The human rights dilemma : an east-west encounter : Germany and China in 1996 /

Conflicts over human rights in relations between East Asia and the West have increased since the end of the Cold War. Western governments express concern about human rights standards in East Asian countries. In the East, these expressions have been perceived as interference in internal affairs. Due to dramatic economic development, East Asian nations recently have gained in pride and self-confidence as global actors. Such development is observed with suspicion in the West. Concerned about the decline of global U.S. influence, some American scholars have re-invented the notion of "culture" to point at an alleged East Asian threat. Also East Asian statesmen use the cultural argument by claiming the existence of so-called 'Asian values', which they allege are the key to Eastern economic success. This thesis argues that issues of human rights in East-West relations are not only a consequence of well-intended concern by Western governments regarding the human rights and welfare of the citizens of East Asian nations, but are in fact dominated by and used as a pawn in interplay with more complicated questions of global power and economic relations between East and West. The thesis reviews the relevance of culture in East-West relations. In the West, particularly Samuel P. Huntington with his prediction of the Clash of Civilizations stands out. Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew has been very vocal on the Eastern side. Whereas the West tries to cope with its decrease of global influence, after hundreds of years under Western hegemonism, the East believes in an Asian way of development without interference form the West. Most of this dispute revolves around the issue of human rights. The West claims the universality of rights which in fact emphasizes political and civil rights. Western countries critizise poor human rights standards in East Asia. The East, in return, accuses the West of hypocritical policies that seek global dominance. East Asian governments assert that due to a different stage of development they have to stress first their rights to development in order to assure stability. In particular, China argues this way. The country's leadership, however, shows concern about human rights and has already improved its human rights record over the past years. This thesis analyses the dispute over human rights in a case study on Germany and China. Both countries have a mutual interest in trade relations which has conflicted with Germany's criticism of China's problematic human rights record. In 1996, the two countries clashed after the German parliament passed a resolution condemning China's treatment of Tibet. This caused a lot of damage to the Chinese-German relationship which in the course of the year went back to normality. In the light of these frictions a German human rights policy that focuses on unspectacular grass-roots support of China, for example in strengthening China's legal system, would be preferable. Such co-operation must be based on mutual respect.

The encounter with the real and post-Soviet trauma : fantasy construction in Russian popular cinema /

This thesis examines the impact of the Soviet Union's collapse on the Russian Symbolic as represented through popular cinema of the post-Soviet period. The disintegration of the USSR in 1991 became one of the most traumatic experiences for many Russian people. The trauma of the collapse of the Soviet Union penetrated the everyday reality of the Russian Symbolic, leaving the traces-symptoms in different cultural fonns like literature, arts, television and cinema. Because popular culture usually reacts very quickly to any social, political and economical shifts in society, it is an excellent barometer for deeper changes in society. Focusing on postSoviet popular cinema, this thesis analyzes the symptoms of cultural and individual trauma occasioned by the momentous changes of the 1990's. This study is grounded in post-analytic theory of Jacques Lacan and its interpretation by Slavoj Zizek, which emphases the traumatic encounter with the Real as a "hard core" of our reality. According to this paradigm, a new chain of signifiers is structured around the traumatic breach in the Symbolic, initiating a process of fantasy construction to deal with consequences of trauma and, thus, to support our Symbolic order. This thesis examines three major fantasy constructions - drinking, traveling to a "happy land" and family reunion and money - in popular films by Alexander Rogozhkin, Yurij Mamin, Georgij Shengelia, Dmitrij Astrakhan, Valerij Todorovskij, Alexej Balabanov, Sergej Bodrov Jr. and Petr Buslov. According to Zizek, enjoyment underlies any fantasy constructions, and that is why after the intrusion of the Real every individual and culture should go through the process of fantasizing about some substitutes which can help to minimize the traumatic effect and which can lead to a partial enjoyment. By analyzing the fantasies about drinking, "happy land", reconstruction of the family bonds and money in Russian popular cinema since 1991, this thesis demonstrates how the traumatic engagement with the Real affected the everyday lives of Russian people, and how individuals tried to fill the gap, the lack, in the post-Soviet Symbolic and "return" the lost feeling of unity and plenitude.

A Narrative Study of Patient Encounter Accounts of Physicians, Nurses, and Medical Receptionists after Two Decades of a Paradigm of Patient-Centered Care

Despite recent well-known advancements in patient care in the medical fields, such as patient-centeredness and evidence-based medicine and practice, there is rather less known about their effects on the particulars of clinician-patient encounters. The emphasis in clinical encounters remains mostly on treatment and diagnosis and less on communicative competency or engagement for medical professionals. The purpose of this narrative study was to explore interactive competencies in diagnostic and therapeutic encounters and intake protocols within the context of the physicians’, nurses’, and medical receptionists’ perspectives and experiences. Literature on narrative medicine, phenomenology and medicine, therapeutic relationships, cultural and communication competency, and non-Western perspectives on human communication provided the guiding theoretical frameworks for the study. Three data sets including 13 participant interviews (5 physicians, 4 nurses, and 4 medical receptionists), policy documents (physicians, nurses, and medical receptionists) and a website (Communication and Cultural Competency) were used. The researcher then engaged in triangulated analyses, including N-Vivo, manifest and latent, Mishler’s (1984, 1995) narrative elements and Charon’s (2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2013) narrative themes, in recursive, overlapping, comparative and intersected analysis strategies. A common factor affecting physicians’ relationships with their clients was limitation of time, including limited time (a) to listen, (b) to come up with a proper diagnosis, and (c) to engage in decision making in critical conditions and limited time for patients’ visits. For almost all nurse participants in the study establishing therapeutic relationships meant being compassionate and empathetic. The goals of intake protocols for the medical receptionists were about being empathetic to patients, being an attentive listener, developing rapport, and being conventionally polite to patients. Participants with the least iv amount of training and preparation (medical receptionists) appeared to be more committed to working narratively in connecting with patients and establishing human relationships as well as in listening to patients’ stories and providing support to narrow down the reason for their visit. The diagnostic and intake “success stories” regarding patient clinical encounters for other study participants were focused on a timely securing of patient information, with some acknowledgement of rapport and emapathy. Patient-centeredness emerged as a discourse practice, with ambiguous or nebulous enactment of its premises in most clinical settings.

The effect of a weighted-vest strength and balance training program on obstructed walking in postmenopausal women

SUMMARY Background: Age related declines in lower extremity strength have been associated with impaired mobility and changes in gait patterns, which increase the likelihood of falls. Since community dwelling adults encounter a wide range of locomotor challenges including uneven and obstmcted walking surfaces, we examined the effect of a strength 11 and balance exercise program on obstructed walking in postmenopausal women. Objectives: This study examined the effect of a weighted-vest strength and balance exercise program on adaptations of the stance leg during obstacle walking in postmenopausal women. Methods: Eighteen women aged 44-62 years who had not engaged in regular resistance training for the past year were recruited from the St. Catharines community to participate in this study. Eleven women volunteered for an aerobic (walking), strength, and balance training program 3 times per week for 12 weeks while 7 women volunteered as controls. Measurements included: force platform dynamic balance measure of the center of pressure (COP) and ground reaction forces (GRFs) in the stance leg while going over obstacles of different heights (0,5, 10,25 and 30 cm); and isokinetic strength measures of knee and ankle extension and flexion. Results: Of the 18 women, who began the trial, 16 completed it. The EX group showed a significant increase of 40% in ankle plantar flexion strength (P < 0.05). However, no improvements in measures of COP or GRFs were observed for either group. Failure to detect any changes in measures of dynamic balance may be due to small sample size. Conclusions: Postmenopausal women experience significant improvements in ankle strength with 12 weeks of a weighted-vest balance and strength training program, however, these changes do not seem to be associated with any improvement in measures of dynamic balance.

Kierkegaardian intersubjectivity and the question of ethics and responsibility

Kierkegaardian Intersubjectivity and the Question of Ethics and Responsibility By Kevin Krumrei. Kierkegaard's contributions to philosophy are generally admitted and recognized as valuable in the history of Western philosophy, both as one of the great anti-Hegelians, as the founder (arguably) of existentialism, and as a religious thinker. However valid this may be, there is similarly a generally admitted critique of Kierkegaard in the Western tradition, that Kierkegaard's philosophy of the development of the self leads the individual into an isolated encounter with God, to the abandonment of the social context. In other words, a Kierkegaardian theory of intersubjectivity is a contradiction in terms. This is voiced eloquently by Emmanuel Levinas, among others. However, Levinas' own intersubjective ethics bears a striking resemblance to Kierkegaard's, with respect to the description and formulation of the basic problem for ethics: the problem of aesthetic egoism. Further, both Kierkegaard and Levinas follow similar paths in responding to the problem, from Kierkegaard's reduplication in Works of Love, to Levinas' notion of substitution in Otherwise than Being. In this comparison, it becomes evident that Levinas' reading of Kierkegaard is mistaken, for Kierkegaard's intersubjective ethics postulates, in fact, the inseparability and necessity of the self s responsible relation to others in the self s relation to God, found in the command, "you shall love your neighbour as yourself."

Other-race faces : limitations of expert face recognition /

Adults' expert face recognition is limited to the kinds of faces they encounter on a daily basis (typically upright human faces of the same race). Adults process own-race faces holistically (Le., as a gestalt) and are exquisitely sensitive to small differences among faces in the spacing of features, the shape of individual features and the outline or contour of the face (Maurer, Le Grand, & Mondloch, 2002), however this expertise does not seem to extend to faces from other races. The goal of the current study was to investigate the extent to which the mechanisms that underlie expert face processing of own-race faces extend to other-race faces. Participants from rural Pennsylvania that had minimal exposure to other-race faces were tested on a battery of tasks. They were tested on a memory task, two measures of holistic processing (the composite task and the part/whole task), two measures of spatial and featural processing (the JanelLing task and the scrambledlblurred faces task) and a test of contour processing (JanelLing task) for both own-and other-race faces. No study to date has tested the same participants on all of these tasks. Participants had minimal experience with other-race faces; they had no Chinese family members, friends or had ever traveled to an Asian country. Results from the memory task did not reveal an other-race effect. In the present study, participants also demonstrated holistic processing of both own- and other-race faces on both the composite task and the part/whole task. These findings contradict previous findings that Caucasian adults process own-race faces more holistically than other-race faces. However participants did demonstrate an own-race advantage for processing the spacing among features, consistent with two recent studies that used different manipulations of spacing cues (Hayward et al. 2007; Rhodes et al. 2006). They also demonstrated an other-race effect for the processing of individual features for the Jane/Ling task (a direct measure of featural processing) consistent with previous findings (Rhodes, Hayward, & Winkler, 2006), but not for the scrambled faces task (an indirect measure offeatural processing). There was no own-race advantage for contour processing. Thus, these results lead to the conclusion that individuals may show less sensitivity to the appearance of individual features and the spacing among them in other-race faces, despite processing other-race faces holistically.

Out of the darkness and into the light : a study of inauthentic and authentic speech

Introduction Man can be described as the being who shows himself in speech, and from birth to death is continually speaking. Communication is so close to us, so woven into our very being, that we have little understanding of the way it is constituted; for it is as hard to obtain distance from communication as it is to obtain distance from ourselves. All communication is not alike. There are two basic modesl of communication, the inauthentic and the authentic, between which there occurs a constant tension. It is in the inauthentic mode, points out Heidegger, that we find ourselves "proximately and for the most part"; 1. Being and Time, pg. 68 Dasein decides as to the way it will comport itself in taking up its task of having being as an issue for it. " •.• it~, in its very being 'choose' itself and win itself; it can also lose itself and never win itself or only "seem" to do so. But only in so far as it is essentially something which can be authentic--that is, something of its own--can it have lost itself and not yet won itself." 2. therefore Heidegger also terms it "everydayness".2 Caught up in the world of everydayness, our speaking covers over and conceals3 our rootedness in being, leaving us in the darkness of untruth. The image of darkness may be inferred from Heidegger's use of the image of "clearing,,4 to depict being as 2. ibid. pg. 69 "Dasein's average everydayness, however, is not to be taken as a mere 'aspect'. Here too, and even in the mode of inauthenticity, the structure of existentiality lies ~ priori and here too Dasein's being is an issue for it in a definite way; and Dasein comports itself towards it the mode of average everydayness, even if this is only the mode of fleeing in the face of it and forgetfulness thereof." 3. ibid. pg. 59 "covering over" and "concealing" are 1;yays Dasein tries to flee its task of having being as an issue for itself. " ••• This being can be covered up so extensively that it becomes forgotten and no question arises about it or its meaning ••• n How everyday speaking accomplishes this will be taken up in detail in the second chapter which explores Dasein's everyday speech. 4. ibid, pg. 171 lI ••• we have in mind nothing other than the Existential - ontological structure of this entity (Dasein), that it is in such a way as to be its 'there'. To say that it is -' illuminated' [tlerleuchtet"] means that as Being-in-theworld it is cleared [gelichtetJ in itself7 not through any other entity, but in such a way that it is itself the clearing. Only for an entity which is eXistentially cleared in this way does what is present-at-hand become accessible in the light or hidden in the dark •••• " 3 dis-coveredness and truth. Our first task will be to explore the nature of communication in general and then to explore each of the modes manifested in turn. The structure of the inauthentic mode of communication can be explored by asking the following questions: What is this speaking about? Who is it that is speaking and who is spoken to? Does this speaking show man in his speech? The authentic mode is distinguished by the rarity with which we encounter it; as the inauthentic conceals, so the authentic reveals our rootedness in being. Yet this rarity makes it difficult to delineate its elusive structure clearly. Its constituent elements can be brought into focus by asking the same questions of this mode that we previously asked of the inauthentic mode. Our initial response to the disclosure of the authentic mode is to attempt to abandon the inauthentic mode and leave the darkness behind dwelling only in the "lighted place". All through the ages, some men pushing this to extreme, have, upon uncovering their relatedness to being, experienced a deep longing to dwell in such a "place" of pure truth and oft times denigrated or attempted to exclude the everyday world. Such 4. flight is twice mistaken: first it atbempts to fix truth as unchanging and static and secondly, it opposes this to untruth which it seeks to abolish. This is both the wrong view of truth and the wrong view of untruth as Heidegger points out in The Origin of The-Work of Art: The Way-to-be of truth, i.e., of discoveredness, is under the sway of refusal. But this refusal is no lack or privation, as if truth could be simply discoveredness rid of all covers. If it could be that, it would no longer be itself . ••• Truth in its way-to-be is untruth.5 Pure light is not the nature of Being nor is pure unconcealedness possible for man. Failure to remember this is the failure to realize that communication destroys itself in such flight because it no longer maintains the contingency of its task, i.e., the dis-closedness of being. We are reminded of the strong attraction this flight from darkness held for Plato. Light, truth and Being are all beyond the darkness and have nothing to do with it. In Book VII of the R~public, Socrates' explanation of the Allegory of the Cave to Glaucon points to a decided preference men have for the "lighted place". 5. The Origin Of The Work Of Art, pg. 42 5. Come then, I said, and join me in this further thought, and do not be surprised that those who attained to this height are not willing to occupy themselves with the affairs of men, but their souls ever feel the upward urge and yearning for that sojourn above. For this, I take it, is likely if in this point too the likeliness of our image holds. 6 Despite the attraction to pure truth, human communication is more complex than putting down one mode of communication and picking up another. Due to the fact that we are always on the way, the title of my thesis will have to be amended: OUT OF THE DARKNESS AND INTO THE LIGHT--AGAIN AND AGAIN. It must be this way because this is what it means to be human. This is the point made by Mephisto to Faust in pointing out that man, standing between God and the devil, needs both darkness and light: Er findet sich in einem ewigen Gl~t Uns hat er in die Finsternis gebracht, Und euch taugt einzig Tag und Nacht. 7 6. Republic z (517 c & d) It should be noted however, that while the philosopherking must be compelled to return to the cave for purely political reasons, once he has taken adequate view of the "brightest region of being" he has the full truth and his return to darkness adds nothing to the truth. 7. Faust, pg. 188 6. This thesis proposes to examine the grounds that give rise to communication, uncovering the structure of its inauthentic and authentic modes and paying close attention to tpeir interrelationship and to their relationship to language as "the house of Being": language that both covers and opens up man's rootedness in Being, transforming him as he moves along his way, taking up his "ownmost task" of becoming who he is. roots. He is the being who shows himself inn that reflects his forgetfulness or remembrance of his rootedness in being. Man comes into an already existent world and is addressedl through things in the world which are c

International volunteers at a Costa Rican organic farm : sheepish volunteers, proud tourists and unwitting developers

This thesis analyzes the practices and experiences of two groups of Canadian volunteers who visited the organic fanning and "alternative development" project ofFinca la Flor (FLF) in central Costa Rica. Using both participant observation and in-depth interviews with volunteers and other people involved with FLF, I examine volunteers' understandings of their involvement with the fann. I argue that three discursive fonnations are instrumental in shaping this particular volunteering encounter. Specifically, interpretation of these Canadian volunteers' experiences inspires the argument that the emerging practice of international volunteering (or voluntourism) exists at the intersection of discourses of development, volunteering and tourism, all of which both reflect and maintain problematic North-South relationships. The analysis shows that in spite ofFLF's construction as an (alternative / sustainable) international-development project, and in spite of volunteers' initial conceptualization of their trip as "volunteering," volunteers tend to act and describe their time at FLF in ways that look more like tourism than like volunteer labor or international development. Likewise, although FLF claims to principally be focused on alternative development, and merely to open up this authentic development space to volunteers for their participation, the organization in both practice and discourse seems primarily to construct a tourist experience and cater to the needs of foreigners as tourists. Discourses of development and volunteering do infonn the practices offann personnel and volunteers at FLF, but they become subordinated to the more dominant discourse of tourism as the volunteers' and fann management's ideals of development and volunteering capitulate to become focused on satisfying volunteers' (perceived or "real") touristic desires. The FLF participants I studied may have entered the encounter as volunteers, but they departed the site having been tourists.

Supporting and maximizing communication between individuals with intellectual disabilities and health care providers

The goal of the present study was to examine the barriers to access in health services faced by individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID), as well as the nature of communication between people with ID and those who are directly involved in supporting their health and well being. The study included in-depth interviews with five adults who have been identified as having ID and are supported by a community agency, five community agency support staff and four physicians who are specialists in supporting people who have ID. A qualitative content analysis approach facilitated the comparative exploration of key themes that each participant group saw as positive or negative influences on health care access and on effective health care communication. Themes drawn from the findings emphasize the unique roles each of these groups plays within the dialogical framework of the health care encounter. Of particular importance to informants was the issue of people with ID being seen as full participants in their own health care who, like all people, are unique individuals and not simply members of an identified or marginalized group. Participants across groups emphasized the need for the health care recipient to be known as an individual who is an expert in her/his own health and well being and, therefore, entitled to full participation with the support of but not control by others.

Admiralty Commissioner's Orders, October 13, 1812.

Sir John Thomas Duckworth (1747-1817) served as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Newfoundland when the United States declared war against Great Britain in 1812. He effectively prepared for the war by reviving and expanding the militia forces, establishing a signal station to warn of the approach of enemy ships, and strengthening the seaward forces. He resigned the post in December 1812 in order to take a parliamentary seat for New Romney, on the Kent coast. Sir William Domett (1752-1828) and Sir Joseph Sydney (1768-1831) were both naval officers and members of the Board of Admiralty when the United States declared war on Great Britain in 1812. Sir George Warrender, 4th Baronet (1782-1849), served as Lord of the Admiralty from 1812-1822, and as a Member of Parliament for various constituencies in Great Britain from 1807-1832. Sir John Barrow (1764-1848) was secretary of the Admiralty from 1804-1845, with the exception of the period from Feb. 1806-April 1807. He is best known for his support and encouragement of British exploration, especially in West Africa and the Arctic.

Region Connection Calculus: Composition Tables and Constraint Satisfaction Problems

Qualitative spatial reasoning (QSR) is an important field of AI that deals with qualitative aspects of spatial entities. Regions and their relationships are described in qualitative terms instead of numerical values. This approach models human based reasoning about such entities closer than other approaches. Any relationships between regions that we encounter in our daily life situations are normally formulated in natural language. For example, one can outline one's room plan to an expert by indicating which rooms should be connected to each other. Mereotopology as an area of QSR combines mereology, topology and algebraic methods. As mereotopology plays an important role in region based theories of space, our focus is on one of the most widely referenced formalisms for QSR, the region connection calculus (RCC). RCC is a first order theory based on a primitive connectedness relation, which is a binary symmetric relation satisfying some additional properties. By using this relation we can define a set of basic binary relations which have the property of being jointly exhaustive and pairwise disjoint (JEPD), which means that between any two spatial entities exactly one of the basic relations hold. Basic reasoning can now be done by using the composition operation on relations whose results are stored in a composition table. Relation algebras (RAs) have become a main entity for spatial reasoning in the area of QSR. These algebras are based on equational reasoning which can be used to derive further relations between regions in a certain situation. Any of those algebras describe the relation between regions up to a certain degree of detail. In this thesis we will use the method of splitting atoms in a RA in order to reproduce known algebras such as RCC15 and RCC25 systematically and to generate new algebras, and hence a more detailed description of regions, beyond RCC25.

Admiralty Commissioner's Orders - October 13, 1812

Admiralty Commissioner's Orders sent to Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Newfoundland, informing him of America's declaration of war against Great Britain and instructing him to seize and destroy all ships belonging to the United States of America which he may encounter. The document is dated October 13, 1812, and is signed by William Domett, Joseph Sydney Yorke, George Warrender, and John Barrow. The paper is marked "duplicate". It is likely that several copies were issued and sent via different ships to ensure that at least one made it to Admiral Duckworth.

Using Poetry, Story, and Reflection to Understand Professional Self After Personal Loss

This research investigated professional identity transformation after personal loss. Through autoethnographic methods, I explore how my personal experience of my sister’s breast cancer and death affected my identity as a diabetes educator in the health culture. I discover a transformation of a professional who focuses on evidence-based medicine to a professional who values connection, therapeutic alliance, and mindfulness with patients and self in the diabetes education encounter. Using a holistic perspective on transformational learning, I integrate the poem “Wild Geese” to a collection of written narratives to connect my personal loss experience to my professional life. By unpacking the generated stories and using poetry, I conduct a process of critical and self-reflection to discover how my identity as a health professional has transformed and what makes meaning in my role as a diabetes educator in the health culture. I consider concepts of a conscious self, social relations and language and discover themes of knowledge exchange, food, and empathy as forms of language expression. These language expressions are not present in my professional life as I focus on rational, logical facts of evidence-based medicine and standardized education methods. Through this reflexive process, I hope to understand how my professional practice has changed, where I place an importance on connection, therapeutic alliance, and mindfulness. I move away from always “doing” in my professional life to focus on my state of “being” in my professional world. Rather than knowledge acquisition as the only factor in professional development, this study contributes to an understanding of additional qualities health professionals may consider that focus on the patient education encounter.

Using First Nations Children's Literature in the Classroom: Portfolio of Learning

A portfolio was developed to encourage teachers of Aboriginal children to include First Nations mentor texts into their daily teaching practices. The artifacts within the portfolio have been produced in accordance with guiding beliefs about how students, specifically First Nations students, learn. The portfolio supports the notion that Aboriginal children need to encounter representations of their own culture, histories and beliefs within the literature in order to be successful in school. The use of First Nations children’s literature in the classroom was explored with an emphasis on how using this literature will assist in improving literacy levels and the self-esteem of First Nations students.