National and cultural identity in diaspora

The thesis examines the 'preservation' of Lithuanian national and cultural identity among migrant groups in Australia, comparing postwar migrants with people who have arrived since 1970. It argues that cultural identity is a flexible, evolving concept, negotiated in relation to the social, economic and political circumstances of the migrant.

Malay theatre in Singapore : issues of cultural identity

This thesis explores the impact of culturally hybrid practices on the Singapore Malay community through fully comprehensive analyses of significant productions by two prominent Singapore Malay theatre groups. It demonstrates the value of applying contemporary cultural/semiotic theory and analysis to issues of cultural hybridity and identity to theatrical performance discourse.

Adolescent’s cultural identity and neighbourhood environment

Objective: this study aims to find out how adolescents in Australia identify themselves culturally, and how adolescents from different cultural groups differ in their assessments of their neighbourhood environments. Methods: one hundred and sixty-six adolescents in Sydney completed a self-administered questionnaire, which collected information of their neighbourhood environments and their cultural backgrounds. Results: adolescents reported a great variety (67) of different cultural backgrounds, clustered into three cultural groups: Australian cultural identity group, Heritage cultural group, and Biculturalism group. Although no significant difference was found on most neighbourhood environment factors between the cultural groups, adolescents from Heritage cultural group scored significantly lower on the factor Vegetation & Facilities. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that the overall neighbourhood environments for adolescents from different cultural groups are satisfactory. However, ethnic minority adolecents live in neighbourhoods with less vegetation and facilities, which suggest that spatial inequity related to ethnic backgrounds still exist in Australia.

Maintenance of cultural identity

The aim of this qualitative study is to explore the transmission of health beliefs among three generations of Greek families in Melbourne, Australia and the way they understand both health and disease as an aspect of cultural maintenance in the context of the larger Australian society. More specifically this paper will discuss the extent to which the immigrant generation has created a memory culture and how this has affected the sense of cultural identity of the first and second generation Greek Australians. Unlike the mainstream Australian community, the Greek population has so far maintaned a traditional framework due to the importance they ascribe to both culture and traditions that have been handed down from from the immigrant generation to the first and second generation Greek Australians. However, it is not only the immigrant generation that holds on to these traditions. More and more the first and second generation Greek Australians are set on maintaining their Hellenic heritage, and many community organizations in Melbourne, Australia are now largely supported by the younger generations. The results of this study have practical applications in elucidating how the memory culture that has been created by the immigrant generation may impact this cultural group’s conceptualization of health and the potential this may have to impact the use of health care by providin insight into the role of culture in forming individual or group conceptulizations of health in this community.

The maintenance of Central Thai cultural identity through hybrid music genres

Thailand has experienced rapid industrialisation, modernisation and cultural changesince the mid-nineteenth century. Many Western cultural forms have been adopted intoThai life, including Western popular music. An external view of these processes andtheir results might suggest that Thailand has become quite ‘Western’. However, closeranalysis reveals that elements of foreign cultures have long been adopted and adaptedinto Thai culture, and used as social capital to build an image of modernity andcosmopolitan sophistication.One of the adaptations made has been the fusion of Western genres with Thaiones, to form new hybrid styles of music. One hybrid genre that has developed largelyover the past half century is Dontri Thai Prayuk (‘modernised Thai music’), whichfuses aspects of Western pop with elements of Central Thai classical music. As thispaper demonstrates, clear patterns emerge in the way Thai musicians have maintainedmarkers of Thai identity and fused them with Western elements that signifymodernisation.Motivations behind this deliberate fusion of Thai and Western elements areexplained by the theories of ‘musical accommodation’ and ‘acts of identity’ – thatmusicians will converge with or diverge from other music-cultures in order to gainapproval or assert a separate identity, in ways that deliberately change the underlyingrules of the source musics to form a new identity. Analysis of Dontri Thai Prayukfusion music shows that it has changed the underlying rules of Thai classical andWestern popular music to display a music-cultural identity that is Thai, yet modern.

Acculturation and cultural identity of immigrant youth: The impact of courses in the language and culture of origin

Career choices in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are favoured by men and often avoided by women; on the other hand, women tend to choose fields such as the social sciences. This not only leads to a shortage of employees with STEM degrees, but also reinforces the prejudice that certain (personality) characteristics are ‘typically female’ or ‘typically male’. Career orientation motives of young women and men can have important implications for gender (a-)typical career choices. However, there is little empirical research on the correlates of career orientation motives in young women in the field of STEM. This study seeks to address this gap by outlining the components of career orientation motives and showing relationships among them. Therefore, our results provide insight into the circumstances and conditions that are associated with academic and career choices.

Our Lady of Guadalupe : contemporary explorations of personal and cultural identity

Since it first appeared, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe has remained relatively unchanged. In the last thirty-five years, however, this has been changing. Artists are creating new variations of the icon to represent and express their reinterpretations. In some of these more contemporary images, the figure of Guadalupe has changed dramatically, but still retains enough traditional elements to be easily recognizable. Some of these images have been received with mixed results and have even sparked major controversy. These new, and sometimes controversial depictions of Guadalupe, specifically those created by Ester Hernández, Yolanda M. López and Alma López, will be explored here. Although each artist has her own individual motivations and intentions, all of the images presented here explore personal and cultural identity, as well as seek in some way to honor ordinary, human women through the sacred iconography of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Accommodative communication as a mediator to the negative effects of cultural identity on perceptions of foreign management practices and perceptions of organisational climate

This Study examines whether cultural identity has an impact on perceptions of foreign management practices and perceptions of organisational climate. Based on social identity theory as a conceptual framework, it is assumed that the salience of cultural identity leads to in-group bias in interpreting organisational events. This study also examines whether managers' accommodative communication behaviour mediates these relationships. In a multinational organisation, employees see the foreign company as a symbol, and the person that deals with them in everyday working relationships in the organisation is their direct leader. It is argued that the salience of cultural identity wiU depend on employees' perceptions of the way managers attach meaning to foreign managerial practices and communicate it to them. Interaction with managers who create a distance with their employees and who fail to Usten to what employees need may be a socially appropriate way to invoke the salience of cultural identity in the working relationship. The participants were 206 Indonesian employees from three multinational organisations. Using a questionnaire, this study shows that participants with strong cultural identity had more negative perceptions of foreign management practices and organisational climate. Furthermore, this study indicates that managers' accommodative communication behaviour mediated these relationships.

Constructing their own space: British Asians explore cultural identity, women, gender differences and feminism within multicultural society.

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"And a child shall lead them?": Slavery, childhood, and African cultural identity in Jamaica, 1750--1838

Based primarily on archival evidence collected in Jamaica, this dissertation examined the nature of childhood in the plantation complex between 1750 and 1838, how colonial society and the slave community defined childhood, and how that definition changed over time. It proves how childhood and slavery influenced and changed each other during these years, with the abolitionist movement standing as the main catalyst for change. Although this project chronologically examined the changing nature of slave childhood in Jamaica through four shifts of Jamaican history, each chapter topically focused on slave childhood through the lenses of labor, family, resistance, race, status, culture, education, and freedom. ^ The research showed that although slavery forced slave children into an early adulthood, childhood was a contested process that changed with each generation of children. As the abolitionist movement motivated changes in planter opinion on the value of children to the plantation economy, planters placed increased responsibility on slave children to lead them towards economic stability and profitability. Meanwhile, slave children struggled to survive slavery by reinventing and modifying their ideas of family and kinship and reacting to their situation through various acts of resistance. Although slave parents gained many opportunities to raise their children on their own terms, they struggled to maintain control over that process as planters attempted to change the nature of African cultural identity in Jamaica by impressing Christian and English values on slave children. Under apprenticeship, childhood returned to its previous status as a liability in the eyes of the Jamaican planters. Yet, Jamaican children faced the prospect of an unwritten childhood, one that was free from planter control and gave Jamaican laborers hope for the future. In the end, this dissertation told the story of an overlooked childhood, one that was often defined by Jamaican planters, but frequently contested by the slaves themselves. ^