No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (PH. D.)--Columbia University, 1941. / Vita. Bibliography: p. [183]-227.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to develop a Navajo Intercultural Sensitizer. It is an attempt to sensitize non-Navajo educational personnel who have come to work in the Navajo Nation to the attributional system of the Navajo culture. The assimilationist, culturally destructive educational policies of the past have been an objective failure. This effort attempts to build on the cultural strengths of Navajo people by promoting the acknowledgement, respect, and understanding of cultural differences. The method used is based on the identification of critical incidents that produce misunderstanding, confusion, or bad feelings between Anglo and Navajo people. The construction of the Navajo Intercultural Sensitizer involves four phases: episode generation, episode selection and construction, attribution elicitation, and attribution selection. Critical incidents (87) were gathered from Navajo students, teachers, and teachers' aides at two Reservation sites. Fifty-six of the incidents were selected by an eight person bilingual and bicultural panel of Navajos who were community and educational leaders. Attributions were elicited in response to the incidents and questions posed. An Anglo sample was drawn from students who were entering the fields of education, educational psychology, counseling, and clinical psychology. Attributions were elicited from them upon presentation of each episode and associated questions concerning the thoughts, feelings, or behavior of the Navajo participant in the incident. An empirical test, consisting of 56 incidents and the question associated with each episode, was administered to a sample of Navajos (n = 70) from two Reservation sites and the Anglo group (n = 56). Each question was followed by four choices. Forty-six of the incidents yielded significant (p < .05) differences in the attributions chosen by the two cultural groups in a chi-square test of significance. These incidents, plus two more, were used in the development of the Navajo Intercultural Sensitizer. The ICS is in a programmed instructional format. The learner is presented with the incident, the question and four plausible attributions. The task of the learner is to learn how the Navajos tended to attribute meaning to the incident.

This study documents consensus and variation in the interpretation of symbolism in Navajo sandpaintings of the heavens. Navajo sandpaintings are sacred designs created to attract supernaturals and to create a ritual reality in which the patient and supernaturals interact for the purpose of curing and blessing. Precise rules of tradition determine the form of all images. Yet even ritual forms are created by individuals whose unique experiences pattern their interpretation of forms. Thus, ritual images index a system of cultural knowledge which possesses the interpretive variability and consensus of belief characteristic of any system of cultural knowledge. This study focuses on celestial constellations because they are a universally perceivable domain which therefore facilitates cross-cultural and intracultural comparison. This study identifies those constellations which are salient for the Navajo and documents their visual depiction in sandpaintings. By examining a corpus of sandpaintings defined by subject matter--sandpaintings with constellations--across ceremonials (sandpainting not limited to one chantway), more detailed comparison of form and meaning becomes possible. Thus, such variation can be systematically documented. Several factors are at work to produce this variation: the nature of the oral transmission process, infrequent performance of sandpaintings which contain constellations, and the relatively monotonous nature of constellation images in comparison to other more distinctive features in the sandpaintings. Interpretive variability in meaning is related to chantway specialization: different chanters provide different interpretations of the same constellation depending upon their ceremonial specialization. A fundamental internal consistency exists in the use of the same cognitive principles applied by chanters to identify and order the constellations and in the way they project key symbols from their chant specializations onto the constellations. Because constellations do not play a dominant role in chantway stories (which form the basis for sandpaintings)--relative to other supernaturals--variation in their depiction and interpretation is not disruptive of the ceremonial-symbolic system.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis. 1979. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 137-142. / by Rodger J. Boyd. / M.C.P.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Saarbrücken, 2001.