This thesis examines the relationship between worker identity and workplace practices from the perspectives of white and Aboriginal women working in a multinational forest company in the northern prairies. Over the course of three manuscripts I demonstrate the salience of ascribed and constructed identities of women to their experiences and representations of forest employment and corporate discourse. Setting the context for the remainder of the thesis, the first manuscript presents an analysis of employment segregation by gender and Aboriginal identity in Canadas forest sector in 2001 using segregation indices. Results demonstrate that forest employment was vertically segregated by both gender and Aboriginal ancestry in the forest sector in 2001. Men and women of First Nations ancestry were over represented in less-stable and lower paying occupations in woods based forest industries, and both white and First Nations women were over represented in forest services and clerical occupations. To explore womens perceptions of company practices of diversity management and restructuring, I then analysed interviews with women working in forest processing using critical discourse analysis. In my second manuscript, I demonstrated how womens representations of diversity management practices were linked to their social identities in terms of Aboriginal identity and class. Yet, as a whole, these representations prompted a questioning of the meaning of difference within diversity management, and of diversity managements ability to further the interests of marginalised workers. My third manuscript examining representations of restructuring, argues that there is a two way relationship between womens identities as workers and their representations of restructuring. Whether women reproduced or resisted restructuring was linked to their presented work identities and restructuring and practices in turn were helping to shape womens worker subjectivities. Results from this thesis demonstrated that how women represent themselves and workplace practices is related to their different experiences in the specific set of social relations of forestry work in the northern prairies.

Coverage for the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) has been low since the publication of Wakefield’s 1998 study associating MMR with the onset of autism. As a part of a larger project on risk communication, this study examined the medical discourse on parental decision-making for childhood immunizations to gain insight on why risk communication efforts have not been successful at improving uptake. The Public Understanding of Science (PUS) was used as a theoretical lens to guide Critical Discourse Analysis of texts from medical, pediatric, and public health journals, from which the analytic themes of Risk and Trust emerged. MMR uptake was framed mainly in terms of risk, indicating the dominance of the Deficit Model of PUS in the discourse. Future research and risk communication need to expand beyond current notions of risk; the Contextual Model of PUS can help highlight other factors that impact parental decision-making about MMR.

Coverage for the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) has been low since the publication of Wakefield’s 1998 study associating MMR with the onset of autism. As a part of a larger project on risk communication, this study examined the medical discourse on parental decision-making for childhood immunizations to gain insight on why risk communication efforts have not been successful at improving uptake. The Public Understanding of Science (PUS) was used as a theoretical lens to guide Critical Discourse Analysis of texts from medical, pediatric, and public health journals, from which the analytic themes of Risk and Trust emerged. MMR uptake was framed mainly in terms of risk, indicating the dominance of the Deficit Model of PUS in the discourse. Future research and risk communication need to expand beyond current notions of risk; the Contextual Model of PUS can help highlight other factors that impact parental decision-making about MMR.

This study uses discourse analysis to investigate and compare the coverage of America in two Chinese official newspapers, the Chinese language People’s Daily and the English language China Daily in January in 1989, 1999, and 2009. This study compares the two newspapers in four aspects of the texts: topic selection, headline design, writing tactics, and visual components use, to find any differences in reporting tactics according to their different readerships. People’s Daily employed a constant editorial preference for political content and a provocative reporting tactics. Meanwhile, China Daily used a more global editorial approach. Its content and its reports were increasingly consistent with Western journalism criteria: accurate, brief, and clear.

Many Latin American countries have during the past decades experienced an increase in violence (Howard et al 2007:716). The expansion of youth gangs and drug cartels in many countries of the region, and the states policy to fight these groups with a strong fist, has created a situation bearing the characteristics of an un-proclaimed civil war, that has come to affect all social classes (ibid:719). This expansion of the problem of violence, and the notion of insecurity it brings, has resulted in an increase in talk about the matter. As a way of trying to grasp control over a seemingly out of control issue, people automatically try to pin down characteristics of the potential perpetrators. Already socially excluded people and minorities on the bottom of the social hierarchy are the ones that have to suffer the stigmatization of criminality as they are seen as more prone to assort to crime and violence due to their economical desperate and unjust living situations (Caldeira 2000:92). These people that are the most exposed and vulnerable to the effects of economic development become personified with the problems that social exclusion and economic inequality creates, such as crime and violence (Howard et al 2007:716). As these groups of people become criminalized, the question of solving these issues becomes not a question of solving the root causes such as the economic inequalities, but the government’s ability to keep these social groups at bay (Caldeira 2000:90). An increase in violence and crime is therefore not perceived as a result of inequality in income and opportunity, but rather as the result of a weak state (ibid). This aim of this research is to analyze how media discourses in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, contributes to the personification of the residents of the Favelas as violent and criminal. This paper will follow the lines of critical discourse analysis theories, which argue that media discourses justify unequal power relations in society and enforces inequality and the social exclusion of minorities (Van Dijk 1988:25). It will also be argued that it is this stereotypical view of the residents of the Favela as inheritably criminal and violent which lead to dehumanization of them and the justification of the killings of civilians in these neighborhoods (Caldeira 2000:20; Goldstein 2003:205; Perlman 2010:172).

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

Through six months of ethnographic and autoethnographic fieldwork, which included participant observation and ten individual semi-structured interviews, I sought to determine how dominant discourses in dance, especially those pertaining to professionalism, ability, validity, and legitimacy, are circulated in and through training, and how we as dancers responded to these discourses. Following the stand alone thesis format, this thesis is comprised of two publishable papers. The first is an ethnography of one integrated dance company’s members’ experience with negotiating space for alternative forms of dance in contemporary dance. The second is an autoethnographic piece of writing where I show the challenges of resisting dominant discourses of validity and legitimacy in both qualitative research as well as contemporary dance. Together, these papers form a thesis that strengthens our scholarly understanding of the discourses and associated tensions at work in participating in and writing about integrated dance.

No description available.

With theories of creativity and aesthetic learning processes as a basis, this study explores the usage of the concept of creativity in the curriculum for the Swedish compulsory school (Lgr11) and in the various syllabi’s commentaries and the assessment guidelines for the subject of Sloyd produced by the Swedish National Agency for Education. The purpose of the study is, to examine to which extent an education and assessment that is directed towards the development of creativity among pupils in the subject of Sloyd, is underpinned and supported for in these texts, and furthermore how these wordings relate to the various other subjects’ wordings about creativity. Creativity is a concept around which there is no proper consensus. Therefore, a qualitative text analysis, grounded in discourse analysis, was chosen as the method to explore how this concept and phenomena is handled and which meaning and place it is given in the examined texts. The analysis reveals many similarities, but also significant differences, between the usage of the concept of creativity in the analyzed texts and in the research and between the various subjects’ wordings. Creativity is portrayed as being the main benefit from the subject of Sloyd and is primarily connected to an employment discourse. The analysis also shows that the criteria for assessment of creativity in Sloyd differ from what the research provides.

Because water is basic to life, an ethical dimension persists in every decision related to water. By explicitly revealing the ethical ideas underlying water-related decisions, human society's relationship with water, and with natural systems of which water is part, can be contested and shifted or be accepted with conscious intention. Water management over the last century has privileged immediate human needs over those of future generations, other living beings, and ecosystems. In recent decades, improved understanding of water's importance for ecosystem functioning and ecological services for human survival is moving us beyond this growth-driven, supply-focused management paradigm. Environmental ethics challenge this paradigm by extending the ethical sphere to the environment. This research in water ethics considers expanding the conception of whom or what is morally considerable in water policy and management. <br /><br /> First, the research proposes a water ethic to balance among intragenerational equity, intergenerational equity, and equity for the environment. Second, the proposed ethic acts as an assessment tool with which to analyse water policy. <em>Water for Life: Alberta's Strategy for Sustainability</em> is the focal policy document for this analysis. This document is an example of new Canadian policy; it represents the Government of Alberta's current and future approach to water issues; and it implicitly embodies the ethical ideas that guided the document's production. To assess Water for Life's success in achieving the principles of the proposed water ethic, this case study used discourse analysis, key informant interviews, and comparison to a progressive international policy document, <em>Securing Our Water Future Together</em>, the 2004 White Paper of Victoria, Australia. <br /><br /> Key conclusions show that <em>Water for Life</em> is progressive by embracing full public participation, a watershed approach, knowledge-generation initiatives, a new planning model, and water rights security. However, barriers exist that can disrupt the strategy's success, including the first-in-time first-in-right water allocation system, the strategy's lack of detail, inadequate protection of aquatic ecosystems, ambiguity of jurisdiction over water in First Nations communities, and under-developed connections between substantive issues. The thesis also outlines recommendations for Alberta and implications for other jurisdictions. Additionally this research offers guidelines and an assessment tool grounded in broad ethical concepts to water policy development; and it encourages making ethical ideas explicit in assessment and formation of equitable and sustainable water policy.