Faith and the Asylum Crisis: The role of religion in responding to displacement (Policy Paper)

This briefing paper is a distillation of the main points and recommendations that arose during two two-day workshops held in Washington DC in May 2014 and Brussels in June 2014. The workshops, funded by the British Council USA Bridging Voices program, assembled scholars, policymakers and practitioners focused on issues of asylum, refuge and protection in contemporary global politics and the current and potential future roles of faith and faith actors across the US and Europe

Reinventing liberatory practice : how do we work with groups of which we are not a part?

The research that informed this paper asked: how can we work as allies of groups of which we are not a part? This question is particularly focused on work with people who have experienced colonisation by those who are aligned (by race, class, gender, culture or position) with the colonisers or oppressors. The research brings together literature in the fields of community work, adult education, and feminist and postcolonial theory, with Indigenous viewpoints and experience. An analysis of Indigenous viewpoints identified a range of key ideas about achieving social change. These ideas are developed into several frameworks, two of which will be discussed here. The first framework offers a way of conceptualising work against oppression and proposes that it must involve a focus on fostering emancipatory agency. Emancipatory agency involves the capacity to know and to act towards social justice ends via meaning making which follows ethical criteria. An ethics of meaning making is proposed which includes a focus on: multiplicity and difference; the partial nature of all knowings; the context / situatedness of meaning; and the critical / reflective attitude in meaning making. This type of agency is dependent on the process of transformative dialogue which is inherently communal and is based on four micro processes: affirming the O/other; encountering, exploring and experiencing of multiple and partial views; moving between positions of self and others; and enacting meaning into the world. A second framework operationalises these ideas in the field of community development, and offers a method of practice.<br /

Defining and measuring the outcomes of inclusive community for people with disability, their families and the communities with whom they engage

This paper explores the meaning of &lsquo;inclusive community&rsquo; as understood by a major disability service provider in Victoria, Australia. Scope is a major non government agency with 1300 staff, a $50M annual budget and over 4500 clients. The recent adoption of a new Strategic plan for the organisation has focused significant attention on the priority area of building welcoming and inclusive communities. Given this mandate, the organisation has begun research to define and measure outcomes for people with a disability, their families, and the communities with whom they engage, as a result of increased community inclusion. This paper reviews literature on outcomes definition relevant to this task and suggests that outcome measures to date, especially within the field of disability, have offered a set of outcomes that are too limited in their aspiration and breadth. It has been the experience within Scope that people with a disability, including people with intellectual, multiple and complex disabilities, aspire to and experience outcomes across a far broader range of life domains than is currently captured in either existing disability outcome measures or in government policies that frame service delivery. As a result, the paper introduces an emerging outcomes framework which seeks to define outcomes across a range of citizenship domains

The London Experience: A Study in the Persuasiveness of Dress

The purpose of this thesis is to answer the research question, does living in a more fashion-forward culture divergent from one’s own for an extended period of time cause that individual to emulate the style of dress of the divergent, more avant-garde culture? More specifically, this thesis embodies a review of literature that delves into two topical areas, sociology of dress and the history of London as a fashion capital to decipher if these areas under review can explain the transformation observed. The primary research design was the use of descriptive research in the form of a self-administered, convenience, non-probability survey. The respondents were female students between the ages of 18 and 21 years old studying abroad inLondon,Englandfor the spring semester at the London College of Fashion. Through analysis of the research conducted, it was found that 56.9% of those surveyed changed their style of dress after studying abroad in Londonfor three to four months, while 43.1% didn’t change at all. The data collected and analyzed indicates that 86.2% of those surveyed perceived their style of dress to be more avant-garde or \British at the completion of their semester abroad. Conclusively, the majority of subjects who answered the research questions changed their style of dress. Scrutiny of the data also determined that the number of subjects who changed their style of dress compared to those whose did not equated to 13.7% more subjects proving that being in an avant-garde culture different from America has a considerable impact on style of dress. Based on the research and the review of literature conducted by the author there are numerous theoretical reasons for the subjects’ drastic change in style of dress. One reason involves the role, the environment and in turn conformity plays in an individual’s style of dress and self perception. Another delves into the idea of self-monitoring in relation to ones’ self-confidence. Alternatively, the significance and rigidity of social class historically and its effect on dress in Americacompared to that of Great Britaincould have contributed to the shift in style of dress. Lastly, the fashionable image and the history of Londonand New Yorkas fashion capitals could have strongly impacted the dress and self-perception of the students surveyed. However, all of these plausible reasons require further research and added detail to the survey conducted to prove if they, in fact contributed to the drastic transformation in dress under discussion

Religion and World Politics

Religion and World Politics provides a short, accessible, and practical introduction to how we can understand the place of religion in world politics in a more comprehensive, contextually relevant way. Is religion central or irrelevant, positive or negative in world politics today? So much political commentary and analysis focuses on these issues. But these are the wrong questions to be asking. Designed for practitioners, policymakers, and newcomers to the topic of religion and global politics, this book emphasises that religion is not something clear, identifiable, and definable, but is fluid and shifting. Consequently, we need analytical frameworks that help us to make sense of this ever-changing phenomenon. The authorpresents a critical, intersectional framework for analysing religion and applies this to case studies of three core areas of international relations (IR) analysis: (1) conflict, violence, and security; (2) development and humanitarianism; and (3) human rights, law, and public life. These cases highlight how assumptions about what religion is and does affect policymakers, theorists, and activists. The book demonstrates the damage that has been done through policies and programmes based on unquestioned assumptions and the possibilities and insights to be gained by incorporating the critical study of religion into research, policymaking, and practice. This book will be of great interest to students of global politics, IR, religion, and security studies, as well as diplomats, civil servants, policymakers, journalists, and civil society practitioners. It will also benefit IR scholars interested in developing their research to include religion, as well as scholars of religion from disciplines outside IR interested in a deeper understanding of religion and world politics

Exploring Membership in Black Greek-Letter Sororities and the Influence on Career Advancement for Black Women in Higher Education

The aim of this study was to explore membership in Black Greek-letter sororities and the influence on career advancement for Black women in higher education. Research has neglected to account for the role that Black Greek-letter organizations play in the development of Black women beyond their undergraduate experience. This research is motivated by two research questions: (1) How do Black women perceive that membership in Black Greek-letter sororities prepared them for career advancement in higher education?; and (2) How do Black women perceive that membership in Black Greek-letter sororities influenced their professional success in higher education? To examine these questions, the study explored the perceptions of 12 Black women holding a membership in one of four Black Greek-letter sororities on the influence these memberships had on career advancement using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings from the research show that the impact of Black-Greek letter sorority membership on the career advancement for Black women in higher education is more complex than previously thought. The results, implications for institutions of higher education and Black Greek-letter sororities, and future research are discussed

Somatic subjects : the pathological path to Victorian womanhood

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on July 30, 2013).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisor: Dr. Nancy WestIncludes bibliographical references.Vita.Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2012."July 2012"This project explores the role of disease in narratives of female development throughout the nineteenth century, primarily British women's novels. Specifically, I analyze the ways in which female subjectivities are formed in a relationship with illness, experienced either personally or by proxy. Bringing novels and memoirs in dialogue with gendered representations detailed in Romantic and Victorian medical treatises, I propose that certain diseases were uniquely adaptable to particular narrative paths, and that the course of a female character's growth depended on the nature of her pathology. In doing so, I reveal that the realms of medical discourse and the narrative arts were inextricably bound throughout the nineteenth century and that they collaborated in constructing Victorian femininities such as " the rational woman," "the angel in the house," and the New Woman. It is my conclusion that gendered representations of illness produced by biomedical discourse inform both the crystallization of subjectivity and configuration of narrative structure in the woman's bildung.Includes bibliographical reference