scholarly journals Mothering Practices in Cambodia

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-60
Author(s):  
Tale Steen-Johnsen ◽  
Nicole Dulieu ◽  
Ann Christin Eklund Nilsen
Keyword(s):  
Physical Discipline ◽  
Cultural Scripts ◽  
Small Children ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Group Interviews

The physical disciplining of children is widespread globally. To work towards ending physical disciplining, we need to understand this practice’s local and contextual justifications. In this article, we explore Cambodian mothers’ rationale for the physical disciplining of their children, as we seek to address two questions: 1) How do Cambodian mothers perceive physical discipline?, and 2) How do they negotiate and justify physical disciplining practices? Based on 10 group interviews with mothers of small children, and in different communities in Cambodia, we found that the physical disciplining is a common practice used to correct behaviours considered unhelpful, impolite or disrespectful. However, there are ambivalent attitudes toward this. This suggests that physical discipline is not a static practice, but rather one that is constantly negotiated. We argue that Barbara Rogoff’s concept of cultural scripts for parenting is well suited for making sense of how physical discipline is justified among Cambodian mothers.

Hierarchies of Place, Hierarchies of Empowerment: Geographies of Talk about Postsocialist Change in Uzbekistan

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan Y. Liu
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Soviet Rule ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Socioeconomic Changes ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Group Interviews

This study concerns how people throughout Uzbekistan were making sense of the tremendous socioeconomic changes taking place in their Central Asian republic during their first decade of independence from Soviet rule in 1991. This paper analyzes talk about the daily struggles of Uzbekistanis in order to arrive at ground-level insight about the kind of postsocialist state Uzbekistan was becoming in the 1990s, and how its citizens envisioned it. The extent to which people felt empowered to understand and potentially act on social issues, I argue, depended on geographical location. Looking at a series of focus group interviews conducted in three Uzbekistani cities in 1996, I identify spatial inflections in talk about social problems. The results of the study allow us to think about the Uzbekistani state's changing bases of legitimation since the late 1990s.

scholarly journals Making sense of global warming: Norwegians appropriating knowledge of anthropogenic climate change

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 778-795 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Ryghaug ◽  
Knut Holtan Sørensen ◽  
Robert Næss
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Group Interviews

This paper studies how people reason about and make sense of human-made global warming, based on ten focus group interviews with Norwegian citizens. It shows that the domestication of climate science knowledge was shaped through five sense-making devices: news media coverage of changes in nature, particularly the weather, the coverage of presumed experts’ disagreement about global warming, critical attitudes towards media, observations of political inaction, and considerations with respect to everyday life. These sense-making devices allowed for ambiguous outcomes, and the paper argues four main outcomes with respect to the domestication processes: the acceptors, the tempered acceptors, the uncertain and the sceptics.

Rebbi

Yeshiva Days ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 122-142
Author(s):  
Jonathan Boyarin
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Small Children ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Making Sense

This chapter explains why the leader of the shiur is almost never addressed as “you,” but rather referred to either as “the Rosh Yeshiva” or as “Rebbi,” a term broadly used in Ashkenazic Jewish culture to refer to any teacher of Torah, from one who instructs small children to the most advanced lecturers. It argues that their Rebbi's authority is, if anything, anticharismatic and reserved, unlike the paradigmatic hasidic leader, similarly addressed and referred to as “the Rebbe.” The chapter also discusses the custom in the beis medresh whenever the Rebbi enters and stand upon his entry. It presents a discussion which turned on the fundamental principle of rabbinic biblical interpretation that nothing is superfluous in the Torah — and that therefore, every seeming superfluity is available to teach us something not explicitly stated in the text. Ultimately, the chapter illustrates the Rosh Yeshiva's dedication to making sense of the text on his own as far as possible. It assumes that the Rosh Yeshiva is willing to accept a certain degree of necessary misapprehension of the rabbinic texts because of his conviction that the halacha for us is what we do.

Using Activity Theory to Assess the Effectiveness of an Online Learning Community

2010 ◽  
pp. 249-268
Author(s):  
Theodor G. Wyeld ◽  
Ekaterina Prasolova-Forland
Keyword(s):  
Learning Community ◽  
Activity Theory ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Scripts ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Triangular Relationship

Remote, collaborative work practices are increasingly common in a globalised society. Simulating these environments in a pedagogical setting allows students to engage in cross-cultural exchanges encountered in the profession. However, identifying the pedagogical benefits of students collaborating remotely on a single project presents numerous challenges. Activity Theory (AT) provides a means for monitoring and making sense of their activities as individuals and as a collective. AT assists in researching the personal and social construction of students’ intersubjective cognitive representations of their own learning activities. Moreover, AT makes the socially constructed cultural scripts captured in their cross-cultural exchanges analysable. Students’ reflection on these scripts and their roles in them helps them better understand the heterogeneity of the cultures encountered. In this chapter Engestrom’s (1999) simple AT triangular relationship of activity, action and operation is used to analyze and provide insights into how students cooperate with each other across different cultures in a 3D collaborative virtual environment.

Making sense of terms of address in European languages through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Wierzbicka
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Cultural Scripts ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
Cross Cultural Communication ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
French And English ◽  
French Words ◽  
Key Terms

Abstract Building on the author’s earlier work on address practices and focusing on the French words monsieur and madame, this paper seeks to demonstrate that generic titles used daily across Europe have relatively stable meanings, different in different languages, and that their semantic analysis can provide keys to the speakers’ cultural assumptions and attitudes. But to use these keys effectively, we need some basic locksmith skills. The NSM approach, with its stock of primes and molecules and its mini-grammar for combining these into explications and cultural scripts, provides both the necessary tools and the necessary techniques. The unique feature of the NSM approach to both semantics and pragmatics is the reliance on a set of simple, cross-translatable words and phrases, in terms of which interactional meanings and norms can be articulated, compared, and explained to linguistic and cultural outsiders. Using this approach, this paper assigns intuitive, intelligible and cross-translatable meanings to several key terms of address in French and English, and it shows how these meanings can account for many aspects of these terms’ use. The paper offers a framework for studying the use of terms of address in Europe and elsewhere and has implications for language teaching, cross-cultural communication and education.

scholarly journals Making Sense of the Virtual World for Young Children: Estonian Pre-School Teachers’ Experiences and Perceptions

1970 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andra Siibak ◽  
Kristi Vinter
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Teacher Perceptions ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Internet Use ◽  
Children's Media ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Teachers Perceptions ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Media ◽  
Group Interviews

The study provides an overview of teacher perceptions regarding young children’s internet use and media education in pre-schools. Two focus-group interviews with 24 Estonian pre-school teachers were carried out in order to analyze their experiences and opinions about factors that influence pre-school children’s computer and Internet use. Pre-school teachers’ perceptions about their own role in shaping children’s media literacy were also examined. The results indicate that teachers consider the role of the family on children’s computer use to be more significant compared to their own role. Although the teachers started to acknowledge their own role as supervisors and parents’ counselors as the interviews progressed, no curriculum-based media literacy shaping is done in the classrooms. Furthermore, rather than developing children’s awareness of the media, various new media had been used as “enrichment” and significantly fewer activities that would actually help to shape children’s media literacy were mentioned.

Using Activity Theory to Assess the Effectiveness of an Online Learning Community

2011 ◽  
pp. 629-646
Author(s):  
Theodor G. Wyeld ◽  
Ekaterina Prasolova-Forland
Keyword(s):  
Learning Community ◽  
Activity Theory ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Scripts ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Triangular Relationship

Remote, collaborative work practices are increasingly common in a globalised society. Simulating these environments in a pedagogical setting allows students to engage in cross-cultural exchanges encountered in the profession. However, identifying the pedagogical benefits of students collaborating remotely on a single project presents numerous challenges. Activity Theory (AT) provides a means for monitoring and making sense of their activities as individuals and as a collective. AT assists in researching the personal and social construction of students’ intersubjective cognitive representations of their own learning activities. Moreover, AT makes the socially constructed cultural scripts captured in their cross-cultural exchanges analysable. Students’ reflection on these scripts and their roles in them helps them better understand the heterogeneity of the cultures encountered. In this chapter Engestrom’s (1999) simple AT triangular relationship of activity, action and operation is used to analyze and provide insights into how students cooperate with each other across different cultures in a 3D collaborative virtual environment.

From hooking up to staying in? Women negotiating appropriate sexuality in nightlife with age

Sexualities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136346072110338
Author(s):  
Kristine Vaadal
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Hooking Up ◽  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Cultural Scripts ◽  
Sexual Interaction ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
Age Related

While much research has explored contemporary constructions of young women’s sexuality, few studies have been sensitive to how age influences women’s sexuality in the context of mainstream nightlife. Drawing on sexual scripting theory, I investigate how 19 Norwegian women (ages 27–34 years) draw on and negotiate cultural scripts when making sense of their nightlife experiences with age. I found that nightlife was an increasingly difficult space to occupy, and that participating could cause tension with the women’s understandings of themselves, their behaviours and their desires in nightlife. While age-related scripts allowed the participants to criticise gender inequality in sexual interaction in nightlife, they simultaneously obscured how gender inequality in nightlife persisted in new forms with age.

Representations of LGBT ageing and older people in Australia and the UK

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Hughes ◽  
Andrew King
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Cultural Scripts ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Membership Categorization ◽  
Cultural Imaginary ◽  
Bisexual And Transgender ◽  
The Uk

While there is evidence of the cultural scripts lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) older people use in making sense of their lives, little attention has been given to how these scripts are themselves produced. This article examines cultural representations of LGBT ageing and older people in 40 UK and Australian websites. It is argued that these sites form part of a cultural imaginary about LGBT ageing and older people accessed by policy makers and service providers. Employing membership categorization analysis, the study revealed attributes attached to LGBT ageing categories that related to constraint and celebration narratives. It also uncovered anomalies within the text of 23 websites where celebration and constraint attributes were juxtaposed, although in 15 websites only celebration representations were apparent. The findings highlight the complexity of some representations of LGBT ageing and older people, and the limitations of framing LGBT ageing and older people in homogenous ways.

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