Thesis (M.Sc.)--Brock University--[St. Catherines, Ontario], 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-128).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska--Lincoln, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130-138).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Syracuse University, 2007. / "Publication number: AAT 3295510."

Thesis--Uppsala. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-[173]).

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, October 2009.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis examines the effect of ethnicity on assessments of achievement outcomes, and presents a theoretical explanation using Foschi's reformulation. The reformulation integrates aspects of attribution theory and status generalization theory. It proposes that when a higher status performer and a lower status performer are equally successful at a task, the success of the former will tend to be attributed to ability more than the success of the latter. Also, when the two performers are equally unsuccessful at a task, the performance of the lower status person will tend to be attributed to lack of ability more than the performance of the higher status person. The propositions are tested for ethnicity by collecting evidence from attribution studies dealing with ethnicity and assessment of performance outcomes. The findings indicate that there is substantial support for the propositions. Since these have not been directly tested, an experiment is proposed. In the final section of the thesis a standardized experimental format such as the one used in expectation states research is presented. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

This study investigates Korean-American identity in the postmodern condition. Although there have been several studies on assimilation and ethnic identity, the existing body of literature is largely divided into assimilation and cultural pluralism. It seems that these existing theories of assimilation and ethnicity do not adequately capture the complex and paradoxical nature of the postmodern condition, thus fail to lend a framework in which the issue of ethnic identity is properly examined. The postmodern perspective that this study employs is not a theory of ethnicity per se, but it renders many useful insights into ethnic identity. Postmodernism recognizes the paradoxical co-existence of "surface homogenization" and the search for deeply rooted ethnicity. Using postmodern argument, this study avoids the modernistic accounts of ethnicity which have a tendency to reduce it to mere binary oppositions of assimilation and nativism. This study offers the findings from the narratives of the second and 1.5 generation Korean-Americans as the following: (1) Korean-Americans are aware that they are not fully accepted as American, and they are often viewed together with other Asian-Americans. (2) Their connection to American history is rather weak due to Koreans' short immigration history. (3) They assert that they have both Korean and American elements in their identity neither of which they can deny. This study calls this pastiched identity. (4) However, others (whites, other Koreans) have difficulty accepting pastiched identity. They tend to reduce it to either Korean or American which makes them doubly marginalized. (5) Thus, Korean-Americans need to challenge the governing meta-narratives in America by asserting their difference and sameness simultaneously. (6) But at the same time, they need to invent a collective voice in American cultural politics and to share their stories to establish a "community of memory" for future generations.

This dissertation addresses the problem of how Asian Indian sojourners to the United States discourse the nature of "Indian," "American," and "Indian sojourner" identities in the host setting. The assumption grounding the study is that cultural discourses produce a social reality which then guides the actions and experiences of the sojourner. The ethnographic methods of interviews and participant observation were used to study sojourner discourse. The analyses in the dissertation relied primarily upon transcribed interview data in making claims about patterns in sojourner discourse. The analytic results suggest that sojourner discourses are efficacious in facilitating adaptation to the host setting. Indian sojourners presented codes of identity which created predictable kinds of cultural identities. The reality produced in the talk of the sojourners provided a basis for social relations with members of each of the focal groups. The sojourners symbolically positioned themselves somewhere between the American and Indian identities by appropriating symbols from each in self-reference. The findings suggest that cultural adaptation is not a universally experienced set of phases, but that sojourners groups may creatively develop symbolic resources for dealing with the exigencies of the host setting.