On Chineseness and the identities of Vancouver's Chinese youth with implications for education
department or school: Education, Faculty of
department or school: Educational Studies (EDST), Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Lee, Peter
issued: 2011-12-19T20:05:52Z
issued: 2011
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This qualitative study examines the creation of Vancouver’s Chinese youth identities using a cultural studies framework. This thesis moves the thinking about Vancouver’s Chinese youth beyond that of mere victims of racism and views them instead as active desiring agents with interests, ambitions and the power to decide for themselves how to identify. This study also avoids any essentializing assumptions about Chinesesness and illustrates the multiple constructions of Chineseness by Chinese youth. By investigating more complex identifications, the boundaries of what constitutes the category “Vancouver’s Chinese youth” become blurred and a challenge is made to any commonsense notions about Chineseness, Canadianness, and cultural identity generally. In such a way, this study helps to fill a significant gap in the literature on Vancouver’s Chinese youth identities, a literature that focuses primarily on stereotypes, race-relations, and quantitative socio-psychological work. A discourse analysis is performed on two “texts”: a historical novel, The Jade Peony, and a contemporary incident involving the release of controversial Internet video clips by a social club on the University of British Columbia campus. They are analyzed for their representations of Chinese youth identifications using the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the work of cultural studies thinkers such as Stuart Hall and Ien Ang and their poststructuralist notions of cultural identity, and the work of queer theorists of colour such as Patrick Johnson and José Esteban Muñoz. The study will show the usefulness of the concept of hybridity and the limitations of the diasporic paradigm that places homeland as “centre.” Chineseness then becomes an open signifier whose meaning is continuously struggled over and dependent on the context of discussion. The study also makes a connection between the complexities of Chinese Canadian identity and debates in antiracism education by showing how anti…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/39789
note: ON CHINESENESS AND THE IDENTITIES OF VANCOUVER’S CHINESE YOUTH WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION by Peter Lee A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in The Faculty of Graduate Studies (Educational Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) December 2011 © Peter Lee, 2011 ii Abstract This qualitative study examines the creation of Vancouver’s Chinese youth identities using a cultural studies framework. This thesis moves the thinking about Vancouver’s Chinese youth beyond that of mere victims of racism and views them instead as active desiring agents with interests, ambitions and the power to decide for themselves how to identify. This study also avoids any essentializing assumptions about Chinesesness and illustrates the multiple constructions of Chineseness by Chinese youth. By investigating more complex identifications, the boundaries of what constitutes the category “Vancouver’s Chinese youth” become blurred and a challenge is made to any commonsense notions about Chineseness, Canadianness, and cultural identity generally. In such a way, this study helps to fill a significant gap in the literature on Vancouver’s Chinese youth identities, a literature that focuses primarily on stereotypes, race- relations, and quantitative socio-psychological work. A discourse analysis is performed on two “texts”: a historical novel, The Jade Peony, and a contemporary incident involving the release of controversial Internet video clips by a social club on the University of British Columbia campus. They are analyzed for their representations of Chinese youth identifications using the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the work of cultural studies thinkers such as Stuart Hall and Ien Ang and their poststructuralist notions of cultural identity, and the work of queer theorists of colour such as Patrick Johnson and José Esteban Muñoz. The study will show the usefulness of the concept of hybridity and…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2012-05
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0064657
language: eng
degree discipline: Educational Studies
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/39789