8,026 research outputs found
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Ensuring Access to Safe and Nutritious Food for All Through the Transformation of Food Systems
Changing society: pioneering women entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia.
The research examines the role of institutions influencing Saudi female entrepreneurs, and how they became enabled to be social agents and institutional entrepreneurs in a very traditional, family-orientated society - albeit facing pressures to change. In acknowledging the uniqueness of the social-cultural context in Saudi Arabia, this study adopts a qualitative design. Specifically, purposive and snowball sampling techniques were implemented to gather primary qualitative data. The data draw on 31 interviews with female entrepreneurs residing in Jeddah, capturing the practical experiences of these entrepreneurs, and their engagement with the informal and formal institutions of their immediate societal surroundings. The analysis relies on the constant-comparative method (Anderson and Jack 2015) to illicit the meanings and implications taken from context, and also how this informs the day-to-day activities of the entrepreneur (Anderson et al. 2012). This study has found that existing institutions both constrain and enable Saudi women's entrepreneurship. In particular, the obligations and responsibility of Arab families are turned into an advantage, in the form of a patient resource base or networks of knowledge development. We saw too how pioneering efforts, in conjunction with other change, have begun to modestly alter the opportunity structure in Saudi Arabia, with the entrepreneur acting as an agent of change. Saudi women's entrepreneurship is thus best characterised as a recursive process between these entrepreneurs and the social system, which is an essential resource for - and product of - situated actions. This research makes a modest contribution to the long-running discussions on women's entrepreneurship in the context of the Arab world. The findings cannot suggest that it is going to be easy or smooth for future women entrepreneurs; traditions continue and there are also vested patriarchal interests. Nonetheless, increasing numbers of Saudi women are involved in growing their businesses. These pioneers have changed society; a modest, but progressive change for the better. This study has several implications. First, the produced empirical findings have highlighted certain areas for further improvement of female entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia, which goes in keeping with Saudi Vision 2030 and the expected role of women in the social and economic development of Saudi Arabia. Second, this study has contributed to the existing body of knowledge and understanding of what institutional barriers and challenges Saudi female entrepreneurs face and how they could be overcome at a national level
A narrative study of how shame features in the lives of women living with HIV
Once classed as a devastating virus that resulted in a guaranteed premature death, HIV can be treated successfully with lifelong medication and importantly its transmissibility is eliminated for individuals on effective medication. However, the psychosocial burden of HIV remains for many and despite this advancement in biomedical treatment, HIV remains a highly stigmatised virus and condition.
This study explores how shame features in the experiences of women living with HIV in Ireland. There is an absence of womenâs narratives in the overall discourse on HIV in Ireland, therefore little is known about their lives. Research on shame tells us that prolonged unacknowledged shame can impact on mental well-being if unaddressed.
The studyâs sample comprised twelve women living with HIV who were based in Ireland. Their narratives based on semi-structured interviews have been analysed using Clandinin and Connellyâs (2000) three-dimensional narrative inquiry tool, which explores from the interactional, chronological and situational elements of a story. A cross-case analysis was adopted to explore dominant themes across the twelve narratives.
Findings from this study portray how shame stemmed from an absence of a woman centred HIV narrative and the ongoing presence of stigmatising HIV discourse. Shame featured as three dimensions of the exposed self: anticipated exposure, exposure avoidance and felt exposure. Finally, many of the participants managed to grow through their HIV-related shame and move past it by discovering a shared experience with other women, to reduce emotional isolation.
This study concludes that HIV-related shame can have negative implications for womenâs health and general well-being, thus compromising womenâs ability to live well with HIV. HIV-related shame must be addressed with the appropriate intervention. The study contributes to the development of a women-centred HIV discourse. This can help increase visibility of WLHIV and enable potential mitigation of the onset of HIV-related shame, which is crucial in this era of HIV normalisation
The Future of Work and Digital Skills
The theme for the events was "The Future of Work and Digital Skills". The 4IR caused a
hollowing out of middle-income jobs (Frey & Osborne, 2017) but COVID-19 exposed the digital gap as survival depended mainly on digital infrastructure and connectivity. Almost overnight, organizations that had not invested in a digital strategy suddenly realized the need for such a strategy and the associated digital skills. The effects have been profound for those who struggled to adapt, while those who stepped up have reaped quite the reward.Therefore, there are no longer certainties about what the world will look like in a few years from now. However, there are certain ways to anticipate the changes that are occurring and plan on how to continually adapt to an increasingly changing world. Certain jobs will soon be lost and will not come back; other new jobs will however be created. Using data science and other predictive sciences, it is possible to anticipate, to the extent possible, the rate at which certain jobs will be replaced and new jobs created in different industries. Accordingly, the collocated events sought to bring together government, international organizations, academia, industry, organized labour and civil society to deliberate on how these changes are occurring in South Africa, how fast they are occurring and what needs to change in order to prepare society for the changes.Deutsche Gesellschaft fĂŒr Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
British High Commission (BHC)School of Computin
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After Creation: Intergovernmental Organizations and Member State Governments as Co-Participants in an Authority Relationship
This is a re-amalgamation of what started as one manuscript and became two when the length proved to be more than any publisher wanted to consider. The splitting consisted of removing what are now Parts 3, 4, and 5 so that the manuscript focused on the outcome-related shared beliefs holding an authority relationship together. Those parts were last worked on in 2018. The rest were last worked on in late 2021 but also remain incomplete.
The relational approach adopted in this study treats intergovernmental organizations and the governments of member states as co-participants in an authority relationship with the governments of their member states. Authority relationships link two types of actor, defined by their authority-holder or addressee role in the relationship, through a set of shared beliefs about why the relationship exists and how the participants should fulfill their respective roles. The IGO as authority holder has a role that includes a right to instruct other actors about what they should or should not do; the governments of member states as addressees are expected to comply with the instructions. Three sets of shared beliefs provide the conceptual âglueâ holding the relationship together. The first defines the goal of the collective effort, providing both the rationale for having the authority relationship and providing a lode star for assessments of the collective effortâs success or lack of success. The second set defines the shared understanding about allocation of roles and the process of interaction by establishing shared expectations about a) the selection process by which particular actors acquire authority holder roles, b) the definitions identifying one or more categories of addressees expected to follow instructions, and c) the procedures through which the authority holder issues instructions. The third set focus on the outcomes of cooperation through the relationship by defining a) the substantive areas in which the authority holder may issue instructions, b) the bases for assessing the relevance actions mandated in instructions for reaching the goal, and c) the relative efficacy of action paths chosen for reaching the goal as compared to other possible action paths.
Using an authority relationship framework for analyzing cooperation through IGOs highlights the inherently bi-directional nature of IGO-member government activity by viewing their interaction as involving a three-step process in which the IGO as authority holder decides when to issue what instruction, the member state governments as followers react to the instruction with anything from prompt and full compliance through various forms of pushback to outright rejection, and the IGO as authority holder responds to how the followers react with efforts to increase individual compliance with instructions and reinforce continuing acceptance of the authority relationship. Foregrounding the dynamics produced by the interaction of these two streams of perception and action reveals more clearly how far intergovernmental organizations acquire capacity to operate as independent actors, the dynamic ways they maintain that capacity, and how much they influence member governmentsâ beliefs and actions at different times. The approach fosters better understanding of why, when, and for how long governments choose cooperation through an IGO even in periods of rising unilateralism
Platform protocol place: a practice-based study of critical media art practice (2007-2020)
This practice-based research project focuses on critical media art practices in contemporary digital culture. The theoretical framework employed in this inquiry draws from the work of the Frankfurt School, in particular Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimerâs The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. Using Adorno & Horkheimerâs thesis as a theoretical guide, this research project formulates the concept of the digital culture industry - a concept that refers to the contemporary era of networked capitalism, an era defined by the unprecedented extraction, accumulation and manipulation of data and the material and digital infrastructures that facilitate it. This concept is used as a framing mechanism that articulates certain techno-political concerns within networked capitalism and responds to them through practice.
The second concept formulated within this research project is Platform Protocol Place. The function of this second concept is to frame and outline the body of practice-based work developed in this study. It is also used to make complex technological issues accessible and to communicate these issues through public exhibition and within this written thesis.
The final concept developed in this research project is tactical media archaeology. This concept describes the techniques and approaches employed in the development of the body of practice-based work that are the central focus of this research project. This approach is a synthesis of two subfields of media art practice and theory, tactical media and media archaeology. Through practice, tactical media archaeology critiques the geopolitical machinations and systems beneath the networked devices and interfaces of the digital culture industry
The Angel of Art Sees the Future Even as She Flies Backwards: Enabling Deep Relational Encounter Through Participatory Practice-Based Research.
This research addresses the current lack of opportunity within interdisciplinary arts practices for deep one-to-one relational encounters between creative practitioners operating in applied arts, performance, and workshop contexts with participant-subjects. This artistic problem is situated within the wider culture of pervasive social media, which continues to shape our interactions into forms that are characteristically faster, shorter, and more fragmented than ever before. Such dispersal of our attention is also accelerating our inability to deeply focus or relate for any real length of time. These modes of engaging within our technologically permeated, cosmopolitan and global society is escalating relational problems. Coupled with a constant bombardment of unrealistic visual images, mental health difficulties are also consequently rising, cultivating further issues such as identity âsplittingâ, (Lopez-Fernandez, 2019). In the context of the arts, this thesis proposes that such relational lack cannot be solved by one singular art form, one media modality, one existing engagement approach, or within a short participatory timeframe.
Key to the originality of my thesis is the deliberate embodiment of a maternal experience. Feminist Lise Haller-Rossâ proposes that there is a âmother shaped hole in the art worldâ and that, âas with the essence of the doughnut â we donât need another hole for the doughnut, we need a whole new recipeâ (conference address, 2015). Indeed, her assertion encapsulates a need for different types of artistic and relational ingredients to be found. I propose these can be discovered within particular forms of maternal love; nurture; caring, and through conceptual relational states of courtship; intercourse; gestation, and birth. Furthermore, my maternal emphasis builds on: feminist, artist, and psychotherapist Bracha Ettingerâs (2006; 2015) notions of maternal, cohabitation and carrying; architect and phenomenologist Juhani Pallasmaaâs (2012) views on sensing and feeling; child psychoanalyst Donald Winnicottâs (1971) thoughts on transitional phenomena and perceptions of holding. Such psychotherapeutic and phenomenological theories are imbricated in-action within my multimodal arts processes. Additionally, by deliberately not privileging the ocular, I engage all my project participants senses and distil their multimodal data through an extended form of somatic and artistic Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), (Smith, Flowers, and Larkin, 2009). IPA usefully focuses on the importance of the thematic and idiographic in terms of new knowledge generation, with an analytical focus on lived experience. Indeed, whilst the specifics of the participants in my minor and major projects are unique, my research activates and makes valid, findings that are collectively beneficial to the disciplines of applied and interdisciplinary arts; the field of practice-based research, and beyond.
My original contribution to new knowledge as argued by this thesis, comprises both this text exposition and my practice. This sees the final generation of a new multimodal arts Participatory Practice-Based Framework (PartPb). Through this framework, the researcher-practitioner is seen to adopt a maternal role to gently guide project participants through four phases of co-created multimodal artwork generation. The four participatory âPhasesâ are: Phase 1: Courtship â Digital Dialogues; Phase 2: Intercourse â Performative Encounters; Phase 3: Gestation â Screen Narratives; Phase 4: Birth â Relational Artworks. The framework also contains six researcher-only âStagesâ: Stage 1: Participant Selection; Stage 2: Checking Distilled Themes; Stage 3: Location and Object Planning; Stage 4: Noticing, Logging, Sourcing; Stage 5: Collaboration and Construction; Stage 6: Releasing, Gifting, Recruiting. This new PartPb framework, is realised within a series of five practice-based (Pb) artworks called, âMinor Projects 1-5â, (2015-16) and Final Major Project, âTransformational Encounters: Touch, Traction, Transformâ (TETTT), (2018). These projects are likewise shaped through action-research processes of iterative testing, as developed from Candy and Edmonds (2010) Practice-based Research (PbR) trajectory. In my new PartPb framework, Candy, and Edmondsâ PbR processes are originally combined with a form of Fritz and Laura Perlâs Gestalt Experience Cycle (1947). This innovative fusion I come to term as a form of âFeeling Architecture,â which is procedurally proven to hold and carry both researcher and participants alike, safely, ethically, and creatively through all Phases and Stages of artefact generation. Specifically, my new multimodal PartPb framework offers new knowledge to the field of Practice-Based Research (PbR) and practitioners working in multimodal arts and applied performance contexts. Due to its participatory focus, I develop on the term Practice-Based Research, (Candy and Edmonds, 2010) to coin the term Participatory Practice-Based Research, (PartPbR).
The unique combination of multimodal arts and social-psychological methodologies underpinning my framework also has the potential to contribute to broader Arts, Well-Being, and Creative Health agendas, such as the UK governmentâs Social Prescribing and Arts and Health initiatives. My original framework offers future researchersâ opportunities to further develop, enhance and enrich individual and community well-being through its application to their own projects, and, in doing so, also starts to challenge unhelpful art binaries that still position community arts practices as somehow lesser to higher art disciplines
Science Fiction, Radical Democracy, and World Building: A Pedagogy of Unknowable Futures
The unknowability of the future implicates everyone, yet the narratives of mastery which shape pedagogical approaches to the future do not allow students the opportunity to explore the uncertainty that comes from ultimately unknowable futures. This dissertation therefore foregrounds the exploration of uncertainty by envisioning science fictional, collaborative world building as a space in which students can imagine contested views of the future that move beyond predicting future problems. This study occurred in two stages: first, a reflexive ethnography framed within participatory action research in one secondary-level English classroom over three months, which involved exploring science fiction (SF) with students who then mobilized science fictional storytelling to collaboratively imagine the future of Toronto; and second, a world building assignment that was designed and informed by findings from stage one and used with pre-service teachers in order to facilitate speculative pedagogical explorations as they imagined myriad potential futures of society and schooling through SF. In stage one, various qualitative methods were used to explore students engagement with SF, the future, and storytelling, including observations and fieldnotes, a questionnaire on students thoughts on the future, semi-structured group interviews, in-class discussions, and contributions to the collaborative world building project. Data is analyzed through thematic analysis, discourse analysis, and critical theories to gain a deeper understanding of issues of representation, power, and intersectionality in students engagement with one another throughout the project, in pursuit of understanding how students envisioned a collective, contested future together. In stage two, pre-service teachers world building work is analyzed through thematic analysis, with particular attention to the development of speculative pedagogies which centre futures that are open and uncertain. Informed by thinking on radically democratic pedagogy, poststructuralism, and critical theory, in addition to genre studies within SF scholarship, this study contributes to a reframing of the future within education by moving away from the goal of mastering unknowable futures, and instead towards engaging in a collectively constructed exploration of uncertainty, and further positions SF as a promising and largely untapped resource integral to narratively navigating challenge and change
Making social entrepreneurship part of strategic management: perspective of Abu Dhabi government.
This study presents the results both from primary and secondary data sources utilized by the researcher to complete this study on social entrepreneurship as part of strategic management in Abu Dhabi. The focus of this research is on social entrepreneurship initiatives undertaken by organizations working in Abu Dhabi. The study adopted a qualitative research approach along with the research methods known as semi-structured interviews and in-depth interviews. The researcher consulted secondary data based on the published material available on the topic as well as using primary data collected and analyzed by the researcher. The researcher conducted 269 semi-structured interviews with people working in different organizations and linked with social entrepreneurship initiatives in various ways. Along with these semi-structured interviews, the researcher conducted 15 in-depth interviews using open-ended questions in which probing questions were added by the researcher during the interviews. Moreover, three case studies were compiled by the researcher for this research. The findings show that social entrepreneurship projects are part of the Abu Dhabi governmentâs strategic management. The government is increasingly mobilizing resources to enable organizations to undertake more social entrepreneurship initiatives in the country. The participants confirmed that the various communities are supportive of, and taking part in, social entrepreneurship projects. These communities are gaining benefits from such projects in the form of solving their problems and learning skills related to doing business. The findings show that social entrepreneurship is gaining popularity among people because of its deep roots in the culture. The findings also show the impact of social entrepreneurship projects, although this impact is hard to discern due to public perceptions that social work and social entrepreneurship are part of their obligations rather than entrepreneurial ventures.
Keywords: social entrepreneurship, strategic management, Abu Dhabi government, United Arab Emirates (UAE
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