Leonora Angeles

Despite the international status of the English language, there is a very particular image of who speaks ‘good’ English. Whatever the racial, gender, cultural, national or other identities of the English as Second Language/English Language Learning (ESL/ELL) instructors and their students, there are questions about the images and representations in the teaching materials that are used to guide students into the mysteries of English. Given the assumptions about the source of ‘good,’ acceptable English, how are ‘English speakers’ being represented to English learners, and what role did ESL materials play in students’ perceptions? What representations of race, gender, women, sexuality and nation do the available teaching materials convey to an increasingly diverse range of ESL instructors and their students? This paper examines the implications of intersectional gendered visual representations of people, classes, sexualities and nations in a range of popular teaching materials available in Canada. Visual data from 10 ESL/ELL textbooks was collected, organized and analyzed with the intention of reaching a conclusion about the state of diverse representation in modern teaching materials, and to fill in the gap of Canadian scholarship on intersectional visual depictions in English language education.

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Women in Peru are still experiencing high levels of gender-based violence (GBV). Despite the existence of a broad legal framework that strives to eradicate violence against women (VAW) and GBV, there is limited impact towards transforming structural inequalities/inequities that produce and perpetuate hierarchies along of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality and class lines in Peru, all of which inextricably linked to GBV. Drawing largely on primary official documents and secondary literature, this research aims to critically understand the Peruvian State’s relationship with intersecting forms of gender based-violence and inequalities during war (1980–2000) and peace (2000–mid-2009). The deep-rooted and present-day forms of violence and inequalities are present not just in wartime but also in peacetime, reverberating into a historicized continuum of violence that is critically linked to patriarchal, ethno-racial, gendered and colonial structures of power. I thus provide a state-centred analysis with a prioritization of power, decoloniality and intersectionality to understand how structures of power and processes of differentiation operate in the production of gender-based violence that disproportionately affect indigenous and impoverished rural women. To that end, I analyze a case study of the 2009–2015 National Plan against Violence toward Women and its implementation, reflecting upon its vision and success as well as limitations and constraints, in a continuing effort to unpack the complexity of adequately addressing GBV and its underlying causes. I finally emphasize the Peruvian State’s responsibility to work towards the substantial transformation of these inequalities associated with structures of power that have sustained gender-based violence in war and peace alongside its historicized continuation, particularly in light of the State’s active facilitation of the same. With this, I hope to improve our understandings, rethink the State’s responses and strategies in culturally diverse settings, and improve access to justice, as central to effectively addressing the historical and contemporary forms of sociocultural ideologies and systems of inequality that affect indigenous and non-indigenous women's lives differently, while working to prioritize and address prevention in practical terms.

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State-level legislative efforts to address the persisting M-curve pattern in female labour force participation in Japan are not translating into widespread implementation and uptake of work-family policies. While it has been established that the gendered norms of the male ideal worker and female primary caregiver are entrenched in the Japanese workplace and significantly impede the compatibility of motherhood and work, few have investigated how the globalization of business is impacting the influence of such norms. Or subsequently, how this affects policy uptake by working mothers. Drawing on document analysis of organizational and nationally-mandated work-family policies, as well as 13 in-depth interviews with professional working mothers at three leading globally-affiliated financial advisory firms in Tokyo, this study examines how women engage in multi-level translation and use of work-family policies. Document analysis of national legislations and the multi-national work-family policies of one of the organizations found that the policies of their Japanese offices corresponded fully to the national legislative framework. Despite this alignment, narratives revealed that the women leveraged the presence of international work values and practices in their workplace to justify their use of progressive work-family policies. The working mothers engaged with policies based on the “global” institutional, social and ideological resources that they perceived as safeguarding their careers. Their use of these resources was interdependent with presumptions of what constituted “local” and “global” values and their association of the international with gender equity and modernity. This study argues that these women used these strategies to legitimate a way of working that recognizes the demands of parenting, thus, exposing possibilities of the legitimization of work-family policies in different cultural contexts.

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This project studies Black joy using auto-ethnography and narrative analysis of my personal experience, and critical media analysis to understand the cross section of vulnerability, subject position, and joy for Black women, particularly Black women in the U.S.A. My claims about Blackgirls’ experiences of joy are framed by my own standpoint(s) and background (U.S born National, working class) and not representative of all Blackgirls, for example, those who are from the Caribbean or African continent or the African diaspora in settler states. This project seeks to interrogate generally 1) How might we describe the relationship black women in U.S.A have with joy, and 2) How do our experiences inform this relationship and the expectations of Black girlhood? For the purposes of this study, joy is understood as an internal and spiritual experience that encompasses the cultivation of self-acceptance and love of self. Using narrative inquiry and endarkened Black Feminist theories, this study is set in the context of the United States and operates from the standpoint that we live in a world that frames Black women as inhuman, invulnerable, and unworthy of protection because of their perceived lack of innocence and virtue. This study examines popular culture projects like The Color Purple and Lemonade, as well as fantasy T.V, specifically The Vampire Diaries. This research argues that various media forms and communities that articulate the specific experiences of Black women’s vulnerability and insecurity allow for validation and the possibility for black women to see the potential of other subject positions. In other words, ‘we are not what they say we are.’

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No abstract available.

Two years after super typhoon Yolanda (internationally named Haiyan) ravaged the Visayan region of the Philippines, survivors of Leyte Island who were at the front line of the strongest storm in recorded history persist through waves of disaster. Anthropologists of disaster argue there is a need to trouble the assumed uniformity of disaster experiences in the same manner that feminist scholars argue for an intersectional analysis of vulnerabilities as shaped by racism, sexism, and ongoing projects of colonialism. This ethnographic research inquires: How do Waray women survivors make meaning of super typhoon Yolanda as expressed in their survival testimonies and disaster symbolisms? How do they view their everyday life in relation to the rain, rivers, and the sea? How do they mobilize memories of Yolanda to engage in practises of social repair? This on-site feminist ethnographic research was conducted in the town of Palo in the summer of 2015, with 12 self-identified Waray women interviewed from the three barangays or villages of San Miguel, Salvacion and Cogon. I argue that women survivors employ disaster memory as a cultural practise to repair their worldview, insisting on an ontology that still holds some meaning despite the wrathful destruction of a super typhoon that pounds repeatedly through the everyday violence of poverty. This thesis outlines how the women (a) personify the storm; (b) explain order and safety in cycles and seasons; and (c) explain syncretic theologies pertaining to ideas of justice. Writing as a transnational Filipina scholar-activist, I frame my work to serve a feminist and decolonizing purpose by weaving the women’s survival testimonies together as acts of resistance over the chronic crises of everyday poverty, Yolanda and larger colonial histories. This thesis offers a Waray theory of survivance defined by an ancient ferocity in the Eastern Visayas, which claims a full humanity persisting through disaster deathscapes and the colonial present.

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Informality of housing, micro economies, and social networks have emerged over the last century as the dominant morphology in large cities and urbanizing rural municipalities. In the Philippines, this phenomenon has been exacerbated by colonial influences on urban design and declining rural agricultural livelihoods. Informality has historically been addressed as a planning problem to be solved with social housing and zoning. This research attempts to capture the subjective, human side of informality using images and narratives to examine place-making processes and place attachment of persons living informally along the Angat River in the peri-urban municipality of Plaridel in Central Luzon, Philippines as well as local service providers and a sample of persons who have been successfully relocated to social housing within Plaridel. This study uses Photovoice and ethnography to characterize how informal settlers, relocated informal settlers and service providers make sense of informal spaces and places and Jubilee Homes social housing site in Plaridel in the context of vulnerability and place-making. Through historical and current policy analysis paired with Photovoice images and personal narratives, this research asserts that decentralizing shifts in policy, such as the Local Shelter Plan, create a window of opportunity for transition into a new policy paradigm of meaningful consultation and planning with informality and informal settlers. Informality has been, and will continue to be a part of reality in Plaridel and other peri-urban satellite municipalities to Metro Manila.

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This thesis focuses on the practice of evaluation of informal settlement upgrading projects in Brazil. The country experienced a wave of rapid urbanization over the last sixty years, with eighty-four percent of the population now living in cities. As cities lacked affordable housing options commensurate with their burgeoning populations, informal settlements proliferated. Over several decades, policy responses have evolved to promoting the upgrading of these settlements. A wide variety of strategies has been employed to address the material, social, and legal issues associated with informal settlements. The actors have been equally diverse, including federal and municipal government, NGOs, international agencies, and community-based organizations. After more than a generation of concerted trial and error in designing and implementing upgrading programs, how have monitoring and evaluation practices been put to use? Grounded in an understanding of global urbanization trends and current debates around the practice of monitoring and evaluation, this study aims to: 1. Establish the importance of monitoring and evaluation as a critical element in improving the outcomes of upgrading and building an international body of knowl¬edge around effective upgrading programs; 2. Assess the current practice of monitoring and evaluation of upgrading programs in Brazil; 3. Identify the challenges and barriers that currently impede the broad usage of such evaluation systems, and; 4. Identify the national trends that point to increased use of monitoring and evaluation in the future. This research finds that systematic monitoring and evaluation of the development outcomes of upgrading programs rarely occurs. Academics and researchers conduct a wide range of evaluative studies, though these tend to be isolated and non-continuous. International donor agencies, and more recently the federal government, require project evaluations be conducted on particular projects, though these tend to remain at the level of project outputs. Many trends, however, indicate that the nascent practice of monitoring and evaluation is attracting increased interest from policy-makers, practitioners, scholars and stakeholders. It is concluded that M&E practice will continue to be refined and experience broader application in the coming years.

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No abstract available.

There is a lack of data and analysis relating to implementation processes and impacts for Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT), particularly at the community level. This is despite the fact that IMT has become one of the most popular trends in irrigation management worldwide.This research fills key gaps in knowledge about IMT in practice, specifically with respect to: (1) the different approaches being used, the constraints to implementation, the impacts on all stakeholders; and (2) the suitability of IMT in different social, political and economic settings, through a case study analysis of the municipality of Plaridel, Bulacan, Philippines. Based on a review of literature focused on the works of the leading experts in IMT, seven 'best practices', with respect to the implementation of IMT, are formulated. Through semi-structured interviews and data collection, the implementation of IMT in Plaridel is then evaluated against these seven 'best practices'. It is found that all seven of the 'best practices' are not currently operational in the municipality and that as a result, there is an extremely high likelihood that Plaridel's farms and Irrigation Associations (IAs) will not be viable in the near future. The main reasons for this being the absence of clearly recognized and sustainable water rights and service and insufficient financial resources provided by the implementing irrigation agency, the National Irrigation Administration (NIA). This study argues that this scenario is likely because NIA is implementing IMT solely to reduce its own financial costs in operating and maintaining Plaridel's irrigation systems and not to improve productivity or the livelihoods of Plaridel's farmers.Plaridel is a cautionary tale to any government that is planning to implement IMT, as it shows how IMT is no quick fix to a financially unviable Irrigation Agency or agricultural sector. Rather it is a difficult, painstaking process that requires substantial financing and commitment.

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The current mantra of development advocates macro level, top down approaches which largely ignore the potential for change inherent within existing indigenous grass root social structures. One such indigenous social institution prevalent in the Islamic World is that of the religious school locally known as the madrassa. After 9-11, madaris have been prominently featured in the international media as a potential breeding ground for terrorists and fundamentalists and has become a policy concern for both the American and Pakistani governments. Recent policy interventions have included steps to centralize madaris, curriculum revisions along with a renewed interest in improving existing public and private schools as an alternative to religious schooling. Most of these steps have been rejected by the madrassa community and there is ongoing antagonism between madrassa officials and government authorities.This research examines how madrassa mission and mandate intersect with community development goals as well as with the national project of development and modernity, and how they create linkages and multiplier effects within the local culture and institutions particularly in the absence of social support services. It utilizes a mixed method approach based on ethnographic interviews, mapping, content and discourse analyses and participant observations to uncover the daily patterns of the research participants’ lives in two selected research sites in Islamabad, Pakistan. The research develops recommendations based on the perspective of madrassa students, alumni, administrators, teachers and local community members.The study argues that madaris have the ability to reach out to Pakistan’s marginalized and disenfranchised. It is important for the madaris community to get recognized by the state to gain access to state funding and aid agencies. However the government needs to be very flexible with its policy of reforms and needs to allow the madaris to operate in the academic spaces they deem fit. The purpose and intent of madaris should be preserved and allowed to remain intact. This is where planners and development practioners fit in. They need to mobilize a participatory dialogue between the state and the madaris community and exact this crucial integration of indigenous institutions such as the madrassa into mainstream development policy.

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