Conversations In The Rainforest: Culture, Values, And The Environment In Central Africa

This book examines the environmental perceptions, values, and practices of inhabitants of Central Africa’s rainforests in order to help build a more firm foundation for ecological and social sustainability at the local level, while also making contributions to global environmental ethics from underrepresented African cultural traditions. It focuses on two case studies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), one an integrated health and sustainable development project in the Ubangi region, and the other a large wildlife reserve in the Ituri Forest. Through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and participant observation conducted with local farmers and foragers, project staff, and local academics, the author records cultural and practical resources for the promotion of ecological sustainability both locally and globally. This revised and updated edition includes a new Preface and Afterword highlighting some of the key transformations that have taken place in the DRC, and relating those changes to the enduring themes discussed in the original work. In addition to several new color figures, new color photographs provide alluring images of the places and people with whom the author worked.https://dune.une.edu/env_facbooks/1000/thumbnail.jp

Academic misconduct in higher education: perceptions, self-reports and perspectives

In the last two decades the international research literature has demonstrated a growing awareness of student cheating, with high levels of self-reported cheating, especially in the United states (U.S.). Much of the early literature on student cheating originated in the U.S. but from the mid 1990s onwards there was increased interest in student cheating in Europe and the rest of the world. The aim of this research was to explore perceptions and self-reports of, and attitudes towards, cheating in undergraduate programmes. There was an element of comparison involved, in trying to identify differences between students studying for degrees in healthcare professions and psychology. A mixed methods approach was adopted. First, students (n=159) completed anonymous questionnaires that invited them to i) rate the perceived frequency of use in "students on a course like theirs" of each of 27 behaviours that ranged from signing as present students who were absent from classes to copying in examinations; іі) self-report their own use of the same behaviours. Second, volunteer students (n=10) and academics (n=12) from the same programmes as the questionnaire sample were interviewed. Questionnaires were analysed using SPSS to identify within-group and between-group differences; interview transcripts were analysed using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Ninety six percent of the sample believed that "students on a course like theirs" cheated in some way, exact percentages ranging from 24%-96%, depending on the cheating behaviour. When it came to self-reporting, the students in the sample self- reported significantly less cheating than they perceived in their peers. Whilst there were significant differences between healthcare and psychology students in their perceptions of cheating, no such difference was found in their self-reports. Interviews revealed that almost 60% of students believed that academics rarely investigate suspicions of cheating. Fifty percent of academics confirmed that view

Foča Bosnia-Herzegovina: presentations of identity in survivor narratives and testimony

In April of 1992 the Foča municipality of Bosnia-Herzegovina was taken over by the ultranationalist Bosnian Serb, Serb and Montenegrin forces. As part of a larger strategy of genocide, the ultranationalist forces systematically raped and sexually abused the Bosniak girls and women of Foča. The systematic rapes perpetrated in the Foča municipality are representative of the larger pattern of rape during the 1992-1995 genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The use of rape as a tactical force of war in the Foča municipality garnered international media attention; resulting in a wealth of literature, interviews with survivors and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia court case The Prosecutor v. Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovač and Zoran Vuković (Kunarac et al.). The academic discourse surrounding rape as a tactical force of war within the Foča municipality, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, portrays rape survivors as an amorphous group of women defined by their Bosniak identity and, ultimately, their victimhood. Through applying narrative analysis to 26 survivor accounts originating from the texts I Begged Them to Kill Me: Crime Against the Women of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Breaking the Wall of Silence: The Voices of Raped Bosnia and the survivor testimony from Kunarac et al. this thesis revisits the narratives and courtroom testimony of rape survivors from the Foča municipality, studying the presentation of their personal and social identities. Within the context of courtroom testimony, this thesis also examines patterns of questioning by the prosecuting and defense attorneys and the identity of rape survivors within the judicial system. Ultimately, this thesis argues that while there are commonalities between the survivors\u27 experiences and presentation of their personal and social identities, each individual survivor has her own unique perception, interpretation and coping mechanisms in regards to the trauma she experienced. To assign the Foča rape survivors a unidimensional identity is a denial of their individual identities and personhood

Constructing collective identities in the Internet age: a case study of Taiwanese-based internet forums

The thesis presents a case study of asynchronous Taiwanese-based internet forums, aimed at exploring new perspectives in the question of collective identity construction via intemet-forum participation. It develops a discursive-constructivist approach that incorporates the theories and models of Goffman, Butler, Laclau & Mouffe and Melucci, investigating the performative, antagonistic and negotiated dimensions of identities. Methodologically, it deploys a series of analytic tools from linguistics and micro sociology, as well as the methods of content analysis and online ethnography. Focusing on the questions of gay identities and national identities, the case study tracks down ten years of archives of the local gay forums and political forums, examining the ways in which collective identities take form through speech performance and social interactions in cyberspace. The case analysis of the gay forums finds that the internet gives rise to networked online gay communities, where individual gays’ subject-positions are performed. Meanwhile, the forums permit the reconstruction of the Other of the gay community, which ironically results in the creation of an internal Other among the community. Furthermore, the forums allow their grassroots participants to engage in the local gay movement, which eventually leads to change in the public identity of the movement. The case of national identity shows that antagonism between the two oppositional nationalisms in Taiwan penetrates identity practices in this domain; cyberspace is no exception. The local political forums become the space for marking, creating and stigmatising the Other. Nevertheless, they also provide the space for negotiated interactions concerning identity-oriented national projects, as well as facilitate dialogues between Chinese and Taiwanese online participants on the question of Taiwan’s future. To conclude, internet forums do not necessarily lead to the devolution of symbolic and political power of their participants. Mainstream discourses still deeply influence the discourses in cyberspace. Grassroots participation in debates concerning social projects may intervene in decision-making; however, this is dependent on the participants’ access to valid information and the decision makers’ attitudes towards the grassroots forums. Finally, while connecting people together, the internet is also disuniting people in spreading antagonisms and animosity

“World” – travelling with professional indigenous women of Mexico:Collective weavings

This thesis emerges from personal and collective journeys through several contexts, lives, and times. It represents a living process that started before the academic exercise and will continue beyond it. It is a point of encounters, of arrivals and departures, of changes and permanences, of synergies, coalitions, and disagreements among the many participants who helped me to craft my arguments. It is formed by a series of plural narratives based on my listening, learning, and discussing with a group of Indigenous women from Mexico about how graduate education has informed their professional trajectories and how they are positioning themselves as political actors. My approach of allowing the thesis to emerge over time and through a plurality of voices is ethically and politically important because it recognises diverse experiences in knowledge cultivation. In this way the thesis challenges the historical marginalisation and erasures that Indigenous women face in academia and other political spaces. The thesis aims to promote inclusivity, social justice, and gender equality by providing examples of how Indigenous women’s experiences are relevant to build plural, intercultural understandings and practices, particularly in and for development studies

Womanpriest

"This book is openly available in digital formats thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. While some Catholics and even non-Catholics today are asking if priests are necessary, especially given the ongoing sex-abuse scandal, The Roman Catholic Womanpriests (RCWP) looks to reframe and reform Roman Catholic priesthood, starting with ordained women. Womanpriest is the first academic study of the RCWP movement. As an ethnography, Womanpriest analyzes the womenpriests’ actions and lived theologies in order to explore ongoing tensions in Roman Catholicism around gender and sexuality, priestly authority, and religious change. In order to understand how womenpriests navigate tradition and transgression, this study situates RCWP within post–Vatican II Catholicism, apostolic succession, sacraments, ministerial action, and questions of embodiment. Womanpriest reveals RCWP to be a discrete religious movement in a distinct religious moment, with a small group of tenacious women defying the Catholic patriarchy, taking on the priestly role, and demanding reconsideration of Roman Catholic tradition. Doing so, the women inhabit and re-create the central tensions in Catholicism today.

Geographies of Identity

Geographies of Identity: Narrative Forms, Feminist Futures explores identity and American culture through hybrid, prose work by women, and expands the strategies of cultural poetics practices into the study of innovative narrative writing. Informed by Judith Butler, Homi Bhabha, Harryette Mullen, Julia Kristeva, and others, this project further considers feminist identity politics, race, and ethnicity as cultural content in and through poetic and non/narrative forms. The texts reflected on here explore literal and figurative landscapes, linguistic and cultural geographies, sexual borders, and spatial topographies. Ultimately, they offer non-prescriptive models that go beyond expectations for narrative forms, and create textual webs that reflect the diverse realities of multi-ethnic, multi-oriented, multi-linguistic cultural experiences. Readings of Gertrude Stein’s A Geographical History of America, Renee Gladman’s Juice, Pamela Lu’s Pamela: A Novel, Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, Juliana Spahr’s The Transformation, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, and Layli Long Soldier’s WHEREAS show how alternatively narrative modes of writing can expand access to representation, means of identification, and subjective agency, and point to horizons of possibility for new futures. These texts critique essentializing practices in which subjects are defined by specific identity categories, and offer complicated, contextualized, and historical understandings of identity formation through the textual weaving of form and content