Figured Worlds

Figured Worlds
Author: Professor John Clammer
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780802087492

"World Visions can conceive of everything except alternative world visions." If this pronouncement by Umberto Eco is right, how can any ethnic group conceive of living with another group on the same territory - in Canada or elsewhere - if their world visions are incompatible? Can we sidestep incompatible world visions or should we try to understand them? Figured Worlds explores the possibilities of equilibrium between commitments to mutual understanding and the framing of strategies of negotiation. This collection begins its rich analytical investigation by describing how people - Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maori, Japanese, and Africans - first learn the figured worlds of their own culture, made up of sensations, affirmations and will, prophecy, revelation, myth, dream, and metamorphoses. It then sets out how diverse figured worlds within a given social system are related, and concludes by offering insightful mappings of the dynamics of these relations, perceived in both their existential-ontological aspects, as well as their material-practical means. Comprising scholarship that is half Canadian and half British, this work offers important foundational perspectives into the thought worlds of cultures found within other cultures.

Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds

Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds
Author: Dorothy Holland
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2001-03-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780674005624

This text addresses the central problem in anthropological theory of the late 1990s - the paradox that humans are both products of social discipline and creators of remarkable improvisation.

Literacies, Power and Identities in Figured Worlds in Malawi

Literacies, Power and Identities in Figured Worlds in Malawi
Author: Ahmmardouh Mjaya
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2022-02-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1350144843

This book is based on an in-depth ethnographic study of the National Adult Literacy Programme (NALP) in Malawi. It highlights the significance of exploring power and identity in literacy studies. Employing the concept of 'figured worlds' to study literacy as a social practice, the book focuses on understanding power relationships and identities in literacy practices. It illustrates how literacy identities and power relationships of some local community members continuously vary from one context to another and, in some cases, even within the same context. Using notions such as agency, artefact, resistance, shame and positioning, the book demonstrates the potential of the concept of figured worlds to address some of the questions raised within the New Literacy Studies – especially those concerning power and identity. The book also illustrates the value of an ethnographic approach in adult literacy studies, by exploring the challenges faced by the researcher in gaining access to community members' activities, and the opportunity to experience first-hand what instructors go through in facilitating adult literacy lessons.

Myanmar’s Mountain and Maritime Borderscapes

Myanmar’s Mountain and Maritime Borderscapes
Author: Oh Su-Ann
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2016-08-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9814695769

This edited volume adds to the literature on Myanmar and its borders by drawing attention to the significance of geography, history, politics and society in the construction of the border regions and the country. First, it alerts us to the fact that the border regions are situated in the mountainous and maritime domains of the country, highlighting the commonalities that arise from shared geography. Second, the book foregrounds socio-spatio practices — economic, intimate, spiritual, virtual — of border and boundary-making in their local context. This demonstrates how state-defined notions of territory, borders and identity are enacted or challenged. Third, despite sharing common features, Myanmar’s borderscapes also possess unique configurations of ethnic, political and economic attributes, producing social formations and figured worlds that are more cohesive or militant in some border areas than in others. Understanding and comparing these social practices and their corresponding life-worlds allows us to re-examine the connections from the borderlands back to the hinterland and to consider the value of border and boundary studies in problematizing and conceptualizing recent changes in Myanmar. “This ambitious project combines sophisticated theorization of boundary-making as a form of social practice and empirical studies of Myanmar’s heterogeneous borderlands, both land and sea. Seeing the country from its edges opens up a provocative and altogether novel vision of the contestations joining diverse peripheries and centre. This volume brings together the leading scholars of the country in a collection that is a must-have for anyone interested in contemporary Myanmar, border studies, and Southeast Asia.” -- Itty Abraham, Head, Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore (NUS) “This is the first book to attempt to bring together such a diverse range of Myanmar’s land and maritime border regions for comparison. In doing so, it highlights the diversity of the country’s demographic, social, economic and political make-up when viewed from the margins rather than the centre. It reveals how these border regions help to constitute the nation and how they shape what modern Myanmar is today — they also give strong indicators of what it might become. This is an essential read for anyone in the social sciences interested in borderlands, as well as those requiring a broader understanding of the challenges facing the contemporary Myanmar government as it attempts to usher in social and political cohesion following decades of conflict.” -- Mandy Sadan, Reader in the History of South East Asia, School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS)

Transmodal Communications

Transmodal Communications
Author: Margaret R. Hawkins
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2021-09-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1788926382

This book examines semiotics, meaning-making and the co-construction of relations in transmodal communications. Through the lens of transpositioning – the multiple and interwoven layers of emplacements and positionings that are entailed in communications which cross and transcend the boundaries that have historically shaped our thinking about the world and its inhabitants – the chapters interrogate digital languaging and literacies, and how transmodal communications shape identities, belongings and relationships, with particular attention paid to issues of equity and social justice. The chapter authors consider both transmodalities and critical cosmopolitanism as they analyze empirical data from youth, adults and researchers participating in a project that digitally connects youth to share their lives across diverse and under-resourced global communities. In offering this multi-perspectival, multi-voiced volume, the authors portray and address methodological issues in researching transglobal transmodal communications.

Learning Identity

Learning Identity
Author: Stanton Wortham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2006
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0521845882

This book describes how social identification and academic learning can deeply depend on each other, through a theoretical account of the two processes and a detailed empirical analysis of how studentsa identities emerged and how students learned curriculum in one classroom. The book traces the identity development of two students across an academic year, showing how they developed unexpected identities in substantial part because curricular themes provided categories that teachers and students used to identify them and showing how students learned about curricular themes in part because the two students were socially identified in ways that illuminated those themes. The book's distinctive contribution is to demonstrate in detail how social identification and academic learning can become deeply interdependent.

Working from Within

Working from Within
Author: Luis Urrieta
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2010-01-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780816529179

Combining approaches from anthropology and cultural studies, Working from Within examines how issues of identity, agency, and social movements shape the lives of Chicana and Chicano activist educators in U.S. schools. Luis Urrieta Jr. skillfully utilizes the cultural concepts of positioning, figured worlds, and self-authorship, along with Chicano Studies and Chicana feminist frameworks, to tell the story of twenty-four Mexican Americans who have successfully navigated school systems as students and later as activist educators. Working from Within is one of the first books to show how identity is linked to agency--individually and collectively--for Chicanas and Chicanos in education. Urrieta set out to answer linked questions: How do Chicanas and Chicanos negotiate identity, ideology, and activism within educational institutions that are often socially, culturally, linguistically, emotionally, and psychologically alienating? Analyzing in-depth interviews with twenty-four educators, Urrieta offers vivid narratives that show how activist identities are culturally produced through daily negotiations. UrrietaÕs work details the struggles of activist Chicana and Chicano educators to raise consciousness in a wide range of educational settings, from elementary schools to colleges. Overall, Urrieta addresses important questions about what it means to work for social justice from within institutions, and he explores the dialogic spaces between the alternatives of reproduction and resistance. In doing so, he highlights the continuity of Chicana and Chicano social movement, the relevance of gender, and the importance of autochthonous frameworks in understanding contemporary activism. Finally, he shows that it is possible for minority activist educators to thrive in a variety of institutional settings while maintaining strong ties to their communities.

Literacies, Global and Local

Literacies, Global and Local
Author: Mastin Prinsloo
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027205186

The articles collected in this volume draw on or relate to a body of work that has become known as the 'New Literacy Studies' (NLS), which studies literacy as situated semiotic practices that vary across sites in specific ways that are socially shaped. The collection offers a body of empirically and theoretically based papers on literacy ethnography as well as providing engagements with critical issues around literacy and education. The articles offer complementary perspectives on research and theory in literacy studies and include research perspectives from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, as well as North and South America. The researchers are all concerned to take the work of the New Literacy Studies further by expanding on its conceptual resources and research sites.

Resisting the Kinder-Race

Resisting the Kinder-Race
Author: Christopher P. Brown
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2021
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0807779709

Kindergarten has changed. Many believe that it no longer reflects a nurturing environment but, instead, has become a race for children to learn skills so they are ready for the academic achievement tests that they will take continuously throughout their time in school. Resisting the Kinder-Race examines how the race came about, why it must change, and how all stakeholders in the early childhood and elementary school communities must take part in the reform process. The author draws on his own research to consider how the Kinder-Race might be reimagined through more democratic principles of schooling. Brown offers both practical and political strategies that can alter the day-to-day practices of the kindergarten classroom and the policies that currently define PreK–12 education in the United States. This resource will help readers see kindergarten as an educational environment that expands the learning of every child. Book Features: Provides an in-depth glimpse into a typical day in the Kinder-Race.Examines how kindergarten devolved from a garden that nurtures children into a race that dashes them from skill to skill.Brings together what are often siloed conversations among stakeholder groups.Highlights how kindergarten is now primarily defined through an economic lens and how this framing of learning, earning, and consuming might be rethought. Employs varied conceptual frameworks to investigate how stakeholders across different levels of public education make sense of the changed kindergarten.Illuminates the complexity of what is occurring in today’s kindergarten and puts forward practical and achievable ideas for change.

Drawing on Students’ Worlds in the ELA Classroom

Drawing on Students’ Worlds in the ELA Classroom
Author: Richard Beach
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2022-04-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000576469

This book approaches English instruction through the lens of “fi gured worlds,” which recognizes and spotlights how students are actively engaged in constructing their own school, peer group, extracurricular, and community worlds. Teachers’ ability not only to engage with students’ experiences and interests in and outside of school but also to build connections between students’ worlds and their teaching is essential for promoting student agency, engagement, and meaningful learning. Beach and Caraballo provide an accessible framework for working with students to use critical discourse, narratives, media, genres, and more to support their identity development through addressing topics that are meaningful for them— their families, social issues, virtual worlds, and more. Through extensive activities and examples of students writing about their participation in these worlds, this text allows educators to recognize how students’ experiences in the classroom aff ect and shape their identities and to connect such an understanding to successful classroom practice. With chapters featuring eff ective instructional activities, this book is necessary reading for ELA methods courses and for all English teachers.