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

Student academic achievement is a collective effort of family, community, and school experience (Sloat, Makkonen, & Koehler, 2007). However the biggest burden is placed on teachers who are assumed and expected to possess the skills, knowledge, caring, and commitment to students often without the appropriate support, resources and professional development. With a focus on teacher development this work will listen to the voices of eight veteran educators from the Texas-Mexico border region and trace the steps in their formation and critical understandings of themselves and their professions to better diagnose students’ academic needs. The site of my study is in the southern-most part of the U.S.-Mexico border known as the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (RGV). This dynamic region of our country was occupied by immigrant settlers in the middle 1700s and has seen much socio-political and cultural change throughout the years. Nucleus to the “browning of America” (Rodriguez, 2002), the demographic shift toward more ethnic/racial diversity, and in particular the ascent of Latinos as the largest minority in the country, the Border and its teachers provide key insights regarding effective ways to educate Latino children because they have served this community the longest. This study is a synthesis of historical sociology and cultural anthropology inquiries based on applied research method of interviews with Border educators. It includes: ethnographic and historical data, and testimonios, or critically documented histories, that address views on educational reform intended to foster academic success among Latino students. Latinos have become the nation’s largest majority at 16.3% of the population. The growth trend is also evident in Texas with a 37.6% and 90.4% for the RGV (Census, 2010). The correlation between poverty and educational attainment places this population at a significant disadvantage in the nation as well as in the RGV. Some observers have expressed concern that Latinos will represent the majority of the population by 2040 as the “poorer, less educated, and productive” (Jillson, 2012, p. xiii). My work challenges this conceptual relationship between poverty and school failure by focusing on a region where the student body has historically been predominantly Latino and economically disadvantaged with a 32.6% poverty rate compared to a national figure of 11.3% (Census, 2010). My findings on the epistemic value of identity demonstrated through my Spotlight Identity (SI) framework, support the notion that aligning students with teachers of similar experiential and cultural backgrounds positively impacts academic achievement and that, generally speaking, these affinities improve relations with families and allow for teachers to better understand the academic and personal challenges that the students are facing. My constructivist analysis suggests that academic success can be achieved, regardless of economic impediments when communities, schools, educators, and families work collaboratively with a child-centered approach. For participants in the study, barriers such as low socioeconomic (SES) were not seen as germane to student academic success when all the elements in their “educational equation” were in place. Academic success—construed by participants as significant student yearly progress, meeting grade level requirements, and high school completion—can be achieved, regardless of social and economic factors, when communities, schools, educators, and families work together through child-centered efforts and mediated through “critical bicultural education” (Darder, 1991). / text

Given the importance placed on participation and empowerment in global health initiatives, the perspective of young people with disabilities has emerged as a vital field of study. This critical ethnographic study gained insight into the perspectives of adolescents with disabilities aged 12 to 18 years who were affiliated with a community-based rehabilitation program in the urban slums of North India. The purpose of this research was to highlight the collective voices of adolescents with disabilities about their rehabilitation challenges, to explore how the culture influenced the rehabilitation challenges faced by adolescents, and to support collaborative work among adolescents with and without disabilities that would inform organizational activities. Fieldwork was conducted from January to May 2005 and October 2006 to March 2007 with 21 adolescents with disabilities, 11 adolescents without disability, and 10 community-based rehabilitation team members. Multiple data collection methods were utilized to ensure that participants could comfortably express their views. A conceptual framework called the ‘Adolescent Group Empowerment Pyramid’ was developed that illustrates one process for empowering adolescents with disabilities and their peers without disabilities within a community setting. Group empowerment involves adolescents with disabilities working towards assuming greater ownership over their rehabilitation while collaborating with their peers. The ‘group’ concept provided the foundation for the framework because adolescents viewed the group setting as enjoyable and effective. Three areas associated with meaningful group empowerment included: group participation, group demonstration, and group recognition. Three external support factors and ten areas for nurturing the group empowerment process are also described. Participants promoted a more liberal approach to empowering adolescents that embraced the notion of collaboration (rather than competition), interdependence (rather than independence), shared benefits (rather than individual gain), and the interaction of community groups. This approach promotes a harmonious balance between empowerment and the community, rather than an aggressive approach to gaining power over or from other marginalized individuals. Group empowerment, achieved through enabling group-centered occupations, encourages adolescents to collectively work for social and occupational justice. To ensure the sustainability of community-based rehabilitation initiatives, programs must be aware of personally meaningful factors that empower and maintain the interest of the target population. / Thesis (Ph.D, Rehabilitation Science) -- Queen's University, 2009-08-05 15:30:32.786

Outside school hours programs provide recreation, play and leisure-based programs for children aged 5 to 12 years in before- and after-school settings, and in the vacation periods. Over the past ten years, the number of programs has grown rapidly due to women’s increasing participation in the workforce. At the same time, critical changes for the operation and administration of Queensland outside school hours care services were occurring following the introduction of mandatory standards and quality assurance. This study is a critical ethnography investigating the circumstances for two Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) services located on school sites at this time of change. The services were responding to the introduced legislative and accreditation requirements, the burgeoning numbers of students in the programs, and the requirements by parents for care for their school-aged child. The findings of this study show the complexity of the dualities of purpose and the operational administration of OSHC services, an area that has been little identified and discussed to date. This study illuminated not only aspects of OSHC services, it provided an opportunity for the co-ordinators of the two OSHC services to reflect on the operational structures. As the majority of OSHC services in Queensland (and other Australian states) are located in school sites, a closer examination of the relationship between OSHC and schools provided insights into some issues concerning the sector. Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action was used to investigate the state of affairs and analyse the consensual and coercion meaning-making that occurred in the interactions between the stakeholders, specifically between the OSHC coordinators and school principals. Critical ethnographic research techniques, including participant observations and semi-structured interviews, were used to investigate what appears below the surface of social existence in the OSHC settings. On the surface, the interactions between the coordinators and principals appeared congenial. However, the study found that the vulnerability of the OSHC services for alienation and marginalisation was linked to the lack of legitimacy and reduced sense of social membership endowed by the ambience of the school setting in which the services were located. The study found that the distorted communicative action that took place within the OSHC settings exhibited the pathologies of alienation, withdrawal of legitimation and lack of collective identity. Examining the relationships of the key stakeholders within the outside school hours care services offers conceptual understandings of existing institutional relationships and practices, This critical ethnography pinpoints sources of power and unease contributing to the concerns for the outside school hours sector and recommends ways to develop these programs.

HIV/AIDS is now widely recognized as a medically manageable condition. However, more than 2,000 new HIV infections are reported across Canada each year. A pressing issue in the public health response to HIV is how to better engage people at risk and living with the virus in testing, treatment, and support services. For this study, a critical ethnography was undertaken with 22 public health nurses involved in HIV case management in 14 public health units across Ontario. The objectives were to describe the experiences of case management nurses involved in the follow-up of people who test positive for HIV in public health units across Ontario and identify how public health policies shape the boundaries of nursing care and client outcomes in the response to HIV. A poststructuralist, feminist and critical geographical lens was employed to understand how different discourses determine the social and spatial organization of case management and structure the possibilities in nurses’ follow-up at the point-of-care. The main finding is evidence of two different sets of goals and measures in the public health response to HIV in Ontario: (1) a medical-epidemiological discourse tied to a biosecurity approach and goal of disease containment; and (2) a nursing discourse linked to a relational approach aimed at promoting meaningful engagement and ensuring people with HIV “feel supported.” The thesis of this study is that the hegemony of a biosecurity approach and singular biomedical indicator of success (an undetectable viral load) are contributing to the relegation of relational work and nurses’ efforts to support people who are unable or unwilling to engage in risk reduction measures to the margins of care. Strengthening the capacity of case management nurses to develop a relational approach and account for the diversity of emotional and social issues impacting the ability of people to live with HIV may be an important starting point for improving the outcomes of the public health response. The findings have implications for future research, policy, and practice in the areas of governmentality, public health nursing and efforts to end the “War on HIV.”

This thesis builds on the findings of my previous study, which established that queer South Asian women (QSAW) feel invisibilized in Toronto’s LGBTQ+ community (see Patel, 2019). The present study critically investigates the operation and cultural reproduction of power in organizational practices that invisibilize QSAW within Pride Toronto™, as a means of diagnosing the problem in mainstream LGBTQ+ organizations more broadly. The following research question is explored: How do the cultural underpinnings of Pride Toronto™ contribute to the invisibilization of queer South Asian women in the broader LGBTQ+ community? This critical ethnography substantiates the invisibilization of QSAW in the LGBTQ+ community as an institutionalized form of identity-based violence. This study rejects the argument that invisibility is exclusively felt by QSAW. Instead, this thesis demonstrates that QSAW are invisibilized by the willful negligence of dominant actors in knowledge practices, as well as assimilationist politics that mandate outness, which invalidate and exclude QSAW. This study further finds that QSAW remain invisibilized in the broader LGBTQ+ community as a result of Pride organizations branding as diverse and inclusive, while simultaneously advancing colonial knowledge about queer identities and ideologies that re-write the narratives of QSAW in mainstream LGBTQ+ discourse.

Community treatment orders (CTOs), which allow for involuntary psychiatric treatment of individuals who meet particular legal criteria while they are living in the community, have been in effect in Ontario since 2001. Some similar form of mandated community-based psychiatric treatment exists in every Canadian province and in many other jurisdictions around the world. In the wake of deinstitutionalization, CTOs filled a gap in mental health care, allowing for the treatment of people with serious and persistent mental illness (SPMI) who were otherwise unable or unwilling to access care; however, CTOs brought their own host of legal, ethical and practice dilemmas, as well as mixed results in research about their effectiveness. This doctoral research examines the way CTO policy is situated within a larger historical, social, legal and discursive system; the way it is deployed, operationalized and negotiated in day-to-day practice; and the layered effects that this has on the multiple actors involved. This study gives voice to a small and vulnerable subset of the population who, in addition to experiencing mental illness, have layered experiences of stigmatization and low socio-economic status. The purpose of this study was to explore the cultural context, beliefs and values underlying the CTO and perpetuated by the CTO, as it was used in community mental health care in Ontario, through an examination of its impact on identity of people living with SPMI. The study was guided by a theoretical framework that brought together the work of Michel Foucault on governmentality and Elizabeth Grosz on body image in order to critically examine the issue of identity from both the outside in (how identity is constructed) and the inside out (how that constructed identity is experienced). It used a critical ethnographic methodology. Data collection included in-depth interviews with persons with SPMI (N=7), family members (N=5) and clinicians (N=10), observations of health care practices for people with CTOs, and analysis of documents used during the CTO process. Data was analyzed using critical discourse analysis. This study revealed insights in the into social context of CTOs, that is, the complex social landscape in which CTOs operate; the social practice of CTOs, that is, the many steps and many actors involved in the CTO process; and the social impact of CTOs, that is the effect of CTO processes on both the constructed and the experienced identity of the patient, family member and clinician. The constructed identity of the patient included perceptions of the patient as risky, defective, and in need of surveillance; the experience of this identity was characterized by feelings of being criminalized, disconnected, muted, traumatized and gaslit. The constructed identity of the family members included an idealization of families as responsible and available, and instrumentalization of the family role. This identity experience was characterized as a dissonance between roles, a witnessing of the absurd, and as putting a strain on other elements of life/identity. The constructed identity of the clinician in relation to CTOs included the role of enforcer, fall-guy, paternalistic provider, and the patient’s adversary. The experience of this identity was characterized by frustration, powerlessness, distress, and an acceptance of dissonance. CTOs, while facilitating access to some treatments and services, also act to construct identities for patients that further limit their full integration into communities as valued members. An examination of the constituent parts of the CTO highlights areas in which CTO processes could be changed; research participants conveyed areas in which they thought the CTO could be improved, including changes to methods of police intervention, better collection and use of administrative data, systemic change, the use of specific approaches to care, changes to the timings of renewals, and changes to the Consent and Capacity Board hearings. The discussion highlights ways in which a re-examination of the context in which CTOs are used can lead to the consideration of political and therapeutic means to reduce both the circumstances that lead to mental and emotional distress and to improve our responses to mental and emotional distress when these are experienced by members of our communities.

The research reported here evolved from the researcher’s ethnographic immersion in an ICT for Development (ICT4D) project in a deep rural part of South Africa. During ethnographic immersion, three key issues emerged from fieldwork. Firstly, the researcher realised his limited understanding of the worldview of research participants. Secondly, he realised his inability to appropriately and ethically do community entry and implement the ICT4D artefact (e.g. ICT4D training and policy), especially because of his limited understanding of the cultural context, underlying values, emancipatory concepts and interests, as well as incomplete insight into the oppressive circumstances that the people in the research setting find themselves in. The third issue relates to an inability to interpret and explain the collisions and conflicts that emerged from introducing, aligning, and implementing the ICT4D artefact. Through critical ethnographic methods and a critical orientation to knowledge, the researcher shows how these inabilities, collisions, and false consciousnesses emerged to be the result of cultural entrapment and ethnocentricity that he and the research participants suffered from. A key argument throughout this thesis is that the emancipation of the researcher is a precursor for the emancipation of the researched. The researcher thus asks: In what ways should ICT4D researchers and practitioners achieve self-emancipation, in order to ensure the ongoing emancipation and empowerment of the deep rural developing community in South Africa? The study subsequently argues the link between the topic of this thesis, namely the issue of ethical research practice, and the primary research question. A unique perspective on these problems is presented as the study looks at emancipatory ICT4D research and practice in context of a deep rural Zulu community in South Africa, and specifically the journey of social transformation that the researcher himself embarked on. The study retrospectively applies Bourdieu’s critical lineage to reflect on the research contribution and how the researcher was eventually able to construct adequate knowledge of the ICT4D social situation. Building onto the idea of critical reflexivity, the researcher argues that critical introspection should also be part of critical ICT4D research in South African contexts. Through confessional writing, the researcher describes experiential knowledge of the worldview collisions that emerged from ICT4D research and practice. In particular, manifestations of the collisions between the typical task-orientated or performance-orientated value system of Western-minded societies and the traditional loyalty-based value system or people-orientated culture of the Zulu people are described. The research contributes by challenging dominant ICT4D discourses and by arguing for an end to a line of ICT4D research and practice where outsiders with a Western task-orientated worldview, like the researcher himself, make unqualified and inadequate assumptions about their own position in ICT4D practice, and about their own understanding of how to “develop” traditional communities in South Africa through ICTs. Following Bourdieu, the researcher argues that one can only build an adequate understanding of the social situation through critical reflexivity, by making the necessary knowledge breaks, and by allowing oneself to be carried away by the game of ICT4D practice. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Informatics / Unrestricted

This thesis is a critical ethnographic exploration of Philadelphia graffiti as radical citizens’ media, and how the graffiti community is impacted by digital new media in regard to identity, social connection, and commodification. Previous research explores the traditions and practices that are specific to the Philadelphia graffiti community and how the medium affords transformative agency to practitioners, but existing research does not sufficiently explore how this subculture has been impacted by digitality and social media. Through both interviews with Philadelphia based graffiti writers and a critical virtual ethnography of local graffiti archives on Instagram, I explore the following research questions: How may graffiti be used as a form of transgressive, radical citizens’ media to challenge hegemony and elicit alternative imaginaries of resistance? How has the local Philadelphia graffiti scene integrated Instagram to their graffiti practices and community? I argue that graffiti contributes to both the urban physical landscape, but also the digital mediascape, specifically on the social media platform Instagram and as a medium has unique affordances that empower writers for social change. Further, I also argue that social media has influenced how graffiti is practiced, documented, and culturally received while also expanding opportunities for social change and community building. / Media Studies & Production

ABSTRACT FINDING THEIR WAY: A CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF FIVE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN EDUCATORS’ EARLY EXPERIENCES TO DEVELOP INTO CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEGAGOGUES by Rachel Beatrice Dunbar Teacher education programs have been charged with the responsibility to equip all teachers to work successfully in increasingly diverse elementary classrooms around the nation (NCES, 1996). However, the composition of the nation’s teaching force has not kept pace with these changes. Additionally, there is concern that many Pre-service teachers are ill prepared to work with culturally diverse students, partly because teacher education programs (TEPs) often adopt a monocultural, one-size-fits-all approach to preparation, ignoring race, class, and gender considerations (King & Castnell, 2001). African American women who seek preparation are greatly impacted by this singular approach to teacher education, which influences the way in which they experience their training. Consequently, they are often underserved in TEPs (Cozart & Price, 2005). It has been argued that TEPs will have to broaden their approaches to preparation by using a culturally relevant approach to teaching (Gay & Kirkland, 2003). Given the necessity for teachers to be equipped to meet the needs of culturally diverse learners in the classroom, it is imperative that TEPs are designed to cultivate culturally appropriate practices within Pre-service teachers. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the nature of the diversity preparation of five African American women and their teaching experiences following the completion of their teacher education training. The critical ethnographic case studies that developed were theoretically framed in Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), Black Feminist Thought (Collins, 1990), and Womanism (Phillips, 2006). Data were collected from classroom observations, individual, and group interviews. Using a system of open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), data analysis resulted in the emergence of three overarching themes: a) the formal diversity preparation offered by the university, b) the women’s individual perspectives of cultural relevance, and c) the ways in which the women incorporated their perspectives into their classroom practices. The experiences the young women encountered significantly influenced their understandings of culture and its impact on learning for diverse student populations. The results of this study suggest the need for teacher educators to reconsider how TEPs are structured to better prepare minority Pre-service teachers in the future to teach culturally diverse students.