Saudi society is undergoing dramatic social transformation, brought about by rapid industrialisation and massive urbanisation. In this period of haste, home environments have experienced significant changes. There was a strong temptation by architects to pick Western houses designs off-the-shelf and by occupants to furnish their houses with modern imported furniture. A surplus economy made such 'shopping' possible. But while the Saudi society was transforming it would be an over simplification to term it `Westernising'. The new home environment leads us to question: how does modern furniture relate to the present-day Saudi family? Does modern furniture hinder or support Saudis' cultural values and identity? The aim of this study is to identify the influence of the use and meaning of modern furniture on the home environment in Jeddah. The study examines the home environment as a system within which constituents communicate continuously to reach different stages of compatibility. People communicate to furniture by using it and shaping its form, and furniture communicates to people by conveying how it is used and what it stands for (meaning). A model of nine stages has been developed to identify the possible relationships between form, use and meaning. The model is then used to analyse r, the relationship between occupants and furniture in both the traditional and contemporary home environment. The methodology of the study is qualitative. The data collection includes in-depth interviews with older women who lived in the traditional houses of Jeddah and housewives in contemporary houses, house floor plans, site and museums visits, a literature review, statistical data of furniture and appliances imported to Saudi Arabia, and other data related to social changes in Saudi Arabia. It has been found that traditional furniture was highly compatible with use, values and occupants' expression of identity. Modern furniture was introduced mainly for its meaning function and was incompatible with cultural values. Because cultural values have resisted change, some traditional furniture is still used and new local furniture was developed. This has led to an increase in the number of rooms, as some are used to express identity while others are used to maintain activities driven by traditional values.

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This thesis is an analysis of the representations of Deaf identity in a major English Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Star. A qualitative case-based discourse analysis was used to examine a documented interaction between the Toronto Star and eleven Deaf community leaders and allies. This research found that the most frequent use of ‘deaf’ is metaphorical and of the non-metaphorical uses, ‘Deaf’ identity is predominantly constructed from a pathological paradigm. The findings of this research provide a valuable perspective from a non-dominate cultural group, the Canadian Deaf community, on the representation of Deaf identity in mainstream print news media. It also makes linkages between the representations of Deaf identity and the experiences of these representations by Deaf people, and links the perspectives of this cultural group to the broader body of research related to minority identity negotiation in mainstream media.

This research project is focused on contemporary identity issues facing Muslim Mainlanders in Taiwan. Muslim Mainlanders are an ethnic subgroup of the Mainlanders who fled to Taiwan after the communist take-over of China. This project argues that multiple communal identities interact and are pragmatically used by Muslim Mainlanders depending on social context. Specifically, ethnicity, nationality and religion are identities which individuals understand according to unique social experiences. This research provides an opportunity to update the literature on the Islamic community in Taipei. The thesis argues that global processes are causing an Islamic revival. This transformation is occurring alongside the movement of Mainlanders to identify as Taiwanese. Both movements are nationalistic because they provide opportunities to move beyond a heritage which originates in China. Ce projet de recherche se concentre sur les questions d'identité auxquels est confrontée la Continentaux musulmans à Taiwan. Continentaux musulmans sont un sous-groupe ethnique des Continentaux qui ont fui à Taiwan après la prise de contrôle communiste de la Chine. Ce projet fait valoir que plusieurs identités communautaires interagissent et sont utilisés de façon pragmatique par Continentaux musulmans selon le contexte social. Plus précisément, l'origine ethnique, la nationalité et la religion sont des identités dont les individus comprennent selon les expériences sociales uniques. Cette recherche offre la possibilité de mettre à jour la documentation sur la communauté islamique à Taipei. La thèse soutient que les processus mondiaux sont à l'origine d'un renouveau islamique. Cette transformation se produit aux côtés du mouvement des Continentaux à s'identifier comme taiwanais. Les deux mouvements sont nationalistes, car ils offrent des possibilités d'aller au-delà d'un patrimoine qui est originaire de Chine.

Cuisine is a topic worthy of interest because it is often associated with a specific national culture. Among the various national cuisines, Chinese cuisine is probably one of the most fascinating, all the more so because the culture-specific characteristics of Chinese cuisine have resulted in its typical diversity. Furthermore, Chinese cuisine can be considered diasporic and capable of breaking cultural boundaries as Chinese overseas communities have introduced their cuisine to various parts of the world over the past two centuries. In translation studies, culinary identity is viewed by scholars as an extension of translation activity. However, Chinese culinary identity hasn't received the same attention that other areas of research in translation studies have, probably because of its culture-specific traits. My thesis will focus on one example of this important phenomenon: the "translation" of Chinese culinary culture in Canadian food discourse. Renowned for its multiculturalism, Canada—perhaps more than any other country—has embraced "Chinese food" as one of its mainstream international cuisines, and Chinese cuisine, on the other hand, has adopted Canadian cultural values and has become practically inseparable from contemporary Canadian culture. In this respect, the question becomes to what extent has "Chineseness," which refers here to Chinese cultural identity, been constructed within the Canadian culinary sphere? My thesis involves an analysis of the translation of Chineseness by Chinese-Canadians in food discourse from a cultural perspective. In the first chapter, I will introduce the discussion of Chineseness in sociology and in translation studies. The second chapter deals with culinary identity in both food studies and translation studies. In the final chapter, I analyze Chineseness, as it is represented by culinary identity in the Canadian context, by observing HeartSmart Chinese Cooking, a cookbook written by a Chinese-Canadian chef in English for a Canadian readership.

This research project proposes to examine the role of religious/secular identities and spaces in processes of newcomer settlement. By focusing on how newcomer participants performed socio-spatially contingent religious/secular identities and experienced religious/secular spaces fluidly, I shed light on the importance of these negotiations of identity and space as settlement strategy. I examined these settlement strategies through participants’ navigation of religious organizations and other spatial contexts such as the workplace, school and home. Informed by their individual agency, participants were shown to perform identities and experience different spaces in such a way as to address a variety of structural constraints and settlement challenges. This thesis research was conducted using a feminist geography framework, drawing on qualitative research methods. I relied on a mixed-methods approach, using participant observation, individual semi-structured interviews and mental maps to collect data. My data collection took place in Ottawa, focusing on the settlement experiences of 11 newcomers to the National Capital Region of Canada.

This thesis uses the findings from a study of pharmacists and non-pharmacists to explore the concept of professional identity in pharmacy. Pharmacists are well-established as providers of healthcare in hospitals and community pharmacies and their position as dispensers of prescribed medicines, and advisors on medicines in general seem relatively secure, as does their clinical role in hospital and their extended role in community pharmacy. However, previous studies have suggested that there is still ambiguity over the identity of pharmacists. Government policy in particular can be oblique and there seemed to be a need to clarify who pharmacists are. Consequently, a study was designed to address this topic. The concept of professional identity in pharmacy is made up of three dimensions: how pharmacists see themselves, how pharmacists believe others see them and how others do see pharmacists. This study investigated all three dimensions of professional identity in pharmacy.The research adopted a grounded theory approach and a qualitative study was undertaken in two stages. The first stage involved 21 pharmacists taking part in group interviews. The second stage involved 85 pharmacists, pharmacy support staff, nurses, doctors and lay pharmacy users participating in individual interviews. The data were analysed using the framework method.Analysis of the data generated for this study revealed nine identities for pharmacists: the medicines maker; the supplier; the scientist; the medicines advisor; the clinical practitioner; the minor medical practitioner; the unremarkable character; the business person and the manager. The pharmacists' identity as medicines advisor is considered the core identity which exists for pharmacists today and this manifests itself in different ways, depending on the setting or organisation worked in.

This thesis is concerned with the philosophical problems of personal identity and personal survival. In the first case, we are concerned to establish what our identity as persons consists in at any instant. In the second case we are concerned to establish what our survival as the self-same (i.e.:numerically identical) person consists in. That is, we wish to know what it means to say that one is the same person now which one was ten years ago or will be ten years from now. I first introduce the distinction between the epistemological question of how we can know these things and the metaphysical question of what these notions actually consist in and claim that much confusion has resulted from the conflation of these two. Further, I explicitly claim that this thesis is intended as a solution to the latter only. I then move on to an historical survey of the major theories of personal identity that have been held since the time of Descartes. After demonstrating how these theories are inadequate, I introduce and explicate the theory defended here which, it is claimed, is a novel one. This novelty consists in the following two distinctions: Firstly, that between persons and sentient beings and, secondly, that between qualitative and non-qualitative psychological relations. It is claimed that sentient beings incorporate the latter in a way which makes them immune to the sorts of contextual problems that typically affect theories of personal identity. Having already established that we are all sentient beings as well as persons, I then claim that the former concept is the fundamental notion of any theory of personal identity and survival. I subsequently consider reductionism, which currently prevails in the field, and conclude that such a position inevitably leads to many counterintuitive results. I then compare reductionism with the theory defended here and conclude that the latter is preferable, since it allows us to explain personal identity without abandoning our intuitions regarding what is involved in these matters. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

This study was undertaken to evaluate the part which nascent skeptical doubt plays in shaping the course of adolescent social-cognitive development. Past attempts to relate the achievement of formal operations to the tasks of identity formation and other signature concerns of adolescence have yielded equivocal results. This failure is seen to be due in part to the "all or none" character often ascribed to formal operational thought. If formal reasoning is seen to be achieved in one piece, then there is little hope of accounting for the variability within adolescent development by pointing to such a monolith. It is argued in this thesis that the intellectual changes which accompany the acquisition of formal operational competence set in motion a series of developments which seriously undermine the typical adolescent's previous sense of epistemic certainty. The epistemic model proposed in the thesis leads to the hypothesis that, in response to such doubts, young persons adopt one or another of three contrasting interpretive levels or strategies each of which then dictates much about their subsequent solutions to the problems of identity formation and commitment. To test these predictions, 110 high school aged young people were prescreened using a battery of Piagetian measures and classified as being either concrete or formal operational. Those subjects who were clearly classifiable (N = 70) were individually administered: (1) Adams' Objective Measure of Ego identity Status (OM-EIS) which permits classification of respondents into diffused, foreclosed, moratorium, and achieved identity statuses; and (2) The Epistemic Doubt Interview, which is comprised of 2 story problems and a semi-structured interview procedure, based on the work of Piaget, Perry, and Kitchener and King, and designed to indicate both the presence of generic doubt and the respondent's characteristic coping strategy for dealing with such uncertainties. These include realistic, dogmatic, skeptical, and rational epistemic stances. The results indicate that the young people selected on the basis of the cognitive developmental screening procedures could be reliably and exhaustively assigned to a single epistemic level or to a modal and a single developmentally adjacent level. Only formal operational subjects appreciated the generic nature of the doubt undermining their epistemic certainty while the concrete operational subjects were largely confined to the ranks of the epistemic realists. Predictions regarding the anticipated relation between epistemic stance and ego identity status were supported. Virtually all of the subjects scored as epistemic realists were found in the diffusion and foreclosure statuses. Of those subjects who evidenced an appreciation of the generic nature of doubt, only epistemic dogmatists were scored as foreclosed. Only subjects scored as epistemic skeptics or rationalists were routinely found to be in the moratorium or achieved statuses. The results are taken as strong support for the claim that epistemic doubt plays a central role in shaping the course of adolescent social-cognitive development. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

In the process of negotiating land claims, First Nations in British Columbia and Canada face the challenging task of presenting a unified identity without trampling on the inevitable diversity within their communities. This thesis explores the perceived conflict between unity and diversity amongst Native populations. It brings together fieldwork in St6:l o territory in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, performance theory, and contemporary discourse surrounding identity production at this particular point in time. The work examines performance of identity as a form of social action and the variability of identity performances. Data was gathered from interviews with people involved with two sites where educational programmes are being developed for local students: Xa:ytem Longhouse Interpretive Centre at Hatzic Rock, near Mission, and Longhouse Extension Programme/ Shxwt'a:selhawtxw on St6:l o Nation grounds in Chilliwack. The theme explored in this thesis is that just as unity is politically expedient, diversity and its management is an important facet of the performance of identity. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate