This work applies intersectionality to five Somali women self-narratives and focuses on their identities and positions in Swedish society, but also their relation to Somali society. Since people constructs in relation to the environment, this work studies the impact of environmental confirmations of their own self. Intersectionality is brought into the social work with an operational attempt, and shows how critics of power and interplay between theories and empirics can provide new knowledge. Intersectionality also demands some alterations of the social constructionists’ idea of the ego. Therefore this work outline a model of analysis that considers the critic of power. According to this work, intersectionality implies that social work is essentially about power. The women’s egos seem to be closely united different strongly. The more different identifications the women describes and the more ambivalent they are allowed to be in different milieus, the greater assets has the women in their ability to move between milieus and to pass between positions of power. But the tighter united some of their identifications are in their egos; the firmer is their assumptions of what constitute a good behaviour. And the stronger united the ego is, the space to pass through positions of power in different arenas is shrinking. This work emphasizes the importance of making shifts of power in identification categories visible in order to localize resistance strategies among exposed individuals. This work also suggest that social work should consider the supplementary vulnerable situation that signify the position in intersection between power orders and contradictory norms, since that could lead to too simplified conclusions that create additional isolation. Being sensitive to the experience and resolution of these women’s own experiences and resolutions is therefore crucial in achieving good social work. Accordingly, lack of knowledge is an obstacle to resist discrimination and oppression. Another conclusion is that social work and social politics should aim to strengthen the ego of immigrant women in order to release their driving forces that in turn may lead to participation, not only to the Swedish society. These Somali women appear as peace endeavours, whose political voices has been marginalised both in the Somali and the Swedish context, which obstacle peace making in the Somali society.

This research explored how mission trip volunteers assume various roles throughout their volunteer experience. By seeing the various roles that emerge in mission volunteer work, the identities that they construct based upon these roles are revealed. Discovering the ways in which these roles and constructed identities affect the way that mission trip volunteers could potentially help colleges improve their recruitment messages and distinguish themselves from other institutions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to obtain data from the participants, and the data were analyzed through a thematic, constant comparative method. Findings revealed the types of stories heard from other mission trip volunteers prior to serving, the impact of those stories on decisions to volunteer, the various identities that emerge while serving on a mission trip, and how mission trip volunteers make sense of their experiences after serving. This study applies several well-known aspects of organizational communication to the context of mission trip volunteers, offering new and interesting data. This study also provides practical implications for mission trip coordinators and individuals who might be interested in being a mission trip volunteer.

Abstract Toni Morrison¡¦s Song of Solomon deals with the African Americans¡¦ history of fighting for self-independence, while exposing their difficulties in forming a viable cultural identity. Focusing on the politics of naming, the motif of flight, and the constitution of African American manhood, Toni Morrison in this novel aims to provide a different reading/writing of African American history whereupon her people can develop an alternative strategy of identification politics. In this thesis, I problematize the notion of democracy¡Vthe ordained rights of human beings to pursuit liberty, happiness and prosperity¡Vby articulating the idea of the American Dream with African Americans¡¦ experiences of self-realization in a so-called democratic society. The purpose is to discuss whether or not African Americans can reverse and utilize their marginalized position as a critical stance for self-articulation to undo the racists¡¦ misnaming on African American people. With a special emphasis on Milkman¡¦s improvisation of the meanings of his family name, Dead, I discuss how the African Americans¡¦ distinctive way of double-talk can facilitate them to negotiate the apparent dualism to inscribe their hybridized identity and how this kind of creativity can help them produce an alternative narrative of their traumatizing as well as truncated history. Also, I intend to analyze both the limitation and liability of conventional psychoanalytic paradigm which is blind to the specificity of African American manhood and the problems peculiar to African American family. Though it is an undeniable historical fact that the African Americans do suffer from the aftermath of plantation slavery, they should be able to empower themselves by re-imagining a collective ancestry as a strategy to formulate an applicable identification politics. While narrating an inspiring genealogy for her people, Toni Morrison wraps up this novel with an open ending. This arrangement suggests to her people that the significations of their cultural identities be opened to further contestation and re-definition.

Literature on the appropriation of hip hop culture outside of the United States maintains that hip hop engenders local interpretations no longer reliant on African-American origins, and this research project is an attempt to determine the extent to which this is the case in a specific local context. My thesis is an effort to move beyond the rhetoric of much of what constitutes the debates surrounding globalisation, by employing a research strategy combining theoretical analysis and direct engagement with the Berlin hip hop scene. My project not only aims to uncover the meanings young people in Berlin give to their hip hop practices, but intends to do so within a framework that does not ignore the discursive spaces in which these young people are operating. This is particularly relevant because of the complex ways in which race and ethnicity are related to German national identity. Furthermore, this thesis is concerned with the ways in which the spaces and places collectively known as Berlin shape the cultural practices found there. While hip hop belongs to global culture, it is also the case that the city of Berlin plays a significant role in determining how hip hop is understood and reproduced by young people there.

In this thesis I investigate connections between modern Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean fiction between the 1950s and the present. My study brings into focus literary representations of inter-related histories and cultures and problematises the fragmentation of Caribbean studies into separate academic disciplines. The disciplinary compartmentalisation of Caribbean studies into English studies on the one hand and French and Francophone studies on the other has contributed to a reading of Caribbean literature within separate linguistic spheres. This division is strikingly reflected in the scarcity of any sustained literary criticism that acknowledges cultural and literary interpenetration within the archipelago. My comparative study of selected Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean fiction allows me to account for the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and historical diversity of Caribbean societies while, at the same time, foregrounding their inter-relatedness. Through a series of specific case studies the thesis illuminates ways in which theoretical concepts and literary tropes have travelled within the archipelago. Through a close reading of selected narrative fiction I will contextualise and analyse significant underlying linguistic, ethnic and cultural links between the various Caribbean societies which are largely based on the shared history of slavery, colonialism and decolonisation processes. The themes of migration, transformation and creolisation will be at the centre of my investigation. Chapter One establishes the historical and literary-critical framework for this thesis by engaging with key developments in Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean writing from the 1920s until the present. My comparison of the most influential trends in both Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature and criticism from the discourse of négritude to postcolonial studies seeks to highlight connections between these two linguistically divided fields of study. The analysis of Caribbean fiction in Chapters Two to Four pursues such theoretical, stylistic and thematic links further. Chapter Two challenges the conception of postwar Antillean and West Indian writing produced in the metropolis as distinct literary canons by drawing attention to thematic connections between the two traditions. Through the comparison of The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon and La Fête à Paris by Joseph Zobel it argues that these continuities represent a wider trend in ‘black European’ writing. Chapter Three examines concepts of cultural identity which have been central to Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature and criticism during the last two decades. Specifically it focuses on the notions of hybridity, créolité/creoleness and créolisation/creolisation which it discusses in relation to Robert Antoni’s novel Divina Trace and Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco. The final chapter focuses on Shani Mootoo’s and Gisèle Pineau’s representations of specific female experiences of trauma which are related to reiterated colonial violence. Their fictional portrayal of suppressed memories can be read in light of recent critical debates about a collective remembrance of the history of slavery and colonialism.

This dissertation is about the production of national identity in the transnational age. Focusing on the specific example of Egyptian television, this dissertation argues that new production imperatives, mainly in satellite television and internet, have changed the way that television is produced in the Arabic speaking Middle East, most significantly away from direct state control. The changes in production accompany changes in distribution and consumption of electronic media and are significantly rewriting the ways that shared cultural identities in the Middle East, including nationalism, religious, and other significant identities, are produced, consumed and replicated. This dissertation approaches these topics by relating two specific televisual texts, the Ramadan serials Malek Farouq and Gamal Abdel Nasser, to larger changes in Arab and Egyptian television production. / text

This thesis is concerned with the concepts of exile, trauma, and nostalgia and how they all come together to create a sense of culture shock that the subjects of my thesis encountered. Azar Nafisi, Nahid Rachlin, Tara Bahrampour, and Azadeh Moaveni, are all Iranian-American authors, and despite their different life experiences and ages, they all encountered culture shock as it related to male-female relations, Iranian gender norms and issues of sex and sexuality and treatments and views of the female body as it relates to reproduction. / text

Using the theory of the dialogical self, this study aimed to understand the identities of a sample of transracially adopted South African adolescents. Particular attention was paid to the identity domains of race and adoption, as well as the impact of relationships on the formation of individual identity. In-depth interviews were conducted with four transracially adopted adolescents and their parents. The voice centred relational method (Brown and Gilligan, 1992) was used as the method of analysis. Results of this research support many assumptions of the theory of the dialogical self and suggest that there is a dynamic relationship between internal and external positions within the self. In addition, the results show that the participants have developed racial and adoptive identities characterized by conflicting positions within the self, which may be mediated by relationships with significant others. Issues specific to the South African context, including language and poverty, also appear to bear significant influence on the identities of the participants. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006

Avec la romanisation à grande échelle pendant le Haut-Empire, les Romains ont propagé leur culture dans tout le bassin méditerranéen. Les jeux de gladiateurs ont été en Asie Mineure un apport important à la société romaine instaurée en milieu grec. Les théâtres hellénistiques ont été modifiés pour accueillir ces nouveaux divertissements, typiquement romains. Il est question de tout ce qui entoure ces endroits et les gladiateurs grecs qui les ont massivement fréquentés pendant les trois premiers siècles de notre ère, également de ces combattants grecs à travers les spectacles, les festivals et le culte impérial. Quatre cités sont étudiées dans cette optique : Éphèse, Aphrodisias, Attaleia, Side. Nous pouvons ainsi analyser les développements de ce phénomène autant dans les grands que les petites villes. / With full scale Romanization during the early days of the Empire, the Romans propagated their culture all across the Mediterranean region. Gladiatorial games were in Asia Minor a significant feature of the Roman culture implanted amid the Greek population. The Hellenistic theaters were modified to accommodate this new Roman entertainment. This contribution is about all that surrounds these places and the Greek gladiators who fought in them during the first three centuries of our era ; it explores those Greek warriors in spectacle, festival and imperial cult. Four cities are studied : Ephesos, Aphrodisias, Attaleia and Side. The choice of these examples, it is hoped, will allow a better understanding of the development of this phenomenon in big urban centers as well as in smaller cities. / Entièrement réalisé grâce au programme LaTeX (http://www.latex-project.org/)

The essay represents the projector principle, on which, as the essay’s author believes, the narration of The Summer Lightning and Other Stories by Olive Senior is based. The projector principle illustrates the idea that little details and images in the text serve big purposes, for example, reflect the emotional state of the characters or how the characters construct their identity. The literary analysis of the present essay aims at exploring a complicated identity construction in the context of Jamaica with its half-lost indigenous and half-remained colonial legacies through the identity construction of adolescent Jamaican protagonists of the short stories.