Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Technology: Fine Art, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2015. / This dissertation sets out to investigate cultural dislocation in the work of Leora Farber (1964), Viviane Sassen (1972), George Alamidis (1954) and my art practice. The paper begins by highlighting the importance of this study and defines terminology for the purpose of this research. In addition an explanation of the research methodology used is provided. The study is contextualised through a discussion of writings by Stuart Hall (1997), Edward Said (1987), Heidi Armbruster (2010), Chloe Sells (2011), Katheryn Woodward (1997), Michel Foucault (1967), Leora Farber (2012) and Lorin Friesen (2013). An analysis of the selected artists’ work reveals an investigation of cultural dislocation within diverse cultural contexts. Farber investigates her position as a second generation Jewish woman in post- colonial, post-Apartheid South Africa through the use of three protagonists. She does this in an attempt to create a lasting Jewish / South African hybrid identity. She explores not only her Jewish heritage and its connotations, but also the changing notions of white identity in post 1994 South Africa. Sassen, in her photographic depiction of obscured African subjects, challenges the viewer’s perceptions of Africa and positions herself as being ‘in-between’ Africa and the Netherlands, where she “will always be the stranger … and will never be part of the culture” (Sassen in Jaeger 2010). Alamidis’ work explores cultural dislocation in the context of migration, eloquently expressed through the use of the identity cards of 1950s Greek immigrants as visual metaphors for the loss of identity. I explore cultural dislocation through the history of three female protagonists (my grandmother, mother and myself) and their migration between the Netherlands and Southern Africa. The protagonists’ cultural narratives provide an historical context for a discussion of my art practice in the form of an exhibition titled Discovering Home. The conclusion outlines the research findings and identifies possible areas of future research. The main research finding reveals that the formation of a new subject identity, post migration, is dependent on a specific (historical) time and (geographical and psychological) space. An area of possible future research, in the context of cultural dislocation, is the use of Foucault’s (1967) theory of heterotopias to explore the idea of the ‘third space’ functioning as a personal heterotopia. / M

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

A Native American Aesthetic: The Attitude of Relationship discusses issues of identity that arise from my own experience and in the writing of N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Silko, and Louise Erdrich.

Liwei Zhang. / "23, July, 2000." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

Tse Ka-Wa. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 44-53). / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

My aim in this project is to demonstrate how the reconfiguration of custom in the writings of Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon opened up a new discourse of collective identity that found its most developed expression in the writings of the French and English people who first colonized North America. Among the authors whose work I examine are Marc Lescarbot, Thomas Morton, Anne Bradstreet, Marie de l'Incarnation, Pierre Esprit-Radisson, and Mary Rowlandson. Their texts, I argue, radically reconceptualize identity, making it something that one performs rather than something one simply is. In charting custom's development I reveal how its radical potential was neutralized by the emerging opposition between nature and culture, illuminating the central role that the nascent concept of the nuclear family played in this transition. My dissertation thus closes with the work of the "American" authors Cotton Mather and Joseph-François Lafitau, who refined the meaning of custom to the brink of irrelevance at the turn of the eighteenth century, transforming it from the source of one's sense of communal belonging to a mere index of how far a given community had fallen from the state of grace. An epilogue on the Letters of an American Farmer by Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur demonstrates the aftermath of this transformation and gesture towards the afterlife of custom as a critical term.

This dissertation, “Group Identity in American Politics: A Multidimensional Approach to Study and Measurement,” offers novel measurement strategies and theoretic insight toward the study of group politics. My research examines how best to explain group political preferences in a society that is becoming more culturally pluralistic while at the same time experiencing an increase in within-group heterogeneity. The first chapter frames the dissertation as an exploration group politics with both critical and positive implications. I outline the intellectual lineage of theories in group politics, addressing the tension between research in political behavior which often links behavioral outcomes to fixed categorical identity variables, and research in political psychology which often treats identity as fluid and malleable. I argue that a full understanding of relationship between an individual’s self-identification and sense of shared outcomes with the identity group requires us to understand the different ways individuals may self-categorize and link their identities to political attitudes and behavior. In chapter one I introduce the type-predictor framework, a theoretical contribution that rests on the notion that it is not ascriptive identity that we should think of as being tied to particular trends in attitudes and behaviors, but the way individuals understand their relationship to group identity when group membership becomes individually salient. I argue that different types of individuals may process group consciousness in a variety of different ways when group membership becomes salient at the individual level, leading them to express different conclusions about the notion of shared fate with in-group members. The type-predictor typology consists of five “types” that describe how individuals self-categorize (non-affiliation, abstract conceptualization, non-conformist identification, multiple identification, and strong identification) that correspond with four “predictors” of how an individual will conceptualize and respond to questions about group consciousness (disassociation, group membership, group identity, and group attachment). My typology clarifies the theoretical discussion by providing a framework that considers the subjective nature of the relationship between demographic characteristics and their political correlates, which can vary by groups. Drawing on a series of 40 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, the second chapter of this thesis presents support for the type-predictor framework, and demonstrates how individuals link their sense of identity to their political attitudes and behaviors when given the opportunity to explain the process in their own words. One contribution of my work has been to provide an analysis of a linked fate measure based on an open-ended question that allows interview subjects to respond in reference to the group with which they primarily self-identify rather than having subjects answer the linked fate question in reference to an ascribed social category such as race or gender. The linked fate measure is frequently cited to explain the seemingly homogenous political attitudes and behaviors of African Americans and has been used increasingly in the past two decades to argue for a sense of shared outcomes leading to political solidarity among other groups such as Hispanics and Latinos, women, and the LBGT community. The question asks, “Do you think what happens to [people in your group] will have something to do with what happens in your life?” My interviews reveal that people interpret the linked fate question quite differently, with a wide degree of variation the range of responses. These findings are consistent with existing empirical research showing consistent statistical support for linked fate, yet substantial variation between and even within groups. Moreover, the open-ended responses to group consciousness questions in my interviews provide support for the type-predictor framework. I find examples of all five “types” and all four “predictors” in the typology, and the relationships between types and predictors are consistent with the directions I expected. Thus, my analysis of the interview data emphasizes the theoretical underpinning of the type-predictor framework: it is not ascriptive identity that we should think of as being tied to particular trends in attitudes and behaviors, but rather the way individuals understand their relationship to group identity when group membership becomes individually salient. In other words, among the interview sample, a sense of shared outcomes is related to the different degrees of group consciousness individuals may hold at the individual level depending on the group categories with which they do (or do not) self-identify. The third thesis chapter further explores the multidimensionality of identity by using survey data to examine how group identity matters to individuals across policy areas, with particular attention paid to the politics of immigration and welfare policy. In the 2015 Identity Measurement Survey (IMS) (N=3,010) I introduce a point allocation system for measuring identity that allows subjects to allocate a fixed number of “identity points” to a number of socially relevant identity categories and compares this new approach with conventional survey methods by randomly assigning respondents to one of six methods of identity measurement and assessing the differences in policy-related attitudes across the six randomly assigned groups and across identity categories. Existing empirical work relies almost universally on a set of fixed, categorical measures that fail to reflect the multidimensionality many scholars associate with racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and other forms of identity. The identity point allocation system allows survey respondents to identify with multiple group identities and to weight the strength of their association across groups. In addition to racial categories, the identity point allocation design includes class, religion and gender as categories to which respondents allocate points, and the random assignment of individuals to different measurement conditions allows us to understand how different approaches to measurement may reveal different outcomes on important identity-related questions. The design also allows us to explore whether the attitudes observed when individuals select a primary identity are different from the attitudes we observe when using conventional measures of demographic correlation. Data from the IMS reveal that attitudes across policy areas differ according to the primary identity offered by respondents, and differ for some groups from what we might observe using the conventional “checked box” measure of ascriptive group identity. In particular, individuals who primarily identify as white, male, or Protestant consistently stuck out as having distinctive views from the population average, but also as having stronger views than what we would observe under conventional correlation between ascriptive categorization and attitudinal outcomes. Those who ascriptively identified as Protestant, male, or as a white person are most likely to have colder feelings toward immigrants and more conservative views toward providing welfare than people who more strongly associate with other groups. These attitudinal differences were even more pronounced when the analysis considered policy views according to the primary identity offered by respondents rather than through ascriptive categorization alone. These results underscore the opportunities afforded by alternative measurement strategies to reveal additional information about the links between identity and expressed policy attitudes when we allow individuals to tell us which identities matter most to them. Taken together, the chapters of this dissertation provide perspective on individual thresholds for self-identification, and offer a novel measurement strategy to understand how individuals subjectively relate to group identities. Continued work will shed light on the relationships between individuals, their subjective identities, and the empirical correlates of identity such as inequality, intergroup conflict and violence, coalitional politics, and descriptive representation. The implications of these, to be sure, are not limited to the study of American politics.

This study examines the role of collective identity in nonprofit coalition-building, using critical discourse analysis of a case study of an Asian American nonprofit organizational coalition focused on advocating for community health access and equity. The study finds that the pan-ethnic collective identity is a resource for the organizational coalition studied. The study extends existing literature on inter-organizational studies and nonprofit organizational coalition-building through the introduction of a conceptualization or model of identity work as involving both the activation and strategic deconstruction of the pan-ethnic Asian American collective identity. This study finds that identity work, as conceptualized, can be critical not only to sustaining a pan-ethnic coalition, but also to ensuring that a pan-ethnic coalition of nonprofit organizations embodies social work value of social justice and ethical responsibility of cultural competence and social diversity.

No description available.

Wong, Yat Yu. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 164-176). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgements --- p.iii / Chapter Chapter One: --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Statement of Purpose --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Literature Review --- p.6 / Chapter 1.2.1 --- Identity and perceptions of “the other´ح / Chapter 1.2.2 --- National identity / Chapter 1.2.3 --- How do Japanese and Chinese people view each other? / Chapter 1.2.4 --- Chinese and Japanese national identity / Chapter 1.2.5 --- Identity and foreign experiences among overseas Chinese and Japanese / Chapter 1.3 --- Methodology --- p.26 / Chapter 1.3.1 --- "Beijing, China and Kyoto, Japan as field sites" / Chapter 1.3.2 --- Semi-structured interviews / Chapter 1.3.3 --- Written sources / Chapter 1.3.4 --- Reflexivity of the researcher / Chapter 1.3.5 --- Limitations of the Research Methods / Chapter 1.4 --- Structure of the Thesis --- p.35 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- Perceptions of “the Other´ح in the Japanese and Chinese Media --- p.38 / Chapter 2.1 --- Images of “the Other´ح in Japanese and Chinese Popular Books --- p.41 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Heavy focus on negative images of China and Chinese people in Japanese popular books / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Diverse views of Japan and Japanese people in Chinese popular books / Chapter 2.2 --- Reporting “the Other´ح in Japanese and Chinese Newspapers --- p.55 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Background of Japanese and Chinese newspapers / Chapter 2.2.2 --- The poisoned dumpling incident in Japanese and Chinese newspapers / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Jun'ichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Japanese and Chinese newspapers / Chapter Chapter Three: --- Stereotypes and Disappointments: Chinese Students´ة Perceptions of Japan and Japanese People --- p.69 / Chapter 3.1 --- Initial Views of Japan --- p.72 / Chapter 3.2 --- "Stereotypes of Japanese Characteristics: Strict, Ambiguous and Distant" --- p.75 / Chapter 3.3 --- Stereotypes of Japanese Views of China and Chinese People --- p.81 / Chapter 3.4 --- Unpleasant Part-time Jobs --- p.84 / Chapter 3.5 --- Stressful Scholarship System --- p.86 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- Improved Impressions and Reinforced Stereotypes: Japanese Students' Perceptions of China and Chinese People --- p.92 / Chapter 4.1 --- Initial Views of China and Chinese People / Chapter 4.2 --- Reasons to Go to China --- p.100 / Chapter 4.3 --- Improved Impressions: Friendships with Chinese People --- p.101 / Chapter 4.4 --- Different Communication Styles --- p.105 / Chapter 4.5 --- Reinforced Stereotypes --- p.110 / Chapter 4.5.1 --- The Chinese government and people / Chapter 4.5.2 --- Uncivilized Chinese general public / Chapter 4.5.3 --- A good Chinese person / Chapter Chapter Five: --- Perceptions of Media and “the Other´ح among Chinese and Japanese Students --- p.119 / Chapter 5.1 --- Exaggerations and Unreliability: The Japanese Media in the Eyes of Chinese Students --- p.120 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Exaggerations by the Japanese media: “They only report negative things!´ح / Chapter 5.1.2 --- Unreliability of the Japanese media / Chapter 5.1.3 --- Comparing the Japanese and Chinese media: Different styles of reporting news / Chapter 5.1.4 --- Comparing the Japanese and Chinese media: Different attitudes in reporting “the other´ح / Chapter 5.1.5 --- Relations between the Japanese media and the general public / Chapter 5.2 --- Lack of Freedom and Lack of Reality: Chinese Media in the Eyes of Japanese --- p.132 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Limited information and choices from the Chinese media / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Misleading of audiences by the Chinese media / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Comparing the Chinese and Japanese media / Chapter 5.2.4 --- Relations between the Chinese media and the general public / Chapter 5.3 --- Discussion --- p.142 / Chapter Chapter Six: --- Conclusion --- p.146 / Chapter 6.1 --- Chapter Summaries --- p..146 / Chapter 6.2 --- National Identity among the Japanese and Chinese Students --- p..149 / Chapter 6.3 --- "Perceptions of “the Other,´ح Media Discourses and Cultural Power Relations between Japan and China" --- p..153 / Chapter 6.4 --- Value of the Study --- p.156 / Appendices --- p.160 / Bibliography --- p.164