Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Sustainable Development And The Issue Of Water In The Kagera Region Of Tanzania, Teresa M. Dresner

Theses & Dissertations

Over the last five decades, an abundance of research on sustainable development has emerged in multiple disciplinary areas, but few studies on the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainability have examined water issues for rural communities. Consequently, the purpose of this case study was to understand how a group of rural women from the Kagera region in Tanzania perceived and experienced sustainable development as a result of their improved access to water. The following central questions of the study sought to explore the local meanings of sustainable development and improved water sources: (a) How was life of rural women …

With An Eye On A Set Of New Eyes: Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Kette Thomas

Journal of Religion & Film

This article focuses on how, Beasts of the Southern Wild, represents both divergence and transgression from paradigmatic structures that determine how certain visual representations are to be used. Specifically, the cinematic detours taken by the filmmakers, Lucy Alibar and Behn Zeitlin, do not lead to alien places for most viewers; on the contrary, ancient myths, legends, heroes and prehistoric references are recalled in total isolation from current social and political discourse. In this way, Beasts of the Southern Wild, effectively, highlights mythological structures operating in contemporary American society. Mircea Eliade, Roger Caillois and G.S. Kirk define mythology as a …

Editorial: Social Inclusion--Are We There Yet?, Kimberley Mcmahon-Coleman, Alisa Percy, Bronwyn James

Kimberley McMahon-Coleman

This special edition of the Journal of Academic Language and Learning arose out of a Forum titled Critical Discussions about Social Inclusion held at the University of Wollongong, Australia in June 2011. It was organised by academic language and learning educators from five different universities: Ingrid Wijeyewardene from the University of New England, Helen Drury from the University of Sydney, Caroline San Miguel from the University of Technology Sydney, Stephen Milnes from the Australian National University, and ourselves from the University of Wollongong. Initially funded by a grant from the Association for Academic Language and Learning, this funding was later …

Literature As Social Barometer In Post-Apartheid South Africa: Reading Contemprorary 'White Writing', Antonio Simoes Da Silva

Tony Simoes da Silva

Contemporary South African literature shows a renewed concern with the close bonds between land, place and people in the New South Africa. In the post-apartheid period, this is literature that reflects a close awareness of the need for an art that retains both a sense of creative integrity and the ethical and political demands of the narrative of the new, postapartheid nation. Often history is invoked not as the deterministic frame that regulates each character’s lives typical of so much of the country’s literature, but as the accumulated mesh of individual experiences encompassed by the historical narrative. More to the …

"Ice Is Crazy But If You Just Smoke A Bit Of Dope It's Not That Bad": Formative Research For A Drug-Driving Social Marketing Campaign In The Act, Sandra C. Jones, Elizabeth M. Wiese, Lance R. Barrie

Sandra Jones

Road traffic accidents are one of the two leading specific causes of disease and injury burden in people aged 15-24 years. There are a number of factors that have been found to be associated with motor vehicle accidents and fatalities some of which (e.g., speeding and drink-driving) have been heavily targeted by social marketing campaigns and legislative actions. Drug driving has been found to be associated with motor vehicle accidents, particularly among younger drivers, but the potential for social marketing in this area has received little attention. This paper reports on a qualitative study designed to examine young drivers knowledge …

Realising The Potential Of Peer-To-Peer Learning: Taming A Mooc With Social Media, Emily Purser, Angela Towndrow, Ary Aranguiz

Emily R Purser

We report on peer-to-peer learning online, describing the role of cooperative, student managed groupings in successful learn-by-MOOC experiences. We found that to expand learners’ potential in digital culture, it helps to by-pass traditional notions and tools of online learning support, and embrace networked social media.

The Case Of Brown, Sara Ellingsworth

English and Journalism Student Works

The world is understood through the formation of categories, of defining what something is and what something is not, totalizing an experience, person, or word in order to come to an understanding of its essential meaning. Associations color one’s thoughts whether they are fully acknowledged or not. Without exploring the associations, accumulated through personal experience, that determine one’s view of another individual, there is a danger of marginalizing that person, instead of allowing them to fully inhabit their identity. In the following, I aim to expose the ways in which Richard Rodriguez uses Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction as a …

The ‘New Frontier’: Emergent Indigenous Identities And Social Media, Bronwyn Carlson

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The rapid rise in the use of social media as a means of cultural and social interaction among Aboriginal people and groups is an intriguing development. It is a phenomenon that has not yet gained traction in academia, although interest is gaining momentum as it becomes apparent that the use of social media is becoming an everyday, typical activity. In one episode of Living Black (an Australian television show featuring stories of interest to Indigenous people) entitled ‘‘Cyber Wars’’ (April 19th, 2010), several Aboriginal people commented on their Facebook use. Allan Clarke, one of the Aboriginal Facebook users featured, stated …

Guanxi, Social Capital Theory And Beyond: Toward A Globalized Social Science, Xiaoying Qi

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Western theoretical traditions can benefit from systematic engagement with non-Western concepts: This is shown through an analysis of the Chinese concept guanxi. After considering the general nature of guanxi, including its possible association with corrupt practices and its particular cultural characteristics, the paper goes on to identify the elements of its general form which have universal representation. The possibility of conceiving guanxi as a variant form of social capital is explored. This shows the way in which both the expressive and instrumentalized forms of guanxi indicate otherwise neglected aspects of social and economic relationships not always recognized and addressed by …

Grassroots Social Change: Lessons From An Anarchist Organizer - (Review Of Chris Crass, Towards Collective Liberation), Brian Martin

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Many progressives around the world look at the United States and are repelled by its extremes of wealth and poverty, enormous military, massive prison population, excessive gun violence, inhumane welfare policies, reckless environmental destruction, and aggressive and self-interested foreign policy. US trade policies have contributed to impoverishment in many countries; US troops are stationed in dozens of countries around the globe.

The US is the embodiment of a dangerous - even rogue - state, anomalous when compared to European social democracies or even other English-speaking countries. The US is the only wealthy industrialized country never to have had a significant …

Natural Pedagogy And Social Interaction, Shaun Gallagher

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

I briefly review several debates between standard cognitivist theories and more embodied (and enactive) theories in the area of social cognition, especially in the context of developmental studies and recent false-belief experiments with young infants. I suggest that the concept of natural pedagogy (Csibra & Gergely, 2009) fits best with the more embodied and enactive accounts of social cognition, and that it provides a good model for an embodied learning process

Realising The Potential Of Peer-To-Peer Learning: Taming A Mooc With Social Media, Emily Rose Purser, Angela Towndrow, Ary Aranguiz

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

ELearning and Digital Cultures, from the University of Edinburgh, was offered on the Coursera platform in January 2013. Over 40,000 enrolled, from every continent. The course was aimed mainly at educators wanting to “deepen their understanding of what it means to teach and learn in the digital age”. As participants, we experienced deep and significant learning, very much through social media. The peer-to-peer learning we engaged in and benefitted from was not traditionally organised ‘group work’ or micro-managed interaction, but something more fluid, open, student-initiated and led, that seems to have gone to the very core of what online learner …