scholarly journals “Witch doctors” or professionals? The graduates of Mexico´s first intercultural university and the struggle for legitimacy

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 160
Author(s):  
Marion Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
Critical Mass ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Decolonial Theory ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
Indigenous Minority ◽  
Reproduction Of Inequality

Since 2003, the Mexican government has opened 11 intercultural universities serving a total of 15,000 students, a majority of whom are members of Mexico´s Indigenous minority. While there is a growing body of work analyzing the intercultural model from public policy and theoretical perspectives, few studies focus on the experiences of the students and graduates of these institutions. In this article, I share the findings of one such study of the Intercultural University of Mexico State, the pioneer of the intercultural universities. Through interviews with graduates, students, and deans of three undergraduate intercultural programs, I seek to answer a central question, which is rooted in critical and decolonial theory: To what degree does the intercultural model achieve its stated mission of empowering Indigenous students and to what degree does it contribute to the reproduction of inequality? In general, the findings are mixed. While many students share experiences of discrimination in the workplace, and even being derided as “witch-doctors,” they argue that attending an institution with a critical mass of Indigenous students has empowered them personally and professionally, transformed their cultural identities, and given them a new appreciation for their Indigenous roots.

Moral Choices in Digital Games

2020 ◽  
pp. 707-724
Author(s):  
Cleve Graver ◽  
Fran C. Blumberg
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Digital Games ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Digital Game ◽  
Game Play ◽  
Game World ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Moral Choices

Digital game play is increasingly acknowledged as an activity in which moral decisions are made. Research to date has largely addressed decisions pertaining to transgressions despite opportunities for prosocial moral choices. These decisions range from relatively benign acts of cheating to gain advantage within a game to the more egregious infliction of physical harm on virtual others to advance one’s goals. Research examining the ramifications of these transgressions as they apply to perceptions of game play and to real-world behaviors is still relatively new and largely studied among undergraduate participants. We survey this growing body of work with consideration of the theoretical perspectives that have been used to frame it and the factors, such as game narrative and mode of play, that have been identified as impacting players’ moral judgments and choices in the digital game world.

scholarly journals Segregation and the Sea: Toward a Critical Understanding of Race and Coastal Blue Space in Greater Miami

2020 ◽  
pp. 019372352095053 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra Phoenix ◽  
Sarah L. Bell ◽  
Julie Hollenbeck
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Group Data ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Focus Group Data ◽  
Critical Understanding

There is a growing body of research signaling the health and wellbeing benefits of being in blue space. Here, we advance this intellectual agenda by critically examining perceptions and experiences of coastal blue space among residents of a disadvantaged, predominantly African American community who report limited engagement with their local coastal blue space, despite beachgoing being considered mainstream by a previous generation. Drawing on focus group data and sensitized to a range of theoretical perspectives aligned with race, space, and social class, we advance theoretical and empirical knowledge pertaining to blue space engagement. In doing so, we demonstrate the need for more critically informed, theoretically appropriate research in this area, which connects individual stories of the sea to the wider historical, social, and political settings in which relationships with blue space are framed and (re)produced.

Indigenous Learning Environments

Education ◽  
2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Learning Environment ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Alaska Native ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Indigenous Learning

A learning environment incorporates the physical location, context, and cultures in which students learn. The term implicitly acknowledges that learning takes place in a multitude of ways and locations. The implication is that certain learning environments are better suited for certain individuals, cultures, subjects, or content. Indigneous students are often underserved in higher education. Few educational institutions, outside of tribally controlled institutions, have a critical mass of Indigenous students, resulting in a lack of Indigenous courses, content, programs, dialogue, and space. An additional consequence is that research solely dedicated to Indigenous postsecondary education is limited. To account for this gap, it is necessary to pull from secondary, and sometimes primary, academic research. Cultural differences between dominant higher education models and traditional ways of learning work to widen the education gap and reduce Indigenous students’ future opportunities. In 2016, approximately, 20 percent of American Indians/Alaska Native and Pacific Islander students enrolled in higher education, yet their graduation rate was 39 percent and 51 percent, respectively, compared to 64 percent for white students. Creating an Indigenous learning environment can serve to improve Indigneous student knowledge acquisition, increase recruitment and retention, and facilitate increased on-campus intercultural dialogue. Curating a space where Indigneous students can thrive and where non-Indigenous students are able to learn about the unique sociohistorical relationship betwen Indigneous people and the United States facilitates the bridging of a cultural gap in larger society. After providing a General Overview, the literature is divided into five sub-themes: Curriculum, Indigenous Knowledge, Indigenous Pedagogy, Indigenous-Focused Assessment, and Culturally Appropriate Safe Space.

The Governance of Islam in Finland and Ireland

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuula Sakaranaho ◽  
Tuomas Martikainen
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Status ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Governance Of Islam ◽  
State Relations

The questions of how western European states have related, and should relate, to their Muslim populations have in recent decades generated a rapidly growing body of research, aimed at answering the above questions from different theoretical perspectives. It has been argued that the main problem with the existing theories is their failure to take into account historically evolved church–state relations that have a bearing on the way that Muslim religious practices are accommodated in a given country. In order to test this argument, we will examine the representational structures of Muslims in Finland and the Republic of Ireland as well as questions pertaining to Islam and education. Even if under different legal arrangements of church–state relations, both Finland and Ireland have opted for a policy where they aim at securing the status quo of a dominant national church while also extending some of the legal privileges enjoyed by the mainstream church to religious minorities. What we will demonstrate in our article is that while this kind of “policy of extended privileges” can work for, it can also function against securing the rights of religious minorities such as Muslims.

scholarly journals Religion at the Margins: Resistance to Secular Humanitarianism at the Rohingya Refugee Camps in Bangladesh

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 423
Author(s):  
Nusrat Jahan Mim
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global South ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Forced Migrations ◽  
Growing Body

This paper joins the growing body of work on Human Rights and Religion and examines the impacts of religious practices in protecting the socioeconomic and cultural rights of Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh. Based on an empirical study at eight different camps in Kutupalong, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, this article documents how the refugees, through different Islamic religious activities and practices, protect their cultural identities, negotiate with the local governing agents, and maintain solidarity with the host communities in their camp lives. This article also describes how, in these camps, many secular humanitarian projects often get challenged, resisted, or rejected by the refugees since those fail to address their networked relations with religion. Drawing from a rich body of literature in forced migrations, socioeconomic human rights, and religious studies in the Global South, this article investigates how religion and religious activities cushion the refugees from different forms of marginalization that are often engendered by secular development agencies. This article further offers several insights for practitioners and policymakers to ensure socioeconomic and cultural integration in human rights activities in refugee camps in the Global South.

scholarly journals Discourse, identity and change in mid-to-late life: interdisciplinary perspectives on language and ageing

2009 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 849-861 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUSTINE COUPLAND
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Late Life ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Discursive Psychology ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Growing Body

ABSTRACTThe papers in this special issue contribute to the growing body of research on sociolinguistic and discursive interpretations of mid and later life by investigating some of the identity affordances and constraints associated with ‘being middle-aged’ or ‘being old’. The papers here offer qualitative, contextually based analyses of a broad range of data and use various methodological and theoretical perspectives: narrative theory, critical pragmatics, social theory and discursive psychology. The main focus is on the ways in which change impacts on the ageing individual, and how this change is discursively interpreted and negotiated both by and for or about individuals in diverse social frames. We examine age and change as they interact with personal and social identity in personal diary accounts, in print, on the television and web media, in conversations amongst friends and acquaintances, in interviews and during storytelling. Language and communication are examined as resources for making and interpreting the meanings of ageing, at both the macro (societal) and micro (individual and inter-personal) levels.

scholarly journals De-industrialization and Globalization

2002 ◽  
Vol 47 (S10) ◽  
pp. 3-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher H. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Rust Belt ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
History Of ◽  
World Economic ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Immanuel Wallerstein

The problem of de-industrialization has undergone a decisive transmutation in the past two decades, roughly from the moment when it was linked to proto-industrialization at the Budapest Economic History Conference in 1981. Also interacting with the remarkable efforts of Immanuel Wallerstein and his colleagues who dated the formation of a “world economic system” from the expansion of European conquest and trade in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, its place in historical and sociological analysis rapidly transcended local concerns (such as the warmly received 1982 study by Bluestone and Harrison of the American “rust belt”) and has become an element in the overall problematique of global capitalism. Only very recently, however, have the necessary studies (and hence theoretical perspectives) formed an appropriate critical mass to integrate the concept of de-industrialization fully into the long-term history of economic globalism. We are coming to understand that the phenomenon at the tip of the tongue of every head of state and the source of massive (and lethal) protest that came to be termed “globalization” in ordinary parlance around 1990 is hardly new and, most importantly, not simply a one-way street originating in the West.

Deficits in Selective Attention Alter Gait in Frail Older Adults

GeroPsych ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Véronique Cornu ◽  
Jean-Paul Steinmetz ◽  
Carine Federspiel
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Nursing Home ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Nursing Home Residents ◽  
Gait Rehabilitation ◽  
Rehabilitation Programs ◽  
Gait Parameters ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Task Conditions

Abstract. A growing body of research demonstrates an association between gait disorders, falls, and attentional capacities in older adults. The present work empirically analyzes differences in gait parameters in frail institutionalized older adults as a function of selective attention. Gait analysis under single- and dual-task conditions as well as selective attention measures were collected from a total of 33 nursing-home residents. We found that differences in selective attention performances were related to the investigated gait parameters. Poorer selective attention performances were associated with higher stride-to-stride variabilities and a slowing of gait speed under dual-task conditions. The present findings suggest a contribution of selective attention to a safe gait. Implications for gait rehabilitation programs are discussed.

The Evolution of Music Therapy

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 207-221
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Mastnak
Keyword(s):  
Music Therapy ◽  
Evidence Based Medicine ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Modern Music ◽  
Guided Imagery And Music ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
International Importance ◽  
Evolution Of Music ◽  
Based Medicine

Abstract. Five overlapping eras or stages can be distinguished in the evolution of music therapy. The first one refers to the historical roots and ethnological sources that have influenced modern meta-theoretical perspectives and practices. The next stage marks the heterogeneous origins of modern music therapy in the 20th century that mirror psychological positions and novel clinical ideas about the healing power of music. The subsequent heyday of music therapeutic models and schools of thought yielded an enormous variety of concepts and methods such as Nordoff–Robbins music therapy, Orff music therapy, analytic music therapy, regulatory music therapy, guided imagery and music, sound work, etc. As music therapy gained in international importance, clinical applications required research on its therapeutic efficacy. According to standards of evidence-based medicine and with regard to clearly defined diagnoses, research on music therapeutic practice was the core of the fourth stage of evolution. The current stage is characterized by the emerging epistemological dissatisfaction with the paradigmatic reductionism of evidence-based medicine and by the strong will to discover the true healing nature of music. This trend has given birth to a wide spectrum of interdisciplinary hermeneutics for novel foundations of music therapy. Epigenetics, neuroplasticity, regulatory and chronobiological sciences, quantum physical philosophies, universal harmonies, spiritual and religious views, and the cultural anthropological phenomenon of esthetics and creativity have become guiding principles. This article should not be regarded as a historical treatise but rather as an attempt to identify theoretical landmarks in the evolution of modern music therapy and to elucidate the evolution of its spirit.

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