1,720,978 research outputs found
When Students Misbehave: Student Discipline from the Insight Approach
Get PDFThis study examines the applicability and utility of the Insight approach to conflict analysis and resolution in the school setting as a response to the persistent, contemporary problem of the school-to-prison pipeline, where kids who are punished for misbehavior through suspension and expulsion are overwhelmingly ending up in the juvenile justice system and without future prospects for success. Guided by the explanatory framework of the Insight approach, which attends specifically and intentionally to the interiority driving behavior, this research takes a new perspective on student misbehavior, hypothesizing that misbehavior is not only behavior that breaks the rules, but is also conflict behavior. Through an integrated case study and pilot project, this research builds on this hypothesis and examines whether specialized Insight skills can help school staff make targeted and precise disciplinary decisions that support students and change patterns of misbehavior, thereby enhancing the probability of positive student outcomes
Deconversion as Conflict: The Moral Grammar of Latter-day Saints and Ex-Mormons
Get PDFThis thesis has been embargoed for 2 years. It will not be available until May 2023 at the earliest.In religious psychology, deconversion is often studied as an intrapersonal phenomenon, a shift from religious belief to disbelief. But deconversion is at least analogous to (if not coterminous with) social conflict in that both are complex, non-linear social phenomena characterized by destructive relational patterns and protracted social identities. Hence this thesis presents a theory of deconversion as conflict. This theory is informed both by original research and the literatures of religious psychology, peace and conflict studies, and narratology. Original research includes a root narrative analysis of a triangulated dataset—five focus group interviews and a small sample of representative texts from three conflict parties. This includes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its current members, and its former members. This analysis demonstrates stark differences in moral grammar that make it difficult for each party to understand the points of view of the other. Who one group sees as a hero, the other sees as a villain; and what one group sees as their primary method of overcoming abuse, the other sees as an abuse of power. These disparate moral systems influence each party to choose resolution strategies such as evangelism and apologetics that fracture their relationship and prevent reconciliation. These findings suggest: a) deconversion transforms the relationships between believers and the newly formed disbeliever, b) evangelism and apologetics are win-lose modes of interaction unfit for the purpose of conflict resolution, and c) a healed relationship between believers and disbelievers will not occur automatically but requires renegotiation.2023-05-1
Exploring the Utopic Promise of Smart City Engagements
Get PDFThis research is intended for practitioners and explored how smart city engagements are negotiated to better understand and recognize underlying complex relational power dynamics. This was accomplished through a conflict resolution reflective and facilitative lens as it pertains to trust and value alignments. Practical insights generated from understanding these influential dynamics create the opportunity to have better decision-making and transformative capabilities. The existing literature highlighted conflicts around geopolitical and operational security concerns. In contrast, the research conducted for this study showed much of the smart city industry was more naturally collaborative and artificially competitive than originally theorized. Additionally, the research uncovered a shift in the smart city industry of embracing a more inclusive and human-centered approach, rather than a one-size-fits-all model. The concept of utopia and Root Narrative framework were used to identify value commitments, while other organizational models were used to help position the engagements and understand issues around trust. Overall, while this research may not address all the issues related to this topic, it expands the application of the conflict resolution domain to areas of practice not previously explored. Research Question: How do relational power dynamics shape smart city engagements
ROOT NARRATIVE FRAMEWORK AND ENGAGING NARRATIVES OF DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA IN NIGERIA: TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE INTERVENTION APPROACH
No full textThis dissertation delves into the concept of development economics in the Global South, focusing specifically on Nigeria. It highlights the necessity of aligning intervention strategies with the realities of the local recipient population and suggests the use of root narrative theory to decolonize peacebuilding and development narratives. The study explores the far-reaching implications of colonialism, the role of narratology in African oral tradition, and the challenges involved in intervening in post-conflict regions. The research argues that economic interventions in the Global South are not exclusively motivated by economic factors, but also by regional cultural peculiarities and ideological orientations that perpetuate neo-colonialism. These factors determine the perception of locals in the Global South. As a result, the study proposes the adoption of a framework that takes into account the root narrative orientation of the target area to develop interventions that are tailored to the specific environment
Retaining Families, Renewing Cities? The Promises and Pitfalls of Urban Upper-Class Retention Policies
Get PDFThis dissertation critically considers the racial, gendered and classed implications of public policies aimed at retaining affluent families in urban centers. In recent decades, policy makers, economists, and urban developers alike have heralded the integration of middle and upper-class families as a panacea for rebuilding struggling cities; reversing decades of declining urban populations, bolstering tax bases insufficient to support city infrastructure and services, and pumping economic capital into lackluster consumer markets. These intended outcomes are built on the implicit proposition that an influx of affluent families will catalyze improvements to city services and infrastructure, leading to better quality of life for all. However, many privileged families have means to opt-out of public schools, transit, and recreation facilities. Far from achieving these policies’ stated goals, retaining families who favor elite pay-to-play options further exacerbates structural violence and segregation.
Drawing from over two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Baltimore, MD, this dissertation empirically explores community mobilization efforts aimed at incentivizing privileged families to enroll in public schools. Marrying theoretical insights on power with practical action, I consider the limitations and potentials of these initiatives as means of ameliorating sources of institutionalized racism, systemic poverty, and political marginalization. Original empirical findings from this fieldwork are brought into dialogue with findings from scholarship investigating similar policies in Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago’s east side, Seattle, and a handful of cities abroad all struggling with family retention. Based on analysis of these data, I argue making incremental improvements to failing urban schools and segregation through such efforts is possible, when such initiatives are undertaken concurrently with efforts to control for unintended consequences. When family retention initiatives are taken with critical attention to institutionalized structures of racial, socioeconomic and gendered disparities, these policies are powerful tools for upending the underlying social structures that propagate poverty and segregation
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
Democratization of Unrecognized States: A Comparative Study
Get PDFThe question of how to effectively and peacefully resolve conflicts involving unrecognized states, which pose significant regional security challenges despite their small territorial areas, has been frequently asked since the Kosovar independence and the Ossetian War of 2008. Central to the behavior of unrecognized states in conflicts is their political systems, for many unrecognized states, having emerged from an ethno-nationalist conflict, institutionalize ethnic nationalism and politicize an ethnic identity to galvanize local support for the fledgling state as well as the war heroes that emerged. These war heroes then tend to cultivate their political capital through ethno-nationalist manipulation and mobilization. Much of the literature has already asserted that unrecognized states cannot democratize – at least not fully. Instead, they become ethnocracies or titular democracies, serving a single ethnic group (the founding, titular one) over any others. However, this literature has provided no empirical evidence to any such assertion. This dissertation takes up the challenge of discovering how and why unrecognized states democratize
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
Is All News Good News?: Media Coverage of Terrorism
Get PDFThis research used a series of qualitative measurements of media coverage to investigate how differences in characteristics of a terrorist related event correlate with qualitative differences in media coverage. The first part of this study determined that there were tools to measure differences in the quality of coverage. Three variables showed significant differences in coverage. Coverage differed in the structure of the news account- in whose shoes the reader enters the story. The differences between entering through the perspective of the victim, the perpetrator or the context have been correlated by Cerulo (1998) with different messages of the legitimacy of the actors. Victim sequences signal deviant (illegitimate) violence, perpetrator sequences signal legitimate violence and contextual sequences signal ambiguous violence. Coverage also differed in the extent to which an article provided contextual information or focused strictly on the details of the event. Providing contextual information is important for terrorist groups because it includes information on the grievances of the group as well as the history of the conflict. This variable was measured as an episodic or thematic frame. Explanations of motivation for participation in terrorism also differed based on characteristics of an event. As with contextual coverage, presenting themes of causation or motivation for the account is a way for terrorist groups to present grievances and history of the conflict. Combining these three variables into a favorable coverage variable helped makes sense of competing trends in the data. This first section set up a system for evaluating the qualitative impact on media coverage of choices that terrorist groups and governments make. What stands out is a paradox for a terrorist group around the use of violence. Both here and in other studies, violence has been shown to be an effective means of getting through the media gatekeeping and achieving coverage, but it is also associated with a decrease in favorable coverage. Number of casualties is also negatively associated with favorable coverage. Hence the paradox that, in order to achieve coverage, based on criteria of newsworthiness, violence may often be necessary, but violent action actually decreases the number of articles presenting the kind of information terrorist groups want to get across. Looking at the paired cases, what was most significant was the lack of change in the favorability of coverage before and after events. The implication is that while terrorist groups may have some control over whether or not their actions get covered, media organizations develop fairly resilient patterns for covering those actions, irrespective of the nature of the action. Terrorist groups essentially have less capacity to actually manipulate the type of coverage they receive than is commonly believed. While there were some very small effects, the favorability of coverage immediately following an event is essentially the same as before it. The difference lies in the actual amount of coverage. While short-term impacts were slight, there are substantial differences both in quantity and quality over the life of the conflict, a longer term view may allow for better understanding of changes in media coverage
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