Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Leipzig, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation is based on field-work conducted at a khane-aman (home of peace) in Kabul in 2011-2012. In this dissertation, I have argued that the Afghan state vacillates between a rational-honorable mode and an unintelligible promiscuous mode. In its rational-honorable mode, the state institutes norms and regulations and develops institutional infrastructures for their implementation. The state also manifests another mode, which I am calling a promiscuous mode. To engage in promiscuity is to cater to the basest and most abject fantasies, to indulge in the regions of precariousness and vulnerability. This vacillation produces the Afghan state as both feared and desired, as transparent and opaque. Carnal punishments like flogging or stoning render present the distant force of the law into the context of everyday lives. Here the state takes on a different presence, a promiscuous one, in which the spectacular threat of violence is brought into the midst of the communal formations. Once the state institutes these punishments, it opens up the possibility of misplaced blames and wrongful retribution. It is in these realms of indecorum and solecism that the state reinvents and reveals itself.

This thesis contains a detailed study of contemporary South Asian diasporic literary and cinematic works in English. The majority of the works analyzed and discussed are those produced from the 1980s onwards. My research investigates how selected diasporic texts and films from South Asia problematize representations of homeland and host spaces. I reveal in the course of this study, how these works, actively negotiate alternative modalities of belonging that celebrate the plurality of cultural identities within and outside the homeland. This exploration of diasporic narratives of homeland and host land is explored by examining these narratives across two mediums: the cinematic and the literary. In so doing, the thesis initiates a dialogue between the two mediums and locates these selected diasporic works within a larger tapestry of contemporary cultural, literary and global contexts. The thesis shows that these literary and filmic representations celebrate as well as present an incisive critique of the different cultural spaces they inhabit. The thesis also reveals how, in representing the experiences of multiple-linguistic, geographical, historical dislocations, these texts invite readers to see the changing faces of diasporic cultures and identities. My thesis complements this analysis of representation with a broader analysis of the reception of these diasporic works. My analysis sets out to move away from the critical tendency to scrutinize texts in relation to a politicized rhetoric of reception which privileges a reading of texts through insider/outsider binarism, by drawing together and contrasting academic and popular responses in the reception of diasporic texts. In so doing, my thesis reads these texts as agents of cultural production, focusing on interpretative possibilities of the literary critical mode of reading and enabling nuanced modes of analysis attentive to issues of diasporic identity, the identity of nation-states and the emergent global dynamics of migrant narratives. The texts I analyze are Salman Rushdie‘s Midnight's Children (1981) and The Satanic Verses (1988), Micheal Ondaatje‘s Running in the Family (1982) and Anil's Ghost (2000), Rohinton Mistry‘s A Fine Balance (1995), Mohsin Hamid‘s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), and Hanif Kureishi‘s The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) and as well as two filmic texts, Mira Nair‘s The Namesake (2007) and Gurinder Chadha‘s Bend It Like Beckham (2001).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Sociology, December 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

This paper is a critical reflection upon commonly found distortions in the representations of the lives of Canadian women of South Asian origin in the Vancouver Sun. The strategy adopted consists in presenting first, the views of three South Asian women activists who acted as collaborators and analyzed the constituted sample of articles; second, feminist anthropological readings are used to draw upon a theory of discourse which looks at news-products as active elements in the construction of reality. It is then argued that by focusing on a narrow range of topics, the prevalent media discourse encourages news readers to develop a homogenous perspective on Canadian women of South Asian origin. The depictions in the press suggest that not only are these women oppressed, but this oppression originates in elements of their own culture and assimilation is only possible by relinquishing these "oppressive" cultural traits. It is argued that the media reinforces the dominant patriarchal, racist and classist discourses prevailing in Canadian society.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine,Dentistry and Health Sciences, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 278-292).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-287).

Thesis (M. Ed.)--York University, 2002. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-171). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ82931.

This paper is a critical reflection upon commonly found distortions in the representations of the lives of Canadian women of South Asian origin in the Vancouver Sun. The strategy adopted consists in presenting first, the views of three South Asian women activists who acted as collaborators and analyzed the constituted sample of articles; second, feminist anthropological readings are used to draw upon a theory of discourse which looks at news-products as active elements in the construction of reality. It is then argued that by focusing on a narrow range of topics, the prevalent media discourse encourages news readers to develop a homogenous perspective on Canadian women of South Asian origin. The depictions in the press suggest that not only are these women oppressed, but this oppression originates in elements of their own culture and assimilation is only possible by relinquishing these "oppressive" cultural traits. It is argued that the media reinforces the dominant patriarchal, racist and classist discourses prevailing in Canadian society. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate