published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

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Using ethnographic methods, namely in-depth interviews and participant-observation, I examined the everyday experiences of fifteen female Japanese students during a nine-month study abroad. I attempted to investigate (1) the nature of cultural learning in the participants of this study during their sojourn and (2) how different social networks in the sojourn context affected the processes of their cultural learning and adaptation to the host environment. I employed models of cross-cultural adaptation based on a perspective of cultural learning / social skill acquisition as a theoretical framework. During the first few months in Canada, students without previous international sojourn experiences seemed to be physically and emotionally vulnerable. Some students experienced emotional upheaval which was consistent with previously published accounts of the characteristics of the sojourner adaptation process. A close association of the Japanese within their group throughout their sojourn resulted in the formation of an ethnic enclave in the dormitory community. This provided a support network for most of the Japanese students, but at the same time, caused interpersonal conflicts in the group. The strong group solidarity also negatively affected the relationship between the Japanese students and their Canadian peers in the dormitory. The Japanese students in this study not only had to adapt to the socio-cultural characteristics of the host environment, but also to the norms and values of their own group which reflected their cultural heritage. Although they encountered a number of challenges while in Canada, the process of overcoming difficulties and absorbing new experiences enabled them to grow personally and intellectually. Towards the end of their sojourn and after returning to Japan, the students recognised positive changes in their attitude and behaviour which they attributed to the different experiences they had through their study abroad. While several findings of the study indicated that the participants' adaptation to the new cultural setting reflected theoretical propositions in the cross-cultural adaptation literature, the study also showed how the unique nature of the students' sojourn environment had a significant impact on their adaptation process.

This study examines long-term Inuit-European and -Euroamerican intersocietal interaction in the central Canadian Arctic. This geographical area encompasses the traditional ranges of the contiguous Copper, Netsilik and Iglulik Inuit societies. Specifically, the study analyzes and discusses changes in intra- and intergroup material trade networks and social relations resulting from indirect and direct contact with the developing capitalist world-system. Through the application of world-system theory and methodology, it is shown that indirect contact in the form of the acquisition of material trade items was a gradual, though constant, process that had a considerable impact on the cultural development of these societies. Both indirect and direct contact were greatly accelerated during the 19th century, increasing the rate of cultural change, and, by the early 20th century, ultimately culminating in the articulation of the Copper, Netsilik and Iglulik Inuit societies within the modern capitalist world-system.

This study seeks to determine the reasons for the departure of New Zealand-born Samoans from a South Auckland traditional Samoan Seventh-day Adventist church. The concept of SURVIVAL: Exposure, Exit, and Reinvestment Model is used to explain the two factors instrumental in these young people's decisions to depart from the church. The first factor, which is a push factor, is the atmosphere at church, or what I refer to in this study as exposure. The second factor, which is a pull factor, involves the benefits of reinvesting their time and talents in other churches or in other non-church related activities. The results of this study strongly indicate that the church atmosphere was neither conducive nor promising, but very antagonistic to developing New Zealand-born Samoan young people's spiritual and social journeys. Consequently, the situation at church made these young people look elsewhere for social and spiritual survival. An analysis of the data suggests that the church can reverse the problem of departure by putting in place an active and effective system whereby the concerns and ideas of New Zealand-born Samoans as well as other youths are shared, heard, and rightly understood by the elders and the leadership of the church.

O presente trabalho se propõe a realizar uma análise histórica que nos possibilite interrogar quais são as condições de produção e reprodução de certos modelos (idéias e práticas) sobre o que se instituiu denominar a questão racial brasileira. O objetivo deste trabalho é mapear a proliferação de uma série de discursos em torno da construção de um projeto nacional e civilizatório que teve como eixo principal a produção de um discurso racializado, ou seja, discutir de que modo certos fatores permitiram engendrar a produção de uma estranheza eficaz a partir da criação do que convencionamos chamar de elemento negro, constituindo-se como o representante mais eficaz desse espaço social destinado a demarcar um lugar de estranhamento (o outro como perigoso, anormal, diferente etc.). Utilizando como recurso analítico principal os trabalhos de Raimundo Nina Rodrigues e da Escola Baiana de Antropologia, discutimos como esse saber acadêmico possibilitou a formulação de um modelo psicofísico de explicação sobre a degeneração da raça brasileira. Mais tarde este modelo seria substituído por uma estratégia mais englobante, o que pode ser verificado pela aplicação dos conceitos de cultura ou aculturação, e mesmo pelo emprego dos modernos conceitos psicanalíticos. O nosso propósito consistiu em analisar a produção de certas práticas sociais: a constituição de uma ciência médico-psicológica; a difusão de certas opiniões a respeito do elemento negro através da imprensa e da literatura; a constituição jurídica do cidadão negro em decorrência da implementação de uma discussão política e legislativa pré e pós-abolicionista que se produziram em torno da construção de um projeto nacional e civilizatório e que tiveram como eixo principal a produção do elemento negro como personagem principal desse novo enredo: uma ortodoxia da cor. Optamos por discutir o processo de formação do Brasil e do brasileiro em finais do século XIX e início do século XX (período compreendido entre as décadas de 1870 e 1930), a partir das rupturas provocadas pelo iminente processo abolicionista. / This work aims at performing a historical analysis towards questioning the production and reproduction conditions of certain models (ideas and practices) regarding what become to be known as the Brazilian race problem. The purpose of this work is the mapping of the proliferation of various discourses regarding the construction of a national and civilized project whose backbone was the formation of a racial speech. In other words, we want to discuss how certain factors contributed to the engineering of an \"efficient strangeness\" derived from the creation of the so-called black element. This element turned out to be the most efficient representative of the social space designated to determine a strangeness locale (the other as dangerous, abnormal, different, etc). We discussed, based primarily on the research works of Raimundo Nina Rodrigues and of the Escola Baiana de Antropologia, the means by which such an academic knowledge facilitated the formulation of an explicatory psychophysical model for the degeneration of the Brazilian race. This model was subsequently generalized, which can be verified by concepts of culture or \"acculturations\", as well as by modern psychoanalytical concepts. Our proposal was to analyze the production of certain social practices: the constitution of a medico-psychology science; the diffusion of certain opinions regarding the black element through the press and the literature; and the judicial constitution of the black citizen. These practices were the result of the implementation of pre- and post-abolitionist legislative and political discussions inspired by a national and civil project whose backbone was the production of the black element as the principal character of this new script: the orthodoxy of color. We opted to focus our discussion on the formation process of Brazil and of the Brazilian between the final decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century (between 1870 and 1930), characterized by the ruptures aggravated by the imminent abolitionist process.

In 1991 a private town for Afrikaners was established on the bank of the Orange River, in the semi-desert of South Africa’s Northern Cape Province. As a deliberately Afrikaans, and thus white, community, the town’s aims and existence are controversial, but both its principles and practicalities are not unique. Endeavouring to build an Afrikaner homeland in multiracial South Africa seems incongruous, signalling a retreat from social heterogeneity as a fact of the contemporary world. It raises questions about what people do following a social, political and economic paradigm shift, and about what is occurring within a country with multiple and contradictory accounts of history and a traumatic recent past. It also means resisting the pressure to deal with the past, and therefore the present, in a certain way. Consequently, the frequent question of whether or not the town as an enterprise, or its residents, are racist, reveals instead a complex ordering of society. Life in Orania is filled with ordinary everyday activities of earning a living, raising and educating children, socialising, and practising religion in a town where Christian principles are explicit, each combining elements of intentionality and contingency. Once superficial similarity between residents can be taken for granted, the focus shifts to the differences between them, which rise and fall in importance, highlighting the circumstantial nature of group solidarity. This raises the question of what the differences within the community are, how deeply they reach, and where fundamental commonalities lie that prompt them to choose to build a future together. For the few hundred people involved in the enterprise, Orania is the only way they think they will have a recognisable future: they fear the demise of Afrikaners as an ethnic group through cultural assimilation or dispersal, emigration, and population decline. Their position of victimhood and vulnerability, shaped by the past, shapes their present actions in turn. Afrikaners’ interpretation of themselves as victims is easily supported by the popular historical narrative that Afrikaners have always struggled against outside authorities to be self-determining. This ethnographic study reveals that Orania is a concrete response to the fear that there may not be a place for Afrikaners in South Africa’s future, in the country to which they feel they belong and where their identity is rooted.

Using ethnographic methods, namely in-depth interviews and participant-observation, I examined the everyday experiences of fifteen female Japanese students during a nine-month study abroad. I attempted to investigate (1) the nature of cultural learning in the participants of this study during their sojourn and (2) how different social networks in the sojourn context affected the processes of their cultural learning and adaptation to the host environment. I employed models of cross-cultural adaptation based on a perspective of cultural learning / social skill acquisition as a theoretical framework. During the first few months in Canada, students without previous international sojourn experiences seemed to be physically and emotionally vulnerable. Some students experienced emotional upheaval which was consistent with previously published accounts of the characteristics of the sojourner adaptation process. A close association of the Japanese within their group throughout their sojourn resulted in the formation of an ethnic enclave in the dormitory community. This provided a support network for most of the Japanese students, but at the same time, caused interpersonal conflicts in the group. The strong group solidarity also negatively affected the relationship between the Japanese students and their Canadian peers in the dormitory. The Japanese students in this study not only had to adapt to the socio-cultural characteristics of the host environment, but also to the norms and values of their own group which reflected their cultural heritage. Although they encountered a number of challenges while in Canada, the process of overcoming difficulties and absorbing new experiences enabled them to grow personally and intellectually. Towards the end of their sojourn and after returning to Japan, the students recognised positive changes in their attitude and behaviour which they attributed to the different experiences they had through their study abroad. While several findings of the study indicated that the participants' adaptation to the new cultural setting reflected theoretical propositions in the cross-cultural adaptation literature, the study also showed how the unique nature of the students' sojourn environment had a significant impact on their adaptation process. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Masters in Fine Art by Research Wits School of Art (Division of Fine Art) January 2016 / The Ugandan diaspora to South Africa is a relatively small community with a short history of country of origin to adoptive country relation prior to its development. The cultural legacy of this community is comparatively dilute. Personal narratives from members of this community describe economic prospects and international aspirations as reasons for migration. These same reasons affect the potential for cultural manifestation. The pageant trope expresses the hyphenated relationship to national pride of Ugandans living in South Africa. The Miss Uganda SA pageant, a pageant developed by and catered to the Ugandan diaspora in South Africa, is a central case study in assessing the consequences of a hyphenated identity. Artists such as Benon Lutaaya and Lilian Nabulime give a visual illustration and develop a discussion about what cultural manifestation of Ugandans living in diaspora’s could potentially look like, and how it is affected by hyphenation