This thesis focuses on the structural and behavioural factors that placed South Asian immigrant women living with HIV/AIDS in the Greater Toronto Area at risk. Informed by Connell's social theory of gender (1987), this study examined the role of hegemonic masculinity in legitimizing male power and contributing to the HIV risk of these women. By conducting one-on-one interviews with 12 HIV-positive immigrant women, meaningful constructions of the women's narratives and accounts of their experiences relative to HIV were created. This study examined the intersection of power ideologies such as gender, race and class in specific contexts as they generated particular experiences that affected women's risk for HIV. Following a community-based research approach, a collaborative relationship was established with the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention where qualitative methods of analysis and an inductive approach with an iterative process were followed. Factors such as isolation, economic dependence on their husbands, discrimination, racism, investment in psychologically and emotionally abusive relationships, combined with the absence of support from their family of origin exacerbated the women's risk of HIV infection. The strong ties exhibited by most of the women to their religious/ethnic communities helped sustain a gender-based social hierarchy. To facilitate dialogue and social change for South Asian women, gender and culture need to be situated in social and historical contexts. As such, programs should be understood within a larger critical understanding of the social power relations and history of Canadian immigration patterns. Using anti-racist frameworks, initiatives should address violence against women, while tackling interrelated issues (i.e., housing, poverty, etc.). This work draws attention to oppressions through the experiences of a community of women who are rarely given a voice within the context of research on HIV/AIDS. It will be also helpful for Ontario’s HIV prevention strategy and the field of women's sexual health.

In an attempt to close the gaps between diaspora and regional studies an Afro-Asian comparative perspective on African and Indian identity will be explored in the countries of Guyana and South Africa. The overlying aim of the ethnographic research will be to see whether blackness can be used as a unifier to those belonging to enslaved and indentured diasporas. Comparisons will be made between the two race models of the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean worlds. A substantial portion will be set aside for a critique of the concept of Coolitude including commentary on V.S. Naipaul. Further, mixing, creolization, spirituality and the cultural politics of Black Consciousness, multiculturalism, and dreadlocks will be exemplified as AfroAsian encounters.

This thesis constructs a history of reading for South Asia (1857-1914) through an examination of the eccentric relationships that marginal colonial agents and subjects - soldiers, peasants, office clerks and women - developed with everyday forms of writing. Drawing on the methodologies of the history of the book, and literary and cultural histories, it creates a counterpoint to the dominant view of imperial self-fashioning as built on reading intensively and at length. Instead, it contends that the formation of identities in colonial South Asia, whether compliant or dissenting, was predicated on superficial forms of textual engagement, leaving the documents of empire most likely misread, unread, or simply read in part. I illustrate this argument through four chapters, each of which brings together extensive archival material and nonliterary texts, as well as both canonical and little-known literary works. The first two discuss the circulation of unread texts in colonial institutions: the army and the government office. I study Garnet Wolseley's pioneering war manual, The Soldier's Pocket-book for Field Service, a book that soldiers refused to read. This is juxtaposed, in the second study, with an examination of the reception of the bureaucratic document in illiterate peasant communities, explored through the colonial archive and ethnographic novels. In the third and fourth chapters, I focus on texts consumed in part. I turn to the Bengali Hindu almanac, a form that made the transition from manuscript to print in this period, and examine how it trained its new-found readership of English-educated office clerks to oscillate smoothly between British-bureaucratic and local forms of time, as well as to read quickly and selectively. I end with a study of The Indian Ladies' Magazine, and suggest that the cosmopolitan form of the periodical and editorial practices of extracting and summarising gave women unprecedented access to a network of global print.

The world business has been changed tremendously during last thirteen year. This is all due to the revolutionary dot com digital business. The dot com digital business has given big swing to world business. No one now can deny the power and capabilities of the internet technology. However, from 2001 onwards the growth of internet business has declined. Our paper investigates the major reasons behinds this. The focus of our paper is south Asian market because we believe this region has more potential of growth within internet business as compare to any other part of the world. The focal point of our paper is to identify obstacles which are hindering the growth of service based internet commerce in south Asian market. We have also come up with the possible solutions which when applied can create a room for big growth of internet business.

This thesis explores the origin of one of the most engrossing concerns of the post-colonial Indian state, that is, its extensive, intricate, and expensive feeding arrangements for the civilians. It tracks the colonial origin of the post-colonial welfare state, of which state-management of food is one of the most publicized manifestations. This thesis examines the intervention of the late colonial British state in food procurement and distribution in India during the Second World War, and various forms of such intervention, such as the introduction of food rationing and food austerity laws. It argues that the war necessitated actions on the part of the colonial state to secure food supplies to a vastly expanded British Indian Army, to the foreign Allied troops stationed in India, and to the workers employed in war-industries. The thesis brings forth the constitutional and political predicaments that deprived the colonial central government's food administration of success. It further reveals how the bitter bargaining about food imports into India between the Government of India and the War Cabinet in Britain hampered the state efforts to tackle the food crisis. By discussing the religious and cultural codes vis-à-vis food consumption that influenced government food policies, this thesis has situated food in the historiography of consumption in colonial India. In addition to adopting a political approach to study food, it has also applied sociological treatment, particularly while dealing with how the wartime scarcity, and consequent austerity laws, forced people to accept novel consumption cultures. It also contributes to the historiography of 'everyday state'. Through its wartime intervention in everyday food affairs, the colonial state that had been distant and abstract in the perception of most common households, suddenly became a reality to be dealt with in everyday life within the domestic site. Thus, the macro state penetrated micro levels of existence. The colonial state now even developed elaborate food surveillance to gather intelligence about violation of food laws. This thesis unravels the responses of some of the political and religious organizations to state intervention in quotidian food consumption. Following in this vein, through a study of the political use of famine-relief in wartime Bengal, it introduces a new site to the study of communal politics in India, namely, propagation of Hindu communal politics through distribution of food by the Hindu Mahasabha party. Further, it demonstrates how the Muslim League government's failure to prevent the Great Bengal Famine of 1943-44 was politically used by the Mahasabha to oppose the League's emerging demand for the creation of Pakistan.

This thesis explores the working lives of British Born South Asian Ethnic Minorities (BB SAEMs), critiquing the homogenous identities ascribed to them in previous research. Its methodology is life-story interviews analysed using Nvivo. This identified four hybrid categories emerging from two cultures. I fitted myself neatly into just one. However the reflexive analysis required in good qualitative research led me to realise that I fitted into not one, but all four categories, and into others not yet recognised. At this point, my thesis had to take a new turn. An auto-ethnographic, moment-by-moment study led to an ‘unhybrid categorisation of hybridities’ acknowledging ‘fuzziness and mélange, cut ‘n’ mix, and criss and crossover’ where identity is a complex-mix, always in flux. I conclude not only with this new theory of identity formation in the working lives of BB SAEMs, but also by arguing that by imposing the requirement to categorise, research methods lead to over-simplification and misunderstanding.

The emergence of grammatical norms in postcolonial varieties of English has been argued to manifest itself in quantitative preferences rather than in categorical distinctions (cf. Schneider 2007: 46). Several studies on Indian English, however, have shown that this South Asian variety has developed innovative uses, i.e. marked qualitative differences, for the additive focus marker also and the restrictive focus markers only and itself as presentational focus markers (Bhatt 2000, Lange 2007, Balasubramanian 2009), e.g. Since 7 am itself, schoolchildren started to reach the venue smartly dressed and armed with their queries and waited patiently for more than two hours for the programme to begin. (IN_TI_38032) Number-related mismatches in agreement between the antecedent in plural and the focus marker in singular have also been attested. This structural phenomenon may be indicative of a grammaticalization process of the focus marker itself to an invariant focus particle as illustrated in the following example. He said the temporary peace achieved by leaders of the country was a victory for the Sri Lankan Security Forces itself as it was gained by the Security Forces at the expense of their lives. (LK_DN_2004-07-02) The present study is concerned with variation and convergence in the use of focus marking with itself in South Asian Englishes, i.e. Bangladeshi English, Indian English, Maldivian English, Nepali English, Pakistani English and Sri Lankan English. On the basis of the South Asian varieties of English (SAVE) corpus, an 18-million word web-based newspaper corpus featuring acrolectal language use of the varieties under scrutiny (cf. Bernaisch et al. 2011), we report on the pervasiveness of (presentational) focus marking with itself. Although the novel usage of itself as illustrated above certainly represents a feature of South Asian English, there is a clear pattern characterised by unity and diversity with regard to the individual varieties of English in South Asia.Despite the pan-South Asian presence of presentational itself, quantity, grammaticalization processes and structural combinability provide grounds to argue that presentational itself is more firmly rooted in some South Asian varieties of English (e.g. Indian English and Sri Lankan English) than in others (Bangladeshi English or Maldivian English).

The aging Canadian population is becoming increasingly ethno-culturally diverse primarily due to immigration. This, together with research indicating increased likelihood of long-term residential care (LTRC) use at older ages and challenges in providing these services, prompt important questions about whether LTRC services are prepared to provide culturally responsive and competent care to immigrant and ethno-cultural minority older adults (EMOA). This ethnographic study, informed by a critical theoretical perspective, explored these questions from the perspectives of South Asian older adults (SAOAs) and their family caregivers (FCGs). In-depth interviews with 18 SAOAs in LTRC, assisted living and those at home, their FCGs, and seven key informants from LTRC and the South Asian (SA) community (n=43) were undertaken. These interviews, in addition to 220 hours of participant observation in two LTRC facilities, provided information regarding the needs, preferences, experiences and situation of SAOAs in LTRC as well as how SA families make decisions regarding the use of such services. A select review of provincial policy, residential care regulation, health authority and facility documents, exposed taken-for-granted assumptions in how care and services are provided and the sociopolitical context of LTRC provision. Study findings suggest that LTRC services are challenged to meet the needs of immigrant and EMOA and reflect unequal and inequitable care, illuminated by the differential impact of macro-policies and resource-constrained LTRC environments on SAOAs and their families and on the ability of existing LTRC services to provide person-centred care. This inequity in service provision has implications for immigrant and EMOA and their family members in light of findings that the decision to move to LTRC is essentially a (non) decision influenced by a range of social structural factors that interact to necessitate the move to LTRC. Study findings revealed the salience of socio-economic status and economic resources in particular, in the (non) decision for LTRC placement. The findings from this study along with demographic shifts in the aging Canadian population call for LTRC service providers and policy makers to actively prepare for increasing ethno-culturally diverse resident populations and point to the need for equity informed approaches to the care of older adults. / Graduate / 2022-03-31

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