The growing Thai community in Eastern Massachusetts has an unofficial ethnic enclave that surrounds the neighborhood of Allston/Brighton. Studies of Thai communities in the United States indicate that Thai-Americans have limited access to quality health care in the United States due to factors that contribute to health disparities such as language barriers and cultural beliefs. As a result, Thai people have different approaches to how they treat illnesses through traditional Thai medicine (TTM), Western medicine (also called biomedicine), or a mixture of both medical systems. This study examines healthways Thai/Thai Americans in Eastern Massachusetts draw on in response to different illnesses. In-depth stories of how this community engages in illness prevention and responses to the experiences of illness illuminated by Thai people’s approaches to different medical systems helps us understand how they present their values when seeking medical care. I argue that responses to various illness episodes experienced by members of the Thai community in Eastern Massachusetts influence perceived health and health-seeking behaviors. Factors that contribute to Thai-American health practices include: religion, sociocultural elements (cultural identity, generational differences, cross-cultural differences, structural violence), and Thai constructs of illness and well-being.

The thesis intends to analyze the Caribbean as more than "elsewhere" in modernism through food research. The Eurocentric viewpoint is that the islands are the "other" and that the Caribbean's contributions are not central to the past and present. Representations of food in Caribbean literature reveal dualism, such as Western/African in the tropic's identity, and this dualism can lead to identity issues. Chapter 1 analyzes Caribbean cuisine's mosaic origins from Indian, European, Native, and African influences. Food imagery in Caribbean literature does not separate the Caribbean from its complicated past. However, it notes that the islands should embrace their differences while being cautious of foreign identity dominance. Chapter 2 explores the Caribbean's continuous modernity with other powers. Continuous modernity is established from the beginning of the plantation system, and the pattern of colonial trade remains apparent in the Caribbean's current import dependency. The chapter analyzes how constant interactions with global trade leave the islands with food insecurity, sometimes leading to revolutions or resistance. The section suggests self-sufficiency in the islands by strengthening domestic food production and reshaping past trade patterns.

With the intention of understanding the opportunities, challenges, and construction of identity that foreign teachers encounter through their work in France, my study is grounded in the theory that identity is changeable, ongoing, and influenced by both past and current living situations. Furthermore, the professional, social and cultural theories propose that identity is constructed through our work and our place within a group or a culture.   Six foreign- born teachers, who are active at university level as foreign language teachers in France, were interviewed with the aim of answering the following research questions: “Which challenges and opportunities do foreign born teachers acknowledge in their work with the French students? “and “How do foreign born teachers construct their identity within the French classroom? “. The interviews were conducted one-on-one and the data was analyzed and compared to former studies. The participants were both native speakers and non- native speakers.    The findings of my study proposed that the challenges in the French univeristy classroom contain a reluctance to speak as well as a preference for written and marked exams over communication skills within the student body. An inclination to use American English was also noticed. Shame of accent but especially the group dynamic was mentioned as factors. Conversely the students showed a positive attitude and appreciation towards foreign teachers.    The study established that the participants shaped their identity through a dual process: firstly, by encouraging their students to acclimate to their teaching approach, incorporating subjects and techniques from their countries of origin, and secondly, by adapting to their student body. This adaptation involved mastering the cultural codes and adjust to the expectations of the students. Although it was noted a challenge to find a balancing act between the two cultures, it appears that the link to the country of origin was rather reinforced than replaced. In order to demonstrate an understanding of their students' circumstances, many participants downplayed their proficiency in French as a means of connecting with their students' experiences.

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Insofar as the postcolonial project is one of the elaboration of “the plurality of modernity, and the agency multiplying its forms”, my project is a contribution to this larger one in the form of a postcolonial theory of multiculturalism (Ashcroft, 2009, p. 85). Drawing from minority standpoints, arguments, and narratives, I focus on the lives and perspectives of a few broad groups in particular: indigenous peoples in Canada, Muslim women, and East Asian “immigrant” minorities. I take up a critical theory approach to framing multicultural theory and the questions it asks from the standpoints of minorities themselves, foregrounding the challenges and perspectives of racialized groups for whom their ethno-culture is morally salient and central to their own understanding of their identities and aims. This framework draws on the insights of feminist theorists of deliberative democracy but also departs from them in the crucial respect of affirming a conception of culture and identity that accepts some basic “communitarian” ideas of morality and culture, while conceiving these within a postcolonial project of cultural reclamation rather than a republican framework of the public sphere. My project is organized into two parts: The first section systematically critiques the dominant liberal multiculturalist model based on Canadian multicultural policy and theorized by Kymlicka, which is oriented by the liberal state’s perspective in its aims of integrating minorities. In the first chapter, I reject his universalist principle of liberal neutrality as the standard for justice in favour of a pluralist democratic standard that accommodates “thin” theories of the good. In the second and third chapters, I reformulate Kymlicka’s categories of “national minorities” and “polyethnic minorities” respectively in order to take account of postcolonial indigenous sovereignty and the transnational scope of ethnic identity. The second section develops a pluralist account of agency in its descriptive (Chapter 4), normative (Chapter 5), and prescriptive (Chapter 6) aspects (Deveaux 2006 p. 179). This is developed as a constructive critique of liberal standards of autonomy, particularly feminist proposals for a standard of procedural autonomy, as unable to adequately describe and assess heteronomous agency.

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