Cultivating a Troubled Consciousness: Compulsory sound-mindedness and complicity in oppression

Implicating oneself in oppression provokes uncertainty, shame and anxiety, and identity destabilizations. Yet anti-oppressive texts often denigrate these experiences, participating in forces I call “compulsory sound-mindedness.” Narratives of three women confronting their complicity illustrate the workings of compulsory sound-mindedness: a white Canadian recognizing the racism in her development work and both a white woman and a racialized Muslim reflecting on their complicity in ongoing Canadian colonization. The three narratives devalue affect, uncertainty, and destabilized identity. They also reveal these denigrated experiences as fundamental to personal-is-political ethical transformation. Compulsory sound-mindedness cannot consistently prevent people from journeying with pain, uncertainty, and coming undone. But when people undertake such journeys, compulsory sound-mindedness frames pain, identity destabilization, and uncertainty as regrettable and without value. I advocate that people cultivate a “troubled consciousness” by journeying with internalized accountability narratives, uncertainties, painful feelings, and destabilizations of a straightforwardly moral self

Moving and Not Moving: rhythm, flow and interruption in a sensory ethnography of urban cycling

Recent work in sensory ethnography has drawn attention to the integration of both corporeal and cognitive dimensions in the experience of mobile practices. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Munich and its immediate surroundings, together with comparative data from Munich and London, this paper follows on from work by Edensor (2010) in linking a Lefebvrian consideration of rhythm with a concern for the sensory dimensions of mobility. In this case, the central concern shifts towards a greater focus on an exploration of the intertwined physical and emotional sensations imposed on the mobile body by its immediate surroundings and the physical environments of movement. In the sensory world of journey-making by bicycle, a process reliant on repetitive, rhythmic physical motion restricted by the mechanics of the machine itself, stopping and starting has a significantly greater impact than it does for walking. The paper therefore considers the import of the not-moving experience for journey-making by the cycle commuter. By focusing on the sensory dimensions of travel, differentiation can be made between stillness, not moving, pausing and waiting. Consideration is given to how these relate to the sensory environments of non-motorised urban mobility

The Life-and-Death Journey of the Soul : Interpreting the Myth of Er

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Remembering, Reflecting, Returning: A Return to Professional Practice Journey Through Poetry, Music and Images:A Return to Professional Practice Journey Through Poetry, Music and Images

<p>Our composition brings together poetry, music, images and personal narratives based around the experiences of an occupational therapist, Karen, who following a family career break, returned to her profession. Our work demonstrates collaborative research practices and illuminates our experiences and journeying as practitioner-artists/researchers/teachers.</p> <p>This autoethnographic inquiry employs bricolage, drawing on theory and hybridized methods, inspired by the notion of ‘returning to practice’. The conversations of Karen and Katherine (mentee and mentor) as qualitative data, analyzed, interpreted and made accessible through poetry and images – along with Peter’s musical and autobiographical compositions – explore possibilities to re-examine and share alternative avenues of scholarship and theoretical understanding, not least in redefining what contribution to knowledge that artistic processes and ‘artwork’ makes methodologically, pedagogically, aesthetically, and therapeutically. Our intention is to engage the reader-viewer-listener to (re)think, take notice, disrupt, re-examine and extend personal meanings about return to practice journeys, enabling each of us to benefit and be (re)inspired.</p> <p>We recast aspects of ‘knowing and experience’ metaphorically, to consider and express our sense of being and becoming in the world. Importantly, we seek to explore how arts informed ways of knowing and learning about the self and other can serve to enhance our students/researchers/practitioners learning experiences.</p

So-journeying: creating sacred space in education

This research questions current taken-for-granted meanings given to school, education, teaching and curriculum from an African/African American perspective. This inquiry is based on my experiences as an African American woman curriculum theorist committed to the education of African American youth. Drawing on the lifework of Sojourner Truth, a nineteenth century African American woman abolitionist and human rights activist, this work seeks to explore aspects of both African/African American-centered education and curriculum theory as a means of informing understandings of school, education, teaching and curriculum. My research question is: How does Sojourner Truth inform curriculum theory? This inquiry is a self-exploration and self-evaluation from African/African American-centered education through curriculum theory inspired by the call of Sojourner Truth. Referencing literature relative to Sojourner Truth, African/African American-centered education and curriculum theory, this dissertation makes connections between Truth’s lived experiences and its relevance to African/African American-centered education and curriculum theory. Based on Sojourner Truth’s African/African American world view as well as my own, I developed call-and-response in the context of I~We as my methodology which honors the communion, community, and communication of All-That-Exists. Using this as well as autobiographical methods, I explored an African world view, African/African American-centered education, curriculum theory as well as spirituality in education. The results of this inquiry suggest: 1) The role of spirituality in education needs to be reexamined so that the spirit of life can become the focus of school, education, teaching, and curriculum. 2) An African/African American world view of life is a guide, source, and resource for school, education, teaching, and curriculum; 3) To challenge limited, static contemporary approaches to learning, so-journeying is an authentic, organic process of and approach to learning which reflects learning as lifelong and rooted in life; 4) Following the belief that human beings are spiritual beings having a human experience, education necessitates creating sacred space

Wellbeing experienced by digital players: Comparing real-life and gaming perspectives

The on-growing consumption of digital games has worried many. Recent barometers show that 75% of Finnish citizens and 67% of Australians play video games. Earlier studies suggest many adverse effects on gaming. Digital games are nevertheless largely used, and thus understanding the positive experiences of gaming is important. To better understand why gaming is so popular, this research examined the positive subjective experience of gaming. The gaming preferences of players and the subjective experiences of digital gaming were examined by a web survey (N=513) distributed to Finnish and Australian gaming forums. The respondents were players from Australia and Finland, who played on average 20.16 hours per week. The players’ specific preferences for game dynamics were examined with an upgraded version of the Game Dynamics Preferences Questionnaire (Vahlo, Kaakinen, Holm & Koponen, 2017) consisting of 50 items. Using exploratory factor analysis, these game dynamics were grouped into core dynamics. A cluster analysis based on the factor scores of the questionnaire answers was then used to divide the gamers to different profiles. The survey also contained four psychological scales: self-efficacy, curiosity, subjective vitality and psychological empowerment. There were two versions of each of these scales: first participants responded to the scales from real-life perspective, then from gaming perspective. By comparing the responses given in real-life vs. gaming perspective, the positive subjective experience of gaming could be calculated. This study conducted six core dynamics: Assault and Coordinate; Manage; Affect, Aesthetics and Expression; Explore and Develop the Gameworld; Interact; and Logic and Problem Solving. Based on the dynamics, the players divided into five gaming profiles: the Wise Adventurer, the Looter­Adventurer, the Explorer, the Commander and the Companion. The profiles consisting of heavy gamers had more positive subjective experiences of gaming, compared to light gamers. All of the different gaming profiles experienced significantly more curiosity when gaming, compared to real-life. The results suggest that heavy gamers have positive subjective experiences during gaming. In the future these subjective experiences should be further examined by controlled intervention studies. KEYWORDS: Digital gaming, player profiles, gamer’s wellbein

Search/ing for missing people:families living with ambiguous absence

Families of missing people are often understood as inhabiting a particular space of ambiguity, captured in the phrase ‘living in limbo’ (Holmes, 2008). To explore this uncertain ground, we interviewed 25 family members to consider how human absence is acted upon and not just felt within this space ‘in between’ grief and loss (Wayland, 2007). In the paper, we represent families as active agents in spatial stories of ‘living in limbo’, and we provide insights into the diverse strategies of search/ing (technical, physical and emotional) in which they engage to locate either their missing member or news of them. Responses to absence are shown to be intimately bound up with unstable spatial knowledges of the missing person and emotional actions that are subject to change over time. We suggest that practices of search are not just locative actions, but act as transformative processes providing insights into how families inhabit emotional dynamism and transition in response to the on-going ‘missing situation’ and ambiguous loss (Boss, 1999, 2013)

"Engaging with birth stories in pregnancy: a hermeneutic phenomenological study of women's experiences across two generations"

BACKGROUND: The birth story has been widely understood as a crucial source of knowledge about childbirth. What has not been reported is the effect that birth stories may have on primigravid women's understandings of birth. Findings are presented from a qualitative study exploring how two generations of women came to understand birth in the milieu of other's stories. The prior assumption was that birth stories must surely have a positive or negative influence on listeners, steering them towards either medical or midwifery-led models of care. METHODS: A Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used. Twenty UK participants were purposively selected and interviewed. Findings from the initial sample of 10 women who were pregnant in 2012 indicated that virtual media was a primary source of birth stories. This led to recruitment of a second sample of 10 women who gave birth in the 1970s-1980s, to determine whether they were more able to translate information into knowledge via stories told through personal contact and not through virtual technologies RESULTS: Findings revealed the experience of 'being-in-the-world' of birth and of stories in that world. From a Heideggerian perspective, the birth story was constructed through 'idle talk' (the taken for granted assumptions of things, which come into being through language). Both oral stories and those told through technology were described as the 'modern birth story'. The first theme 'Stories are difficult like that', examines the birth story as problematic and considers how stories shape meaning. The second 'It's a generational thing', considers how women from two generations came to understand what their experience might be. The third 'Birth in the twilight of certainty,' examines women's experience of Being in a system of birth as constructed, portrayed and sustained in the stories being shared. CONCLUSIONS: The women pregnant in 2012 framed their expectations in the language of choice, whilst the women who birthed in the 1970s-1980s framed their experience in the language of safety. For both, however, the world of birth was the same; saturated with, and only legitimised by the birth of a healthy baby. Rather than creating meaningful understanding, the 'idle talk' of birth made both cohorts fearful of leaving the relative comfort of the 'system', and of claiming an alternative birth