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Helping Homeless Youth: Epistemological Implications of Power in a YPAR Project
Get PDFText from Nasma: \u27I’ve started moving my things out of the house. I’m putting it in your office for now.\u27 Thus began the story of how one of the youth I had worked with for four years on various YPAR projects became homeless and turned to me for help. Entering this crisis with Nasma took time and an emotional toll, and it affected the power dynamics of our relationship when finishing our YPAR project. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) works to rebalance power in inequitable relationships based on roles, age, race, gender, etc. Providing care to Nasma as she confronted the traumatic situation of homelessness affected our collaborative relationship as she became dependent on me for basic economic resources. Through this process, the inequities in age and material resources between Nasma and me were centred, displacing the more equitable interactions that we had constructed through YPAR projects. This article employs critical autoethnography to examine the epistemological ‘risks of care’ and argues that the calls for ‘care-full’ scholarship still need to contend with the pitfalls of differential power dynamics in YPAR
Studying Abroad at Home: The Meaning of Education Abroad During the Pandemic
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic virtually ended studying abroad. New (online) formats are offered, but this has not stopped universities from having to revise curricula, renegotiate partnerships and consult with students about studying abroad in 2020 and beyond. This short essay stems from the author’s experience of cancelling his own Japanese study abroad program in late February 2020 to avoid the program participants taking unnecessary risks in the face of the unknown speed at which COVID-19 was spreading in Europe. The cancellation of that study trip brought to the fore, however, entrenched issues with short term study abroad programs and pushed the author to consider what the value of the ‘abroad’ in ‘study abroad’ had been until then. A short comparison with the practice of ethnography ensues, inspired by early pandemic debates on the future of anthropological fieldwork, which is another endeavour that has traditionally depended on relatively extended stays abroad. The essay closes with two problems that study abroad organisers will have to think about in a post-corona world
From Ise to the World in a Time of Pandemic
Get PDFA collection of essays on COVID-19 by scholars from around the world who shared a common experience in Japan in the early stages of the pandemic, and then communicated from their respective countries as the disease spread around the world. Written in multiple styles and with diverse perspectives, these essays provide insight into the similarities and differences, and the equalizing and dis-equalizing aspects of the world’s response to the pandemic
Remembering Romit Dasgupta
Get PDFRomit Dasgupta lectured in Japanese Studies at the University of Western Australia until his untimely passing in 2018. He was posthumously awarded the Philippa Maddern Award in 2019 by the University of Western Australia Academic Staff Association. The citation described him as ‘[p]rofessional, highly organised and respectful to all, …proactive and willing to help others in regard to any issues, consistently demonstrating his passion in supporting his colleagues and students’. In the essays collected here, Romit’s friends and colleagues reflect on Romit’s qualities and his academic contributions. Romit Dasgupta’s work ranged over gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, cultural studies, cultural history, Asian Studies and Asian-Australian Studies. Each of the authors discusses the inspiration they received from Romit Dasgupta\u27s work in these fields
Challenges for Occupational Health and Safety Enforcement in the Construction Industry in Ghana
Get PDFMany previous studies have reported that the occupational health and safety (OHS) enforcement is poor in developing countries, however these studies have mainly focused on the broader enforcement problems and not fully considered the challenges confronting the institutions responsible for enforcing OHS standards at workplaces. In this study, twelve potential challenges were identified from an extensive literature review, then an empirical investigation was carried out via a questionnaire survey from OHS inspectors and professionals in the Ghanaian construction industry. The twelve challenges were confirmed and ranked. Also, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and correlation were used to determine the statistical significance of the responses and the relationships between the challenges. Based on these findings, this study provides practical strategies for government, OHS inspectors and other professionals within the construction industry to improve the OHS enforcement. The research findings can also be adopted as a basis to assess challenges confronting OHS institutions in other developing countries
Modelling Customers’ Perception of the Quality of Services Provided by Builders: A Case of Victoria, Australia
Get PDFConsumer satisfaction is essential for quality assurance, business survival and economic prosperity. It can also be used as an indicator of the occurrence of defects in the houses delivered by builders. The objective of this study is to compare the quality of services provided by volume and small builders, and to develop a model for predicting the chance of occurrence of structural defects in houses. A list of home builders was obtained from Australia’s Housing Industry Association media release 2019. Thereafter, customer reviews of 10 volume builders and 107 small builders were obtained from publicly available data. Overall, 2336 reviews for volume-builders and 2037 reviews for small builders were analysed quantitatively. Further, using the scores provided by customers, the probability-based regression model for the structural integrity of residential buildings was developed. Generally, the research found that for volume-builders, customers have the highest satisfaction level for ‘customer service’ and the lowest satisfaction level for ‘plumbing and waterproofing’ work. However, for small builders, customers have the highest confidence in the ‘structural integrity’ of their buildings and the least confidence in projects ‘timeliness’. Clients can use the stochastic-based model to predict the probability that a builder could deliver a house with low structural defects. The model showed that if a customer service score for a particular builder is less than 3.3, then there is a higher chance of having structural defects. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by developing and validating the logistic regression model that can be used as a tool to assess the quality of services provided by home builders. Moreover, the research provides useful information which can assist builders to improve the quality of services they provide
Organisational citizenship behaviour and service delivery in urban local governments in Uganda
Get PDFThe quality of service delivery in decentralised local governments (LGs) in Uganda remains largely unsatisfactory, despite central government’s efforts to improve resource allocation and develop supporting legal frameworks. This has been partly linked to the extent to which LG staff exhibit ‘organisational citizenship behaviour’ (OCB). Extant literature has not given adequate attention to OCB in the decentralisation discourse, especially in sub-national governments within developing countries such as Uganda. This paper tackles the issue of OCB among LG employees and its relationship to service delivery by addressing the following questions: (a) what is the level of OCB among LG employees and (b) to what extent do various dimensions of OCB relate to the quality of service delivery in the decentralised LG context?
The study is a cross-sectional survey of 165 LG staff in central Uganda. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Using content analysis and correlational analysis, the study found that OCB among LG employees is too low, and that higher levels of OCB are associated with improved service delivery. The study recommends that LGs should prioritise effective leadership and supervision, a client-centred performance culture, and empowerment of staff in order to promote OCB among employees and thereby enhance service delivery to local communities
Trauma informed participatory research: Reflections on co-producing a research proposal
Get PDFThis article discusses the development of a co-produced research proposal. The authors reflect on the process of this work and some of the challenges that were experienced by a team who had a mix of lived, clinical and academic experience of the research topic. We highlight the need to embed trauma informed principles into co-produced research and the ways in which doing so can support the development of co-produced work. As such, the article focuses on how we established safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness and empowerment during the process of developing the proposal. Within this we offer our reflection on some of the challenges we experienced and our learning from undertaking this work
Dollar Daze in the Days of the Big CV
Get PDFThe first miser I met was the supremely joyful Scrooge McDuck diving in and out of pools of cash. The pandemic has shaken my miser, but finally he can’t not be gleefully optimistic that rentierismo will return in triumph, re-establishing the old order of inequality, exploitation, class relations and bins of moola for the few
Mourning le Temps Perdu (Proust 1988–1990): Eating Together in Pestilence
Get PDFThis creative piece of non-fiction was written in response to the challenges of everyday life in the early weeks of the pandemic in Australia. I wanted to convey the emotional economy of experiences—the longing, sense of loss, traces of guilt in processes of remembering and storytelling, particularly when these feelings might seem unjustified and self-indulgent
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