Purpose: The threefold purpose of this research is to identify the essential antecedents of cultural competence as identified by international nurse researchers, to compare the content of the extant cultural competence instruments to these antecedents and to potentially identify gaps in their conceptualization. A secondary aim of this research is to initiate validation of Harper's model of ethical multiculturalism. Conceptual Basis: The model of ethical multiculturalism depicts the attributes of ethical multiculturalism as the fulcrum of a balance between two ethical philosophies of fundamentalism and relativism. The attributes of moral reasoning, beneficence/nonmaleficence, respect for persons and communities, and cultural competence form the pyramidal fulcrum. The antecedents form the base of the pyramid and include cultural awareness, culture knowledge, cultural sensitivity, cultural encounters, cultural skill and understanding of ethical principles. Methodology: An on-line Delphi method was conducted with 35 international nurse researchers identified through published research, university directories, and professional organizations. Consensus was reached after two rounds. Following the Delphi rounds, sixteen members of the expert panel participated in an on-line focus group to validate results of the Delphi and discuss cultural competence in the international arena. Findings: Eighty antecedents of cultural competence were identified. Focus group discussion validated findings of the Delphi. Consensual thematic analysis of the focus group transcripts resulted in six themes: chimerical, contact, contextual, collaboration, connections, and considering impact. The Transcultural Self-Efficacy Tool (TSET) contained the most antecedents identified by the expert panel. Conclusions: Cultural competence is a process, not an outcome, and must be considered from the perspective of the recipient of care or research participant. Nurses must strive to deliver culturally acceptable care. The model of ethical multiculturalism is revised to include cultural desire as an antecedent. Nurses must understand the impact of globalization on individual health and care delivery. Implications for Nursing: Further testing of cultural competence instruments is needed to determine the correlation of self-efficacy with behavior, self-assessment with client assessment, and cultural competence with client outcomes. In education, research is needed to determine the most effective methods of teaching cultural competence. Increased recruitment of minorities into nursing programs is warranted. In practice, nurses must be prepared to provide language assistance as needed, recruitment and hiring of minorities must be increased, and minority thresholds must be used to determine cultural knowledge content for organizations.

Based on an ethnographic investigation, the dissertation examines the emergence and significance of discourses around “the environment” in the Lake District of the Araucanía region of Chile (Araucanía Lacustre). These are understood as part of the discursive aspect of globalization – the process by which the territory and its population are integrated ever more tightly into the networks of global market society – and considered in conjunction with discourses around Mapuche indigenous identity. Drawing on mediacultural studies, actor network theory, and medium theory, the analysis seeks to advance an ecological concept of communication that does not privilege human consciousness and agency. Communication is argued to be the principle by which space (physical and metaphysical) is configured and connected. Through a discussion of the physical and human geography of the territory it is argued that discourse is mutually immanent with material realities, including human practice and pre-discursive, nonhuman elements (chapter 3). The connection between environmental discourse and Mapuche culture is examined through the stereotype of the ecologically virtuous indigenous subject – a stereotype whose significance is changing as parallel neoliberal multicultural and sustainable development discourses boost the prestige of both Mapuche culture and ecological responsibility, even as the steady expansion of market society undermines both (Chapter 2). A program run by an NGO, funded by the Chilean state, and intended to market the agro-ecological produce of Mapuche small farmers to tourists, provides a concrete case of the intersection of neoliberal multiculturalism with environmental discourse (Chapter 4). The concept of “postmaterialism” is adapted, with a critical edge, in an exploration of the environmental activism and a certain dissatisfaction with modernity among college educated immigrants to the District from Santiago, North America and Europe (chapter 5). The process of globalization, through which Mapuche campesinos come to use environmentalist discourses, involves interactions among old and new information technologies, transportation technologies, and the nonanthropogenic realities of physical space-time and geography (chapter 6). The dissertation concludes with a normative argument about the ethical and epistemological inadequacy of globalizing market society.

Three experiments explored the way in which different framings of multiculturalism influence White American perceivers’ attitudes towards ethnic minorities and inclusion of them in the national group. Results showed that while participants always preferred Whites to ethnic minorities, the difference in liking was largest when multiculturalism was described as permanent and Whites were present (vs. absent) in that description. In contrast, differences in liking did not vary by the role of Whites when multiculturalism was described as temporary (Studies 1 and 2). Second, Whites were always seen as more American than ethnic minorities, but particularly when Whites were present (vs. absent) in the description of multiculturalism regardless of the temporal framing (Studies 1 and 2). Third, participants experienced a greater need to affirm the White status quo when multiculturalism was described as permanent and Whites were present (vs. absent) in the description (Study 2). Finally, bias against ethnic minorities was greatest when the description of multiculturalism affirmed the primacy of White heritage in the definition of the nation. Overall findings suggest that not explicitly including the majority group in multiculturalism may lead to better relations between them and minority groups.

The current research integrates social cognitive theories of psychological construals and information processing with theories of social identity to identify the conditions under which multiculturalism helps versus hinders positive intergroup relations. Three experiments investigated how abstract vs. concrete construals of multiculturalism impact majority group members' attitudes and behavioral intentions toward ethnic minorities in the US. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that construing multiculturalism in abstract terms by highlighting its broad goals reduced majority group members' prejudice toward ethnic minorities by decreasing the extent to which diversity is seen as threatening the national group. However, construing multiculturalism in concrete terms by highlighting specific ways in which its goals can be achieved increased majority group members' prejudice toward minorities by amplifying the extent to which diversity is seen as threatening the national group. Experiment 3 then revealed that a different concrete construal that incorporates values and practices of both majority and minority groups reduced perceived threats to the national group and in turn attenuated prejudice and increased desire for contact with ethnic minorities. Collectively, these experiments demonstrate when and why multiculturalism leads to positive versus negative intergroup outcomes, while identifying new ways in which multiculturalism can be successfully implemented in pluralistic nations.

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This research study examined 394 K-12 teacher interns' incorporation of multicultural content and theory into their teaching practices during a 16-week internship in schools, mostly located within a 30-mile radius of Mississippi State University. The teacher interns had completed all coursework and practicum hours required by their teacher education program. As part of their duties, the mentor teachers evaluated the interns' incorporation of multicultural content and theory, using two indicators from the Teacher Intern Assessment Instrument: "Uses knowledge of students’ backgrounds, interests, experiences, and prior knowledge to make instructions relevant and meaningful" and “Incorporates diversity, including multicultural perspectives into lessons”. To conduct the study, the researcher used descriptive and causal comparative research designs. Results from the paired- sample T-tests indicated a statistically significant difference between initial and final mean scores for both indicators. The Cohen's d effect size indicated the 16-week internship had a large affect on the scores provided by the mentor teachers for the 394 K-12 teacher interns. Findings from the study indicated improvement in the interns' overall incorporation of multicultural content and theory into their teaching practices. As a result of the findings from this study, the researcher recommended that professors and instructors increase the number of assignments, which provide opportunities for pre-service teachers to plan and demonstrate the incorporation of multiculturalism into their teaching practices. The researcher also recommended that facilitators of professional development from the Office of Clinical Field-based Instruction and Licensure increase the amount of time spent on the incorporation of multiculturalism and diversity.

I make two arguments in this dissertation. First, I argue that institutions and the people who managed them mattered in the fight for racial justice. At the University of Michigan, activists and state actors successfully pushed administrators to create new policies to increase minorities' access to the University, but it was University presidents, admissions officers, housing officials, deans and faculty members who had to put the ideal of racial justice into practice. These institutional managers, many of whom had never participated in a civil rights protest, had to rethink admissions and recruiting policies, craft new curriculum and counseling services and create new programs to address racial tension. In short, this is the story of what happened when institutional managers at the University of Michigan put the civil rights movement through the meat grinder of implementation. The second argument concerns the origins of the concepts and practices of diversity. Scholars have shown that activists, politicians and federal bureaucrats were responsible for the origins of affirmative action. In other words, institutions that implemented race-conscious admissions or hiring practices reacted to both the activists who insisted that institutions had a social responsibility to use affirmative action to address the racial inequities in American society, and to the state actors who enforced this ideal. If activists and state actors invented affirmative action, I argue that institutional managers created the concept of diversity. At the University of Michigan, the concept of diversity emerged out of a long struggle to implement race-conscious policies and carry out the ideal that the University had a social responsibility to address racial inequity in the state of Michigan. / History

This dissertation examines what I refer to as the politics of multiculturalism and the politics of friendship as represented in five texts: Rudyard Kipling's Kim, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, Meera Syal's novel Anita and Me, Syal's film adaptation Anita and Me, and Gurinder Chadha's film Bend it Like Beckham. I argue these texts are dialogically engaged with larger political discourses concerning race relations, anticipating or problematizing contemporary multiculturalist debates and practices. I read the theme of interracial friendship, prioritized in all five texts, as a strategic narrative device through which larger political questions of race relations get played out. The colonial novels suggest friendship as a potential antidote to interracial tensions, but show (albeit inadvertently in Kim) how it cannot induce a future egalitarian world if one race rules another. In doing so, these novels anticipate multiculturalist discourses, which celebrate diverse cultures but do nothing to address the political inequalities of racialized peoples. The British-Asian texts already assume the futility of multiculturalist celebrations of cultural diversity as a means for progressive race relations and disrupt ideals of fraternal friendship that overlook cultural difference for the sake of social harmony. Even so, these texts still express the necessity of building connections between diverse peoples. Through various narrative strategies, I argue they promote the notion of political friendship, which supports the enunciation not elision of cultural difference, negotiating rather than avoiding the terrain of uneven, incommensurable differences between peoples and cultures to move toward a more promising future. . / English