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Rightist nationalist politics have emerged globally in recent years. This dissertation traces the developing character of rightist nationalism in Britain and Germany since the early 1990s. The primary aim is to better understand its appeal at different political key moments. I draw on longitudinal individual- and macro-level data, and embed my analysis in a comparative historical sociology that is attentive to both countries' very different post-war periods and longer historical traditions. They form an instructive longitudinal contrast in which they illuminate each other (see Geertz 1971), and the shape of their nationalisms, within a wider European context. In addition to literature on the radical right (e.g. Betz 1994; Bonikowski 2017; Mudde 2007; Rydgren 2007), the thesis thus also speaks to more historically oriented work on the political right (Eatwell 2003; 1992a; Eley 2015b; Gamble 1995; Mann 2004). It further speaks to the literatures of nationalism (e.g. Gellner 1998b; 1990; Hall 1995; Malešević 2019; Mann 2005: Ch.3; 1995) and populism (Berlin et al. 1968; Canovan 1981; Mouffe 2018; Mudde 2004; Müller 2016). I explore inter-relationships between both concepts (e.g. Bonikowski et al. 2018), and contribute to the discussion with a more substantive focus on how their inherent struggle for political recognition and their shared drive towards socio-cultural homogenisation work within real-world rightist nationalism. By contextualising rightist nationalism within both countries' colonial and racialised traditions (e.g. Bhambra 2017b; Eley 2015a), I examine both its surface variation over time and the deeper historical alignment of its exclusionary mechanisms. I undertake largely descriptive data analysis in two steps. First, I examine longitudinal macro-level data to identify socio-economic and political key moments in both countries' recent histories. Second, these key moments then provide occasions in which I explore social backgrounds and political perceptions of the same groups of respondents in panel surveys (BHPS-UKHLS, SOEP), as they lived through their countries' changing socio-economic and political landscapes. The dissertation's methodological contribution lies in its interpretive and historically embedded approach to panel data that draws on as much of its longitudinal dimension as possible. One substantial finding emerging from the longitudinal contrast between both countries is that I found no direct line from socio-economic positions to affinities for rightist nationalism. In a subtle adjustment to theories around the "left-behind" (e.g. Ford and Goodwin 2014b), I found that rightist nationalism was not simply located in the lowest socio-economic positions, although it was characterised by a risk of dropping and relative social stagnation over time. I offer an interpretive account of how both countries' nationalists' feelings of social abandonment became entangled with a broader sense of political grievance and a racialised retrieval of socio-political privileges. Second, the contrast between Britain and Germany allowed me to more clearly delineate their historical and post-war patterns of racialised exclusions. Rightist nationalism came to the surface especially during moments of strong migration. This was more distinctly contained within two key moments in Germany (early 1990s and mid-2010s), and expressed itself more gradually in the UK (since the late 1990s). This difference suggests varying degrees of urgency regarding feared cultural change. Migration prompted a more sudden rightward shift in Germany's political landscape, while Britain foregrounded key moments of European (dis)integration. A third substantial finding highlights Europe's increasing importance for both countries' rightist nationalisms. Britain's moved from a wider racial towards and narrower English ethnic nationalism and a political focus on sovereignty vis-à-vis Europe. German nationalism, by contrast, moved from an ethnic towards a wider racialised focus that locates Germany within the "fortress Europe" to preserve its culture. The dissertation's first argument is that both countries' rightist nationalisms can be understood as different expressions of racialised nation-building in the face of growing cultural diversity, seen as threat to political rights and legitimate belonging. The second, related argument is that they are also indicative of the longer-term tension between class and nation that has recently tilted towards nation, culture, and "race". This suggests that rightist nationalism is not simply "on the rise", but also that the decline of its counterweight, class, has facilitated its increasing pull on political mainstream and self-understandings. My main theoretical contribution is a four-feature framework that helps understand rightist nationalism in these two countries as it emerged from the longitudinal individual- and macro-level contrast. I suggest that rightist nationalism is characterised by racialisation; a populist impulse towards political recognition; a selective retrieval of historical narratives and legacies; and a conservative concern with (dis)order. This is relevant for studies of historical and present rightist politics, and those embedding longitudinal data analysis within historical contexts.

This study aimed to explore how trainee clinical psychologists from Chinese cultural backgrounds make sense of their Doctorate Clinical Psychology (DClinPsy) training. By attending to this under-explored topic, this research hopes to elucidate the influence of potential taken-for-granted training structures and possible power dynamic on Chinese trainees within a profession lacking cultural diversity. Seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese trainee clinical psychologists. Embracing a social constructionist epistemological paradigm, the collected data were analysed using a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) (Foucault, 1984), guided by Willig's framework of FDA (Willig, 2008). The findings revealed five major discursive constructions. These include: "competency in expressing oneself", "challenges in maintaining social connection", "problems arising from being the cultural other", "issues with being given a 'BAME' label" and "the symbolic capital". This research explored the shape these discursive constructions take; and offered initiatives that could be needed to raise cultural humility and sensitivity towards Chinese culture within the clinical psychology profession.

The thesis provides a timely re-evaluation of self-conscious theatre, or metatheatre, in relation to emerging notions of the intersubjective self in early modern culture. It proposes that the self-conscious theatre of Shakespeare and his contemporaries produces a concomitant self-consciousness within its audiences that situates identity on the theatrical boundary, highlighting the performativity of the self and its relations to others. It takes a dialectical and thematic approach to demonstrate how self-conscious theatre makes audiences conscious of themselves and their relations to others, focusing on those categories which traditionally distinguish the self from others in terms of culture, morality, class, and gender. The thesis considers a range of genres, performance styles, and self-consciously theatrical structures without lumping together or oversimplifying their effects with each chapter focusing on a particular facet of self-conscious theatre to demonstrate the different kinds of self-consciousness that the plays produce and engage with. The thesis brings external notions of audience, spectatorship, sight, and insight into dialogue with the internal evidence of playgoers within early modern drama to produce a clearer picture of how audiences were perceived-and perceived themselves-in relation to the playing space. The thesis argues that the theatre space itself produces the conditions in which self-consciously theatrical structures thrive by enabling heightened interaction between the self and others. This interaction, in turn, produces the kind of self-consciousness of seeing and being seen that forms and shapes identity in dialogue with others.

This study unites the burgeoning academic field of exhibition histories and the critiques of race-based exhibition practices that crystallised in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. It concerns recent practices of presenting and contextualising black creativity in British publicly funded art museums and galleries that are part of a broader attempt to increase the diversity of histories and perspectives represented in public art collections and exhibitions. The research focuses on three concurrent 2010 exhibitions that aimed to offer a non-hegemonic reading of black creativity through the use of non-art-historical conceptual and alternative curatorial models: Afro Modern (Tate Liverpool), Action (The Bluecoat), and a retrospective of works by Chris Ofili (Tate Britain). Comparative exhibitions of the past were typically premised on concepts of difference that ultimately resulted in the notional separation of black artists from mainstream discourses on contemporary art and histories of British art. Through a close and critical textual analysis of these three recent exhibitions, which is informed by J.L. Austin’s theory of speech acts (1955), the study considers whether, and to what extent the delimiting curatorial practices of the past have been successfully abandoned by public art museums and galleries, and furthermore, whether it has been possible for British art institutions to reject the entrenched, exclusive conceptions of British culture that negated black contributions to the canon and narratives of British art in the first place. The exhibition case studies are complemented and contextualised by an in-depth history of the Bluecoat’s engagement with black creativity between 1976 and 2012, which provides a particular insight into the ways that debates about representation, difference and separatism have impacted the policies and practices of one culturally significant art gallery that is frequently overlooked in histories of black British art. With reference to the notion of legitimate coercion as defined by Zygmunt Bauman (2000), the study determines that long-standing hegemonic structures continue to inform the modes through which public art museums and galleries in Britain curate and control black creativity.

Growing levels of religious and cultural toleration have long been identified as a “hallmark” of the British and European Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. This period has since been interpreted as a turning point in the advance of greater political liberty and religious freedom across the Western world over the last three hundred and fifty years. Today, the notion of a tolerant, liberal, and free West is being undermined from within and without by a rising tide of intolerance towards the religion and followers of Islam in Western societies. This thesis returns to the era of Britain and Europe’s Enlightenment, between the late seventeenth century and the end of the eighteenth century, in order to reassess how a range of British intellectuals and travellers perceived the religion and peoples of the Ottoman Empire across this period. I provide much needed historical context for contemporary invocations of ‘Enlightenment’ in response to current geo-political tensions. By doing so, I do not claim that Europe’s era of Enlightenment offers any neat solutions to current world problems. Rather, my purpose is to illustrate the tensions inherent in Enlightenment British engagements with, understandings of, and responses to Islam and Ottoman Muslim peoples. I argue that the acquisition and circulation of knowledge of Islam and Ottoman societies during Britain’s Enlightenment defied a simple East/West binary so often invoked today. Specifically, I will consider how transnational and trans-imperial knowledge circulation during Britain’s prolonged engagement with the Ottoman Empire contributed to a softening of old intolerances. My thesis chronologically examines the literature produced by four British Enlightenment writers whose work and careers map an expanding global engagement in Enlightenment thought: the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) whose commentary relied on second hand accounts of life in the Ottoman Empire, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), the wife of the British Ambassador who travelled overland from Britain, to reside in the Ottoman Empire between 1716-1718, and two brothers, Alexander (1715-1768) and Patrick Russell (1727-1805), who served consecutively as doctors in Ottoman held Aleppo between 1730-1768. While Locke’s writings deserve attention for his remarkable but inconsistent use of source material, Lady Mary and the Russell brothers provide us with personal testimonies as a traveller and as residents, respectively, that offer a window into the deepening engagements between Europe and the Ottoman Empire across the era. Both Lady Mary and the Russell brothers provided interpretative comparisons which engaged with the religious, intellectual, and societal traditions they experienced in the Islamic Ottoman Empire. This thesis will contribute to existing scholarship by recording how shifting British political, economic, and material interests shaped the level of tolerance exhibited towards Islam and Muslims in the Ottoman Empire during this period. More to the point, I draw attention to the crucial contribution made to the circulation of knowledge of Islam and Ottoman society in Britain of those who travelled to and resided in the East. In the process, a complicated picture emerges of Britain’s Enlightenment abroad, on the one hand challenging old prejudices against Islam, while fuelling the natural historical delineation of physical and societal differences between human beings with consequences that have currency today.

This arts-based research investigates the ways in which contemporary transcultural artists (a category in which I include myself) have harnessed the frictions and tensions of cultural difference to develop their practices. Transcultural artists are understood in this research to be those who experience, adopt, and work across multiple cultures based on their heritage and upbringing. Two examples of such artists are Australian Aboriginal Tony Albert and Vietnamese-American Dinh Q. Lê, who are discussed in this exegesis. Both artists leverage cultural difference to create artworks that offer alternate and deeper understandings of identities, and reveal forgotten or neglected voices and narratives of the past. They work across multiple platforms and spaces, highlighting the important role transcultural visual artists play in broadening definitions of art, artmaking, and art audiences. This exegesis draws on postcolonial theories, artistic fields, and cultural and historical contexts to contextualise my studio outcomes, including the history of Australian national identity, the series of events that led to my family’s migration to Australia, and the continued representation of Hmong as Other in Australia and the diaspora. As a first-generation Hmong-Australian, I have often felt the strain of cultural difference. Rather than dissuade or resolve the frictions and tensions of cultural difference, I have used these productively within my arts practice. The works I have produced throughout my doctoral candidature reimagines tropes of Hmong-Australian identity in ways that are playful and inclusive of my lived experiences. I have also reinterpreted past events associated with my family’s experiences of war and migration, drawing on personal memories, my father’s oral stories, family mementos, recorded documentation, and artefacts. To circumvent being pigeonholed as an ‘ethnic’ artist, I have worked across multiple disciplines and expanded my role as an artist by positioning my work within traditional and non-traditional art exhibiting spaces and contexts. These outcomes have reached those who are often marginalised by art institutions, as I have engaged them in both making and viewing art.

This multidisciplinary PhD comprises a novel and exegesis, which, together, explore the idea that some small Australian towns may promote the likelihood of residents having intercultural experiences associated with cosmopolitanism. The exegesis examines social, political and economic conditions which may support cosmopolitan experience. The novel dramatizes how the lived social environment can influence one’s emotional experience of cultural difference. Together, the novel and exegesis conclude that small towns present social conditions, which can promote empathy and cultural curiosity. The combination of novel and exegesis enables this project to ask broad questions about how Australian multiculturalism could harness the potential of cosmopolitan interactions. For example, it asks as: can modern residents of diverse small towns better adapt to social and cultural change than city dwellers? Through creative, practice-led research in the form of a novel, this project offers a verisimilar perspective of a cultural outsider in a diverse small town. Through first person narrative, the novel explores what a cosmopolitan experience may feel like. This perspective also allows the thesis to reflect on how some of the socio-cultural impediments to acceptance may be overcome. The exegesis supports this line of inquiry through more traditional scholarship, drawing on case studies, as well as social, cultural and economic theory to interrogate the central assertion of this thesis: that small towns can be as cosmopolitan, if not more so, than their big city counterparts. Combined, the creative work and exegesis respond to perennial questions, such as what it means to belong to Australia, how difference is perceived and how it could be valued in this country. Through the novel and exegesis, the utility of cosmopolitan perspectives and social policy emerge as a practical responses to negotiating differences in the social context of Australia’s multicultural community: a diverse, national community facing an increasingly global world.

This study is an empirical study that explores the effect of an Augmented Reality (AR)-enabled navigation aid on indoor navigation performance and user experience. A new AR-enabled navigation aid prototype was developed for this study. Its user ratings and navigation performance records were compared to those of a printed map. A total of 50 college students participated in the study, and each participant experienced two conditions with different navigation routes presented in a randomized order. During each condition, participant performed a navigation task with a destination and a route recall task to retrace the navigation path without any navigation aid. The results showed that in terms of navigation task, participants required shorter navigation time and made fewer errors with an AR-enabled navigation aid than with a printed map. The results of route recall task demonstrated a significant effect of participants’ culture. In the printed map condition, East Asians required shorter route recall time and made fewer errors than European Americans. In the AR-enabled navigation aid condition, European Americans required shorter route recall time and made fewer errors than East Asians. Findings from the current study highlight new factors such as individual differences shaped by culture in affecting a person’s navigation behavior. Such findings will be beneficial to researchers and app developers interested in successfully merging AR technologies with current indoor navigation aids.

Guided by social cognitive behavioral theory, this study aimed to explore the parental perceptions of including children in family members’ end of life care and at the funeral services by examining the potential predicting factors such as anxiety, depressive symptoms, stress, self-efficacy, self-esteem, attitude toward death, children’s age, social support, and personal relationships. A total of 120 (58 non-Japanese and 62 Japanese) parents participated in the study by completing either hard copy or online surveys. Data were analyzed by performing t-tests, correlations, and multiple regression. Results indicated that the majority of participants would definitely include their children in the partners’ and other children’s (if available) end of life care and at their funeral services, regardless of the cultural backgrounds, that social support and parent-child relationships were strongly associated with the parental decision making, and that there were cultural differences in such associations. The findings suggest that strengthening the social support, particularly from family and friends, and enhancing the parent-child relationships might encourage parents to include children in a family member’s end of life care and at the funeral service.

Culture-bound syndromes have proven to be significant indicators for social and psychiatric vulnerability for specific racial/ethnic minorities. However, the diagnostic criteria for these syndromes often fail to adequately address important historical and social circumstances that influence immigrant health. While culture plays a significant role in influencing the etiology and the symptom expression of certain disorders, the immigrant context is also an important indicator of mental health outcomes. In particular, factors such as English proficiency, generational status, and age at time of immigration can influence how they experience and express mental illness. The present study used logistic regression to assess the relationships among ethnicity and immigration-integration characteristics on the outcome of culture-bound syndromes from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS, n = 4528). Differences in racial/ethnic groups and immigration-integration factors were found. Compared to Filipinos and other Asians, Latinos had higher odds of reporting ataques de nervios. There were associations between ataques de nervios with age of immigration, generation, and English proficiency. Further, there was effect modification between English proficiency and ethnicity: Filipinos with limited English proficiency were associated with greater odds of reporting ataques de nervios as compared to Latinos and other Asians. Filipinos with excellent or good English proficiency were associated with decreased odds of reporting ataques de nervios as compared to Latinos and other Asians. The Latinos in our sample demonstrated an inverse relationship to Filipinos in their reports of ataques de nervios, while all other Asians reported similar levels of ataques de nervios at both levels of English proficiency. Culture-bound syndromes can serve as helpful indicators for identifying mental health needs in marginalized populations, but should be considered in the context of important historical, cultural, and social factors.

This thesis work is a digital book presenting Chinese international students’ lives at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The book introduces detailed information about Chinese students who are presently attending RIT. There are five main topics discussed in the book: finding housing around the campus, commuting and transportation, food and dining, education and academics at RIT, and extracurricular activities for Chinese international students at RIT. The book content is developed based on the research of RIT Chinese students. It is designed for those who are interested in as well as those who are considering attending RIT. Instead of another traditional printed book or brochure, a digital interactive media design was developed. It is easier to distribute as compared to a printed book. The book is a combination of multimedia Including text, audio, video, animation, and interactivity. The book also explores cross-field design, which integrates graphic design, motion graphics, interactive design, and digital video.

With new migration patterns extending border spaces into the interior of the United States, undocumented migrants living in the U.S. interior are forced to navigate the hazards and insecurities of illegal residence within the contexts of their daily lives. In the midst of these hazards, many migrants use listening to music in specific public spaces as a way of creating positions of security. Music and genre-normative modes of listening form a fundamental part of the social architecture of public space, and regional Mexican music forms part of the social architecture of Mexican grocery stores as a culturally “safe” environment for migrants.

This thesis examined the effects of social network sites (SNS) on users' social capital and privacy awareness and tested if differences existed in intensity of SNS usage and its relationship with students' social capital and privacy awareness between Chinese and the U.S. college students. An online survey conducted among Chinese Renren Network users and the U.S. Facebook users showed that the usage of SNSs was positively related to users' social capital (both bridging and partially bonding) and privacy awareness. Significant differences were found in the intensity of SNS usage and bridging social capital between the users of Facebook and Renren Network.

This thesis investigates perceptions of Japanese folktales by readers from different cultural backgrounds. The study analyzes whether a reader’s cultural background affects how the Japanese folktales are perceived and understood, particularly focusing on where the comprehension difference appears between Native English Speaking (NES) American readers and Japanese readers as well as where the NES American readers with more than three years of Japanese courses fall within the spectrum. The participants in this study are separated into three different groups, namely Japanese, NES Americans with more than three years of Japanese courses and NES Americans with Japanese courses. The participants were asked to read three Japanese folktales, Urashima Taro, Bamboo- Cutter’s Tale and Click-Clack Mountain, and were asked to answer short-answer survey questions regarding three folktales as well as the general questions about the Japanese folktales. the survey responses were typed and tallied by themes of responses. The result showed that there are differences in comprehension of the Japanese folktales between NES American readers and Japanese readers. Also, the NES American readers with more than three years of Japanese courses’ comprehension was similar to Japanese readers than NES American readers without Japanese courses.

This study investigated views, beliefs, and values about extracurricular activities of two sets of parents, Korean immigrant parents and American U.S. born parents, both groups of middle or higher class socioeconomic status with above college degrees. By examining how parents perceive their own involvement in their children’s extracurricular activities and how differently parents of recent immigration from Korea or of established European American descent become involved with their children’s activities, parents’ motivation and their role emerged using self-determination theory as a basis to explain the internalization underlying self-determined motivation. Participants in this study were 31 parents (approximately10 each from 3 activity groups) associated with three extracurricular activities for young children. This study used a mixed-methods approach. First, the degree of to which parents perceived their involvement based on parental support or pressure, the two factors from Anderson et al. (2003), were surveyed. Second, semi-structured face-to-face interviews were used to elicit in-depth information from three parents for each activity, selecting them based on their responses to the survey. The findings suggested that parents expect their children to find their own interest, build competence, and ultimately acquire autonomy by engaging in extracurricular activities. In terms of cultural differences, the results revealed that though there are cultural differences in their involvement, these parents were aware of possible gaps and strove to close these gaps to help their children.

This thesis uses qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore the relationship between cultural differences and marital satisfaction in Chinese-American transnational marriages. During semi-standardized interviews with couples living in Beijing, several common cultural issues arose, such as language and communication, adjustment and attitudes towards spouse’s culture, in-laws and family, politics, money spending habits, and children. An online survey measured individual acculturation and enculturation and compared it with individual and couple’s marital satisfaction. Although it was found that individual’s cultural adjustment could not significantly predict their spouse’s marital satisfaction, for Chinese participants, the degree of cultural adjustment was positively correlated with their marital satisfaction.

This report is conceptualized as a research proposal that aims to investigate culturally differentiated consumers' motivations to engage in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communication through one of the newest and most popular social networking sites: micro-blogging service in the U.S and China. Instead of actually collecting data, the report uses a social cognitive approach and tries to explain eWOM motives in outcome expectations by applying Bandura’s six outcome expectations and three additional dimensions to eWOM communication, some of which will be influenced by apparent cultural differences that exist between U.S and China.

This study examined the impact of cultural differences on the trans-cultural application of the concept of organizational leadership. The significance of four cultural dimensions (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity) (Hofstede, G., 1980) towards the concept of organizational leadership (Rost, J.C, 1991) was discussed and a survey as created to test for cultural differences from a leadership perspective. American and Croatian college students then completed the survey. Results showed cultural similarities for all cultural dimensions with the exception of uncertainty avoidance, which was found to be higher for the American sample than the Croatian. Consequently, it can be said that organizational leadership may be easier to apply in Croatia than in the United States.