Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-157). Also available on the World Wide Web.

p. 535-556. / Submitted by Suelen Reis (suelen_suzane@hotmail.com) on 2012-12-10T18:29:17Z No. of bitstreams: 1 a05v46n3.pdf: 139845 bytes, checksum: 0c415df6bae84a0b268b52d2c57b3c07 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-12-10T18:29:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 a05v46n3.pdf: 139845 bytes, checksum: 0c415df6bae84a0b268b52d2c57b3c07 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2003 / This paper, based on ethnographic research, presents the most evident changes among groups of low-income youth, the vast majority of whom are black or mixed-race, in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, over the course of ten years. The notions of ideal work and ideal male or female partner change along with the growing popularity of a perception of citizenship that is increasingly centered on individuals and their freedom of movement and conspicuous consumption – the measurement of participation in societies and their collective rituals. Among these youth there is also a renewed interest in blackness and youth, features which are no longer hidden, but celebrated and vindicated. In this context, new demands for citizenship take shape, along with a new feeling of relative dispossession: both are indicators of the new face of poverty in Brazil.

Due to the ever growing diversity of school populations in the United States, it becomes increasingly more vital that school counselors are efficient in multicultural counseling. As the significance of effective multicultural counseling competencies increases, so too does the importance of accurately assessing these proficiencies. To assess school counselors' ability to implement multicultural techniques, specific constructs must be developed. The central focus of this research is to develop an instrument which accurately assesses the multicultural counseling competencies of school counselors and conforms to standards set by the American School Counselor Association and the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development. By exploring these standards and investigating qualitative and quantitative data regarding current competencies, school counselors can work more effectively with a diverse student body.

This research was conducted to assess cultural diversity in the institutionalisation of the African Union (AU). Most researchers have found interest on the subject of cultural diversity that edifice the African Union because “Africa does not have a single culture not in religions, not in economic systems, and especially not in languages, the number of different languages spoken on the continent, numerous dialects not included, range as high as 2,000 or more languages. While some languages, such as Swahili, are spoken by millions, other languages may be spoken by only a handful” (Robert & Feldman, 2008: 267) The AU member states heads are quiet aware of the forces of cultural diversity in the Union, hence several workshops were carried out between member states heads to put together the cultural policy for the Union. There are also numerous policies on African cultural diversity that were approved previously by different organisations that intended to unify Africa before the African Union was formed. Those policies are aligned within the AU cultural policy - The Charter for African Renaissance that will be reviewed in length in Chapter 3 in the literature review. What comes as a mystery is that, even though the Charter for African Renaissance has unified and adopted various policies ethnic and religion segregations within states and between states is still visible in most African countries (ethnicity, language and religion will also be evaluated and a sample of various cultures found in African countries will also be discussed in Chapter 3 under literature review). The Charter for African Renaissance contains guiding principle and objectives of the AU pertaining cultural diversity and these objectives needs to be met. However the biggest well known challenge about policies is that in most cases they remain on paper and shelved, they never make that much difference to the society that they intend to change. As Cloete and Wissink (2000) will put it that “policies only exist because they need to bring about change, however, it is also possible to change policies on paper, whilst effecting no real social change" (2000: 239). African cultural diversity policies are as well littered with failed institutions and initiatives that have not been followed through to completion, or of promises that have been broken. The driving force for this research is that Africans has seen many false starts in the last few decades and they are desperate for change, they need to see democracy, development and institutional building in the African countries. African Union on the other hand has existed for a decade but it has not yet achieved its objectives. How do we know that this is not just another focus for a misplaced enthusiasm? Will the current initiatives of the AU fall by the wayside? Will the world continue to mock Africa as the land of broken promises, of criminalized and failed states that inevitably subvert the best intentions of their peoples and their development partners? Unfortunately these questions has influenced this investigation but cannot be answered by this paper. However this paper intends to find out if cultural diversity has an impact in the missed opportunities and broken promises of Africa and this will be examined in the structures of the African Union.

South Africa is a society of diverse cultures, and the workplace is one of the few places that serve as a melting pot for these varied cultures. If managed well, cultural diversity has numerous benefits that can help an organisation gain a competitive advantage. However, failure to manage it can pose challenges that can have serious consequences for an organisation. The purpose of this study was to analyse the leadership of cultural diversity at Volkswagen South Africa (VWSA) and identify leadership guidelines to both enhance team performance and reduce the challenges faced by the organisation as a result of this cultural diversity. For the purpose of this study, a culturally diverse team was defined as a team of diverse individuals from different cultures or societies working together to achieve organisational success. The research was conducted by the use of questionnaire using a sample of 200 employees of the VWSA Paint Shop. The sample represents 42 percent of the total population of the Paint Shop. The study discusses the relationship of four leadership styles (Classical Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Transformational Leadership, and Visionary Leadership) with Cultural Diversity. Whilst strong cases were made for Transformational and Transactional Leadership style being the most suitable styles for leading culturally diverse teams, the researcher concluded that no single leadership style would be ideal for effectively leading culturally diverse teams at VWSA. The appropriate leadership style will instead be a hybrid of all leadership styles, thus being a leadership approach that works as a sort of “best practices” of various leadership styles.

This thesis fills a gap in the political philosophy of liberalism by elaborating the conceptions of the human subject implicit in a central ideal of liberalism. The essence of that ideal is that fortuitous facts about an individual – one’s race, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation – ought not to determine one’s life chances. This ideal, I maintain, presupposes a philosophical anthropology. Tacit but essential in this presupposition is that contingency and vulnerability are ineliminable features of the human condition. One of the central aspirations of liberalism is to construct a world in which fortuitous facts about an individual do not determine the individual’s prospects of having a flourishing and dignified life. This thesis argues that a close scrutiny of leading theories of liberal justice reveals that the indisputable fact of human vulnerability is regularly depicted as peripheral. I contend that the marginal depiction of vulnerability in liberalism constitutes a basic problem in the philosophical anthropology implicit in liberalism. I demonstrate this claim by analysing three broad models of philosophical anthropology that can be uncovered in liberal theories and that are the subjects of this study: the Economic Model, as exemplified in Rawls among others, the Sociological Model, exemplified in Will Kymlicka and theorists focusing on cultural concerns, and the Integrationist Model, occurring in at least two somewhat contrasting versions, one by Martha Nussbaum and one by Kwame Anthony Appiah. I argue that the Economic and Sociological Models are in some ways inconsistent with the motifs of contingency and human vulnerability. Unlike the two other models, the Integrationist Model, I argue, is compatible with the motifs of the ideal of liberalism insofar as this Model portrays human beings as vulnerable subjects, as a consequence of universal features of humanity but also of specific features associated with a legitimate degree of local rootedness and partiality. The thesis thus argues by way of the Integrationist Model that liberal cosmopolitanism furnishes liberalism with a matching philosophical anthropology. The overall aim of the thesis is to counter the tendency in an array of liberal theorists to ignore or deny the need for an underlying philosophical anthropology and ultimately to elaborate the essentials of the requisite conception.

The process of identification for émigrés in host countries requires an investigation into the “politics of identity”, and epistemological tensions of how identity is conceptualized and practiced in the context of multicultural environments. Indeed, multiculturalism frameworks in Canada have emerged from attempts to manage coexisting cultures living in the nation-state. This research is a comparative theoretical discussion that mobilizes postmodern perspectives to open limited notions of Canadian identity, and describes the potential challenges that English Canadian and Francophone Quebec multicultural frameworks raise in cultural identification for Canada as a whole, and specifically for émigrés. Secondary literature for the analysis of multicultural frameworks is examined with citizenship markers from Census of Canada questionnaires, to conceptualize Canadian identity through discourse. The findings: (1) postulate how the multiculturalist framework in English Canada and the politics of intercultural identity in Quebec intervene in the meaning-making process of national identity and thus impede on the preservation and development of different cultural identities; and (2) discover that both frameworks of multiculturalism and interculturalism, as an institutionalization of social justice and equality, should be reframed or refined due to the limiting conceptualization of cultural identity as fluid. The findings conclude that multiculturalism, interculturalism, and citizenship frameworks may not provide effective strategies to balance the relationship between different groups with regards to ethnic and cultural rights and equality, and that these frameworks should be revisited to account for, and represent, the complexities of identity in Canada.

The main aim of this theses is to explore current academic discourse about multiculturalism and to evaluate these theories. Then the second aim is to compare and contrast the theory and the reality in Quebec and Canada, the possibility of the national identity survival is examined.

This thesis sets out to critically interrogate the contemporary relevance of integration and, in turn, develops a more useful theoretical framing for understanding the experiences of ethnic minorities in Stockholm and London. I argue that the concept of integration remains so normatively loaded that it obscures its advocates’ own stated ideal – the fluent sharing of lives on a daily, mundane basis. I also argue that processes of integration are the self-same processes that produce and reaffirm racialised differentiation. My analysis is empirically situated in interviews with 23 young research participants from Stockholm and London, as well as observations from shared time – at sites ranging from commercial high streets to the squares of council estates. Much of my critique targets the tendency of sociological commentary to trade in a series of analytic reductions, whereby: a) ethnic identification is too heavily tied to expectations about culture and value-orientations; b) identity performance is too often read as denoting a subjective internalisation of that particular identity position, whereby the subject is seemingly of the identity she refers to; and c) close social ties are seen as more meaningful to people’s experiences than the negotiation of fleeting urban encounters. The recurring emphasis of this critique is that routines of fluent multi-ethnic cohabitation rest on an ability to disturb the idea of space, culture and solidarity as ethno-communal properties. The idea of conviviality, borrowed from Paul Gilroy, is developed here as a more accurate heuristic via which one can understand these alternative interactive fields; where markers of difference are neither actively elided (i.e. denied or absorbed into a larger field of community) nor rendered obstructive. Going against a resurgent ‘sociology of ties’, my empirical attention centres here on those myriad and irregular encounters outside of one’s immediate kin and peer networks (what I call ‘second-order’ interaction). I also evidence the ways in which the participants are often involved in an intricate game of ‘identity citation’; wherein, they consent to a sense of their own difference primarily in order to remain intelligible to the dominant social gaze and its normative racial orders. This alternative reading of identity difference, where identity is consented to, but not necessarily internalised, triggers in turn a different kind of lived multicultural politics; a multicultural politics which is more about anti-racism than it is about the ontology of communal difference.

The thesis defends a critical theological engagement with rights and autonomy as the basis for protecting children. It was prompted by child protection cases encountered as a lawyer involving families from minority religious communities. The cases raised questions about cross-cultural norms for child protection. The need for such norms, emphasised in the Laming report into Victoria Climbie's death through exorcism, is further highlighted by phenomena like forced marriage and 'honour' killing. Government documents and judicial decisions assume that such norms are found in children's rights and welfare. Yet welfare is indeterminate and in some circles rights are seen as incompatible with religion, unrealistic in their universal aspirations and criticised for liberal assumptions about autonomy and reason. The problems are examined through contextual illustrations from contemporary debates about forced marriage, religious dress, 'honour' killings and sexuality, corporal punishment, faith-based education and adoption. The introductory chapter sets out the problematic, methodology, legal and religious sources and paradigms and the limits of the research. The second chapter considers earlier explorations of cross-cultural bases for child protection norms and identifies their limitations; in particular assumptions of agreement over what constitutes harm are challenged. Chapter three examines specific illustrations of secular or liberal concern which highlight differing understandings about what is harmful for children. In chapter four the worldviews, epistemology and theology underlying such differences are examined in greater depth, identifying divergent views about autonomy as a key factor in the differences. Chapter five considers the concept of autonomy from the perspective of Christian theology, particularly that of Karl Barth and Christian arguments concerning rights. This process enables the construction of a theological defence of autonomy and rights in which autonomy is understood not as libertarian freedom but as the graced uniqueness of cognitive, affective and bodily integrity and identity inherent in all human beings from birth. Such autonomy is the gift of personhood in 'what is least fathomable and controllable in the human subject' that human rights are designed to protect. Graced autonomy can only be lived in relationship with family, community and God but recognises that without respect for each person's integrity and worth right relationship is impossible. Rights are defended as necessary in addressing distortions of power even exploitation which subordinates the interests of some to more powerful others, both individuals and communities. Rights based on graced autonomy also provide more substance to what constitutes worth in terms of the material, social and participative. The sixth chapter assesses the compatibility of the paradigm of graced autonomy with Islam and Judaism whilst the seventh and final chapter considers the implications of the paradigm for various areas of public and legal debate concerning children and adults. In addition further areas of research and exploration of the paradigm are considered for example implications for theological literacy in frontline social work, further testing in other faith traditions and application to adults' rights.