Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 154-166). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [xlvi]-li).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-160). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

This thesis analyses the ideology of the Radical right-wing Populist Party, Sweden Democrats. The aim of the study is to see if and how the ideology of the Sweden Democrats has changed through its years of activity, by comparing the party in three periods. The focus in the analysis is put on the party's view on the Swedish national identity and on multiculturalism. The reason for analyzing the party's view on these two concepts is due to the fact that they can be seen as corner stones in a racist ideology. An explanation of the concepts will be presented in the theory chapter, which is later used in the analysis of the party. The study shows that the ideology of the Sweden Democrats has changed very little throughout its years of activity in terms of their view on the national identity and the multicultural idea. This as a result has led to a similar amount of change in the arguments that can be seen as racist, by the party.

This PhD in Creative Writing consists of three parts. The first part is a full-length novel, approximately 80K words, entitled Pure Mafia. It is a drama about child labour and the Pakistani “carpet mafia”. This is intertwined with the story of an unhappily married man undergoing a midlife crisis who has an affair with a younger woman; the latter is instrumental to the main plot about child labour. The book’s second main theme is British Pakistanis. An overarching theme is abuse and exploitation, both personal and global, but ultimately of redemption and renewal. The story is set in 2010/2011, mainly in London, England, with a middle section in Lahore, Pakistan. The second part is an academic thesis, approximately 20K words, entitled Cheap Labour = Child Labour, on the main theme of the novel, child labour. It attempts to show that child labour is an inevitable consequence of cheap labour generally, and that the only way to tackle child labour is to address cheap labour. The thesis has been consciously and deliberately written as an objective, third person, standalone document and for this reason does not mention the novel. It is partly designed to fulfil the general PhD criterion of demonstrating scholarship and research. The third part is a subjective, first person critical commentary, approximately 15K words, on the writing of the novel and the thesis, the connection between them, and the research context; it is entitled Pure Mafia: A critical commentary. It explains why the main thesis is on child labour, rather than on the creative process or an English Literature thesis; however, the commentary does include in some detail an insight into the creative process, as well as a discussion of influences and tradition of writing. The final section of the commentary summarises this entire PhD’s original contribution to knowledge.

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

Τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες έχουν παρατηρηθεί σε παγκόσμιο επίπεδο μεγάλες οικονομικές, κοινωνικές και πολιτικές αλλαγές. Αποτέλεσμα αυτών, ήταν η δημιουργία μεταναστευτικού ρεύματος από τη μία χώρα στην άλλη και η μετατροπή των εκάστοτε κοινωνιών από μονοπολιτισμικές σε πολυπολιτισμικές. Η αύξηση της μετανάστευσης δεν άφησε ανεπηρέαστη την ελληνική κοινωνία. Τα τελευταία χρόνια, η σύσταση του ελληνικού πληθυσμού έχει αλλάξει, δημιουργώντας μια πολυπολιτισμική κοινωνία, στην οποία η παρουσία γηγενών και αλλοδαπών είναι σημαντική. Μέσα σε αυτή την πολυπολιτισμική πραγματικότητα, τα άτομα αλληλεπιδρούν και αλληλοεπηρεάζονται μεταξύ τους με αποτέλεσμα η κοινωνία μας να καθίσταται διαπολιτισμική. Ο χώρος της εκπαίδευσης δεν έμεινε εκτός της νέας αυτής πολυπολιτισμικής πραγματικότητας. Το εκπαιδευτικό σύστημα προσπάθησε να αντιμετωπίσει τα προβλήματα που προκλήθηκαν με την παρουσία παιδιών από διάφορα πολιτισμικά υπόβαθρα, θέτοντας ως βάση τη διαπολιτισμική εκπαίδευση. Η εργασία αυτή θα προσπαθήσει να διερευνήσει εάν οι Έλληνες αλλά και πολιτισμικά διαφορετικοί μαθητές που ζουν στον ελληνική κοινωνία υφίστανται τις κοινωνικές διαμεσολαβήσεις και να αναδείξει κατά πόσο αυτές επηρεάζουν τη διαμόρφωση των προσδοκιών τους στην εκπαίδευση. Στην ελληνική σχολική κοινότητα οι διαμεσολαβητές εκείνοι που διαμορφώνουν τις προσδοκίες των μαθητών και που δημιουργούν ανάλογες υποκειμενοποιήσεις μπορεί να ποικίλουν. Στην παρούσα έρευνα ως βασικοί διαμεσολαβητές θεωρούνται οι γονείς, οι φίλοι, ο δάσκαλος και οι συμμαθητές.Οι προσδοκίες των μαθητών στις οποίες εστιάζει η έρευνα είναι η φοίτηση στο σχολείο, η αριστεία, η επίτευξη υψηλότερων επιδόσεων, η εκμάθηση καινούργιων πραγμάτων και η μελέτη των μαθημάτων τους. / Recent decades have seen worldwide major economic, social and political changes. These changes led to immigration flow from one country to another and the conversion of the respective societies from monocultural to multicultural. The increase of the immigration flow affected the Greek society as well. In recent years, the establishment of the Greek population has changed, creating a multicultural society, in which the presence of natives and foreigners is important. In this multicultural reality, people interact with each other creating a multicultural society. The education sector is not left out of this new multicultural reality. The educational system has tried to address the problems caused by the presence of children from various cultural backgrounds by setting an intercultural education base. This research attempts to explore whether the Greek and culturally different students living in Greece suffer the social mediations and identify whether they affect the formation of expectations in education. In the Greek school community the mediators that shape the students' expectations may vary. In this research, the parents, the friends, the teacher and the classmates are considered as key mediators. The student expectations are school attendance, excellence of students, achievement of higher performance, learning of new things and doing their homework. Finally, all the mediators and the expectations of students in education were considered by the independent variables: nationality and gender, nationality and class attendance, nationality and performance in language, nationality and student behavior, nationality and adjustment of students in the school.

Convivencia, or conviviality/coexistence, represents a pivotal node in Spanish ideologies of multiculturalism. Long touted as the legacy of interreligious harmony in Al- Andalus (A.D. 711-1492), contemporary pedagogical convivencia involves a complex of innovative policies, curricula, and activities which idealize distinct ways of communicating and enacting egalitarianism across myriad differences. This dissertation establishes this idealization as an artifact of Spain’s historic struggles with democracy and newfound struggles with cultural pluralism from immigration. I approach education as a focal sphere in which to examine the daily construction and maintenance of this ideal. Specifically, I draw on twelve months’ fieldwork at three secondary schools in the municipality of El Ejido (Almería) to argue that the universalist bent of contemporary convivencia pedagogies tends to obscure and invalidate minority student perspectives. My primary concern lies with the experiences of Moroccan youth, who during my research belonged to the largest, most stigmatized immigrant group in the area and whose stereotyped association with patriarchy, piety, and cultural isolationism placed them at odds with the values most fervently promoted in convivencia lessons, especially gender equality. I show how one unintended consequence of these interventions was that intolerance persisted not despite, but through, lessons on tolerance—a troubling finding for a place like El Ejido, which has seen some of the worst interracial violence in Europe. Using audio recordings collected at one school during democratic education classes and related activities, I identify patterns in teacher-student and student-student interactions that reveal how convivencia was constructed (and undermined) as a discursive performance of progressivism. Stance prompting, stance assessment, and stance attribution comprised tools that allowed teachers to defend their situational and moral authority while compelling students toward self-reflection and empathy. I reveal these repertoires as exclusionary to Moroccan youth, who were positioned as “others” unqualified to speak as progressive subjects, while their native-born peers launched critiques, and even insults, with impunity. Convivencia lessons, taught through classes mandated at the national and regional levels, politicized interactions and sparked various forms of resistance or pushback from students. Using analytic frameworks from linguistic anthropology and building on studies of diversity and civic education, Spanish social history, and liberalism and modernity, I argue that the dialogues analyzed in this dissertation represent tensions ever-present in projects of democratic equality. I ultimately describe convivencia pedagogies as ritualized instantiations of dominant social norms that inadvertently ostracize rather than unite youth across differences. While the shape of these efforts have much to do with Spain’s mottled history with democracy, these findings hold significance for educators everywhere insofar as heartfelt support for seemingly unassailable ideals—including human rights, gender equality, and racial equality—can smuggle in ethnocentrist biases.

This qualitative research study, conducted at Ben Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beersheva, Israel, examined the interrelationships between language, identity and power in the context of a modern, multicultural society. The study focused on the impact of language use and status on the cultural, political and social identities of female students belonging to the Bedouin and the former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrant communities. As members of an ethnic subgroup of the Arab minority, and as females subordinated within their own traditionally patriarchal society, women of the indigenous Bedouin tribes of the Negev region have been dubbed a 'doubly marginalized' minority. In 1989, following decades of religious persecution, Jews were allowed to leave the FSU en masse; nearly one million have immigrated to Israel. This massive immigration of Russian speakers, as well as programs promoting study for Arabic-speaking Bedouin women, have led to greater diversity and increased multilingualism at BGU. The university offers a unique microcosm in which to study the language use, attitudes and consequent impact on the identities of these two distinctive minority groups.This study explored the attitudes of six female Bedouin and FSU immigrant students of BGU residing in the Negev region of Israel toward their first, second and foreign languages. Using data collected from in-depth interviews, I linked informant attitudes to underlying issues of gender, social status, identity, power and empowerment. Language took on new meanings and status as these students utilized Hebrew and English for purposes of communication and knowledge acquisition at the university level. Moreover, the new linguistic scenarios faced by Bedouin and FSU immigrant informants raised complex social issues and tensions, and influenced their perceptions about language and identity.Themes that emerged concerning language use and status, and self-perceptions of identity led to conclusions involving issues related to gender, social status, community, nationality, ethnicity, globalism, and power relations, as well as to future prospects made possible by higher education. It was demonstrated that, like the process of language acquisition, perceptions of identity and culture are dynamic in nature and are continually being reinvented.

Increasing cultural globalisation and the assertion of cultural identities present an interesting opportunity for cities in the postmodern Western World. An increasingly multi-situated polity must better reflect and serve an increasingly self-aware and heterogeneous population in search of better planning, community and social justice. A great deal of research in diversity issues has been conducted in various disciplines, but there is little integration of this theory and even less instruction as to its application. This thesis attempts to address the deficiencies - providing some rationale and some guidance towards the diversification of civic culture as a model of incorporation. Diversification requires a significant shift in our understanding of culture, identity, community and self - an end to mainstream and its hegemony. It places the onus for change on local institutions and operates on an assumption of difference, a desire for meaningful incorporation and a commitment to equality as equity. These principles translate into the pursuit of increasingly differentiated benefits, inclusive participation, varied discourse and inclusive definitions. For the transformation to be truly meaningful and systemic, it must take place in all agencies of civic culture: government, civil society, business, the media and family. A conceptual, prescriptive and evaluative framework for cultural diversification is thus elaborated. Change will require deliberate purpose and action. This thesis attempts to provide some direction by applying the discussion to a level at which most urban leaders, planners and cultural producers work. A local organisation in Vancouver, Canada - a reputed leader in diversity - is selected as a case to illustrate application of the developed framework and to enrich it with an initial investigation of how practitioners work towards the diversification of their individual institutions and their larger socio-cultural environment. It is hoped that strategies learned here, and in future applications of this research, can provide guidance for other organisations and that numerous small efforts will be rewarded with the gradual transformation of the whole.