Thesis--PlanB (Ed. Spec.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 8, 2007). Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation is an ethnographic analysis of state led multiculturalism and its impacts on indigenous people in the former colonial city of San Cristobal de Las Casas in Southern Mexico. Based on an eighteen-month period of fieldwork, it examines how the colonial order is being redeployed in the urban space through multicultural programs that seek to govern indigenous people. In particular, it discusses how indigenous people are transformed into multicultural citizens and their lands into natural reserves. In showing how indigenous people are being produced as citizens and governed through particular citizenship regimes, it also emphasizes on how they produce themselves as political subjects. Drawing upon indigenous people experiences at the urban periphery, this dissertation discusses the complexities and contradictions they face in the process of building a community of their own. It investigates how multiple citizenships, religious and gender regimes coexist in the urban periphery, and how indigenous people navigate them in the process of building new forms of belonging. This dissertation complicates the civil society vs. State opposition by focusing on how citizenship among indigenous people is built on a daily basis through contradictory and problematic articulations. Through their articulations with peasant organizations, the State, political parties, NGOs and religious discourses, indigenous people become agents of their own government. They do so by directing each other actions and decisions, shaping their leaders practices and holding them accountable, and monitoring gender relations and religious practice to secure women’s participation in both politics and religion. Finally, this dissertation argues that indigenous people in the urban periphery of San Cristóbal de Las Casas refuse to become multicultural citizens. Instead they struggle to build horizontal and inclusive communities through land occupation and conversion to Islam, and in the process they are calling into question the limits and contradictions of state led multiculturalism, and expanding liberal notions of citizenship. / text

This thesis examines the concept of multiculturalism and its equivalence in Islam. It investigates the Islamic core sources of the Qur'an and <i>Sunnah</i> (Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) in relation to the ‘other’, i.e. those who are seen as different.  In this view, the thesis looks into the Qur'anic injunctions and those Prophetic traditions that deal with issues concerned with the treatment of non-Muslims, their status in Islam, and the Islamic codes of ethics and conduct that outline the basics of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, with a particular reference to <i>Ahl Al-Kitāb</i>, i.e. the People of the Book, in multicultural diverse context.  By highlighting these issues the thesis aims to explore the Islamic theoretical concept of multiculturalism and the contribution this framework can make to diverse multicultural societies in our present time. To draw on the application part of the Qur'anic perspective in relation to others, this work examines two historical documents that represent the early Muslim applications of the Qur'anic code of conduct with regards to non-Muslims. The first is the “document of Madīnah” which was concluded by the Prophet Muhammad in the first year of <i>Hijrah</i> (622 CE) in the context of Madīnah of Arabia. The second document is ‘Umar’s Assurance of Safety’ that was granted by the second Caliph ‘Umar Ibn Al-Khattāb to the Christians of Aelia (Jerusalem) shortly after the first Muslim conquest of 637 CE. The objective of this study is to create a paradigm through which Islam as a major religion can contribute to the discourse of multiculturalism in terms of building bridges between Muslims and their non-Muslim fellows.  This work investigates how Islam looks at difference and diversity and the basics on which the relation between Muslims and non-Muslims stands.

No description available.

The study of youth culture in Britain, after a fertile period in the 1 970s, underwent a fallow stretch in the 1980s. By the 1990s it was being claimed from some quarters that youth culture had ceased to exist. This thesis presents the results of a study of various aspects of contemporary youth culture undertaken in Britain and France with the mixed methodologies of textual secondary source analysis, ethnographic participant observation, semi-structured interviewing and quantitative survey techniques. The central aim was to determine whether and in what forms youth culture exists in contemporary times and to redress some of the earlier imbalances in research on this subject in doing so. There are nine main findings. The first three are concerned with matters of theory and method, the remainder with the empirical work presented in the thesis: 1. It is more useful to draw on several theoretical approaches rather than constrict oneself to singular explanations of 'grand theory.' 2. Furthermore, 'theory' alone is not enough: ethnography is a key instrument for examining youth culture. 3. The exclusively class-based explanations offered by existing British subcultural studies are increasingly untenable given the transient, non-linear youth cultural forms of today. 4. Second generation hybridic British Asian youth cultures, long ignored by subculturalists, are a crucial expanding area. 5. Youth are not simply an 'urban species'; a rich under-researched suburban youth culture also exists, and is worthy of serious study. 6. Our considerations of youth culture should look beyond British shores to parallels with other countries, with whom British youth have many similarities. The expressive postcolonial cultures of French youth are one example, through which we can see both parallels with the British experience, and that there is some evidence for an emergent 'pan European youth culture'. 7. The above developments unfold despite governments' attempts at preserving 'national culture.' 8. Pop music can no longer be seen as a synonym for youth culture. 9. Reports of youth culture's death have been greatly exaggerated. It may not exist as previously conceptualised but it is taking on multiple, shifting meanings in an ageing world.

Multiculturalism eludes any simple and straightforward definition. It has come to mean different things to different people. In particular, four broad approaches have been advanced as ways in which to assess the goals and objectives of multiculturalism in Canada. These four approaches are multiculturalism as a social reality, an ideology, a policy, and as a resource. This paper examines how multiculturalism is viewed as a resource. / As a resource, multiculturalism constitutes a vehicle by which various stakeholders can advance their particular goals and objectives. Since there are three primary stakeholders (the government, non-visible minorities, and visible minorities); each group seeks to employ multiculturalism to advance their respective interests. Using the 1991 Multiculturalism Attitude Survey, this paper empirically examines the hypothesis that non-visible minorities are more predisposed towards utilizing multiculturalism to address their symbolic needs, whereas visible minorities are more predisposed towards utilizing multiculturalism to advance their instrumental goals. Furthermore, this paper contends that these different visions of multiculturalism as a resource are better understood as outcomes of intrinsic differences in the very meaning of ethnicity and race to its adherents. While symbolic multiculturalism may be a suitable sociological framework to characterize the meaningfulness of ethnicity for white ethnics, this paper suggests that instrumental multiculturalism is more appropriate to characterize the meaningfulness of race for racial minorities. / The results, however, demonstrate that it is inaccurate to dichotomize the expectations that non-visible and visible minorities maintain towards multiculturalism. Although non-visible minorities are more predisposed to support multiculturalism being used to service symbolic as opposed to instrumental goals, visible minorities are not exclusively preoccupied with advancing instrumental initiatives. Visible minorities demonstrate greater levels of support for resourcing multiculturalism towards symbolic and instrumental ends compared to their ethnic counterparts. This paper suggests several potential explanations for these outcomes.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Australian National University, 2001.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept of Psychology and Committee on Human Development. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.