South Africa’s about-turn on Libya: Is speaking with the AU/BRIC majority defending the indefensible?

On 17 March, 2011, South Africa joined a number of other permanent and non-permanent members of the UN Security Council in adopting UNSC Resolution 1973. The resolution authorised “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in the escalating civil conflict in Libya, and was ultimately implemented by NATO, with controversial consequences. South Africa’s decision came as a surprise to the country’s foreign policy observers because it contradicted a number of key tenets of post-Apartheid South Africa’s foreign policy

Where to from here for South Africa’s foreign policy?

Disquiet is being expressed in global capitals about the current travails afflicting the South African economy and body politic. Convulsive strikes have been paralysing one of the country’s central economic mainstays and leading export sector, the mining industry, while a violent truck drivers’ strike has claimed at least one life. The public education system, among other key national sectors, is laboring under weak governance, with activists resorting to the justice system to compel government action. The political elite is preoccupied with an intra-party battle that was recently intensified by the official opening of the nominations process for the new leadership of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), to be elected in December at the party’s elective conference. In all of this, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain distance between the country’s domestic problems and its international image. While previously, President Jacob Zuma was seen as a well-meaning, friendly, if uncommonly polygamous, leader in Western capitals, he is now more widely viewed as lacking in the leadership necessary to steer South Africa out of mounting domestic troubles

Twenty years on the African Union’s continental diplomacy has changed

On the 20th anniversary of the Constitutive Act of the African Union entering into force, Candice Moore reflects on the diplomacy, vision and paradigm changes that brought it into being, and the differences between then and the Union today

Governing Parties and Southern Internationalism: a neoclassical realist approach to the foreign policies of South Africa and Brazil, 1999-2010

The international relations literature on internationalism in foreign policy has not taken account of the internationalist methods and motives of countries of the developing world. This thesis aims to correct this absence through an analysis of Southern internationalism, as evidenced by the foreign policy approaches of South Africa and Brazil in the first decade of the 21st century. By utilising a neoclassical realist approach to the study of the emergence of new powers, the use of internationalism as a foreign policy tool is interrogated as a response both to domestic imperatives, such as perception and identity, and systemic constraints and opportunities. Central to the analysis is an examination of the role of governing parties in foreign policymaking, both as key actors in determining policy, and as the sources of ideational constructs, in this case ‘internationalism’, that have a bearing on foreign policy. Foreign policymakers are limited in their perceptions and responses to external threats and opportunities by the domestic institutional structure, as well as by external threats and opportunities. In South Africa, responses are often limited to rhetoric, owing to limited resource extraction capacity, in spite of the highly centralised foreign policymaking structure under Mbeki. In Brazil, constitutional checks and balances also limited the state’s responses to external stimuli under Lula; yet, these responses, when they are implemented, can be more forceful owing to greater resource capacity. The ‘new Southern internationalism’, propounded by both South Africa and Brazil, is a function of domestic politics and external pressures, as evidenced by the Haiti case. These findings make a contribution to advancing the analysis of emerging powers, their trajectory and intentions in international relations, as well as the extent to which governing parties can influence foreign policy outcomes, and under which condition

Using Simulation to Enhance Undergraduate Nursing Education

This poster presentation will discuss the implementation of simulation-based education in the undergraduate nursing curriculum to increase preparedness in caring for adolescent patients with symptoms of depression and suicidal ideation. This topic aligns with the conference’s theme by identifying the importance of introducing nursing students to urgent and life-threatening simulated healthcare events prior to graduation. The plan for this presentation is to impart information to others regarding the use of the International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning’s standards of best practice when implementing innovative, simulation-based education for nursing students. The outcome and objectives for this presentation is to provide awareness on how our faculty implemented these simulation-based experiences in our program, to describe the standards of best practice for implementing this innovative type of education using our University’s Simulation Program, and to disseminate our progress and findings to other members of regional institutions of higher education.https://jagworks.southalabama.edu/cotl2024-poster/1000/thumbnail.jp

"Coming ready or not" : women's accounts of negotiating intersubjectivity within heterosex : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

This research examined the discourses that women rely on when talking about heterosexual sex and how they position both themselves and their sexual partners. These positions are produced through dominant sexual discourses that function to maintain and reproduce a sexual double standard for women, and to reinforce existing patriarchal power structures. However, these subject/object positions also draw on multiple intersecting discourses. This research examines women’s attempts at negotiating space within sexual encounters to enable the opening of spaces for resistance and for challenging the normative and oppressive discourses that produce them. Analysis of conversational interviews with eight women was conducted to interrogate the dominant discourses involved in the construction, maintenance and change of meaning within normative discourse over time. I identified where these discourses were integrated or worked in tandem to produce sexual subjectivities and areas of contradiction or inconsistences which were accounted for as the women negotiated meaning. I explored points of resistance and repositioning within each discourse. A feminist poststructuralist epistemology was utilised with a focus on social power relations to enable the exploration of the patriarchal power structures that regulates women’s subjectivity and the social function of the sexual double standard and heteronormativity in maintaining patriarchal dominance and the social status quo. It also enabled examination of the resistances exercised by the women towards the sexual double standard, the coital imperative and the absence of desire. Analysis included examination of the ways in which the women located themselves and their partners in relation to sexual encounters and orgasm. Key findings were; that women’s sexuality is still represented as a response to men’s sexuality with a clear double standard still in play; that sex for most of the women was very important to the overall relationship; that orgasm was a choice and faking had its uses; that pleasure did not mean orgasm; that having sex with multiple partners could enable pleasurable encounters; that sexual encounters did not necessarily involve penetration; and that women have very clear desires. My analysis suggests that regardless of social movements towards acknowledging women’s sexuality, disciplinary power continues to regulate women’s sexual encounters and an acknowledgment of women’s sexual desire remains absent within the norms of heterosexuality. Without articulated desires, women struggle with burdens of masculine imposed sexuality, negative social sanctions and negative or unwanted sexual experiences. This research highlights the importance of talking openly about women’s desire and to open up a space within sexual education for pleasure and relationship talk and within everyday social discussions that enables both a language and position from which women may assert their own independent desires. The points of resistance identified within women’s talk along with the position of future focused desiring women may enable new counter narratives and therefore more pleasurable sexual experiences for women to occur

School Counselor Use of Narrative Therapy to Support Students of Color Transitioning from an Alternative School Setting

The authors propose a collaborative application of narrative therapy utilizing the school counselor, teachers, and parents to support students of color transitioning from an alternative school setting. Research indicates that students of color transitioning from alternative settings often face stigma and marginalization by teachers and peers. The authors contend that school counselors can use this collaborative narrative approach to support students to create new narratives within a supportive environment. Included is an illustration demonstrating the application of the collaborative narrative therapy process

Gay Men\u27s Health Crisis: An Ecological Approach

The limited early response to the AIDS epidemic deepened existing prejudices against marginalized groups. Healthcare, government assistance, and social services were denied, insufficient, or inaccessible. The Gay Men\u27s Health Crisis (GMHC) formed in NYC in the 1980s as a volunteer-oriented community response to ameliorate social and medical conditions that clients with AIDS faced. Through Bronfenbrenner\u27s Ecological model, GMHC\u27s monthly archives made for the affected community from 1986 to 1988 were qualitatively analyzed to understand the factors that contributed to the client\u27s experiences with GMHC and AIDS. These included client reports, minutes from team leader meetings, board meeting notes, and newsletters. The major themes found in the archival data include relationships between GMHC and government, relationships between members and clients, public perceptions of AIDS, and changes in the organizational structure of staff.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_spring2020/1060/thumbnail.jp

An ontology of mechanisms of action in behaviour change interventions

BACKGROUND: Behaviour change interventions influence behaviour through causal processes called “mechanisms of action” (MoAs). Reports of such interventions and their evaluations often use inconsistent or ambiguous terminology, creating problems for searching, evidence synthesis and theory development. This inconsistency includes the reporting of MoAs. An ontology can help address these challenges by serving as a classification system that labels and defines MoAs and their relationships. The aim of this study was to develop an ontology of MoAs of behaviour change interventions. METHODS: To develop the MoA Ontology, we (1) defined the ontology’s scope; (2) identified, labelled and defined the ontology’s entities; (3) refined the ontology by annotating (i.e., coding) MoAs in intervention reports; (4) refined the ontology via stakeholder review of the ontology’s comprehensiveness and clarity; (5) tested whether researchers could reliably apply the ontology to annotate MoAs in intervention evaluation reports; (6) refined the relationships between entities; (7) reviewed the alignment of the MoA Ontology with other relevant ontologies, (8) reviewed the ontology’s alignment with the Theories and Techniques Tool; and (9) published a machine-readable version of the ontology. RESULTS: An MoA was defined as “a process that is causally active in the relationship between a behaviour change intervention scenario and its outcome behaviour”. We created an initial MoA Ontology with 261 entities through Steps 2-5. Inter-rater reliability for annotating study reports using these entities was α=0.68 (“acceptable”) for researchers familiar with the ontology and α=0.47 for researchers unfamiliar with it. As a result of additional revisions (Steps 6-8), 21 further entities were added to the ontology resulting in 282 entities organised in seven hierarchical levels. CONCLUSIONS: The MoA Ontology extensively captures MoAs of behaviour change interventions. The ontology can serve as a controlled vocabulary for MoAs to consistently describe and synthesise evidence about MoAs across diverse sources