We Are Still in Apartheid: Girls\u27 Perspectives on Education Inequality in Democratic South Africa and Models for Social Change

Centering on the perceptions of black South African girl learners from impoverished township communities provides a new informed lived knowledge regarding social and educational inequality in the nation’s post-apartheid era. Perspectives from intersectional feminist theory and Black Feminist Thought offer an appropriate and unique approach to analyze the multiple socio-economic inequalities these girl learners face every day. By gathering original narrative data from a group of girls, their teachers, and the principal of Fezeka Secondary School in Gugulethu, South Africa, the intersections of inequality these girls face will be illuminated as critical factors to consider for policy and program aid initiatives. By gathering the narratives of these girls and members of the school, the challenges girls face in their journey towards secondary education completion and access to university education will be situated in the larger historical context and social structure of South Africa. This thesis also analyzes original data from the founders of international education NGO Education without Borders, which has a longstanding history at the school, and focuses on the ways that this organization and many others like it could bring more meaningful and necessary change to girl learners. Both international and national policy and program efforts centered on education development must consider the multiple oppressions a given group of learners face, and by implementing group produced knowledge, work to understand how these oppressions coexist and interact. The findings from this study demonstrate that girls not only provide a more informed perspective of the social challenges that personally affect them, but also that these narratives could improve the reach and success of education policy and program initiatives. The study demonstrates through the case study of Education without Borders how an organization’s openness to incorporate girls’ perspectives can lead to more appropriate and effective educational development and change

A ritual investigation of sudden death events in an urban united states emergency department

This study investigated sudden death as a social act and a ritual process (Hertz, 1960) in an urban hospital emergency department (ED) in the United States. An analytical auto ethnographic approach was utilized by the author who is a nurse-anthropologist and a bereaved parent. In sudden and a more prepared for death, the dying person goes through a rite of passage van Gennep (1960[1909]) and enters into an area of liminality Turner (1967). A key transition from life to death occurs and crossing a threshold where the dying person cannot cross back. The aims of the study were to: 1) Identify and describe the meaning of social rituals to families and healthcare staff involved in sudden death events, 2) Discover the organizational culture and power structure involved with the formal and informal rituals in a sudden death and 3) Analyze the data collected regarding the social rituals and organizational culture in sudden events in an urban ED in the U.S. to contribute to the anthropological literature on death and dying and ritual processes. In a yearlong ethnographic study, these research activities were conducted: 1) extensive participation observation in the ED setting, 2) twenty in-depth face-to-face interviews with staff members who worked with families experiencing sudden death events and 3) ten in-depth face-to-face interviews with eleven family members who experienced a sudden death event. All interviews were audiotaped, transcribed and analyzed for themes. Findings included identification of ritualized activity by hospital staff in sudden death events despite the lack of official policy in this area. Staff and families\u27 stories about the ritual process as the sudden death event progressed in the ED were analyzed in terms of six key properties of secular rituals (Moore & Myerhoff 1977). The stages of the ritual process analyzed in detail included gathering in the ED and coming together for the death ritual, the transitional social time of becoming dead in the ED, leaving the ED and re-entering society as a mourner and final rituals. It was concluded that the ritual process overall gave structure and meaning to staff and families involved in sudden death events

Evaluation of the behavior of tanks under seismic load

The unstable reaction of structures could be influenced by evaluating the behavior of tanks under seismic loads using research of soil-structure interaction. Because fluid limit tanks are important structures that can continue to function even in the face of severe earthquakes, their unstable behavior should be examined. Similarly, under unstable tremor ground upgrades, the unstable reaction of liquid limit tanks placed on 0.5 area soil is investigated. To improve correlation, the six considered ground enhancements are divided into bundles based on their beat like properties, dubbed turn off and shut accuse ground enhancements. The acquired ground mass-spring represent is used to signal up the liquid limit tanks, and the liquid is displayed as lumped lots termed sloshing and flying, and furthermore exploiting paired springs and dashpots is how the fluid and structure are linked. Using a connected spring and dashpot, the impact of Soil Structure Interaction is also considered. Aside from that, four soil types are commonly used to identify a wide range of soil attributes. To date, the mat lab writing computer programs has been used to invigorate the time history reactions in the aftermath of social gathering the stages of development. Due to its significant heap, the sloshing (or convective) voidance is not troubled by such effects, even though the Soil Structure Interaction influence causes a reduction in rush relocation, falling small and standardized base shear

Social networks and performance in distributed learning communities

Social networks play an essential role in learning environments as a key channel for knowledge sharing and students' support. In distributed learning communities, knowledge sharing does not occur as spontaneously as when a working group shares the same physical space; knowledge sharing depends even more on student informal connections. In this study we analyse two distributed learning communities' social networks in order to understand how characteristics of the social structure can enhance students' success and performance. We used a monitoring system for social network data gathering. Results from correlation analyses showed that students' social network characteristics are related to their performancePostprint (published version

Fundamental structures of dynamic social networks

Social systems are in a constant state of flux with dynamics spanning from minute-by-minute changes to patterns present on the timescale of years. Accurate models of social dynamics are important for understanding spreading of influence or diseases, formation of friendships, and the productivity of teams. While there has been much progress on understanding complex networks over the past decade, little is known about the regularities governing the micro-dynamics of social networks. Here we explore the dynamic social network of a densely-connected population of approximately 1000 individuals and their interactions in the network of real-world person-to-person proximity measured via Bluetooth, as well as their telecommunication networks, online social media contacts, geo-location, and demographic data. These high-resolution data allow us to observe social groups directly, rendering community detection unnecessary. Starting from 5-minute time slices we uncover dynamic social structures expressed on multiple timescales. On the hourly timescale, we find that gatherings are fluid, with members coming and going, but organized via a stable core of individuals. Each core represents a social context. Cores exhibit a pattern of recurring meetings across weeks and months, each with varying degrees of regularity. Taken together, these findings provide a powerful simplification of the social network, where cores represent fundamental structures expressed with strong temporal and spatial regularity. Using this framework, we explore the complex interplay between social and geospatial behavior, documenting how the formation of cores are preceded by coordination behavior in the communication networks, and demonstrating that social behavior can be predicted with high precision.Comment: Main Manuscript: 16 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary Information: 39 pages, 34 figure

Contact patterns among high school students

Face-to-face contacts between individuals contribute to shape social networks and play an important role in determining how infectious diseases can spread within a population. It is thus important to obtain accurate and reliable descriptions of human contact patterns occurring in various day-to-day life contexts. Recent technological advances and the development of wearable sensors able to sense proximity patterns have made it possible to gather data giving access to time-varying contact networks of individuals in specific environments. Here we present and analyze two such data sets describing with high temporal resolution the contact patterns of students in a high school. We define contact matrices describing the contact patterns between students of different classes and show the importance of the class structure. We take advantage of the fact that the two data sets were collected in the same setting during several days in two successive years to perform a longitudinal analysis on two very different timescales. We show the high stability of the contact patterns across days and across years: the statistical distributions of numbers and durations of contacts are the same in different periods, and we observe a very high similarity of the contact matrices measured in different days or different years. The rate of change of the contacts of each individual from one day to the next is also similar in different years. We discuss the interest of the present analysis and data sets for various fields, including in social sciences in order to better understand and model human behavior and interactions in different contexts, and in epidemiology in order to inform models describing the spread of infectious diseases and design targeted containment strategies.Comment: Supplementary Information at http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/files.figshare.com/1677807/File_S1.pd

A new living contract: cases in the implementation of the Living Wage by British SME retailers

Purpose of this paper: This paper aims to provide evidence for the motivations of SMEs for introducing the Living Wage, focusing on retail as one specific sector. It develops understanding of the strategic benefits and challenges these employers face in balancing financial, ethical and social considerations in small businesses. Design/methodology/approach: The study employed mixed methods: a survey and semi-structured interviews. The interviews are presented as part of three case studies. Findings: Findings indicate that employers were, for the most part, motivated by personal ethics and beliefs about fair wages and social justice. They suggest that SME accrue benefits from Living Wage accreditation such as reputational benefits and higher employee morale, but that there are also potential pitfalls of Living Wage adoption related to pay structure and incentives. The sustainability of the Living Wage emerged as an issue in terms of the long-term strategy and brand positioning of the companies involved. Research limitations/implications: The nature of the research was exploratory and thus the study only allows for limited generalisation. Recommended avenues for further research include gathering data from different levels of organisations and from different stakeholders. What is original/value of paper: This is the first paper to investigate the drivers for, and implementation of, the Living Wage in SMEs. The specific characteristics of SMEs – their ethos, low visibility, reliance on trusting relationships and limited resources, among others – make the study of why and how they choose to implement the LW very interesting. This study is the first to gather and analyse data from SME retailers and wholesalers that have implemented the Living Wage

Investigating design features of a computer-mediated communication system

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is increasingly used in higher education, but it is not without problems. The effectiveness of CMC depends on many factors, including the characteristics of CMC systems themselves. The research reported here therefore aimed to investigate how an educational CMC system might be improved, in order to support learning more effectively. The main context for the research was distance learning at the UK Open University (OU). A two-stage, mixed methods research approach was adopted. In the first stage, interviews and observations were carried out to explore the benefits and problems experienced by users. This revealed two major issues: information overload and lack of social presence. Information overload relates to users’ problems dealing with large numbers of messages. Social presence relates to the need for users to feel connected with each other. The second stage investigated system features aimed at addressing these issues, implemented in a prototype computer conferencing system. Features to address overload included branched message threading and user recommendations. Features to address social presence were ‘résumés’ and instant messaging. These features were evaluated using questionnaires, with several cohorts of students in an OU course. Students expressed approval of the features, although some features were not widely used. Students preferred branched threading to chronological threading because branching helped them to follow ‘conversations’. Students were uncomfortable recommending messages, feeling that the value of a message would vary between people. They were also uncomfortable using instant messaging to contact others whom they did not know. However, the awareness aspect of instant messaging provided a sense of solidarity. The research demonstrated that the problems of overload and lack of social presence are significant, and each has social aspects which must be addressed. Students’ relationships with each other affect whether and how they use the features of CMC systems. We can conclude that particular attention must be paid to the social aspects of online communication, both when designing educational CMC systems and when considering how they are used. To maximise the benefits for learning, students need to feel comfortable with each other online, and there are few short cuts to achieving this

Encounters on the social web: Everyday life and emotions online

Encounters also happen online nowadays and, yes, they are still difficult to describe, even though it is sometimes easier to observe them-and obtain data about them- than in the past. The internet is crucially 'shaping the interactions people have with one another' (Johns 2010: 499). With the recent explosion and popularity of Web 2.0 services and the social web, such as Facebook (FB), Twitter, and various other types of social media, internet users now have at their disposal an unprecedented collection of tools to interact with others. These modes of online sociability allow users to pursue social encounters with variable levels of involvement, attention, and activity (Papacharissi and Mendelson 2010). For many of us it is now difficult to imagine our social relationships without access to the internet. The social web plays an important role in relationships among internet users (Boyd 2006), with the expression, management and experience of emotions being key to the maintenance of these relationships

Borgs in the Org? Organizational Decision Making and Technology

Data warehousing and the development of the World Wide Web both augment information gathering (search) processes in individual decision making by increasing the availability of required information. Imagine, for example, that one wanted to buy new golf clubs. Thirty years ago, the cost of information gathering would likely have limited an individual\u27s search process to geographically proximal vendors and the golf clubs they stocked. Today, a prospective purchaser can log onto the World Wide Web to find out what types of golf clubs are available anywhere; consult databases, chat rooms, and bulletin boards (e.g., epinions.com) to gather product information and user opinions; and compare prices across vendors around the world