The purpose of the study was to investigate process and stability issues in intermarried families utilizing data from a group of American Indian intermarried families and a group of endogamous European American families. Stability issues such as marital satisfaction and overall problem solving were investigated by comparing scores between the two groups. Process issues such as the participation and the coalition practices related to intermarriage were investigated by comparing scores between the two groups and analyzing in more depth the gender and ethnic data of the parents in the American Indian intermarried group. Supplementary qualitative analysis was also supplied by focus groups of American Indian college students discussing the subject of American Indian intermarried families. Significant distinctions were identified by both analyses which indicate a complex relationship between intermarriage status, American Indian culture, family problem solving, and marital satisfaction. / Graduation date: 1996

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1983. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 171-179).

This study analyzes crime novels written around the turn of the twenty-first century that blur the boundaries between “serious” fiction and genre fiction. I argue that these novels represent violence, not as an isolated event or action, but as a pervasive cultural logic. In other words, they frame violence as a cultural and institutional problem, instead of as a disruptive social anomaly, and they thereby expose violence as a constitutive force in a world and era in which social relations are always already mediated by the disciplinary apparatus of institutions. Novels like Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Nuruddin Farah’s Secrets, and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, draw attention to the cultural logic of violence by reproducing conventions associated with more traditional crime fiction—a crime to be solved, a “detective” figure, and the gradual revelation of clues—but these novels break with traditional crime fiction in one important way: they do not follow a trajectory of crime and punishment. Such a trajectory necessarily limits our understanding of violence to isolated actions that can be punished and to individuals who can be reformed. By breaking with the logic of crime and punishment, these novels position violence as a master narrative or as an interpretive lens that invites readers to engage in a critique of institutionalized and systemic violence. This investigation traces how this new practice of crime narrative seeks to exile readers from horizons of expectations that would ordinarily be associated with crime fiction. These contemporary novels constitute a new crime fiction subgenre: a narrative that, through the use of new conventions, forces its readers to confront the limits of canonical forms and to consider violence as a contemporary master narrative. / text

At the conclusion of the U.S. Mexican War in 1848, Mexican Americans across the United States found their disjointed communities struggling to adapt to a newly acquired national status. My project argues that Mexican American literary manhood functioned as a representational strategy that instantiated a Mexican American national public and that sutured regional communities into a national whole. Within a transnational, multilingual archive, Mexican American manhood served as a means through which to articulate multiple forms of citizenship and competing cultural investments in U.S. and Mexican national projects. Between 1848 and the 1960s -- that is, prior to the Chicano movement -- USAmerican writers looked to Mexican American manhood for this purpose because it was inseparable from a rival sovereign state, revealed an inconsistent racial hierarchy, and troubled gendered ideals of the civil participation, yet simultaneously contained such contradictions. For Mexican American writers Manuel C. de Baca, Adolfo Carrillo, Maria Cristina Mena, Jovita González, Américo Paredes and José Antonio Villarreal, manhood offered a tactic for imagining participation in national citizenship, unhindered by institutional or legal impediments, although each represented Mexican American manhood in radically different ways. Conversely, authors Gertrude Atherton, Stephen Crane, and Jack London turned to Mexican American manhood as a powerful tool for disenfranchising or assimilating Mexican American communities from and into the U.S. nation. For these authors, Mexican American manhood was instrumental in the dissemination of narratives of American progress because it facilitated claims to continental and imperial expansion, reinforcing ideals of Anglo American manhood and masking claims to whiteness. Through analysis of prose fiction in both English and Spanish, my dissertation explicates the cultural creation of Mexican American literary manhood as a constitutive category of American manhood and as a textual strategy that positions Mexican Americans as national citizens. / text

A cultural evaluation of the Isle of Wight has not been addressed in relation to mainland Britain. Strategically and economically significant, it was often disregarded; however, its unique situation offers a microcosm of social and cultural development, which so far appears to have received little attention. From an island subjected to the will of outsiders, to a cultivated venue, which attracted and fostered cultural tourism, the purpose of this regional study is to trace the evolution of this vulnerable part of England and identify influential factors, which contributed towards its cultural constructions. The hypothesis considers that the construction and consumption of the island was, throughout its history, driven by external forces. This theme is developed by relating cultural and social notions to island circumstances and identifying variables which contribute towards its unique situation. An interdisciplinary approach utilizes mainland Britain as a historical matrix to illustrate cultural development; emphasizing determining circumstances, geographic, social, economic and aesthetic, to establish how the island was used, abused and ignored. Research is island focussed, though with corresponding allusion to metropolitan influence and middle-class cultural aspirations, which contributed to the island becoming a popular tourist destination. By taking a broad historical overview it is apparent that due to location, the island was always an integral part of the British Isles, more significant than other outlying islands due to its relative proximity to the capital, the short distance to the mainland and its strategic importance both militarily and territorially. The progression of a connected narrative allows for an identification of features such as changing attitudes to the countryside and the sea which indicate an increasing consciousness, realized during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in cultural tourism, landscape art and relocation. This narrative structure is critical to establish the context for the primary focus of investigation, the period 1770- 1900 enabling an evaluation of the impact of visitors as consumers, landscape artists as interpreters, and the intertwining of these concepts to give an account of the evolution of cultural tourism on the Isle of Wight. This is central for an appreciation of the ideas, tastes, and affinities expressed aesthetically in prints and paintings, physically in mansions and marine villas and conceptually in cultural conventions such as the notions of travel. It is a significant area for research, since the dynamics of cultural forces are universally relevant for an appreciation of social, historical and economic influences in the cultural domain. On a local level the cultural constructions examined within this study are areas which can be appraised to determine and develop constructive tourism and respond to future cultural needs.

This dissertation attempts to outline general problems regarding the appropriateness of the concept of public service broadcasting in the late 1990s, a direct result of the liberalisation of the global broadcasting environment. The work is an assessment of the SABC's fulfilment of its public service mandate, the general hypothesis being that the SABC has failed to fulfill its public service mandate due to its inability to remain financially stable and politically independent from the government of the day. The research examined feelings and opinions regarding the concept of public service broadcasting within the SABC in order to discover whether current changes in the broadcasting environment have influenced the SABC's fulfilment of its public service mandate. The assumption is that if the concept of public service broadcasting is shifting, commitment to the principles underlying public broadcasting will shift and therefore public broadcasters are no longer working along traditional lines. The research concludes that the SABC is facing many of the same problems that public broadcasters the world over have faced during the 1990s: the lack of stable funding, the withdrawal of financial support from the government in the face of increasing competition from other broadcasters and the resulting move towards a more business-like, strategic approach are all traits identified amongst public broadcasters the world over. This does not mean to say that the SABC's situation is not unique in some senses, for example it has been far more sUbject to political trajectory than many other public broadcasters due to its past status as a state broadcaster and its operation in a strongly political environment. The SABC also faces large-scale criticism from the South African press, which has proved to be an obstacle for the SABC with regard to its ability to move beyond its past. The fact that challenges facing the SABC are not new suggests that the changing environment is not catering for public service broadcasting and therefore its principle of a distancing from vested interests needs to be rethought. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

The field of psychotherapy is not objective. Like any social construction, it is a product of the values of the culture in which it was developed. The theories and principles that form the cornerstones of Western psychotherapy reflect a number of Western ideals and biases, one of which is individualism. As such, it is important that we examine the impact that such a bias can have on clinical judgment, particularly since so many clients come from collectivist cultures, and since inaccurate clinical decisions that derive from flawed etiologies and character assessment can have such serious repercussions. / The following study investigates, both qualitatively and quantitatively, how this individualistic bias in Western psychotherapy influences the clinical judgment and inference-making process. Within a Repeated Measures design, 84 graduate students provided assessments of two different clinical vignettes that were each alternated to reflect a client with either individualist or collectivist values. All participants were also asked to provide qualitative assessments of the casefiles, and a total of seven participants discussed their clinical impressions in greater depth during two different focus groups that were conducted at a later date. The focus groups were organized around four broad-based themes that were intended to clarify the study's earlier findings, and shed light on the processes underlying participants' clinical assessments. / Results from this study suggest that clinicians do tend to view individualism as psychologically healthier than collectivism. While the findings indicate that clinicians tend to pathologize collectivism more in men than in women, factors other than gender also appear to interact with individualism-collectivism values to impact clinical assessment. Implications of these findings, as well as proposed directions for future research within the context of this study's limitations, are discussed.

The underlying assumptions of Western counselling and psychotherapy are based on Western European values such as individualism and autonomy. How applicable then are the goals and practices of Western counselling and psychotherapy when applied to non-Western cultures? This research study interviews eight Western-trained Chinese counsellors/psychotherapists who have experience with counselling both Western European clients and Chinese clients. It was found that the establishment of rapport using traditional Western counselling theories has varying amounts of success depending on (a.) the familiarity of the client to Western values, (b.) the familiarity of the counsellor/psychotherapist with Chinese values, (c.) the awareness to not apply knowledge of a client's culture in a stereotypical way, and (d.) the willingness of the counsellor/psychotherapist to be open, flexible, and patient in negotiating a process that fits comfortably with BOTH the particular counsellor/psychotherapist's cultural bias and the particular client's cultural bias.

The study examined the benefits of implementing multicultural music education into an elementary school's music curriculum. Conducted in a region with a culturally diverse student population, the study surveyed in-service music teachers and elementary students' parents on their perceptions of multicultural music education. Meanwhile, a set of experimental classes focused on Chinese music was taught to a diverse class of Grade 5 students to study their reactions and learning outcomes when studying non-Western music. Results indicate that (a) multicultural music needs to be better implemented in Ontario's music curriculum, (b) students receive non-Western music with enthusiasm, and (c) if taught responsibly, learning music from non-Western cultures can expand individual students' musical and cultural horizons, help eliminate stereotypes and discrimination in society, and possibly elevate the status of music education in schools.

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