogical implications is that it is the role of the teacher to adequately capitalize on the multilingual and multicultural practices that each student brings to the language classroom, and to identify the social and cultural voices present in the class.