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Various Places (various + place)
Selected AbstractsThe impact of victim-offender mediation: A cross-national perspectiveCONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2000Mark S. Umbreit The field of victim-offender mediation, now in its third decade, has grown extensively throughout North America and Europe, with programs in more than twelve hundred communities. This article reports on results from three related studies on the consequences of participating in victim-offender mediation, including programs in four of the United States (Umbreit, 1996, 1994a, 1994b; Umbreit and Coates, 1993), four provinces of Canada (Umbreit, 1999, 1995c), and two cities in England (Umbreit and Roberts, 1996). VOM is implemented differently in various places, reflecting cultural norms and mores. Given innumerable ways of doing victim-offender mediation, are there common experiences shared among participants that can inform program delivery and justice policy? The VOM model was found to be a highly transportable and flexible program in diverse settings. High levels of client satisfaction with both the process and outcome were found, and a high level of fairness was expressed. VOM continues to be a promising model, reflecting the principles of the restorative justice movement and offering a firm foundation of practice wisdom and research from which other newer forms of victim-offender dialogue, such as family group conferences, circles, and boards, can benefit (Bazemore and Umbreit, 1999). [source] From Shallow to Deep: Toward a Thorough Cultural Analysis of School Achievement PatternsANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2008Mica Pollock What do anthropologists of education do? Many observers think that we provide quick glosses on what various "cultures",typically racialized, ethnic, and national-origin groups,"do" in schools. Hervé Varenne and I each name an alternative form of analysis that we think should be central to the subfield. Varenne argues that anthropologists of education should expand analysis of teaching and learning beyond (American) schools and classrooms and examine everyday life in various places as containing countless moments of teaching and learning that are worth understanding. Varenne reminds us that teaching and learning occur nonstop in everyday life, not just in classrooms. "Education" is about far more than what we typically call "achievement," which usually translates into grades, graduation, or test scores.1 This long-standing way of thinking anthropologically about "education" is essential to exploding simplistic notions of what, when, how, and from whom people "learn." In my essay, I contend that U.S. anthropologists of education also need to analyze thoroughly how U.S. school achievement patterns take shape in real time. I argue that it is our particular responsibility to counteract "shallow" analyses of "culture" in schools, which purport to explain "achievement gaps" by making quick claims about how parents and children from various racial, ethnic, national-origin, or class groups react to schools. Such shallow analyses dangerously oversimplify the social processes, interactions, and practices that create disparate outcomes for children. Shallow cultural analyses are common in both journalism and popular discourse,and in schools of education as well (see Ladson-Billings 2006 for a related critique). They are explanatory claims that name a group as having a "cultural" set of behaviors and then name that "cultural" behavior as the cause of the group's school achievement outcomes. (E.g., some argue that "group x"[e.g., "Asians"] employs a "group x behavior"[e.g., "push their children"] that causes "high" or "low" achievement.) Such claims allow people to explain achievement outcomes too simply as the production of parents and children without ever actually examining the real-life experiences of specific parents and children in specific opportunity contexts. Going deeper requires pressing for actual, accurate information about the everyday interactions among real-life parents, children, and other actors that add up to school achievement patterns (graduation rates, dropout rates, skill-test scores, suspension lists, and the like). When anthropologists of education say that we study culture, we mean that we are studying the organization of people's everyday interactions in concrete contexts. Shallow analyses of "culture" that purport to describe only how a "group's" parents train its children blame a reduced set of actors, behaviors, and processes for educational outcomes, and they include a reduced set of actors and actions in a reduced set of projects for educational improvement. Anthropologists of education should make clear that we examine children's experiences both in context and in appropriate detail; we study interactional processes that other observers might describe too quickly or with insufficient information.2 I think that if anthropologists of education explicitly, publicly, and colloquially name what counts as deep, thorough cultural analysis of American school achievement patterns, we will make ourselves far better prepared to respond to harmfully shallow claims made by journalists, colleagues, and educators alike. We will also support other stakeholders in children's lives (including teachers and teacher educators) to think more thoroughly about which actions, by whom, and in what situations produce children's achievement. This short essay suggests four key ways that anthropologists of education can, do, and should get "deep" in analyzing American achievement patterns. I invite colleagues to edit and extend this list in future editions of AEQ. [source] The Phenomenology of Body-Mind: The Contrasting Cases of Flow in Sports and ContemplationANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Issue 3-4 2000Jeremy Hunter The demise of Cartesianism as an animating force in conceptualizing mind and body relations has opened up the field to a wider variety of perspectives, like the "embodiment" of phenomenological thinkers. However, because of Cartesianism's deeply rooted psychic legacy it still makes its presence felt in various places in everyday life. This paper will explore two facets of everyday life, sports and contemplation, which lend themselves to a mind-body cognitive dissonance affected by latent Cartesian thinking. As an alternative, we will propose a more phenomenologically oriented interpretation based on what has been revealed by historical precedents as well as our empirical investigations. Keywords: Flow, Contemplation, Phenomenofogy, Sports [source] SURROGACY: DONOR CONCEPTION REGULATION IN JAPANBIOETHICS, Issue 7 2010YUKARI SEMBA ABSTRACT As of 2008, surrogacy is legal and openly practised in various places; Japan, however, has no regulations or laws regarding surrogacy. This paper reports the situation of surrogacy in Japan and in five other regions (the USA, the UK, Taiwan, Korea and France) to clarify the pros and cons of prohibiting surrogacy, along with the problems and issues relating to surrogacy compensation. Not only in a country such as France that completely prohibits surrogacy within the country, but also in a country such as the UK that allows non-commercial surrogacy, infertile couples travel overseas for the purpose of surrogacy. In addition, some couples might seek underground surrogacy if the government prohibits surrogacy. If an intended parent couple and a surrogate make an agreement among themselves and then a problem occurs, they cannot ask for support from professionals or bring a case to court, as can be observed in South Korea and Taiwan. We also conclude that there is little difference between commercial surrogacy and non-commercial surrogacy in the absence of a clear definition of ,reasonable expenses.' In the UK, the law does not allow surrogates to receive compensation. However, in reality, there may be little difference between the amounts paid to surrogates for profit in the US and those paid to surrogates for reasonable expenses in the UK. We conclude that the issue of surrogacy demands further discussion in Japan. [source] | ||||||||||