Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

This dissertation is about the need to re-examine South Asian British literature and film from the perspective of "horizontal" thought. Writers and filmmakers of the British Asian diaspora offer a new model of thinking about identity, one that is "Deleuzean" in nature. Artists such as Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Meera Syal, Monica Ali, Suniti Namjoshi, and Gurinder Chadha reveal a concern with showing both celebrations of and resistance to pluralism and possibility in a transnational world. Furthermore, their work also illustrates the need and desire to create a new cultural poetics in Britain, one that is more inclusive of diaspora literature and film. When applied to Asian British texts, Deleuzean philosophy reveals the complex intersections of migrancy, ethnicity, postcoloniality, and (homo)sexuality in the diasporic identities of contemporary South Asian writers, filmmakers, and their characters. In contrast to models of hybrid identity espoused by postcolonial theorists such as Homi Bhabha (vertical thinkers), Gilles Deleuze's model of horizontal thought escapes hierarchism, binarism, and idealism when analyzing transnational, liminal identities as represented in and by the creative work of British Asians. This shift in thought to horizontality is necessary because the literature and film themselves exemplify the following three concerns: (1) the need and quest for plural identities, (2) an examination of the pros and cons of being a migrant/transnational/diasporic figure in England, calling for a consideration of both transnationalism's advantages and its discontents, and (3) and the need to create a unique cultural poetics that operates as a "minor" literature that forms a significant part of the larger grouping of English literature and cinema.

This dissertation consists of three essays that examine various important macroeconomic issues that are of concern to the Chinese economy. The analysis that supports the empirical work is inspired by post-Keynesian theory. The first chapter presents the mechanism of endogenous sterilization by extending the theory of demand-led money supply to the case of China. This view of money is confirmed by the fact that foreign reserves are not cointegrated with base money, meaning that there is no long-run relationship between foreign reserves and the supply of base money, whereas foreign reserves are long-run related with the claims of the central bank and the amount of bonds issued by the central bank. The second chapter outlines Kaldor's laws and tests for the contributions of the manufacturing sector to labor productivity and overall output growth using the panel dataset of 29 Chinese regions during the period of 1986-2007. Empirical findings, taking advantage of spatial panel econometric techniques, provide significant support for the Kaldorian thesis, while the incorporation of spatial autocorrelation improves the performance of empirical models compared to traditional ones. The third chapter analyzes the relationship between functional income distribution and Chinese economic growth from 1993 to 2007. Based on a demand-driven macroeconomic framework, there is a possibility of either profit-led or wage-led demand regime depending on the total effects of changes in the profit share on all components of final demand. Our results suggest that the Chinese economy presents a profit-led nature both for all 29 regions and for the coastal regions. We also find that while the expansion of interregional and international trade plays an important role, it is investment expenditure that determines the profit-led pattern of economic growth.

Marriage is an intimate interpersonal bond, a juridic reality, between a man and a woman, who are legally habiles, and it comes into being through their mutual, free and irrevocable consent expressed in accord with the norm of law (cf. CIC, c. 1057; CCEO, c. 817). This mutual consent can be affected by several intrinsic and external factors which can render it null or invalid. One among these factors is grave fear imposed from without, which the person is not able to resist except by choosing marriage, and this no doubt invalidates the marriage. One form of grave fear implied in canon 1103 of the Latin Code and canon 825 of the Eastern Code is reverential fear. The effect of reverential fear on the choices one makes is determined largely by the culture of people. The system of arranged marriages is so deeply rooted in Indian culture that, even today, almost ninety-five percent of the marriages are contracted in accord with that system. Although this system has its own merits within the context of a particular culture, it is not without its negative impact on the freedom of the Christian faithful in the choice of their life-partners. This is particularly evident in cases of reverential fear. The specific question we responded to in our thesis is: What is the impact of reverential fear, which is deeply rooted in the Indian culture, on matrimonial consent? We have organized our response to this question under four sub-questions and the response to these questions is developed in four chapters. In the first chapter we deal with the interpretation of ecclesial law in light of culture. The second chapter deals with the nature and the elements of matrimonial consent. The third chapter is a study of reverential fear as a ground of marriage nullity with particular reference to the factors that underlie reverential fear in the Indian cultural context. The focus of the fourth chapter is canonical jurisprudence on reverential fear. What we have discovered in our study is that there is a very close link between culture and law, and that a proper understanding of the cultural background of a person or of a community is very important to provide a just and equitable interpretation of law, marriage law in particular, and to apply it to a concrete case. Hence, a careful analysis of various cultural factors which impinge on matrimonial consent leads us to conclude that cultural factors can have a serious impact on the consent of the spouses and, indeed, the culturally rooted reverential fear can substantially affect the freedom of choice of marriage itself and/or of the marriage partner.

A single case study research format was used to understand what happens when Western people are involved in meditation over a long period of time. This research examines what problems are faced in integrating meditation into a modern Western style of living. In this single case study of the long term process of meditation, the co-researcher was interviewed for his account of his twelve year experience of meditation. Additional data was obtained from friends and family members as well as from the co-researcher's lifeline. The co-researcher's account of his involvement in meditation highlighted several problems. The problem of obsessively trying to become enlightened and spiritual materialism was illustrated by the co-researcher's experience. Other problems illuminated were the problems of isolation and withdrawal in relationship, developing psychological blind spots in spiritual practice and dealing with intense kundalini awakening phenomenon. The vulnerability of different paths of meditation to these problems was considered. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines the role played by the United Nations in the implementation of the August 1962 New York Agreement. The Agreement ended a thirteen year dispute between the Netherlands and Indonesia concerning the future of West New Guinea and its Papuan inhabitants (or Irianese as they were known by Indonesia). Under the terms of the Agreement, the territory's administration was transferred to a temporary UN authority (UNTEA) which remained from 1 October 1962 until 1 May 1963. Following this, control of West New Guinea was handed over to Indonesia which renamed it West Irian (later Irian Jaya, now Papua). In 1968, a small UN team returned, led by Fernando Ortiz Sanz, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for West Irian (UNRWI). The team's responsibility was to "advise, assist and participate" in Indonesian preparations for an act of Papuan self-determination planned for 1969. This 'Act of Free Choice' (or Pepera as it was known by Indonesia), and the UN's involvement, were central to the Agreement and its fulfillment. Following the Introduction and a short chapter on the background to the dispute, chapters two to four look at the UNTEA administration. Chapter five examines briefly the first years of Indonesian rule in West Irian between 1963 and 1967. The arrival of the UN team in 1968 and Ortiz Sanz's first two tours of the territory are discussed in Chapters Six and Seven. Preparations for the Act in 1969, including the selection of the 1022 Papuan representatives who took part in it, are examined in Chapters Eight and Nine. Chapter Ten looks at the conduct of the Act itself and international reaction culminating in the UNGA vote of November 1969. The thesis ends with a conclusion in Chapter Eleven.

This dissertation is a comparative study of the properties that distinguish Chinese fiction from its counterpart in the West. I argue that the nonmimetic nature of Chinese literary theory is derived from the world view epitomized in the concept of Dao as opposed to the Western definition of truth. Instead of representing dao, wen X (writing) is born out of, and remains part of, dao. The way in which orthodox Confucianist discourse takes shape and operates decides that fiction cannot have a cognitive function and, therefore, determines its low status in China. The Chinese term "xiao shuo" (small talk), which is always translated as "fiction," has clearly different associations from the Western word. Unlike "fiction," which mainly denotes the dualism of truth and falsehood, xiao shuo primarily signifies a value judgment. Xiao shuo is neither purely literature nor a genre in pre-modern China. Subsequently I propose that concepts such as "you xi" (game) or "qi" (the strange) are more appropriate constructs for approaching Chinese fiction than "realism" or any other Western term. On the basis of analysis of these indigenous terms, I conclude that we should recover the lost traditional criticism, which represents a unique understanding of pre-modern Chinese fiction.

This project engages a cultural studies approach to translation. I investigate different thematic issues, each of which underscores the underpinning force of cultural translation. Chapter 1 serves as a theoretical background to the entire work, in which I review the development of translation studies in the Anglo-American world and attempt to connect it to subject theory, cultural theory, and social critical theory. The main aim is to show how translation constitutes and mediates subject (re)formation and social justice. From the view of translation as constitutive of political and cultural processes, Chapter 2 tells the history of translation in Vietnam while critiquing Homi Bhabha's notions of cultural translation, hybridity, and ambivalence. I argue that the Vietnamese, as historical colonized subjects, have always been hybrid and ambivalent in regard to their language, culture, and identity. The specific acts of translation that the Vietnamese engaged in throughout their history show that Vietnam during French rule was a site of cultural translation in which both the colonized and the colonizer participated in the mediation and negotiation of their identities. Chapter 3 presents a shift in focus, from cultural translation in the colonial context to the postcolonial resignifications of femininity. In a culture of perpetual translation, the Vietnamese woman is constantly resignified to suite emerging political conditions. In this chapter, I examine an array of texts from different genres—poetry, fiction, and film—to criticize Judith Bulter's notion of gender performativity. A feminist politics that aims to counter the regulatory discourse of femininity, I argue, needs to attend to the powerful mechanism of resignification, not as a basis of resistance, but as a form of suppression. The traditional binary of power as essentializing and resistance as de-essentializing does not work in the Vietnamese context. Continuing the line of gender studies, Chapter 4 enunciates a specific strategy for translating Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain into contemporary Vietnamese culture. Based on my cultural analysis of the discursive displacement of translation and homosexuality, I propose to use domesticating translation, against Lawrence Venuti's politics of foreignizing, as a way to counter the displacement and reinstate both homosexuality and translation itself.

This dissertation examines the communication of identity in a Chinese Indonesian Reformed Evangelical Christian (CIREC) religious community in Boston, Massachusetts. Members of this community are English-dominant, Indonesian-born, racially and/or ethnically Chinese , and fundamentalist Christians. They have had to face and negotiate issues of identity that do not fit neatly into pre-existing social categories of race, ethnicity, religion and nationality, all of which are geographically-bound and determined by ruling powers of nation-states. Not tethered to specific geo-political locations and those locations' accompanying identity categories, it is solely through communication and daily social performance of `who they are' that members of this community create and negotiate their identity. Being a CIREC requires one to form one's identity around the act of evangelizing. In this community, evangelizing is practiced by engaging in (among other practices) a unique form of prayer referred to as `prayer of the faithful', distributing generic Christian pamphlets in Boston Common, the city's main public park, and discussing effective evangelizing strategies, without necessarily putting them into action. Engaging in these communication practices provides members with a sense of identity and belonging, a sense they never had due to the marginalized position of Chinese in an Indonesian socio-cultural context . Data used for this dissertation were drawn from twenty-one months of participation in prayer meetings, Bible study, Sunday service and social events outside of church settings. Using cultural discourse analysis as the main analytical framework (Berry, 2009; Carbaugh, 1996a, b, 2005, 2007, 2007a; Carbaugh, Gibson, and Milburn, 1997; Scollo, 2010), I explicated the daily social performance of the CIREC multicultural and international identity. This work seeks to contribute to scholarship on cultural communication, religious communication, Chinese diaspora identity studies, and suggests a comparison with practices of a mainstream fundamentalist evangelical Christian community in the United States. The focus on daily communicative enactments of identity in social settings also serves to bridge the gap between macro-level issues of ethnicity, race, and religion in an Indonesian and U.S socio-cultural context, and micro-level analyses of how a multicultural identity is enacted on a daily basis.