Island diasporas: Perceptions of Indo-Caribbean protégés regarding the effects of their cross-cultural mentoring experiences in the United States

Mentoring is defined as an "intense caring relationship in which persons with more experience work with less experienced persons to promote both professional and personal development" (Caffarella, 1992, p. 38). It is "a powerful emotional, and passionate interaction whereby the mentor and protégé experience...intellectual growth and development" (Galbraith & Zelenak, 1991, p. 126). In cross-cultural mentoring, mentors and protégés from different cultures confront social and cultural identities, goals, expectations, values, and beliefs (Cross & Lincoln, 2005) to "achieve a higher level of potency in education and society" (Mullen, 2005, p. 6). Cross-cultural mentoring research explores attitudes, behaviors, linguistics and motivators of the more visible racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. (Elmer, 1986, Ulmer, 2008). The cross-cultural mentoring experiences of Indo-Caribbeans in the U.S. are obscured from the research despite their rich socio-historic culture. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions of Indo-Caribbean protégés regarding the effects of their cross-cultural mentoring experiences in the United States. Phenomenology is "the systematic attempt to uncover and describe...the internal meaning structures, of lived experience [by studying the] particulars or instances as they are encountered" (Van Manen, 1990, p. 10). Criterion and snowball sampling were used to recruit 15 participants. A semi-structured interview guide was used to gather data and Creswell's (2007) simplified version of Moustakas's (1994) Modification of the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen Method of Analysis of Phenomenological Data was used to analyze the data. Three themes emerged: (a) "Sitting at the feet of gurus" taught protégés how to accept guidance, (b) Guru-Shishya: Learning and Discipleship, ways that protégés perceived mentors' guidance related to work, skill acquisition, and social or emotional support, and (c) Samavartan sanskar: Building Coherence, helped protégés understand, manage and find meaning. Protégés' goals and professional expectations determined what they wanted from cross-cultural mentoring relationships and what they were willing to endure within those relationships. Since participants valued achievement and continuous improvement, mentor support was integral to making meaning and developing a sense of coherence in their lives. Implications regarding cross-cultural mentoring relationships together with recommendations for future research conclude the study.

Arcabouço jurídico normativo pedagógico da lei federal 10.639/2003 na universidade federal de Uberlândia: avanços e limites

This search addresses the public policies that directly or indirectly corroborate for the implementation of the Brazilian Law number 10.639/2003 in Federal University of Uberlândia and it analyzes the affirmative actions in this context. The study aims to answer some questions such as: Why we have found difficulties in implementing the Law 10.639/2003 and its correlate legislation in the institutions responsible for teachers formation, particularly in the courses of History, Visual Arts, Portuguese Language and Literature and Education teachers? We started from the hypothesis that implementing the Law 10.639/2003 is considered by popular movements that fight for the emancipation of black population and for its rights consider such actions as a form of eradicating racial and ethnic prejudice which are still present in our society. The methodology is based on case study, which allows the triangulation to other methodological approaches such as qualitative analysis and bibliographic search. The investigation instruments were: I. Bibliographic sources including books, papers, periodic and so one; II. Documental sources: specific legislation on the theme (Brazilian Federal Law 10.639/2003, Resolution CNE/CP 1/2004 and others; III. Oral sources obtained from semi structured interviews with coordinators of the selected Graduation courses. Critical multicuturalism according to McLaren (1999) allowed us to approach our research object in order to understand its plural characteristics, specially reading the different aspects that permeate the relationship between culture and identity, cultural differences and power relationship in modern society. In the study, we did not perceive the involvement of the Higher Education professionals in order to implement Law 10.639/2003. The problem perceived for implementing the law and its pedagogical normative legal framework is the personal and institutional attitude, because every subject involved in it has a direct responsibility. We cannot believe that the institutions may claim lack of knowledge and research in the area as impediments to implementing the disciplines and the pedagogical contents concerning to the Law nor contracting researcher experts and scholars on this topic to compose the frames of the University.

Impossible Identification : Contemporary Art, Politics and the Palestinians in Israel

Quel est le sens donné à l’art par la minorité palestinienne d’Israël dans un contexte où l’État se définit uniquement en termes ethno-nationaux et religieux ? Les écrits sur l’art en contextes coloniaux et postcoloniaux ont tendance à considérer l’art comme une ressource de revendication identitaire face à une situation de domination. Autrement dit, l’art est souvent présenté comme un acte politique de reconnaissance à travers l’affirmation d’une contre-identité. Suite à un travail intensif de terrain ethnographique dans la région, cette recherche démontre que pour les artistes palestiniens en Israël, l’aspect politique de l’art ne vient pas de sa capacité à exprimer des revendications identitaires. À travers l’observation des pratiques et l’analyse des discours des artistes, elle remet en question la relation présumée entre l'art et l'identité. Plus concrètement, elle analyse les pratiques d’un groupe d’artistes issus d’une minorité nationale indigène dont le travail artistique constitue une interruption des régimes spatiotemporels d'identification. L’aspect politique du travail des artistes palestiniens en Israël s’exprime à travers un processus de désidentification, un refus de réduire l’art à des catégories identitaires dominantes. Les œuvres de ces artistes permettent l’expression d’une rupture esthétique, manifestant un « ayant lieu » politique qui se trouve entre l'art et le non-art. Il s’agit d’un espace qui permet la rupture de l’ordre sensible de la société israélienne à travers l’affirmation et la vérification d’une égalité qui existe déjà.

In defence of amateurism:on not professionalizing ethnic and racial studies

This piece suggests that the field of ethnic and racial studies is too diverse in theoretical and methodological approach and subject of study to constitute its own discipline. Instead, ethnic and racial studies remains a loosely defined space of interdisciplinary exchange. There is a sense of community among researchers in this field, but teaching continues to be organized to meet the imperatives of different home disciplines. This article argues that in these times of increasing bureaucracy, standardization and managerial intrusion into academic life, there is a positive benefit in retaining a relatively open space of inquiry where we can consider the construction of contemporary social boundaries.

Exiles and Constituents: Baltic Refugees and American Cold War Politics, 1948- 1960

This dissertation explores the complicated relations between Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian postwar refugees and American foreign policymakers between 1948 and 1960. There were seemingly shared interests between the parties during the first decade of the Cold War. Generally, Eastern European refugees refused to recognize Soviet hegemony in their homelands, and American policy towards the Soviet bloc during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations sought to undermine the Kremlin’s standing in the region. More specifically, Baltic refugees and State Department officials sought to preserve the 1940 non-recognition policy towards the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States. I propose that despite the seemingly natural convergence of interests, the American experiment of constructing a State-Private network revolving around fostering relations with exile groups was fraught with difficulties. These difficulties ultimately undermined any ability that the United States might have had to liberate the Baltic States from the Soviet Union. As this dissertation demonstrates, Baltic exiles were primarily concerned with preserving a high level of political continuity to the interwar republics under the assumption that they would be able to regain their positions in liberated, democratic societies. American policymakers, however, were primarily concerned with maintaining the non-recognition policy, the framework in which all policy considerations were analyzed. I argue that these two motivating factors created unnecessary tensions in American policy towards the Baltic republics in the spheres of psychological warfare as well as exile unity in the United States and Europe. Despite these shortcomings, I argue that out of the exiles’ failings was born a generation of Baltic constituents that blurred the political legitimacy line between exiles who sought to return home and ethnic Americans who were loyal to the United States. These Baltic constituents played an important role in garnering the support of the United States Congress, starting in the 1950s, but became increasingly influential after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, despite the seemingly less important role Eastern Europe played in the Cold War. The actions of the Baltic constituents not only prevented the Baltic question from being forever lost in the memory hole of history, but actually created enough political pressure on the State Department that it was impossible to alter the long-standing policy of not recognizing the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States.

Nonviolent factors: Variables associated with ethnic violence, and factors which are associated with nonviolent response to grievances toward members of other ethnic groups

Ethnic violence appears to be the major source of violence in the world. Ethnic hostilities are potentially all-pervasive because most countries in the world are multi-ethnic. Public health's focus on violence documents its increasing role in this issue.^ The present study is based on a secondary analysis of a dataset of responses by 272 individuals from four ethnic groups (Anglo, African, Mexican, and Vietnamese Americans) who answered questions regarding variables related to ethnic violence from a general questionnaire which was distributed to ethnically diverse purposive, nonprobability, self-selected groups of individuals in Houston, Texas, in 1993.^ One goal was psychometric: learning about issues in analysis of datasets with modest numbers, comparison of two approaches to dealing with missing observations not missing at random (conducting analysis on two datasets), transformation analysis of continuous variables for logistic regression, and logistic regression diagnostics.^ Regarding the psychometric goal, it was concluded that measurement model analysis was not possible with a relatively small dataset with nonnormal variables, such as Likert-scaled variables; therefore, exploratory factor analysis was used. The two approaches to dealing with missing values resulted in comparable findings. Transformation analysis suggested that the continuous variables were in the correct scale, and diagnostics that the model fit was adequate.^ The substantive portion of the analysis included the testing of four hypotheses. Hypothesis One proposed that attitudes/efficacy regarding alternative approaches to resolving grievances from the general questionnaire represented underlying factors: nonpunitive social norms and strategies for addressing grievances--using the political system, organizing protests, using the system to punish offenders, and personal mediation. Evidence was found to support all but one factor, nonpunitive social norms.^ Hypothesis Two proposed that the factor variables and the other independent variables--jail, grievance, male, young, and membership in a particular ethnic group--were associated with (non)violence. Jail, grievance, and not using the political system to address grievances were associated with a greater likelihood of intergroup violence.^ No evidence was found to support Hypotheses Three and Four, which proposed that grievance and ethnic group membership would interact with other variables (i.e., age, gender, etc.) to produce variant levels of subgroup (non)violence.^ The generalizability of the results of this study are constrained by the purposive self-selected nature of the sample and small sample size (n = 272).^ Suggestions for future research include incorporating other possible variables or factors predictive of intergroup violence in models of the kind tested here, and the development and evaluation of interventions that promote electoral and nonelectoral political participation as means of reducing interethnic conflict. ^

Ethnic comparisons of adolescent sexual risk -taking and preventive behavior

For adolescents, unprotected sexual intercourse is the primary cause of sexually transmitted disease (STD), including Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection (virus which causes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)), and pregnancy. Although many studies on adolescent sexual behavior have addressed racial/ethnic differences, few studies have examined the relation between race/ethnicity while controlling for other sociocultural and psychosocial variables. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between racial/ethnic categories and selected sociocultural and psychosocial variables, with reported adolescent sexual risk-taking and preventive behavior.^ A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect information from 3132 students in a Texas school district (Section 3.5.2). The instrument contained approximately 100 questions on demographic characteristics, sexual behavior, and psychosocial determinants of sexual behavior. Based on the findings of this study, the following major conclusions are made: (1) There are differences in reported sexual risk-taking and preventive behavior among Black, Hispanic and White adolescents in this study. The stratified analysis by gender further suggests significant gender differences in reported sexual behavior among the three racial/ethnic groups. (2) Gender, living arrangement, academic grades, and language spoken at home modified the association between reported sexual risk-taking and preventive behavior and race/ethnicity in this study. This suggests that these sociocultural variables should be considered in future research and practice involving multicultural populations. (3) There are differences in selected psychosocial determinants among the three racial/ethnic groups and between males and females. These differences were consistent with the reported sexual risk-taking and preventive behaviors among race/ethnicity and gender for adolescents in this study. The findings support the consideration of psychosocial determinants in research and interventions addressing adolescent sexual behavior among different racial/ethnic groups.^ Based on the results of this study, two recommendations for practice are made. First, health professionals developing interventions for adolescents from different cultural backgrounds and gender need to be familiar with the specific sociocultural and psychosocial factors which will reduce risky sexual behavior, and promote protective behavior. Second, the need for immediate, realistic, and continuous HIV/STD and pregnancy prevention programs for children and adolescents should be considered. ^

Towards an integrative theory of religion and politics

In the social sciences, debate on the relationship between religion and politics is mainly the subject of analysis in the sociology of religion and the theory of international relations. While each of these fields promotes different approaches to study their interdependency. The individual's perception of religion and politics is neglected by current research. The faithful, who participates in religious ceremonies, listening and behaving according to specific religious teachings, actively engaging in the liturgical life of the institutional form of his religion, has a specific way of understanding the relationship between religion and politics. I argue that this aspect is under-researched and misrepresented in the literature of sociology and international relations. However, a more complex analysis is offered by the study of nationalism, and especially by its ethnosymbolic approach, which includes at the micro and macro societal level the presence of myths and symbols as part of the individual's and the nation's life. An integrative theory analysing the connection between religion and politics takes into account the role of myths and symbols from the perspectives of both individuals and ethnic communities.

Ethnic identity, self-esteem and academic factors in second -generation post-1970 Jamaican immigrants

Immigrants from Jamaica represent the largest number of migrants to the United States from the English speaking Caribbean. Research indicates that of all Caribbean immigrants they are most likely to retain the ethnic identity of their home country for the longest period of time. This dissertation explored the nature of ethnic identity and sought to determine its impact upon the additional variables of self-esteem and academic factors. A secondary analysis was carried out using data collected in the Spring of 1992 by Portes and Rumbaut on the children of immigrants attending the eighth and ninth grades in local schools in San Diego and southern Florida. A sample of 151 second-generation Jamaican immigrants was selected from the data set. ^ Six hypotheses yielded mixed results. Both parents who have a Jamaican ethnic identity present in the household are the best predictor Jamaican youth who retain a Jamaican ethnic identity. It was expected that ethnic identity would be a predictor of positive academic factors. The study showed that ethnic identity was not associated with one of the academic factors which were examined: help given with homework. ^ Neither family economic status nor parents' level of education played a significant role in the retention of Jamaican identity. Other findings were that there was no mean difference in the self-esteem scores of respondents who had similar ethnic identities to their parents and those who did not. There was also no difference found in the academic factors of either group. The study also showed that there was a small correlation between parent-child conflict and self-esteem. Specifically, the study found that the higher the conflict between youth and their parents, the lower the self-esteem of the youth. Finally it found that time lived in the U.S. was the best predictor of a higher GPA and it was also related to lower self-esteem. ^ Surprisingly, the study found that the relationship between ethnic identity and SES was the opposite of what was expected in that it found that SES was higher when there was no Jamaican identity. ^

Understandings of transnational families in debates on Migration and development

International migration sets in motion a range of significant transnational processes that connect countries and people. How migration interacts with development and how policies might promote and enhance such interactions have, since the turn of the millennium, gained attention on the international agenda. The recognition that transnational practices connect migrants and their families across sending and receiving societies forms part of this debate. The ways in which policy debate employs and understands transnational family ties nevertheless remain underexplored. This article sets out to discern the understandings of the family in two (often intermingled) debates concerned with transnational interactions: The largely state and policydriven discourse on the potential benefits of migration on economic development, and the largely academic transnational family literature focusing on issues of care and the micro-politics of gender and generation. Emphasizing the relation between diverse migration-development dynamics and specific family positions, we ask whether an analytical point of departure in respective transnational motherhood, fatherhood or childhood is linked to emphasizing certain outcomes. We conclude by sketching important strands of inclusions and exclusions of family matters in policy discourse and suggest ways to better integrate a transnational family perspective in global migration-development policy.

Biopolitics meets Terrapolitics: Political Ontologies and Governance in Settler-Colonial Australia

Crises persist in Australian Indigenous affairs because current policy approaches do not address the intersection of Indigenous and European political worlds. This paper responds to this challenge by providing a heuristic device for delineating Settler and Indigenous Australian political ontologies and considering their interaction. It first evokes Settler and Aboriginal ontologies as respectively biopolitical (focused through life) and terrapolitical (focused through land). These ideal types help to identify important differences that inform current governance challenges. The paper discusses the entwinement of these traditions as a story of biopolitical dominance wherein Aboriginal people are governed as an “included-exclusion” within the Australian political community. Despite the overall pattern of dominance, this same entwinement offers possibilities for exchange between biopolitics and terrapolitics, and hence for breaking the recurrent crises of Indigenous affairs.

Persisting problems related to race and ethnicity in public health and epidemiology research

A recent and comprehensive review of the use of race and ethnicity in research that address health disparities in epidemiology and public health is provided. First it is described the theoretical basis upon which race and ethnicity differ drawing from previous work in anthropology, social science and public health. Second, it is presented a review of 280 articles published in high impacts factor journals in regards to public health and epidemiology from 2009-2011. An analytical grid enabled the examination of conceptual, theoretical and methodological questions related to the use of both concepts. The majority of articles reviewed were grounded in a theoretical framework and provided interpretations from various models. However, key problems identified include a) a failure from researchers to differentiate between the concepts of race and ethnicity; b) an inappropriate use of racial categories to ascribe ethnicity; c) a lack of transparency in the methods used to assess both concepts; and d) failure to address limits associated with the construction of racial or ethnic taxonomies and their use. In conclusion, future studies examining health disparities should clearly establish the distinction between race and ethnicity, develop theoretically driven research and address specific questions about the relationships between race, ethnicity and health. One argue that one way to think about ethnicity, race and health is to dichotomize research into two sets of questions about the relationship between human diversity and health.

Health monitoring for black and minority ethnic groups

This paper explores some aspects of health monitoring in relation to black and ethnic minority populations in London. It considers where research in London and elsewhere has shown evidence of inequalities between ethnic groups, and draws out the issues for recording, analysis and sharing of ethnic-specific data.

Ethnicity and glutathione S-transferase (GSTM1/GSTT1) polymorphisms in a Brazilian population

The distribution of polymorphisms related to glutathione S-transferases (GST) has been described in different populations, mainly for white individuals. We evaluated the distribution of GST mu (GSTM1) and theta (GSTT1) genotypes in 594 individuals, by multiplex PCR-based methods, using amplification of the exon 7 of CYP1A1 gene as an internal control. In São Paulo, 233 whites, 87 mulattos, and 137 blacks, all healthy blood-donor volunteers, were tested. In Bahia, where black and mulatto populations are more numerous, 137 subjects were evaluated. The frequency of the GSTM1 null genotype was significantly higher among whites (55.4%) than among mulattos (41.4%; P = 0.03) and blacks (32.8%; P < 0.0001) from São Paulo, or Bahian subjects in general (35.7%; P = 0.0003). There was no statistically different distribution among any non-white groups. The distribution of GSTT1 null genotype among groups did not differ significantly. The agreement between self-reported and interviewer classification of skin color in the Bahian group was low. The interviewer classification indicated a gradient of distribution of the GSTM1 null genotype from whites (55.6%) to light mulattos (40.4%), dark mulattos (32.0%) and blacks (28.6%). However, any information about race or ethnicity should be considered with caution regarding the bias introduced by different data collection techniques, specially in countries where racial admixture is intense, and ethnic definition boundaries are loose. Because homozygous deletions of GST gene might be associated with cancer risk, a better understanding of chemical metabolizing gene distribution can contribute to risk assessment of humans exposed to environmental carcinogens.