Knowing when to step forward, back, or out: An autoethnography of a white researcher in two post-colonial educational contexts

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tasha R Wyatt
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Native People ◽  
Educational Researcher ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Educational Settings ◽  
Leadership Positions ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Field Notes

This autoethnography makes use of 10 years of field notes that the author collected while living and working as an educational researcher in Greenland and Hawaii. Using Kaomea’s framework for thinking about when non-Native people should step forward, step back, or step out, the author’s analysis of these field notes indicates that she struggled around knowing her role in these post-colonial communities. The author was hesitant in moving into leadership positions in Greenland because it was only recently decolonized and she feared being perceived as someone interested in usurping qualified Greenlanders to fill important leadership positions. However, in Hawaii, which has had more time to consider its colonial past, the author felt less threatened, which gave her greater freedom to explore opportunities for where she could step forward. The study provides another dimension on white researchers working in post-colonial educational settings, and demonstrates the complexity of navigating post-colonial settings even in circumstances where researchers have personal experience with these power dynamics.

Borrowing As A Tool To Fill The Ideological Thoughts: The Role Of Code-Mixing In An American Brat By Bapsi Sidhwa And The Escape By Qaisra Shiraz

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (II) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Native People ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Bapsi Sidhwa ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
Language And Literature

This research article highlights the temperament, inference, scope, and motives of code-mixing in Pakistani English works. One novel from Pakistani English novels namely, An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa, and one short story namely, The Escape by Qaisra Shehraz are being selected as an illustration of this reading. In this novel and short story, the writers have already dealt with the characteristics of postcolonialism. English language and literature pierced into the privileged civilizations of the sub-continent, after the end of British Imperialism. Pakistani writers in English are the best interpreter of the post-colonial communal language. In this study, I have hit upon code-mixing in English works written by Pakistani authors to a bigger echelon. These works are paragons of arts and the unbelievable mixture of rhetorical and fictitious study. In these works, the writers have not abased the confined diversities. They have tinted the value of Pakistani English in order to achieve the chatty desires of native people. These borrowings from the native languages are used to fill the lexical fissures of ideological thoughts. The reason of these borrowings is not to represent the English as a substandard assortment. Through the utilization of native words, we conclude that the significance of native languages has been tinted to question mark the dialect as well. The words of daily use also have an area of research for English people without having any substitute in English. That’s why in English literature innovative practices and ideas of code-mixing have been employed.

Borrowing As A Tool To Fill The Ideological Thoughts: The Role Of Code-Mixing In An American Brat By Bapsi Sidhwa And The Escape By Qaisra Shiraz

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Native People ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Bapsi Sidhwa ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
Language And Literature

This research article highlights the temperament, inference, scope, and motives of code-mixing in Pakistani English works. One novel from Pakistani English novels namely, An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa, and one short story namely, The Escape by Qaisra Shehraz are being selected as an illustration of this reading. In this novel and short story, the writers have already dealt with the characteristics of postcolonialism. English language and literature pierced into the privileged civilizations of the sub-continent, after the end of British Imperialism. Pakistani writers in English are the best interpreter of the post-colonial communal language. In this study, I have hit upon code-mixing in English works written by Pakistani authors to a bigger echelon. These works are paragons of arts and the unbelievable mixture of rhetorical and fictitious study. In these works, the writers have not abased the confined diversities. They have tinted the value of Pakistani English in order to achieve the chatty desires of native people. These borrowings from the native languages are used to fill the lexical fissures of ideological thoughts. The reason for these borrowings is not to represent the English as a substandard assortment. Through the utilization of native words, we conclude that the significance of native languages has been tinted to question mark the dialect as well. The words of daily use also have an area of research for English people without having any substitute in English. That’s why in English literature innovative practices and ideas of code-mixing have been employed.

The Reflection of Apartheidic Trauma / Traumatic Apartheid in None to Accompany Me by Nadine Gordimer

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 328
Author(s):  
Şahin KIZILTAŞ
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black People ◽  
Native People ◽  
Nadine Gordimer ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
White People ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Violence Victimization ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Almost All

The world has gone through a trauma for centuries. Almost all nations have experienced all sorts of traumatic events and feelings in this period. Among those nations, the black seem to be the most unlucky and ill-fated suffered from traumatic disasters. However, among those black nations, the natives of South Africa have been the most piteous and wretched ones. Their misfortune began in 1652 with the arrival of white colonists in the country. Since then, the oppression and persecution of white European colonists and settlers on natives increasingly continued. Those native people were displaced from the lands inherited from their ancestors a few centuries ago. They were not allowed to have equal rights with white people and to share same environment in public premises. The natives have put up resistance against the racial and colonial practices of white settlers which excluded them from all living spaces; yet, they could not manage, even they came into power in 1994. Today their exclusion and violence victimization still go on and they are still subjected to inferior treatment by (post)colonial dominant white powers. As a white intellectual and writer who had European origins, Nadine Gordimer witnessed the repression and torturing of European settlers on native people in South Africa. In her novels, she has reflected the racial discrimination practiced by white people who have considered of themselves in a superior position compared to the black. This study aims to focus on how Gordimer has reflected the trauma which the black people of South Africa have experienced as a consequence of racist practices. This will contribute to clarify and get across the real and true-life traumatic narratives of native people in the colonized countries.

The Legend of Jump Mountain: Narrative Dispossession of the Monacan in Postcolonial Virginia

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
Jay Vest
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Local History ◽  
Native People ◽  
Burial Mound ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
North Central ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Implicit Stereotypes ◽  
Indian Country

In north central Virginia there is a local tale - The Legend of Jump Mountain, which purports to explain the origins of the Hayes Creek Indian Burial Mound. A highly romantic legend, it immortalizes post colonial intertribal warfare during the early nineteenth century while ignoring the antiquity of the mound and the local descendants of its aboriginal creators. It is not at all uncommon to find such romantic tales in Indian country where the Native people have become invisible and there remain significant tribal artifacts common to the landscape. However, the standing claim to authenticity remains a matter of significant concern. In this essay, the author considers the tale's effectiveness assessing Indian origins, local history and tribal heritages, as well as the implicit stereotypes and the romantic illusion that it may generate in the popular imagination.

scholarly journals Writing through grief: Using autoethnography to help process grief after the death of a loved one

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 205979911988956
Author(s):  
Angela Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Traumatic Loss ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Field Notes

While reliving traumatic events may initially feel agonizing, writing down our worst experiences can also offer a way to cope with some of life’s horrors. The following narrative presents and describes how one grieving mother harnessed autoethnography to process her profound grief. The researcher draws on personal experience losing her son, chronicling her thoughts and feelings in grief journals, and eventually compiling autoethnographic field notes and reflections. This article helps support the argument that weaving personal experiences with academic research can reveal an understanding of complex, painful issues, such as death, grief, and traumatic loss. The author recommends similar strategies for others examining difficult topics, as this method reveals insights about difficult experiences without infringing on the pain of other subjects.

scholarly journals The Power Game: Power Dynamics between the Teacher and the Students in a Graduate Seminar

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gihan Sidky
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Teachers Perceptions ◽  
Teaching Perspectives ◽  
Graduate Seminar ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Power Game ◽  
Teachers Training ◽  
Different Cultures

This study investigated power relations in a graduate seminar on Literacy learning and knowledge acquisition. Three categories were examined in relation to ideological assumptions: students’ expectations, institution’s expectations, and teachers’ perceptions of their roles as guided by their teaching perspectives. The study aimed at identifying how those aspects shaped by ideological perspectives influenced the interviewed teachers’ viewpoints about power dynamics. It also addressed the dominance of the mainstream norms over those of the minority students coming from different cultures. The issue of voice in relation to diversity was discussed as an important factor that shaped power relations in classroom discourse. A critical perspective was adopted throughout the paper with the purpose of advocating a pedagogical stance that would encourage the empowerment of students and build upon their diversity. Through the study of field notes and audio tapes of interviews and classroom interactions, three main factors seemed to have contributed to teachers’ perceptions of power relations within classroom settings. The factors were: students’ expectations, institutions’ expectations, and teachers’ perceptions of their roles. Regarding issues of voice, participants seemed to have come to a consensus concerning reasons that might have led to persistence on teachers’ part to students’ conformity to mainstream norms, which they explained in terms of limitations in most teachers training in dealing with diversity.

What stories to tell? A trilogy of methods used for knowledge exchange in a community-based participatory research project

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah L Fraser
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Knowledge Exchange ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
Aboriginal Health ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Indigenous Methods ◽  
Research Criteria

Researchers in the field of Aboriginal health generally have a keen interest in ‘participating in change’ to address the ongoing injustices experienced by Aboriginal peoples. Perhaps the most promoted methods for this purpose are those described as Indigenous methods and action research. Criteria of authenticity are generally used to assess the quality of research. In this essay, we reflect on how certain basic principles of action research, more notably ontological authenticity and educative authenticity can penetrate the process of knowledge exchange, creating spaces of ontological contamination and transformation. We reflect on the context of sharing ‘difficult knowledge’, knowledge that is encountered and shared in a post-colonial context of unequal power dynamics. We describe a trilogy of methods used for such knowledge exchange activities with three distinct audiences, and distinct goals. A commonality amongst the three described methods is the ‘unfinished’ and unorganised nature of what is transmitted, requiring the receptor to actively participate in the differentiation and reorganisation of information in a way that makes sense to him/her.

Explorers' and Travelers' Narratives: A Peregrination Through Different Editions

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 213-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
I.S. MacLaren
Keyword(s):  
Native People ◽  
James Cook ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Press ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
The Pacific Ocean ◽  
First Editions ◽  
First Time ◽  
George Iii

Researchers keen to examine the representation of native people in European accounts of exploration and travel need bring under review the mechanism by which field notes became books, and, once they were books, the multiplicity and diffusion of editions, often themselves quite different from one another. An example that illustrates well this need is British Royal Naval Captain James Cook's posthumously published account of his third voyage to the Pacific Ocean in the years 1776-80. The standard scholarly source is J.C. Beaglehole's monumental edition, The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery (1955-74), a twenty-year editing project for the Hakluyt Society, which made available for the first time Cook's own writings until his death at Kealakekua Bay, Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), on 14 February 1779, during the third voyage. However, the need for Beaglehole's project arose, according to the president of the Hakluyt Society, because the original publications differed very widely from Cook's own writings. They were “official” accounts, published by order of George III, and they performed that always interesting exercise—they “improved” on Cook's own writings. It is well known that Cook did not prepare his journals for the press: in the case of the first two voyages to the Pacific, this was his choice. In the case of the third, the choice was not his to make, he being five years deceased. How wide are those differences?In the case of Cook's description of a month-long mooring in Nootka Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, do substantive differences occur between Cook's logs and journal and Bishop John Douglas' edition? Answering that question necessarily involves consulting first editions of the various published accounts.

It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

LOGOS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-32
Author(s):  
Erika Bianchi
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Publishing Process ◽  
Publishing World ◽  
Fiction Writer ◽  
Literary Agents

This essay is based on a talk the author gave at the By the Book conference in Florence in June 2019. It examines the power dynamics in the Italian publishing world from the perspective of a fiction writer. Writing and publishing are two completely different worlds that can be differently approached. What’s the point of writing? Should writers write about what they know, or about what they do not know? Can publishing be put off? What’s the role of literary agents in the publishing process? The author’s answers to these questions are based on her personal experience.

scholarly journals Provincialising smart urbanism in Taipei: The smart city as a strategy for urban regime transition

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802094790 ◽  
Author(s):  
I-Chun Catherine Chang ◽  
Sue-Ching Jou ◽  
Ming-Kuang Chung
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Regime Transition ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Urban Regime ◽  
Smart Urbanism

The appeal of revolutionising urban governance through information technologies has prompted cities across the globe to pursue smart city initiatives. The mainstream scholarship on these initiatives has mostly focused on technology and corporate-led urban development, and it also often privileges the experience of cities in the global North. Nevertheless, this mainstream understanding of the smart city may obscure emerging new power dynamics and locally contextualised processes associated with smart urban development, especially in cities at the global periphery. Inspired by post-colonial theories, this article makes the case for ‘provincialising’ smart urbanism by dislodging technology from the centre of analysis, accentuating perspectives of cities outside the locations where the smart city knowledge is traditionally produced and attending to power relationships. In our case study of Taipei, this provincialising approach helps unveil various logics, intentionalities, assemblages and power dynamics through which the smart city is employed as a political strategy to facilitate urban regime transition. We argue that the current non-affiliated Ko administration exploits the veneer of technological superiority and political neutrality of its smart city agenda to set a new growth agenda, form new development coalitions, establish new institutions and incorporate rising populist momentum into policy-making. Focusing on the politics of being smart, our findings illustrate how smart city experiments reshape power dynamics and regime formation through reorganising actors and interest groups, reconfiguring government institutions, reallocating resource distribution and, in the end, bolstering governing legitimacy.

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