Within Australia, research on women and alcohol has been predominantly focussed on either large scale surveys of women’s consumption or on alcohol problems studies within treatment populations. Such research mainly draws upon the biomedical understandings of the body and the disease model of alcoholism. In contrast, this study examines the meanings and practices of alcohol use within the social contexts of women’s everyday lives. Alcohol is viewed as a part of life rather than as an excess or problem.

In current discussions about contemporary forms of spirituality, consideration is given to the question, ‘what is spirituality?’ and to exploring the range of associated beliefs and practices. Common to most discussions is the acknowledgement that the term spirituality is ambiguous and does not represent any one finite quality or thing, but rather, is a wide and somewhat identifiable set of characteristics. Some commentators suggest that contemporary spirituality, characterised by its separation from institutional forms of religion, and represented by the hallmark expression “I am spiritual, but not religious”, is an increasing phenomenon in Australian society. In view of this, there are several debates about the merits of a spirituality without explicit links to religion (in particular Christian traditions) and whether a personal spirituality can hold any real depth or purpose, or whether it just perpetuates a superficial, narcissistic focus of the self. This kind of critique pays little attention as to how spirituality, and the associated beliefs and practices, are developed and applied in an everyday sense, and how this impacts on the lives of those who subscribe to their own sense of spirituality. In this thesis, I shift the focus from analysing the merits of a personalised spirituality to exploring in depth some of the lay understandings and purposes underlying contemporary forms of spiritual practice. The primary concern of my thesis is to describe this phenomena of spiritual life as experienced by eleven younger Australian women aged 18-38 years inclusive, who considered themselves ‘spiritual’ women, yet do not necessarily identify with a particular religious denomination. At its core, and as a phenomenological study, the thesis undertakes a theoretical exploration of consciousness and the apprehension and formation of belief, meaning, and identity. Held central, and alongside the phenomenological methodology, is the feminist notion that every woman is the centre of her own experience, that any interpretations and understandings of women’s spirituality, must start with the personal. The empirical stages of research therefore focus on an exploration of the women’s personal understandings, experiences, interpretations and translations of spirituality to uncover the location and application of spirituality in everyday life. A primary factor explored throughout the thesis is the intersection between emotional experiences, meaning and purpose, and notions of spirituality. It is my assertion that grief, crisis and trauma, and the more general emotional experiences arising from everyday life, can be a driving force to embark on an exploration of the spiritual; inform personal constructions of spirituality; and provide a basis for the articulation of that spirituality, with a central purpose of alleviating emotional pain. Thus, my main thesis contention is this ‘new’ form of spirituality, as experienced and practiced outside of religious institutions, was expressed by the women in this research as a conscious and pragmatic resource applied, and developed in relation to, the various events and experiences of everyday life, and in relation to the ongoing process of developing and locating a sense of self and identity.

Maîtrise (M.A.)--Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, 2002. / Document électronique également accessible en format PDF. CaQCU

No description available.

No description available.

Batticaloa district on the Eastern coast of Sri Lanka has been one of the most disrupted and devastated areas of the island since civil war began in the early 1980s. Ethnically and culturally diverse, the Eastern province has been under the control of different military actors, the Sri Lankan army, the Indian Peace-Keeping Forces, and the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), however, none maintained full control of the Eastern areas until May 2009 when the Sri Lankan Army successfully defeated the LTTE. Exploring the lives of Tamil communities in Batticaloa, this thesis examines the ways in which people make sense of an ‘everyday life’ shaped by conflict. Following the idiosyncratic journey of the researcher through the uncertain environment of escalating conflict and the aftermath of the tsunami, it builds up a larger picture of life, moving between accounts of everyday violence and suffering and more sustained dwelling on the particular people who are actively making it possible to endure by investing in a more humane future. In areas such as Batticaloa, where violence frames the past, present and foreseeable future, resistance in some shape or form has become a way of life. As Foucault (1976, 2003) maintains, violence which is embedded in social and material structures can create an environment where power and control saturate the routines of the ordinary, making its existence appear ‘normal’. However, from this way of life, what may emerge beyond the more obvious signs of violence, is the fact that people do keep pushing forward. Integral to this is the importance of risk, hope, and trust, which, woven through the interactions of daily activity, mark out what is possible and what is not. The chapters in this thesis, explore individuals who, in the spaces between accepted understandings of ordinary and extraordinary, work around the various controls and constraints to forge habitable spaces in which relations of trust and support can be strengthened and the future can be imagined. Starting with a focus on the relationship between personal narrative and history, I trace the experiences of a woman living through poverty, displacement, and loss. From this I suggest that it is the paradoxical existence of violence, risk, fear, friendship, and trust as worked through the endurance of daily interactions that is integral to understanding the texture of everyday life. Therefore, I argue that what can on the one hand look like a hopeless and negative picture of militancy and violence, can also, contain within it, fragments of hope and survival, captured for example, in the work of local people to reclaim space. I also deal with the complexities of the research experience in a violent environment and look at the strategies that people employ to negotiate and minimize risk in contested and militarized spaces. The second part of the thesis examines the meaning of the everyday and the ordinary through the experiences of a widow and group of fishermen, and thus challenges conventional academic writing which relates ‘normalcy’ in violence prone-areas to peace and productivity. Overall, these chapters argue that a capacity for hope, for building trust, safety, and peace, however fragile and tentative, is as much an integral part of a conflict situation as the more obvious capacity for fear and silence.

This thesis explores the ongoing accomplishment of ordinary life with dementia and asks how older people variously negotiate and make sense of the obstacles, dilemmas and opportunities of everyday life as lived. The thesis responds to persistent calls to recognise the heterogeneity of people living with dementia and to challenge predominantly negative cultural stereotypes. It draws together parallel developments in contemporary dementia studies, namely the extension of social citizenship into the realm of the ordinary and fresh critiques of the biomedicalisation of ageing, particularly the rapid expansion of its technologies into the domain of cognitive impairment. In different ways, these developments bring a more overtly political impetus to the research agenda. The research study takes the form of ‘narrative-in-action’ (Alsaker et al, 2009), a mode of Narrative Inquiry that combines Paul Ricoeur’s (1984) early narrative theorising with ethnographic methods. The study expands the theoretical underpinnings of this methodology by engaging more deeply with Ricoeur’s (1992) elaboration of the dynamic relationships between narrative and life, narrative and temporality, and incorporating critical insights from narrative gerontology. The resultant methodology facilitates an understanding of experiences as expressed in practice and through time by embodied, emotional, relational persons. The study explores the everyday life of three couples, one man and one woman (aged 78-85 years) residing at home in a small Scottish town. This entailed meeting regularly with each person or couple over a period of six or seven months and participating in their choice of everyday activities. The length and intensity of involvement required careful deliberation about the creation and ongoing negotiation of uniquely constructed relationships that altered and deepened as the study progressed. Narrative analysis engaged with events, happenings and the various shifting and patterned meanings made within the flow of actions in different settings and over time, and was informed by Ricoeur’s (1984, 1992) notions of mimesis, emplotment and narrative identity. The resultant narratives offer a nuanced understanding of different ways of living with dementia in later life. They illustrate how meanings were made in different situations and over time, depicting diverse implicit or purposeful ways of resisting the dominant cultural narrative of loss and contributing to ordinary social life. These distinctions were manifest in the dynamic, dialogic configuration of identities. Despite these differences, the spectre of testing coloured each narrative, extending its reach into recollections of the past and also influencing the ways in which future possibilities were embraced, discounted or denied. This spectre also impacted upon the larger task of trying to make meaning of life as a whole in the face of ageing and memory loss. The thesis augments current conceptualisations of citizenship-as-practice in dementia studies through the construct of recognition. It also highlights the potential of the narrative-in-action methodology to enrich the notion and study of ‘narrative citizenship’ (Baldwin, 2008); in this study, it facilitates an understanding of later life with dementia that is optimistic but not naïve. Taken together the narratives illuminate the risks of prescribing how people should respond to a diagnosis based on observations of how some individuals adapt successfully. Finally, the thesis concludes that unless we attend to productive as well as repressive forms of power, there may be increasingly testing times ahead for us all.

288f. / Submitted by Oliveira Santos Dilzaná (dilznana@yahoo.com.br) on 2013-10-11T17:57:40Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Erahsto Felício de Sousa.pdf: 10102365 bytes, checksum: 0996452d7156cc6774a40d18be642fb1 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Portela (anapoli@ufba.br) on 2013-10-30T18:41:29Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Erahsto Felício de Sousa.pdf: 10102365 bytes, checksum: 0996452d7156cc6774a40d18be642fb1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-10-30T18:41:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Erahsto Felício de Sousa.pdf: 10102365 bytes, checksum: 0996452d7156cc6774a40d18be642fb1 (MD5) / Esta pesquisa analisa como sujeitos subalternos transformaram a sociedade de Itabuna (sul da Bahia), durante a década de 1950, a partir de resistências às campanhas de elites que os subordinavam. Tratam-se, portanto, de histórias de mendigos, prisioneiros, ladrões, filhos de santo, feirantes, comunistas e etc. que estiveram em constante enfrentamento com forças modernizadoras e capitalistas. O tema geral da pesquisa foi a subordinação que as classes hegemônicas imprimiam à diversos grupos sociais e como estes usavam da própria subordinação para emergir socialmente como agentes políticos. No plano de fundo há ainda analises sobre pobreza, condições de sobrevivência, crescimento populacional, abastecimento local de alimentos, padrão político de elite, racismo, alteridade cultural a partir da desigualdade social e medo dos subalternos. Trata-se, assim, de entender os distintos mecanismos de subordinação e as diversas formas que a subalternidade tomou para sobreviver. A pesquisa se baseou em jornais, processos crimes e cíveis, fotografias, poemas e crônicas, sempre procurando nestes documentos dimensões da vida e ação de sujeitos invisibilizados pela memória local registrada e pela historiografia vigente. This research analyses how the subalterns individuals have changed Itabunas´s society (South of Bahia) during the 50´s through resistance against upper-classes campaign which had turned them subordinates. Therefore, it refers to story of beggars, prisoners, thiefs, Sons of Saints, market sellers, comunists and others that was often facing capitalists modernizers forces. The general topic of this research was the subordination whose the hegemonic classes have executed against different social groups and how these groups took advantages from the own subordination to emerge as politics. There are studies about poverty, conditions of survival, population growth, local supplying of food, elite politic standard, racism, cultural otherness from social inequality and fear of the subordinates on in the background. However, this is about understand the distinct mechanism of subordination of men and the different manners that subordinated men have got for survive. The sources of the research was newspaper, criminal judgement and civilian, photos, poetry and chronicles. We was always looking in these documents for dimensions of life and forgotten fellows by wrote memory and by actual historiography. / Salvador

In recent years, entrepreneurship studies scholars have begun studying entrepreneurship from a process-oriented philosophy and with an interest in the prosaic, everyday practices of entrepreneurs. In keeping with these "new movement" approaches, I have tried to "catch" entrepreneurship as it is happening within the field of private investigations. An in-depth, two-year field study of private investigators engaged in the entwined practices of investigating and entrepreneuring was conducted. Methodologically, I shadowed five private investigators and interviewed an additional 25. Because shadowing is an emergent methodology, an in-depth discussion of conducting and writing shadowing research is provided. As noted in this discussion, it is important that writing remain primarily descriptive yet linked to dominant contemporary discourses. Consequently, an overview of dominant narrative themes in popular and academic discourses about private investigating and entrepreneurship are included. Based on the framework of this methodology, dominant narrative themes, and field notes, various culturally-situated accounts of private investigator practices are offered. The findings of this research project suggest that private investigators use various rhetorical and practical strategies to successfully and simultaneously complete investigative and business-related tasks, such as "planting suspicions," using gender and race to strategically position themselves in relation to others in opportunistic ways, and incorporating contemporary technology into their work routines. Drawing on actor-network-theory, I argue that opportunities are enacted through a series of taken-for-granted and everyday interactions among subjects and objects. This research privileges descriptive accounts over theory-building. However, the descriptive accounts of the practices of subjects and objects suggest pragmatic solutions for private investigators to create and manage entrepreneurial opportunities. For example, I propose that private investigators should collectively engage in practices that further professionalize their field. Such professionalizing activities would include, among other things, engaging in knowledge accumulation through academic and professional research activities and professional association public relations campaigns. Insights are also provided regarding the role of rhetoric and technology in opportunity creation and destruction. Readers interested in organization communication and theory will find many of the descriptions to be empirically rich examples of ethno-methods used by actors in highly institutionalized contexts. Similarly, these scholars may also find the descriptions to validate recent arguments regarding organizing as "hybridized actions" (or action nets) occurring in multiple spaces, places, and times. The examples herein demonstrate the usefulness of shadowing as an approach to understanding organizing practices, especially in fields where actors are always "on the move." Readers interested in private investigating will find many of the examples rich in techniques that will enhance profitability. Finally, readers interested in entrepreneurship studies will undoubtedly find many novel potential research projects that are embedded in the various thick descriptions throughout the document.

Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (GWTW) has long been termed an "epic" of the American South. The implications of that term, however, have not been fully investigated, particularly as they concern generic criteria. How can we assign the generic characteristics of the epic narrative to GWTW? Using theories of the epic as postulated by Hegel, Lukács, Merchant, and Bakhtin, this study examines the ways in which GWTW writes the Southern nation into history, and how the objective portrayal of its epic heroine reflects the emergence of the New Southern nation. More specifically, it looks at how the depiction of Scarlett O'Hara's "everyday" existence reflects the larger New Southern identity and consciousness. The "everyday" or quotidian experience has been defined by such scholars as Henri Lefebvre, Michel deCerteau and Joe Moran as the space in which the life as lived is developed in all its minutia and the manner by which the state acts upon that existence. Using these ideas as a framework, we begin to see how the narrative of Scarlett's day-to-day existence functions as a voice for the New South. Finally, questions of how GWTW enters into the "everyday" of contemporary American culture are explored.