My dissertation explores people’s responses to cultural crossing, exploring when and why it is admired or admonished. One form of crossing is cultural accommodation, which occurs when a recently arrived foreign visitor behaves like a local, adhering to host-country norms of behavior rather than those of his/her heritage country. The second is cultural borrowing, which occurs when ideas from multiple cultural traditions are integrated into a product, performance or activity. I propose that people’s background beliefs about cultural differences (i.e., diversity ideologies) influence their evaluations of the actions of other people who cross cultures, as well as their own decisions to cross cultures. My studies consider two well-studied diversity ideologies—colorblindness and multiculturalism. In addition, I also consider polyculturalism, a more novel ideology that, like multiculturalism, celebrates cultural differences. However, polyculturalism differs in that it embraces cultural change. I develop novel methods for empirically distinguishing consequences of the mindset of polyculturalism as opposed to classical multiculturalism. In Chapter 1, I explore how diversity ideologies affect people’s acceptance of foreign visitors’ accommodation to the local culture. Multiculturalism, which holds cultural traditions to be separate legacies that should be preserved, was associated with negative evaluations of high accommodation. When polyculturalism (vs. multiculturalism) was experimentally primed, high accommodation was evaluated more positively. Further, I examine the underlying effects of diversity ideology on evaluations by focusing on trust judgments and find that multiculturalists’ distrust of high accommodators involves judgments of low ability and of identity contamination. In Chapter 2, I develop the argument that diversity ideologies guide people’s first-person decisions about whether to accommodate when entering a new cultural context. Polyculturalism facilitated cultural accommodation and longer-term cultural adjustment by reducing concerns about contamination of heritage identity, whereas colorblindness and multiculturalism had no consistent effects. In Chapter 3, I theorize and demonstrate that diversity ideologies also affect how people draw upon knowledge from foreign cultures in their problem-solving. Polyculturalism encouraged participants’ inclusion of foreign ideas when solving problems, which enhanced their creativity. However, colorblindness, which views ethnicity/culture as a mirage that is best ignored, inhibited participants’ incorporation of foreign ideas, thereby reducing creativity. No effect was found for multiculturalism. Taken together, the chapters of my dissertation contribute to a more nuanced understanding of cultural crossing: when people do it, and when people admire or admonish others for doing so. Also, these empirical findings advance research on polyculturalism and spark future research questions.

Discourses of diaspora and transnationalism have begun to question previous traditional assumptions about the inevitability of ethnic assimilation by drawing attention to various kinds of hybrid identities, but I contend that, in contemporary Canadian literature, we cannot replace an outmoded model of eventual integration with an uncritical vision of ethnic persistence and hybridity. Much thinking about diasporic and ethnic identities suggests that, on the one hand, there are genuine marginalized identities worthy of inquiry and, on the other, there are symbolic ones undeserving of serious study. This dissertation focuses on the supposedly disingenuous or symbolic kinds of ethnic and diasporic identities, providing an analysis of Ukrainian-Canadian ethnic identity retention in a case study of second-, third-, and fourth-generation Canadians of Ukrainian descent who both read and write in English (not Ukrainian). Looking at Ukrainian-Canadian literature from 1954 to 2003, this dissertation argues: (1) ethnic identity affiliation does not necessarily dissipate with time; (2) ethnic identity in a hostland manifests itself as imagined ties to a homeland; and (3) lacking meaningful public and private recognition of ethnic group membership yields anxiety about subjectivity. I first argue that as multicultural policies drew attention to racial marginalization, Ukrainian-Canadian ethnic identity shifted from being an aspect of socio-economic disenfranchisement to becoming a hyphenated identity with links to Ukraine. I then suggest that in order to make that connection to Ukraine viable, writers attempt to locate Ukraine on the Canadian prairie as a substitute home-country. Such attempts give rise to various images Ukrainian-Canadian uneasiness and discomfort, primarily as authors struggle to account for First Nations’ prior presences on the landscape that they want to write as their own. Further, I analyze attempts to locate ethnic authenticity in post-independence Ukraine that also prove unsatisfactory for Ukrainian-Canadian subject formation. The many failed attempts to affix Ukrainian-Canadianness as a meaningful public and private identity give rise to unsettled and ghostly images that signal significant ethnic unease not to be overlooked in analyses of ethnic and diasporic identities. In these ways, this dissertation contributes to ongoing debates and discussions about the place of contemporary literary ethnicity in Canada.

Discourses of diaspora and transnationalism have begun to question previous traditional assumptions about the inevitability of ethnic assimilation by drawing attention to various kinds of hybrid identities, but I contend that, in contemporary Canadian literature, we cannot replace an outmoded model of eventual integration with an uncritical vision of ethnic persistence and hybridity. Much thinking about diasporic and ethnic identities suggests that, on the one hand, there are genuine marginalized identities worthy of inquiry and, on the other, there are symbolic ones undeserving of serious study. This dissertation focuses on the supposedly disingenuous or symbolic kinds of ethnic and diasporic identities, providing an analysis of Ukrainian-Canadian ethnic identity retention in a case study of second-, third-, and fourth-generation Canadians of Ukrainian descent who both read and write in English (not Ukrainian). Looking at Ukrainian-Canadian literature from 1954 to 2003, this dissertation argues: (1) ethnic identity affiliation does not necessarily dissipate with time; (2) ethnic identity in a hostland manifests itself as imagined ties to a homeland; and (3) lacking meaningful public and private recognition of ethnic group membership yields anxiety about subjectivity. I first argue that as multicultural policies drew attention to racial marginalization, Ukrainian-Canadian ethnic identity shifted from being an aspect of socio-economic disenfranchisement to becoming a hyphenated identity with links to Ukraine. I then suggest that in order to make that connection to Ukraine viable, writers attempt to locate Ukraine on the Canadian prairie as a substitute home-country. Such attempts give rise to various images Ukrainian-Canadian uneasiness and discomfort, primarily as authors struggle to account for First Nations’ prior presences on the landscape that they want to write as their own. Further, I analyze attempts to locate ethnic authenticity in post-independence Ukraine that also prove unsatisfactory for Ukrainian-Canadian subject formation. The many failed attempts to affix Ukrainian-Canadianness as a meaningful public and private identity give rise to unsettled and ghostly images that signal significant ethnic unease not to be overlooked in analyses of ethnic and diasporic identities. In these ways, this dissertation contributes to ongoing debates and discussions about the place of contemporary literary ethnicity in Canada.

This thesis attempts to read Rebecca Walker's memoir Black White and Jewish as an investigation into the problematic of the social construct of race. It begins with an elaboration on the society's phobia about racial amalgamation owing to its potentiality to alter color boundaries, which are maintained through the manipulation of power. Born in a society where racial purity is highly postulated, Walker encounters an identity crisis that renders her double alienated and marginalized. What follows, thereby, is an examination of the identity formation of Walker as a mixed black and white individual, as well as a discussion of how racial hybridity may challenge essentialist racialization. With its fluidity and ambiguity, Walker's mixed race identity turns out to contest and further destabilize the immutability, stability, and homogeneity of essentializing racial categories. By cherishing the boundary-crossing capability a multiracial possesses, Walker could liberate herself from the shackles of the trauma of racism.

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This dissertation gives an aesthetic analysis on the selected woodblock prints of the Okinawan artist Gima Hiroshi concurrent with an exploration of the identity politics of the Okinawans. Deconstructing the historical circumstances of the archipelago, the contradictions and predicaments that the islanders have been struggling with from the trade era and annexation period, to the wartime, the U.S. occupation and the reversion to the Japanese state are portrayed in the war prints. With the constitution of a multi-vocal identity, a regionalist identity has been articulated. This regionalism is manifested in the artist’s prints about traditions, customs and everyday life in terms of folk dance, drum playing, craftsmanship, festivities, daily activities, agriculture, residential space and the practices related to nature. Following a thorough discussion of the visual texts is the elucidation of essentialism in contemporary Okinawan studies that identity politics is itself delimiting and institutionalizing in representation. Essentialist representations reinforce the dichotomy of the self/other structure that they can be more detrimental than explicit performative discourses. As a concluding argument, this essay finishes with a proposed alternative to essentialist literature – visual representations. The interpretative potentiality and transformative powers of art serve as a stepping stone for the third party to experience the experience of the Other, which challenges the presumptions imposed by the self/other narrative. In this process, the marginalized can be made visible. / published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

I develop a feminist critique of three features in contemporary views of race: the meaning of race is essentially biological; each of us has exactly one kind of racial identity; and our racial identities are permanent. Having revealed each of these features to be confusions about the language of racial identification, I contend that our racial concepts currently permit a wider range of racial identifications than we currently acknowledge. Finally, I critically evaluate the political and ethical ramifications of treating race as a unified, permanent identity. Resistance to systems of racial and gendered oppression should challenge our identities as unified and permanent. / text

To state that the 1994 Rwandan genocide was one of the most horrific catastrophes that occurred in the 20th century is to restate the obvious. This thesis is an analytical exploration of the root causes of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. It explains how Tutsi became non-indigenous Hamities and how Hutu became native indigenous, leaving the two populations to be identified along racial and ethnic lines. In 1933, the Belgians introduced identity cards which specified one‟s ethnic affiliation, giving birth to political identities as Hutu and Tutsi ceased to become cultural identities and became political identities. The identities of Hutu and Tutsi were not only legally enforced, but they also became linked to the governance of the state. Tutsi was now associated with state power and domination, while Hutu was linked with suppression and discrimination. Independent Rwanda, the Hutu took over power and continued to subscribe to some of the colonial racists ideologies and maintained Tutsi and Hutu as political identities. The once oppressed Hutu became the oppressor, whilst the once dominate Tutsi became the oppressed. The victim group construction theories were used in this study to examine the ills of race-branding in independent Rwanda. The Hutu regimes of the First Republic (1962-1973) and the Second Republic (1973-1994), failed to go beyond the colonist‟s strategy of divide and rule and instead continued to apply this racist ideology to bring justice to the Hutu, which turned into revenge for the Tutsi. Hence, this study analysis and evaluates how the citizenship and political identity crisis led to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

This thesis is an attempt to document and explain the manifest changes that have been taking place in Welsh identity since 1979, and the political consequences thereof. It is presupposed that before any autonomist outbursts and other, related political changes take place in a sub-national region such as Wales, some sort of identive change has to occur. This 'identive change' is posited to take place in two stages - identity transformation followed by identity mobilisation. Central chapters deal with this process in two, non-exclusive, dimensions - institutions and individual agents. Alongside institution-building, certain policy areas are deemed to be of crucial importance in relation to the maintenance and dissemination of Welsh identity, namely education and broadcasting. In addition, the relationship between endogenous and exogenous forces affecting Welsh identity is considered in the context of civil society, political praxis, the economy and the European Union. These events are charted and analysed by means of primarily qualitative techniques which emphasise the importance of the positional and strategic confluence of individual 'gatekeepers', who are able to influence policy and, perhaps more importantly, affect the perception and reception of new ideologies and institutional exigencies.

Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-251). / Electronic reproduction. / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / [3], ix, 251 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm