Exploring the ‘craftedness’ of multimedia narratives: from creation to interpretation

This paper emerges from a comparative study of two community-based multimedia storytelling projects in Toronto and Montreal, and the multimedia narratives participants produced in those projects. Following current scholarship in visual methods that acknowledges the significance for research of the medium’s formal qualities, the authors offer the concept of ‘craftedness’ as one which might help researchers grapple with the significance of the processes of both creating and interpreting visual data. Through a study of the visual data produced in these two projects, they examine three qualities of this aesthetic experience captured in the notion of craftedness, which seem to both complicate and enable processes of self-representation and interpretation: aesthetic distance, visual excess and the visualisation of the unrepresentable. Taking seriously the craftedness of multimedia works highlights the complexities of interpreting visual data and the dilemmas of representing ourselves and others.     

Places for Place‐Based Policy

Place‐based policy is both ubiquitous and widely criticised. The conventional economic case against place‐targeted interventions is strong, relegating its application to a narrow range of cases of immobile labour resources, market imperfections and/or other externalities. However, both internationally and domestically, equity considerations lead to policies and programmes for disadvantaged regions and their populations. Budget constraints and accountability suggest a selection or ‘triage’ process targeting places with the highest returns in contributing to social welfare. Furthermore, the challenges facing rural areas may be fundamentally different in developed from developing countries. This article proposes a framework for assessing places appropriate for place‐based policies, using the examples of Canada, Chile and Peru.     

“A Bad Combination”: Lived Experiences of Youth Involved in the Foster Care and Juvenile Justice Systems

Youth with involvement in foster care and the juvenile justice system, often called dual-status youth, are at increased risk for negative outcomes as they transition into adulthood, including homelessness, and involvement in the adult criminal justice system. Increase of interest in the phenomenon of youth dual involvement within the last decade, reveals focus on challenges associated with the dual-status population, the importance of multi-system collaboration, and foster care factors contributing to juvenile delinquency. This study aims to build on the current literature, through exploration of how dually-involved youth make sense of their experiences in the juvenile justice and foster care systems; and what youth believe are their unique challenges of being in two systems? This phenomenological study engaged ten individuals in Houston, Texas, between the ages of 18 and 24 years old, and previously involved in the juvenile justice and foster care systems. Research subjects participated in-depth, semi-structured, and audio-recorded interviews, disclosing their experiences in two systems. Interviews were transcribed and entered in the qualitative analytical program, Atlas.ti, where common themes of participant responses were extracted. Accounts from participants highlighted three key experiences: (1) experiences of and leading to dual involvement, (2) traumatic experiences, and (3) absence of normalcy. Study results are categorized based on their pathways to dual-involvement. This current study offers rich insights into how dually-involved youth make sense of their experiences in the foster care and juvenile justice systems. Implications for enhanced service provision among child welfare and juvenile justice professionals are offered.

     

Treatment with children and adolescents traumatized by the September 11th attack

In the aftermath of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, a myriad of complicated issues faced us all. Among these issues were how to provide support and ease anxiety during a time when taking in what had occurred was painful for us all, and everyone felt uncertain about the future. In this article, we describe how some New York City children and adolescents in close proximity to the devastation experienced the day and managed in the aftermath. We offer two case examples as characteristic reactions and describe the fine balance of getting to the material while respecting the defenses of our young clients. These school-based sessions offer insight into the unique parameters of school-based work, and the flexibilities and limitations available in this setting. We describe treatment grounded in psychodynamic theory and in the adolescent case, the implementation of some cognitive techniques. Both cases illustrate that the effects of prior trauma play significant element in the experience of present day trauma.     

Calling Upon the Sacred: Migrants' Use of Religion in the Migration Process

The role of religion in the stages of the migration process has been overlooked by both immigration and sociology of religion scholars. This article draws on the migratory and religious history of a transnational Maya community with members in the western highlands of Guatemala and Houston, Texas. Drawing on field research of Mayas in both the sending and receiving areas, we show how migrants use religion in the following stages of the migration process: 1) decisionmaking; 2) preparing for the trip; 3) the journey; 4) the arrival; 5) the role of the ethnic church in immigrant settlement; and 6) the development of transnational linkages.     

The Paradox of Disability Culture: the need to combine versus the imperative to let go

This article seeks to demonstrate that, to function as a truly emancipatory phenomenon, disability culture must be relieved of the paradox that keeps it trapped in modernist assumptions that serve to reinforce its marginalised status. The paradox of disability culture may be stated as follows. How can we claim unity without falling into the same exclusionary practices that have served to create our divisive identifications in the first place? Conversely, how can we relinquish the practices of identification that are based on binary oppositions without losing the ability to claim identities at all? I argue that, by extricating it from its origins in essentialist assumptions, disability culture can be reinvigo rated as a truly emancipatory device, which is capable of devising positive identities which, rather than celebrating the 'disabled identity', rely on its dissolution.