<p>The aim of this study is to widen our knowledge about the basic idea about having an open preschool for adopted children as understood by parents of adopted children and a preschool teacher. Sweden has a large number of international adoptions, in an international comparison among the highest numbers of adoptions per capita. Interviews were carried out with seven adoptive parents and one preschool teacher teaching at a special preschool for adopted children. It was found that adoptive parents had no particular problems with placing their children in an "ordinary" preschool. However, they choose to place the children in an open preschool solely for adopted children because of the possibility of sharing similar experiences as parents and children as well. Activities at "Drippen" preschool were found mostly to be supportive of the adoptive parents. The interviewed preschool teacher was of the opinion that caring bodies such as Children's Health Centers and other similar institutions needed to develop a better understanding of both adoptive parents and their adopted children concerning developmental processes on their arrival in Sweden. Furthermore, the preschool teacher regarded Preschool "Drippen" as being like any other school except for the fact that children who attend there arrive with the experience of a significant separation, and thus ought be treated as infants regardless of their age on arrival. Because of this, the open preschool for adopted children tends to focus a great deal on establishing emotional connections with the adopted children and working with their language and physical development. Key words: adoption, attachment, identity, discrepancy, solidarity, foreign adoptions.</p>

Diverse sociology theoretical constructs serve as the lens to examine the evolution of two popular symbols of US culture in the last 20 years: yellow ribbons displayed as decoration and awareness ribbons worn as personal accoutrement. This research was motivated by society's weakened state of "collective consciousness," whereby shared beliefs and values have declined and some have completely disappeared, and sought to determine whether symbols will survive in a culture without commitment to the social. Invoking Christopher Lasch's Culture of Narcissism, Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, David Riesman's theory of other-directedness from The Lonely Crowd, and Stjepan Mestrovic's Postemotional Society, this work examined the significance of public displays of ribbons (whether on animate or inanimate objects), theorized why certain diseases and social causes "earned" their awareness ribbons and others did not, and demonstrated that these ribbons have served as multivalent symbols to accommodate our culture in a postmodern world. These symbols have not maintained their unifying function and now serve at the whim of the individual participant or observer. Ultimately, the act of wearing or displaying awareness ribbons and yellow ribbons, like so many other symbols, has been severed from the idea and is a freefloating, simulacrum to be used in whatever mode our postmodern, postemotional society requires.

<p>Abstract</p><p>Mexico City's punk scene has a notorious reputation, based on the supposedly angry, rude, and destructive behavior of its integrants. Certainly, participants in the punk scene value intense affects, aesthetics, and interpersonal exchange, but see them as means to amplify their political consciousness, their attempts to create alternative social networks. In this dissertation thesis, based on an extended period of ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico City's punk scene, I investigate the co-constitution of the aesthetic and political for participants of the punk scene and ask what "the political" might entail for the city's marginalized punk youth. In pursuing a local punk aesthetics that is both righteous and profane, to borrow descriptive terminology from Dick Hebdige, I argue for close formal analysis of musical, artistic, and other social performance. I employ formal analysis to evaluate the flourishing of punk in the context of "el DeFectuoso"--as residents name the hard-scrabble, global South metropolis of Mexico City--decades after punk's initial arrival in Mexico. Deluezian network theory and social movement theory more broadly help me argue for a politically constituted music "scene," created largely through U.S.-Mexico cross-border relations, without fixing its boundaries or stultifying its politics. Additionally, I explore the affective dimensions of punk performance, the role of music in subjectivization, and the importance of the body trained intersubjectively for both listening and performing. It is at the points of convergence of these three approaches that I locate a punk aesthetics as at once a punk ethics, animated by an ideal of "direct action." Within chapters organized through broad themes like networks, violence, labor, and solidarity, I address topics from the harsh, hard-working vocal performances punks employ to the various anarchist currents that shape an always-tenuous, specifically Mexican punk solidarity, constituted through practices like street sing-alongs, the creation of alternative DIY networks of exchange, and fanzine writing and design. Within these routes of investigation, I elucidate the ways in which participants in Mexico City's punk scene use profanity and outrage in the performance of a righteous ethic that informs their struggles to maintain solidarity and make a difference, through an explicitly political social network that is nevertheless grounded in aesthetic experience.</p> / Dissertation

The aim of this study is to widen our knowledge about the basic idea about having an open preschool for adopted children as understood by parents of adopted children and a preschool teacher. Sweden has a large number of international adoptions, in an international comparison among the highest numbers of adoptions per capita. Interviews were carried out with seven adoptive parents and one preschool teacher teaching at a special preschool for adopted children. It was found that adoptive parents had no particular problems with placing their children in an "ordinary" preschool. However, they choose to place the children in an open preschool solely for adopted children because of the possibility of sharing similar experiences as parents and children as well. Activities at "Drippen" preschool were found mostly to be supportive of the adoptive parents. The interviewed preschool teacher was of the opinion that caring bodies such as Children's Health Centers and other similar institutions needed to develop a better understanding of both adoptive parents and their adopted children concerning developmental processes on their arrival in Sweden. Furthermore, the preschool teacher regarded Preschool "Drippen" as being like any other school except for the fact that children who attend there arrive with the experience of a significant separation, and thus ought be treated as infants regardless of their age on arrival. Because of this, the open preschool for adopted children tends to focus a great deal on establishing emotional connections with the adopted children and working with their language and physical development. Key words: adoption, attachment, identity, discrepancy, solidarity, foreign adoptions.

Diverse sociology theoretical constructs serve as the lens to examine the evolution of two popular symbols of US culture in the last 20 years: yellow ribbons displayed as decoration and awareness ribbons worn as personal accoutrement. This research was motivated by society's weakened state of "collective consciousness," whereby shared beliefs and values have declined and some have completely disappeared, and sought to determine whether symbols will survive in a culture without commitment to the social. Invoking Christopher Lasch's Culture of Narcissism, Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, David Riesman's theory of other-directedness from The Lonely Crowd, and Stjepan Mestrovic's Postemotional Society, this work examined the significance of public displays of ribbons (whether on animate or inanimate objects), theorized why certain diseases and social causes "earned" their awareness ribbons and others did not, and demonstrated that these ribbons have served as multivalent symbols to accommodate our culture in a postmodern world. These symbols have not maintained their unifying function and now serve at the whim of the individual participant or observer. Ultimately, the act of wearing or displaying awareness ribbons and yellow ribbons, like so many other symbols, has been severed from the idea and is a freefloating, simulacrum to be used in whatever mode our postmodern, postemotional society requires.

Thesis (LL. M.)--York University, 2000. / "Graduate Programme in Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-242). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ59548.

There is a tendency within intersectional blogging discourse for settlers to ignore the ongoing colonial process occurring on Turtle Island. This pattern is bound up in a settler common sense that understands settler occupancy as inherent and natural. Such an approach to intersectional-type work ignores the manner in which all oppressive actions on Turtle Island are occurring on Indigenous lands. Regardless of a settler’s intersections, their presence on Indigenous lands indicates that they are implicated in an ongoing process of colonization. This thesis identifies and examines how intersectional bloggers are writing about issues pertaining to Indigenous peoples and nations. It is argued that through the exploration of Indigenous feminist writing, intersectional settler blogging has the potential to work towards decolonization and solidarity with Indigenous nations. This thesis draws from the work of Indigenous feminist blogs in order to gain insight on how settlers can begin to decolonize their own work. / Graduate

This thesis examines the emergence of Olympic sport aid policy in the early phase of its establishment in 1961 with the founding of the Commission For International Olympic Aid (CIOA) and the Olympic Solidarity (OS) in the early 1970s. The study aims to explore the global process of cultural flows of Olympism and modern sport, and the international relations involved in constructing, modifying or resisting the Olympic 'message'. A tentative conceptualisation of 'aid donors' (core and semi-periphery) and the 'aid recipients' (peripheral states) is outlined in relation to the global sport interaction between nation states. At the macro level, it is clear that the bi-political order of the Cold War, the decolonisation process, and the development aid projects provided to the newly independent countries in Africa and Asia influenced agents' approaches in forming the sport aid policy and the promotion of Olympic institutions. At the meso level, the IOC relations with UNESCO, IFs, regional games and National Olympic Committees and the emergence of hyper nationalism, commercialism and professionalism impinge on the creation of the global sport aid programme that emphasises the hegemony of the Olympic movement. The research subscribes to critical realism as its ontological and epistemological base and the principal method employed to investigate is a form of qualitative content analysis using a protocol drawn from ethnographic content analysis. Inductive and deductive techniques were utilised to analyse 355 official documents and agents' correspondence in English, French and German gathered from Olympic Museum archives and facilitated by the application of QSR NUD*IST software for qualitative data analysis. A socio-economic and political account of the postcolonial era is provided as viewed through 'prism' of modernisation, cultural imperialism, dependency and figuration theories. The thesis provides an approach to the evaluation of the global diffusion of sport and Olympism through the aid programmes revealing complex responses and engagement with global processes, contextualised by (in some ways) homogenous and (in others) heterogeneous nature of the global sport.

Originally presented as the author's thesis--Amsterdam School for Social Science Research. / Title from PDF title screen (viewed July 28, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 168-171).