Matching Items (7)
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- All Subjects: Social Research
- All Subjects: Cultural Anthropology
- Creators: Swadener, Elizabeth
Description
This dissertation examines Japanese preschool teachers' cultural practices and beliefs about the pedagogy of social-emotional development. The study is an interview-based, ethnographic study, which is based on the video-cued mutivocal ethnographic method. This study focuses on the emic terms that Japanese preschool teachers use to explain their practices, such as amae (dependency), omoiyari (empathy), sabishii (loneliness), mimamoru (watching and waiting) and garari (peripheral participation). My analysis suggests that sabishii, amae, and omoiyari form a triad of emotional exchange that has a particular cultural patterning and salience in Japan and in the Japanese approach to the socialization of emotions in early childhood. Japanese teachers think about the development of the class as a community, which is different from individual-centric Western pedagogical perspective that gives more attention to each child's development. Mimamoru is a pedagogical philosophy and practice in Japanese early childhood education. A key component of Japanese teachers' cultural practices and beliefs about the pedagogy of social-emotional development is that the process requires the development not only of children as individuals, but also of children in a preschool class as a community. In addition, the study suggests that at a deeper level these emic concepts reflect more general Japanese cultural notions of time, space, sight, and body. This dissertation concludes with the argument that teachers' implicit cultural practices and beliefs is "A cultural art of teaching." Teachers' implicit cultural practices and beliefs are harmonized in the teachers' mind and body, making connections between them, and used depending on the nuances of a situation, as informed by teachers' conscious and unconscious thoughts. The study has also shown evidence of similar practices and logic vertically distributed within Japanese early childhood education, from the way teachers act with children, to the way directors act with teachers, to the way government ministries act with directors, to the way deaf and hearing educators act with their deaf and hearing students. Because these practices are forms of bodily habitus and implicit Japanese culture, it makes sense that they are found across fields of action.
ContributorsHayashi, Akiko (Author) / Tobin, Joseph (Thesis advisor) / Eisenberg, Nancy (Committee member) / Nakagawa, Kathryn (Committee member) / Fischman, Gustavo (Committee member) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
A bilingual, bicultural interpreter and researcher navigates blurry boundaries and intersectionality
Description
A researcher reflects using a close reading of interview transcripts and description to share what happened while participating in multiple roles in a larger ethnographic study of the acculturation process of deaf students in kindergarten classrooms in three countries. The course of this paper will focus on three instances that took place in Japan and America. The analysis of these examples will bring to light the concept of taking on multiple roles, including graduate research assistant, interpreter, cultural mediator, and sociolinguistic consultant within a research project serving to uncover challenging personal and professional dilemmas and crossing boundaries; the dual roles, interpreter and researcher being the primary focus. This analysis results in a brief look at a thought provoking, yet evolving task of the researcher/interpreter. Maintaining multiple roles in the study the researcher is able to potentially identify and contribute "hidden" knowledge that may have been overlooked by other members of the research team. Balancing these different roles become key implications when interpreting practice, ethical boundaries, and participant research at times the lines of separation are blurred.
ContributorsHensley, Jennifer Scarboro (Author) / Tobin, Joseph (Thesis advisor) / Artiles, Alfredo (Committee member) / Horejes, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
National mandates to decrease suspension numbers have prompted school districts across the country to turn to a practice known as restorative justice as an alternative to removing students through suspension or referral to law enforcement for problematic behavior. This ethnographic case study examines school-based restorative justice programs as potentially disruptive social movements in dismantling the school-to-prison-pipeline through participatory analysis of one school’s implementation of Discipline that Restores.
Findings go beyond suspension numbers to discuss the promise inherent in the program’s validation of student lived experience using a disruptive framework within the greater context of the politics of care and the school-to-prison-pipeline. Findings analyze the intersection of race, power, and identity with the experience of care in defining community to illustrate some of the prominent structural impediments that continue to work to cap the program’s disruptive potential. This study argues that restorative justice, through the experience of care, has the potential to act as a disruptive force, but wrestles with the enormity of the larger structural investments required for authentic transformative and disruptive change to occur.
As the restorative justice movement gains steam, on-going critical analysis against a disruptive framework becomes necessary to ensure the future success of restorative discipline in disrupting the school-to-prison-pipeline.
Findings go beyond suspension numbers to discuss the promise inherent in the program’s validation of student lived experience using a disruptive framework within the greater context of the politics of care and the school-to-prison-pipeline. Findings analyze the intersection of race, power, and identity with the experience of care in defining community to illustrate some of the prominent structural impediments that continue to work to cap the program’s disruptive potential. This study argues that restorative justice, through the experience of care, has the potential to act as a disruptive force, but wrestles with the enormity of the larger structural investments required for authentic transformative and disruptive change to occur.
As the restorative justice movement gains steam, on-going critical analysis against a disruptive framework becomes necessary to ensure the future success of restorative discipline in disrupting the school-to-prison-pipeline.
ContributorsWeeks, Brianna Ruth (Author) / Cuadraz, Gloria (Thesis advisor) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Lopez, Vera (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This study examines the representation of Asian online brides by studying the images and profiles that are advertised on Asianonlinebrides.com. To do so, I combined the history and growth of the Human Trafficking industry, the idea of the Asian “exotic OTHER,” the power and structured/constrained agency, and social construction of gender theories. In particular, I utilized a mixed methods approach for data collection. The content and visual analysis in this study provided the two sides of the analytic coin: the written and the visual. I am particularly interested in the narrative comments offered by the prospective brides, e.g., what they state to be their preferences in their dream man/husband, and the personality traits, and characteristics that they write about themselves. The following were examined: the gender displays, picture frames, feminine touch, and the ritualization of subordination. For example, body language, clothing, skin, hair color, and texture, bone structure, posture, etc. I argue that this data alerts us to the whole host of ideas, assumptions, social, cultural, and gender constructions. The power relations that exceeds the text and inform us of these online brides. The findings have indicated that these women are vulnerable and caught within oppressive social structures. They have nevertheless utilized those structures to their advantage. By doing so, the brides have acted as assertive agents in that they have looked out for the interests of both themselves and their families. Moreover, a significant body of data was provided first hand through the written and visual narratives of the online brides. These brides have offered valuable insight into the field of Asian online brides. Their stories have presented a unique perspective to the online brides’ process that can only be captured through the narratives provided in this research.
ContributorsDai, Linh K (Author) / Cavender, Gray (Thesis advisor) / Jurik, Nancy (Committee member) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Tibbs, Donald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Privilege is unearned advantages, access, and power reserved for a select group of people. Those that benefit from privilege manifest their power consciously and sub-consciously so as to maintain their exclusive control of the opportunities privilege affords them. The reach and power of one’s privilege rises and falls as the different social identities that one possesses intersect. Ultimately, if a society built on justice and equity is to be achieved, those with privilege must take tangible steps to acknowledge their privilege and work to end the unequal advantages and oppression that are created in order to perpetuate privilege. This thesis unpacks privilege through an autoethnographic examination of the author’s history. Through the use of creative nonfiction, personal stories become launching points to explore characteristics of privilege manifest in the author’s life which are emblematic of larger social groups that share many of the author’s social identities. The following characteristics of privilege are explored: merit, oppression, normalization, economic value, neutrality, blindness, and silence.
ContributorsBlack, Luke (Author) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / de la Garza, Amira (Committee member) / Scott, Kimberly (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation explores the notion of Pueblo community engagement at multiple levels, from the communities’ role in engaging its members, the individual’s responsibility in engaging with the community, both the community and individual’s engagement relationship with external forces, and the movement towards new engagement as it relates to youth and community. This research recognizes both the existing and the changing nature of engagement in our Pueblo communities. Because the core value of contribution is critical to being a participant in community, both participants and communities need to think of what needs to be done to strengthen Pueblo community engagement , for community and for youth. On the community side, this dissertation examines past community programs impact to the social structures of Pueblo communities and highlights a couple of new strategies to incorporate community voice in programming efforts. In addition, this dissertation explores youth contribution to community. The notions of community recognizing and being receptive to new ideas for youth engagement and of instilling their sense of community in youth is critical to the ‘new engagement’ paradigm. This dissertation proposes that one strategy is to incorporate youth in the governance structures of community through innovative programming with the ultimate goal of instilling in youth the feeling that they belong to their community.
ContributorsChosa, Carnell Terry (Author) / Sumida Huaman, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Brayboy, Bryan (Thesis advisor) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
My Critical Yoga Studies investigation maps from the early 20th century to present day how yoga has become white through U.S. law and cultural productions, and has enhanced white privilege at the expense of Indian and people of color bodies. I position Critical Yoga Studies at the intersection of Yoga Studies, Critical Race Theory, Indigenous Studies, Mobilities Studies, and transnational American Studies. Scholars have linked uneven development and racial displacement (Soja, 1989; Harvey, 2006; Gilmore, 2007). How does racist displacement appear in historic and current contexts of development in yoga? In my dissertation, I use yoga mobilities to explain ongoing movements of Indigenous knowledge and wealth from former colonies, and contemporary “Indian” bodies, into the white, U.S. settler nation-state, economy, culture, and body. The mobilities trope provides rich conceptual ground for yoga study, because commodified yoga anchors in corporal movement, sets billions of dollars of global wealth in motion, shapes culture, and fuels complex legal and nation building maneuvers by the U.S. settler state and post-colonial India. Emerging discussions of commodified yoga typically do not consider race and colonialism. I fill these gaps with critical race and Indigenous Studies investigations of yoga mobilities in contested territories, triangulating data through three research sites: (1) U.S. Copyright law (1937-2015): I chart a 14,000% rise in U.S. yoga copyrights over a century of white hoarding through archival study in Copyright Public Records Reading Room, Library of Congress; (2) U.S. popular culture/music (1941-1967): I analyze twentieth-century popular song to illustrate how racist tropes of the Indian yogi joined yoga’s entry into U.S. popular culture, with material consequences; (3) Kerala, India, branded as India’s wellness tourism destination (2018): I engage participant-observation and interviews with workers in yoga tourism hubs to document patterns of racialized, uneven access to yoga. I find legal regimes facilitate extraction and displacement; cultural productions materially segregate and exclude; and yoga tourism is a node of racist capitalism that privileges white, settler mobility at the expense of Indian people, land, culture.
ContributorsSingh, Roopa (Author) / Lomawaima, K. Tsianina (Thesis advisor) / Aggarwal, Rimjhim (Committee member) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019