1,720,957 research outputs found
The Usefulness of Indigenous Plants and Vegetables in contemporary Society.
Full text linkIndigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) is tacit knowledge available to local people of any community which can be used in all sectors of life and development. This knowledge is passed from generation to generation through oral tradition, song, and dance. The invasion of traditional societies through colonization, modernization, and globalization has threatened the resilience of IKS and some literature argues that it is being driven into extinction. This paper argues that Indigenous knowledge Systems are undeniably resistant and resilient as evidenced by the continuous inevitable use of indigenous plant varieties in Africa and the rest of the world during outbreaks of pandemics like COVID-19 and even use in the day-to-day treatment of humans and domestic animals. Using individual telephone interviews, a teleconference focus group with rural and urban key informants from Chirumanzu District, Gokwe District, and Harare North lowdensity residential area, the paper discovered twenty-four (24) indigenous plant varieties, 5 non-indigenous plants, and 5 indigenous vegetables which people are using to improve health systems and strengthens the lungs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The same plant varieties have been used in everyday life even before the outbreak of the current pandemic, indicating their undeniable usefulness in the lives of people. The paper, therefore,recommends that more research should be done and literature should be written on the role of these different plant varieties so that the knowledge is kept safe and readily available for future generations. Documentation is very critical as a migratory measure against the extinction of the crucial role of indigenous knowledge system
COVID-19 AND GIRL CHILD EDUCATION: PARENTAL PERSPECTIVES.
Full text linkThis paper argues that COVID-19 lockdowns negatively affected the education of many young girls in rural Zimbabwe, particularly those who ran into teenage marriages; because they had no other alternative productive activities to occupy them during school closures. Had there been other educational activities like readily available online lessons, community clubs, access to internet and many more activities which their urban counterparts are enjoying, less numbers of child marriages could have been recorded. The paper interviewed some parents from rural areas (Gokwe and Chirumanzu), on the state of affairs and discovered that 7 in every 10 families interviewed had their teenage girl married or had unwanted pregnancies before marriage. The paper recommends that mitigation measures should be taken so that young girls are kept in school as long as possible despite quagmires like the Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19). Without sustainable programs for girls and boys in rural and urban areas, the gains yet to be achieved by all legislation promoting gender equality in education, the education Amendment Act 2020 and other intervention strategies from Non-Governmental Organisations like Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) which are paying school fees for girls in more than 29 districts of rural Zimbabwe will go to waste. Efforts should therefore be made through a multistakeholder approach to keep girls in school against any odds
An Analysis of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on Gender Inclusivity
Full text linkThe 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is the mother of all human rights instruments internationally. Other subsequent documents such as the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (1976), Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and so on emerged as responses to the inadequacies and gaps within the parent document. While the document made significant achievements in human rights upholding during its own time, this study argues that the UDHR (1948) was never meant for everyone, but rather, it was a patriarchal document designed to further the interests of grown-up men to the detriment and exclusion of women and children. The thrust of the paper is to elaborate the importance of the semantics approach to human rights, and how inconsiderate language can cause irreparable damage to the rights of other groups in society. Presented in the paper are facts gathered through desk research which is also commonly known as document analysis. The study also employed interviews and focus group discussions. The study interviewed 5 key informants who are lecturers at a particular institution of higher learning. 30 students from the same institution participated in 3 focus group discussions of 10 people each, to make a total sample size of 35 participants. The study established that the UDHR (1948) contains 15 articles which used semantics referring to men “he, himself, and his” which clearly exclude women. The study further established that the UDHR (1948) rarely used gender neutral language specifying he or she, him/her, himself of herself, an action which grossly indicated gender discrimination from the semantics approach to human rights. Recommendations are made that policy formulators should always use gender inclusive language to include everyon
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe 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
Challenges Women face in Accessing the Benefits of Development Policies in Rural Areas: A case of Gokwe District in Zimbabwe
No full textThis paper examines the challenges women face in accessing the benefits of development policies in remote rural areas like Gokwe district. Rural women can be effective at increasing national development growth rates if they are included in development policy formulation, planning and implementation phases. However, their contribution is not significant because they are excluded from mainstream development activities. The study employed a mixed methods approach to identifying the challenges that rural women face in accessing development policy benefits. Using Gokwe as a case study the researcher administered 260 questionnaires to participants in the district in addition to 8 focus group discussions comprising 10 participants each during the period May 2020 and May 2021. The results showed that rural women are aware of the challenges which deter them from accessing development policy benefits. These challenges include lack of education on the part of the women, strict traditional structures, lack of supporting legislation, and male dominance amongst others. The paper recommends that Government should continue formulating inclusive policies specifically meant for women. Strict monitoring and evaluation at all stages of project formulation and implementation should be observed so that maximum development policy gains can be realised for rural women. In addition, some development programs can be introduced for both boys and girls right from high school so that women’s empowerment starts earlier in their lives
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