Doing Fieldwork on Sensitive Topics: Navigating Memories of Intergroup Violence Committed by Ingroups in Contemporary Poland

Sensitive topics in qualitative fieldwork typically include health problems, sexual practices, addictions, illegal activity and death (Campbell 2002; Lee 1993; Liamputtong 2006). Yet, the situation of memories of intergroup violence committed by ingroup members on outgroups ‒ where a community is confronted with the fact that their fellow members have harmed members of other groups ‒ should also be considered as a sensitive topic. An especially sensitive situation occurs when research is conducted in a small community with relatively strong social control maintained through networks of relationships between its members. The aim of this paper is to explore the sensitivity of respondents in their remembering and forgetting of the harm done by members of their own group to the "Others" in local communities, to diagnose the difficulties in conducting fieldwork on this topic, and to present various methods of overcoming them. This article is based on experience from a project dedicated to the social memory of violence committed by Poles against members of other ethnic groups within local communities during World War II

Doing fieldwork on sensitive topics : navigating memories of intergroup violence committed by in-groups in contemporary Poland

Sensitive topics in qualitative fi eldwork typically include health problems, sexual practices, addictions, illegal activity and death (Campbell 2002; Lee 1993; Liamputtong 2006). Yet, the situation of memories of intergroup violence committed by ingroup members on outgroups - where a community is confronted with the fact that their fellow members have harmed members of other groups - should also be considered as a sensitive topic. An especially sensitive situation occurs when research is conducted in a small community with relatively strong social control maintained through networks of relationships between its members. The aim of this paper is to explore the sensitivity of respondents in their remembering and forgetting of the harm done by members of their own group to the "Others" in local communities, to diagnose the diffi culties in conducting fi eldwork on this topic, and to present various methods of overcoming them. This article is based on experience from a project dedicated to the social memory of violence committed by Poles against members of other ethnic groups within local communities during World War II

A társadalmi felelősségvállalás és a vállalati reputáció érintetti szempontú vizsgálata = Stakeholder-focused research of Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Reputation

A doktori disszertáció témáját a társadalmi felelősségvállalás (CSR), annak kommunikációja, az érintettek és érintetti kapcsolatok menedzsmentje, valamint a szervezeti (szándékolt) identitás és az érintetti reputáció elemzése alkotta. A disszertáció megírásával az volt a célom, hogy bemutassam a társadalmi felelősségvállalás érintett-fókuszú elméletét, illetve a CSR és a marketing egyre szorosabbá váló kapcsolatrendszerét. Az érintettekkel, a társadalmi felelősségvállalással, valamint a reputációval kapcsolatos főbb irodalmak ismertetése révén arra törekedtem, hogy hangsúlyozzam az érintetti percepciók jelentőségét a vállalatok társadalmi felelősségvállalása esetében. A dolgozat és a hozzá kapcsolódó kutatás gyakorlati jelentősége, hogy újszerű eszközöket adhat a vállalatok és a kutatók kezébe, amelyek segítségével feltárhatók az érintettek CSR-rel kapcsolatos percepciói

Prefigurative Politics: Perils and Promise

Many recent social movements have been characterised by their commitment to direct democratic decision-making procedures and leaderless, non-hierarchic organizational structures. This political tendency also implies the search for autonomy from existing political institutions and practises. Movements seek instead to embody in the political action itself the social relations, ways of collective decision-making and values that are ultimately desired for the whole society. This prefigurative approach to social change is often criticized for being naiive or marginal. This thesis argues first that this is not the case, but that prefigurative politics is misunderstood due to its differing view on questions of strategy, organisation and ultimately the possibility of fundamental societal change. The dissertation first outlines the often implicit strategy or vision of change underpinning prefigurative politics. It then identifies as the key challenge for prefigurative movements their ability to avoid reproducing oppressive forms of power, ‘power-over.’ This understudied aspect is investigated through extensive ethnographic field research with the unemployed workers movement, MTD Lanús in Buenos Aires, and the Zapatista movement in Mexico. The thesis concludes that it seems impossible to completely avoid reproducing old forms of power. Often key individuals in the movements end up in a paradoxical position whereby, in an effort to ensure the group’s prefigurative nature, these individuals enjoy non-prefigurative influence. The findings imply that the state and corresponding political forms and practise are not the only source of hierarchic pressures. As such, it would be more useful to view prefigurative political action as desirable, yet impossible

Walking Back the System Trope: Reimagining Incarceration and the State Through a Spatial Theory Approach

This dissertation critiques the systems theory approach to incarceration policy, practice, and research and proposes a rhetorically informed spatial theory approach as an alternative. Offering a non-hierarchical complexity theory as a bridge between systems and space, I then integrate rhetorical listening as a strategy for navigating and operationalizing our proposed spatial theory approach. I then apply our proposed methodology to archival research, focusing on the South Carolina Penitentiary as a case study, and offer two heuretic experiments to explore the range of this methodology for archival research. I also explore potential applications of this rhetorically informed spatial theory approach in terms of civic engagement among incarcerated populations through deliberative democracy theory. Finally, I conclude that this methodology offers an avenue for elaborating the ambiguity in myriad social organizational practices that are conceived in terms of systems, crucial insights into uses of complexity in contemporary rhetorical studies, and a valuable approach for argument analysis and civic engagement in composition classrooms

The relationship between thinking style differences and career choice for high-achieving high school students

The intent of this study was to study high achieving students\u27 career decision-making associated with thinking styles and to examine factors influencing career choices. A causal-comparative research design and correlational research design were used, with a sample of 209 high school students. Data were gathered from two International Baccalaureate (TB) programs and a Governor\u27s School Program. Students responded to two types of questionnaire---the Thinking Style Inventory, and A Questionnaire Related to Career Choices and Students\u27 Sensitivity toward Environmental Forces.;The findings of this study demonstrated that the effect of program on different thinking styles was significant (p \u3c .05), and the effect of gender on different thinking styles was significant ( p \u3c .01). Also, the findings showed that an external thinking style was a good predictor for choosing the social science area for future careers. However, students with a higher external thinking style chose computer and math areas 73% less than students with lower external thinking style. Also, the findings of the study demonstrated that students\u27 passion for a specific subject and family environment were also important factors influencing career choices of high achieving high school students.;The study suggested the importance of taking thinking styles into consideration for the career development of high-achieving adolescents. In addition, the environmental influences of parents, family, and schools are also important considerations for students\u27 career development, along with students\u27 inherent interest in a subject. Therefore, parents, teachers, and guidance counselors should recognize their own critical roles in shaping students\u27 career development

3D Object Recognition Based On Constrained 2D Views

The aim of the present work was to build a novel 3D object recognition system capable of classifying man-made and natural objects based on single 2D views. The approach to this problem has been one motivated by recent theories on biological vision and multiresolution analysis. The project's objectives were the implementation of a system that is able to deal with simple 3D scenes and constitutes an engineering solution to the problem of 3D object recognition, allowing the proposed recognition system to operate in a practically acceptable time frame. The developed system takes further the work on automatic classification of marine phytoplank- (ons, carried out at the Centre for Intelligent Systems, University of Plymouth. The thesis discusses the main theoretical issues that prompted the fundamental system design options. The principles and the implementation of the coarse data channels used in the system are described. A new multiresolution representation of 2D views is presented, which provides the classifier module of the system with coarse-coded descriptions of the scale-space distribution of potentially interesting features. A multiresolution analysis-based mechanism is proposed, which directs the system's attention towards potentially salient features. Unsupervised similarity-based feature grouping is introduced, which is used in coarse data channels to yield feature signatures that are not spatially coherent and provide the classifier module with salient descriptions of object views. A simple texture descriptor is described, which is based on properties of a special wavelet transform. The system has been tested on computer-generated and natural image data sets, in conditions where the inter-object similarity was monitored and quantitatively assessed by human subjects, or the analysed objects were very similar and their discrimination constituted a difficult task even for human experts. The validity of the above described approaches has been proven. The studies conducted with various statistical and artificial neural network-based classifiers have shown that the system is able to perform well in all of the above mentioned situations. These investigations also made possible to take further and generalise a number of important conclusions drawn during previous work carried out in the field of 2D shape (plankton) recognition, regarding the behaviour of multiple coarse data channels-based pattern recognition systems and various classifier architectures. The system possesses the ability of dealing with difficult field-collected images of objects and the techniques employed by its component modules make possible its extension to the domain of complex multiple-object 3D scene recognition. The system is expected to find immediate applicability in the field of marine biota classification

Risk perception of oil operations of residents of oil-producing communities in Nigeria

Oil-producing communities in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria believe they have been rendered vulnerable to impacts and risks of oil operations. Many studies have examined the environmental impacts of the operations, which stem from pollution caused by processes of exploration and production of the oil. This is reported to have social, economic, and health implications on the communities. The communities have demonstrated their outrage on the situation, including protests against the involved oil corporations. The corporations have employed some measures to deal with the risks, including cleaning up of the environment and providing development projects to counteract the difficulty. There is however, limited research on the risk perceptions of the communities, concerning their views on exposure to the risks, including management of the risks by the oil corporations. Thus, the aim of this study is to explore how residents of the oil-producing communities perceive risks of the oil operations. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is the methodology adopted in conducting the study, which focuses on participants’ experiences of a phenomenon and the meanings they attach to the experiences. This enabled the study to elicit how residents of the communities, while relating with their experiences regarding the oil operations, form their perceptions of risks of the operations. Residents of three communities in the ONELGA district in the Niger Delta, where onshore oil operations are carried out by Eni and Total were chosen for the study. Responses of the residents were gathered through individual interviews and focus group discussion. The residents have believed to be exposed to risks of food insecurity, income, health, and earthquake, due to the oil operations. They have explained the causes and factors of the risks, and how they may be affected by them. Their concern of the risks, however, has appeared not to be mainly influenced by the effects, but by their perceived inappropriate management of the risks by the oil corporations. They have suggested to accept the operations, if the risks will be managed from their viewpoints, by the corporations—for which the residents have specified certain measures. Their trust in the capability of the corporations to accordingly manage the risks has been found to be the key factor behind this. The findings of the study show the importance of the oil-producing communities’ risk perception of the oil operations and its implications on the oil corporations vis-à-vis managing the risks. This can also be useful for developing further research on risk perception of not only the communities in the Niger Delta but also others affected by oil operations