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**Example From Education**
Several years ago I started teaching a World Literature class with a Middle East component which I felt lacked a real sense of connectivity to my students. Now, a few years later, after some creative fund-raising, the unit now includes //The Kite Runner, Persepolis, and Three Cups of Tea.// Its become a very popular unit.

As we began to read about Critical Theory a few ideas seemed to link-up. Willmott writes, "Critical Theory developed by members of the Frankfurt School, as they have become known, aims to combine social science and philosophy to advance politically and practically committed social philosophy" (p. 93). We, as a World Literature class, had read all this evidence of inequity and my students really wanted to do something practical to help these oppressed people. Each year since we've researched and selected a charity. Two years ago we selected [|Invisible Children] and last year we selected [|Pennies for Peace]. We began a use of "... Critical Reason as a means of exposing and removing forms of mystification and oppression engendered by a modern, scientistic culture" (Willmott p. 94). Lots of my kids think suffering and oppression are abstract ideas viewed on the news. After a little research, the issues we may be sheltered from become very real, as can our efforts to improve the lives of others we will never meet.

**Example From Health and Human Services**
Each year I receive free maps from [|Doctors Without Boarders]; I hang them on my classroom walls and use them throughout the year. I mentioned this organization in class earlier this week; it was the first that came to mind when thinking about Critical Theory in action. I had to do some work at school this week for our annual date retreat; I went to my classroom. I took a closer look at my maps and was truly taken aback by all the locations around the world touched by this organization. After visiting [|Doctors Without Border's Web Site] I was even more convinced of the organizations quality and its connection to Critical Theory. The human end of an organization like this is very visible, the website is fulled with emotion eliciting pictures, but the technical aspects that make the work they do possible are simply staggering. Their ability to coordinate the logistical nightmare that is helping those throughout the world in need captures perfectly a line from Willmott, " When technical interest is engaged or articulated, it impels the production of knowledge in a way that improves the efficiency and/or effectiveness of the means of fulfilling current ends" (p.96).

People helping empower others through every available avenue...



**Example From the World of Non-Profit**
Recently a friend on mine returned from Uganda where he was working with [|The Refugee Law Project]. Eventually he met some people running a not for profit called [|One Mango Tree]. Their espoused mission is: //One Mango Tree uses a fair trade model to provide income generating opportunities for women in impoverished and conflict-ridden areas of the globe. Our first project is now underway in northern Uganda, a region devastated by more than twenty years of armed conflict. The war has taken the lives of thousands, displaced more than two million, and destroyed the once-vibrant local culture and economy. //

This week as I read Joan Acker's //Gendering Organizational Theory// I could not help but think about the work [|One Mango Tree] does for women desperately in need of emancipation throughout Uganda. Though Acker does not focus on the war torn third world she makes some astute observations, for example Acker writes, " Women do not fit the assumptions about the abstract worker. Thus they are less than ideal organizational participants, best placed in particular jobs that separate them from "real" workers" (p. 455). No where on earth is this more true than in Uganda. Organizations like [|One Mango Tree] give the marginalized the most profitable job in the region.

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