1,720,981 research outputs found
THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF FAMILY SIZE DECISIONS:The Experiences of Somali and Sudanese Migrant Communities
Get PDFThis thesis is an in-depth study of the fertility practices and family size decisions of Sudanese and Somali migrants living in Birmingham. It interrogates the characteristics of decision-making rather than the characteristics of the women and men themselves. In this way, the study captures participants’ experiences of fertility practices, rather than their reproductive outcomes. Whilst the literature identifies many factors, such as culture, migration, and socio-economic dimensions, which have significant effects on fertility, more in-depth research was necessary to gain a better understanding of how such factors interact with the individual approaches of migrants to determining fertility practice and behaviour. To answer these questions, I collected data via the qualitative methodologies of one-to-one interviews and focus groups. My analysis of the data showed that the majority of Somali participants considered large families to be a part of their cultural identity as Muslims, while for the Sudanese participants, large families were less critical to a ‘good’ Muslim identity. Structural conditions and individual stigmatisation also impact the fertility practices of migrants as gendered persons. Socio-economic context is highly relevant for those living in a migration context, as it alters the family structure, gender roles, parenting practice, and large family size values. Comparisons are presented between the migrant groups; for example, Somali women who choose to organise their work life around their fertility, and Sudanese migrants who are selective regarding job preferences, organising their fertility around work needs. This reflects differences in education and commitments towards family in the homeland. Social context shapes informants’ behaviours, enabling or hindering specific fertility practices and norms. This research helps to illuminate how and why these fertility practices adapt and change
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Superdiverse Diaspora: Everyday Identifications of Tamil Migrants in Britain
No full textDrawing on in-depth qualitative research, this book provides a nuanced picture of the everyday identifications experienced and expressed among the superdiverse Tamil migrant population in Britain. It presents the first detailed analysis of the narrative and experiences of Tamils from a diversity of backgrounds – including Sri Lankan, Indian, Singaporean and Malaysian – and addresses the question of their identification with a ‘Tamil diaspora’ in Britain.
Theoretically informed by Brubaker’s conception of ‘diaspora as process’ and Werbner’s notion of diasporas as both ‘aesthetic’ and ‘moral’ communities, Jones examines political engagements alongside other, less studied, ‘frames’ of Tamil migrants’ lives: social relationships (local and transnational), the domestic space of home, and performances of faith and ritual. Considering diaspora as a process or practice allows the author to reveal a complex landscape upon which ‘being Tamil’ and ‘doing Tamil-ness’ in diaspora are diversely enacted.
Combining original ethnographic research with a theoretical engagement in the key debates in migration, diaspora, ethnicity and superdiversity studies, this book makes a novel contribution to scholarship on Tamil populations and will advance critical understandings of the concept of ‘diaspora’ more generally
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
“Our Kith and Kin”?: Sri Lankan Tamil Refugees and the Ethnonationalist Parties of Tamil Nadu
Get PDFThis article explains the impact of substate nationalism on the political dynamic surrounding ethnic kin migration through a case study of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu. Examples drawn from the migration studies literature identify ethnic kinship between refugees and host as an indicator of favorable reception and assistance. While this expectation is borne out to an extent in the Tamil Nadu case, it is tempered by a period of hostility following the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by an LTTE suicide bomber, when the refugees were figured as a disruptive and dangerous presence by Tamil Nadu's political elites. A version of the “triadic nexus” model of kin state relations, reconfigured to accommodate the larger political unit within which the substate nationalism is incorporated, is proposed as a framework of analysis for these events. This can better account for Tamil Nadu's substate ethnonationalist elite's movement between expressions of coethnic solidarity with the refugees and the more hostile, security-focused response postassassination
An Exploration of Pupils’ and Teachers’ Discursive Constructions of Religion(s): The Case of Alexander Parkes Primary School
Get PDFThis thesis considers questions pertaining to the discursive constructions of religion(s) as mediated through a primary school. It considers how pupils and teachers make sense of religion(s) in their institutional setting and beyond. The main research questions are: a) How is religion mediated through daily educational practices? b) How do pupils and teachers construct religion(s) at school? For this project, I adopted an ethnographic approach to a case study, and conducted fieldwork at Alexander Parkes Primary School,1 a state-funded non-faith-based primary school in Birmingham, UK. .While most research conducted in Birmingham tends to focus on faith-based schools and/or minority faith communities, this research pays attention to the “missing group”(Davie, 2012: 287), that is to say the ‘middle ground’ group in the religious life of England “who self-identify as Christians” (Davie, 2015: 169), but “whose way of being religious is captured by the term ‘vicarious’” (Davie, 2012: 287).This project considers the place of religion in the everyday lives of children andteachers, and how they encounter religion in mundane ways. The findings of this study shed new light on how pupils and teachers discursively construct religion in education(macro level). The concepts of religion as ‘chain of memory’ (Hervieu-Léger, 2000),‘Golden Rule’ Christianity (Ammerman, 1997), and ‘vicarious religion’ (Davie, 2015)provide the theoretical framework to explore the dialectic relationship between the‘religious’ and the ‘secular,’ and the (perceived) role and function of religion in contemporary society (meso level). In order to investigate which discourses were(re)reproduced at Alexander Parkes, I adopted Ipgrave’s analytical tools to the “differentapproaches to religion: doxological, sacramental, and instrumental, founded,respectively, on certain faith in God, on openness to the possibility of God, and on adefault scepticism” (2012a: 30). These tools were useful to explore how the school managed religion (micro level). Findings show that while children’s agency should notbe underplayed, the school as a structure plays an important role in shaping pupils’construction of religion in general, and of Christianity in particular
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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