• Refine Query
  • Source
  • Publication year
  • to
  • Language
  • 17
  • 3
  • 2
  • 2
  • 1
  • 1
  • Tagged with
  • 35
  • 9
  • 8
  • 6
  • 5
  • 5
  • 5
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 3
  • 3
  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Exploring Donkey Welfare and Positionality in Maun, Botswana

Geiger, Martha 16 May 2013 (has links)
Donkeys (Equus assinus) are active agents in human development and wellbeing. They provide an affordable and accessible means of draught power, food, and transport for many Batswana, in particular for smallholder farmers. Yet despite these contributions to people’s livelihoods, donkeys remain marginalized within Batswana ideological, political, economic, and societal structures, as well as within policy-making and planning mechanisms. This research argues in favour of the intrinsic value of donkeys and examines their welfare and position in relation to their material and symbolic roles in shaping human lives in Batswana society. Through a mixed social and animal welfare science methodology, the research explored the ways human use, care for, and value donkeys and how human positioning potentially impacts the donkeys’ welfare. Donkey welfare assessments were performed to measure their physical and emotional welfare to assess if donkey welfare is a function of human positioning in Batswana society. We cannot understand human affairs, wellbeing, and relations without recognizing the ways in which animals are entangled in and affected by social and cultural practices. This research draws on animal geography theory and the idea of positionality to understand how people’s co-habitation with donkeys affects the donkeys’ welfare. This research contributes scholarly insights on animal-human relations, animal welfare studies, and will inform relevant government livestock programming and planning in Botswana. / Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada;Guelph Graduate Studies;Arthur D. Latronell
2

Beyond Feminism: The Discourse of Positionality and Transnationalism in Alice Munro's Short Fiction

Alkhider, Hela Saleh 01 June 2021 (has links) (PDF)
This dissertation offers a new exploration of the relationship between geographic awareness and literary realism in Alice Munro’s depictions of female identity-formation. It demonstrates how Munro, the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, uses the discourse of place and positionality not just as a Canadian regionalist writer, but also as a writer implicitly concerned with the paradigms of intersectionality as advanced in Susan Stanford Friedman’s 1998 book Mappings and in the recent work of feminist geographers. These theories shed light on Munro’s efforts to represent her female protagonists’ individual and communal identities authentically. Following an introduction in which I explain how Munro’s cautious statements about feminism relate to these recent geopolitical theories, my chapters examine groupings of Munro’s stories through concepts associated with locational feminism. Chapter 2 compares Munro to one of her major influences, the American regionalist writer Willa Cather, through the concept of geopolitical space. Chapter 3 applies this concept more closely to Munro’s portrayals of female maturation in Lives of Girls and Women and The Moons of Jupiter, focusing on a thematic tension between belonging and alienation. Munro sees women’s dilemmas of identity as deeply connected to their sense of place and their definitions of their home places and positions. Chapter 4 examines how issues of place and space, especially regarding what Munro calls “home ground,” affect the construction of relational identity in the title story of Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and in several stories from the collection Runaway. Chapter 5 demonstrates how Munro employs the tropes of women’s mobility and travel -- usually seen as tools of empowerment -- to depict their unsettled lives, characterized by instability, insecurity and imbalance. Because these experiences have to do with multiple nodes of difference, Munro’s depictions of mobility as a mixed reality overlap with recent theories of transnational feminism. Chapter 6 deals with the question of narrative agency vis-à-vis locational identity and positionality in her collection, Who Do You Think You Are? In sum, the dissertation argues that Munro’s realistic focus on women’s lives and experiences, and her emphasis on strategic place-awareness rather than the goal of equality, does carry an inspiring message to her readers about the nature of empowerment in today’s world.
3

Crossdressing Cinema: An Analysis of Transgender Representation in Film

Miller, Jeremy Russell 2012 August 1900 (has links)
Transgender representations generally distance the transgender characters from the audience as objects of ridicule, fear, and sympathy. This distancing is accomplished through the use of specific narrative conventions and visual codes. In this dissertation, I analyze representations of transgender individuals in popular film comedies, thrillers, and independent dramas. Through a textual analysis of 24 films, I argue that the narrative conventions and visual codes of the films work to prevent identification or connection between the transgender characters and the audience. The purpose of this distancing is to privilege the heteronormative identities of the characters over their transgender identities. This dissertation is grounded in a cultural studies approach to representation as constitutive and constraining and a positional approach to gender that views gender identity as a position taken in a specific social context. Contributions are made to the fields of communication, film studies, and gender studies through the methodological approach to textual analysis of categories of films over individual case studies and the idea that individuals can be positioned in identities they do not actively claim for themselves. This dissertation also makes a significant contribution to conceptions of the gaze through the development of three transgender gazes that focus on the ways the characters are visually constructed rather than the viewpoints taken by audience members. In the end, transgender representations work to support heteronormativity by constructing the transgender characters in specific ways to prevent audience members from developing deeper connections with them.
4

Institutional Counter-surveillance using a Critical Disability Studies Lens

Svyantek, Martina V. 27 May 2021 (has links)
This study examines policy and procedure documents related to Disability at 3 U.S. institutions of higher education over a 25-year time frame. Policy and procedure documents are the foundation that govern how institutions "handle" Disability, outlining expectations and guidelines for providing services and establishing bureaucratic channels used to determine who has access to those services. This research employs a comparative case study mixed methods approach. The found documents and their online contexts are analyzed according to four qualities: findability, cohesion, consistency, and transparency. A document's findability refers to the ability of a user to locate the original document, and a document's cohesion, consistency, and transparency, refer to respectively where, what, and how these documents persist from their original creation date. As I collected these documents, I constructed comparative matrices to track these qualities within and across three different universities. The initial findability of documents demonstrates two key results: 1) during the overall 1990– 2015 time frame, there was a marked change in the availability of materials in a digital format, and 2) the emergence of a way to describe documents via the phrase "Does Not Exist." These materials definitively did not exist prior to a given time frame, but later versions of such documents included an earlier start date. Cohesion results indicate that the documents most likely to be presented in a single source were broadly usable to a large portion of the university population: the general student body. Consistency results address a major issue with the document search: while these materials were likely to exist, at each of these institutions and time frames (barring the DNE documents), they are very difficult to track down. Transparency across found, single-source documents was ubiquitous; if it could be found, it had searchable text. Beyond the findings of my document collection, I created two major products as a result of this dissertation work: key recommendations for different stakeholder groups and a curated exhibit of VT-specific materials collected for this study. / Doctor of Philosophy / This study examines policy and procedure documents related to Disability at 3 U.S. institutions of higher education over a 25-year time frame. Policy and procedure documents are the foundation that govern how institutions "handle" Disability, outlining expectations and guidelines for providing services and establishing bureaucratic channels used to determine who has access to those services. This research employs a comparative case study mixed methods approach. The found documents and their online contexts are analyzed according to four qualities: findability, cohesion, consistency, and transparency. A document's findability refers to the ability of a user to locate the original document, and a document's cohesion, consistency, and transparency, refer to respectively where, what, and how these documents persist from their original creation date. As I collected these documents, I constructed comparative matrices to track these qualities within and across three different universities. The initial findability of documents demonstrates two key results: 1) during the overall 1990– 2015 time frame, there was a marked change in the availability of materials in a digital format, and 2) the emergence of a way to describe documents via the phrase "Does Not Exist." These materials definitively did not exist prior to a given time frame, but later versions of such documents included an earlier start date. Cohesion results indicate that the documents most likely to be presented in a single source were broadly usable to a large portion of the university population: the general student body. Consistency results address a major issue with the document search: while these materials were likely to exist, at each of these institutions and time frames (barring the DNE documents), they are very difficult to track down. Transparency across found, single-source documents was ubiquitous; if it could be found, it had searchable text. Beyond the findings of the document collection, there are two major products as a result of this dissertation work. First, key recommendations for different stakeholder groups (SEEKERS, WRITERS, and KEEPERS) are outlined; these recommendations are intended for the entire audience as practices that they can incorporate within their own documents. Second, the work undertaken to create a repository using materials from my document collection, utilizing the Qualitative Data Repository (based in Syracuse University) as the host for a curated exhibit of VT-specific materials, is described.
5

IN A POSITION OF POWER: (RE)NAMING SOCIAL IDENTITIES IN THE NAEYC POSITION STATEMENTS (1991-2014)

Green, Shannon 01 August 2022 (has links) (PDF)
This case study is an investigation into the ways a powerful professional education organization, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), historically constructed and promoted pedagogical discourses about social identities, social problems, and social change. The purpose of the study was to critically analyze a dominant early childhood pedagogical discourse that is constituted by public position statements published by the NAEYC between 1991 and 2014. Using a critical, intersectional, and sustainable framework, this study revealed a complex, detailed narrative of the ways the NAEYC position statements constructed images of social identities and social groups in relation to social issues relevant to early childhood education practice and policy, particularly those that the NAEYC identified as eliciting “controversial or critical opinions” for the purposes of “promoting broad-based dialogue on these issues” (naeyc.org). This study worked to reveal the ways that the NAEYC position statements promoted harmful discourses about historically and multiply minoritized social identity groups and supremacist discourses about white and affluent children. This study also emphasized the significance of positionality and reflexivity in educational research about equity, justice, and sustainability for recognizing the potential for both harm and healing throughout the research process. The findings of the study highlight the need for layers of reflexivity at the institutional level, the disruption of deficit narratives in education, and the need for re-mediation of traditional signifiers of quality and professional development in the early childhood profession.
6

(Becoming) Strong Women in Sweden : Japanese Female Immigrants in the Greater Stockholm Area

Kikuchi, Yuka January 2019 (has links)
This thesis investigates how the Japanese women who were born and grew up in Japan experienced their migration to Sweden. Three things are examined. The first regards the Japanese female immigrants’ (re)interpretation and practice of gender. Differences in policies and social systems of Sweden and Japan to pursue a gender-equal society are illustrated through contextualization of social and historical backgrounds of the past few decades and informants’ lived experiences. The second regards their (re)construction and performance of ethnicity. Various meanings and experiences of Japanese cultural space were highlighted in transcultural settings of Swedish society and (re)constructed Japanese ethnicity in Sweden. Having these perspectives as components, thirdly, their multiple, complex and flexible ways of being and sense of belonging(s) are scrutinized by employing translocational positionality framework. This analytical framework permeates all chapters of this thesis and discusses how Japanese female immigrants multiply constructed and flexibly shifted their ways of being and sense of belonging(s) in addition to their positionality in Swedish social stratification depending on situations and contexts they were exposed to. This thesis is an attempt to contribute to burgeoning ethnographic studies on gender and migration by revealing female immigrants’ construction of corrective identities in their contry of settlement. / 本論⽂は、筆者の2018 年3 ⽉から10 ⽉に及ぶスウェーデン王国⾸都ストックホルムとその近郊における⺠族学的調査によって、⽇本⼈⼥性の⽇常⽣活に焦点を当て、移⺠かつ⼥性という彼⼥たちの集団的属性が移住先での暮らしと社会的位置性をどのように形成するのかを⺠族誌的に明らかにすることを主題とするものである。そして最終的に、当該地域における彼⼥たちのジェンダー意識の再形成とその実践の過程、⽇本⼈という⺠族性の現地での再形成とその体現のされ⽅、そして彼⼥たちの状況に応じて多様かつ複合的に形成される集団的属性と帰属意識を明らかにすることを⽬的としている。本論⽂は次の5 章で構成されている。第1 章では研究動機、研究⽬的、理論的背景の考察、調査の概略などについて述べ、第 2 章では調査対象の⼈々の労働⽣活、第 3 章では家庭⽣活を始めとする私⽣活、そして第4 章ではストックホルムでの⽇本⽂化の体験と再現に焦点をあて、個別的テーマに関する⺠族誌的データを検討し、第5 章において本論全体にかかる考察を⾏っている。本論⽂は、近年増加するジェンダーと移住に関する⼈類学的調査に則りつつ、先進国間での移住に焦点を当てた調査である。
7

Classroom Influences on Third Grade African American Learners' Mathematics Identities

Roberts, Oliver Thomas Wade 01 January 2017 (has links)
Students’ mathematics identity has become a more prominent concept in the research literature (Jackson & Wilson, 2012). The experiences of African Americans are still underreported, with African American elementary students receiving the least attention. This dissertation uses a case study method to explore two learners’ experiences. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore African American third grade students’ classroom interactions with mathematics in order to better understand factors that promote positive mathematics identities. This research study explored the mathematics classroom influences on three third grade African American learners’ mathematics identities in a K-8 school in a north central Midwestern city in the United States. The school was classified as 100% free and reduced lunch and served approximately 900 students, with the vast majority of students classified as African American. The three student participants and their teacher were all African American. The student participants wore glasses that video recorded their perspectives. A stationary camera was also used to capture the wider classroom environment. Each student participant completed three interviews (Seidman, 2013). The teacher participant completed one interview. Additionally, the student participants completed a mathematics interest questionnaire. Findings showed the importance of an explicit focus on the Standards for Mathematical Practice, a growth mindset, and positioning for promoting positive mathematics identities. In one case study, Janae’s experiences in lessons about fractions highlight the relevance of the Standards for Mathematical Practice, specifically attending to precision and making sense of and persevering in solving problems. In both the classroom and in interviews, she shows the importance of making sense of problems and persevering in solving them and of attending to precision. In the second manuscript, I explore Jaane and Kayla’s different experiences. Janae was positioned more positively and faces limited resistance in maintaining a positive mathematics identity. Kayla, on the other hand, regularly rejected and renegotiated the positions offered to her as she aimed for success and a positive mathematics identity. Kayla’s growth mindset and negotiation of positions offered to her in the classroom were critical factors in how she maintained a positive mathematics identity.
8

The Illusion of Making America Great Again - The shifting positionality of states within the global hierarchical structure

Novak, Leonard Carl January 2020 (has links)
Since the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States of America, US policy has shifted towards isolation and protectionism, challenging initial patterns of cooperation among the states within the global political order, aiming at improving the American stance in the world. Thus, this paper will analysis whether the ‘Trumpian’ foreign policy approach might indeed be able to enhance the American stance in the international realm, by arguing that the breaking with initial patterns of cooperation provokes resistance with the American leadership, leading to a weakening of the American positionality within the global hierarchical structure and thus, weakening the structural power-capabilities of the US. In order to do so, the author applies a qualitative discourse analysis to the examination of documents, representing the voices of European decision-makers. The author concludes by stating that the American behaviour is eventually challenging the positionality of the US globally, provoking a restructuring of the global political order.
9

Connection, Technology, Positionality: An Inside Look at Women Faculty's Positionality toward "Connection" and "Technology"

Zhai, Wei 01 May 2010 (has links)
Women faculty members have been reported rating their level of knowledge and experience in using technologies lower than male faculty members. A closer examination revealed that women faculty members were likely to use technologies that fit into their pedagogy, met students' learning styles and needs, and facilitated their interactions with colleagues and students. So women faculty's choices of particular technologies can be assumed to reflect their particular instructional beliefs and perspectives, represented as a connected approach to learning and teaching. Gender alone is inadequate to explain women faculty's use of technology. The purpose of this study was to explore women faculty's understanding of teacher-student, student-student, and student learning-life connections and how technology affects these connections. A theoretical framework called positionality is used, which approaches women not solely from their biological or psychological attributes but also from the contexts in which they are situated. The results of the study suggested that women faculty members exhibited a positional understanding of the teacher-student, student-student, and student learning-life connections. A positional consciousness was reflected in their use of strategies to promote these connections. Technology played a positional role in women faculty's effort to create connections. Women faculty's views and practices of "connection" and "technology" are better understood by the contexts in which they are situated rather than by their gender. Women faculty often assume multiple identities expressed from different positions within different contexts, which is reflected by the variations in their relationships with students, their different perceptions of their student relationship with each other, their different ways of promoting connections, and their different views and use of technology. Limitations of the current study, recommendations for future research, and practical implications are discussed.
10

Middletown No More? Globalization and the Declining Positionality of Muncie, Indiana

Malone, Aaron M. 29 July 2010 (has links)
No description available.

Page generated in 0.1486 seconds