Monthly Archives: October 2014

As we go into October, my research is slowly but surely progressing. The design has come along immensely since my last post. What started as just a few sketches and thoughts have all started to come together, becoming a true 21^st Century design. After doing preliminary sketches, my biggest challenge so far has been maximizing space. For a master bath, it is not as big as a traditional American Bathroom. In trying to keep it feeling open and comfortable, placing fixtures has proved to be a bit complicated. In addition, insuring the design will meet Universal Design Standards has not been easy. I want any future users to be able to age gracefully and easily in their home, and that includes their bathroom. A curbless roman shower and other accessible features will provide the ease and peace of mind for the user to keep their independence as they age.

Most of my selections have already been picked out; Thos Somerville providing information on the plumbing fixtures, and Mosaic Tile the backsplash and floor tiles. These are some of the more important elements of the design as they provide the backbone of keeping the space environmentally friendly and efficient. All of the fixtures are low-flow, meaning they use less water than a typical bathroom fixture and recycle water product to product. This eliminates the need and use of potable water in a fixture that doesn’t require it. The tile is important in keeping the moisture content of the bathroom down. Using tile instead of paint will be more eco-friendly and health conscious, as they paint will not peel and degrade when wet. Tile is also a very popular aesthetic found in American bathrooms today. Both of these elements will make my design marketable and pleasing to a broad target client base.

After our peer discussion, I felt more secure in the direction my project is headed. My group felt my design encompassed all of the efficiency from the homes we saw and used in Morocco. The most thought provoking element of the discussion came from the question about the bidet. I do plan on having a bidet involved in the design, but am currently contemplating how to get the most health consciousness out of it. It will be interesting to see how I can best incorporate the “squat toilet” into my design. Otherwise I feel really good about where I am at in my research, and excited to see how it progresses in the next month.

Research Group Conversations: Task #2

This week I was able to discuss my research project ideas with Taylor. I know that my research is looking to cover young women in Sri Lanka that have been raped or sexually abused, however, it was hard for me to come up with a clear “research question” that would be my entire focus for the project.

My research proposal from last semester aimed to cover women’s roles in Sri Lanka and how they changed because of events like the civil war and the tsunami. However, after my internship with Sarvodaya, I started becoming more interested in young women who have been sexually abused. I met Maraliya Bakker, a student from Amsterdam who is doing a study on why some rape victims experience posttraumatic stress disorder and why others don’t. I was able to assist her in her study by visiting women’s centers and being open to the information that were willing to share with us. It was after visiting all of these centers that made me realize I was really interested in knowing more about young women who have been raped and are using whatever resources they have to pick up their life again.

So as I was looking into what my research would specifically be about, I thought about the things I knew/found out about on the trip:

• Seems like current status of women in Sri Lankan society makes them more vulnerable to rape incidents
• What Sri Lankan culture and society don’t provide results in the vulnerability of women and them getting raped
• For men, sex is one of their “basic needs”
• For women, it is a duty to submit to their husbands desire for sex even if it’s not consensual
• A lot of women are not aware of what sex or rape is. Some rape victims have even said they thought it was normal for their uncle or father to do that to them.

With all of these thoughts considered, it is challenging for me to know what basis of study I should cover. Should I use past events within Sri Lanka’s history, like the civil war and the tsunami, to understand how these events have led to the displacement of women and how this could relate to the increase in rape incidents? Should I look at the attitudes towards women in Sri Lanka and how these attitudes lay down a structure for who women are and how they can be mistreated? Should I look at intervention/prevention programs like the women’s centers and see how their resources have benefitted their participants? There are so many different angles I could choose when looking at this topic of raped women in Sri Lanka.

These are some questions that Taylor and I went through and discussed as we tried to narrow down my research topic. I am still in the process of figuring out the best angle to take with my research but I am hoping that I will soon come to a solid research question.

Research Task 1

I had 4 different project ideas roaming in my mind, 2 of them were a continuation of my initial project. Funny thing is the project I am now pursuing is not one of those 4. My new project idea is inspired by my internship in Sri Lanka. I had the privilege of meeting an inspiring man who turned his idea of building the first agricultural school in Sri Lanka into a reality.

For my new project I want to build a small, urban, organic farm following the philosophy of permaculture.

“Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions rather than asking only one yield of them…”

                                                                                    – Bill Mollison

The goals I have so far for this project are:

• To build an open environment that cultivates the knowledge of small-scale organic farming.
• To encourage sustainable living.
• To promote healthy eating.
• To share food.

I plan to implement these goals by opening the farm to community members to volunteer and learn about small-scale organic farming. The harvest will be shared among volunteers. The harvest will also be available to the entire community through a farmers market.

Where am I planning to build this farm? Well, my house in Falls Church has a really large vacant yard! To be exact its ~0.3 acres, which isn’t large at all, but to me it’s the perfect size.

I know that this may be too large of a task to accomplish all in one semester, but I hope that by the end of this semester I will have the knowledge required to draw out a layout of the farm. I plan to present my research in the form of a detailed blueprint.

There is much to be learned, so off I go!

Research Task 2

Sharing my project with my group has provided me with a lot of helpful and new perspectives. They suggested looking at existing organic farms to learn from, especially if the farm has been through challenges and how they overcame that. They also mentioned visiting and meeting some of the farmers. I am planning to volunteer with Kentland Farms, here in Blacksburg soon.

As I was explaining the principles of permaculture, we were able to connect a lot of the values to what we have been learning in class. The principles of permaculture emphasizes the connection among every thing to everything else and how a “successful design serves the needs of people and provides many useful connections between elements, or diversity” (Faires 9). This reminded me of the feedback system in Paradise Poisoned and how the arrows intertwined with everything.

A lot of questions were also brought up about permaculture and how it differs from monoculture. The clear distinction of the two is that permaculture is more about polyculture, which focuses on plants and animals living together for mutual benefit. Whereas, monoculture is what you would usually think of a farm, long rows of a single crop grown over a large area.

I am hoping to broaden my research and seek out professors that are experts in this field!

Since my meeting with Kristine and Kaitlyn, I now have a few specific issues that I want to include and focus on in my research.  One current, on-going issue that I definitely think needs to be included in my research is ISIS on the Syrian-Turkish border and how this effects the Kurdish population in Turkey.  This issue is definitely going to play a role in my assessment of the situation in Turkey. Recently there have been deadly protests across Turkey due to the Turkish government’s lack of military action against ISIS.  This is a huge factor that could possibly contribute to further political violence and social unrest. Kaitlyn suggested that I should choose specific conditions in Turkey to focus on and find hard evidence.  I think this case of ISIS and the Kurdish population is a perfect example to focus on for a good portion of my research paper.

I also expressed my concern about being blinded by western media and western opinions that are projected onto the situation in Turkey. I want to avoid making assumptions and want to get first hand, local opinions as much as possible so that I can properly assess the situation from the point of view of the people in Turkey. In order to do this I now need to look at Turkish media as much as possible to see how they are framing the situation and current issues in Turkey.

Lastly, one of the biggest goals of my research is to create my own Richardson-style flow diagram from Paradise Poisoned.  I am going to include various conditions (socioeconomic, political, ethnic, international pressures, etc. ) as counteracting and reinforcing loops that I view as the most important factors affecting the situation and future of the country.  These conditions might reflect an unsatisfied population and indicate policy failures which could lead to political conflict and violence.  On the other hand, I might find that no such thing will occur and that the AKP will continue to rule Turkey without opposition. Currently, I have a shell for my argument that based on [insert conditions] I assess that there is the likely possibility for [insert forecast] in Turkey for [insert timeframe]. Now, I need to fill in those blanks.

I would say that the group meeting between me, Micheal and Alex today went pretty well. We all made some good points about each other projects and asked each other some questions to help reassure that we know where we stand with our research. As far as my project is going, I am still waiting to hear back from the founder of PUSH skateboarders to get a hold of some important governmental documents that they had to sign in order to receive clearance to build their skate park, which I would guess has just broken ground. I also hope that they will be able to send me some plans for their park. Now, I am realizing that this updated research project has to be a separate entity from our fall papers as a much as I wish I could have traveled Sri Lanka, filming a skate video with PUSH, I didn’t, so now I will have to turn my focus elsewhere. I would like to focus on the globalization of skateboarding, and its roots in “developing” countries. Micheal and Alex pointed out today that a physical poster board would be a good way to present my project because it is a change up from the standard paper and woulds till do the job. I think that with the information that I have though, something along the lines of a prezi would be more effective. I want to focus on the role that skate parks are playing in communities worldwide, and how those skate parks came to be. Were they built by donors? Were they state funded with tax money? What had to be done politically and socially to have parks built, especially the park in Colombo. I would also like to focus on the giving back aspect of skateboarding, including board donations, and entire park donations. Micheal and Alex helped me realize that I can convey this information in a more interesting way than through a research paper. Though if it comes down to it, a paper I will write.

Today’s meeting went well for my group. Everyone is taking advantage of their resources and are in the process of getting their materials to do their writeup. Eli is working on his skateboard project and is getting a lot of information from his connections in Sri Lanka and Alex is underway in designing a sustainable bathroom to be sold to American clients. Eli is now focusing in on the practices in making a skateboard park in a developing country and the effect it will have, and Alex is figuring out the best toilet design, with a bade as the solution. My project is going well. I am focusing on creating a new way in solving water issues by using my case study in Sri Lanka. The information I gathered during my internship gave me all the resources I needed to start writing the paper. The project got pretty flushed out by the scientists I talked to in Sri Lanka and Sarvodaya staff and is still on track.

Todays’ group research workshop was very helpful in giving me more direction for my app. I have ultimately come to the conclusion the app I would like to create is far more complicated than what can actually be accomplished within a two month period. Rather than simplifying it and leaving out crucial pieces to actually produce the app, I have resolved to make an app proposal instead with a creative poster to show my work. I presented the different elements of my app proposal to my group and they helped me dissect what sections to further address. I have divided my app into three categories of main functions: location, safety, and communication.  This app is to be used by NGO’s as an informational tool and a way of communication during protest situations for better safety and organization. As I stated in my earlier blog post I have gained a lot of inspiration from the Israeli apps Yo! And their government run missile warnings, so I will be incorporating similar features into this app. Kristine helped me to recognize that this app needs to have features that only use internet rather than a wireless carrier because in times of protests or missile strikes local communication lines and towers could be destroyed, in addition to routers for wifi. Therefore a new thing I’ve determined for my project is this app must solely function on external connections, satellites of 3g or 4g.

I will not type out the same proposal that I gave orally to Kristine or Caroline because most of this will be found in my first draft. However, the largest new thing I need to clarify by Caroline’s suggestion was my violence warning section. In this section I chose to use a color system of red, yellow, green to indicate the urgency of danger that will alert app users in the form of a push notification. This notification will be based on location services (what is happening within that region) to better direct citizens to places of refuge (combination of google map directions and shelter addresses listed in a different section of the app). This draws inspiration from the government-app used in Israel to notify citizens when and where missile attacks were going to be launched. However, the app in Israel for these types of warning was run by the government, making it public service announcements. Caroline asked several questions the first of which: how the NGO’s will find this information? Will it be given to them by intelligence agencies/government, will it be through leaks in the media? Also at what point does sharing this information with citizens for their safety cross over exposing a military strategy the government would like to keep secret? These are huge questions to tackle on their own, which has inspired me to research the best method for NGO’s to seek this information and where.

I also recognize that I should probably include more tools and citations of culturally appropriate development methods as we have discovered this semester with Escobar. I didn’t think of my project originally in terms of  being relevant to development, but I certainly see the need to mention some key points. Overall , I am very excited about where my project is heading and fleshing out my methods section within the next two weeks will certainly put my closer to the ultimate product I am looking to produce. I will certainly be including Kristine’s point on the satellite connection in addition to addressing Caroline’s concern about information gathering.

I met with Krystal and Meron last Thursday to discuss our research topics.  My project has been slightly modified since the last blog post as I have moved away from doing anything with sex work.  Rather, I am now focusing on eight narratives from refugees of Burma’s military regime who are currently living in Thailand.  Each of these individuals has a different backstory; but through human rights violations imposed on them from the military regime, they have all found themselves living in refuge in Thailand.  I have been working with my Rhetorical Tradition professor who has been a huge help throughout this process, helping point me in the right direction and giving me suggestions of theories I could look at to explain some aspects of the narratives.  The things I have been focusing on so far are the way they discuss their family, religion, education, corruption, why they left Burma, and their views on returning.  I am looking for similarities in the ways they discuss these aspects of their lives.  As of right now, the only outside research I plan to use is background history of the regime, as well as history of the ethnic divisions as Burma has over 100 different ethnicities—only about three are mentioned in my narratives.

Krystal asked what form my project will be taking and was concerned about the small sample size.  I am planning to do this as a traditional research paper, although I am unsure if I will divide the body of the paper up between each narrative or each common theme.  I am leaning towards each common theme but I will be discussing that with the professor helping me before I begin writing.  As far as the small sample size, although it would be better to have more narratives to analyze, I am unable to find any others that will be useful to me and since I have no plans to visit Thailand anytime soon to conduct my own interviews, I am limited to this sample size.

Another suggestion that was brought up was to attempt to broaden the sample size by including narratives from individuals in places other than Thailand.  Although this would work to broaden the number of narratives, I am afraid that it would add an extra variable to my research that I will not be able to fully address in the amount of time I have to complete this.

I am not as far along in my research as I would like to be but I have a meeting with my professor tomorrow to talk about the next steps so I am hoping to get back on track this week.