This masters thesis presents the stories of Doña Eugdocia and Doña Carmen: two parteras empíricas living and working in the area of Estelí, Nicaragua. The stories were constructed from interviews with the parteras empíricas and are influenced by testimonial life history research methods. The stories, complemented by interviews with Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) trainers, locally available training manuals, and interviews with other parteras empíricas function as a counter-narrative to global (TBA) discourse revealing the important but little understood contributions these women make to their respective communities and health care systems. The stories demonstrate important parallels between the parteras empíricas narrowing role in Nicaragua and global TBA discourse regarding their practices. The stories also dispel the notion of the traditional as signifying incapable of change. Instead, considering the parteras empíricas story within a postcolonial framework using Jordans (an anthropologist) conceptualization of authoritative knowledge demonstrates that the parteras empíricas positioning of biomedicine as authoritative is a survival mechanism and not a devaluation of their own epistemological orientations.

This masters thesis presents the stories of Doña Eugdocia and Doña Carmen: two parteras empíricas living and working in the area of Estelí, Nicaragua. The stories were constructed from interviews with the parteras empíricas and are influenced by testimonial life history research methods. The stories, complemented by interviews with Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) trainers, locally available training manuals, and interviews with other parteras empíricas function as a counter-narrative to global (TBA) discourse revealing the important but little understood contributions these women make to their respective communities and health care systems. The stories demonstrate important parallels between the parteras empíricas narrowing role in Nicaragua and global TBA discourse regarding their practices. The stories also dispel the notion of the traditional as signifying incapable of change. Instead, considering the parteras empíricas story within a postcolonial framework using Jordans (an anthropologist) conceptualization of authoritative knowledge demonstrates that the parteras empíricas positioning of biomedicine as authoritative is a survival mechanism and not a devaluation of their own epistemological orientations.

Zweite Studienarbeit Hochschule für Angewandte Psychologie Zürich, 2004.

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / This thesis maps the sixty year history of the Qantas flight attendants’ uniform. It figures the Qantas uniform as a prism through which to explore a history of modern Australian fashion and design, and the social and cultural web that gives life to the image of the Qantas flight attendant, rather than a history of the airline itself. Qantas, with its humble origins in the rural town of Longreach, Queensland, became the national carrier when it combined interests with Britain’s Imperial Airways to form Qantas Empire Airways in 1934. From the time the first female Qantas flight hostess appeared on board in 1948, the aircraft aisle became a 'catwalk for the image-makers'. It is particularly important to the role of the flight hostess, later the flight attendant, that the dress of the cabin crew, although clearly defined as uniforms, also responded to current fashion from the beginning of this history. Although the story of Qantas has been well documented, this thesis will focus on the uncharted area of the evolving design history of flight uniforms from the clinical white dress of the 1940s, through the military designs of the 1950s and the synthetics and stilettos of the 1960s, right through to the corporate designs of the present day. The analysis of such corporate design is a relatively new field. This study uses the flight attendants’ uniform to chart the links between the Australian fashion and textile industry and with militarism, versions of Australian nationalism and cosmopolitanism, the corporate world and the role of international designers in Australian design history. While the method of this thesis is largely archival, meticulously detailing the changing facets of the Qantas uniforms and unfolding those details into an engagement with these historical context, there are other theoretical influences on this study. In particular, it is underpinned by the ‘semiotics of uniformity’ drawn from fashion and design studies and by an equal focus on discourse analysis. The flight hostess’s uniform was always a complex ‘articulation of discourses’ as national image had to be played off against international trends, dominant and emerging gender norms, and the language of professional 'decorum' for people with high levels of responsibility and public exposure. Across each of these registers, the frisson of glamour was also a factor, morphing across this history from images of modernism and internationalism via the quasi-erotics of uniform fetishism into ‘postmodern’ performativity.

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / This thesis maps the sixty year history of the Qantas flight attendants’ uniform. It figures the Qantas uniform as a prism through which to explore a history of modern Australian fashion and design, and the social and cultural web that gives life to the image of the Qantas flight attendant, rather than a history of the airline itself. Qantas, with its humble origins in the rural town of Longreach, Queensland, became the national carrier when it combined interests with Britain’s Imperial Airways to form Qantas Empire Airways in 1934. From the time the first female Qantas flight hostess appeared on board in 1948, the aircraft aisle became a 'catwalk for the image-makers'. It is particularly important to the role of the flight hostess, later the flight attendant, that the dress of the cabin crew, although clearly defined as uniforms, also responded to current fashion from the beginning of this history. Although the story of Qantas has been well documented, this thesis will focus on the uncharted area of the evolving design history of flight uniforms from the clinical white dress of the 1940s, through the military designs of the 1950s and the synthetics and stilettos of the 1960s, right through to the corporate designs of the present day. The analysis of such corporate design is a relatively new field. This study uses the flight attendants’ uniform to chart the links between the Australian fashion and textile industry and with militarism, versions of Australian nationalism and cosmopolitanism, the corporate world and the role of international designers in Australian design history. While the method of this thesis is largely archival, meticulously detailing the changing facets of the Qantas uniforms and unfolding those details into an engagement with these historical context, there are other theoretical influences on this study. In particular, it is underpinned by the ‘semiotics of uniformity’ drawn from fashion and design studies and by an equal focus on discourse analysis. The flight hostess’s uniform was always a complex ‘articulation of discourses’ as national image had to be played off against international trends, dominant and emerging gender norms, and the language of professional 'decorum' for people with high levels of responsibility and public exposure. Across each of these registers, the frisson of glamour was also a factor, morphing across this history from images of modernism and internationalism via the quasi-erotics of uniform fetishism into ‘postmodern’ performativity.

The purposes of this study are to explore flight attendants¡¦: (1) the effect of personal characteristic to emotional intelligence, service attitude and withdrawal behaviors; (2) the relationship among emotional intelligence, service attitude, and withdrawal behaviors; (3) the mediating effect between emotional intelligence and withdrawal behaviors through service attitude. For this research, according to the 232 valid returned questionnaires from the native flight attendants of China Airlines, the results of the study are as follows: 1.Partial personal characteristic has a significant influence on emotional intelligence, service attitude and withdrawal behaviors. 2.Emotional intelligence is significantly positive related to service attitude. 3.Emotional intelligence has a significant negative influence on withdrawal behaviors. 4.Service attitude has a significant negative influence on withdrawal behaviors. 5.Service attitude has a partial mediating effect between emotional intelligence and withdrawal behaviors. Finally, the suggestion has been offered to the managerial level of the airlines and others researchers.

If ¡§People¡¨ are the most important source of an enterprise, undoubtedly, the most important asset of hotel industry is its working staffs. The measurement of asset requires a perfect internal management system to operate it normally, in which an important management tool is to apply the system of performance management, which could introduce the operation of performance appraisal correctly and effectively, and to develop HR asset of hotel industry higher and have more competition value. This research starts from the discussion of literature theory and the expert interview of hotel industry, and then uses Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to design questionnaire and makes questionnaire survey. It is expected to extract the important perspectives of performance appraisal of room attendant in hotel from the investigated statistic data, and then develop standards for performance appraisal. Finally is to collect performance appraisal indicator of hotel room attendant and the weight of each indicator, and propose to hotel industry as reference. This research established the framework and weight of performance appraisal indicator of room attendant in hotel industry, and discovered that the priorities of the second hierarchy level indicator of the performance appraisal of room attendant in hotel industry in turns are work result, behavior feature and personal feature; in which the work result almost made up half of the total weight. Therefore, it could be seen that work result is the most important one in the performance appraisal of room attendant in hotel industry; in particular, for the service oriented hotel industry, the work result presented by staffs is the critical factor to evaluate whether the working staffs offer the service quality comply with the requirements of the company or not.

No description available.

Nearly one in three women in the United States undergoes major abdominal surgery in childbirth. According to the World Health Organization, in industrialized countries, the cesarean operation provides no health benefits when rates surpass one in six. In fact, the reverse applies; as a result of cesareans both women and their babies suffer disproportionate morbidity and mortality compared to cases of vaginal births. Furthermore, the decision to perform a cesarean relies mostly on subjective physiological indicators and varies according to the sociodemographic characteristics of the birthing woman. By regressing multiple clinical and sociodemographic factors against the method of birth, this research determines the risk factors of undergoing surgery in childbirth in the U.S. Results reveal medicalized childbirth to be a capricious system where sociodemographic factors determine a woman’s chance of major abdominal surgery.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1964 B16 / Master of Science