Toronto Metropolitan University Open Journals
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Understanding child supervision among South Korean immigrant families: A qualitative phenomenological approach
No full textIntroduction: Child supervision impacts the health and well-being of children and families, including for migrants adapting to life in Canada. Their supervisory practices may change during this transition, and influence the mental health, safety, and development of children. Limited research has been conducted on how South Korean immigrant families negotiate child supervision and caregiving in a new country within the last five years, given the transformative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on supervision practices. Methods: This study explores the views and experiences of supervision amongst South Korean immigrant parents and adolescents residing in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Canada. Individual interviews with fifteen parents and ten adolescents aged 14-17 were conducted. Results: Results highlight the primary role of academic institutions in providing supervision in South Korea, and parents’ high control over children’s activities. In Canada, parents lacked supervision support due to absence of extended family and of trust in their neighbours. Parents and adolescents understood and experienced supervision differently. Parent-child communication was considered an important aspect of supervision, particularly with adolescents. Conclusions: Understanding how South Korean immigrant parents and adolescents make meaning of “child supervision” can help public health professionals, community organizations, and schools to identify necessary support and services to address their needs and challenges
Healthcare provider experience in caring for sexual minority patients in West Africa: An integrative review
No full textBackground: Sexual Minority People (LGBTQ) are a population experiencing significant health disparities, including higher rates of diseases, injury, and violence. Their marginalized status also limits their opportunities to achieve optimal health outcomes. While LGBTQ individuals face significant stigma and discrimination in accessing healthcare, the experiences of healthcare providers – key stakeholders in addressing these challenges – remains underexplored, which is the objective of this study, exploring the experiences of the care providers. Purpose: To describe the experiences of providers and contribute to improving the competence of Ghanaian nurses in their care for sexual minority patients. Methods: An integrative literature review, following the standards of Whittemore and Knafl’s framework. Literature was search on CINAHL, Medline, Web of Science, Global Public Health, and Google Scholar, using sexual minority (LGBTQ), healthcare providers and West Africa as broad concepts to generate keywords. Results: A total of 156 articles were retrieved from database searches, and were filtered using predefined inclusion criteria, focusing on relevance and methodological rigor, using the PRISMA review process and 4 final articles were included in the review. These studies highlighted stigma from healthcare providers, poor knowledge of sexual identity, sexual orientation and the unique needs of sexual minority people. Institutional homophobia and unsafe healthcare facilities for LGBTQ people were also unearthed. Implications: Healthcare related stigma must be addressed through; continued professional development training for healthcare workers to understand the impact of stigma and promote their knowledge of sexual minority health needs, implementing culturally safe curriculum on minority healthcare, and making healthcare facilities minority friendly
The rise of AI “therapists” and “companions”: A brave new world for human health or the latest tech bait?
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Solastalgia: Documenting Disaster Through Interactive Documentary
No full textIn this presentation, we present our recent year-long collaborative work in what Steve Mentz calls “the blue humanities” – thinking about the climate emergency in relation to twinned problems of water and fire. We’ll first contextualize our intention as it emerged from our work with the feminist research creation Decameron Collective. We will then demonstrate how we have been using SCALAR to create an interactive documentary/research creation project that employs a range of analogue and digital documentary practices which include book making, watercoloring, embodied documentary filmmaking, and augmented reality, anchoring our approaches in theories of embodiment (“the role of the felt sense and the body politic primarily in the process of making documentary films, and secondarily in the film’s subject matter, role in the media landscape, and impact of process on the filmmaker,”( Monde)) asking what do our bodies already know about climate change?, as well as eco-theory notions of Solastalgia, that is, the distress caused by environmental change (Albrecht et al.), exploring the research questions our experimentations both crystallized and obscured. We will demonstrate how we have used the affordances of Scalar to create an interactive, living, creative and data-driven assemblage to deepen our connections and understanding of global and personal events. Ultimately, our goal will be to provide an assessment of what, if anything, these errant “methods” offer interactive film and media studies, as well as idocs practice and methodologies
Surreal(ist) Video Games: Thinking About How Not To Think
No full textLucid Assemblage is a short exploration game created to embody Surrealism in its development and output. Its objective is to serve as a microcosmic exploration of an attempt to implement Surrealist philosophy in video games. In the process, it forms part of a wider contemplation of video game design in relation to art and philosophy movements, an area we consider underserved by current game design literature.
We developed the project with a reflective practice methodology derived from Newsome-Ward & Ng (2021), in turn inspired by Donald Schön’s classic The Reflective Practitioner, to unveil “knowledge about practice through practice” (Newsome-Ward & Ng 2021, p. 559; emphasis in original). Our approach involved three stages. Firstly, we researched and collated key aspects of Surrealist philosophy, eventually identifying the 3 most dominant tenets to inform our project: dreams and the subconscious; nonconformism and counterculture; and irrationality. In the second stage, we ideated, designed and implemented a media artefact based on the crystallised tenets of Surrealist philosophies, accompanied by documentation concurrently made through journaling and detailed recording of processes, inspirations, contradictions and challenges. Finally, we reflected on the development process and the resulting product by correlating how the development of the project performed and/or reflected ‘Surreal’ qualities via the three identified tenets. We also conducted close reading of the work itself, specifically of its gameplay, presentation and narrative, to examine its reflection of Surrealist philosophies by which it had been implemented.
Our key results from this study in relation to the method of Surrealist game design were two-fold. The first was the strange tension of the subconscious against the conscious in developing the game. Incorporating Surrealist philosophy into the project’s development process itself, our approach was influenced by the original Surrealists’ inclination towards automatism, a technique that prioritises spontaneous thinking to generate ideas untainted by rational oversight, thus tapping into the subconscious. By integrating automatism into game design, forethought could be minimised and the game would be positioned as a raw Surrealist expression. But this basis of the automatic game development framework that guided Lucid Assemblage’s production became a contradictory process which mirrored the paradoxes at the heart of Surrealism — the endeavour of thinking about how to not think – against the conscious, involved and functional decision-making and actions necessary to the creative act. Surrealist game development is thus a complex balancing act — one must minimise forethought to maximise spontaneity, but exercise a degree of reason to produce something comprehensible as a game. In this process, time management also becomes a major challenge. To avoid spontaneous ideas extending the project duration in perpetuity, one must define some kind of end point. The greater the span of time between idea and implementation, the more considerations the idea undergoes, and thus rationalised.
Secondly (if relatedly), guarding against tangential conscious thoughts and influences for the game’s development, even when – or perhaps particularly when – not actively developing the game, also emerges as a deeply covert, if not impossible, endeavour. We continue thinking about and feeding into our minds ideas about the project even as we are not actively working on the project. In our reflections, we note how these challenges, whilst present in other forms of Surrealist art, are exacerbated by game development’s relative lack of immediacy (e.g. as opposed to automatic drawing or writing) and in its more long-drawn process of steps and stages stretched across ideation, mediation and computational processes. In this instance, the automatic game development framework was successful in producing a ‘Surreal’ game by limiting rationalisation in the design process. However, it is uncertain if the same result would have been achieved had the ideation process not been targeted toward the tenets. Further research might focus on automatic game development in the absence of such a constraint
Economies of Hyper (In)visibility: Fattening Discourse Within Economic Markets
No full textStereotypes about fat bodies assume they lack productive and reproductive capabilities. I propose the economies of hyper (in)visibility, or the epistemological processes that simultaneously overlook – or make invisible – and hyperfocus on fat bodies. I contend that neoliberal economic structures mediate relations of power through money, objects, and bodily signification to create a normalizing “logic” to dehumanize and violate fat individuals. I expand upon economies of hyper (in)visibility by using examples from everyday life such as the medicalization of fatness and discourse on reproduction. I argue that economies of hyper (in)visibility threaten fat futurities through the exploitation and profitability of devaluing fat populations within neoliberal societies. Suggestions for moving towards fat visibility take shape through (re)designing fat time, visibility in fat burlesque, and increased social media presence to explore fat futurities and worldmaking
Wide Shot: Poetry Collection
No full textThese six poems will explore the sub-themes of “connections between bodies and homelands” and “taking up space.” Focusing on my own personal fitness mantra of #lovement, I will explore how my body, with all her robustness and girth, packaged with Brown caramel skin, allows for me to thrive in six different fitness spaces (the boxing gym, yoga studio, spin class, weight room, treadmill, and walking in public). These poems will touch on themes ranging from gratitude to the Indigenous L’nu people of Nova Scotia, to resentment of the predominance of cis-White women fitness instructors, to sisterhood with other Brown women #lovement participants
Transgender microaggressions in health care across South Africa: A deductive content analysis
No full textIntroduction: For transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) persons, encounters with healthcare providers can be harmful and can compromise medical outcomes. This harm, which is not always overt and direct in these interpersonal relations, can be conceptualized as microaggressions. Aim: This study explored TGD persons’ accounts of microaggressions in healthcare settings. Methods: Unstructured interviews were conducted with TGD participants who had experienced harm in healthcare settings in South Africa. Deductive analysis was used. Findings: Ten of the 12 taxonomy’s themes were present. Offensive terminology, prominent amongst the themes, was directed at persons with (trans) feminine expression or nonbinary presentations. Conclusions: We propose ‘Conflation of Trans Identification With Sexual Orientation’ be added to the taxonomy to make one of the categories less overinclusive and improve on the taxonomy’s contextual transferability
Examining obstetric-related hospitalization outcomes among female immigrants at risk of female genital mutilation/cutting in Canada
No full textCross-border migration has implications for immigrant experiences of the host country’s health care system and health care provisions. Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is a traditional practice performed on young girls between infancy and age 15. While illegal in Canada, proxy estimates of females aged 0 to 49 years at risk of FGM/C in the country range from 95,000 to 161,000, based on internationally accepted estimation methodologies. Two of the top source continents for immigrants in Canada – Asia and Africa – demonstrate high prevalence of FGM/C, raising concerns about implications for the health outcomes of female immigrants who are at risk of having undergone the practice and the need for awareness among health care professionals and other stakeholders. To date, little is known about the health outcomes for females at risk of having undergone FGM/C and who are living in Canada. Using Canadian linked administrative data, the Longitudinal Immigration Database (1980-2013) and Discharge Abstract Database (2004-2005 to 2013-2014), regression analyses were conducted to compare causes of hospitalizations for female immigrants born in countries identified at risk for FGM/C and female immigrants from non-FGM/C practicing countries. The results suggest female immigrants from FGM/C-practicing countries appear to be at higher-risk for obstetric-related conditions requiring acute-care hospitalization