This qualitative study examines sixteen women's understanding of their experiences in community organizing in a northern urban context. While most front-line community organizing is done by women, there is a paucity of research giving voice to their particular realities. Similarly, there is little information describing community organizing in a northern urban context. The study's conceptual frameworks draw on theory and research from rural and northern social work, activist mothering, feminist social policy, diversity and exclusion, and the social construction of identities. It follows a feminist research paradigm. The study illustrates women community organizers' sense of place and their perceptions of the politics of language, cultural and linguistic tensions, and the influences of northern economic and geographic realities. The research findings demonstrate the processes of community organizing in a northern setting, community organizers' demoralization because of increasingly less generous social policy environments, and the challenges of racial and linguistic divisions in community organizing. The study challenges the urban lens dominating social work education and highlights the legitimacy of community organizing within social work education. It discusses future research possibilities for cross-cultural community organizing involving minority francophone and ethnocultural populations as well as the relativity of notions of oppression within francophone spheres.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.85928 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Lafrenière, Ginette |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (School of Social Work.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002268682, proquestno: AAINR21665, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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