While accountability measures are designed and promoted to increase trust among members of society in Canada, this study finds that accountability practices actually reduce trust and flexibility among people. This dissertation interrogates the concept of accountability as value-free and in the public interest in Canada. Using institutional ethnography as an approach to research, this study traces how accountability as a concept is defined through a set of performances described in texts that trickle down from the federal to the municipal level in Ontario. In particular, I examine how residents’ groups providing social services with a small grant from an Ontario municipality are required to go to great lengths to perform accountability according to dominant texts. This study overlays a mapping of the textual organization of accountability with the theories of civility and governmentality to demonstrate how white, middle-class, neoliberal values pervade decision-making about the allocation of public funds. The data demonstrate that while government accountability measures are designed with elected officials and government workers in mind, the practice of accountability gets enforced through the least socially powerful members of society, defined through racialized, gendered, and class distinctions. I conclude that while changes to reporting mechanisms could render the lives of more residents visible, ultimately the dominant focus on rules rather than relationships in Canada undermines real trust, and thus is the most vital site for change.

While accountability measures are designed and promoted to increase trust among members of society in Canada, this study finds that accountability practices actually reduce trust and flexibility among people. This dissertation interrogates the concept of accountability as value-free and in the public interest in Canada. Using institutional ethnography as an approach to research, this study traces how accountability as a concept is defined through a set of performances described in texts that trickle down from the federal to the municipal level in Ontario. In particular, I examine how residents’ groups providing social services with a small grant from an Ontario municipality are required to go to great lengths to perform accountability according to dominant texts. This study overlays a mapping of the textual organization of accountability with the theories of civility and governmentality to demonstrate how white, middle-class, neoliberal values pervade decision-making about the allocation of public funds. The data demonstrate that while government accountability measures are designed with elected officials and government workers in mind, the practice of accountability gets enforced through the least socially powerful members of society, defined through racialized, gendered, and class distinctions. I conclude that while changes to reporting mechanisms could render the lives of more residents visible, ultimately the dominant focus on rules rather than relationships in Canada undermines real trust, and thus is the most vital site for change.

This thesis describes the role of Spanish as a common language in the construction of social networks among the diverse Spanish-speaking population of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Analysis of the data confirms the low public visibility of the community observed initially, despite the even larger numbers of Spanish speakers living in the city than initially estimated. The communitys relatively low level of coherence and its minimal presence in the public sphere can be explained by two main factors: an exceptional degree of diversity among members (described in terms of national, religious, political, socio-economic and ethnic variations), and a set of ambivalent attitudes regarding the relative value of Hispanic culture. This communitys public anonymity is also discussed as related to the larger realities of Canadas official policy of multiculturalism and popular discourses of Hispanidad in Anglo-Canadian mainstream culture.

Purpose <br>The purpose of this focused ethnography is to understand the meaning and cultural influences of healthy eating and the role of nursing in the promotion of healthy eating practices from the Mexican American child's point of view. <br>Background <br>No current studies directly measure the meaning of healthy eating from the Mexican American child's perspective. Mexican American children have a unique perspective and understanding of the meaning of healthy eating and can help identify cultural norms and other factors that may be vital in directing culturally appropriate health promotion interventions. <br>Research Design <br>A focused ethnography method using Leininger's four phases of data analysis was utilized. <br>Informants <br>The researcher interviewed twenty-one children aged eleven to thirteen for the study. Fifteen individual interviews and two group interviews were completed. <br>Data Collection and Analysis <br>Data gathering and data analysis occurred simultaneously. Leininger's four phases of qualitative data analysis and utilized NVivo9 qualitative data management software. <br>Results <br>The data emerged into three themes within the culture. Theme one: Mexican American children connect healthy eating with familiar foods in the context of their Mexican American culture. Theme two: Foods that provide feelings of happiness and well being are essential for healthy eating. Theme three: Sources of food and health information education are valued when provided by familiar and trusted sources. <br>Conclusions and Implications <br>For the informants of this study the meaning of healthy eating is closely tied to the cultural life ways learned and valued by the Mexican American culture. Culture cannot be separated from the child when considering the meaning of healthy eating. Mexican American children view healthy eating within the context of culture, associating familiar foods that provide a feeling of happiness and well being with healthy foods. Mexican American children view eating habits as healthy when taught by familiar and trusted sources. <br>This study provides nurses an enhanced understanding of the meaning of healthy eating and valuable information to improve nutritional health education and promotion activities, better assists children and their families to improve and maintain health and provides culturally congruent care that is valued by the population. / School of Nursing / Nursing / PhD / Dissertation

This dissertation investigates heterosexed reality as an ongoing accomplishment by the members at a workplace. Observations were carried out sporadically for two years at a museum. During this period twelve formal interviews, fifteen informal interviews, three formal group interviews and three informal group interviews were also conducted. The study rests on an ethnomethodological understanding of how reality and order is achieved by actors in interaction through the use of ethnomethods, such as common sense. Order is produced in a number of situations and it is situations, as locations of shared practices, which are primarily focused. It is concluded that the members try to, in different ways, realise the museum as a nice place. The concept of straight-framing is introduced to describe one of the pleasure procedures performed by the members in order to generate good mood, solidarity and familiarity in everyday working life. To successfully straight-frame situations, the members must utilise the heterosexual matrix and produce themselves and others as intelligibly sexed beings, belonging to either the category women or men, and as relatable to people of the other sex in couple-like and/or sexualised (explicitly or implicitly) ways. Three different forms of straight-framing are distinguished; direct, mock direct and indirect. The members also routinely realise the museum as a nice place by creating a discourse of political correctness. The easiest way to produce and use this discourse appears to be to talk about gender equality. In conversations about gender equality women and men are commonsensically turned into a standardised relational pair and this is referred to as the body count routine. While the body count routine makes the issue of gender equality intelligible for the members and enables them to come across as politically competent, it also provides them with an opportunity to organise the working units at the museum. Sex-mixed units can be placed above non-mixed in a moral hierarchy.

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.

Summary: My excuse for attempting this thesis is firstly, that I am a graduate in medicine of the University of New Zealand and secondly, that my mother was a Maori. It seems to me that with a young university such as that of New Zealand, without the facilities for research work provided by older and richer homes of learning, the scope for original work, which it is the duty of every University to encourage and foster, is somewhat limited. In the philology, history and ethnology of the Polynesian Race, however, is provided a wide field for research work which it is the bounden duty of this University to explore and lead the way. As an obligation to my �alma mater� I take up the subject nearest to my family - medicine amongst the Maoris, in ancient and modern times. As another reason, I have the honour through my mother of belonging to the Maori race. As a result of four years work amongst them as an officer of Health, I am much struck by the different view-point with which the two races, European and Maori, approach the subject of disease. As a member of the Race I am perhaps enabled to understand my mother�s people more intimately than the more progressive but some what forgetful Anglo-Saxon. My experience of Maori ideas and customs dates from beyond the time of graduation in medicine. In childhood�s days, I experienced the bitter taste of the decoction prepared from phorium tenex and I heard around me the whispered diagnosis of �makutu� and �mate Maori�. Constantly throughout youth and early manhood, I have seen the European doctor wax impatient with what he terms prejudices or superstitions which retard or prevent the recovery of Maori patients. I have understood and sympathised with him. At the same time, with the priveledge of the half-breed inheriting the blood and ideas of both races I have been able to detach myself from European thought and look at the question of disease from my Maori countryman�s viewpoint. I understood the burden of the neolithic man�s fears and I symathise with him more deeply still. There are deep holes in the Urenui river which flows through our tribal territory wherein, so my Maori mother taught me, dwelt �taniwhas� or �dragons of slime� who destroyed the transgressor of the multitude of Maori laws and observances. Years of College and University education, combined with the unbelief inherited from a European father, have not been able to suppress the involuntary shudder and contraction of the erector pilae which the suggestion of bathing in those dark holes gives rise to. We inherit our fears in our blood, we imbibe them at our mother�s breast. The schools and teaching of a father appeal to us as we grow older. We subject customs and faiths to the light of comparative criticism and we ridicule the ideas of more primitive races as absurd. But in times of stress, despondency and lowered vitality, there is a tendency to revert to the mother�s fears which slumber within beneath the veneer of civilisation. How much more so in the case of the full Maori who has not had the advantage of even primary education! Clodd says, "In structure and inherited tendencies each of us is recent". The Maori has not been civilised for a century yet. As a duty to my kin, I have attempted to put on record their view of disease, in the hope that though anthropologist�s and others have done so much in collecting the ideas and customs of races on a lower culture stage, this thesis may serve as a small contribution to ethnology.

People living with end stage kidney disease require dialysis or kidney transplantation to maintain life. Of those receiving dialysis in Australia, most people receive this treatment in satellite haemodialysis centres that are nurse-run, community-based clinics. Nurses provide the majority of care in these clinics with little or no on-site medical support, yet there has been minimal research exploring nursing care, or perceptions of nurses, in the satellite haemodialysis context. The major aim of this study was to explore satellite dialysis nurses’ perceptions of quality care. Fundamental to this aim was the premise that to improve nursing care, nurses need to understand the factors influencing satellite dialysis nursing care. A critical ethnography exploring the culture of one satellite haemodialysis clinic, focusing on the nurse’s perception of quality was undertaken, with a focus on issues of power that influenced satellite dialysis nursing care. Over a period of twelve months, interviews with nurses, non-participant observation and document analysis were conducted. Of particular concern was the satellite dialysis nurses’ struggle with the dominant medical discourse of quantitative measurement of quality. Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, field and practice provided a vehicle to explore nurses’ dispositions that operated within the institutional conditions of the medicalised discourse and physical structure of the satellite dialysis environment. Findings about nurses’ perceptions of quality dialysis care were categorised into three broad themes: what is quality; what is not quality; and what affects quality. Nurses considered technical knowledge, technical skills and personal respect as characteristics of quality. Long-term blood pressure management and arranging transport for people receiving dialysis treatment were not seen to be quality priorities. The person receiving dialysis treatment, management, nurse and environment were considered major factors influencing and determining quality dialysis nursing care. Acceptance by nurses about their position and their reluctance to challenge medical power was revealed. Aspects of power and oppression operated for nurses and people receiving dialysis treatment within the satellite dialysis context, and this environment was perceived by the nurses as very different from hospital dialysis units. Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and subconscious reproduced practices were embedded in the satellite dialysis nurses’ behaviour and were conveyed to other nurses. In order to improve nursing care in this context, ten recommendations were proposed: 1) implementing a concordance nursing care model; 2) using a goal-setting framework; 3) increasing staff rotation between dialysis units; 4) improving satellite dialysis unit design; 5) educating satellite dialysis nurses in internet and database skills; 6) using new technologies in staff education programmes; 7) recognising increased patient acuity; 8) research exploring residential dialysis facilities; 9) introducing advanced practice nurses in a satellite collaborative model of care; and 10) requiring a structured programme of reflective practice. Facilitating change in dialysis nursing practice was fundamental to this study and consistent with a critical approach. New understandings for the nurses may not result in practice change however, unless there is a collective review and uptake of these practices. This study offers new knowledge about quality nursing in satellite haemodialysis units, enabling nurses to critically reflect on, and improve, the quality of care they provide.

This dissertation is an investigation of visitor experiences in the Screen Gallery at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), in Melbourne. This thesis argues that visitors’ interaction with moving image art can yield expressions of agency which not only enrich the experience of visiting a new museum, but also find application beyond an institutionalised environment as a praxis for negotiating the conditions of everyday life. I term the articulation of this praxis a politics of movement. (For complete abstract open document).

The nature and role of workplace literacy and numeracy are the subject of considerable debate (Baker, 1998; Castleton, 2002; Gee & Lankshear, 1997; Hull, 1997; Jackson, 2000; Marr & Hagston, 2007). The debate in New Zealand, (as in many other countries), is taking place amid concerns about the adequacy of the skills of its workforce and the latter’s ability to meet future demands of everyday work and life (Tertiary Education Commission, 2008). These concerns have resulted in major investment at a national level in a Skills Strategy (New Zealand Government, 2008) with particular emphasis on improving adult literacy and numeracy levels. However, Castleton (2002) suggests that conceptualising literacy as a skill ignores the reality of workplaces which, she suggests, consist of communities of workers who engage in purposeful communication and who possess and use different skills and knowledge in complementary ways, while Hull (1997) believes that too great an emphasis is placed on literacy, particularly in low skilled work. I teach on a programme for students with limited English literacy and numeracy proficiency. A common entry point into the workforce for current and past learners from the programme is entry-level supermarket work. However there is limited information available about the literacy and numeracy pre-requisites for this type of work or the literacy and numeracy demands placed on those in employment. In seeking to contribute to the body of knowledge about low skilled work in general and entry-level supermarket work in particular, research was carried out in a large, busy, suburban supermarket. The study was underpinned by the belief that both literacy and numeracy are social practices which cannot be separated from the contexts in which they occur. It adopted an ethnographic approach and was conducted through semi-structured interviews with supermarket managers and entry-level workers/supermarket assistants; observation of assistants during induction and at work; and analysis of some significant supermarket documentation. Findings indicate that, while literacy and numeracy are generally not considered to be important pre-requisites for entry-level supermarket work, supermarket assistants are exposed to highly context-specific literacy texts and ‘embedded’ and invisible numeracy demands at induction and during parts of their working day. The findings have significance for the teaching of literacy and numeracy in vocational training programmes. They indicate that off-site programmes have an important role to play in providing a learning foundation but also point to the importance of, and need for, workplace-specific, on-the-job literacy and numeracy training.