Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'And Racialised Space'

The goal of this essay is to pursue a reading of ethnicity and sexuality in Shyam Selvadurai’s novel Funny Boy to show the importance of the interrelations between the two and how equally crucial both of these are in order to understand the protagonist Arjie’s journey and search for identity. To investigate the interrelation between ethnicity and sexuality, the analysis makes use of a method of simultaneous consideration that is similar to Mae Gwendolyn Henderson’s focus on “simultaneity of discourse” used by black women writers.

The turning points in the protagonist’s life and search for an identity are crucial and influenced by issues of separation, and the theme of exile is prominent in the novel. Selvadurai uses the theme in several aspects on a number of levels, concerning both ethnicity and sexuality. However, the narrative also allows the protagonist to find an alternative route in exploring his identity as a “funny one”.

These turning points are illustrated by a moving beyond the traditional gender roles and the idea of masculinity in areas of gendered and racialised spaces. Selvadurai shows a people that are ethnically and/or sexually divided while at the same time being linked through words and languages that can give and/or take away possibilities.

Hence, a second aim of this essay is to show that the protagonist overcomes the limitations that society has set by choosing the path that is right for him, a path that allows him to be “funny”.

This thesis seeks to understand the relationship between sexuality, ‘race' and space within the context of urban night-time leisure spaces for women. It is informed by and draws on different fields: sexual geographies, critical ‘race' scholarship, feminist and queer theories, studies on whiteness, postmodern spatial theories. The intellectual roots of this thesis lie in black feminist theories of gender, ‘race' and sexuality (and class) as intersecting categories and fields of experience. The thesis draws on poststructuralist approaches that theorise sexuality and ‘race' as discursively and performatively produced. It argues that ‘race' and sexuality are mutually constitutive categories and that they can only be understood in relation to each other. The ethnographic fieldwork of this study is carried out in specific sexualised spaces, namely two lesbian bars in Manchester's Gay Village. Through participant observations in those bars and qualitative interviews with women who identify as lesbian and bisexual and white, mixed-race, black and East Asian, the thesis explores the role of ‘race' in the construction of lesbian bodies and spaces and how sexuality, ‘race' and space work together in shaping subjectivities. The aims of this study are manifold: to develop an understanding of how practices of inclusion and exclusion work in leisure spaces designed to meet the needs of a marginalised group; to find new ways of understanding ‘race' and sexuality by looking at their spatial relationship; to contribute to debates on sexuality and space by investigating how space is simultaneously sexualised and racialised; to contribute to existing research on whiteness through an exploration of how different forms of whiteness spatially intersect with sexuality.

In this dissertation, I explore ‘green’ urban development and urban agriculture projects from the perspective of residents of an African American majority neighborhood in Kansas City—who reside in an area referred to as a ‘blighted food desert’ by local policy makers. In Kansas City, extensive city government support exists for urban agricultural projects, which are touted not just as a solution to poverty associated issues such food insecurity and obesity, but also as a remedy for ‘blight,’ violence and crime, and vacant urban land. Specific narratives of Kansas City’s past are used to prop up and legitimate these future visions for, and development projects in, the city. This dissertation lays out an argument for how, in Kansas City, the dominant narrative surrounding urban sustainability, agriculture, and history came to be constructed and informed by white voices, and documents how these narratives, primarily constructed by upper-middle class white local ‘foodies’, are harnessed to support green development projects that marginalize and displace people of color and the poor. Specifically, I draw on 26 months of ethnographic fieldwork to explore how this narrative was constructed and elevated in local policy circles, document the lived consequences of this whitened narrative from the perspective of residents of “food deserts,” and describe historical and current minority-led agricultural projects—which aren’t included in dominant accountings of Kansas City’s development. I also explore agentive actions of racialized groups in opposition to this dominant whitened discourse, documenting how one neighborhood council in Kansas City strategically utilizes urban food project funding to acquire other, more urgently needed, community resources. I bring light to important acts of resistance by some black and brown urban farmers, who explicitly work to shape city space by reinscribing spatialized histories of displacement and racism in Kansas City. In this project I understand racialization and representation as active, not passive, processes, that have the power to determine whose voices are heard, and who has power to shape city space and its use. By untangling the racialized construction of history and space, and drawing on narratives shared by oft-silenced groups, this dissertation project contributes to scholarly work committed to disrupting hegemonic spatialized whiteness (McKittrick 2011).

This article explores how lesbian identity construction is facilitated and constrained by the raced, classed, gendered, familial, and geographical spaces that women occupy. We present a narrative-discursive analysis of eight lesbians’ stories of sexuality, told within a historically white university in South Africa. Three interpretative repertoires that emerged in the narratives are discussed. The ‘disallowance of lesbian identity in particular racialised and class-based spaces’ repertoire, deployed by black lesbians only, was used to account for their de-emphasis of a lesbian identity through the invocation of a threat of danger and stereotyping. The ‘disjuncture of the (heterosexual) family and lesbian identity’ repertoire emphasised how the expectation of support and care within a family does not necessarily extend to acceptance of a lesbian identity.

The aim of this research project is to investigate how Muslim-American undergraduate women experience racialization in public and private spaces, examine whether those experiences give rise to a racialized identity, and highlight how they resist and cope with their racialization. The recent application of the term racialization to discuss the Muslim experience in the west has encouraged scholars such as Leon Moosavi, Saher Selod, Mythili Rajiva, Ming H. Chen and others, to engage in critical discourse within the scholarship of race and ethnicity regarding this often-neglected population. It is due to the unique, and gendered relationship that the female Muslim-American population has with the United States, particularly as a result of 9/11 and the label of 'oppressed' being imposed upon them, that it is important to comprehend how specifically Muslim-American women experience racialization. While these studies have broadened the understanding of how Muslims are, and continue to be othered, few studies have focused on the specific areas within public and private spaces where this marginalized group is racialized. This study attempts to fill this gap in existing research by examining how peers, mass media, educational institutions, law enforcement, family, and religious communities racialize Muslim-American women, and how these gendered experiences shape their racialized sense of self. In doing so, it also examines the impact of religious, racial, ethnic and cultural signifiers on the female Muslim-American experience of racialization, and demonstrates how these women employ certain strategies of resistance and coping mechanisms to deal with their racialization.
Master of Science

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toledo, 2010.
Typescript. "Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Sociology." "A thesis entitled"--at head of title. Title from title page of PDF document. Bibliography: p. 118-127.

This thesis explores how government and society are invariably against the racial sharing of spaces. It examines how impoverished Black communities are created, sustained and perpetuated. The thesis is concerned with two main theories about race repression, race castes and racialization of space, both of which posit race as the main factor shaping the existing power relations. The work first draws upon the era of de jure segregation to highlight features of castes and racialized space. The first chapter looks at how housing discrimination caused Harlem to develop into a ghetto space. In the post-de jure era, the second chapter examines how the economics of racialized space access continued to inform a national framework defined by race-neutrality. It examines how, against the wake of Civil Rights era and community rioting, politicians discursively campaigned by demonizing and criminalizing Black rioters and Black culture. The War on Drugs, which emerged against the backdrop of Rights activism, called for crime control in Black communities. By targeting Blacks already isolated in “ghetto” spaces, politicians ensure that they over-compensate White communities with the public benefits and economic resources that are taken away from Blacks spaces. In media as well as in politics, our nation continuously fails to contextualize the costs of the War on Drugs on Black communities. The final chapter examines a film to show how popular depictions of Black ghettos and misconceptions about the War on Drugs, continue to feed our ideological and actual understandings of racialized space and privileged access.

Historically, most research on Indigenous peoples has been framed by Western empirical positivism which fundamentally conflicts with Indigenous circular ways of knowing. Current research governing bodies, scholars, and Indigenous communities have generated new theories and guidelines for research structures that support respectful and meaningful practices with Indigenous peoples. Participatory action research (PAR) attempts to address the unequal power structures inherent in research relationships: participants set the agenda for the research and are co-researchers in the project. In this study, I placed PAR theory into action to problematize research practices and to generate new discourses for research within an Indigenous context. The Lil’wat Nation and I collaborated on a PAR project in 2006-2007 that led to the formation of the Lil’wat Girls’ and Women’s Affirmation Group. Through the process of reflection-in-action we identified several opportunities for growth as we examined PAR theory in practice. Using decolonizing research methods and a metaphor of the Lil’wat s7istken (pit house), the model of practice wove between three distinct worlds with divergent protocols and pedagogies: the worlds of the Lil’wat, academia, and the researcher’s racialized lived experiences. This model of practice aimed to disrupt the essentialized dichotomies of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships and to problematize research practices for the academic and research communities to consider for their practice. The findings exposed several lessons at sites of praxis pertaining to the intersection of PAR theory and practice: definition of the community; ethics in the community; racialized researcher space; and PAR incongruence. The model was intended not as a “how to” manual, but as an entry point for discussions to advance respectful decolonizing research practices.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2001. Graduate Programme in Sociology.
Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 348-365). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ67937.

This dissertation investigates how the process of gentrification is experienced in the lives of residents of the Tremé neighborhood in New Orleans. Using an ethnographic approach, I demonstrate the impacts of gentrification on neighborhood life and practices, showing how memory and belonging are negotiated in the context of gentrification. I also call into question assumed distinctions between gentrifiers and longstanding residents. I lived in the neighborhood for eight months, conducted in-depth interviews with residents, attended neighborhood organization meetings, and was a participant observer in activities such as second line parades. Emotional and physical impacts of events in the neighborhood history continue to permeate the present day lives of longstanding residents. I show how these residents turn to nostalgia as a way of inhabiting the present. I argue that gentrification brings more challenges, threatening practices that are vital to the fabric of the neighborhood. Longstanding residents have maintained traditions of everyday engagement with the neighborhood space, such as second line parading. However, the influx of gentrifiers brings new sensibilities of inhabiting and engaging with the neighborhood that sometimes clash with the practices of longstanding residents, threatening these ways of life. I also interrogate the perspectives of gentrifiers by examining their responses to racialized constructions of the neighborhood. I show how discourses of gentrification and racialization are linked by examining how this neighborhood is remembered. I argue that the authenticity of a particular narrative about the neighborhood is either challenged or embraced by gentrifiers, depending on their own racialized identity, in order to support their particular politics of belonging to the neighborhood. This dissertation is unique in identifying 'returning residents' who complicate traditional boundaries in the literature between gentrifiers and longstanding residents. These are residents that grew up in the neighborhood, then moved away for some time, and subsequently returned as the neighborhood was becoming gentrified. They are neither gentrifiers nor longstanding residents. Thus, the task of urban scholars in comprehending the complex and multi-faceted process of gentrification demands an approach with a nuanced treatment of residents, making their understandings, practices and motivations a central focus of our work on this topic.
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This thesis discusses the effects of racialising/sexualising discourses on the sociospatial organisation of school. It is based on an investigation of the views and experiences of Asian girls in one Australian high school and generated data from observations, interviews and conversations with thirty-five Asian girls.

This eleven-month ethnographic study puts critical discourse analysis in dialogue with postmodern conceptualizations of space and place to explore how eight educators talk about space and in the process, produce racialized spaces in Roche Bois, Mauritius. The macro-historical context of racialization of this urban marginalized community informs the discursive analysis of educators' talk at school. Drawing on theories of race that call for the non-deterministic exploration of race relations as they occur in different contexts and times (Hall, 2000; Pandian & Kosek, 2003; Essed & Goldberg, 2000), I explore the spatial racialization of children in Roche Bois as a process specific to this township and its history. Engaging with Lefebvre's three-dimensional theorization of space (Lefebre, 1991) as well as the Discourse Historical Approach developed by Wodak and colleagues (Wodak & Reisgl, 1999), I draw on the micro-macro concept of identity construction "strategy" to study 1) how meanings of race play out as an amalgam of various thematic dimensions of schooling, culture, bodies, and work that are spatialized; 2) how meanings of place perpetuate or transform long-standing historical constructions of Creole identity in Roche Bois. The findings show that repeated patterns of educators' spatial racialization produce and reproduce conceived spaces (Lefebvre, 1991) and yet my research also highlights that banal moments of lived space (Lefebvre, 1991) also exist, as ordinary disruptions of the spatial order produced by patterns of conceived space. While educator discourse for the most part negatively emplaces and racializes the children, one educator's representations of place and race both assimilates and differentiates marginal identities, encourages unity and essentialism at the same time as promotes hybridity. The analysis therefore shows that discourses of place are not totalizing and that moments of interruption can be the basis for thinking of teacher education and practice as a politics of "decolonization" and "reinhabitation" (Gruenewald, 2003). Specifically, the findings indicate the importance of reinvesting critical historical meanings into pedagogies of the local.

This eleven-month ethnographic study puts critical discourse analysis in dialogue with postmodern conceptualizations of space and place to explore how eight educators talk about space and in the process, produce racialized spaces in Roche Bois, Mauritius. The macro-historical context of racialization of this urban marginalized community informs the discursive analysis of educators' talk at school. Drawing on theories of race that call for the non-deterministic exploration of race relations as they occur in different contexts and times (Hall, 2000; Pandian & Kosek, 2003; Essed & Goldberg, 2000), I explore the spatial racialization of children in Roche Bois as a process specific to this township and its history. Engaging with Lefebvre's three-dimensional theorization of space (Lefebre, 1991) as well as the Discourse Historical Approach developed by Wodak and colleagues (Wodak & Reisgl, 1999), I draw on the micro-macro concept of identity construction "strategy" to study 1) how meanings of race play out as an amalgam of various thematic dimensions of schooling, culture, bodies, and work that are spatialized; 2) how meanings of place perpetuate or transform long-standing historical constructions of Creole identity in Roche Bois. The findings show that repeated patterns of educators' spatial racialization produce and reproduce conceived spaces (Lefebvre, 1991) and yet my research also highlights that banal moments of lived space (Lefebvre, 1991) also exist, as ordinary disruptions of the spatial order produced by patterns of conceived space. While educator discourse for the most part negatively emplaces and racializes the children, one educator's representations of place and race both assimilates and differentiates marginal identities, encourages unity and essentialism at the same time as promotes hybridity. The analysis therefore shows that discourses of place are not totalizing and that moments of interruption can be the basis for thinking of teacher education and practice as a politics of "decolonization" and "reinhabitation" (Gruenewald, 2003). Specifically, the findings indicate the importance of reinvesting critical historical meanings into pedagogies of the local.

Presently the literature available on women’s cricket is very limited. This thesis attempts to redress this gap by telling a story about the experiences of women’s club cricket in Toronto and Victoria. The player’s social spaces were examined, as were the intersections of gender, race and culture.. Using qualitative methods, narratives were interpreted and analyzed using post-colonial, spatial and feminist theoretical frameworks. Major findings indicated that there are specific challenges to women’s participation in cricket in Canada and revealed differences between players due to geography, access to resources, ethnicity and race. Women also experienced inclusions and exclusions based on gendered reproductions. The results indicate that much more support is needed for women’s cricket to flourish in Canada. One strong recommendation this study makes is that we pay more attention to, and develop better strategies for, the integration of Canadian immigrant and racialized women into the Canadian sport and recreation system.

Ce mémoire explore le vécu et la construction de l’expérience de jeunes racisés ayant reçu des constats d’infraction dans le cadre de leur occupation de l’espace public montréalais. Il s’agit spécifiquement d’appréhender, à partir de la sociologie de l’expérience de Dubet (1994), le profil et les conditions de vie, la présence dans l’espace public, les raisons et la nature des constats d’infraction, les stratégies mises en œuvre face au profilage racial ainsi que les conséquences du profilage racial sur les jeunes racisés. Se situant dans une perspective qualitative, la méthodologie de recherche a reposé sur le recueil de dix entrevues semi-dirigées, soit neuf jeunes hommes et une jeune fille entre 18 et 30 ans ayant eu des contacts avec la police dans le cadre du contrôle de l’espace public à Montréal. Basée essentiellement sur l’approche mixte de Miles et Huberman (2003), l’analyse du corpus a permis de rendre compte de l’hétérogénéité de l’expérience des jeunes racisés et profilés interrogés et de dégager deux types d’expérience de profilage racial : les contestataires et les résignés. Si les interactions avec les forces de l’ordre engendrent des traitements perçus comme discriminatoires, l’expérience se construit en fonction de la nature des interactions, du niveau de maturité et de la tranche d’âge des jeunes et elle se décline en une logique de soumission et une logique de lutte pour la contestation des constats d’infraction. Les résultats de la recherche démontrent par ailleurs la pertinence de l’accompagnement du jeune au niveau de la prise de conscience de ses droits et de la contestation des tickets reçus.
This memoir explores the real-life experience and the construction of the experience of racialized youths who have received statements of offense for having occupied the Montreal public space. Using the Sociology of experience theorized by Dubet (1994), the profile and the living conditions, the presence in public areas, the reasons and nature of the statements of offense, the strategies implemented for racial profiling along with its consequences on the racialized youths all must be apprehended. Based on a qualitative perspective, the research method was founded on 10 semi-structured interviews where 9 young men and 1 one young lady between the ages of 18 and 30 who have had encounters with the police concerning the control of the public space in Montreal. Essentially based on the mixed approach of Miles and Huberman (2003), the corpus analyze helped to understand heterogeneity of the experience of racially profiled youths questioned. It was possible to distinguish two types of racial profiling experience: the protesters and the resigned. If the interactions with law enforcement create treatments that are perceived to be discriminatory, the experience is constructed according to the nature of the interaction, the maturity level and the age group of the youths and comes in submission or contest strategies. The results of the research demonstrate otherwise the relevance of the youth's accompaniment at the level of realization of their rights and the protestation of the received infractions.