5,898 research outputs found

    Raising Critical Consciousness in Engineering Education: A Critical Exploration of Transformative Possibilities in Engineering Education and Research

    Get PDF
    This thesis represents a critical exploration of the opportunities, challenges, and barriers to enacting social justice via the engineering curriculum. Through an ethnographic case study of a British engineering for sustainable development course, I illuminate tensions and contradictions of attempts to “do good” while “doing engineering” in a higher education setting. This work is couched within critical and anti-colonial theoretical frames. Through critical and reflexive analysis, I illustrate attempts of participants to innovate in engineering education toward a counter-hegemonic engineering practice, and highlight transformative possibilities, as well as barriers. This case illustrates how the structures that formed modern engineering continue to shape engineering higher education, restraining attempts to transform engineering training for social good.A central question that has driven this work has been: Is it possible to cultivate a more socially just form of engineering practice through engineering higher education? The function of asking this question has been to interrogate a core assumption in engineering education research – that with the right blend of educational interventions, we can make strides towards social justice. My intent in interrogating this assumption is not to be nihilistic per se. I believe it is entirely possible that engineering could potentially be wielded for just cause and consequence. However, if we do not critically examine our core assumptions around this issue, we may also miss out on the possibility that socially just engineering is not achievable, at least in the way we are currently approaching it or in the current context within which it exists.An examination of this topic is already underway in the US context. However, it is under-explored in a British context. Given the different historical trajectories of engineering and engineering in higher education between these two contexts, a closer look at the British context is warranted

    An American Knightmare: Joker, Fandom, and Malicious Movie Meaning-Making

    Get PDF
    This monograph concerns the long-standing communication problem of how individuals can identify and resist the influence of unethical public speakers. Scholarship on the issue of what Socrates & Plato called the “Evil Lover” – i.e., the ill-intended rhetor – began with the Greek philosophers, but has carried into [post]Modern anxieties. For instance, the study of Nazi propaganda machines, and the rhetoric of Hitler himself, rejuvenated interest in the study of speech and communication in the U.S. and Europe. Whereas unscrupulous sophists used lectures and legal forums, and Hitler used a microphone, contemporary Evil Lovers primarily draw on new, internet-related tools to share their malicious influence. These new tools of influence are both more far-reaching and more subtle than the traditional practices of listening to a designated speaker appearing at an overtly political event. Rhetorician Ashley Hinck has recently noted the ways that popular culture – communication about texts which are commonly accessible and shared – are now significant sites through which citizens learn moral and political values. Accordingly, the talk of internet influencers who interpret popular texts for other fans has the potential to constitute strong persuasive power regarding ethics and civic responsibility. The present work identifies and responds to a particular case example of popular culture text that has been recently, and frequently, leveraged in moral and civic discourses: Todd Phillips’ Joker. Specifically, this study takes a hermeneutic approach to understanding responses, especially those explicitly invoking political ideology, to Joker as a method of examining civic meaning-making. A special emphasis is placed on the online film criticisms of Joker from white nationalist movie fans, who clearly exemplify ways that media responses can be leveraged by unethical speakers (i.e., Evil Lovers) and subtly diffused. The study conveys that these racist movie fans can embed values related to “trolling,” incelism, and xenophobia into otherwise seemingly innocuous talk about film. While the sharing of such speech does not immediately mean its positive reception, this kind of communication yet constitutes a new and understudied attack on democratic values such as justice and equity. The case of white nationalist movie fan film criticism therefore reflects a particular brand of communicative strategy for contemporary Evil Lovers in communicating unethical messages under the covert guise of mundane movie talk

    Literature, Development, and the Reaches of Literacy, 1979 to the Present

    Full text link
    In this study, I examine the twentieth century’s vast history of large-scale literacy campaigns and the imprints and legacies of those campaigns in literary texts from the global South. Literary texts by Mahasweta Devi, Nuruddin Farah, J. M. Coetzee, M. G. Vassanji, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and others provide compelling examples of narratives that foreground literacy - particularly its acquisition, loss, or redistribution in the lives, communities, and emerging independent nations in which these narratives take place. The second half of the twentieth century represents a global effort at the realignment of reading, writing, and power. In this moment, the authors at the center of this study restore the nonliterate to the scene of development, globalization, and nationalism. In these postcolonial literacy narratives, both the literate and the nonliterate confront the historical, material, and cultural valences of literacy in their lives - and, through these, both the limits and the power of education

    The Slightest Attachment: When Psychiatric Spaces Enact Affinities

    Get PDF
    While the disciplinary architecture of hospitals has long prevailed in psychiatry, many care teams now work in smaller structures, within communities. The author explores one of these places: Drawing on fieldwork in a psychiatric day center for teenagers, she traces how spatial arrangements matter in the care practice. From a corner in which one can withdraw, to a kitchen inviting to hang around, or displayed artworks that pique one's curiosity, caregivers use the material environment to stir up the slightest affinity from teenagers. This study thus expands our idea of what attachment is, and makes us more able to recognize the subtle dynamics between care, things, and spaces. With a preface by Jeannette Pols

    Towards ending incarceration of Indigenous peoples in Canada: A critical, narrative inquiry of hegemonic power in the Gladue report process

    Get PDF
    Abstract This study is concerned with the possibility that Gladue perpetuates the hegemonic powers of settler colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and neoliberalism. Gladue is intended to remediate systemic anti-Indigenous racism by requiring judges to consider all alternatives to incarceration when sentencing Indigenous peoples, yet Indigenous incarceration rates continue to rise precipitously. On the surface, Gladue does not appear to disrupt the hegemonic status quo. How is it that the Canadian state, even when ‘remediating,’ keeps producing the same – colonial, oppressive, and tyrannical – result? This qualitative study used a critical, narrative methodology, interviewing Gladue report writers (n=9) and judges (n=12) about their perspectives and experiences with Gladue, particularly Gladue reports. The study purposefully emphasized settler accountability – research as reparation – in the research design, data collection, and analysis. A careful, ethical protocol for researching with Indigenous peoples (n=9) was followed, premised in Truth and Reconciliation ‘Call to Action’ number 30 to reduce Indigenous incarceration in Canada. This study found that Gladue is falling short of achieving its systemic aim because of (a) a hyper-individualistic, dehumanizing configuration that discursively shifts judges away from dealing with the systemic issue of anti-Indigenous racism, towards judging the individual Indigenous person before the court; (b) colonial mentalities (e.g., whiteness and patriarchy) persisting in the process; (c) a lack of funding for Gladue writers, as well alternatives to incarceration, constraining judges’ capacities to divert Indigenous away from prisons. The study points towards the need for a more radical framework for Gladue that honours Indigenous self-determination and foundational treaties such as the Two Row Wampum

    Opportunities for Redress: Re-imagining Relations, Restoration, and Leisure for Uniformed Bodies serving as First Responders

    Get PDF
    In times of distress, uniformed first responders (UFRs) are the first formal line of care on scene and are responsible for providing care. Due to the obligations required of UFRs, they are considered to be at higher risk for experiencing traumatic stressors that may lead to concerns with their mental well-being (such as depression, alcoholism, post-traumatic stress, major depression, generalized anxiety, and sleep disorders) (Benedek et al., 2007; Bennett et al., 2004; Carey et al., 2011; Fullerton et al., 2004; Jacobson et al., 2008; Meyer et al., 2012). In the current climate of social activist movements (Black Lives Matter (BLM) and #Defundthepolice, in particular), the purpose of this research is to unpack and address the complex issue of care provision for first responders alongside these long overdue movements. Drawing from critical theories of disability, this research project was methodologically inspired by critical participatory action research (PAR) and narrative inquiry (Clandinin, 2016). I partnered with a local organization (FF) – a community-based holistic wellness centre built for and by UFRs to offer wellness-based services in Southern Ontario. The PAR team (three individuals) recruited 11 participants (six police officers, four paramedics, and one corrections officer) to participate in a series of audio-recorded focus groups and semi-structured interviews (September to December, 2021). This work was guided by concepts of power, privilege, and culture to unpack what it means to identify as a UFR (i.e., the militant ideologies, power-laden relations and performances, and symbolic representations) By un-learning and re-learning how emergent care is provided in these situations, and how restorative justice and care can be re-centered, this work aims to resist systemic oppressions (i.e., capitalism, government-sanctioned power, and ableism), restore caring bodies, and reconcile power relations with the public. This work employs the concept of redress ¬– the idea of resisting, restoring, repairing, or reconciling – (similar to Amighetti & Nuti, 2015; Henderson & Wakeham, 2013; Spiga, 2012) to address: (1) parts of institutional culture that UFRs that perpetuate toxic resilience, (2) the lack of mental health care relations and support that exist within UFR cultures, and (3) the need for leisure spaces of care, compassion, and healing. Through a reflexive, interpretive analysis (Smith et al.,1999), three main threads are described as making up the material and symbolic constructs of the UFR uniform (relations of power, cultural habitus and performing the expectations and symbolic representation) (Bourdieu, 1990; Butler, 1990; Foucault, 1977; Holt, 2008). Interrupted by necessary reflections on ableism, capitalism, white supremacy, and power in relation to UFRs, the findings of this research provide conceptual and practical implications on how government-sanctioned power is strategically used to maintain toxic relations within institutions that govern UFRs. I also offer reflections on how UFRs and the public experience parallel tensions and systemic harms as a result of government-sanctioned institutions of power. Leisure as a space for coping with stresses and trauma(s) (Heintzman, 2008; Iwasaki & Mannell, 2000; Kleiber et al., 2002; Weissinger & Iso-Ahola, 1984) is then used to better understand how UFRs take up leisure to navigate the nuances of stepping into laborious caring roles. This research makes a case for how leisure as care, healing, and restoration can be used to begin to mend the broken systemic relations for UFRs and the public. The findings of this research are represented through a narrative (documentary inspired) script as a means to share the stories and lived experiences told by UFRs. Future research can build on this work by interrupting government-sanctioned institutions of power that continue to privilege processes of ableism, capitalism, and colonialism and enact systemic harms and violences on UFRs and the public. All persons are in need of care in our badly fractured systems. I believe spaces of leisure can be used to cope and heal from systemic oppressions by offering opportunities for care, healing, and restoration to better meet the communal needs of all members of the public, including UFRs

    Neil Postman\u27s Loving Resistance Fighter: A Philosophy of Communication in the Age of Technopoly

    Get PDF
    This project walks the work of Neil Postman (1931-2003) into the philosophy of communication. Traditional conceptions of Neil Postman’s body of work position his ideas within the traditions of media ecology, general semantics, or, more broadly, as a form of media studies and criticism. In addition, others label Postman’s work, especially in Technopoly (1992), as pessimistic, deterministic, and/or imbibed with Luddite tendencies. This project articulates a different view and contends that Postman’s scholarship, in particular his articulation of the loving resistance fighter in the final chapter of Technopoly, is committed to resisting the nefarious forces embedded in both technology and modernity. It shows that Postman’s loving resistance fighter provides meaningful communicative practices that prevent one from falling into existential despair or acquiescing to the demands of technopoly. The loving resistance fighter’s emphasis on creating social and psychic distance from technology allows one to view technology with unclouded judgment and to see how technology becomes intertwined with the goods of modernity (progress, efficiency, and individual autonomy). Therefore, this project shows that the loving resistance fighter offers hope and the narrative ground to refuse both technology and modernity

    METROPOLITAN ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT. METROPOLITAN ANTHROPOLOGY FOR THE CONTEMPORARY LIVING MAP CONSTRUCTION

    Get PDF
    We can no longer interpret the contemporary metropolis as we did in the last century. The thought of civil economy regarding the contemporary Metropolis conflicts more or less radically with the merely acquisitive dimension of the behaviour of its citizens. What is needed is therefore a new capacity for imagining the economic-productive future of the city: hybrid social enterprises, economically sustainable, structured and capable of using technologies, could be a solution for producing value and distributing it fairly and inclusively. Metropolitan Urbanity is another issue to establish. Metropolis needs new spaces where inclusion can occur, and where a repository of the imagery can be recreated. What is the ontology behind the technique of metropolitan planning and management, its vision and its symbols? Competitiveness, speed, and meritocracy are political words, not technical ones. Metropolitan Urbanity is the characteristic of a polis that expresses itself in its public places. Today, however, public places are private ones that are destined for public use. The Common Good has always had a space of representation in the city, which was the public space. Today, the Green-Grey Infrastructure is the metropolitan city's monument that communicates a value for future generations and must therefore be recognised and imagined; it is the production of the metropolitan symbolic imagery, the new magic of the city
    • 

    corecore