This dissertation is a critical ethnography about the power that storytelling offers in creating sustainable community literacy programs. The research for this dissertation was conducted at a ten year-old grassroots community literacy organization, VOICES: Community Stories Past and Present, Inc., which is based in Tucson, Arizona. Interviews for this project were conducted over a period of two years and includes feedback from thirty-three board members, staff members, volunteers, and youth participants at the organization. The dissertation begins with the assertion that gaps in understanding between theory and practice lead to damaging assumptions about difference and inequality, especially in the realm of community-based programming. I argue that an expanded understanding of storytelling as reciprocal and transformative can bridge these misunderstandings.In order to bridge the divide between theory and practice, this project offers the concept of reciprocity, fleshed out by the work of Ellen Cushman and Pierre Bourdieu, to encourage both participants in community literacy programs, as well as administrators, to be more transparent about their goals by sharing individual experience. This concept of reciprocity is the foundation on which storytelling as an agent of transformation rests. The process of storytelling that this project proposes establishes advocacy journalism and witnessing as a precedent. In the stories about interviewing and storytelling that the narrators from VOICES share, reciprocity is performative in that it can be manipulated to fit the needs of specific rhetorical situations. But this performance is dependent on the audience. I suggest that contrary to many discussions in composition and rhetoric, the tension between "addressed" and "invoked" audiences is an accurate one, and can be used to generate conversation about the assumptions and expectations of low-income youth and community literacy participants. An addressed audience is necessary in order for stories to be transformative; which is ultimately the way that they create large-scale social change. The conclusion of this project argues that administrators and literacy workers must foster an ethic of sustainability, which can be achieved through storytelling in order to both honor difference and challenge inequality in ways that are meaningful to the participants in these programs.

Family violence is a tragedy in any community. The pastoral image of a quiet home in "Mayberry" is shattered by the reality of family violence. The literature reveals that family violence is a social health issue in rural communities, however it does not provide sufficient insight into the influential contextual factors. The goal of this research was to conduct an ethnography into relevant contextual factors in rural family violence to provide researchers with information on which to base decisions, develop effective programs and interventions, and influence policy. The purpose was to better understand this social health issue within the context of a rural community and to identify influential contextual factors useful in developing a praxis theory for addressing health issues in rural communities.Specific aims were: 1) to learn from rural residents how rural context affects family and community health; 2) to deepen understanding of family violence related to rurality; and 3) to propose a theoretical model of family violence for eventual practical use in informing, assessing, and intervening with a community.Methodology: Within a paradigm of social constructivism, interviews and focus groups provided data for this ethnographic study and a scholarly description of family violence in a rural community in southeastern Arizona.Findings: An iterative process of data analysis yielded five organizing themes and an emerging praxis theory. The organizing themes were substance abuse; lack of resources; lack of understanding and awareness of family violence; family and values; and strong sense of community. The emerging theory indicates it is necessary to consider the context, physical environment, and significant relationships of a person when developing and implementing a plan of care to achieve optimal outcomes.Conclusion: A constructionist view that undergirds ethnographic methodology allows for the voice of the community to express the local realities. The juxtaposition of knowledge of nursing and this constructionist view generates meaningful descriptions and understandings of the health problem of family violence. This new knowledge can be used to work with the community to identify intervention strategies. The issues of family violence are inseparably intertwined within a community, so are the solutions.

The prolonged civil-war and famine in the African nation of Sudan has displaced millions over the last two decades, many of these are women and children. Refugee women who are resettled to the US with their children must make profound adjustments to learn how to live in the American society and culture. Very little is understood about the factors and conditions that affect the health of immigrant and refugee populations who resettle to a host country.This ethnographic study investigates the influences to health and well-being in 10 refugee women from the Dinka tribe of southern Sudan who were resettled with their children to a Midwestern city in the United States (US). The in-depth interviews and participant observation that occurred over the one-year period of the study resulted in an interpretive theory of Well-Being in Refugee Women Experiencing Cultural Transition. Well-being in Dinka mothers is understood through the relationships between three major themes: Liminality: Living Between Two Cultures, Standing for Myself, and Hope for the Future. Liminality: Living Between Two Cultures describes how the women struggled to maintain a delicate balance between their traditional Dinka culture and the new American culture. The theme of Standing for Myself addresses how learning new skills and taking on new roles in the US, led to transformation of the refugee women. The third theme of Hope for the Future emphasizes the Dinka cultural values of communality and religious convictions that gave the women hope for a better future for their families and countrymen.The middle-range theory of transitions was used as a theoretical framework to guide the investigation of well-being of the refugee women and their families during resettlement. The study extends of the theory of transitions to refugee women from southern Sudan by developing a theoretical explanation for how refugee Dinka women attain well-being during transition. The results of this study strongly indicate that `cultural transition' be added as a distinct type of transition significant to understand the health needs of refugee women. The knowledge from this study will lead to the development of culturally competent interventions for resettled refugee families.

There's an interesting phenomenon happening on the South Coast of British Columbia, Canada- particularly on southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. Groups of women, couples and families are going back to the roots of craftsmanship to build their own houses. These houses are not your typical timber framed home. These cob homes are made from a mixture of clay, sand and straw. The author draws upon data collected through interviews with nine participants. Through the examination of why people live in or build with cob, the author shows the importance of this material in relation to community and connectivity, as well as environment and health. Two professionally produced audio documentaries and two magazine-style articles contribute to wider public knowledge and understanding of the physical and mental sensations and beliefs of the participants, as well as their understanding of how others perceive cob builders and dwellers to be.

This interdisciplinary research project investigated the process of healing utilized by Açorean Portuguese traditional healers. The purpose was to facilitate an understanding of this process for multicultural counselling practices in North America. The theoretical framework is informed by medical anthropology and the work of Arthur Kleinman (1980, 1987). Kleinman has been called an ethnographer of illness because of his belief that suffering is social and, as such, culturally constructed. He contends that without consideration of the experience of suffering and the social aspects of suffering, health care practitioners face poorer outcomes in treatments (Kleinman, 2005). The current ethnographic study was carried out in the Açorean Islands of Portugal and asked the following research question: How do traditional healers in the Açorean Islands facilitate wellness in people suffering from illness? Illness was defined as the personal experience of physiological and/or psychological disease or distress (Kleinman, 1980). This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge dealing with multicultural counselling as follows: a) it adds knowledge by contributing an in-depth description of Portuguese Açorean traditional healers, which was previously absent from the counselling psychology literature: b) it expands on existing research to further explicate the significance of suffering in the world for Portuguese Açoreans and the role traditional healers play in witnessing this suffering; and c) it highlights the multifaceted impact of language when English speaking counsellors work with second language English speaking clients.

The Camino Francés, a 780km pilgrimage in Northern Spain, has been traveled by millions of pilgrims over the last 800 years. In recent decades the route has been increasingly threatened by insensitive development and infrastructure. Surprisingly little research has been conducted on the nature and ecology of pilgrims’ experiences and the landscape necessary to support the roughly 170,000 people that walk the Camino each year. Adapting methods from recreation and leisure science, this autoethnographic research explored the influence of the environment on my pilgrimage experience as I walked for five weeks in the Fall of 2011. Analysis used a variety of qualitative techniques in creating my own narrative. My research suggests that the landscape is essential to a positive and meaningful pilgrimage experience. Future planning and design efforts for this UNESCO route should incorporate the influence of the landscape on the experience of pilgrimage.

As a major project, this work studies the spoken word genre as a response to, and interpretation of, oppression and examine my own spoken word performance through the lens of narratology, narrative-making and auto-ethnography. This project is composed of two parts: a full-length spoken word performance and a curatorial analysis of this performance. While attempting to re-enact the trauma of oppression, this performance dually recognizes the impossibility within the task. Maurice Blanchot writes in The Writing of the Disaster, “The disaster, unexperienced. It is what escapes the very possibility of experience- it is the limit of writing. This must be repeated: the disaster de- scribes.” This project aims to perform the places of de-scription. In poems detailing experiences of trauma, racism, misogyny, and relationships, this spoken word performance will offer an account of the subject for whom the act of narration is subversive. In this, the performance is self-aware and self-reflective; it communicates experiences for which the language to describe such experiences is either unavailable or nonexistent. The continuous theme of ‘home’ is maintained throughout the performance- how its absence marks the absence of the oppressed subject, how its absence implies the absence of language for the subject, and how spoken word can begin the outlining of a narrative, a foundation, for the subject. My accompanying curatorial paper will examine similar themes. As spoken word is an art form deeply linked to activism, my paper will begin with an analysis of how this art has taken place, what its role has been in community development, and how it continues to function as a teaching tool. My paper argues that spoken word is instrumental in tying learning to voice; by offering young people a medium that both gives them a forum to voice the issues directly impacting their lives, while giving them a means of developing skills in language, presentation and communicating ideas effectively, spoken word acts as a unique and important teaching tool. / Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2014-01-07 02:07:39.286

This thesis explores the potential for ethico-politically committed cultural critique in investigating lived experiences of gender in the hegemonic global north, where the neo/liberal rhetoric of sexual equality tends to portray issues of gender as already sufficiently addressed. It argues that the ideological roots of dominant gender discourses can be productively explored through the interrelated histories of Christianities and neo/liberalisms that have powerfully shaped mainstream Canadian society. Supported by an extensive body of literature bringing religious studies, feminist, and queer theory to bear on sociological and political questions, this rhetoric is investigated by applying critical discourse analysis to transcripts of interviews conducted over a year of participant observation with the members of a local United Church women’s discussion group. Findings suggest a complex set of attachments, rejections, and ambivalent attitudes toward those elements of feminism that have entered into the social, cultural, political and economic discourses that have become dominant in Canada. The discussion of results considers the forces which produced respondents’ general complacency with the status quo of gender equality along with their hesitancy to make judgments about the validity of competing claims regarding gender ethics. Analysis concludes by examining the implication of these attitudes for the prospects of gender justice movements, especially those conceived in terms of allyship and coalition-building at the intersection of different axes of identity and practice. / Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-14 13:34:43.664

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