<p><font size="3"> <p>This qualitative study aims to use some of Frantz Fanon&rsquo / s critical insights to explore how individuals within the Health Sciences Faculty at the UCT experienced change and perceived the transformation process instituted by University management and the change taking place in the wider society. Frantz Fanon, a critical theorist born in a Martinique, university-educated in France and later employed in Algeria, wrote extensively on how the colonial condition affects the psychology of individuals, thus inter-linking psychology and politics. This study selected six individuals who had experienced the institutional context before and during the process of transformation. Data was collected by way of unstructured interview schedules. A Fanonian psychoanalytic-inspired discourse analysis was employed to analyse the data. The data showed that broader discourses influences the way people talk about phenomena. Our past still plays a role in the way we construct current realities.</p> </font></p>

The aim of this thesis is to elucidate the tension between feminism and nationalism in Israel and to investigate the ways by which such discursive currents mark the identities of Israeli women. The specific field of investigation is Israeli theatre, and the identities examined are dramatic characters created by the Israeli playwright Miriam Kainy. Also examined is the character of the playwright herself. Theatre is being observed as a specific field of society in which the position of women can be clarified. What kind of women characters the Israeli theatre produces is therefore a leading question for this study. Feminist theories, focusing on gender aspects of power relations, together with the postcolonial perspective, which considers power relations by focusing on ethnicity and geopolitical aspects, provide the theoretical tools. The social constructionist viewpoint is used since it provides an appropriate understanding of important notions for the thesis, such as nation and identity, considering them as constructions created by discourse. The discourses focused upon are the national v. the feminist discourse and theatre is viewed as a discourse mediator, which is why the dramatic text is the object of the analysis. The specific method of analysis is inspired by Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. The main part of the thesis consists of a discursive analysis of five women characters, constructed within a period of about five decades, namely between the 1950s and 1990s. Each one of these characters consists of an articulation which is considered representative of a specific time-relevant discursive struggle between the two discourses in question. One of the central assumptions of the thesis is that the Israeli national identity is thoroughly masculine. The identity problems it has been causing Israeli women since the time of the pioneers until today are clearly illuminated throughout the analysis. The conclusion emphasises that the subjectpositions being introduced by Israeli national discourse, namely the ways of being a New Jew, an Israeli, collide with those introduced by feminist discourse, i.e. ways of being an independent woman subject. Nevertheless, each and every character demonstrates creative ways of transforming the discourses by aiming at a hybrid formation.

Over the past century, the Japanese community in Peru has grown to be the second largest in South America. Their arrival and subsequent success in small businesses posed a threat to the Peruvian attempt to “whiten” their population. Because of this, racial conflicts arose between the Japanese and Peruvians, leading to the widespread “Yellow Peril” epidemic. Anti-Japanese sentiments caused immigration reduction laws and in the years leading up to WWII, tensions grew. During this time, the Japanese community remained ethnically close, maintaining transnational ties with Japan. This changed after the war, when their sojourner mentality changed to the permanence of Peru as a home. The community slowly built up to where they are today as a respected ethnic minority. They were able to do so because of the creation of a new pan-ethnic identity, Nikkei. This new identity allowed the Japanese population to adopt certain aspects of both their Japanese and Peruvian identities, both which at this point were becoming problematic to represent who they were. Identity formation of immigrants is a complicated process in which identities of the new country clash with lasting identities from their home country. The Nikkei identity allows for the Japanese to still maintain certain ties with Japan, yet not be constrained to being totally Japanese. During the process of assimilation into Peruvian society, the Japanese have come to rely on their new Nikkei identity as a way to distinguish themselves within Peruvian society, while at the same time resisting exclusion and marginalization.

This thesis addresses the influences on family size for Palestinian refugees in Beirut. It is based on ethnographic research done in a camp in Beirut over a three month period in which 24 women were interviewed to discern why they choose to have the number of children that they do. This thesis argues that changing nationalist ideals, declining economic status, and evolving women’s roles in the family contributed to the average decrease in family size.

This thesis explores the way in which it is possible to undermine dominant colonial power structures through the figure of the organic intellectual. In the context of this work, the figure of the organic intellectual is the Filipino American playwright, who creates characters and worlds that expose the fragmented identities of the postcolonial condition following both Spanish and American occupation. This thesis focuses on Han Ong and Ralph Peña, two Filipino American playwrights who are well suited to the role of instigating change because they embrace the cracks and fissures brought on from years of trying to reconcile disparate identities within an often insecure self and transform those disjointed regions into something beautiful, and above all, worth examining further. By creating works that allow literal embodiment of postcolonial discourse, Filipino American playwrights are able to articulate issues and foster awareness for all involved in the production of the play, whether it be through a performative or spectatorial perspective.

The Farming of Bones deals with issues surrounding the dynamic connections between identity and boundary construction in post-colonial context. It will present an analysis of how the novelist problematizes and communicates her idea of social and national identity construction to her readers and how the readers can identify themselves with the struggles and challenges of the protagonist Amabelle who is trying to find her own identity. This essay will show how Danticat’s novel contributes to an understanding of national identity beyond borders and makes the reader take the role of an individual who constructs her identity by uncovering moments of raw humanness. Until now, no literary scholar has examined the protagonist’s therapeutic role in bridging this social and national gap. Instead critics have discussed other issues of the novel like crossing and re-crossing the border, love, dreams, etc. Although this scholarship has been very effective and rewarding, it lacks any focus on the complexity of the characters’ identity construction. Therefore, this paper will reconsider Danticat’s The Farming of Bones with a closer attention to the question of identity.

ABSTRACT A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SENSE OF BELONGING AS A PART OF IDENTITY OF THE COLONIZER AND THE COLONIZED IN THE GRASS IS SINGING AND MY PLACE Cansu G&ouml / ktan M.A., in English Literature Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Margaret S&ouml / nmez May 2010, 205 pages This thesis investigates how two loosely autobiographical works unveil the effects of colonization on their major characters in terms of their identities and senses of belonging. The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing, a second-generation member of the colonizer, and My Place by Sally Morgan, a third-generation hybrid Australian Aborigine, are selected because both novels essentially deal with colonial issues by depicting their major characters in a process of maturation within a colonial and post-colonial framework, the former using a semi-autobiographical narrative tone and the latter using an Aboriginal version of autobiography, which integrates oral tradition and storytelling. These two books reveal that a sense of identity is closely related to a sense of belonging and that both are fundamentally affected by the colonial situation. The effects of a sense of identity and a sense of belonging, which boil down to the demise or survival of the individual, interacts with family and society, physical environment, and race issues that the thesis investigates by dedicating a chapter to each. The method used in this point-by-point comparative analysis is to approach the issues of sense of belonging and identity in a colonial context with a close reading of the two works, to find out what the texts say for themselves regarding the effect of family and society, environment, and race as depicted in The Grass Is Singing and My Place. The theoretical background that is most relevant to this study is post-colonial literary theory, although here it is taken as secondary to the close reading that is the thesis&rsquo / s primary approach to these works. Keywords: Doris Lessing The Grass Is Singing, Sally Morgan My Place, Colonial and Post-colonial Literature

Recent studies have reported that African American couples in the military are less likely to divorce than their civilian counterparts. This dissertation was designed to document the experiences of African American military couples in order to understand the challenges they face while serving in the armed forces and the strategies they have used to maintain their marriages. A grounded theory approach was utilized to produce 12 main themes that categorize experiences of both the individual and the couple within the context of their respective military branch. Photo-elicitation was incorporated into semi-structured interviews with 10 couples to identify what they consider to be the important aspects of their marriage, the ways in which their relationships were impacted by the demands of duty, and their perspectives on the role that race plays in an institution that has been characterized as relatively race-neutral.

This thesis examines the organizing strategies and successes of Afro-Argentine civil society organizations (CSO) in Buenos Aires. I argue that despite low representation, Afro-Argentines have strategically designed their initiatives in ways that draw on national discourses of identity rights and nationalism; and, as well, have used cultural inclusion to influence state actors, creating agency and increasing visibility. Afro-Argentines are a highly understudied population due to the common belief that they do not exist in Argentina as a group. This thesis not only dispels that myth with a history of the long hidden importance of Afro-Argentines contributions to the formation of the Argentine nation and culture, but also provides a contemporary analysis which shows that they are a vibrant group which faces marginalization and exclusion on a daily basis. The central argument is that civil society is a viable method by which Afro-Argentines can combat institutionalized racism. I show this with an analysis of the various theories on civil society, focusing strongly on Putnam's (1996) argument that strong voluntary organizations are vital to making democracy work. This assessment lends to the argument that civil society places Afro-Argentines in a discursive space in which they can communicate with state actors to make claims for cultural and citizenship rights. This argument is followed with concrete examples which show that the successful organizing of three Afro-Argentine CSOs in Buenos Aires have increased the visibility and agency of the Afro-Argentine community. Overall I provide a contribution to the argument for civil society as a crucial component of functional democracies, contribute to academic discussion of the black diaspora in Latin America, and provide an in depth analysis of a highly understudied demographic.

In this thesis, I look at the mobilization of the domestic workers in Brazil as a social movement. In Brazil, the domestic workers have managed to organize continuously for over eight decades using both informal and formal mechanisms to connect workers all over the country in unique ways. By viewing these women and the ways in which they have organized in the framework of a social movement, we can begin to identify their repertoires of contention and how those repertoires have contributed to the successes of the movement. In order to guide this investigation, I ask, how has the doméstica movement in Brazil been successful in reducing the vulnerability of domestic workers? Throughout the development of the domestic workers movement in Brazil, the participants have shaped their repertoires of contention to embody their intersectional narrative and conceptualized it to reduce the vulnerability of domestic work. I argue throughout this work that, as the movement became more successful and better organized, the vulnerability of domestic workers declined. I consider this vulnerability to be a combination of informality associated with the profession for domestic work and the lack of legal protections which apply to domestic workers. This work is a single unit case study analyzing solely the doméstica movement in Brazil from the mid-1930s to the present. I gauge success primarily using two types of within-case observations: 1.) process-tracing through the historical trajectory of the movement to understand the development of the repertoires of contention within four distinct waves of organizing; and, 2.) comparative analysis of official statistics on indicators of the level of informality associated with domestic work.