<p> This study aimed to answer the following question: What is the transformative learning process, if any, undergone by soldiers who apply for status as a conscientious objector? Answers to this question were sought through a comparative case study that involved four soldiers who while serving in the military during the Iraq War applied for status as conscientious objectors. Semi-structured interviews, documents submitted by soldiers involved in the study while in the military, archival data, and autobiographical material, both written and documented through audio-visual media, were used as data sources to inform each of these cases. </p><p> The case study methodology was selected for its exploratory capacity, as it can provide rich insight into the attitudes, beliefs and worldviews of the study&rsquo;s participants by triangulating multiple sources of data. The researcher used semi-structured interviews to elicit openness of response by the participants, allowing for a process of discovery. Data analysis involved extraction of themes and statements that represented each individual&rsquo;s thought process and experiences that contributed to his decision to apply for status as a conscientious objector. The themes and statements elicited from the study&rsquo;s subjects were then evaluated from a transformative learning theory framework as developed by Mezirow (1991) to identify the degree to which the individuals underwent a transformative learning process. </p><p> Findings of this study indicated themes extracted from narratives of the four participants that could be categorized within Mezirow&rsquo;s 10 phases of the transformative learning process. A disorienting dilemma was present within all participants&rsquo; interviews and rational discourse was the theme least reflected within the narratives. Each of the participants engaged in reflective thinking in making his decision to apply for status as a conscientious objector and then took action in submitting his application. Of interest is that each entered a period of participation in activism, which over time subsided. However, despite departure from participation in activism a change in worldview related to conflict resolution remained. Participants&rsquo; enlistments stemmed from a combination of factors including lack of employment opportunities prior to joining, family tradition, desire for structure, the desire to help others, family dynamics and a sense of patriotic duty and security within communities. </p><p> This exploratory research provided a starting point for potential future research within peace studies. Follow up inquiry may include further qualitative research into the experiences of soldiers who join the anti-war movement after completion of their term of enlistment.</p><p>

Abstract not available.

This thesis is an exploratory examination of Jewish identity among recent Jewish immigrants from France in Montreal Quebec. It examines the relationship and the role that Jewish identity has played in the immigration of these Jews from France to Montreal and their integration. It also examines other factors, which may have led these Jews to immigrate to Montreal. In order to investigate and analyze their Jewish identity, various theories of identity and other components of "Jewishness 1" are presented in this analysis. It was hypothesized that Jewish identity was one of the factors that led these Jews to leave France. In the analysis of the interviews with these participants, it was considered that not only had their Jewish identity or "Jewishness" led them to immigrate, but also that threats to their "Jewishness" and loved ones were among the main reasons why they immigrated from France to Montreal. All the participants' Jewish identities had also strengthened as a result of the immigration process: they now considered themselves to be "even more Jewish" than before their immigration. This analysis allowed me to conclude that Jewish identity did indeed play a role in the immigration of these Jewish immigrants from France, and that, as a result of their immigration, this identity was reinforced and strengthened within the Montreal Jewish community. I decided to devote my life to telling the story of the Jews because I felt that having survived. I owe something to the dead and anyone who does not remember betrays them again. (Elie Wiesel, 1980). I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people have such an obsession with memory. (Elie Wiesel, 1980) 1"Jewishness" refers to specific qualities or characteristics of being Jewish.

Coming Into Clover traces the evolution of cinematic representations of Ireland and the Irish in early American cinema. From the birth of the medium in 1895 until the full emergence of the so-called classical cinema in 1917, these images underwent a fascinating evolution with the crude "stage Irish" stereotypes of Paddy and Bridget steadily giving way to a more positive and diverse set of representations beginning in the early- to mid-teens. The reasons for this transformation are many, but can be traced to two seemingly separate yet inter-dependent factors. Firstly, the social and economic forces that gave rise to the classical mode of production demanded an overall gentrification of the form and content of American cinema. Secondly, an increasingly powerful and influential class of Irish-Americans took an active role in transforming the nativist perceptions that for so long had worked to ostracize them from mainstream society. The result was the emergence of set of visual and narrative tropes that would define Hollywood's representation of the Irish for next three decades.

No description available.

This thesis utilises a sample of major documentary films on the Bushmen of Southern Africa as primary sources in investigating change over time in the interpretation and visualisation of Bushmen peoples over seventy-five years from 1925 to 2000. The primary sources of this thesis are seven documentary films on the subject of Bushmen people in southern Africa. These films are as follows The Bushmen (1925), made by the Denver African Expedition to southern Africa; the BBC film Lost World of Kalahari (1956) by Laurens van der Post; The Hunters (1958) by John Marshall; the 1974 National Geographic Society film Bushmen of the Kalahari; John Marshall's 1980 film N!ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman; and the South African films People of the Great Sandface (1984) by Paul John Myburgh and The Great Dance (2000) by Craig and Damon Foster. All of these films reflect, to varying degrees, a complex interplay between generic images of Bushmen as pristine primitives and the visible evidence of many Bushmen peoples rapid decline into poverty in Southern Africa, a process which had been ongoing throughout the twentieth century. The aim of the thesis has been to explore the utilisation of film as a primary source for historical research, but focussing specifically on a subject related to the southern African historical context. The films under analysis have been critically appraised as evidence of the values and attitudes of the people and period that have produced them, and for evidence about the Bushmen at the time of filming. Furthermore, each film has been considered as a film in history, for how it influences academic or popular discourses on the Bushmen, and finally as filmic 'historiography' that communicates historical knowledge. This thesis, then, utilises a knowledge and understanding of film language, as well as the history and development of documentary film, to assess and consider the way in which knowledge is communicated through the medium of film. This study has attempted to investigate the popular and academic indictment of documentary film as progenitor and/ or reinforcing agent of crude, reified mythologies about Bushmen culture in southern Africa. It is shown here that the way major documentary films have interpreted and positioned Bushmen people reveals the degree to which documentary films are acute reflections of their historical contexts, particularly in relation to the complicated webs of discourse that define popular and academic responses to particular subjects, such as 'Bushmen', at particular historical moments. Critical, visually literate analysis of documentaries can reveal the patterns of these discourses, which in turn reflect layers of ideology that change over time. A secondary finding of this thesis has been that documentary film might constitute a source of oral history for historians, when the subjects of a documentary film express ideas and attitudes that reflect self-identity. It is proposed that the approach to analysis of documentary film that has been utilised throughout this study is a means of 'extracting' the oral testimony from its ideological positioning within the world of the film. The historian might evaluate the usefulness of a subject's oral testimony in relation to the ideological orientation of the film as a whole, to decide whether it is worthwhile being considered as das Ding an sich or should be seen purely as a reflection of values and attitudes of the filmmaker, or something in between. It is shown in this thesis that documentary film constitutes an important archive of oral testimony for historians who are properly versed in reading film language.

On 10 January 2014, the New York Times placed Cape Town at the top of its list of the "52 places to go in 2014". The hopeful rhetoric of the city as ultimate holiday destination, African creative metropolis, prime global-events location and city of freedom indicates powerful cultural discourses at work. Looking at how Cape Town is simultaneously reinvented and haunted, this thesis poses a set of questions regarding the discourses associated with the reinvention of the city, on the one hand, and the city's unresolved pasts, on the other. Situated at the convergence of two fields, Urban Studies and Heritage Studies, it sets out to investigate the workings of heritage and urban-design discourses in the city of Cape Town over the period of 2002 to 2014. It describes the unfolding of these discourses, and discusses the organisational process of both the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the 2014 World Design Capital in relation to the exhumation of human remains at District One and the restitution of land at District Six. Using as its methodology a combination of embedded ethnographic research, qualitative indepth interviews, desktop and archival research, and a form of embodied research, the thesis points to a historical hinge upon which these discourses shift. Through discourse analysis, it examines what this discursive shift entails, and how it takes place. It points to "moments of poignancy" in the construction of Cape Town's recent urban transformation. As such, this study offers a series of insights into the links between colonial modernity, on the one hand, and the origins of contemporary heritage and urban-design discourses in Cape Town, on the other. It examines the function of official discourse concerning the design of the city, as well as the sudden eruptions of public dissent that disturb this official discourse. The central argument of this thesis is that, through an in-depth understanding of the shifts, transformations and internal workings of the discourses of heritage and urban design, a critique can be made of the way contemporary Cape Town has been repositioned in relation to the city's past, present and future.

This study explores the nature of Jewish identity and identification in contemporary American society. It is anchored theoretically in an analysis of alternative models of the nature of ethnic relations. Traditional models, including the theory of the melting pot, cultural pluralism, and the dominant perspective, assimilation, are discussed in Chapter I and found to be inadequate for the depiction and explanation of the Jewish experience. An alternative model, called ethnogenesis, is developed, which emphasizes changes in group life and the creation of new definitions of what it means to be an ethnic group member as well as the partial maintenance of traditional group characteristics and behavior patterns. Chapter II explores the American Jewish experience in some detail, paying particular attention to the religious and ethnic duality of this group's attitudes and behavior. To test the applicability of the ethnogenesis model, a research strategy was devised which utilized a new survey as well as an existing, larger-scale survey of Jewish attitudes and behavior. The former survey sampled the beliefs and practices of Jews raised and confirmed in a Reform Jewish congregation in Erie, Pennsylvania. Members of the sample were adults aged thirty-one to forty-one; as many of those who were confirmed (at age fifteen) in this congregation from 1952 to 1962 were contacted and surveyed by means of a mailed questionnaire. A reform congregation was chosen in order to maximize the likelihood of assimilation and thus provide a severe test of the ethnogenesis model. To supplement data from this small sample, data from the 1970-71 National Jewish Population Survey, sponsored by the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, were also employed, and findings from the Erie survey were compared with findings from a comparable age group in the National survey. Chapters IV and V, the data analysis chapters, examine in detail the shape of contemporary Jewish ethnicity. Chapter V focuses on Jewish identity, which refers to the subjective or attitudinal dimension of being Jewish--the meaning of being Jewish to the individual Jew. Chapter V focuses on identification, which refers to the behavioral dimension--what people do in their lives to announce to themselves and to others the fact of their Jewishness. Both chapters examine these issues from the standpoint of both the religious and the ethnic component of Jewishness. Chapter VI attempts to bring together the detailed analyses of the preceding chapters and to examine the case for the ethnogenesis model. It concludes that ethnogenesis is a superior way of depicting and explaining patterns of contemporary Jewish life, and is probably a superior general model for the study of ethnic relations. Data from the Erie and national surveys indicate that new cultural patterns have emerged in this society that define Jewish identity and identification, and that, accordingly, an accurate portrayal of Jewish life cannot be made simply by examining the extent to which traditional group patterns of belief and behavior have persisted. While the shape of Jewish life has clearly changed, with many traditional beliefs and practices abandoned, Jews continue to identify as Jews, their Jewishness continues to have subjective importance to them, and they continue to act in ways that identify them to others as members of a distinct group. Despite the ease and potential for assimilation, Jews persist as a group, losing some ground to attribution and lower birth rates, but nevertheless preserving linked patterns of belief and action.

This study explores the varied ways sexual minority organisations in Kenya negotiate their choices, decisions and actions when determining how, when, and why to be publicly visible or retreat from visibility. This they have to do in the context of the threats of retribution on the part of Kenyan state leaders to their efforts to protect sexual minority rights. Sexual minority organising carries the risk of verbal abuse and the threat of arrest and other retribution. In spite of this, sexual minorities have organised themselves into publicly visible social movement organisations over the last ten years. In addition to the hostility of the Kenyan state, these organisations operate within the context of the uneven situation with regard to the constraints or otherwise of organising as sexual minorities between the Global South and North. The situation is further complicated by the role of donors, who bring their own experiences and agendas from the Global North, not always appropriately, into African contexts. Amid such varied responses to sexual minority organising, how, when, and why do Kenyan social movement organizations become publicly visible or retreat from visibility? To recognise the various forces that influence (in)visibility choices that sexual minority organisations have to negotiate, I used sociologist James M. Jasper's (2006) concept of "strategic dilemma". Sexual minority social movement organisations field strategic dilemmas when they strategise around whether and how to become visible, modify their public profile, or forgo political opportunities. To understand the micro-political dynamics of how sexual minority social movement organisations negotiated such strategic dilemmas of visibility and invisibility, I analysed 200 newspaper articles and sexual minority organisational documents and conducted 12 in-depth interviews with staff, members and leaders of sexual minority social movement organisations. Ultimately the findings of this thesis centre on the fluidity of visibility and invisibility as was experienced by Kenyan sexual minority organisations. (ln)visibility was experienced in diverse ways as a process that included a series of steps that do not have absolute values nor are they necessarily coherent in different time and space. My findings advance social movement theorizing by demonstrating the importance of studying social movements in the global South. In addition, my findings contribute to postcolonial feminist and queer theorizing by showing how marginalised sexual and gender minorities in Kenya struggled strategically to assert their democratic inclusion in the state.

Nigerians are an integral part of the nursing profession, yet there is no literature on their common health risks, such as homesickness, isolation and suicide ideation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between lack of acculturation, social support, and self-esteem and mental health among Nigerian nursing students. Berry's model of acculturation was used which identifies individuals perception of self in relation to their ethnic culture and the host culture. A sample of 76 Nigerian nursing students enrolled in Baccalaureate nursing programs from 3 universities in the District of Columbia and Maryland participated in the study. Data were obtained using an online survey of 69 items assessing their acculturation, social support, self-esteem and their mental health. A descriptive cross sectional design was used. Analysis of the data included descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, multiple regression, and ANOVA. The final regression model revealed that acculturation, companionship construct of social support and self-esteem are predictors of mental health status as shown by the adjusted R squared (R2 = 0.638). Recommendations are for universities to commit to increasing acculturation, social support, and self-esteem among foreign students in an effort to decrease isolation and improve their mental health. It is also recommended that future studies should be conducted on social isolation of subcultures to improve acculturation and reduce incidence of low self-esteem among foreign students within the American society. The strategies would create positive social change for healthcare organizations and nurse educators, resulting in an increase of ethnic diverse nurses and reducing the shortage of nurses in the USA.