R-3 Repository :: Browsing by Author "Tyler, Stephen A."

Browsing by Author "Tyler, Stephen A."

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A map of life: An epistemological study of the Human Genome Project
(1999) Leal, Belita (Maria Isabel); Tyler, Stephen A.
Based on research primarily conducted in a molecular biology laboratory working on the Human Genome Project (HGP), this dissertation focuses-upon how genomic research, as an emerging form of scientific knowledge, stands to affect the fashioning of subjectivity. This study argues that as a biomedical project which claims to be capable of understanding "what it means to be human," the HGP stands to have profound consequences upon the way in which modern subjects know themselves. The life sciences have increasingly moved away from the mastery of nature towards knowledge and control over human nature. The HGP represents an emerging model in which human nature and life have become objects and categories of knowledge and control for the life sciences. The focus of this project is the investigation of how the HGP incorporates an understanding of human nature and life into its realm of study and how that knowledge in turn is incorporated into the understanding human beings have of themselves. This research centers upon the HGP as the site in which to draw out, counterpose and resolve some of the issues at stake in the scientific remaking of human subjects. The HGP represents an expansion of the domain of the life sciences into the control of life itself and the psychological as well as material expression of that life in human beings, known as human nature. Finally, this study characterizes the HGP as a biomedical research project that is essentially religious in how it perceives itself and claims to provide ultimate knowledge on being human. This project argues that such knowledge is religious and therefore inaccessible through modern science. Therefore it questions the ability of the HGP to provide valid knowledge on the ultimate understanding of human beings through religious, philosophical and scientific discourses that contest and subvert this claim.
Aphasia: Some neurological, anthropological and postmodern implications of disturbed speech
(1992) Doody, Rachelle Smith; Tyler, Stephen A.
This work begins by examining the history of aphasia studies, placing them in the context of historically concurrent theories about speech and language. The historical analysis can be read as a deconstructive incision into contemporary discourses which use information about language to make inferences about brain functioning or thought processes. A deconstructive critique of aphasiology and those sciences upon which it is built, including linguistics and localization theory, suggests that aphasia is constructed artificially so that it cannot be localized or explained by brain mechanisms. Anthropological influences in this work inform the style of analysis as well as the range of inquiry. Situated in postmodern anthropology, the thesis includes an investigation of positioning: positioning of the author within medicine (neurology) and anthropology; and positioning as a phenomenon brought about by certain sets of practices. Among these practices are those related to the scientific method and those related to more interpretive or hermeneutic strategies. Several controversies within anthropology are related to the clash between science and not-science, including feminist and postmodern debates. Practices, which are situation-dependent, are not as conflicted as theories are and provide reasonable ways to separate sense (or meaningfulness) from non-sense (or artifacts) in daily life and work. Related to questions of method and interpretation are questions about "data." What count(s) as data? Should units of significance be predetermined, or discovered in the process of investigation? How do standardized methodologies or interpretive expectations shape the outcome of clinical, scientific, and anthropological studies? A narrative style is employed to discuss these questions by telling particular stories involving research and publication: case reports in neurology; semantics of sentence accent in Alzheimer's disease; and fieldwork in northern Thailand concerning nonliteracy and its effects on cognitive processes among Karen hilltribes. These disciplinary projects are contrasted and data creation discussed. What began as an examination of the history of aphasia studies concludes in discussion of aphasic speech as an example/critique of postmodern and anthropological discourse. Practices that cluster around the study of aphasia, particularly those involving living patients, provide useful critiques to scientific, anthropological and postmodern theorizations.
Closets and Walls: Practices of Heterodoxy among Gay Mormons and Stencilistas in Santigao, Chile
(2010) Adair-Kriz, Michael; Faubion, James D.; Tyler, Stephen A.; Kripal, Jeffrey J.
This dissertation compares the heterodoxic practices of gay Mormons and stencil street artists (Stencilistas) in Santiago, Chile, recorded during twenty-two months of fieldwork. The dissertation is divided in two distinct sections: one text-based and the
Dissolving classifications: Rethinking linguistic typology
(1989) Cummings, Elisabeth Alma; Tyler, Stephen A.
The three traditional strands of linguistics--theoretical, typological, and genealogical--are discussed as constructed systems of classification seeking to impose order in various ways on the world's rambunctious languages. All three strands are based on Indo-European grammatical expectations, they are enabled by literacy, and they have been empowered by a scientific mode of thought which has been dominant in the West. The postulation of "Language" as an abstract object of study is seen to emanate from an epistemology of logico-mathematics, alphabetic literacy, and the demands of a scientific methodology; note is made of the power of the Platonic metaphor. There is a growing lack of dogmatic acceptance of the three traditional linguistic approaches: the classificatory attempts to tame language are, in fact, dissolving. A focus on typological linguistics is introduced by a tracing of typological thought from 1800 to 1963. Influences from within and from without philology and linguistics which contributed to the delineation of the subfield are commented upon. The historical and epistemological interface between theoretical, typological, and genealogical linguistics is probed. The concentration on typological classification is continued by in-depth discussions of two languages which are of the statistically rare word order in which the object precedes the subject: Hixkaryana (Carib) OVS, and Tzotzil (Mayan) VOS. Interpretations of sentential word order in these languages are provided from a psychological-functional approach to discourse. The order in these languages is found to constitute an anomaly from current theoretical viewpoints: they are grammatically object-subject, functionally rheme-theme, and psychologically "diffuse"-"focused". Grammatical subjects and objects are found to have limited relevance for an understanding of the discourse of these languages. The evidence from these languages and the detailed study of the imagination which has come to dominate the study of language are meant to comprise a contribution to the dissolution of the traditional classificatory linguistic approaches. Alternatives are suggested, both implicitly and explicitly. Unified attempts to classify the world's languages in the three traditional manners are possible; the many publications devoted to this enterprise bear witness to this fact. It is suggested that what can be principally learned from these publications is an insight into the self of Western culture, and into that mode of thought which has been dominant in the West for so long.
Guardians of the embers: A cultural geography of land use and land tenure among the BaAka Pygmies of Central Africa
(1996) Davies, Evan Tyler; Tyler, Stephen A.; Marcus, George E.
A general geographical and cultural survey of BaAka Pygmy exploitation of the tropical rain forest environment in the Dzanga-Ndoki national park of Central African Republic, and adjacent areas of Cameroon and the Congo is presented. The fabric of BaAka society as it pertains to practices and perceptions of land use, land tenure and relationship to the environment is specifically investigated. The data obtained during the fieldwork stage of this investigation are presented herein as an original narrative ethnography with inclusions of tabular and graphic data. A collection of some contemporary experimental genres used in contemporary ethnographic writings are discussed prior to presentation of the ethnography.
Late voices, late movements: Beethoven and the cultural construction of genius
(1992) Bishop, Ryan Marion; Tyler, Stephen A.
The text represents an experimental work in the intersections of anthropology, history, and literature, particularly as they pertain to notions regarding cultural constructions of common-sense reality (hence, questions of epistemology and ontology). The object of inquiry is one within the Western tradition, an increasingly important concern of anthropology which establishes an Other that is both of us and not us. In this case, the Other is a heavily inscribed individual, Beethoven, and the notions regarding genius which have accrued around him. The Beethoven of the text both is and is not the Beethoven of the historical past; the Beethoven in the text is often, but not always or completely, the trope that Beethoven has become in our culture, the referent for various discursive practices which embody many Enlightenment ideals and aspects of our common-sense understanding of the world. The experimentation of the text emerges in many ways, most explicitly through the work's being a novel. Casting the work as a novel allows the writer to come clean with the fiction of this experiment, that is fiction in the sense as derived from its etymological ancestor figura: the human shaping and fashioning of materials employed. The experimentation also emerges via the explicit employment of inter-textuality as a means of constructing self, other, and community, as well as knowledge regarding all three. The rhetorical device of inter-textuality--the incorporation of "real" documents whole, altered or doctored as suits the author's purposes--leads to a polyphany which is actually only vox humana (the organ stop meant to mechanically reproduce the human voice). The illusion of polyphany, then, is filtered through the machinery of a single writer as the text moves between realist and metafictional narrative and textual devices. Thus, the text engages in the defamiliarization of textual strategies generally encountered in ethnography, history, or fiction, as well as the defamiliarization of the content found in these discursive practices. The text does not pretend to represent or describe anything or anyone. Rather, it hopefully provides for readers of it a co-creative and interactive moment for considering the contingent and constructed aspects of what is often taken as given.
Middle Voice in Northern Moldavian Hungarian
(2013-07-24) Hartenstein, Anne Marie; Shibatani, Masayoshi; Achard, Michel; Tyler, Stephen A.
Based on 160 hours of recording collected in the villages of Săbăoani, and Pildeşti, Romania, the present research attempts to describe the middle voice system of Northern Moldavian Hungarian (NMH), an endangered language spoken by no more than 3000 speakers. Defining the middle voice category semantically rather than formally, it is argued that the various middle situation types in NMH can be placed relative to one another on a “semantic map” based on shared semantic properties such as 1) the confinement of the development of the action within the agent’s sphere to the extent that the action’s effect accrues back on the agent itself, 2) the degree of volitionality of the Initiator/Agent, and 3) the degree of affectedness of the Initiator/Agent. Polysemy structures are examined against the background of a common semantic map derived on the basis of cross linguistic investigation of a given grammatical domain. In working toward this end a detailed description of major patterns of meaning inherent in the NMH middle system, examining three types of morphological middles, syntactic middles, and lexical middles is presented. Cases in which the same verb can occur with or without a middle marker apparently having the same meaning are discussed. Moreover, seemingly minimal pairs in which two different morphological constructions occur with the same verb are analyzed. A detailed analysis of the differences in form and function of the two reciprocal syntactic middle constructions in NMH is provided. Regarding reflexive syntactic middles it will be shown that depending on the case marking taken by the reflexive anaphoric operator the function conveyed is different such as reflexives, intensifiers, causers, and experiencer. Finally, cases in which the same verb can convey a middle meaning by using a morphological middle marker or by using a syntactic middle construction are analyzed showing that there are main differences in the meaning those two strategies convey. Thus, the present paper identifies specific semantic properties relevant to the middle voice system in NMH, sets up some hypotheses regarding the relations among middle and related situation types and proposes some diachronic predictions regarding the middle voice system of NMH.
A Point of Order
(Rice University, 1975-04) Tyler, Stephen A.; Electronic version made possible with funding from the Rice Historical Society and Thomas R. Williams, Ph.D., class of 2000.
Re-locating rural Portugal: Narrative clues to community and culture
(1994) Hill, Diana Louise Lourenco; Tyler, Stephen A.
This dissertation describes the multiple ways in which the Portuguese place named Cavaleiro can be construed as a community in terms of local subjectivities, the social positioning which occurs in relation to broader cultural and political-economic processes and finally anthropologically. It focuses on everyday narratives as a communicative matrix through which we can recognize culture and in doing so foregrounds the mundane experience of the Cavaleirence. While European countries worry about losing their cultural autonomy I chose deliberately to look at the most minute details of situated knowledges and to listen to the generative power of everyday discourses. Chapter one focuses on the event of the dance which suggests itself as community, despite its meaning being both as ephemeral and visceral as the experience of the dance itself. In the second chapter, gossip is a narrative event which processually constructs the "truth" of community through the continual speculation on what is real, legitimate and worthy of attention. Chapter three focuses on the ways objects of material culture serve as reference points for social identity and reach beyond their value within economic exchange as agents in the shaping of local geography. All three chapters and approaches described here question the means and content of material and cultural exchange. Narrative is conceived as cultural work which produces a range of assets, including community itself. Community is shown to be the product of narrative devices which differentiate the individual and the group, the local and foreign, the relevant and irrelevant. These differences are never rigidly codified. The continuity of narrative facilitates but also constrain on-going negotiations which respond to changing circumstances, material cultural and passions. By way of conclusion, the fourth chapter elaborates on the traditions of scholarly inquiry which staged the questions I asked and informed my interpretations and strategy of writing. The chapter focuses on the work in anthropology and British Cultural Studies which led me to choose narrative and discourse as the focus for a study of culture and on some of the key terms of "New Ethnography."
Rhetoric and grammar (English, Mandarin Chinese)
(1996) Bruff, Gary W.; Tyler, Stephen A.
Grammar can be described from a positioned rather than a universal perspective. My main point in this thesis is absolutely synthetic: the rhetorical calibrations of trope and figure unify the communication of speaker and hearer in the same way that two languages can be understood to vary. In dialogue, subtle expressions are developed (energeia) which impact on the referential and non-referential systems of a language (ergon). However, as these innovations lose their efficacy, they sediment into a grammaticalized system which appears, through translation--i.e., from an "overly-literal" glossing into English, no doubt--to be a creative and artistic product rather than an epiphenomenon of a structural template. My contention is that this appearance, stemming as it does from an aesthetic stance, is at least as real as any formal unity holding among all languages simultaneously. Finally, I gloss Mandarin in English to demonstrate how languages can be compared bi-laterally.
Signal 3: Ethnographic experiences in the American theme park industry
(1998) Lukas, Scott A.; Tyler, Stephen A.
This dissertation investigates the social, political and historical dimensions of the American theme park industry. Specifically, the research seeks to ethnologically analyze the "American theme park" as a multi-faceted space of socio-cultural formation, reformation, contestation and representation. Through a multi-sited approach, the thesis investigates theme parks, both extinct and extant, from the everyday perspectives of patrons and workers, in the closed rooms of designers, managers and elite decision-makers, and in the numerous spaces of material culture, multi-media representation and design which so makeup the place of study. The ethnographic research is based on two-years of participant-observation at a major American theme park, where the author was a trainer, as well as two years of subsequent research in over twenty additional theme parks and amusement venues, like Las Vegas casinos, throughout the country. As "edge work," the author investigates the complexities of representation, authorship and fieldwork as they emerge in a textual and performative scene of writing and evocation, ultimately challenging distinctions of ethnography and fiction.
Speaking in voices, learning to talk: The spoken and written culture of the AIDS Foundation of Houston
(1994) Tudor, Elizabeth Jean; Tyler, Stephen A.
AIDS has become the most controversial issue to enter the American public discourse in the recent past. AIDS arouses a passionate response in Houston as elsewhere because it lies at the intersection between competing discourses. Contemporary debates on sexual identity, gay politics, sex education, drug use, and health care are changing the shape of public discourses on sexuality, identity, Christianity, public health, and law. The founders of the AIDS Foundation of Houston recognized the need to create a way of speaking about and understanding AIDS which could challenge unsympathetic points of view. The AIDS Foundation of Houston began its organizing and educational activities in 1981. It has become a key player in local political battles over what course Houston's response to the AIDS epidemic would take. As part of their efforts, local groups like the Foundation use a counter-discourse which portrays PWA's not as dangerous sources of contamination or AIDS victims but honestly represented as caring, responsible people who are actively involved in decision making and shaping public policy. This essay explores several aspects of this counter-discourse including both its oral and written aspects. Volunteers and staff at the AIDS Foundation speak about AIDS with a Foundation "etiquette" which protects the secrecy and dignity of persons with AIDS (PWA's) while loudly insisting on a more caring response by the city and state. PWA's, their lovers, friends, and family publicly talk about what it is like to have AIDS in oral narratives as well as through written autobiography and biography. These narratives express the suffering and passion of people with AIDS while also speaking to the political nature of life-threatening illness. These stories confront negative representations with a language of compassion and acceptance. The AIDS Foundation also has a more conventional form of public discourse which is less emotionally intense but is persistent in demanding improved services and AIDS education. The AIDS Foundation of Houston has been successful in creating alternate forms of AIDS discourses, challenging unsympathetic discourses, expanding local services, and teaching their way of speaking to people from all walks of life.
Static flowers: Following William Bartram
(2003) Pound, Andrea Warren; Tyler, Stephen A.
Following the plot of William Bartram's Travels through North Florida, this dissertation presents a multi-sited investigation of Florida's rural modernities, illuminating contingent and accidental relationships between disparate social phenomena. Bartram's Travels is a canonical text of Floridiana that can be read as an historical myth chartering the contemporary cultural production of Florida's landscape. Testing its plot against the ethnographic realities in place today leads not to a problematization of the myth but rather a discovery of the structures of feeling at work in a provincial American setting: the dominant, residual, and emergent trends in the social construction and interpretation of a region. Bartram's text becomes a found apparatus for an empirical critique. Borrowing on Bartram's major themes, connections are traced between botany, history, floral art, farming, gardening, small towns, and tourism as sites of invention and imagination, as well as disjuncture and difference.
Structure and function of a secondary linguistic code: communication of air traffic controllers
(1976) Dessler, Lorraine H.; Tyler, Stephen A.
A vocational group in our society that uses a special language in their work was selected for a study of their language. The group consisted of air traffic controllers. This vocational group undergoes special training in connection with their work, which training provides them with knowledge and information together with a language and phraseology that enables them to clearly and concisely communicate with pilots and other controllers, The structure and function of this linguistic code was studied. The specified purpose of the language and phraseology of air traffic control is communication in which precise understanding is primary. Since a vocational group is a group in only a limited sense, this language is based on its use in the cognitive environment of flying -- an environment that contains concepts and values important in the physical environment of flying. Controllers, who are earthbound while working, must be familiar with this cognitive environment and relate to it easily. This research was conducted over a period of several months in the Air Route Traffic Control Center in Houston, Texas. Data were obtained primarily by observing and listening to the work of controllers. By being present during the classroom instruction of controller-trainees and in the control room while controllers were working, I was able to study the work and language of controllers in detail while it was in actual use. It was found that elliptical syntax in the phraseology of air traffic controllers was successfully utilized to provide brief, concise communication because both controllers and pilots operate in a situation where the background of knowledge and information are shared. I also found that while the goal of understanding in communication is highly successful, it is still possible on occasion to have a difference in interpretation, indicating that understanding in communication is not easy. A diachronic study of the language showed that, while occasional changes in the phraseology have occurred for clarification, more often changes have been in additions in procedure and phraseology owing to technological developments The language and phraseology now contain many additional acronyms and code word. Since the added procedures mean more information must be learned and utilized, it may be that acronyms provide a means of linguistic recoding that makes possible learning and processing of more information.
Synthetic beauty: American women and cosmetic surgery
(1989) Anderson, Lenore Wright; Tyler, Stephen A.
This dissertation constitutes an anthropological inquiry into the current American boom in facial and bodily cosmetic surgery. The exploration of this phenomenon utilizes the messages of the print media, the literature of the social and medical sciences, and the voices of women who tell their stories and interpret their experiences. The dissertation begins with a perspective on American society as a commercialized entity and also as a post-modern phenomenon. The commodification of American medicine is discussed as a related and yet distinct process. Chapter II provides an historical look at medical advertising in the United States and offers interpretive data on a collection of advertisements for cosmetic surgical procedures. Chapter III describes the conceptions of female beauty in the United States from the 1800s until 1989, and additionally supplies a feminist take on beauty and the viewpoints on female attractiveness held by cosmetic surgeons. Chapter IV overviews social science studies that discuss the importance of physical appearance, and psychological literature that establishes the nature of body-image over the life-cycle. This chapter also provides data on the interactions between plastic surgeons and their patients and discusses the potential psychiatric problems that might plague those who seek cosmetic surgery. Chapter V presents a discussion of the rhytidoplasty (facelift) and blepharoplasty (eyelift) operations, and outlines methods, side-effects, and complications. Additionally included are the stories and words of three women who have undergone these procedures and an analysis of the themes that recur and seem pivotal to the process of having a facelift. Chapter VI discusses augmentation mammoplasty (breast enlargement) procedures and presents an overview of how the operation is done and the common side-effects and complications. Once again the stories and quotes of three women who have had this operation are provided, and the recurrent and relevant themes found in their discourse are analyzed. The final chapter provides a gloss on cosmetic surgery using the scaffolding of symbolism, ritual, and myth. The surgical rituals of facelift and breast augmentation as well as other American beauty rites are compared with feminine rituals in other cultures and the elements of pain and danger are discussed as common to many beauty rituals, across several cultures.
The image of limited good in two Mexican novels: Hasta no Verte, Jesus Mio and La Princess del Palacio de Hierro
(1980) Madrigal, Mariana; Boorman, Joan Rea; Martinez, Maria Teresa Leal de; Tyler, Stephen A.
Certain relationships between reality and fiction can be appreciated by means of a study of a type of writing called documentary fiction, in which non-fiction -- newspaper reports and sociological studies, for example -- is presented in a narrative framework. The reality dealt with, however, must be a cognitive one, that is, a set of mental constructs shared by members of a society rather than any concrete physical reality. Documentary fiction has been chosen over "pure" fiction for a first study in this area because while it conforms to the conventions of the narrative, it documents "real" behavior and thus may be considered to be a meeting ground between the real and the imaginary. In addition, documentary fiction is an increasingly popular literary form both in the United States and Latin America. A short review of the genre in Mexico precedes a detailed study of two examples of it from that country: Hasta no verte, Jesús mío (Poniatowska 1969) and La Prihcesa del Palacio de Hierro (Sainz 1974). A cognitive model, the Image of Limited Good, has been posited for Mexico by George Foster (1965 and 1967) . A subcategory of this model is the nucleus of behavior which Octavio Paz (195) calls the Mexican mask. It is our contention that the model predicts behavior not only for the society but for its literature as well, and that this is tíie point at which: reality and fiction come togetlier. In tlie novels analyzed, tills is seen to be the case. Hasta no verte, Jesús mío is clearly a portrait of a member of the Limited Good society. The protagonist of La Princesa del Palacio de Hierro, on the other hand, exhibits very little of this traditional behavior. Hoever, she structures her discourse to conform to the pattern of masking, which is closely tied to Limited Good behavior.
The semantics of the preposition na in Slavic spatial constructions
(1994) Reindl, Donald F.; Tyler, Stephen A.
Prepositional usage in spatial constructions in the Slavic languages is frequently unpredictable and perplexing to the non-native speaker. This is especially true in the case of the preposition na. By examining categories of spatial phenomena with which the preposition na is used, it is possible to better understand why na is used in many circumstances. This not only has implications for language pedagogy, but promises to aid the understanding of certain aspects of diachronic change in the semantics of the prepositional systems of the Slavic languages.
The sword of the spirit: Christians, Karens, colonialists, and the creation of a nation of Burma
(1993) Petry, Jeffrey Louis; Tyler, Stephen A.
An ethnography of representation combining the following elements: (a) The American Baptist Mission to the Karen people of Burma; (b) The emergence of Karen nationalism as a consequence of the former, demonstrating the centrality of the phenomenon of "writing," introduced by the missionaries, in this process; (c) The colonial milieux in Burma, as evoked by the diverse documentary voices of American Baptists, British colonialists, and Karen Christians; (d) Ethnic politics, from the Karen rebellion after Burma's independence through the current democratic challenge posed by a coalition of Burma's largest ethnic groups, including Burman; (e) The fieldwork process; research and writing; ethnography; exoticism and primitivism; and the construction of this text itself. An ethnography of the Karen National Union, a predominantly Christian insurgent army in Burma, is constructed. Through an assemblage of texts, some of which have been translated into English for this project, the origins, construction, and articulation of organized Karen nationalism and cultural representation is depicted. The role of writing, print-technology, and the circulation of texts is demonstrated to be central to the foregoing processes in the Karen case. An anthropology of religion and an ethnography of the politics of ethnicity explicates the transitions from conversion to ethnic nationalism to ethnic separatism to democratic opposition. An evocative pastiche of discourses both reflects and contends with the impossibility of objective representation, with regard to both the subject and the process of research, which are thematically analogous: They both begin and end in religion and politics--Christianity and revolution. Diverse discursive styles and voices display the contested nature of knowledge while simultaneously participating in the experiment of re-construction. An academic, analytical style, for example, contributes to an understanding of the dynamics of the emergence of ethnic nationalism and notions of identity among Karen Christians in Burma, while the inclusion of Karen stories provides the reader with meaningful complementary ethnographic grounding. These juxtapositions simulate and stimulate the always inherent tension between daily life and retrospection; between action and reconstruction; between experience and representation; between living and writing.
Topologies of invention: An anthropological approach to the rhetoric of games
(2002) Pound, Christopher Brian; Tyler, Stephen A.
A study of rhetorical practice in the design and interpretation of games, this dissertation draws on culture theory and ethnographic interviews to comprehend invention as a social act. Although only role-playing games written in English are considered, the approach taken to understand the structures of attention emergent in gaming is generalizable as a means of investigating the informal social and rhetorical aspects of other kinds of games. The textual and visual rhetorics of numerous games are examined as self-situating lessons for acquiring and focusing interest. The intrinsic gap between reading and following a rule is explored as a phenomenon mediated by rhetoric. Experienced players' reflections on styles and motives are translated into ratios in a grammar of rhetorical invention. Finally, the game designers are interviewed for their professional life histories relative to the development of particular games, and the matters they emphasize are read as configurations of cultural knowledge animated by personal rhetorical resources and heuristics.
Twice upon a time: Chinese identity claimed--not merely inherited
(1996) Belden, Elionne Walker; Tyler, Stephen A.; Marcus, George E.
A study of first generation Chinese youth and their parents who have immigrated to Houston, Texas reveals that identity for this group (Chinese youth in particular) emerges from the opposition of the submissive connection to the authority of networks, and the dominant American (United States) individualism which promotes private self-interest and, hence, tends to sever communal relations. Identity is thus a consideration of opposition/contingency and same/different. An examination of identity requires recognizing that cultural inheritance impacts one's determination and ability to function within the given world. For the Chinese in this study, "ghosts" of their past remind and connect them to their cultural inheritance; they take with them what they remember leaving behind. Yet, whereas an established history and sanguinal traditions are advantageous to perpetuate facts and myths, an evolving culture which is creating new identities with and within each new generation is unfolding beyond, even in spite of, the established Chinese traditions. Furthermore, the Chinese in this study group lack the amphibolic, unstable footing characteristic of liminars who straddle two cultures, producing in themselves hybrid positioning, generating for themselves ambivalence and alienating identification. Rather than assimilate to the Western milieu, the Chinese accommodate themselves and live as a paracommunity with the dominant culture of their host city. Chinese parents' most apodictic means of countering Western influence on their children is with Chinese language schools, having the youth participate in Chinese community events, encouraging the younger Chinese to develop a network of Chinese friends, and insisting that the youth retain the Chinese values they have exemplified for them at home. By applying linguistic considerations, particularly functionalism, to create meaning, clearly there is space within the appetite for dialectics of immigration to this country (and others) and the cultural processes which ensue to resist lumping all diasporic people as liminars and hybrids.

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