The Digital Family Oral History Pilot (DFOHP) data were collected and catalogued on a private website blog for family members to learn about their grandfather (ALP) who died without telling his own story. This study examined the outcomes and perceptions of the family members who were engaged with the pilot. A self-selected sample of 17 family members were interviewed and their reflections recorded. The reflections held their perceptions of adult learning as they responded to three research questions. “How did the family change when constructing an oral history about themselves?” “How did the family members perceive themselves as part of a family community through this oral history process?” and “What is the impact on the family relationships?” The reflections were coded and clustered in color assigned categories that revealed the themes. Findings indicated the family changed in positive ways through knowledge they gained, the new connection via the Internet, through affirmation of each other and the desire that future generations will use this resource. The family perceived themselves in varied positions within their social structure. The daughter placed herself in the epicenter due to her knowledge of her father (ALP). Family members, who perceived themselves as outliers, identified new knowledge of ALP that will help them move closer to the center in the future. The final research question on the impact on family relations elicited responses such as mended brother/sister stresses and enthusiasm that many of the family participated in the storytelling. The few negative reflections expressed sadness that ALP was not here to see what the family constructed and concern that individual stories did not encroach on the available space. The combined stories and reflections shared enough oral history that ALP was revealed as a person worth knowing to those who did not know his oral history previously. Finally, with responses such as “learned”, “learning” and “I now know” received from the sample, an environment of non-threatening informal education established new ways of knowing through an activity as simple as sharing story. Implicit informal education though storytelling was the catalyst for bonding between the branches of this family’s tree. / Department of Educational Studies

Between 1945 and 1987, as part of its efforts to impose a Chinese identity on native-born Taiwanese and to establish and maintain hegemony, Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) government pursued a unilingual, Mandarin-only policy in education. This thesis studies the changing meaning of “becoming Taiwanese” by examining the school experiences of four generations of Taiyu speakers who went to school during the Mandarin-only era: 1) those who also went to school under the Japanese; 2) those who went to school before 1949 when Taiwan was part of KMT-controlled China; 3) those who went to school during the 1950s at the height of the implementation of KMT rule; and, 4) those who went to school when Mandarin had become the dominant language. Two data types, interviews and public documents, are analyzed using two research methods, focus group interviews as the primary one, and document analysis as the secondary one. This research found that there is no direct relationship between how people negotiated language, hegemony and Taiwanese identity. First, as KMT hegemony became more secure, people’s links to their home language became weaker, so their view of Taiwanese identity as defined by Taiyu changed. Second, as exposure to hegemonic forces deepened over time, people were less able to find cultural spaces that allowed escape from hegemonic influences, and this, along with other life-course factors such as occupation, had an impact on their contestations of language and identity. The study recognizes the role of human agency and highlights the interactive and performative aspects of identity construction. The results reflect the different possibilities of living with hegemony in different eras, and also show that Taiwanese identity is not fixed, nor is there a single, “authentic” Taiwanese identity.

In working with Elder John Killulark, this project aimed at documenting the history of the Amaruq and Kigjugalik families and his perspective of the Land around Akulliqpaaq Qamaniq (Aberdeen Lake) and Qamaniq Tugliqpaaq (Schultz Lake). The study area is on the west side of Hudson Bay, Nunavut, and has been used by the families for many generations. In sharing his thoughts about life prior to moving to the permanent settlement of Baker Lake. He then described the family’s homeland through stories, songs, and legends and by providing a detailed map of the area including more than 290 place names. Our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and ancestors were once closely linked to the Land. The Land is important to Inuit and through this project, we can reflect on how old and new traditions are coming together to provide a bright future for Inuit.

The everyday practices of maternity and beauty are important for the enactment of femininity. This dissertation deals with femininities created in the context of changing ideas about “normality” in Soviet Russia during the mid 1930s-1960s and explores a diversity of norms, discourses and rituals. The main sources are women’s magazines, advice books, and interviews with women living now in three different cities of the Russian Federation – Moscow, Saratov (Volga region) and Ufa (capital of Bashkortostan Republic). The results of the research suggest that some parts of the Soviet discourses on maternity and beauty turn out to be similar to those that were characteristic for other European countries of the same historical period. At the same time the interviews show that the modern practices of medical and welfare institutions, the consumption of clothes as well as advice about appearance and childcare were situated in the context of shortages of goods, women’s work outside of home, rhetorics of the “naturalness” of maternity for every woman as well as that of a woman’s particular need to care about looking nice. Together with the home reproduction of many rural/patriarchal rituals of maternity and beauty it led to a contradictory everyday performance of femininity. Fluctuating categories of social status, ethnical belonging, geographical location and generation also contributed to a diversity of femininity constructions. Common sense normativities concerning practices of becoming a mother, caring for a baby and making oneself beautiful suggest that Soviet discourses on maternity and beauty were only partly accepted and reproduced by women. They were also partly rejected and subverted in everyday practices. The analysis of maternity and beauty practices shows that performative femininities were utterly complex. / <p>Boken innehåller en sammanfattning på ryska.</p>

This thesis sets out to examine how feminist struggle can be negotiated, defined and motivated. By using Oral history as a theoretical and methodological framework, three persons narrative are being constructed, explored and discussed throughout the thesis. All the interviewees define themselves as women and feminists and have all practised music in different separatist rock and pop-groups from 1970 to present. Themes as music as political action, and separatism for persons who define themselves as women are discussed. The tree informants agree about some feministic goals such as equality and the right to be able to play and perform music regardless of gender identity, although the means to reach these goals are formulated differently.

This thesis argues for a more expansive historiography rooted in Indigenous peoples’ oral, social and land-based modes of sharing knowledge. Such an approach may help to decolonize the practices and narratives of history in British Columbia, which have too often excluded or undermined Indigenous peoples' perspectives. Over the past several centuries, Indigenous knowledge-keepers have used their languages to maintain their oral traditions and other modes of sharing, despite colonial policies in Canada aimed at destroying them. This thesis gives careful consideration to ethical approaches to cross-cultural engagement, including researcher’s position in discourse and colonial paradigms, as well as modes of listening that emphasize attitudes of respect, flexibility, responsibility and trust-building. I travelled to Syilx (Okanagan) territory in south central British Columbia to interview five knowledgeable Upper Nicola band members about their knowledge practices. Their views, combined with those of others (from Nlaka’pamux, to Coast Salish, to Maliseet peoples and more) pointed to the importance of a vibrant Indigenous historiography at the local community level. Interviewees discussed the ways speaker/listener relationships, as well as timing and life experience, shape knowledge passed on. They also explained the ways Indigenous knowledge practices are linked to particular territories, as knowledge may help to sustain or may be sustained by particular places. Lastly, all touched on how colonial policies have impacted their knowledge practices. This thesis proposes some decolonizing approaches for engaging with Indigenous knowledge and knowledge practices. By accounting for Indigenous knowledge 'institutions' that have long existed outside of colonial frameworks, we can move one step closer to decolonization. / Graduate

By 1970, Singapore’s urban landscape was dominated by high-rise blocks of planned public housing built by the People’s Action Party government, signifying the establishment of a high modernist nation-state. A decade earlier, the margins of the City had been dominated by kampongs, home to semi-autonomous communities of low-income Chinese families which freely built, and rebuilt, unauthorised wooden houses. This change was not merely one of housing but belied a more fundamental realignment of state-society relations in the 1960s. Relocated in Housing and Development Board flats, urban kampong families were progressively integrated into the social fabric of the emergent nation-state. This study examines the pivotal role of an event, the great Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire of 1961, in bringing about this transformation. The redevelopment of the fire site in the aftermath of the calamity brought to completion the British colonial regime’s ‘emergency’ programmes of resettling urban kampong dwellers in planned accommodation, in particular, of building emergency public housing on the sites of major fires in the 1950s. The PAP’s far greater political resolve, and the timing of and state of emergency occasioned by the scale of the 1961 disaster, enabled the government to rehouse the Bukit Ho Swee fire victims in emergency housing in record time. This in turn provided the HDB with a strategic platform for clearing other kampongs and for transforming their residents into model citizens of the nation-state. The 1961 fire’s symbolic usefulness extended into the 1980s and beyond, in sanctioning the PAP’s new housing redevelopment schemes. The official account of the inferno has also become politically useful for the government of today for disciplining a new generation of Singaporeans against taking the nation’s progress for granted. Against these exalted claims of the fire’s role in the Singapore Story, this study also examines the degree of actual change and continuity in the social and economic lives of the people of Bukit Ho Swee after the inferno. In some crucial ways, the residents continued to occupy a marginal place in society while pondering, too, over the unresolved question of the cause of the fire. These continuities of everyday life reflect the ambivalence with which the citizenry regarded the high modernist state in contemporary Singapore.

This study investigates the development of services and treatment modalities for the mentally ill of Western Australia from a nursing perspective. The thesis moves from the influences of Europe to focus on the emergence of services for the mentally ill in Western Australia. In particular the process of change that has occurred in the treatment of Western Australia’s mentally ill from colonisation to the end of the 1980s is considered. The study has a central focus on nursing care, and how nursing has adapted to changes in treatment modalities for mental illness as well as emerging government policy, fiscal restraint and community beliefs concerning mental illness. Through exploration of the role and care provided by mental health nurses and a description of the environment where this care was administered, an insight into how the mentally ill were perceived and treated is gained.

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2007. / S. 318-337: Bibliografi.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-194). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.