Yes / It is argued in this paper that: ethnic minority population and their enterprises, predominated by South Asians, are growing faster than their mainstream counterparts in the UK; past research paid more attention to either South Asian ethnic minority SMEs based in and around London only or owned by Indian entrepreneurs only than South Asian ethnic minority SMEs elsewhere in the UK or owned by Pakistani and Bangladeshi entrepreneurs. Further, scholarly investigation is needed to explain: the relationship between educational levels and entrepreneurial orientation; and intra-ethnic minority entrepreneurial differences between South Asian ethnic minority entrepreneurs in the UK by expanding the research scope both geographically and contextually.

This study identifies a theological trajectory of first generation “believers” – those who allow the biblical text to speak authoritatively into their lives – within the Sindhi community of Pakistan. A passage from a contemporary translation of the New Testament in the Sindhi language – Luke 15:11-32, Jesus’ Parable of the Two Lost Sons – was presented in interview settings to discover how Sindhis express their faith as they consider the message of the parable. Culture texts generated by believers are compared to those generated by “traditional” Muslim Sindhis who do not accept the Bible as authoritative. Twenty–eight people identified as Sindhi believers were interviewed as well as twenty traditional Sindhi Muslims. Similarities and contrasts between the two groups are used to discover how the theological praxis of the believers is being impacted and how they are adjusting their view of God as they engage scripture. The description of theological trajectories that diverge from accepted traditional convictions is referred to as “mapping.” Six themes were identified from the interviews that are important for both groups while demonstrating distinct contrasts and similarities. The themes are (1) God is compassionate/kind/merciful/loving beyond our imagination, (2) God forgives his servants who repent, (3) Concepts of rewards, punishment and the fear of God, (4) The relationship of human beings with God (child versus servant), (5) Issues of justice, honor and status, and (6) The importance of obedience to God. An evaluation of the six themes revealed one overarching trajectory: a shift from a dominant master–servant view of the Divine–human relationship to a father–child paradigm. The research affirms that the shift to a biblically shaped view of God is not disconnected from previous beliefs, but is based on and shaped by a priori assumptions held by members of society. Commitment to the Bible as God’s word speaking authoritatively to believers creates a shift or trajectory of faith so that current perspectives, symbols and metaphors of God are being reformed and reconfirmed through the believers’ interaction with the Sindhi translation of scripture. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

This dissertation examines literary representations of the intersection between British imperialism and British and British-modeled public schools. I categorize British writers who have addressed this nexus in their literary works into two groups, idealists and realists, based on their views of British public schools, imperialism, and the effectiveness of the former in sustaining the latter. I present two examples of idealists, Henry Newbolt and the contributors to The Boy's Own Paper, followed by two examples of realists, Rudyard Kipling and E. M. Forster, who have often been viewed as opposites. I then provide an example of a South-Asian diasporic realist, Selvaduari, who builds upon the critiques of British realists by revealing the contemporary offspring of the marriage between British public schools and imperialism. By analyzing works by idealist and realist authors, I demonstrate the importance of public schools and school literature in promoting and sustaining as well as critiquing and condemning imperialism. / text

Background: Food insecurity amongst South Asian Americans is a major public health issue. The South Asian American (SAA) community is the third largest Asian community in the United States. Despite this fact, very few specific studies have been conducted to investigate the food needs and barriers that exist within the SAA community so as to successfully help them improve dietary habits. Methods: This study utilized a mixed methods convergent parallel design, where both qualitative and quantitative methods were conducted and analyzed separately and compared and contrasted at the end. Results: The results of this study demonstrate that ethnic grocery stores were limited and scattered for the population to access them. Also, some ingredients used by the population were not available in general grocery stores and the pricing was considerably higher. Results of the focus group show that what was considered healthy in their home country would be expensive in the United States and thus switching to cheaper options in the new country was norm. Furthermore, cultural/religious appropriate food items were limited due to cost and often impacted participants’ dietary behavior. In addition to expense, the availability of ethnic-specific food ingredients was limited and/or would require significant travel to obtain them, and thus further contributed to change their dietary habits. Conclusion: The results of the study highlight the need for more interventions focusing on the food habits of the SAA population, in terms of availability of ingredients and accessibility to the ethnic grocery stores in the Inland Empire of Southern California.

No description available.

This thesis is concerned with transnational literature and writers of the Middle Eastern and South Asian diasporas. It argues that the diasporic position of the authors enables their roles as comprador subjects. The thesis maintains that the figure of the comprador is always acted upon by its ontological predisposition, so that diasporic positionality often involves a single subject which straddles and speaks from two or more different subject positions. Comprador authors can be said to be co-opted by Western metropolitan publishing companies who stand to benefit by marketing the apparent marginality of the homelands about which these authors write. The thesis therefore proceeds from the notion that such a diasporic position is the paradoxical condition of the transnational subject or writer. I submit that there is, to some degree, a questionable element in the common political and cultural suggestions that emerge upon closer evaluation of diasporic literature. Indeed, a charge of complicity has been levelled against authors who write, apparently, to service two distinct entities – the wish to speak on behalf of a minority collective, as well as the imperial ‘centre’ which is the intended interlocutor of the comprador author. However, it is this difference, the implied otherness or marginality of the outsider within, which I argue is sometimes used by diasporic writers as a way of articulating with ‘authenticity’ the cultures and politics of their erstwhile localities. This thesis is concerned, therefore, with the representation of ‘the East’ in four novels by diasporic, specifically comprador writers, namely Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I suggest that the ‘third-world’ and transnational literature can also be a selling point for the transnational subject, whose representations may at times pander to preconceived ideas about ‘the Orient’ and its people. As an illustration of this double-bind, I offer a close reading of all the novels to suggest that on the one hand, the comprador author writes within the paradigm of the ‘writing back’ movement, as a counter-discourse to the Orientalist representations of the homeland. However, the corollary is that such an attempt to ‘write back’, in a sense, re-inscribes the very discourse it wishes to subvert, especially because the literature is aimed at a ‘Western’ audience. Moreover, the template of the comprador could be used to explain how a transnational post-9/11 text from an Afghan-American, for instance, may be put to the service of the imperial machine, and read, therefore, as a supporting document to the U.S. policy on Afghanistan.

This study identifies a theological trajectory of first generation “believers” – those who allow the biblical text to speak authoritatively into their lives – within the Sindhi community of Pakistan. A passage from a contemporary translation of the New Testament in the Sindhi language – Luke 15:11-32, Jesus’ Parable of the Two Lost Sons – was presented in interview settings to discover how Sindhis express their faith as they consider the message of the parable. Culture texts generated by believers are compared to those generated by “traditional” Muslim Sindhis who do not accept the Bible as authoritative. Twenty–eight people identified as Sindhi believers were interviewed as well as twenty traditional Sindhi Muslims. Similarities and contrasts between the two groups are used to discover how the theological praxis of the believers is being impacted and how they are adjusting their view of God as they engage scripture. The description of theological trajectories that diverge from accepted traditional convictions is referred to as “mapping.” Six themes were identified from the interviews that are important for both groups while demonstrating distinct contrasts and similarities. The themes are (1) God is compassionate/kind/merciful/loving beyond our imagination, (2) God forgives his servants who repent, (3) Concepts of rewards, punishment and the fear of God, (4) The relationship of human beings with God (child versus servant), (5) Issues of justice, honor and status, and (6) The importance of obedience to God. An evaluation of the six themes revealed one overarching trajectory: a shift from a dominant master–servant view of the Divine–human relationship to a father–child paradigm. The research affirms that the shift to a biblically shaped view of God is not disconnected from previous beliefs, but is based on and shaped by a priori assumptions held by members of society. Commitment to the Bible as God’s word speaking authoritatively to believers creates a shift or trajectory of faith so that current perspectives, symbols and metaphors of God are being reformed and reconfirmed through the believers’ interaction with the Sindhi translation of scripture. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

No description available.

My paper examines how American authors of the South Asian Diaspora (Indian-American or South Asian American) can be read 1) as simply American and 2) without regard to ethnicity. I develop this argument using American authors Jhumpa Lahiri, a first generation American of Bengali-Indian descent, and Bharati Mukherjee, an American of Bengali-Indian origin. I borrow from Deepika Bahri's materialist aesthetics in postcolonialism (in turn borrowed from members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory) and include theoretical insights from Rey Chow, Graham Huggan, and R. Radhakrishnan regarding multiculturalism, identity politics, and diaspora studies. Huggan and Radhakrishnan's insights are especially useful because their work deals with the South Asian diaspora, in England and the United States, respectively. After setting up a theoretical framework, I critique reviews and essays that privilege hyphenated, "Indian," or "South Asian" identity, and the resultant reading paradigm that fixes these authors into an ethnic minority category. I then trace aesthetic and thematic content of short stories from both Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and Mukherjee's The Middleman and Other Stories to demonstrate how these stories resist this ethno-cultural pigeonholing. My analysis exposes how ethnic and multicultural identity politics supplant aesthetic criticism and transform ethno-cultural identity into an aesthetic object, even if done as a celebration of hybridity or liminality as a putatively liberating space (hyphenated identity as embodying that space). Though my purpose is not to undermine the meaningful artwork and criticism instantiated in or about the "in-between" spaces of American culture, I demonstrate that an over-emphasis on ethnicity and culture (culture "other" than the majority culture in the U.S.) in fact stifles the opening of the American literary canon. Ethnicity and culture become ways of limiting the hermeneutics available to literary criticism because they become the only ways of reading, instead of one lens through which American literature is read.

No description available.