Achieving a place: a communography of disabled postgraduates : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Albany campus, New Zealand

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dc.contributor.authorMcCool, Michael John
dc.date.accessioned2010-02-01T00:47:58Z
dc.date.availableNO_RESTRICTIONen_US
dc.date.available2010-02-01T00:47:58Z
dc.date.issued2009
dc.description.abstractThis study is social anthropological insider research of disabled postgraduates, students and staff in tertiary educational institutions. This is also a study of enabling conditions for inclusion; and ways the participants build relationships between themselves and the wider community. I consider my participants as kin. This was a joint venture - we were related not by blood, but by the very fact that we share in communities of disabled people. We are connected even if not always interacting with each other; we seldom moved in the same circles on a day-to-day basis. These are stories of adversity, where the participants have developed successful coping strategies and made achievements, not despite their being ?othered?, but by living with and acknowledging their differences. These are reflections on our society where we compete in complex emotional relationships within employment and all other social institutions. The university seemed to be a psychologically safer setting probably because it is a place for higher learning and therefore all the people had a more highly developed consciousness. Even though in some cases there were some wider macro barriers, on the whole, the participantsā€˜ experience was positive. We found what we as joint participants shared in that feeling of disability was just the same as the feeling of communitas as students. Thinking about communitas (Turner, 1967), the Latin for community, convinced me that community was the central theme of this whole thesis. There are communities of practice in all organisations and institutions in society and they are used by the participants in this study not only in developing strategies for inclusion, but also for learning. Because the university is a series of communities of practice a major theorist for this study is Vygotsky and his concept of a culture of learning. We are also indebted to the social anthropologist Lave and her colleagues for bringing his ideas to Western academia.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10179/1164
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherMassey Universityen_US
dc.rightsThe Authoren_US
dc.subjectDisabled communityen_US
dc.subjectInclusionen_US
dc.subjectRelationshipsen_US
dc.subject.otherFields of Research::370000 Studies in Human Society::370300 Anthropology::370302 Social and cultural anthropologyen_US
dc.titleAchieving a place: a communography of disabled postgraduates : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Albany campus, New Zealanden_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
massey.contributor.authorMcCool, Michael John
thesis.degree.disciplineSocial Anthropologyen_US
thesis.degree.grantorMassey Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy (Ph. D.)en_US
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