Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2002. Graduate Programme in Psychology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-141). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ71612.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-88).

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Victoria University (Melbourne, Vic.), 2009.

This dissertation uses the taxicab as a vehicle to tell the story of the Pakistani Muslim community from the 1970s onwards. The research includes an in-depth ethnography (2013-2014) on Muslim cab drivers that live and work in West Yorkshire, northern England, but who vary in age as well as place of birth. Most have their heritage in and around the villages of Mirpur, Azad Kashmir/Pakistan, as do the vast majority of the Pakistani diaspora in Britain. One driver's personal narrative organizes my thesis: a former rude boy turn revert (practicing Muslim), whose trajectory is situated in the 1980s and 1990s specifically. Exploring themes of family, community, religious identities, and violence, ‘Cab Driving in the Spirit of Islam’ refers to the richness of Islamic religious traditions as well as the specter which continues to haunt the liberal imaginary, both of which help shape the world of Muslim cab driving. Cab driving is a hyper-individualistic pursuit, the first steps towards integration into mainstream society and corollary normative acceptability. Yet paradoxically, for these South Asian Muslims, cab driving has stabilized into a communal infrastructure, a way of life for over three decades now, and as integral to them as the two Islamic traditions in their lives, Barelwi and Tablighi respectively. In the world of Muslim cab driving, critical knowledge is shared and passed on as religious community is continuously produced. The circulating cab driver occupies a pivotal mediating role, full of potential and promise, but also a position fraught with risk. As a figure of access and “plain person” in Alasdair MacIntyre’s words, he is an integral religious authority in this sociality, readily available to dispense and enjoin the Islamic good. It requires virtue and skill to live according to the sunna, the model of ethicality based on the Prophet’s example, the Prophet motive, rather than being dictated by the profit motive. In doing so, the expert driver turns a possible vulnerability into a potentiality. The study has five parts. In ‘Formations of the Rude Boy,’ I introduce the “boys,” figures of resistance and rebellion analogous to Paul Willis’ working-class “lads.” Via the critical medium of the car, the boy becomes the sovereign-beast. He takes possession of his fate, the ineluctable predicament of degraded cab driver, position occupied by his father and "uncles." However, the significant difference from my findings and Willis’ research is that the world of cab driving mediates Islamic religious traditions to produce the Islamic counterpublic (Charles Hirschkind), thereby unsettling the normative regime where school complements workplace. The sphere of pious cab driving is tantamount to an education in the Islamic virtues, described in Part II, ‘Righteous Turn.’ The overlay of revivalist discourse and practice onto the cabbing infrastructure, especially the spiritual exchanges in the taxi base, enables the rude boy’s ‘reversion,’ an un-becoming Sovereign and a life-altering trajectory shared by a significant constituency in this Islamic revival. In his pious turn, the former “boy” sees the other side to the tradition, one of care and concern, rather than the policing which he aspired to rebel against. Part III, ‘Riding with the Enemy,’ examines the specter of “Islam” in liberalism. Drivers work all over England, including the country proper, villages and market towns whose residents are predominantly non-Muslim whites. The driver is thus at the core of liberalism, both materially and psychologically. The Muslim driver is a marked target, a convenient opportunity and point of access, resulting in a concentration of violence in the cab. In the possibility that the ride turns into a sexual encounter, the Muslim driver is the “intimate enemy.” I investigate the gendered dimension in this mode of everyday violence, tying together the performance of expected gender roles to a resurgent nationalist sentiment that necessitates the need to disavow the Muslim/the migrant within. I trace the emergence of this nationalist subjectivity in the decline of the white working-class while attending to the spatial transformations and movements taking place in these landscapes. In Part IV, ‘Care Drivers,’ I consider the driver’s response in this vulnerable predicament as the putatively lacking migrant. The pious driver learns to depend and trust in God. He draws upon the significance of the social position of ‘lack’ and ‘beginning’ in Islamic tradition, most notably the Prophet’s companion, Bilal, the exemplar par excellence of embodying piety and practicing sabr, the virtue of endurance, in the face of degradation, inferiority and violence. While Muslim cab driving has formed a way of life, it is far from stagnant. In Part V, ‘Revaluation of the Saints,’ I explore the shifts and transformations that result in the transnational circulation of goods and people, as the returning émigré-driver is endowed with a saint-like authority, produced out of the two dominant South Asian Muslim traditions, ‘Sufi’ Barelwi and ‘Deobandi’ Tablighi, mediated by cab driving and the migration process. I analyze changes in the religious authority and practices of these Muslims, a matter of ‘knowing the men,’ their good deeds and actions, as they strive to ‘live Medina’ in modern England.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2009. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 48-02, page: .

The purposes of this study were to identify acceptable procedures for organizing, managing and administering a recreation service; to state objectives; to define the role of the project recreation manager; to establish procedures for management; and to set the pattern of relationships between the project recreation manager and the Pakistani assistant recreation managers. Because as Allen states, “organization is, essentially, organization for for management and the structure of the business itself cannot be designed successfully unless we know the purpose of that which we build”, it became important to correlate the organization of the study with the organization of the structure for operation of the recreation service. Thus the problem was: (1) to determine the valid principles guiding organization and management and to apply those principles to a specific problem in organization, the operation of a recreation service for the Pakistani personnel of the Mangla Dam Contractors; (2) to select procedures based on those principles; (3) to determine the most acceptable techniques and most effective methods for applying procedures; and (4) to determine the influence of the culture and religion on activity programming. In undertaking the administration, and particularly the managements, of a Pakistani staff, the most important objective was the determination of a guiding philosophy and the defining of goals and objectives. Dimock emphasizes the importance of a philosophy in the statement, “administration is more than learned responses, well chosen techniques; a bundle of tricks. It is not even a science and never ought to become a hard and fast method. It is more than an art. It is a philosophy.” Such a philosophy guided the selection of a staff capable of meaning decentralized recreation offices constructively and with minimum of trial and error.

Yes / Currently there is no consensus regarding services required to help families with consanguineous marriages manage their increased genetic reproductive risk. Genetic services for communities with a preference for consanguineous marriage in the UK remain patchy, often poor. Receiving two disparate explanations of the cause of recessive disorders (cousin marriage and recessive inheritance) leads to confusion among families. Further, the realisation that couples in non-consanguineous relationships have affected children leads to mistrust of professional advice. British Pakistani families at-risk for recessive disorders lack an understanding of recessive disorders and their inheritance. Such an understanding is empowering and can be shared within the extended family to enable informed choice. In a three-site qualitative study of British Pakistanis, we explored family and health professional perspectives on recessively inherited conditions. Our findings suggest, first, that family networks hold strong potential for cascading genetic information, making the adoption of a family centred approach an efficient strategy for this community. However, this is dependent on provision of high quality and timely information from health care providers. Secondly, families’ experience was of ill-coordinated and time-starved services, with few having access to specialist provision from Regional Genetics Services; these perspectives were consistent with health professionals’ views of services. Thirdly, we confirm previous findings that genetic information is difficult to communicate and comprehend, further complicated by the need to communicate the relationship between cousin marriage and recessive disorders. A communication tool we developed and piloted is described and offered as a useful resource for communicating complex genetic information. / Department of Health

No / WHO advice suggests a family-centred approach for managing the elevated risk of recessively inherited disorders in consanguineous communities, whilst emerging policy recommends community engagement as an integral component of genetic service development. This paper explores the feasibility of the family-centred approach in the UK Pakistani origin community. The study took place within a context of debate in the media, professional and lay circles about cousin marriage causing disability in children. Using qualitative methods, a total of six single-sex focus group discussions (n = 50) were conducted in three UK cities with a high settlement of people of Pakistani origin. Tape-recorded transcripts were analysed using framework analysis. Kinship networks within Pakistani origin communities are being sustained and marriage between close blood relatives continues to take place alongside other marriage options. Study participants were critical of what was perceived as a prevalent notion that cousin marriage causes disability in children. They were willing to discuss cousin marriage and disability, share genetic information and engage with genetic issues. A desire for accurate information and a public informed about genetic issues was articulated whilst ineffective communication of genetic risk information undermined professionals in their support role. This study suggests a community that is embracing change, one in which kinship networks are still active and genetic information exchange is taking place. At the community level, these are conditions supportive of the family-centred approach to genetic testing and counselling.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1984.