I make two arguments in this dissertation. First, I argue that institutions and the people who managed them mattered in the fight for racial justice. At the University of Michigan, activists and state actors successfully pushed administrators to create new policies to increase minorities' access to the University, but it was University presidents, admissions officers, housing officials, deans and faculty members who had to put the ideal of racial justice into practice. These institutional managers, many of whom had never participated in a civil rights protest, had to rethink admissions and recruiting policies, craft new curriculum and counseling services and create new programs to address racial tension. In short, this is the story of what happened when institutional managers at the University of Michigan put the civil rights movement through the meat grinder of implementation. The second argument concerns the origins of the concepts and practices of diversity. Scholars have shown that activists, politicians and federal bureaucrats were responsible for the origins of affirmative action. In other words, institutions that implemented race-conscious admissions or hiring practices reacted to both the activists who insisted that institutions had a social responsibility to use affirmative action to address the racial inequities in American society, and to the state actors who enforced this ideal. If activists and state actors invented affirmative action, I argue that institutional managers created the concept of diversity. At the University of Michigan, the concept of diversity emerged out of a long struggle to implement race-conscious policies and carry out the ideal that the University had a social responsibility to address racial inequity in the state of Michigan. / History

This dissertation examines what I refer to as the politics of multiculturalism and the politics of friendship as represented in five texts: Rudyard Kipling's Kim, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, Meera Syal's novel Anita and Me, Syal's film adaptation Anita and Me, and Gurinder Chadha's film Bend it Like Beckham. I argue these texts are dialogically engaged with larger political discourses concerning race relations, anticipating or problematizing contemporary multiculturalist debates and practices. I read the theme of interracial friendship, prioritized in all five texts, as a strategic narrative device through which larger political questions of race relations get played out. The colonial novels suggest friendship as a potential antidote to interracial tensions, but show (albeit inadvertently in Kim) how it cannot induce a future egalitarian world if one race rules another. In doing so, these novels anticipate multiculturalist discourses, which celebrate diverse cultures but do nothing to address the political inequalities of racialized peoples. The British-Asian texts already assume the futility of multiculturalist celebrations of cultural diversity as a means for progressive race relations and disrupt ideals of fraternal friendship that overlook cultural difference for the sake of social harmony. Even so, these texts still express the necessity of building connections between diverse peoples. Through various narrative strategies, I argue they promote the notion of political friendship, which supports the enunciation not elision of cultural difference, negotiating rather than avoiding the terrain of uneven, incommensurable differences between peoples and cultures to move toward a more promising future. . / English

This case study describes and examines the pedagogical practices of urban middle school teachers who execute multicultural literature unit plans with students of color. Culturally relevant theory guides the analysis of the teachers’ planning and pedagogy. The data gathered include; semi-structured curriculum director, teacher and student interviews; field notes of classroom observations; student reflective journals as well as curriculum artifacts. Data were analyzed and coded for findings, and implications for further research are given. Findings show teachers enact some, but not all principles of the framework of culturally relevant pedagogy. / Literacy & Learners

Since the 1970s, Colombia’s indigenous communities have been the beneficiaries of state-sanctioned cultural and territorial rights. They have also been extensively impacted by the drug trade in their territories. This dissertation examines how drug crop cultivation in indigenous territories has impacted the struggle for indigenous rights in Colombia. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out primarily with the Nasa indigenous community in the southwestern department of Cauca, Colombia. I argue that the drug trade has contributed to the accelerated transition of indigenous agricultural communities from a primarily subsistence-based economy to a cash-based economy that is dependent on the circulation of global commodities. I also argue that drug control policies have contributed to neoliberal multiculturalism in that they have helped to undermine the political autonomy of indigenous communities. Finally, state-regulated institutions such as schools and child welfare circulate moral narratives that emphasize family structure as a cause for social problems rather than political and historical conditions. I conclude with an assessment of how identity may be used for indigenous communities who continue to struggle for cultural and territorial rights in Colombia’s post-conflict era. / Anthropology

This thesis looks at three seasons of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) radio show Canada Reads – 2014, 2015, and 2016. I examine how each year’s debates over reconciliation (2014), inclusive multiculturalism (2015), and Canada’s role as a global refuge (2016) commonly presume a national mythology that Indigenous peoples have either disappeared or become “Canadian.” I argue that despite the show’s desire to build a better society through encouraging Canadians to read Canadian books, the debates featured on Canada Reads reflect the way assumed Canadian control of Indigenous lands is embedded in the language of Canadian literature and culture to both limit the political disruptiveness of Indigenous presence and reproduce ongoing colonial domination. Central to my argument is the sad truth that, even as the show invites diverse critiques of Canadian society, it nonetheless favours stereotypical narratives of Canadian multiculturalism, benevolence, and civility, and by doing so buttresses Canada’s unchanged status as a settler colonial state. I track and evaluate ruptures in the show's civil language and decorum by reading moments of debate when the logical foundations of these stereotypical national narratives are challenged. Thus, this thesis examines not only what panelists say to each other, but also what their dialogue says to other Canadians. I argue that panelists’ critiques of the nation drawn from their readings of the books - readings that are not so much holistic interpretations of books but strategies for winning the Survivor-style game - are welcomed by the show’s annual social justice themes which then use them to purvey the nation’s virtuous liberalism. Ultimately, my analysis traces how the civil protocols of the program through these three seasons reproduce conflicts between Indigenous peoples and Canadians by reinforcing the inequity of the arrangements of the existing nation-state. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

No description available.

This ethnographic study examines the meaning of "diversity" in a rural community, along with related issues of social identity. Data collected through participant observation, public documents, and interviews has shown that as in most places, "diversity" is typically defined in Montgomery County, Virginia in terms of ethnic differences. However, conflict and tensions within the county usually occur not between ethnic groups, but between the public associated with the university here, Virginia Tech, and the public of "rural" community members not associated with the university. Furthermore, there is little interaction between these two polarized publics. The dissertation shows how boundaries between them are created and sustained partly by discursive productions of categories like "rural" and "Appalachian" and partly by institutionalized mechanisms such as tracking in schools that redefine social differences as "natural" and unchangeable. However, these practices are functional for each group too, since they serve to maintain groups' identities. While democratic dialogue could produce new understandings and alter the polarized relations between the groups, it could also be threatening to those involved because either group could become subsumed by the other. One possibility for furthering the democratic project is to work through schools to develop multicultural education that enables students to be critically reflective of their own publics. Such awareness could allow publics to define themselves in less rigid ways, opening possibilities for interpublic dialogue. But if the discursive practices operating in the community that separate groups are left intact, there is little hope that critical reflection learned in schools will be sustained as students grow up and enter the adult community. / Ph. D.

This thesis explores the relationship between proto-democracy, multiculturalism, and state formation. In the introduction, I express the desire to ascertain how legal multiculturalism on the Isle of Man could be viewed as a product of the shared proto-democratic character of the Irish and the Norse legal traditions. Further, I wish to explore how this multiculturalism influenced the development of the state on the island and, coming full circle, what multiculturalism and state formation meant for the future of proto-democracy on the island. In this thesis, I conclude that many of the institutions that played a role in fostering state formation on Man, such as the keys, coroners, and parishes, were themselves a product of legal multiculturalism. Further, I argue that this legal multiculturalism and state formation in turn results in a loss of institutions on Man that characterized the separate legal traditions as proto-democracies. / Master of Arts

The purpose of this thesis in Library and Information Science (LIS) is to examine concepts related to multiculturalism in Sweden. It aims to look beyond the rhetorical construction of these concepts, in an attempt to clarify the actual purpose of commonly emphasizing the importance of mulicultural library services. Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis (CDA) as well as theories on ethnicity and intersectionality constitute the theoretical frame. The material consists of selected anthologies, handbooks and articles in Biblioteksbladet from 1974–2014, as well as a small case study. CDA is furthermore used as method of analysis, with a focus upon how multiculturalism is constructed in relation to libraries and also on how this might be explained with regard to the social and political contexts surrounding these reasonings. The results of the analysis show that multiculturalism is continually mainly connected with the integration of immigrants by drawing upon ethnic and cultural characteristics. However, in a more present-day context, this tendency is challenged and other social elements as well as the majority culture are included in the construction of multiculturalism. In the concluding discussion, the results are considered in the view of how libraries can draw upon them to broaden their understanding of multiculturalism. This is a two-year master thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

Thesis Ph. D. / Notes bibliogr.