This ethnographic study is placed in a space between the principles and laws that come under the purview of multiculturalism and the way in which they are received and enacted in the everyday lives of student groups at a secondary school in Vancouver, BC. Using de Certeau's "logic of action," I view student multicultural practices are viewed as a set of "tactics" measured according to a principle of "usefulness" set against an official or ideological background of rights and privileges within a multiculturalism of mutual respect, integration, harmonious intergroup relations, social cohesion and a shared sense of Canadian identity. Student expressions of "distinctness," belonging and identity are examined using Charles Taylor's approach to a "Canadian multiculturalism." Student groups within a locale transform multiculturalism as policy into a tactical multiculturalism of "distinctness" in which propriety further suggests a multiculturalism based on recognition and individual rights. Using the ideas of Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka, a system of "strong" (cohesive) and "weak" (fragmenting) multiculturalism is identified in the practices of three institutionally composed groups of students - "ESL," "Regular," and "IB." This system is further nuanced by taking account of a richly textured "background" or context in which multiculturalism is practiced. I arrived at an idea of multiculturality, a stylistic spectrum that varies from a passive multiculturalism of "distinctness" with its emphasis stereotypical and bounded forms, to an active style that looks more to historical contingencies and dynamics of context consistent with a Taylorian multiculturalism of dialogue, a discussion of value moving towards a "fusion of horizons" (Gadamer). Based on the study, some suggestions are made regarding pedagogical directions with respect to multiculturality. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate

In this study I analyze how Lower and Upper Canadians in the period 1790-1850 articulated ideas of the self in relation to concepts provided by the Enlightenment and more particularly by the notion of selflove. Canadians discussed the importance of individual self-interest in defining the self and in formulating the ties that would unite a multitude of strangers who were expected to live in peace with one another regardless of their religious, cultural and social affiliations. Scholarly discussion about the making of identities in the Canadas has, for the most part, focussed on community-defined identities even though it has always largely been accepted that the Canadas were 'liberal' and individualistic societies. The writings of known and educated Canadians show that the making of identities went well beyond community-defined attributes. To widen the understanding of the process of identity-making in Canada, I have utilized a wellknown medieval metaphor that opposes order to contingency or, as in the civic tradition, contrasts virtue and fortune-corruption. It becomes evident that those who insisted on a community-defined identity that subsumed the self in the whole had a far different understanding of contingent motifs than those who insisted on the primacy of the self in the definition of humanity. But both ways of dealing with contingency continued to influence how Canadians came to understand who they were. No consensus emerged and by 1850 the discussions of the Canadian self were rich and complex. The dissertation pays special attention to the methodological implications of utilizing binary oppositions such as the trope order vs contingency in fashioning the images of peoples and nations in ways that engage 'post-modern' notions regarding the construction of the identity of the 'Other'. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

This thesis is a study of the current backlash against immigration and multiculturalism policies. The author looks at current arguments against both policies, and compares them to evidence. These arguments are drawn from the media; the writings of critics like Richard Gwyn, and William D. Gairdner; and the policies of the Reform Party. It will provide a historical review of the experiences of immigrant groups in adapting to Canadian society. From this review, the author identifies several consistent themes in anti-multiculturalism and anti-immigration literature, which include: multiculturalism is little more than "flash and dance", the policy is unanimously unpopular among the general public, immigrants take jobs from Canadian-born, immigrants are a burden to society, and that immigrants are not needed to offset the ageing of the Canadian population. The author concludes that these criticisms are based on misconceptions and distortions of facts. In some cases, the criticisms reflect more of an attack on minority groups rather than on these policies, and reveal a movement to reverse the pluralistic nature of Canadian society. This research comes at a time when the debate over these policies is clouded with emotion. The author makes several recommendations as to how the public education system can help counter the use of these themes in the media. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

Competing narratives on the “rise and fall of multiculturalism” (Kymlicka 2010) confuse our understanding of the evolution of multiculturalism policy, particularly in the case of federations like Canada and Australia. Part of the issue is the sharp separation between stability and change and prevailing focus on national multiculturalism policies. This overlooks important and simultaneous developments in the constituent units of these two federations. We therefore ask how and why have multiculturalism policies changed in the constituent units of Australia and Canada? First, we argue that amid a noticeable decline in support for multiculturalism on the part of the central government in both countries, constituent unit governments have become a crucial source of multiculturalism policy development in Australia and Canada. Because many of the economic, labour, civil rights and social policy challenges involve state/provincial or shared responsibilities, multiculturalism policies are developed and implemented in large part by constituent units. Thus, we cannot comment on multiculturalism policies in federations without paying attention to the experiences and contributions of constituent units. Second, we argue this process of multiculturalism policy change can be conceptualized along four modes of gradual institutional change referred to as policy drift, layering, displacement, and conversion. These incremental modes of policy change are the result of a distinct combination of contextual, structural, and agency-based factors. More precisely, (1) a shift in the socio-political context marks the opening of a critical juncture as new ideas and demands for reform emerge; (2) institutional rules with separate compliance and enforcement standards structure reform pathways; and (3) the relationship between policy and political entrepreneurship activates the causal mechanisms that consolidate the separate modes of gradual institutional change. The dissertation therefore offers a more complete theoretical explanation of the processes of institutional change, their ideational influences and causal mechanisms through fresh empirical observation. Building on Mahoney and Thelen’s (2010) theory on gradual institutional change, the dissertation applies a process-tracing method over the period 1989 to 2019 to four case studies: Nova Scotia, South Australia, New South Wales, and British Columbia. In sum, generating inquiry that looks beyond national policies allows us to capture concurrent processes happening within and across State/provincial boundaries, which in turn shape their shared citizenship.

In 2013, the United States is becoming increasingly racially and ethnically diverse.  With these demographic changes, attitudes and approaches toward representation are likewise shifting. Public administration scholarship and practice can continue to contribute to this dynamic process of defining representation and crafting initiatives to meet the needs of the public. To do this, social injustices of the past must be addressed through the recognition and valuation of historically-underrepresented groups in public organizations. Yet, much public affairs discourse and numerous policy decisions are rooted in multiculturalism.  The central question this research explores is whether multiculturalism is detrimental to theorizing and to enacting a representative bureaucracy, and if so, why. To answer this question, the work begins with a critical review of the representative bureaucracy, affirmative action, and multiculturalism literatures.  Then, linking these reviews to practice, the study performs a critical discourse analysis of several executive orders and guidance documents from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to trace how views of representation in U.S. national government agencies changed between 1998 and 2011.  This research finds that a shift from "Affirmative Action" to "Multiculturalism" occurred.  EOs 13078, 13163, and 13171 were heavily rooted in the Affirmative Action approach, while the 2000 OPM Agency Diversity Guide, EOs 13518 and 13583, and the Government-Wide Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan 2011 were anchored in the "Multicultural" approach.  Ultimately, this study concludes that multiculturalism poses significant challenges for representative bureaucracy as a result of its lack of clear and explicit definitions and its treatments of differences, especially group-identity classifications.  Rethinking the relationship between representative bureaucracy and multiculturalism and focusing on historically-underrepresented groups hold the potential to contribute to the further attainment of normative goals of bureaucratic representation. / Ph. D.

This study is grounded on qualitative interviews with 12 adult Kenyan immigrants living in Sweden regarding their experiences of othering, racialisation, creation of divisions in society based on “us” and “them” linked on repertories of racializing the other in the Swedish multicultural environment. I engage with stereotyping as theory which is used as a tool to pick difference, racialize the respondents by white Swedish natives, and how these actions affect the respondents in their everyday life in Sweden. The study finds that non-white bodies of Kenyan immigrants are constantly centered while interacting with native white Swedish population. These are either expressed by direct questions that border impoliteness, subtle and blatant forms of prejudice. The study also shows that othering of Kenyans takes place all the time so that these people feel that they will never fully integrate into the Swedish community thus question the issue of integration and place of multiethnicity in Sweden. The study also finds that respondents have taken various actions to minimise racism or take back the power as forms of coping.

The purpose of this study is to listen to teachers' stories and reconstruct their classrooms in the midst of the global upheaval of people's movements in the 1960s-70s through teachers' narratives. The primary research questions are: How did social movements in the 1960s-1970s influence their teaching practices? What was their intention and how did they carry out their daily teaching practice? In the educational research field, narrative inquirers explore teachers' stories, their life experiences and teaching practices, in order to understand how teachers view the world. I collected stories, through in-depth interviews, of ten Japanese teachers who taught in Japanese public school system, and were active in social and educational movements during the 1960s-70s in order to understand how teachers understood and resisted dominant oppressive forces which create and perpetuate social inequality. Teacher narratives were analyzed using two complementary methods: contents analysis and interactional positioning theory. First, stories of teachers' struggles in their classrooms and schools were contextualized in a wider social struggle for humanity and a more just society, in order to explore teachers' understanding of social oppression and their resistance, and multiculturalism in Japanese classrooms in the 1960s-1970s. Through their stories, an indigenous multicultural nature of Japanese classrooms was revealed, even before the multiculturalism became an imported educational topic in the 1980s. Furthermore, using interactional positioning theory, I discussed how teacher activist identities were constructed during the narration, at the same time, uncover how social stigma of being an activist possibly suppressed the participants overtly constructing an activist identity in narratives.

Diversity has become an essential component in companies. As businesses and industries attempt to appeal to a wider demographic of employees while trying to serve diverse markets, they are also seeking to be representatives of such markets. Internal diversity is essential from a business standpoint. Diverse perspectives and backgrounds are proven to result in advantages for businesses which ultimately increase revenues and profits. The purpose of this study was to address the limited understanding of how White women and women of color navigate the dominant environment in the investment management industry. White men traditionally hold the power in this environment and, as such, are not typically subjected to the same obstacles. The purposely selected sample consisted of seven participants of a program whose mission was to develop women and people-of-color investment managers into more successful investment managers. The research methods included participant interviews and content analysis of documents about the program. Data collections methods included audio-recorded interviews and content analysis of documents about the program. The data were coded and analyzed, first by research question, and then findings were organized into three analytical categories based on the study’s framework. The research revealed two main tensions surrounding being authentic while seeking to raise money from White-male investors and that participants’ gender identity was perceived as an important part of their identity as investment managers. Participants’ capacity to handle these tensions grew after completing the program and they learned to present themselves in an authentic way. Recommendations are offered for educators and women investment managers, and for further research, including: (1) authenticity should be focused on and a key tenet of future programs, (2) having separate cohorts or learning paths for different experience levels, (3) emphasize in person training in order to build relationships with each other and with White-male investors/facilitators, (4) be authentic and run experiments based on being authentic to gauge success, (5) focus on building relationships, (6) think of White males as potential allies instead of adversaries, (7) study authenticity further, (8) expand pool of participants in future studies, (9) integrating future studies into the formal program evaluation, (10) study women professionals in the rest of the investment industry, (11) study White-male investors, and (12) study how subordinate White-males in the industry are treated.

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This study examines the efficacy of new liberal policies designed to recognize cultural difference and improve integration of ethnic communities in Georgia, an emerging democracy in the Caucasus. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in the city of Tbilisi over nine months in 2009 to investigate public opinion and observe changes in heritage-related endeavors. The liberal policies are part of a reform initiative of president Mikheil Saakashvili and reflect his reimagining of the Georgian nation in civic terms rather than ethnonationalist ones. I recognize the unique and ambitious nature of this project and believe that Georgia's leaders are keenly aware of the constraints on their small nation in the context of late capitalism. The project, which I call the Multiethnic Georgia project, is thus a response to these conditions by deploying multiethnic identity as a resource and thus a way to reconfigure Georgia's relationships with its global partners. The Multiethnic Georgia project is problematic on a few levels. At its outset, the project responds to neoliberal pressure rather than to people's desire for a national concept change. Also, average Georgians (not including minorities) believe these kinds of social management paradigms are unnecessary. They claim they have always been tolerant and that social leveling mechanisms will only exacerbate the friction between people. In this sense, ordinary Georgians as well as more educated observers, touch on a problematic feature of the Western recognition paradigm, which arose to prevent ethnic conflict but does not deal with underlying structures that create social inequality. This project seems to be inculcating a superficial approximation of multicultural coexistence. I call attention to Georgian inter-culturalism instead, which exists in the form of unique social practices that show interdependence, flexibility and openness, as well as local norms of civility, and is a better platform from which to construct a recognition and ethnic integration project. / Anthropology