Melbourne School of Population and Global Health - Theses

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Author: Harris, Andrew John × End date: 2019 × Start date: 2010 × Subject: ethnography ×

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    A phenomenological study into African refugee men’s wellness seeking behaviours, inclusive of community, spirit and ancestral connections.
    Harris, Andrew John ( 2017)
    AIM: To inform counselling with African male refugees in Tasmania, Australia, through the elaboration of African-derived approaches to problems. A secondary aim was to critique and re-inform Western counselling approaches and cultural assumptions. DESIGN: Phenomenology was selected to facilitate close engagement with participants’ life-worlds, and African interpretive frameworks were investigated to assist with data analysis. Reliability was enhanced through triangulation techniques such as sequencing the literature review after the Tasmanian data collection phase, followed by field work in South Africa. The study spanned over ten years which provided opportunity for personal transformation and trust-building with participants. METHOD: Phenomenological interviewing was the primary method, with the orienting question enquiring about “Approaches to Problems”. Participants (N=46) comprised 27 male and three female refugee entrants to Tasmania, Australia; and eight female and eight male residents of South Africa. Participants were selected through purposive sampling by place, augmented by trust-balling. Participant-observation in community activities emerged as a secondary method, and researcher experience was analysed heuristically. After publishing the results of interviews and two consensus groups in Tasmania, the researcher conducted three field trips to South Africa and recorded participant perceptions, behaviours, social exchange, and spirit resources. RESULTS: Thematic analysis yielded family-focussed communities of interconnectedness with a vibrant, social universe, inclusive of animal, plant, physical and spirit entities. Complex, layered cultural norms centred around this theme of connectedness supported life-long development and education, and informed African approaches to problems. CONCLUSIONS: Western research and therapeutic approaches informed by experimental science, and Western assumptions of individualised human existence, present multiple barriers to Africans seeking help. De-centred, fluid, and externally-oriented constructions of identity, inclusive of multiple centres of self, are required to enable full consideration of African experience. Such constructions of identity may assist in shaping counselling with western clients by their subversion of western counselling assumptions.