No description available.

This thesis presents an ethnographic study based in the city of Toronto on how ethnic Chinese negotiate their ambivalence towards the category “Chinese-Canadian”, particularly in relation to discourses about race, ethnicity and language. It is the finding of this study that second generation, economically privileged ethnic Chinese women are likely to feel most comfortable with the aforementioned category, in relation to their counterparts. This is because they are most likely to be able to speak Chinese and English, as well as seek out a vocabulary that allows them to make sense of their experience. They are also likely to be most comfortable because, as Chinese is a feminized category, they more easily fit into the mold of what a Chinese person is “supposed” to be like. Ethnic Chinese men, however, are less comfortable with the category and assert their masculinity by engaging in humour driven in racial and ethnic stereotypes.

This study addresses methodological critiques of ethnicity research in organisations by combining intersectionality and identity work frameworks. Additionally, it extends intersectionality beyond its traditional focus on multiple disadvantage and demonstrates contextual sensitivity to ethnicity. Taking an individual constructivist stance, I examined ethnicity and its intersection with gender and seniority through an identity work lens. The research question was: How do senior black, Asian and minority ethnic women and men make meaning of episodes that raise the salience of their intersecting identities at work? The study investigated how 24 senior black, Asian and minority ethnic (BME) women and men constructed an understanding of their multiple-identified selves in response to affirming, contradictory or ambiguous identity-heightening work experiences. Respondents kept journals about episodes that raised the salience of their intersecting identities. Then, in interviews, they described the sense they made of the episodes and their responses to them. Following a template-based analysis of 101 accounts, a typology emerged of Accommodating, Refuting, Reconciling, Affirming and Exploratory identity work modes, describing senior BME individuals’ identity construction in response to identity-heightening episodes. I introduce ‘intersectional identity work’ to illustrate how individual (e.g. cognitive effort to reconcile a paradox), relational (e.g. a sense of responsibility and affinity for subordinate minority colleagues) and contextual (e.g. visibility resulting from demographic distribution in one’s immediate environment) factors influence intersecting senior, ethnic and gender constructions at work. Integrating intersectional and identity work perspectives to examine ethnicity demonstrates the dynamic interplay of multiple identity dimensions during meaning-making, the range of modes adopted and the intensity of effort expended by senior BME women and men during personal meaning-making. This approach makes a methodological contribution to ethnicity and intersectionality research. It also makes an empirical contribution to UK ethnicity and identity work research through the suggestive model of identity work modes and rich insight into senior BME individuals’ experiences at the juxtaposition of disadvantage and privilege.

There is accumulating epidemiological evidence of cross-ethnic differences in relation to schizophrenia’s incidence and prevalence. However, there is a dearth of information about the manifestations of cultural differences in schizophrenia’s symptoms. This thesis aims to bridge the gap in our knowledge about the relationship between cross-cultural differences and schizophrenia. Throughout this thesis, I explore the similarities and dissimilarities of the content of clinical manifestation across cultures. I also examine and further develop epidemiological and clinical issues utilizing the ecological theory model. First, I perform a qualitative systematic review which includes 26 publications. I then discuss findings from a statistical analysis of a mental health population of 860 patients in Brent, North London. Lastly, I report results from a semi-structured mental health questionnaire that was devised and disseminated to 48 mental health professionals in London. Results indicate that ethnic groups which experience a higher incidence of schizophrenia also tend to display more positive or first rank symptoms. These ethnic groups that experience a higher incidence of schizophrenia also belong to cultures that culturally legitimise an externalization of their distress. On the other hand, it was found that cultures that internalize their distress experience lower incidence of schizophrenia. My research further demonstrates that schizophrenia’s interpretations are heavily dependent on the diagnosers’ own cultural background, and on the degree to which the externalization of a symptom is tolerable in that context. Furthermore, evidence of intra-cultural diversity in clinical settings underscores the importance of achieving higher cultural competence.

This thesis provides a critical understanding of the size and relative position of the Cornish in Cornwall, a county in the south-west of the UK. Cornwall is a region which has experienced increased levels of disadvantage for a prolonged period of time. The indigenous people, whilst seeing a rise in their inclusion in ethnicity variables in the region, have remained under-researched in terms of their socio-economic position relative to the non-Cornish in the same geographic area. This thesis addresses this gap in the literature and represents the first in-depth examination of the group. The 2001 Census included an option to ‘write-in’ a Cornish ethnic identity, however whilst accurate in the responses it recorded the result was almost certainly an under-enumeration due to the lack of a dedicated tick-box selection. This thesis is a rigorous examination of the Cornish, starting with these data, estimating their size and socio-economic position (in terms of social exclusion) relative to non-Cornish individuals. Three stages of primary analysis sought to; analyse, adjust and extend the 2001 Census result to broadly estimate the size, links with exclusion and the causal processes behind these links. Firstly, an accurate picture of the size of the Cornish population was estimated using an innovative weighting strategy, developed to collate all other data referring to the Cornish and to derive weights for application to the raw Census data. Secondly, a stage of primary survey research examined this group more directly for links with social exclusion factors; and thirdly, a stage of qualitative interviews with knowledgeable individuals in the region lent depth to the findings and provided a more coherent explanatory framework. The results indicate that the Cornish are certainly more numerous than the 2001 Census had indicated. The proportion of individuals self-identifying as Cornish is likely to be closer to a quarter of the population rather than the 6.7% indicated in the 2001 ii data. There was some discrepancy in the data between the belief amongst the group of social exclusion and the reality. In order to explain the discrepancy, a model was used which explores the difference between personal-level experience and group level discrimination (Taylor et al 1990). The results of this thesis highlight the complex and multi-dimensional processes inherent in, firstly, the methodological and practical process of ethnicity measurement and, secondly, its use as an explanatory variable for social exclusion experience. Overall, this thesis represents the first and most comprehensive examination of the indigenous people of Cornwall and their relative lived experience compared to non-Cornish in the same area.

The focus of this thesis is on elite members of the Chagga ethnic group. Originating from the fertile yet crowded slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, this group is amongst the most entrepreneurial and best educated in Tanzania. In the literature on ethnicity, elites are usually understood as playing a key role in the imagining of ethnicities, while at the same time usually being venal and manipulating ethnicity for purely instrumental means. Yet this approach not only risks misrepresenting elites; it also clouds our understanding of ethnicity itself. This thesis interrogates themes of elites, politics and ethnicity through an examination of the trajectories of Chagga experience from the 1850s to the present. Any discussion of Chagga ethnicity must have at its centre place - the landscape of Kilimanjaro, and the kihamba banana garden. Ideas of Chagga ethnicity were shaped by how the very first European explorers and missionaries saw the landscape of the mountainside. This formed how the colonial Tanganyikan state treated the Chagga people, placing them in an advantageous position through education, and a wealthy one through the growing of coffee. In the 1950s, the Chagga ethnic group came under a single political leadership for the first time with the introduction of a Paramount Chief. This decade marked a period of Chagga nationalism. The role of intellectuals in the articulation and imagination of Chagga ethnicity is examined through two Chaggaauthored ethnohistories. After independence in 1961, the advantages of the colonial period placed Chagga elites in key roles in the new state. However, as Tanzania moved towards Julius Nyerere’s ujamaa socialism, the policies of the state began to clash with the more capitalist outlook of the Chagga elite. Nevertheless, through educational achievement and international migration, members of the Chagga elite were able to remain influential and powerful. As such, they were in an ideal position to take advantage of the political and economic liberalisation, even as new challenges emerged from within Kilimanjaro itself. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the role of ethnicity in the 2005 Presidential elections in Tanzania. This thesis makes a contribution to the literature on ethnicity in Africa by providing an account of elites that is more nuanced than in much of the existing literature. Even though Kilimanjaro saw one of the strongest manifestations of ethnic nationalism during the colonial period, Chagga elites contributed greatly to the nation-building project in postcolonial Tanzania. Tanzanian nationalism, however, did not destroy a Chagga identity, but rather enabled a new imagining of Chagga ethnicity which today continues to have a role and saliency within the Tanzanian nation.

This thesis identifies existing legislation that can provide an adequate system of regional and domestic rights based on a critique of existing protections applicable to Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland. A definition of Gypsies/Travellers is established and analysis of ethnicity undertaken focusing on race relations legislative definition and anthropological/sociological ethnicity definition, identifying obstacles to recognition, however concluding that all Gypsies/Travellers could satisfy these definitions. It is however identified that, to achieve equality, additional measures are necessary in the interpretation and application of existing human rights law with a need for positive action to achieve equality not only in law but in fact. International law is examined regarding minority protection and racial discrimination examining their relevance domestically in the United Kingdom. Regional legislation is similarly examined, in particular developing ECHR jurisprudence, the European Social Charter, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and potential remedies in EU legislation. The Human Rights Act 1998 is also examined as potentially offering a compliance mechanism regarding obligations contained in the ECHR. Domestic race relations legislation is examined, particularly regarding positive duties and mechanisms for ensuring compliance with these duties, identifying shortcomings. Lastly future domestic equality legislation is examined and shortcomings identified in the current proposals of the United Kingdom. Legislation and case law referred to is correct at 1 November, 2008.

PURPOSE: Obese women have increased rates of metabolic diseases compared to those of healthy weight status. Additionally, African-American (AA) women have higher rates of metabolic disease compared to Caucasian (CA) women. Metabolic inflexibility is the inability to adjust substrate oxidation in response to dietary intake; potentially leading to weight gain and the development of metabolic disease. Few studies have investigated the impact of weight status and/or ethnicity on the metabolic response of women to a single high fat meal. An acute unfavorable metabolic response may contribute to the higher incidence of metabolic disease among not only obese, but also AA women. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the impact that weight status (lean vs. overweight/obese) and/or ethnicity (CA vs. AA) has on metabolic health in women in response to a single high fat meal. METHODS: CA (n= 15; age=26.27±5.65 yrs; BMI=30.72±11.92kg/m2) and AA (n= 12; age=26.75±6.65yrs; BMI=28.32±6.91kg/m2) women consumed a high fat shake (1062 calories, 56% fat). Blood was drawn and resting energy expenditure (REE) and substrate oxidation (estimated using indirect calorimetry) were assessed at baseline/fasted (T1), 120 minutes post-shake, (T2) 240 minutes post-shake (T3). RESULTS: Lipid and carbohydrate oxidation significantly increased among all women in response to the high fat meal (p<0.01). Significant increases in fat oxidation were seen from T1-T2 for all women (CA lean: +57.9±24.5%; CA overweight/obese: +30.2±11.8%; AA lean: +10.2±18.1%; AA overweight/obese: +40.6±52.6%; p<0.01). Among the CA women only, CA lean women displayed a significantly higher increase in fat oxidation in response to the meal compared to CA overweight/obese women, but there were no differences among lean and overweight/obese AA women. Similarly, weight status influenced changes in apolipoproteins after consuming the high fat meal among CA women, but not AA women. CONCLUSIONS: CA lean women displayed the most metabolic flexibility in response to the high fat meal. A metabolic system that is less able to respond to metabolic stimuli such as a high fat diet (as noted in all groups compared to lean CA women) may play a role in the increased metabolic disease prevalence among obese and AA women.

A long standing program of research has found consistent and substantial evidence of the underrepresentation of people of color in national parks and has identified potential reasons for this underrepresentation and barriers to participation. However, little research has examined cases where the National Park Service (NPS) has begun to successfully address diversity issues and engage diverse audiences. Through exploration of programs that successfully engage diverse youth, this study identifies promising practices that can be incorporated into NPS diversity programs across the national park system. The study was conducted in two phases. Phase one examined the current state of knowledge and learning needs of the NPS related to relevancy among new and diverse audiences through the use of qualitative interviews with NPS staff and select individuals outside the NPS. The findings from the interviews were used to develop a conceptual model based on key themes for successful engagement. The model was then applied in phase two of the study through the examination of relevancy programs within the NPS. Phase two used case study research techniques to explore programs designed to engage youth of color at two NPS units, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area. This research examined how programs at the two study areas were successful at engaging youth of color. A model of deep engagement was developed, building on the model developed in phase one. The model of deep engagement highlights six processes through which parks can more effectively engage diverse and traditionally underserved audiences.

Cyberbullying has become an issue of concern during the past decade for schools, parents, students, and communities. Media attention to extreme instances of cyberbullying has resulted in misinformation. Myths abound about cyberbullying and accurate information can be hard to find. This study attempts to shed light on this controversial issue. Using the National Crime Victimization Survey: Student Crime Supplement, 2009, this research focuses on the cyberbullying victimization of Black students and White students in specific conditions. These include racial and gender differences, grades, attendance, school environment, and student perception of teacher attitudes towards them.