Pathways Forward (Asynchronous Session)
Choice of Being 'Unlucky'? : An Enquiry into the Changing Definitions and Aspirations of Middle Class Working Urban Women about Their Future in Post Pandemic India View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Richa Tewari
The paper considers the after effects of the global pandemic coupled with economic crisis on the aspirations of middle-class urban women in India. An attempt is made to understand how women define or re-define their future concerning marital aspirations, child birth, and career in a post pandemic world. The Indian patriarchal society standards restrict women and often force them to choose between a professional career versus a personal “well-settled” life. This mindset often comes in clash with educated women looking to break glass ceilings and ensuring their social and economic independence. Amidst rising Hindu nationalist ideologies and it's imagery of an ideal Indian woman which binds women in a traditional division of labor and home bound activities, the paper asks how women navigate and assert their choices in such socio-political scenario. The text employs a combination of feminist methodology, auto-ethnography, interviews, and surveys with working women between the age group of 25-40 years old placed in urban cities across the country. Ultimately the study looks at whether the pandemic and its after effects have brought any shift in their idea of “normal”.
Crisis and Change as Challenges for Sustainable Socio-economic Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Justyna Bokajło
The financial crisis 2007+ proved that the incomplete architecture of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is an accelerator of systemic instability and institutional shortcomings do not allow for effective risk management. Focusing on a single currency, without effective economic social and political governance in parallel reduces Member States' resilience to exogenous shocks. The pandemic crisis provided an opportunity to continue the comprehensive changes in institutional governance at the supranational level. This time, COVID-19 has directly affected human beings, which additionally began to feel more strongly the negative effects of long-lasting climate change. Moreover, the economic impact of the pandemic has been exacerbated by multi-dimensional social problems. Therefore reactions at the EU level should adequately respond to the challenges of interdependence. The aim of the study is to identify whether and how changes in EMU governance influence the greater federalization of the EU. They are visible in the dimension of formal (monetary, fiscal, and social coordination) and informal (noticeable, as modification in the way of thinking about the interdependence of economic, social, and environmental issues) institutions. Attention is drawn to more effective implementation of the subsidiarity principle through greater correlation of governance at the national and supranational level. Research questions are as follows: how effective are the changes to the structure of the institutional governance of the EMU brought about by the pandemic crisis? What factors enhance their effectiveness in the long term?
Mental Health and Urbanization: Stress-coping Strategies, Health-promoting Lifestyle of Hong Kong Women Residing in an Aged Self-contained Satellite Town View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sin Ying Chau, Celia Hoi Yan Chan
Public housing, a set of mass housing programmes through which the government provides affordable housing for lower-income residents, has existed in Hong Kong for six decades. Each housing estate is a self-contained satellite town, residing over 10,000 households. With the development of the urbanization, young adults moved away from aged housing estates, whereas seniors, especially women who are mostly homemakers, stayed behind. It has been found that urban planning and population structure may affect the mental health of residents in terms of accessibility of resources, lifestyle, social support, etc. The purpose of this study was to identify the mental health profiles of women residing in an aged public estate, which was built after WWII in Hong Kong, and to examine the relationship between stress-coping strategies, health-promoting lifestyle, and mental wellbeing. A cross-sectional review was conducted among 630 female respondents. Overall distribution of moderate to extremely severe levels of depression, anxiety and stress among the participants were 17%, 29% and 12%, respectively. Further, lower levels of depression, anxiety and stress were significantly associated with greater use of adaptive coping (e.g. exercising) and lower use of maladaptive coping (e.g. smoking and drinking). Moreover, engagement in health-promoting lifestyles (e.g. having balanced diet and adequate rest) significantly lowered participants’ depression, anxiety and stress levels. These findings shed light on factors influencing mental health and inform policy decisions concerning urban design. Healthcare professionals who work with residents in public estates are encouraged to comprehensively assess their approach in facilitating residents’ accessibility of resources supporting mental health.
Community-based Natural Resource Management and Bio-cultural Community Protocols in Madagascar: Questioning the Sovereignty of Communities over their Resources and Traditional Knowledge View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Manohisoa Rakotondrabe
As a global diversity hotspot, Madagascar serves as a test country for new global environmental policies such as Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) and Biocultural Community Protocols (BCP). Both are community-based tools and stem from the ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol. BCPs are more recent and are part of the legal framework of access and benefit sharing (ABS). Some kind of written charters whereby communities codify or specify the conditions of access to their resources and associated knowledge, BCPs are also repositories of traditions and customary rules relating to the management of their tangible and intangible heritage. According to their promoters, BCPs would make it possible to strengthen decentralization of resource management, in particular by the furtherance of communities’ right to self-governance. Against this backdrop, BCPs held out hopes of a shift of paradigm in community-based conservation. While conventional CBNRM keeps communities under the control of the State, BCPs would allow them to enjoy sovereignty over their resources and associated knowledge. Focusing on the case of the communities of Mariarano and Betsako, both located in the northwest of the island, where BCPs and CBNRM have been coexisting since 2015, this article shows the negative effects of the overlay of theses tools on the community. They have modified local and customary structures for managing space and resources, as shown by the 'legal personification' of community institutions, which reflects the plans of the state and donors to make these communities more 'legible'.
Men’s Perspectives and the Resources Needed Regarding Issues of Fatherhood for Those Who Have Past Involvement with Gangs or Former Incarceration: A Qualitative Study View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Baomi Phung, Kathleen Bell
Fatherhood can be a turning point for men involved in gangs or past incarceration to change lives and choose a different path. This qualitative research study includes results of 11 interviews of multicultural men who were becoming fathers or had young children and past experiences with gang activity or former incarceration. The research question is: for men who have been involved in gangs, what are their perspectives on fatherhood and what resources can be provided that may enhance their role as fathers? The study aims to identify resources in order to understand ways nursing, social, and healthcare providers can support men in strengthening families and communities. The interview questions include topics of upbringing, relationships with their fathers and male mentors, living situations, and support needed. Themes of fatherhood, challenges, fears and hopes, and requested resources emerged. Interventions include to listen, support, and refer fathers to resources, often through interdisciplinary collaboration.
A Handbook for Sustainable Design: How to Design Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Housing in Egypt Today View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mai Osman
Egypt is facing a housing crisis as a result of the exponential population growth coupled with a struggle to express identity in architecture. This struggle is reflected in the westernized trends in architecture leading to design that is environmentally and socially unsustainable. With the west being viewed as the progressive and technologically advanced part of the world, imitation in the Islamic world is inevitable. Consequently, elements in urban planning and architecture such as separation of markets from houses, and large openings in houses became common in Egypt despite their irrelevance to Egyptian social dynamics and climate. In affordable housing projects, this introduction of foreign elements and restructuring of lifestyle sparked a reaction where people altered and reused architect-designed spaces according to their own needs. In addition, with a large part of the population unable to afford mortgages, they have resorted to self-build options where their houses are built with no intervention from an architect or an engineer. The resulting buildings lack organisation, structural stability, and aesthetic. Recently, many projects addressed the aforementioned problems and aimed to revive identity through creating a modern interpretation of Islamic architecture for housing. This paper analyses examples of such housing and individual house projects in the last five decades to search for a contemporary solution to design for Egyptian Islamic societies. The projects differ geographically, but they share the same aim: to design socially and environmentally sustainable dwelling for a modern Islamic society with a deep understanding of its past forms and cultural expressions.
Being, Negotiating, Mending: Experiences of Care in Neoliberal Times View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Keri Cameron
The purpose of my study is to explore care from the perspective of patients. I examine the current state of care in Ontario, Canada as a patient who has navigated the health system and as a researcher with background in critical disability studies and social geography. I use feminist auto/ethnographic methods of data collection, including observation, informal conversations with care providers and patients, journaling, and my patient records as data. I conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with seven individuals who underwent hip or knee replacement surgery and two family members who provided informal care. Data is organized into three storylines: being patient, negotiating care, and mending fault lines. There are two layers of my analysis: patient encounters with carers alongside changing embodiment and the broader care relations of the health system. As austerity measures cut public financing for care and services are de-listed, care is increasingly commodified and informalized. My study reveals that neoliberalism produces poor and precarious working conditions for health providers and that this translates into insufficient care for patients and support for families.
Constructive Indigenization: Tribal Nations, Resilience, and Transformative Change in “Indian Country” View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Patricia Hornback
The development and expansion of the United States has altered and constrained Indigenous (Native American) autonomy and cultural expression arguably, more significantly than any single event since prehistoric times. Indigenous people within the borders of what has become the United States have been living under various degrees of U.S. government occupation since the fledgling colonial government of the United States garnered the strength to challenge and over-run indigenous interests and territorial boundaries. Indigenous people of North American have been engaged in an ever changing, dialectic relationship with the United States since its earliest days. Indigenous agency has shaped and been influenced by often oppressive U.S. federal Indian laws and policies. Even under these difficult circumstances, Indigenous Resilience has been a driving force in indigenous agency that persists to this day. This research proposes the concept of “Constructive Indigenization” as a mechanism for observing and considering the contextual reality that exists in, around, and through the interactions between Indigenous sovereignty, nation-building, survivance, and decolonization collectively. Constructive Indigenization reveals areas where Indigenous resilience expresses ways of knowing and being that transcend systemic, economic, and social barriers by applying uniquely Indigenous cultural values, world views, and perspectives. The author applies the framework of Constructive Indigenization to Tribal endeavors in “Indian Country”.
'People Like You...' Unacceptable Responses For Unacceptable Behaviour View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Susy Ridout
Set in the context of sexual violence perpetrated against neurodivergent women on the autism spectrum, this paper explores how language, context, and power wielded by some outsiders to our experiences have a huge potential to skew our narratives. Practitioners are critical to our support and care, so the language that they use in order to facilitate this is crucial. It can be argued that a support agenda offered should be bespoke and negotiated with the victim-survivor. The position argued by the author is that current support packages are frequently ineffective as neurodivergent victim-survivors are packaged as part of a homogenous group. This has rendered it more difficult to access key services as language used to frame her utilised by practitioners on multiple occasions has been unacceptable. This has placed and continues to place barriers in the way of accessing support and care. The intersections of her identities have been denigrated on numerous occasions to this effect resulting in enormous anxiety around talking to any practitioner. Using language and examples from key points throughout her recovery, the author demonstrates how barriers are placed in the way of essential and meaningful communication. The implication of this paper is to highlight how education around sexual health, consent, and healthy discourse around sexual behaviours is essential and discussion at all levels is critical to understanding how society permits attitudes to prevail. Ultimately, we should be able to call out bad practice.
