Peripheral Ritualized Practices—Threads Connecting Decorations to the Cloak of Identity

This is an ethnographic study which investigates the practices of language maintenance and ethnic identity affiliation for immigrant/migrant Nepalese families with primary to middle school children in the United Kingdom. The study presents a comparative case study analysis of three Nepalese immigrant/migrant families. Participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and historical narrative interview were used. The study investigated prior exposure to home country, ethnic, cultural, and social literacy practices that occurred in various contexts during a nine-month period. This analysis revealed a phenomenon I termed peripheral ritualized practices. Exposure to peripheral ritualized practices over time creates positive changes in attitudes toward multilingualism and diversity.     

Minority Cultures and Social Media: Magnifying Garifuna

This paper looks at social media use by the Garifuna people. It explores how they are using social media to create a supraterritorial cyberscape. Despite the claim that global media is marginalising minority cultures and causing global homogenisation, this research found that newer forms of social media are in fact creating virtual cultural cyberscapes that are extending minority cultures. The Garifuna cultural response to social media can be demonstrative of the positive impact of social media minority perspectives. The larger implication, though, is that traditional geographical models of cultural space are becoming obsolete. In this research, a total of 60 Garifuna in locations all across the United States and Honduras were selected for participation. Their access to and use of media were examined.     

Cultural Diplomacy,Branding and the American Film Institute's Project: 20/20

The Global Cultural Initiative (GCI) was a flagship cultural diplomacy effort introduced by the Bush Administration in the mid-2000s; one project of this initiative was the American Film Institute's Project: 20/20, a program of 19 films from five continents scheduled to tour the United States and abroad. This paper is a historical exploration into how the Bush Administration reconstructed American identity and culture through framing, and how that framing was embedded within cultural diplomacy initiatives like the GCI. This paper contributes to an understanding of how intercultural dialogue is often based on key messages and constructed ideas.     

基于特征数据的开放式同行评议关键因素的实证分析

【目的】对影响开放式同行评议实践的相关因素进行实证研究,发掘开放式同行评议的关键影响因素。【方法】以Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)中开放式同行评议期刊为研究对象,通过网络爬取相关数据。采用变量分类赋值的方式,对影响开放式同行评议的相关定性因素进行量化分析。采用多重对应分析图展示开放式同行评议相关影响因素及其不同类别的内在关联;采用最优尺度回归模型揭示相关影响因素对开放评议类型的影响程度。【结果】开放评议类型与评议专家身份的公开类别具有极密切的关联,评议专家身份对开放评议类型有显著正向影响,且重要性程度值非常高。【结论】评议专家身份是否公开成为开放式同行评议实践模式的关键影响因素,透明性同行评议是当前开放评议行之有效的实践模式。     

‘We can do it’: Community,resistance, social solidarity,and long-term volunteering at a sport event

Much research on volunteers has focused on who the volunteers are, and what motivates them on an individual level. This study, however, aims to contextualize the long-term commitment found in a whole community of volunteers and to explain this pattern of collective volunteering not in terms of individual motivations but in terms of broader social processes. Data gathered from interviews with volunteers in Vikersund, Norway, and the analysis of local and national press coverage in the years leading up to the 2013 World Cup in Ski flying in Vikersund suggest that long-term volunteering can be understood in terms of (i) a high level of social integration (socialization, institutionalization); (ii) the creation of a collective identity focused around the ski flying hill; and (iii) the maintenance and reinforcement of strong community identity and social solidarity by local resistance to the perceived hostility of outside organizations. This focus on the broader community/social processes has implications for researchers examining sport event volunteers as well as managers of recurring sport events wishing to retain volunteers.     

基于社会认同的旅游体验研究

随着中国经济的快速发展,旅游已经成为人们生活的一个重要组成部分,传统的单一观光型旅游已经不能适合人们日益增加的旅游需求。因此研究消费者进行旅游的深层次原因,特别是消费者在旅游时所体现出的社会层面的需求显得非常重要。对其进行研究可以在开发新的旅游产品和服务时更多的加入社会层面的体验,将使消费者在旅游中获得更大程度的满足。本研究通过将社会认同理论引入消费者的旅游活动中,探索消费者的认同感是否会影响其对旅游产品的选择与消费。本研究最后进行了社会认同理论在旅游体验中的发展趋势及策略研究。     

Are You My Grandmother?: Constructing and Maintaining Stepgrandparent Identity and Roles

The disruption of the biological family unit due to divorce or separation followed by remarriage or re-partnering has a profound impact on every family member, including extended family members. An individual becomes a stepgrandparent through later life re-partnering, when an adult child becomes a stepparent, or when a stepchild becomes a parent. In order to gain a greater understanding of the communication influencing the development and maintenance of stepgrandparent roles and identity, a qualitative interpretive analysis method was employed as a guide for interviews with 41 adult stepfamily members across two generations of stepfamily membership: stepparents and stepgrandparents.     

A Post/Decolonial View of Race and Identity Through the Narratives of U.S. International Students from the Global South

Using postcolonial and decolonial theory as a framework, this study focuses on the lived experiences of international students of color entering the United States for the first time in their lives from the global South. Our goal was to understand how they communicate/perform their dis/located identities in relation to “race” when immersed for the first time in a White settler society context. Findings from this qualitative study underscore discomfort with U.S.-centric race logics, production of ambiguity in relation to identity and race, and the growth of compassion for cultural Others as a result of becoming racial Other. The decolonial implications of such dis-identification with U.S. colonial race categories are discussed.     

Factors influencing electronic health record adoption by physicians: A multilevel analysis

In Canada, the healthcare system remains paper-laden, and EHR adoption by physicians lags behind many other industrial countries. Recent reviews identified individual and organizational factors as having the most important influence on EHR adoption and proposed taking a multidimensional perspective to study these adoption determinants. However, most studies have focused on physician EHR adoption measured at the individual level.ObjectivesFirst, we used a multilevel regression model to assess whether organizations' characteristics influenced physician behavioral intention to use EHR. Second, we sought to identify individual and organizational factors that explain physician intention.MethodsWe conducted a prospective cross-sectional study among physicians in 49 primary healthcare organizations in four regions of the province of Quebec (Canada). We first analyzed relationships between individual and organizational variables and intention. Second, we performed multilevel modeling to explore organizational characteristics' impact on physician intention to use EHR.Results278 completed questionnaires were returned from the 31 organizations that had at least 5 participants (response rate: 39.8%). Questionnaires showed satisfactory psychometric properties. The multilevel modeling found no significant overall influence of organizational level on physician intention to use EHR. Second, six of the individual level constructs had a positive and strongly significant impact on physician intention.ConclusionIn the Quebec context, organization-level seems to have no significant impact on EHR adoption by physicians. Hence, particular strategies are more likely to succeed if they target individual physicians rather than organizations.     

e-Government Adoption Model (GAM): Differing service maturity levels

This research has as its objective the discovery of the critical factors that enable citizens to adopt e-Government (e-Gov) at different stages of service maturity. To accomplish the objective, this research has explained the related concepts and theories and developed a research framework grounded on a strong theoretical and literature review background. The empirical study was conducted in Canada, which is a leader in providing mature e-Gov services. From our results, we have observed two ontological differences from the present literature in the adoption behavior of e-Gov where organizational and financial perspectives have distinct implications over parsimonious technology adoption behavior. First, technology adoption model (TAM), diffusion of innovation theory (DOI), and theory of planned behavior (TPB) cannot capture and specify the complete essence of e-Gov adoption behavior of citizens. Second, e-Gov adoption behavior also differs based on service maturity levels, i.e., when functional characteristics of organizational, technological, economical, and social perspectives of e-Gov differ. Our findings indicate the critical factors that enable citizens to adopt e-Gov at different stages of service maturity. Public administrators and policy-makers have potential implications from the findings of the adoption behavior of e-Gov at different maturity levels.