Browsing by Subject "International Development"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Africa’s First Democrats
    (2017) Samatar, Abdi
    Abdi Ismail Samatar provides a clear and foundational history of Somalia at the dawn of the country’s independence when Africa’s first democrats appeared. While many African countries were dominated by authoritarian rulers when they entered the postcolonial era—and scholars have assumed this as a standard feature of political leadership on the continent—Somalia had an authentic democratic leadership providing fundamental lessons.
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    Beyond the International Volunteering Experience: Former Volunteers as Practitioners of Unofficial Development in Vietnam
    (2015-08) Vu, Lisa
    International volunteers demonstrate that development practice is not the sole reserve of professional development workers. As actors conducting unofficial development work, defined as those who do not follow guidelines developed by the development industry and who do not have training in international development, international volunteers contribute to different understandings of development and foreign aid. Looking beyond volunteers' impact on the host country during the actual volunteer experience, this dissertation examines how international volunteers engage with the host country after completing their volunteer assignment and the development implications for the host country. Interview and survey data gathered from alumni of an international volunteer program in Vietnam operated by the nonprofit organization Volunteers in Asia (VIA) reveal four categories by which to classify former volunteers' engagement. These categories--committed contributors, default participants, potential contributors, and indifferent abstainers---reflect the former volunteers' interest and their actual involvement in activities that contribute to Vietnam's socioeconomic development. Due to their continued linkages to people and processes in Vietnam, committed contributors and default participants represent a source of social capital for their former host country. Potential contributors, or those who are interested in contributing to Vietnam's development but have no record of involvement since their volunteer assignment, embody a potential source of social capital for Vietnam. The indifferent abstainers have little interest in partaking in Vietnam's development; consequently, they may not be considered an immediate source of social capital for Vietnam. The study reveals that the unofficial development practiced by international volunteers is centered on relationships, and through those connections between former volunteers and Vietnamese nationals flow goodwill, knowledge and skills, and money. Rather than manifesting as structural changes in Vietnam, the development undertaken by international volunteers brings personal transformations for the volunteers and the people with whom they interact.
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    Constructions of equitable notions of quality in Early Childhood Care and Development from two communities in the Philippines: local practices of bayanihan and dagyaw.
    (2010-06) Williams, Rhiannon Delyth
    As attention and investment in early-childhood care and development (ECCD) has increased in the majority world, aid organizations, governments, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have emphasized creating quality early-childhood environments for children, their families, and the broader community. More specifically, the aim is to support children's health, education, and well-being while building capacity among multiple local actors within communities. Critiques of expert-driven constructions of ECCD community quality in the majority world center around the fact that these notions often reflect little of the social, economic, or historical experiences of the communities in which they are implemented, and also do little to preserve the "inherent assets, such as mother tongue and positive cultural practices" (Ball, 2005, p.4) of these locales (Ball & Pence, 2006; Cleghorn & Prochner, 2010; Penn, 2005). Furthermore, these interventions rarely engage in authentic dialogue with the very individuals they are hoping to engage in social and economic improvement (Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 1999; Cleghorn and Prochner, 2010). Therefore, this dissertation presents research findings and an analysis of local constructions of quality in two Filipino communities. This dissertation resides within a critical constructivist paradigm and uses a theoretical framework based on anthropology and social-justice literature to best understand specific locally constructed knowledge and processes regarding childhood and quality ECCD. Aligning with the study's constructivist paradigm, a qualitative methodology, including focus groups and interviews with a collaborative, ethnographic focus, was chosen. The main tool used in the focus groups was called StoryTech, which considers the indirect and contextual nature of the concept of quality, allowing a critical, in-depth look at what multiple stakeholders view and believe quality looks like in their own ECCD contexts. Stakeholder groups that were invited to participate in the research were day-care parents, teachers, community members, and barangay officials. This method required stakeholder groups to discuss visions of their quality ECCD community. Data were analyzed and interpreted across each stakeholder group using an anthropological and social-justice perspective. Individuals within each stakeholder group were asked to envision what a quality ECCD community would look like in five years, 2012, and several themes emerge in the analysis of these ideal visions. From the findings within the community dimension many stakeholders see a collaborative notion of quality that embodies local practices of bayanihan or dagyaw. Underlying these local practices are values of collaboration, embracing others, listening, seeking out discourses to connect bridges across the ECCD sector, and finding innovative solutions to problems. Similarly, from the findings in the daycare classroom and professional development dimensions stakeholders' ideal visions incorporate supporting and facilitating the development of a good professional citizen. Overall this study demonstrated that conceptions of quality ECCD are to some extent locally determined. In conclusion, while in this dissertation I am not suggesting ways in which cultural projects such as ECCD democratic communities can evolve, flourish, and sustain themselves (these areas need further research), I present and discuss locally constructed visions of processes and practices that have emerged from the research and the literature on inclusive practices, which support an ideal quality ECCD community.
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    Episode 7: Intimate Partner Violence in Colombia
    (2017-04-25) Friedemann-Sanchez, Greta; Conners, Kate
    In 2008, Colombia expanded legislation addressing women's human right to live a life free from violence. The prevalence of intimate partner violence in Colombia is one of the highest in Latin America. In this podcast, Greta Friedemann-Sanchez, associate professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, explores the complexity of implementing the 2008 legislation given Colombia's institutional organization and the context of the conflict.
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    Putting culture to work in counseling practice: Intersections of mental health and representations of Arab and Muslim women in Egypt
    (2017-05) Jaafar, Amina
    Recent sociopolitical events in Egypt have alarmed the global mental health community and led to warnings about the lasting psychological effects of political turmoil for Egyptian women, who are often characterized by Western-trained psychologists as likely to suffer from mental illness due to ‘Arab culture’ (Al-Krenawi, 2005; Charara et al., 2017). This dissertation examines the assumptions underlying this explanation of mental illness through a qualitative study of how representations of ‘culture’ shape the work of counseling psychologists in Egypt providing psychosocial support to women (and men). Drawing on poststructural thought, and through in-depth interviewing and participant observation, this dissertation explores the process by which ‘culture’ becomes understood as heavily influencing the cause, course, and treatment of women’s social and emotional issues. Although Arab and/or Muslim ‘culture’ is often understood as a broad category and is mostly defined in counseling psychology theory and practice as negatively affecting women, through this work an argument is put forth that there are multiple and often competing ways that ‘culture’ is taken up and put to work in the provision of psychosocial support to women in Egypt and the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The findings suggest that notions of culture are taken up and utilized in different ways at the macro, meso, and micro-level. In this study the macro-level represented how ‘culture’ was used simultaneously to explain and deny the existence of sociopolitical events and their effects on women. At the meso-level, notions of culture provided the foundation for the construction of an East versus West divide that privileged Western psychological knowledge and practitioners as having the utmost authority in the field of counseling psychology. Lastly, at the micro-level, practitioners’ understandings of ‘culture’ affected how they described interactions with their clients, and the ways in which they defined themselves as either similar or different from their client populations. Building on the deep exploration and analysis of ‘culture,’ this work concludes with a call for further and more critical psychological research in Egypt and the MENA region that analyzes the problematic centralizing of ‘culture’ in Arab and Muslim women’s mental health.