<p>This dissertation focuses on the intellectual and political trajectory of the Taller de Historia Oral Andina (THOA), an autonomous indigenous working group in which I participate, alongside other Aymaras and Quechuas from Bolivia. Grounding itself on the recuperation of ancestral knowledges of the ayllu and its reconstitution, this group has been seeking to decolonize knowledge and therefore society at large.</p><p>I have used an oral history methodology, revaluing the word and knowledge of the forefathers and foremothers. They are the inheritors and experts of the movement of caciques and representatives of communities and ayllus, who in the early twentieth century focused on defending their territorial rights on the basis of old colonial titles against the attacks of the landowning oligarchy. Using this methodology, I have questioned such principles of Western research as subject-object, Cartesian rationalism, the instrumental character of research, social discrimination, and epistemic racism in academia.</p><p>Guided by the Aymara axiom of qhip nayr uñtasis sarnaqapxañani, looking back to walk forth, as a pluriversal way of thinking that points the contemporaries to their immediate past and deep communal memory, out of whose relation critical sense emerges, it was possible to articulate the process of "Reconstitution and Strenghtening of the Ayllu," whose objective is the reconstitution of political and social organizing forms of thought, as well as the "renewal of Bolivia."</p><p>The concept of complementary duality is a salient aspect of Aymara and Quechua ontology, since together with triadic and tetralectic models, these are principles structuring ayllu knowledge, social organization, and politics. These principles are very different from the paradigms of dialectical materialism or the politics of "left" and "right." Despite colonial practices and colonialism, these principles still govern ayllu or communities, as paradigms learnt in the experience of work and needs, through the long observation of the cosmological movement and integration with animal and plant kingdoms, with mountains and vital or energetic fluids making up beings in the environment, all of which are considered as brethren and protecting parents.</p><p>Aymara and Quechua thought are wholistic and integral. Among their most important axes are parity and complementarity. These constitute a kind of vital codes, which in a way similar to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) are found in almost all beings, in their most diverse modality, and therefore are the guarantors for the transmission of values and survival.</p><p>The THOA belongs to the range of lettered indiginous thinkers, such as Felipe Waman Puma de Ayala and Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti, as well as of the work Dioses y hombres de Huarochirí, the couple Katari-Amaru, or Eduardo Leandro Nina Qhispi - creator of the principle of brotherhood, who proposed the "renovation of Bolivia" -, among others who through our actions reivindicate the wisdom of the ayllus, which expresses a different way of doing politics. Bolivia's current President, Evo Morales, would be the starting point of that model, whose goal is the suma jaqaña or "good living".</p> / Dissertation

Nearly every website or software application these days features a feed to subscribe to, a network to join, or a social timeline to track—all of which do their part to influence public opinion, promote products, and bring people closer together. Being a blogger since 2003 exposed me to these user-generated trends, but never did I expect my blog space, or any others, to play such an important role in my emotional well-being; not until Hurricane Katrina hit. Sharing my story as a transplanted New Orleanian watching the disaster unfold from afar in a public forum quickly linked me to other local voices, and soon I discovered a burgeoning “Big Easy” blogosphere. This dissertation thus illustrates how online communications have the ability to evolve into cathartic and socially responsible exchanges during and after times of disaster. Relying on qualitative research methods, I first discuss existing kinds of texts (news reports, comments on news sites, print publications, oral histories, etc.) to offer a picture of how Hurricane Katrina appeared and was treated by various traditional media. I then shift focus to digital spaces, featuring profiles of various New Orleans bloggers that I compiled through a series of interviews and analysis of their perpetual posting of blog entries, photos, videos, and status updates. I conclude their writing is a shared social experience with the Internet offering multiple platforms across which they can resist the debilitating effects of trauma and present their audiences with a deeper, truer understanding of what life is like in post-Katrina New Orleans.

This feminist oral history project located at the intersections of disability, feminist, body politics, and educational theory presents an analysis of three individual student narratives about their experiences with learning disabilities and learning differences (LD/Ds) at the high school and university levels. This thesis introduces students' accounts of their daily lives, pasts, personal views, experiences, and memories about having learning disabilities and learning differences into the existing scholarship on LDs and reveals how students' narrated experiences might shed light on the ways in which education might be reformed to better meet the needs of students like them. In response to these oral histories, I recommend a more distinctively holistic approach to intervention for students with learning disabilities and differences and introduce regime theory as a potential approach to educational reform to improve circumstances for marginalized individuals in the U.S. educational system. Adopting a broader, more universal model would result in more comprehensive and effective training for professionals to prepare them to more quickly and accurately recognize patterns and trends (such as the growing number of LD/D diagnoses over the past decade), and disability in education being reframed, reimagined, and handled as a social issue, a repairable condition in need of attention and resources.

This research has identified elements of the social memory of librarianship from the last half of the twentieth century by collecting and examining thirty-four oral history interviews of librarians at the end of their careers. These professional life stories trace an important arc through the history of library and information science. Many of these librarians began their careers prior to the use of any form of computer technology in libraries. This cohort ushered in a wave of technological innovations that has revolutionized the access to information. These oral history interviews are part of the Capturing Our Stories Oral History Program of Retiring/Retired Librarians sponsored by the American Library Association and the School of Information at the University of Texas. The social memory includes regret and nostalgia for the librarianship practiced at the beginning of their careers, excitement and wonder about how technology has fundamentally changed the profession, and perspectives on the popular stereotype associated with their careers. / text

This dissertation is an analysis of sharing in the history of western Canada and Indigenous-Settler relations from 1800 to 1970. Based on original research conducted with two Indigenous groups – the Stó:lō Nation of British Columbia’s Fraser River Valley and Metis communities of northwest Saskatchewan – it documents the significance of sharing to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations at the turn of the eighteenth century as well as the role it played in mediating cross cultural interactions following sustained contact in the nineteenth century. Using ethnohistorical methods, I argue that sharing has been a defining feature of Native and Newcomer lives and collective identities. In Indigenous communities it insulated family groups from environmental variability while affirming kin-based social networks. Among non-Indigenous people, sharing provided the basis for imagined communities of individuals connected by religion, occupation, and other non-kin characteristics. In situations of cross-cultural interaction, sharing provided an important lens through which Natives and Newcomers viewed themselves and each other. Indigenous people have viewed sharing as the “Indian way,” a defining feature of Indigeneity in western Canada and elsewhere. Non-Indigenous people, on the other hand, have viewed Indigenous peoples’ dependence on welfare and other government transfer payments – recent examples of sharing – as evidence of cultural difference and, often, inferiority. Sharing thus provides a window into Native and Newcomer worldviews and socio-cultural structures as well as relations forged between and among them. This history of sharing illuminates subtle, critically important events and processes in the history of Indigenous-Settler relations and the transformation of Indigenous North America into Canada.

This thesis focuses on the commercialization of Chinese medicine in the post-Mao era, from 1977 to 2014. It looks at its social and environmental impact on local rural areas.

This thesis aims to emancipate female entrepreneurs from the metanarrative of economic growth which has created a false dichotomy of successful male entrepreneur versus an unsuccessful female entrepreneur. This aim is pursued through a multidisciplinary and critical inquiry that destabilises this metanarrative conceptually and empirically. A critical interrogation of economic studies reveals the embeddedness of the metanarrative in neo-classical economic growth theory. Far from being a true reflection of the entrepreneurial experience, the theory has silenced the innovator entrepreneur in economic theory and replaced him/her with an economic rational manager. Concurrently, a re-analysis of Schumpeter’s theorising suggests that his theories do not subordinate female entrepreneurs as claimed by a number of critical theorists. In contrast, his theorising is emancipatory and offers an alternative theoretical framework to the oppressive neo-classical economic growth theory. Oral history methods are used to capture the voices of female entrepreneurs which have largely been excluded from the literature. The oral history narratives challenge the oppressive homogeneity imposed by the metanarrative of economic growth and illustrate the negative influence of the theoretical foundation of neo-classical theory upon the entrepreneurial experience. The study offers theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions to female entrepreneurship studies by presenting a fresh interpretation of Schumpeter’s theorising; including the voices of the female entrepreneurs; and applying research approaches that break away from positivism which dominates entrepreneurial studies. The study has implications for policy makers and practitioners as it generates knowledge that takes account of the current social and economic changes.

The National Curriculum Statement (NCS) for history, in accordance with the pedagogy of Outcomes Based Education (OBE) and Curriculum 2005 (c2005), aims to make history learner-centred, emancipatory and skills-based . The inclusion of oral history in the Further Education and Training (FET) phase speaks to this methodology and aim , along with addressing the need to rewrite South Africa 's history and acknowledge the biases that exist in the written record. This study aimed to determine the perceptions, opinions and experiences in the implementation of oral history in the FET phase in selected schools in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) through the 'voices' of history subject advisors, history teachers and former history learners. To determine such perceptions, opinions and experiences, the methodology of qualitative research was employed. This included convenient sampling, semi-structured interviews and a document study. Data and document analysis followed, using the methods of coding. The research revealed that while the sampled history subject advisors, teachers and former learners view oral history in the FET classroom in a positive light, problems and difficulties are being encountered. The implementers of oral history and of all official curriculum policy documents are the subject advisors and the teachers. The various levels of implementation that take place based on the Department of Education (DoE) and the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education (KZNDOE) policy documents, are being carried out to the best of the implementers' abilities under difficulties that can be associated with a new curriculum, new methodologies, and a new content that has to be delivered in accordance with the NCS and c2005. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

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.

Phthalates are a class of ubiquitous environmental contaminants that cause health problems including reproductive disorders, asthma, and obesity. Advocacy against phthalates has been taking place in the US since the mid-1990s, and eight in-depth interviews were conducted with advocates and scientists in order to construct a history of this advocacy. There have been a variety of campaigns and victories; those around medical devices, children’s products, and personal care products are examined in detail. Phthalate exposure data for a representative sample of the US population indicates that exposure to DEP, DEHP, DnBP, and BBzP went down between 1999 and 2010. As these were the phthalates that had the largest volume of advocacy during the period researched, this decrease suggests that advocacy around specific phthalates is effective in reducing exposure and that more advocacy around phthalates, and potentially other harmful chemicals, could result in further decreased exposure and improved health in the US population. Additional research using more finely graded biomonitoring data would help deepen understanding about correlations between advocacy and phthalate exposure. In reviewing the health effects of phthalates, it was found that a disproportionate amount of the research is on male reproductive health effects, which is partially responsible for the fact that a disproportionate amount of phthalate advocacy is on heath effects relating to men, particularly male babies. Both phthalate science and advocacy sometimes treat women instrumentally, objectifying them or regarding them as incubators. To combat this, scientists could do more research on the health effects of phthalates on women and advocates could take more care not to neglect or instrumentalize women in their efforts to reduce phthalate exposure for all people.