International education has been practised by Siam/Thailand's elite classes since the late 19th century. However, studies of this practice are few and far between. This thesis investigates the practice of international education among Thailand's elites, examining international education as a strategy that is used to maintain or enhance an elite's status through the importation of deterritorialised cultural capital. This research employs in-depth semi-structured interviews of former international students, examining the logic and discourses behind the participants' decision to study overseas, their perceptions and practices while studying overseas, and how they deploy their new-found cultural capital upon their return to Thailand. These narratives are then analysed with respect to historical references outlining the ways in which Siamese/Thai elites have employed western-derived cultural capitals as status symbols in the past. It demonstrates a link between these historical engagements with western modernity to the contemporary practice of international education among Thailand's elite, influencing the participants' assumption of a hierarchy of culture, with western tertiary institutions seen as being automatically superior to Thai institutions. This study investigats the practice of international education as a strategy that has been influenced by the participant's family, notably through the schooling choices made for the participants by their parents. Participants who have been schooled overseas or at an international school demonstrated higher levels of ease with the Western other, enabling them to engage more closely with the 'source' of Western culture, allowing them to show greater nuance in their consumption of Western things and practices. Their schooling history placed them at an advantage to participants who have been schooled in the Thai educational system, whose narrative shows a more anxious, deliberative, and by-the-book approach to their engagement with western culture. This study confirms findings from previous studies into international practices. Specifically, it shows that narratives of openness to foreign others do not necessarily automatically indicate a cosmopolitan or globally reflexive world view, that these narratives need to be analysed within the context of the participants' frame of reference. In the case of this thesis, the participants' narratives of openness to foreign others and their valuing of international education prove to be a reproduction of a culturally hierarchical frame of reference, with roots in the unequal relationship between Siam/Thailand and western colonial powers. This frame of reference results in the west being perceived as the source of modernity and progress. Moreover, this thesis also expands upon previous research into deterritorialised cultural capital, broadening the concept by bringing attention to the nuance between high cultural capital participants, and very high cultural capital participants. This thesis also demonstrates how Thailand's intellectually bifurcated discourse of its relations to the west complicates the study of international education as a deterritorialised form of cultural capital. This finding demonstrates a need for an approach to deterritorialised cultural capital that is attuned to not just the nuances of a particular field's western lifestyle myth but also the nuances in how that myth was constructed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 8, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 347-368).

In this paper, I am suggesting that instead of using a traditional definition of cosmopolitanism, such as “thinking and feeling beyond the nation” (Cheah and Robbins) or “pluralism” plus “fallibilism” (Appiah), we consider instead Yale theologian Miroslav Volf’s term “embrace” as the framework for expanding our understanding of cosmopolitanism. This term is linked to standard interpretations of cosmopolitanism through its emphasis on hybridity and openness, but it differs in its undeniably religious implications. By applying Volf’s theoretical framework to concrete literary examples – namely, Lev Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Il’ich and Flannery O’Connor’s “Greenleaf” – it becomes clear that Ivan Il'ich’s and Mrs. May’s identity-shaping (religious) encounters with the “Other” are an opening up – or hybridizing – of their identities. This paper concludes that in Volf’s view, and Tolstoy’s and O’Connor’s as well, religious affinity is an impetus and not a hindrance to cosmopolitanism. / text

During the last decade, Japanese cuisine has become firmly rooted in Canada. The once unusual sounding dishes such as sushi, tempura, and edamame are now familiar to most Canadians. Indeed, Japanese restaurants make up a substantial portion of Toronto’s diverse foodscape, yet little is known about how this culinary culture is understood, how the constructed image is created, and the identities that are produced through its production and consumption. This dissertation aims to unpack the constructed identities of the cosmopolitan and the “Oriental Other” contained within Japanese culinary circuits in Toronto, while also examining the connections, constructions, and negotiations concealed within the Japanese restaurants’ cultural landscape. It seeks to highlight the processes of racialization, Whiteness, and the articulation of difference that are interconnected and interdependent on the production and consumption of Japanese food in Toronto’s restaurants. Through this process, cultural differences are mapped out, allowing Japanese cuisine to become an accessible and readily available place to search for cosmopolitan identity making and the performance of Otherness. To this aim, in-depth interviews were conducted with residents of Toronto and chefs of Japanese ethnic origin. Both groups emphasize the relations between food providers and consumers, authenticity strategies, and their imaginative geographies of Japanese culinary culture but had remarkably different interpretations on how these constructions are practiced, articulated, and ultimately understood. / Thesis (Ph.D, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2008-03-24 15:40:29.811

This paper looks at liberal multiculturalism through the lens of its cosmopolitan critics. In particular I examine the arguments of four theorists who issue a variety challenges to the concept of state-sanctioned minority rights. The first two of these theorists, K. Anthony Appiah and David Hollinger, offer cosmopolitan challenges to multiculturalist views on identity (Appiah) and historical critiques of the effects of racial and ethnic political claims-making (Hollinger). My analysis attempts to show how these views are indicative of distinctly a American emphasis on race and immigration which inhibits them from a better appreciation of the Canadian experience with national minorities, one of liberal multiculturalism's main concerns. The third theorist, Patchen Markell, presents a theory of incomplete individual agency the acknowledgment of which he argues is necessary for an adequate political theory yet remains unappreciated by proponents of recognition. I attempt to show that while his concept is useful, it is simply misplaced to the arguments he wishes to criticize. The fourth theorist whose work I examine is Seyla Benhabib. She presents a more substantial account of what cosmopolitan minority claims might look like, relying on a postnational view of world affairs which eschews the state-centric approach of liberal multiculturalism. I largely reject her criticisms, but I argue that this postnational vision is one that could have implications for liberal multiculturalism. I finally offer a modest account of what these implications might be and where the terrain of this multiculturalist-cosmopolitan debate may be headed. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-12 17:41:13.204

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Debates on nationalism highlight loyalty and solidarity as the main benefits of a shared national identity, at the same time contrasting nationhood with universalist models of political action. This interdisciplinary thesis attempts to show nationalism as part of a broader project of modernity. In doing so, I defend a comprehensive view of nationhood, which, I argue, accounts for the recent transformation of nationhood, and explains the potential of national identity to open to universal values and norms. First, I put forward my view of nationhood, which defines nations as forms of political experience. I argue that nations have an ability to create a common public world. Second, by investigating the idea of the modern self and its relationship with individual autonomy, this thesis shows that modernity is characterised by a tension between rational autonomy and subjectivisation. This political self, I argue, develops in a bounded political community. Third, I argue that nations provide access to a common world in which everyone is recognised as moral and political agents. The paradoxical nature of the modern self takes advantage of the capacity of nations to be a source of solidarity that transcends national borders.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2002. / Advisers: Joseph Litvak; Modhumita Roy. Submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 244-258). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (M.A.). / Written for the Dept. of Political Science. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/01/11). Includes bibliographical references.