18,588 research outputs found
Supporting girls and young women victims of sexual harassment in schools : "me and you and everyone we know"
This article highlights an innovative project, across three European countries (Italy, Sweden and Romania), that used a pictorial co-design educational tool to empower young women to counter sexual harassment and abuse. Data is very hard to obtain on levels of sexual harassment and the project revealed that there was a need to educate female and male students, as well as professionals of its long-term impact. The co-designed cards generated discussion and comments both with the young participants and educational professionals. Focus groups were organised in the three countries with students using the co-design tool. What emerged from those focus groups are different
attitudes towards sexual harassment and how this may affect girls and young women in the three participating countries. This article reflects upon the use of a transnational co-design tool to prevent sexual harassment and abuse in schools. The main aim was to promote a dialogue with young people on the complexity of issues surrounding this topic in order to promote change in this area. Findings from this project revealed that there was much variation between the three countries in a number of important areas, such as the support and knowledge base on the issue
Metaphors of London fog, smoke and mist in Victorian and Edwardian Art and Literature
Julian Wolfreys has argued that after 1850 writers employed stock images of the city without allowing them to transform their texts. This thesis argues, on the contrary, that metaphorical uses of London fog were complex and subtle during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, at least until 1914. Fog represented, in particular, formlessness and the dissolution of boundaries. Examining the idea of fog in literature, verse, newspaper accounts and journal articles, as well as in the visual arts, as part of a common discourse about London and the state of its inhabitants, this thesis charts how the metaphorical appropriation of this idea changed over time. Four of Dickens's novels are used to track his use of fog as part of a discourse of the natural and unnatural in individual and society, identifying it with London in progressively more negative terms. Visual representations of fog by Constable, Turner, Whistler, Monet, Markino, O'Connor, Roberts and Wyllie and Coburn showed an increasing readiness to engage with this discourse. Social tensions in the city in the 1880s were articulated in art as well as in fiction. Authors like Hay and Barr showed the destruction of London by its fog because of its inhabitants' supposed degeneracy. As the social threat receded, apocalyptic scenarios gave way to a more optimistic view in the work of Owen and others. Henry James used fog as a metaphorical representation of the boundaries of gendered behaviour in public, and the problems faced by women who crossed them. The dissertation also examines fog and individual transgression, in novels and short stories by Lowndes, Stevenson, Conan Doyle and Joseph Conrad. After 1914, fog was no more than a crude signifier of Victorian London in literature, film and, later, television, deployed as a cliche instead of the subtle metaphorical idea discussed in this thesis
Towards a sociology of conspiracy theories: An investigation into conspiratorial thinking on Dönmes
This thesis investigates the social and political significance of conspiracy theories, which has been an academically neglected topic despite its historical relevance. The academic literature focuses on the methodology, social significance and political impacts of these theories in a secluded manner and lacks empirical analyses. In response, this research provides a comprehensive theoretical framework for conspiracy theories by considering their methodology, political impacts and social significance in the light of empirical data. Theoretically, the thesis uses Adorno's semi-erudition theory along with Girardian approach. It proposes that conspiracy theories are methodologically semi-erudite narratives, i.e. they are biased in favour of a belief and use reason only to prove it. It suggests that conspiracy theories appear in times of power vacuum and provide semi-erudite cognitive maps that relieve alienation and ontological insecurities of people and groups. In so doing, they enforce social control over their audience due to their essentialist, closed-to-interpretation narratives. In order to verify the theory, the study analyses empirically the social and political significance of conspiracy theories about the Dönme community in Turkey. The analysis comprises interviews with conspiracy theorists, conspiracy theory readers and political parties, alongside a frame analysis of the popular conspiracy theory books on Dönmes. These confirm the theoretical framework by showing that the conspiracy theories are fed by the ontological insecurities of Turkish society. Hence, conspiracy theorists, most readers and some political parties respond to their own ontological insecurities and political frustrations through scapegoating Dönmes. Consequently, this work shows that conspiracy theories are important symptoms of society, which, while relieving ontological insecurities, do not provide politically prolific narratives
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Co-design As Healing: Exploring The Experiences Of Participants Facing Mental Health Problems
This thesis is an exploration of the healing role of co-design in mental health. Although co-design projects conducted within mental health settings are rising, existing literature tends to focus on the object of design and its outcomes while the experiences of participants per se remain largely unexplored. The guiding research question of this study is not how we design things that improve mental health, but how co-designing, as an act, might do so.
The thesis presents two projects that were organized in collaboration with the mental health charity Islington Mind and the Psychosis Therapy Project (PTP) in London.
The project at Islington Mind used a structured design process inviting participants to design for wellbeing. A case study analysis provides insights on how participants were impacted, summarizing key challenges and opportunities.
The design at PTP worked towards creating a collective brief in an emergent fashion, finally culminating in a board game. The experiences of participants were explored through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), using semi-structured interview data. The analysis served to identify key themes characterising the experience of co-design such as contributing, connecting, thinking and intentioning. In addition, a mixed-methods analysis of questionnaires and interview data exploring participants' wellbeing, showed that all participants who engaged fairly consistently in the project improved after the project ended, although some participants' scores returned to baseline six months later.
Reflecting on both projects, an approach to facilitation within mental health is outlined, detailing how the dimensions of weaving and layered participation, nurturing mattering and facilitating attitudes interlace. This contribution raises awareness of tacit dimensions in the practice of facilitation, articulating the nuances of how to encourage and sustain meaningful and ethical engagement and offering insights into a range of tools. It highlights the importance of remaining reflexive in relation to attitudes and emotions and discusses practical methodological and ethical challenges and ways to resolve them which can be of benefit to researchers embarking on a similar journey.
The thesis also offers detailed insights on how methodologies from different fields were integrated into a whole, arguing for transparency and reflexivity about epistemological assumptions, and how underlying paradigms shift in an interdisciplinary context.
Based on the overall findings, the thesis makes a case for considering design as healing (or a designerly way of healing), highlighting implications at a systems, social and individual level. It makes an original contribution to our understanding of design, highlighting its healing character, and proposes a new way to support mental health. The participants in this study not only had increased their own wellbeing through co-designing, but were also empowered and contributed towards healing the world. Hence, the thesis argues for a unique, holistic perspective of design and mental health, recognizing the interconnectedness of the individual, social and systemic dimensions of the healing processes that are ignited
Political Islam and grassroots activism in Turkey : a study of the pro-Islamist Virtue Party's grassroots activists and their affects on the electoral outcomes
This thesis presents an analysis of the spectacular rise of political Islam in Turkey. It has two aims: first to understand the underlying causes of the rise of the Welfare Party which -later became the Virtue Party- throughout the 1990s, and second to analyse how grassroots activism influenced this process. The thesis reviews the previous literature on the Islamic fundamentalist movements, political parties, political party systems and concentrates on the local party organisations and their effects on the party's electoral performance. It questions the categorisation of Islamic fundamentalism as an appropriate label for this movement. An exploration of such movements is particularly important in light of the event of 11`x' September. After exploring existing theoretical and case studies into political Islam and party activism, I present my qualitative case study. I have used ethnographic methodology and done participatory observations among grassroots activists in Ankara's two sub-districts covering 105 neighbourhoods. I examined the Turkish party system and the reasons for its collapse. It was observed that as a result of party fragmentation, electoral volatility and organisational decline and decline in the party identification among the citizens the Turkish party system has declined. However, the WP/VP profited from this trend enormously and emerged as
the main beneficiary of this process. Empirical data is analysed in four chapters, dealing with the different aspects of the Virtue Party's local organisations and grassroots activists. They deal with change and continuity in the party, the patterns of participation, the routes and motives for becoming a party activist, the profile of party activists and the local party organisations. I explore what they do and how they do it. The analysis reveals that the categorisation of Islamic fundamentalism is misplaced and the rise of political Islam in Turkey cannot be explained as religious revivalism or the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It is a political force that drives its strength from the urban poor which has been harshly affected by the IMF directed neoliberal economy policies. In conclusion, it is shown that the WP/VP's electoral chances were significantly improved by its very efficient and effective party organisations and highly committed grassroots activists
Pandemics and Financial Assets
There have been several pandemics in the history of mankind. One of the major pandemics was the Spanish flu that took place in 1918, in which millions of lives were lost globally. Despite significant advances in science and medicine since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has still caused major impacts around the world. As evidenced, pandemics not only cause social and public health implications, but also cause effects on the economy as well. This chapter addresses the ill effects of pandemics on the economy and presents how the financial markets and financial institutions were influenced and how they responded to the pandemics. More specifically, this chapter identifies the effects of the pandemics on various assets (e.g., crude oil, gold, currencies, equity, bonds, and cryptocurrencies) around the world. In addition, the chapter also presents evidence of corporates’ characteristics relative to their responses to the ill effects of the pandemics
Shaping the Macroeconomy of Low- and Middle-income Countries in Response to Covid-19
There is heterogeneity in the magnitude of the pandemic’s shortterm impact across the five low- and middle-income countries
(L&MICs) that are the focus of this synthesis paper: Bangladesh,
Kenya, Peru, Sri Lanka and Tanzania. Based on pre-Covid-19
forecasts, Peru was supposed to grow by 3.6% but the pandemic led
to an actual contraction of the Peruvian economy by 11% –
suggesting 15 percentage points loss of growth due to the pandemic.
Similarly, Sri Lanka was forecast to grow by 1.5% but the pandemic
led to a -3.6% economic contraction in 2020 – the worst in the
country’s 73 years of independence. Meanwhile, Tanzania grew by
4.8% in 2020, which is only about 1 percentage point lower than pre-Covid-19 forecasts.
Structural characteristics, initial macroeconomic conditions, and
the size and quality of policy responses largely shaped the
absolute and distributional impact of Covid-19 in the five
L&MICs. Impacts from sharp declines in tourism activities in 2020
were offset partly by increased global demand from their major
exports of agricultural products (e.g., Kenya, Peru) and gold (e.g.,
Tanzania). Bangladesh benefitted from a quick recovery of major
trading partners’ demand for garments (comprising 90% of
Bangladeshi export).IDRC | CRD
Walking with the Earth: Intercultural Perspectives on Ethics of Ecological Caring
It is commonly believed that considering nature different from us, human beings (qua rational, cultural, religious and social actors), is detrimental to our engagement for the preservation of nature. An obvious example is animal rights, a deep concern for all living beings, including non-human living creatures, which is understandable only if we approach nature, without fearing it, as something which should remain outside of our true home. “Walking with the earth” aims at questioning any similar preconceptions in the wide sense, including allegoric-poetic contributions. We invited 14 authors from 4 continents to express all sorts of ways of saying why caring is so important, why togetherness, being-with each others, as a spiritual but also embodied ethics is important in a divided world
How to Be a God
When it comes to questions concerning the nature of Reality, Philosophers and Theologians have the answers.
Philosophers have the answers that can’t be proven right. Theologians have the answers that can’t be proven wrong.
Today’s designers of Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games create realities for a living. They can’t spend centuries mulling over the issues: they have to face them head-on. Their practical experiences can indicate which theoretical proposals actually work in practice.
That’s today’s designers. Tomorrow’s will have a whole new set of questions to answer.
The designers of virtual worlds are the literal gods of those realities. Suppose Artificial Intelligence comes through and allows us to create non-player characters as smart as us. What are our responsibilities as gods? How should we, as gods, conduct ourselves?
How should we be gods
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