Participatory research methodologies and interactive communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly seen as offering ways of enhancing women's empowerment and rural community development. However, some researchers suggest the need for caution about such claims. This book details findings from an evaluation of a feminist action research project that explored the impacts of ICTs for rural women in Queensland, Australia, in terms of personal, business and community development. Using praxis and poststructuralist feminist theories and methodologies, this innovative study presents a rigorous analysis and critique of women's empowerment and participation. This study demonstrates the value of adopting a critical yet pragmatic approach that takes diversity and difference, power-knowledge relations, and the contradictory effects of participation into account. This is argued to enable the development of more effective strategies for women's empowerment, participation and inclusion. This book should be of particular interest to researchers, postgraduate students, and others working in the fields of communication, gender, and rural development, and feminist evaluation and ethnography.
Evaluating Communication for Development presents a comprehensive framework for evaluating communication for development (C4D). This framework combines the latest thinking from a number of fields in new ways. It critiques dominant instrumental, accountability-based approaches to development and evaluation and offers an alternative holistic, participatory, mixed methods approach based on systems and complexity thinking and other key concepts. It maintains a focus on power, gender and other differences and social norms. The authors have designed the framework as a way to focus on achieving sustainable social change and to continually improve and develop C4D initiatives. The benefits and rigour of this approach are supported by examples and case studies from a number of action research and evaluation capacity development projects undertaken by the authors over the past fifteen years. Building on current arguments within the fields of C4D and development, the authors reinforce the case for effective communication being a central and vital component of participatory forms of development, something that needs to be appreciated by decision makers. They also consider ways of increasing the effectiveness of evaluation capacity development from grassroots to management level in the development context, an issue of growing importance to improving the quality, effectiveness and utilisation of monitoring and evaluation studies in this field. The book includes a critical review of the key approaches, methodologies and methods that are considered effective for planning evaluation, assessing the outcomes of C4D, and engaging in continuous learning. This rigorous book is of immense theoretical and practical value to students, scholars, and professionals researching or working in development, communication and media, applied anthropology, and evaluation and program planning.
In the past several years, hundreds of challenges a year to books used in public schools have been reported across the nation. Most of these have come from the Religious Right. This book confronts the attacks on public education and commonly used literature books by challenging the religious assumptions, the biblical interpretations, and the intimidation tactics of the Religious Right. Part I counters the claims of these censors by presenting opposing views on democracy, secular humanism, religion, the Bible, morality, and the purposes of literature. In Part II, six books frequently taught in high school classes are analyzed. Edwards shows why they have been challenged by the Religious Right, and presents a case for their moral and religious virtues as well as their literary worth. The book differs from other anti-censorship works because it deals primarily and directly with the religious and moral aspects that educators often tend to avoid. This book offers teachers and school administrators scholarly conterarguments that can help confront with literature challenges from the Religious Right.
If you're looking for the baby name book that has it all - classic and contemporary suggestions without the insanely silly options you wouldn't even use to name your pet - this second edition of The Everything Baby Names Book is your singular resource for naming your little bundle of joy! Loaded with the 25,000 best options for boys and girls, you can easily narrow down your favorites from A to Z. Inside you'll find: Dictionaries of names for boys and girls Sidebars packed with fun facts about names Top Ten Lists of names across dozens of categories While other books promise tens of thousands of tried and true names, The Everything Baby Names Book, 2nd Edition, is packed with the ones you're more likely to really name your newborn. So complete, you may have trouble choosing just one!
Choosing your baby's name is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. Fortunately, The Everything Baby Names Book, 3rd Edition is here to help! Featuring 50,000 of today's best names, the scoop on how your child's name can affect his sense of self, and how to choose a name that can honor your heritage and your child, this guide is the ultimate resource for making this momentous choice. The new edition features: Brand-new information on the impact that different names have on a child Complete separate sections for boys' and girls' names Meanings and origins of names explained Interesting and unique variations from around the globe Packed with engaging lists of popular and traditional names, fun facts, and important scientific data, this book gives you a plethora of possibilities--so you can make the perfect choice for your new bundle of joy!
Celebrity teen model Lenox Ryan has never attended a traditional school. Family tragedy strikes. Lenox's world drastically changes when she has to live with her aunt in small–town Iowa. Lenox uses her gift to see auras to mingle, avoid, and blend in at public school, hoping to get home ASAP. Then she falls for "the boy with no colors." As this new life rapidly flowers, her controlling manager/mother returns, contemptuous of her new life, and especially the strong, quiet Gabe. Her mother's intuition (and snooping) discovers their young love. Momager is determined to separate them. An irresistible cast of characters conspires to foster this meant–to–be romance for a chance at happily ever after.
June loves stories-and not just the kind you find in books, but stories you dream up of overheard conversations, family secrets, whatever was left unsaid the last time you hung up the phone. She collects them, hoards them, and then transforms them into fiction. Her immediate gifts, then, are a sharp eye and quick ear-making her a kind of spy, voyeur, but also a guardian angel. She sees but she also sees through. She's vigilant but she's also tender. Writing about the blood and mystery under life's surfaces puts her in the current of some of the best writing being done today. This is fiction that's lean, somewhat tight-lipped, un-flashy, and careful. It's built on suggestion, not statement. And it pays no more attention to plot than ordinary life seems to do. June's writing is of this strain, but there's a difference-a difference built up from her deeper gift. That gift is empathy. June's writing rises in power because she's down in the skin along with her characters. Mining the covenants and conspiracies of ordinary life, she's not at all detached. She's a participant. Someone who's been there-and hence understands. -Paul Evans
Another important contribution to the growing literature on critical social work. It is on the cutting edge of thinking about social work and its goal of social change.' - Kate van Heugten, Social Work Review Critical Social Work starts from the premise that a central goal of social work practice is social change to redress social inequality. Taking a critical theoretical approach, the authors explore the links between personal and social change. They confront the challenges for critical social work in the context of pressures to separate the personal from the political and in responding to the impact of changes in the socio-political, statutory and global contexts of practice. Critical Social Work has been thoroughly revised to take into account recent social, economic and political developments. Coverage of theoretical frameworks has been substantially expanded and reflects current concerns such as evidence based practice and human rights. The causes of people's marginalisation and oppression are examined in relation to class, race, ethnicity, gender and other forms of social inequality.Case study chapters in the earlier edition on working with immigrants, Indigenous people, women, men, families, people with psychiatric disabilities and those experiencing loss and grief have been updated and revised. The second edition includes new case study chapters on disability, older people, children, rurality, and violence and abuse. Critical Social Work is an essential resource to inform progressive social work practice.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.