<p> The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between globalization and assimilation (dependent variables), and four contributing factors of culture, value, norms, and identity (independent variables) to determine whether managers in Trinidad and Tobago devalue their own culture to assimilate into a global culture. A researcher-constructed survey questionnaire was used to collect data from a random sample of respondents. The survey was analyzed utilizing both parametric and nonparametric statistical tools to answer five Research Subquestions. The one-sample t test was an appropriate tool to establish construct reliability and validity of assumptions for this quantitative study. Values were established to support the level of statistical significance for (p &lt; 0.05) effect as follows: a medium effect size (f2 = .15), alpha = .0.05, power = .80, yielding an acceptable sample size of 85 participants. Based on the evaluation of the statistical data, it was concluded (a) there was an impact of demographic factors on culture, values, norms, and identity; (b) global factors had no impact on culture, values, norms and identity; (c) the Trinidad and Tobago manager assimilated during international business meetings; (d) there was an impact of assimilation on culture, values, norms and identity in Trinidad and Tobago; and (e) there was no change in management behavior during international business meetings. Three implications resulted from the findings. First, from a theoretical perspective, based on the analysis of culture, managers were unaware of culture erasure. Second, from a scientific merit perspective, the ANOVA method optimized and validated causal-comparative effect of both measurement and structural models with the inclusion of interrelationships effects between variables. Finally, from a practical perspective, respondents perceived global factors had no impact on culture, but assimilation had a negative impact on culture. Based on the results, it was assumed the unique and distinguishable aspects of culture are disappearing, and the effects of globalization and assimilation have caused an unconscious reprogramming of collective behaviors, which resulted in culture erasure.</p>

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<p> This dissertation proposes that West Indian contemporary male writers develop literary authority, or a voice that represents the nation, via a process of individuation. This process enables the contemporary male writer to unite the disparities of the matriarchal and patriarchal authorial traditions that inform his development of a distinctive creative identity. I outline three stages of authorial individuation that are inspired by Jung&rsquo;s theory of individuation. The first is the contemporary male writer&rsquo;s <i> return</i> to his nationalist forebears&rsquo; tradition to dissolve his persona, or identification with patriarchal authority; Fred D&rsquo;Aguiar&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Last Essay About Slavery&rdquo; and <i>Feeding the Ghosts </i> illustrate this stage. The second is his <i>reconciliation </i> of matriarchal (present) and patriarchal (past) traditions of literary authority via his encounter with his forebears&rsquo; feminized, raced shadow; Robert Antoni&rsquo;s <i>Blessed Is the Fruit</i> evidences this process. The third is the contemporary male writer&rsquo;s <i>renunciation </i> of authority defined by masculinity, which emerges as his incorporation of the anima, or unconscious feminine; Marlon James&rsquo;s <i>The Book of Night Women</i> exemplifies this final phase of his individuation. </p>

<p> The existence of an elite class within societies is often a topic of research in the study of inequality of power and influence. Researchers, however, acknowledge that the nature and composition of the elite varies. Trinidad and Tobago, with its colonial history and diverse population has had to confront issues surrounding access to power by various groups within the society. One driving force of the 1970s Black Power Revolution was the practice of color discrimination in the banking industry. Informed by Mills' (1956) elite theory and rooted in Beckford's (1972) economic theory, this project surveys the elite of Trinidad and Tobago. I examine three important national sectors: business, the judiciary, and the National Senate&mdash;all appointed positions&mdash;to explore which groups have access to positions of power and influence. Information was collected with regards to individuals' terms of service or length of appointments, type of appointment, ethnicity, religion, gender and the high school they graduated from. While some of the data are incomplete, women are unrepresented and Whites over-represented across all three sectors.</p>

In her first and third novels How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and &iexcl;Yo!, Julia Alvarez writes about the Dominican-American experience through the lives of an immigrant family. Her personal understanding of the context results in a complex and believable set of hybrid characterizations. In her second novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, there is a purely Dominican context. In translating this history of the Mirabal sisters, Alvarez is unable to avoid the influence of her Dominican-American experience. Therefore, these characterizations are less believable, stereotypical and not reasonably justified given their context. Unconvincing and sudden moments of conversion are a further consequence of Alvarez's failure to correctly reflect Dominican culture in her translation of the story.

This dissertation examines literary renderings of postcolonial American space through close readings of novels by four contemporary American writers: Thomas Pynchon's Vineland and Mason & Dixon, Paule Marshall's The Chosen Place, the Timeless People, Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, and Alfredo Vea, Jr.'s La Maravilla. My study is grounded in environmental criticism's emphasis on the relationships between humans and non-human nature, particularly the interactions between peoples and places. I explore questions of domination and subjugation, possession, dispossession, and repossession, home and homelessness in the world we think we know, and the worlds we can only imagine. The novelists in this study raise difficult questions about America as a philosophical ideal and as a political entity. Where does this nation fit, historically and currently, within global affairs? To what extent does America have the moral authority it assumes over itself or anyone else? At times, these questions are posed through comparisons, both subtle and overt, between the United States and other regimes more recognizable for their egregious human rights records, such as Spanish Mexico, Nazi Germany, and Dutch South Africa. The authors then locate oppression at home by addressing the enduring effects of the genocide of indigenous peoples, the slave trade and the Middle Passage, and the creation of a racially diverse American underclass. In each case, human oppression is depicted within the highly-contested social space of the physical landscape and is shown to go hand in hand with environmental destruction.

Dans la littérature africaine et antillaise la question des relations de pouvoir est omniprésente. Elle est repérable depuis la littérature des indépendances, qui explorait les enjeux socioculturels lorsque les pays africains et antillais se dégageaient de l’emprise des pouvoirs coloniaux, jusqu'à celle d’aujourd’hui où les pays développés et ceux en voie de développement négocient toujours leur relation avec ces anciens pouvoirs colonisateurs. Alors que la femme noire est la première à ressentir les effets de pouvoir, car doublement marginalisée de ce dernier en tant que femme et noire, elle a historiquement été muselée par un canon littéraire qui ne lui laissait pas de place. Par l’intermédiaire d’une analyse des relations de pouvoir entre la femme noire et l’institution patriarcale, nous dévoilons les tactiques que ces femmes utilisent afin de supporter les systèmes aliénants dans lesquels elles se trouvent : 1) la réhabilitation de leur sexualité 2) la solidarité féminine 3) l’éducation formelle 4) le pouvoir surnaturel et 5) la remise en question des valeurs occidentales. A cette fin, nous nous appuyons sur la théorie de l’oppositionnalité de Ross Chambers, mettant en valeur la mise au point sur les modes d’opposition (subtiles) plutôt que sur les modes de résistance (évidents). En récupérant sa sexualité, et une relation saine avec son homologue masculin noir, la femme noire retrouve sa subjectivité et une nouvelle source d’espoir. La solidarité féminine, quant à elle, s’avère nécessaire pour faire reculer l’idéologie et les pratiques qui vont à l’encontre de la femme ; sans elle, la femme n’a pas de moyen de sortir de la domination patriarcale. D’après les romans étudiés, l’éducation formelle est une solution sûre pour la femme de sortir de la misère et de rôles qui limitent ses horizons. Le pouvoir surnaturel, peu étudié jusqu’ici, est un recours problématique pour la femme mais peut la mener à un sens de liberté. Enfin, par la remise en question de valeurs et de jugements occidentaux, les femmes noires assument leur propre image et présentent une version corrective des faits, ce qui est en soi subversif. / Thesis (Ph.D, French) -- Queen's University, 2010-08-30 13:41:07.321

This thesis examines a number of natural and anthropogenic disturbances within marine macrophyte habitats of the Caribbean. Understanding the effects of disturbance and the patterns associated with such dynamics is fundamental to ecological studies. Dynamics of interest included: interactions between populations; interactions between life history strategies; successional regimes; and alterations of community structure including loss of trophic heterogeneity and the possibility of "alternate" states. First I explored natural physical disturbance and succession. The dominance of macroalgae in the mid-shore, between areas of seagrass, challenged "classic" succession in such communities. I therefore proposed a model that included chronic "stress" by wave energy that could lead to a reversal in the climax state. Next, I investigated the importance of other grazers (i.e. trophic heterogeneity) in mediating the strength of trophic cascades (e.g. overgrazing). The enclosure experiments used suggested that different life history strategies respond differently to experimental conditions and that interference competition between specialist (conch) and generalist (urchins) grazers results in urchins switching to alternate resources and displaying lower condition. This dynamic may indirectly "buffer" the community against population expansions of urchins and overgrazing of diversity enhancing detritus. Under high nutrient enrichment, urchins maintained themselves, the trophic cascade and low diversity by switching to "expanded" autochthonous and "new" allochthonous resources. I continued to examine the effects of increasing nutrient enrichment, which correlated well with increasing human density, by examining eleven seagrass beds. The patterns of increasing consumer density and decreasing consumer diversity corresponded well to increasing enrichment and loss of autochthonous detritus. At high levels of enrichment, the community was dominated (> 90%) b

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