Sociology & Anthropology

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    Exploring Violence In School of Tharu, Magar And Muslim Communities of Nepal
    (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, 2021-11) Aryal, Prem Krishna
    The purpose of this study is to examine the phenomenon of school violence, its multiple causes, and consequences and to explore the ways of its prevention. I have applied concurrent embedded research mixed methods, in which I have given high weightage to the qualitative exploration as compared to quantitative finding, since the purpose of the research is focused on the value of humanism perspectives. Thus, I have paid attention to more subjective and less objective reality while exploring the knowledge in schools of Tharu, Magar and Muslim communities. The study is founded on the philosophy of pragmatism with multi case studies of the communities’ schools. Parents, teachers, students, and the school management committee members were key research participants of the communities. I also explored voices on school violence of 834 respondents through opinion survey in which Tharu, Magar and Muslim students of 6 schools including Madrasa participated. The data driven from multiple cases were thematically analyzed and theoretically interpreted to support the qualitative data findings. The study showed that the school violence is a human-induced behavior. It appeared in different forms either as corporal punishments or as bullying and sexual abuses. Such forms of school violence have been nurtured by knowledge, attitude, and behavior evolved through socio-cultural and religious practices. Power dynamics, behavioral pedagogy, reaction of pain and desire of pleasure also promoted violence. Following the cause-and-effect theory, I found that school violence existed as a form of vicious cycle. Bullying, sexual abuse and corporal punishment are the turning points of the cycle. The behavioral causes further supported the existence of the vicious cycle of school violence in the schools of Tharu, Magar and Muslim communities. However, the prevention methods were found different. I also found that occurrence of corporal punishment, bullying and sexual abuse is somehow contextual and depends on cultural, religious and community practices. The findings mentioned above imply that the theory of self-awareness and self-management can prevent the children from being the victims of violence, whereas the external support mechanism (such as policies, legislations, reporting mechanism, case management system etc.) can be instrumental to decrease school violence.
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    Schooling of Terai Dalit Girls of Dhanusha District in Nepal
    (Faculty of Education, 2021) Yadav, Gyanee
    The present study focuses on schooling practices of Terai Dalit girls of Dhanusha district in Nepal, who, for centuries, have been treated as paninachalne tatha chhunanahune Jat (An untouchable caste). The main objective of the study was to explore Dalit girls’ access to basic education by assessing their schooling practices. The research has therefore analyzed issues and challenges related to schooling of Dalit girls to derive implications to improve their schooling practices. The study has used both quantitative and qualitative research design to collect primary information from the research participants and schools. Primary information was collected from four head teachers, eight teachers, 48 students and their parents (48) using a number of instruments: interview guidelines, focus group discussion guidelines and school profile form. The collected data were presented in the forms of tables, figures, charts and graphs to facilitate the process of analysis and interpretation. The data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The researcher collected primary data from four out of 22 community schools of Janakpurdham submet ropolitan area of Dhanusha district that recorded dominant presence of Dalit girls who were more than 100 in each of the sample schools. Parents’ poor economic status, teachers’ behavior, poor participation in extracurricular and co-curricular activities, inadequate tutorial support at school and home, and small presence of Dalit female teachers, all contributed to have their poor access to basic education. Besides, engagement in domestic chores and agricultural work, age-old inappropriate social and religious practices, and parental illiteracy were vii the other challenges to their schooling. Addtionally, social pressure on early marriage, dowry system, and lack of vision for further study were the other challenges. Changes in schooling of Dalit girls resulted in the development of self confidence and positive images of self with their effort to bring their learning knowledge into practice in their day to day life. Support services like tutorial support by parents at home, providing sufficient time to children’s learning, helping them to do their homework, or managing special time for difficult parts of their study were little done by parents. Schools, communities and families were expected to address challenges of Dalit girl students but their awareness level, which is increasing due to their schooling, is to be raised at a faster speed to enable them to fight against the neglect of their rights. Number of female teachers should be increased, particularly female Dalit teachers are to be encouraged to join teaching profession in order to inspire other Dalit girls for ensuring their equitable access to education. Improvement of schooling practices of Dalit girls calls for several efforts at multiple fronts: social protection programs, guarantee of minimum level of employment, skill development training programs to improve their employability skills, and setting of equity-based targets to narrow down the disparities. Programs and policies to address gender discrimination and gender-based challenges, teachers’ awareness about their roles and responsibilities, remedial instruction to ensure that all the Dalit girls learn not just the foundational skills but also the transferable skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, advocacy and conflict resolution, could be the other supportive measures to improve the schooling practices of Terai Dalit girls. ___________________ Gyanee Yadav PhD Research Scholar
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    Dalit Girl’s Perception Towards Discrimination
    (Faculty of Education, 2008) Awasthi, Lalita
    The study deals with Dalit women’s perception regarding discrimination, especially, in Hindu society. The broad objective of the study was to find out the perception of Dalit girls that affect their participation in education. The overarching research question of this study was, “How has discriminatory practices influenced Dalit girls’ access to education? I, as a researcher, reviewed the literature related to Women under Hinduism, Cultural perspective and Educational perspective. I used hermeneutics for the theoretical construct of this research. I used case study as a research strategy for generating information and analyzed it using the philosophy of Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer. I used questionnaires, in-depth open- ended interviews and direct observation under this method. In order to guide myself I also developed schematic chart to dig out information for this study. I found the forces that contributed to make up Dalit women’s perception like culture, religion, social values and gender construct. I also interpreted the forces by using hermeneutic theory of Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer. I also explained about the relationship between perception and education of Dalit girl’s with hermeneutics interpretation. I found the history and structure of society as the cause of their hindrance to education. I presented the findings under different categories like findings generated from the literature, field, personal reflection, and Hermeneutical inquiry. In doing so, I tried to capture the forces that shaped and reshaped Dalit girls’ perception towards discrimination in school. Hermeneutics taught me that all meaning is context- dependent and therefore unstable. It also stated that culture could be created and recreated; implying that the culture, which is against Dalit women, could also be changed. I realized that Dalit girls’ perception towards education could be changed by introducing inclusive approach to teaching, and reorienting culturally socialized mindset. Lastly, I have concluded my thesis by saying that the discrimination started from the mind of people and spread to home school and community so the treatment should be started from the peoples’ mind.