Celebrity endorsement has become a pervasive means of communication strategy by marketing practitioners worldwide. One of the main aims of celebrity endorsement is to utilise the prominent status of the celebrity to positively impact the consumption behaviour of consumers. However, due to globalisation, marketers use internationally renowned celebrities (usually Hollywood stars) to promote products in foreign markets. The costs of using these celebrities are quite significant and as such the objectives of the communication strategy need to be realised if the firm intends to continue with the communication strategy approach. Social Identity plays an important role in mainstream societies as it provides a basis for identification and belonging for people. Individuals who are part of a specific culture or society are positively influenced by the group norms. The sense of identification can be based on race, religion or cultural dimensions. Literature on celebrity endorsement has discussed in depth the source characteristics required by a celebrity to ensure positive consumption behaviour, but it has not explored the role of racial congruency (in the context of Social Identity) between the celebrity and the target market (i.e. race as a source characteristic). As such, the aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between the race of the celebrity endorser and consumer purchase behaviour in multi-racial societies. A quantitative design study was conducted with a sample of 278 respondents across two firms. The data collected from the survey was analysed using non-parametric and descriptive statistical methods. The main finding of the research was that consumers do not outwardly regard the race of the celebrity as an important characteristic in the endorsement process and their subsequent consumption intentions. Interestingly though, the findings showed that consumers have an innate preference for celebrities that are of the same racial profile, which indicates that race plays a role when selecting a celebrity for a specific target market. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / zkgibs2015 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

In April 1952, Japan emerged from Allied occupation free, peaceful, and democratic. Japan’s presses marked the occasion by declaring a state of crisis: the “konketsuji [mixed-blood children] crisis.” By all accounts, Allied soldiers had sired and abandoned two hundred thousand “mixed-blood” orphans in Japan. However, Chapter One reveals this to be a fabricated crisis or “moral panic.” Surveys found only a few thousand konketsuji nationwide, very few of them orphans. Yet these discoveries did little to change the tenor of “crisis.” Opposition politicians deployed wrath and fear over “blood mixing” to discredit the dominant Liberal Party and its alliance with the United States. They were abetted by an array of postwar activists who used the “crisis” to reconstruct Japanese nationalism, laid low by defeat and occupation, on a new basis: the “pure” race rather than the failed state. Chapter Two explores how the panic over “blood mixing” inevitably embroiled not just children but women as well. Japanese women were subject to intense pressures to eschew sex and family formation with Western men, and to abort “mixed” fetuses on eugenic grounds rather than bear them to term. 1948 marked the beginning of the end of criminal prosecution of abortion in Japan. The law that inaugurated this shift, the Eugenic Protection Law (EPL), is generally viewed as an advancement in women’s rights, despite the fact that the EPL envisioned and promoted the use of abortion as a means of managing the “quality and quantity” of Japan’s population. Scholarship on the links between eugenics and the decriminalization of abortion in Japan is vast, but scholars have yet to probe deeply into how eugenic abortion was applied tocontrol—or forestall—“race mixing” after the war. Although it was politically impossible for the government to impose abortions outright on women who might be pregnant with the children of Japan’s conquerors, such women were nonetheless targeted for eugenic intervention. For these women, abortion was not an option granted in a liberal democracy concerned with women’s rights. Abortion was an imperative imposed by a diverse array of governmental and non-governmental actors united behind an ideology of “pure blood.” Chapter Three explains how postwar scientific presses framed konketsuji born in the wake of World War II as an unprecedented presence. Geneticists, physical anthropologists, clinicians, and other researchers from the late 1940s through the 1970s deployed a “system of silences” to erase Japan’s prewar konketsuji community from view. They thereby not only constructed the Japanese as a racial community bounded by “pure blood,” but denied that the racialized nation ever had or ever could assimilate foreign elements. Scientific spokesmen effected the discursive purification of Japan despite resistance from “mixed-blood” adults who organized to contest the rising tide of racial nationalism. In the process, these scientists severely undercut the “mixed” community’s advocacy of a civically rather than biologically constituted nation. Chapter Four contrasts the decline of race science and eugenics in the West with their efflorescence in postwar Japan, where conditions of occupation heightened the relevance of racial eugenics as a prescription for national unity and strength. It is well known that Anglophone genetics and physical anthropology were led at the mid-century by immigrants and minorities, prominently including Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ashley Montagu. Yet without comparative analysis, it is difficult to weigh the significance of this fact, or of the fact that minorities did not lead the Japanese sciences. Japanese geneticists and anthropologists whoidentified as having “pure Japanese blood” never questioned that biopolitical category or the costs it imposed on those it excluded. I argue that who practiced science counts for much more than is allowed by objectivist narratives of self-correcting scientific “progress.” My project explains for the first time why racial nationalism and an ethos of ethnic cleansing triumphed in Japan at the very moment these forces receded in other contexts.

A narrative inheritance is comprised of the stories told by family members that are received by a younger generation and used to help construct identity. According to the communication theory of identity, identity is formed through communication. Additionally, the storied resource perspective looks at narratives as a major method of creating and maintaining identity. This study looks at the kinds of narrative inheritance concerning race that people in multiracial families receive and possible ways it affects racial identity formation. Findings from 12 semi-structured interviews indicate that narratives of racism, cultural pride, and hardship are prevalent in multiracial families. Additionally, findings show that varying family structures may affect the transference of racial narratives between generations, which can in turn affect how multiracial children choose to identify themselves racially.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Families with a transracially adopted child are confronted with normal family crises, crises due to the adoption as well as challenges specific to a transracial family. When this transracial family is a single-parent family, it could be assumed that the challenges the family faces will be even more. Consequently, the need developed to investigate characteristics and family patterns which contribute to family adaptation in crises in the single-parent family where a child from a different race than the parent has been adopted. The research question in this study was: “What are resilience factors in single-parent transracial families?” The strength perspective formed the basis of this study and the theories of Walsh (2003) and McCubbin and McCubbin (1996) provided the theoretical grounding. An explorative research design was used to address the research question. Data were collected by means of semistructured interviews and conventional content analysis was performed to analyse the data by using the Atlas.ti. computer program. Interviews were conducted with six white women who adopted a child or children from a different race than themselves. These women were all single parents living in the Western Cape, South Africa. At the time of the study, the ages of these transracially adopted children ranged from three to 10 years. A biographical questionnaire and an in-depth interview with each participant were used to collect the data. The results indicated that an important resilience factor in the transracially adopted family is equipping the adopted child with specific skills to cope with crises that may result due to his/her unique situation. Effective preparation of the adoptive mother before adoption, social contact and the support of the extended family were also found to be important resilience factors. Family routines, openness about the adoption and the utilisation of external resources were identified as important sources of resilience for the single-parent transracial family. The results of this study provide important information to the potential transracially adopting parent to prepare him/herself for transracial adoption. The results of this study also provide important information to everyone involved in transracial adoption (for example the social worker) in South-Africa. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Gesinne met ʼn aangenome kind van ʼn ander ras as die ouer(s) word gekonfronteer met alle normale gesinskrisisse, krisisse wat ontstaan weens die aanneming, sowel as uitdagings wat spesifiek aan ʼn transrasgesin gestel word. Indien die transrasgesin ʼn enkelouergesin is, kan daar verwag word dat verdere uitdagings aan hierdie gesin gestel sal word. Gevolglik het die vraag ontstaan watter gesinskenmerke en -patrone ʼn bydrae lewer tot gesinsaanpassing in krisissituasies in enkelouergesinne waar ʼn kind van ʼn ander ras as die ouer aangeneem is. Gevolglik was die navorsingsvraag in hierdie ondersoek: “Wat is veerkragtigheidskenmerke van enkelouer-transrasgesinne?” Die sterkteperspektief het as uitgangspunt vir hierdie studie gedien en die teorieë van Walsh (2003) en McCubbin en McCubbin (1996) is as teoretiese grondslag benut. ʼn Eksploratiewe navorsingsontwerp is gebruik om die navorsingsvraag te ondersoek. Data is deur middel van semi-gestruktureerde onderhoude ingesamel en konvensionele inhoudsontleding is gedoen om ingesamelde data met behulp van die Atlas.tirekenaarprogram te ontleed. Onderhoude is met ses wit vroue wat ʼn kind of kinders van ʼn ander ras as hulself aangeneem het, gevoer. Hierdie vroue is almal enkelouers en woonagtig in die Wes-Kaap, Suid-Afrika. Tydens die ondersoek het die ouderdomme van die transrasaangenome kinders gewissel tussen drie en 10 jaar. ʼn Biografiese vraelys en ʼn diepgaande onderhoud met elke deelnemer is gebruik om data in te samel. Daar is bevind dat ʼn belangrike veerkragtigheidsfaktor in die transrasaangenome gesin is om die transrasaangenome kind toe te rus met vaardighede om potensiële krisisse rakende sy/haar transrasaangenome status effektief te hanteer. Die effektiewe voorbereiding van die moeder voor aanneming, sosiale kontak en die ondersteuning van die uitgebreide familie is ook as belangrike veerkragtigheidsfaktore in die transrasgesin geïdentifiseer. Spesifieke gesinspatrone, openlikheid oor die aanneming en die benutting van eksterne hulpbronne help ook die transrasgesin om krisissituasies effektief te hanteer. Hierdie inligting is ʼn belangrike hulpbron vir potensiële aanneemouers ten einde hulle effektief voor te berei vir die aanneming van ʼn kind van ʼn ander ras as hulself. Die resultate van hierdie studie verskaf ook belangrike inligting aan die ondersteuningspartye (byvoorbeeld die maatskaplike werker) wat betrokke is by transrasaanneming in Suid-Afrika.

Many researchers of gender studies and colonial history ignore the lives of European women in the British West Indies. The scarcity of written information combined with preconceived notions about the character of the women inhabiting the islands make this the "final frontier" in colonial studies on women. Over the long eighteenth century, travel literature by men reduced creole white women to a stereotype that endured in literature and visual representations. The writings of female authors, who also visited the plantation islands, display their opinions on the creole white women through their letters, diaries and journals. Male authors were preoccupied with the sexual morality of the women, whereas the female authors focus on the temperate lifestyles of the local females. The popular perceptions of the creole white women seen in periodicals, literature, and caricatures in Britain seem to follow this trend, taking for their sources the travel histories.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Japanese Studies / Master / Master of Philosophy

There is a growing group of adolescents and young adults in the United States who identify as multiracial. An emerging literature has begun to research multiracial identification and health and behavioral outcomes for multiracial populations in comparison to their single-race counterparts. Understanding the intersectional influences on this identification process is critical to updating the literature on racial and ethnic identity and health with more accurate identifications and categories. This dissertation consists of three chapters, each of which investigates the topic of multiracial identification more closely. The first chapter reviews and synthesizes the research examining influences on multiracial identification and health outcomes and creates an empirically testable conceptual framework that guides the work of this dissertation. The second chapter uses a nationally representative sample to explore parent and child racial and ethnic identification as well as psychosocial outcomes and peer treatment among multiracial adolescents. Finally, the third chapter applies learnings from the first two chapters and uses a nationally representative public health dataset to update the empirical data on risk engagement for multiracial and single-race adolescents and young adults. Findings from these papers demonstrate that when compared to single-race peers, multiracial adolescents and young adults are not at increased risk for depressive symptoms, being involved with risky peer groups, or engaging in risk behaviors such as tobacco use, or alcohol use. This dissertation emphasizes the importance of integrating public health research with historical and demographic context. It also argues for approaching data analysis with theory and conceptual reasoning so as to most accurately update public health research using categories that more closely correlate with how individuals self-identify.

Human Subjects is a collection of eight short stories that explore the role of identity, otherness, and personhood in contemporary life. Two sex workers try to buy new faces after a botched plastic surgery, a young girl struggles to find her place in a religious sweat cult, mixed race orphans commune with ghosts in a Korean orphanage, best friends embark on a road trip across America in search of a mother. Human Subjects works to tell stories about deeply felt wants and desires from perspectives at the margins, caught in a state of in between. This collection grapples with what it means to be a subject, and what it means to be subjected.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and University of California, Irvine, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 317-334).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2003. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 323-331).