PRISM :: Browsing by Author "Schneider, Barbara"

Browsing by Author "Schneider, Barbara"

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Open Access
Achieving Publicly Funded Midwifery in Alberta: A Case Study of the Changing Nature of Midwifery Work
(2018-06-28) Field, Diane; Langford, Tom; Ducey, Ariel; Nelson, Fiona; Malacrida, Claudia; Schneider, Barbara; De Vries, Raymond G.
From 1994 to 2008, Alberta midwives were in the unique position among the provinces of Canada of being provincially regulated but unable to obtain public funding for their care work. With the achievement of government funding for midwifery services in 2009, midwifery’s place as an equal but autonomous health care profession within this province’s health care system was secured. My dissertation investigates how and why Alberta midwives undertake particular work practices to mediate the effects of public funding on their daily work lives. I also interrogate the midwives’ ability to maintain their work practices within the core principles of the midwifery model of care, in ways that are distinct from the influence of public funding. In this pursuit, I undertake a case study in a midwifery clinic in southern Alberta that includes: observation of midwife-client appointments over an 8-month period; in-depth, semi-structured interviews with both midwives and clients; and gathering of documents pertaining to both the work of the clinic midwives and the broader political-economic and institutional contexts. My contributions to an understanding of midwives’ work practices include: • Although the daily work of Alberta midwives rests primarily on the enactment of the core principles of the Canadian midwifery model of care, I find midwives are confronted with a paradoxical struggle to maintain their core principles in light of the diverse nature of clients, as a direct consequence of public funding. • I argue that midwives employ strategies that reflect an initial “gatekeeping” to determine the suitability of clients for their care that intermittently results in tensions between their philosophical foundations and their day-to-day work practices. • I contend that midwives establish caring connections in individual appointments with their clients by, initially, creating conditions that support the building up of these relationships and, later, by consolidating and fortifying these relationships through an increased emphasis on partnership aspects of care. • With the achievement of public funding and the substantial increase in the number of women seeking their care, I document how these midwives develop alternative group approaches to individual appointments that go some way to alleviate increased tensions and work stresses. As well, I conclude this style of care has the potential to continue to foster intimate and trusting relationships. • I assert that midwives’ work involved in promoting and facilitating breastfeeding is effective due to the continued strengthening of deep and intimate relationships between themselves and their clients, although they occasionally adopt but also struggle to resist the role of “expert” if clients choose other methods of feeding.
Open Access
Are they "really working"?: organizational control in telework
(2011) Gralen, Alana J.; Schneider, Barbara
Open Access
The Argonauts of esports Practice: Zooming in on the practice-networks of everyday gamers
(2019-01-18) Buckland, Aiden; Bakardjieva, Maria; Mitchell, David B.; Schneider, Barbara; Chee, Florence
Should people be concerned about everyday gamers’ participation in esports practices? This dissertation will address the question by exploring how everyday gamers’ practices are informed by professional gaming (esports). The rise of professional competitive video gaming has exploded in the past two decades. Billions of dollars of prize money have been awarded to thousands of people around the globe since the turn of the century. While a valorized few players have been able to professionalize their gaming, millions of everyday gamers spend countless hours participating in these same practices with no hope of ever being professionals. Who benefits from the perpetuation of the instrumental in-game practices? Who shapes the practices of groups attempting to organize their esports gaming? How do the affordances of nonhuman actors shape the practices of everyday gamers participating in esports gaming? Can the creation of esports media really empower everyday gamers? Using a micro-ethnographic approach this project will trace practice-networks of a student gaming club at the University of Calgary. The approach draws from the theoretical perspectives of practice theory and actor-network theory. Assessing whether the practices elucidated through this framework should be of concern will be accomplished primarily through the concept of participatory culture. Many scholars have weighed in on the value of participatory culture in contemporary society and those positions will be used in the evaluation of the practice-networks of the gaming group. Through this perspective the study will zoom in on the in-game practices of everyday gamers. Through a series of interviews, event observations and time spent in the game I will examine what resources esports practices require and what benefits players receive for their execution. Through engaging with the concept of gamer capital, and expanding it, I will trace the different pressures placed on everyday gamers in relation to in-game practices. I will then zoom out to examine two of the actants, the Students’ Union and Riot Games, which shaped the organization of the student club. The esports game explored in this study forces everyday gamers to seek out others to form teams to play the game. In their efforts to organize their gaming on campus two main actants exerted influence over the organization of the group. I will trace how this influence was exercise. The group drew on various nonhuman actors, from social media to university lecture halls, in their participation in esports practice. I will then zoom in on how the affordances of these actors shaped the practice of the club. Finally, I will explore a competitive series produced by the group and streamed on YouTube, to assess whether this kind of participation is empowering everyday gamers.
Open Access
Canadian Forces Leadership Effectiveness: Competing Values Perspectives on Bilingualism
(2011) Gaudet, Luc; Schneider, Barbara
Open Access
Communicating about contraceptives: exploring discursive constructions in women's talk
(2006) Lupypciw, Dana Mickel; Schneider, Barbara
Open Access
Convergence, contrariety, and context-dependency: the universal/particular dialectic in discourses of 'Japanese management' and globalisation among Japanese 'salarymen'
(2010) Macpherson, Iain Donald; Schneider, Barbara
Open Access
Developing an Estimate of Supported Housing Needs for Persons with Serious Mental Illnesses
(2014-04-27) Waegemakers Schiff, Jeannette; Schiff, Rebecca; Schneider, Barbara
A rich body of literature attests to the importance of affordable accommodation and support services necessary, appropriate, and acceptable to persons disabled by a mental illness. However, there is a little which provides a means for housing and service planners to determine the gap between available supportive housing and need. Such understandings are needed to prepare strategies and develop the resources needed to accommodate persons with a disabling mental illness in the community. While housing studies that examine shelter needs of the homeless acknowledge that a sizable proportion has a disabling mental illness, these numbers underestimate need in the cohort that experiences disabling mental illnesses. This underestimate exists because many of those who are disabled by mental illness and in need of supportive housing are among the hidden homeless: doubled-up, couch-surfing, and temporarily sheltered by friends and family. Thus, little is known about the size of this cohort or their supportive shelter needs. The present analysis examines two approaches and offers one methodology as most feasible and parsimonious which can approximate housing need and may be extrapolated to other urban locations.
Open Access
Dilemmas in accounts of medical drugs: consequences for drug takers negotiation of identity
(2006) Babinec, Patricia Marie; Schneider, Barbara
Open Access
“Ethnic Media, Identity, and Community: A Case Study of the “Koleso” Newspaper”
(2013-09-09) Jukova, Lolita; Schneider, Barbara
The purpose of this study was to identify community and identity based connections that the “Koleso” newspaper creates for its readership - the Calgary Russian-speaking community. By applying a variety of different research methods such as content analysis of the “Koleso” newspaper, focus groups and an interview with the Editor-in-Chief, within the core and ethnic identity theoretical framework, I demonstrate that the “Koleso” creates for its readership connections in time and space and preserve elements of their multiple identities. The subject of Canadian ethnic media in general and the Russian ethnic print media in Canada in particular remains not well-enough researched. This thesis, therefore, contributes to an overall study of ethnic media by providing a unique perspective on a particular Russian ethnic publication and its influence on building multiple identities and connections with the Russian-speaking audience in Calgary.
Open Access
From abject to subject: a discourse analysis of the construction of butch identity and the sex-gender-sexuality matrix
(2007) Macdougall, Jocelyn; Schneider, Barbara
Open Access
Hunting for Food Citizenship: Food, Politics, and Discourses of the Wild
(2017) Carruthers Den Hoed, Rebecca; Elliott, Charlene; Schneider, Barbara; Rock, Melanie; Colpitts, George; Knezevic, Irena
In the words of food hunting advocate Tovar Cerulli (2012a), hunting is taking a seat at the table of food “citizenship”: it is increasingly positioned as a way for people to engage with questions about how food and people ought to be governed. While a burgeoning literature on food citizenship exists, it focuses on agrarian citizenship projects and overlooks wilder food practices, like hunting. Given that several prominent food activists are now advocating the practice, food hunting warrants careful examination as a model of food citizenship. This study uses a Foucauldian view of discourse to explore the food citizenships mobilized in food hunting lifestyle manuals. It finds that models of food citizenship mobilized by these food hunting texts echo elements of agrarian food citizenships, but also diverge from them in startling ways—rendering hunting-based food citizenships nigh unrecognizable as expressions of food citizenship, at least by agrarian standards. Rather than champion reconfigurations of agrarian-industrial food networks to foster close-knit communities and relations of care, food hunting citizenships aim to reconfigure human-nature relations so that humans are compelled—via appeals to biological and genetic destiny—to govern themselves in ways suited to the Anthropocene, the current ‘age of humanity,’ in which humans must contend with (and check) their power to threaten nature, and endure the power of nature to threaten humans (Davoudi, 2014, p. 360). As of and for the Anthropocene, hunting-based food citizenships are rather grim and defeatist: prudent hunters exercise vigilance and self-control in the wild, minimizing human-wrought destruction threatening human and food security; whereas resilient hunters cultivate the readiness and resourcefulness required to endure disruptive changes wrought by wild-nature and the perpetual vulnerability of humans in wild food systems. Hunting-based food citizenships, however, open up space to consider the role of sentient animals—as autonomous, self-governing actors—within models of food citizenship. They also render visible wild species, wild lands, and wild discourses as integral to debates about food policy.
Open Access
Ignacio Cervantes and Forty Danzas in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Cuban Nationalism
(2016) Williams, Shari; Sallis, Friedemann; Squance, Rod; Schneider, Barbara
Amidst independence-driven insurgency in the nineteenth century, the inhabitants of Cuba had created a localized creole culture that was distinct from their Spanish colonizers. Musically, the contradanza was a prime example of this process. It began as accompaniment for a Western European social dance before evolving into a salon-style genre that incorporated the various musical styles from the island’s diverse population. Local pianist and composer Ignacio Cervantes made the most significant contributions to this genre in the late nineteenth century. His sophisticated approach to these miniature pieces revitalized the contradanza, and his works are considered the pinnacle of this creolized Cuban form in the present day. The objective of this thesis is to examine the contribution of Cervantes’ danzas to the development of Cuban art music as a whole, and to show how they can be used as an interpretative tool to study the emergence of Cuban identity in the 1800s. Using scores from 40 Danzas, I will examine the ways in which Cervantes combined his own individual artistic style, nineteenth century European compositional techniques, and Afro-Caribbean influences in a Cuban context.
Open Access
Innovation and Empowerment: Transformational Leadership and Ubuntu in the Youth Choir
(2017) Hoffart, Danica; Frishkopf, Michael; Sallis, Friedemann; Hrynkiw, Patricia; Robinson, Kathy; Schneider, Barbara; Apfelstadt, Hilary
The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand the impact of a choral leadership practice that aligns with transformational leadership and an ubuntu ethic on the rehearsal and performance practices of a youth choir, and on the development of choristers as global citizens. The secondary purpose was to examine these rehearsal and performance practices and the youth choir’s repertoire in light of the canon of Western art music and traditional choral practice, specifically notions of music as performance (Auslander 2006, 2013; Cook 2001, 2003, 2013) and musicking (Small 1998). The study investigated the leadership practice of Scott Leithead, one of Canada’s foremost youth choirs, and his work with Kokopelli of Edmonton, AB. Kokopelli was selected because of its excellence as evidenced by frequent invitations to perform in national and international festivals and conferences, its innovative programming and repertoire, and its ongoing outreach program, African Projects, which supports Kokopelli’s sister choirs in Namibia and South Africa. Ethnographic data collection included interviews with Leithead, five current choristers, four former choristers, and an African Projects exchange student; observations of rehearsals, workshops, and concerts; and artifacts from one choral season. Two main research lenses were used to analyze the data: transformational leadership (Bass 1985, 1998; Bass and Riggio 2006), specifically its four components of idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration; and ubuntu, a southern African philosophy of humanism. Findings indicate that Leithead’s behaviours align with transformational leadership and his moral motivation is consistent with an ubuntu ethic, a combination which corresponds to Bass’s (1998) categorization of an authentic transformational leader. The study presents suggestions for choral directors, although implications from this research are applicable to leaders outside of music as well.
Open Access
It's show time: a critical analysis of a retail company's orientation program
(2004) Lee, Sharon Sha-Lurn; Schneider, Barbara
Open Access
Living stories one day at a time: Recovery storytelling in online communities of practice
(2017) Hedges, Amber; Schneider, Barbara; Schneider, Barbara; Johnston, Dawn; Ewashen, Carol
Recovery is an on-going, socially constructed practice that is “done” by individuals through storytelling. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and explain how members of an online community of practice –r/stropdrinking (r/SD)– normalize recovery by crafting and enacting a recovery identity through recovery storytelling in a stigma-laden world with others. The aim of this thesis is to make sense of how self-described disordered drinkers “do” recovery in online communities of practice (CoP). I argue that alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a disorder of a person in social context, and that storytelling is the process through which recovery is enacted in the world. For data collection and analysis, I applied an autoethnographic storytelling approach. Three processes of recovery storytelling emerged: (re)storying, (re)forming, and (re)learning. These aspects are mutually interdependent and make up a recovery helix that must be nurtured through storytelling. CoP is also described as helical, made up of engagement, imagination, and alignment. These helixes work together to when people “do” recovery online, and are helpful models to unpack how recovery is done in concert with others. This thesis provides an alternative narrative about the lived experience of AUD recovery in pursuit of dismantling stigma. By telling stories about AUD recovery, I am promoting help-seeking and manifesting a social context that responds to AUD with compassionate concern.
Open Access
Managing the Medicalization of Madness: A Narrative Analysis of Personal Stories about Mental Illness Online
(2015-05-08) Solomon, Monique de Boer; Schneider, Barbara
Emancipatory in spirit this thesis asserts personal narratives are an essential and active contributor to the development of meanings in discourse about mental illness and they have an influential role managing medicalization. The medicalization of madness is increasingly contested as people describe and explain how medical approaches and definitions of mental illness at best fail to adequately account for personal experiences of distress, and at worst are the cause of increased physical and psychological trauma. This thesis examines personal narratives posted publicly on medical, social care, and activist websites by organizations and individuals offering support and information about mental illness, community care options, psychiatric survivorship, activism and advocacy. Initial reviews indicated personal stories are included on websites by organizations and individuals with differing views, either for or against medical approaches, suggesting narratives are valued as a way to support or challenge various perspectives on medical approaches to mental illness. In this thesis the objective is not to determine which view is correct or truthful, rather it is to examine how people manage discourse about mental illness as it relates to their personal experiences, whether they identify as health care consumers, patients, ex-patients, or psychiatric survivors. Drawing on Habermas’s (1987) Theory of Communicative Action and Fairclough’s (1992) Social Theory of Discourse this thesis conceptualizes personal narratives as discursive practices and active sites where meaning is negotiated as people work to express lifeworld experiences in ways that fit with, yet challenge system discourses about mental illness. Using Gubrium and Holstein’s (2009) methodology of Narrative Ethnography the analysis identifies and examines personal stories about what it’s like being a patient, how social relationships matter, and why recovery is personal. The analysis shows people manage medicalization of their experiences in their stories by making meaningful connections between personal experiences and discourse about mental illness via a narrative practice (introduced here) called narrative bridging. To accomplish this people use narrative strategies of resisting, re-informing, and reinforcing discourse about mental illness, and it is through these strategies and the consequences of narrative bridging that medicalization is managed in personal narratives.
Open Access
Marketing and Shaping Shanghai in Travel Writings: A Critical Analysis of the Evolving Tourism Discourse in the New York Times Travel Section
(2016) Wang, Yifan; Schneider, Barbara; Keller, Jessalynn; Draper, Dianne
Tourism discourse has been affirmed to be a site where tourist destinations are constantly invented, reinvented, produced and reproduced. More importantly, tourism discourse constantly undergoes variation along with the changing social context and the unfixed power relations between host and guest society. By using critical discourse analysis to analyze the New York Times travel writings covering Shanghai and tracing the evolving discourse, it is discovered that the newspaper increasingly projects the image of Shanghai as a metropolis for diverse consumption by adopting commercialized language, and consequently cultivates a homogenized discourse and routinized ways of viewing Shanghai. It is concluded that the changing discourse suggests the newspaper’s closer relationship with the tourism industry, and the travel writings have become the product of consensual marketing for profitability and reflect the collaborative relationship between the newspaper and the tourism industry of Shanghai.
Open Access
Molecular imaginaries of aging and age intervention: A discursive analysis of popular science and technology coverage of developments in the field of anti-aging science, medicine, and technology
(2019-03-08) Ellison, Kirsten L.; Elliott, Charlene; Schneider, Barbara; Marshall, Barbara L.; McCoy, Liza; Sawchuk, Kim
As technologies of visualization and intervention advance in the fields of science and medicine, aging has become increasingly visible in popular coverage of anti-aging research as a site of molecular intervention. Focusing on coverage of developments in the field of anti-aging science and technology in a selection of popular science and technology magazines published between 2010 and 2015, this study addresses how a “molecular vision of life” (Rose, 2007) is popularized for mass consumption, looking specifically at the use of image and metaphor. Both, I argue, are significant in how we relate to our own bodies and the changes that come with living in a body over time. Through image, the aging bodies of molecular intervention are visualized along a continuum of openness, ranging from transparency to complete absence, as sites of action, evidentiary displays, and spatialized narratives of metamorphosis. Many of these images are furthermore visualized through a collapse of scale, enacting a corporeal sensibility that moves between scales of vision. Through metaphor, bodies are taken up as either serviceable mechanical casings or sites of inner turmoil. In these metaphorical mappings, the abstract world of molecules is rendered sensible through familiar narratives of intervention: cars that need servicing, clocks that need rewinding, computers that need upgrading, systems that need (re-)organizing, walls that need fixing, houses that need cleaning, and enemies that need neutralizing. By highlighting the multidimensional and multimodal means through which aging and age intervention are rendered visible and sensible at the molecular scale, this study contributes to scholarship concerning molecularization, representations of aging, and the popularization of science and aims to carve out a critical space from which we can create, resist, incorporate, or redefine the kinds of futures, bodies and selves that enliven our imaginations.
Open Access
Movies that matter: films, personal meaning-making, and narrative self
(2011) Wybert, Donna-Lee; Schneider, Barbara
Open Access
My Father the Homeless Guy: An Autoethnographic Account of Identity Negotiation among Daughters of Homeless Men
(2016) Ortwein, Kala; Schneider, Barbara; Atkins, Chloe; Bakardjieva, Maria
The homeless are generally categorized by the housed as being either worthy or unworthy, which is dependent on whether the homeless person is seen at fault for their precarious lifestyle. Regardless, the “inner lives” (e.g. relationships, self-worth, culture, et cetera) of the homeless are rarely considered (Snow & Anderson, 1987; Sommerville, 2013). Accordingly, those associated with the homeless also feel the side-effects of the stigmatization of the visibly homeless. This study considers the perspectives of daughters of homeless men, namely men who are deemed “unworthy.” Using an autoethnographical approach, life-story interviews, and discourse analysis, this study investigates identity negotiation among 10 women. The identifiers, abandoned, caretaker, and wounded betrayer frequently alluded to in the narratives of this study, describe how daughters conceptualize their own and their fathers’ moral identity. I aim to provide a previously unconsidered perspective of homelessness in order to challenge current perceptions of the so-called unworthy poor.