Non-mainstream Groups Research Articles

Do we all experience loneliness the same way? Lessons from a pilot study measuring loneliness among people with lived experience of homelessness.

Loneliness research has tended to focus on mainstream and older populations despite evidence that non-mainstream groups, like those experiencing homelessness, may experience loneliness differently. Limited existing research indicates that (a) people who have been homeless experience loneliness as multidimensional (as a pluralistic, non-unidimensional emotion, experienced specific to lacked relationships) and (b) mainstream loneliness scales may be inappropriate for this group. The current study piloted and appraised the feasibility the short version of the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (SELSA-S) among 129 Australian adults with a lived experience of homelessness. Exploratory Factor Analysis and an observational questionnaire appraisal were used to assess factorial and content validity and showed the measure did not fit this sample as well as in mainstream samples. Removal of items that participants found difficult to comprehend/answer improved the factorial fit of the scale. In conclusion, the SELSA-S may be inappropriate for measuring loneliness among people who have experienced homelessness. Further research needs to explore the potentially different structure of loneliness among marginalised groups so that a better understanding of loneliness can be reached.

Respon Nahdlatul Ulama terhadap Gempuran Aliran Fundamental; Telaah Kritis Radikalisme Intoleran dan Pudarnya Moderatisme Islam

Islam that is displayed by mainstream groups is now getting great onslaguht from non-mainstream from transnational circles with diverse faces, this second group is more violent and has a more structured and massive regeneration system and tends to dominate strategic institutions in Indonesia, with a fiercer appearance. and openly, even carrying the caliphate system in government, and trying to enter the national political arena as a strategic vehicle. On the other hand, the mainstream group began to feel and received strong pressure from the non-mainstream so that it began to step aside, even though it had long colored the nation and state of Indonesia, the other side of the non-mainstream group began to take center stage. However, it turns out that there is still hope that educated mainstream groups will begin to show their potential even though they have not been properly consolidated in facing non-mainstream groups. Islam that is displayed by mainstream groups has actually got a place from many circles in this world, because their life always adheres to the principles of tasamuh, tawassud, tawazzun, al'adl, and amar ma'ruf nahi munkar consistently, even in the global era it can also adapt to the life of time.

Wall dressed up: Graffiti and street art in Singapore

To be a ‘Renaissance City for the Arts’, Singapore has long relied on worlding devices such as iconic infrastructure and international cultural events. Since the early 2010s, a shift towards the public interests has emerged alongside the recognition of non-mainstream groups in the cultural life of the city. This paper considers graffiti and street art in Singapore, and their recent acknowledgement as an emergent subculture in the country. The scope is two-fold, firstly focusing on state policies on public art and the embrace of graffiti and street art in recent years, and secondly the artists' responses to government embracement. While some artists resist incorporation, others have strategized opportunities to showcase their work under official license. The conclusion highlights three particular issues attending subcultural embracement in Singapore, pointing the way ahead for further research on subcultural change in globalizing cities.

Dilemmas and Trade-Offs in Peacemaking: A Framework for Navigating Difficult Decisions

This article focuses on the dilemmas and trade-offs that third parties face when mediating violent political conflicts. Should they ignore human rights violations because pushing the issue could jeopardize relationships with political actors who grant access for humanitarian aid? Will bringing moderates and hardliners together help the peace process or radicalize moderate actors? What should dialogue facilitators do when the act of identifying non-mainstream groups to be included into dialogue increases division and polarization? The activity of peacemaking is inherently characterized by such process and strategy dilemmas where two equally compulsory imperatives seem not to be attainable at the same time. The article proposes a framework to break out of either-or thinking in these situations. We argue that: 1) making oneself aware of how a decision is perceived, and 2) systematically exploring a set of different strategies for creating new unexpected options helps to ease these decisions and avoid rotten compromises. The model reworks and combines existing problem-solving strategies to create a new explorative option generation approach to peacemaking dilemmas and trade-offs. Some of these strategies, such as sequencing and incrementalization, are already well-established in peacemaking. Others, such as compartmentalization and utilization, are rather unconsciously used. All identified strategies, however, are not yet systematically employed to manage third parties’ own dilemmas and trade-offs. Under the suggested framework, these strategies can act in complement to synthesize creativity and strategic thinking with surprising ease. Using examples from the authors’ peacemaking activities and observations in Myanmar, Thailand, and Ukraine, the article demonstrates the real-world benefits of the framework in terms of decision assessment and optional thinking.

Dispersed or Concentrated? Urban Distributions of Ethnic Retail Entrepreneurs: the Late Nineteenth-Century USA

Past research shows that ethnic minority groups’ self-employment opportunities tend to be spatially concentrated. Yet, such research has not fully investigated the extent to which the concentration of these opportunities differs among mainstream and non-mainstream ethnic groups. The present study fills this void, analyzing Census data on retail entrepreneurship in the late nineteenth-century USA. The findings show that ethnic groups’ retail enterprise opportunities decline precipitously across cities, often exponentially or in a manner resembling the Pareto curve. The results further indicate that the decline is particularly steep for blacks and for Southern, Central, and Eastern European immigrant groups. Overall, the evidence suggests that non-mainstream groups’ retail enterprise opportunities are concentrated into a relatively narrow segment of the urban-place distribution, casting doubt on assertions that such groups can realistically use self-employment to gain an economic foothold in a large society like the US.

Representations of Autism in Online Harry Potter Fanfiction

From literary canons all the way to the motion picture industry, the artistic and popular cultural experience of marginalized or nonmainstream groups has been one of being represented by the other. In this article, we explore how online fanfiction, as an audience-driven, interactive form of writing, may offer a way for members of nonmainstream groups to push back against and offer alternatives to stereotypical and normative discourses. We focus on how autistic people, family members, teachers, and advocates cast autistic characters in their fanfiction stories, how these stories represent autism and how, given the affordances of an online publishing platform, audience members respond to such representations. Findings suggest that these online narratives diversify available representations of autistic characters; moreover, the interactive nature of the online publishing forum allows readers to respond to and potentially disrupt stereotypical thinking and common fictional tropes surrounding autism.

Networking or Not Working?

This paper examines journalists' changing sourcing practices in the context of an emerging media ecology initiated by processes of globalization, digitization, commercialism and concentration. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube provide the means to access a more diverse range of sources, including civil society organizations and ordinary citizens. We developed a quantitative content analysis to examine to what extent Belgian news coverage showed signs of diverse sourcing practices during the 2011 uprisings in three Arab countries. We analysed a total sample of 1121 news items about the street protests in Syria, Egypt and Tunisia, in four Belgian newspapers (two popular and two quality dailies) and two Belgian broadcasters (the public broadcaster VRT and the commercial channel VTM). The analysis shows that ordinary citizens and non-mainstream groups are important news sources and that social media platforms are consulted relatively often compared to everyday foreign news coverage. In terms of inter-media differences, the findings show that broadcasters' dependency on video footage and eyewitness accounts is reflected in their use of ordinary citizen sources and amateur footage. Moreover, the analysis confirms that quality newspapers display more diverse and more innovative sourcing practices than popular newspapers.

Mothers' Judgement Of The Representativeness Of Their Sons' Language Samples In Relation To

The analysis of language elicited during naturally occurring situations forms the cornerstone of a child language assessment protocol and is used for the planning and monitoring of intervention (Dunn, Flax, Sliwinski, and Aram 1996; Evans and Miller 1999). A 1997 survey revealed that 85% of speech-language therapists in the United States of America use language samples during language assessment with children (Kemp and Klee 1997). One reason for the frequent use of language samples is the limitations of standardised language tests (cf., amongst others, Hawkins and Spencer 1985). Another reason is the lack of assessment tools, especially culturally fair ones, for clients from nonmainstream groups (Pena, Quinn, and Iglesias 1992; Toronto and Merrill 1983). Consider the situation of Afrikaans, for example: According to the 2001 census results (Statistics South Africa 2003), this language is spoken as mother-tongue by 13% of the South African population (i.e., by 6 million people). Considering that Afrikaans is not widely spoken outside of the country, it could thus be viewed as a nonmainstream language compared to, for instance, English, the language which has the world's third largest number of mother-tongue speakers, viz. 322 million (Grimes 1996). The lack of assessment tools for clients from nonmainstream groups is exemplified by the fact that there is only one standardised instrument for the assessment of expressive syntax for children who speak Afrikaans, namely the Toets vir Mondelinge Taalproduksie (Vorster 1980). However, this test has poor test-retest reliability (according to Vorster himself) and has only been standardised for children in the age group 4 years 6 months to 10 years 5 months. This leaves speech-language therapists who are required to assess the expressive syntactic abilities of Afrikaans-speaking children not represented by the population sample on which the test was standardised with the choice of either devising their own informal assessment tool(s) or making use of a spontaneous language sample.

Translation and the Circulation of Competing Narratives from the Wars in Chechnya: A Case Study from the 2004 Beslan Hostage Disaster

This paper examines Russian and English reportage published online over the course of Wednesday, 1 September, the first day of the three-day hostage-crisis that took place in Beslan, Southern Russia in 2004. The material selected for analysis comes from three disparate news agencies: RIA-Novosti, a major, state-controlled Russian news agency; Kavkazcenter, the website of the Chechen armed resistance; and Caucasian Knot, a site founded by Memorial, Russia’s international and historical human rights society. Drawing on tenets of socio-narrative theory that combine narratological tools with the idea of ‘ontological narrativity’ (Somers and Gibson 1994: 38), the paper analyses the construction of the news narratives published by each website, before turning to a comparative analysis of the translated material also published that day. The paper thus contributes to academic knowledge regarding the Beslan hostage-taking and the discourses generated by the event – particularly those produced by fringe groups and in translation – as well as to knowledge of narrative construction as events are still occurring. Preliminary conclusions are drawn regarding the effect of translation on these competing narratives, particularly those circulated by opposition, non-mainstream groups concerning situations of violent political conflict, such as that which still continues in Chechnya and the North Caucasus.

Talking Race in Teacher Education: The Need for Racial Dialogue in Teacher Education Programs

U.S. schools continue to experience increased racial diversity in student population. In response to changing school demographics, various forms of multicultural education have emerged to help incorporate the history and culture of non-mainstream groups into the school curriculum. Among the glaring absences from the discussion of diversity has been the salience of race. Race, as a social construct, continues to be one of the most divisive constructs in our schools and society. In this article, the authors discuss the need for helping preservice teachers acquire the knowledge and skills to effectively initiate and facilitate dialogue about race and race-related issues in their classrooms. The authors discuss why the need for race-related dialogue is necessary, barriers that prevent constructive dialogue from occurring, and design principles that teacher education programs can incorporate to help teachers become effective educators in a multicultural society.

Gifted—Through Whose Cultural Lens? An Application of the Postpositivistic Mode of Inquiry

Using a postpositivistic method of inquiry, this study examined themes that emerged in the language of Latino, African American, Native American, immigrant Asian, and low-income Anglo individuals as they nominated individuals for a hypothetical gifted program. Reflected values differed from group to group and differed considerably from those reflected in classroom teachers' language in an earlier study. The researcher theorized that value orientations of mainstream teachers, who make referrals for programs after initial screening procedures, preclude their valuing behaviors deemed valuable by nonmainstream individuals and also inhibit behaviors deemed gifted by teachers. Findings suggest that the mode of inquiry can be useful for those who seek new ways to conceptualize giftedness and who seek to explain phenomena, such as the underrepresentation of nonmainstream groups in gifted education.

THE INCOME CONSEQUENCES OF ETHNIC ENTREPRENEURIAL CONCENTRATIONS

Based on the 1990 census data for America's 16 largest metropolitan regions, this study assesses the propensities of immigrants and minorities to become self-employed and concentrate in particular niches in different metropolitan regions in relation to earnings. Massive gravitation of nonmainstream groups into self-employment was found to be associated with a low earnings advantage of self-employment, particularly where the self-employed concentrated in a few low-income traditional niches. These niches, however, could still contribute to the economic progress of immigrants and were particularly attractive for less-educated males. High earnings advantage of self-employment, associated with high rates of self-employment, characterized several large communities located in the largest metropolitan regions, where immigrant entrepreneurs expanded from traditional specializations into a broader range of entrepreneurial niches.

Race, Modernity, Postmodernity: A Look at the History and the Literatures of People of Color since the 1960s (review)

Reviewed by: Race, Modernity, Postmodernity: A Look at the History and the Literatures of Peoples of Color since the 1960s Carol E. Henderson W. Lawrence Hogue. Race, Modernity, Postmodernity: A Look at the History and the Literatures of Peoples of Color since the 1960s. State U of New York P, 1996. xii + 209 pp. W. Lawrence Hogue’s look at the history and literature of people of color since the 1960s is an interesting one. Framed in the epistemological tenets that govern discussions of modernity and postmodernity, Hogue investigates the state of being “colored” in America, not from its static, representational position but from its dialectical position as it relates to the larger intellectual communities of mainstream and nonmainstream groups of the 1960s to the present. Hogue focuses on eight narratives from members of four ethnic groups: African American, Asian American, Mexican American, and Native American. As he makes clear in his preface, his study “explores how desires are repressed, ignored and subordinated when they encounter rigid, naturalized narratives either in the forms of literary texts, critical discourses, cultural and political discourses, or canon formations.” Hogue hopes to expand the boundaries which govern the discussions of these texts, positing, in effect, an interpretation that does not center around race exclusively but includes philosophical debates centering on these narratives as modern or postmodern texts. In chapter 1, Hogue outlines the ongoing debates surrounding the significance of postmodernity and its influence in our culture. He notes that changes in the social, political, and economic organization of American society prompted transformations not only in American society at large but also within the communities of people of color over the past three decades. The globalization of certain national markets, [End Page 396] the emergence of computer and information networks, the explosion of the media culture—all these factors contributed to the production of a new social reality which found its “subjects” decentered as the conceptions of time and space took on new meaning in a culture that had lost its master narratives and had left “man . . . without external principles of authority.” Against this backdrop, Hogue argues, “a vision of racial communities as being defined by racial tradition has been distilled” in contemporary literature. This tradition becomes, for all intents and purposes, a shadow of a master narrative that “dichotomizes yet conjoins two oppositions: the rural/urban, the European/non-European.” In tracing the history of this tradition through the lives of people of color, Hogue pinpoints what he believes to be the essentialization of the race tradition by “racial cultural nationalists” who “fall into a trap of taking the rhetorical ideological construct of continuity (and unity and wholeness) as being an essential relation of continuity.” For people of color, this “tradition” then becomes appropriated, objectified, homogenized, and reified through Mexican, African, and Asian cultures. What Hogue suggests is that the properties of modernism and postmodernism complicate these notions of wholeness as ideological constructs like alienation, fragmentation, and individualism supersede the need for historical and communal continuity. The rest of Hogue’s study explores these conflicts in minute detail through an analysis of the following novels: Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (chapter 2); Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory and Andrea Lee’s Sarah Phillips (chapter 3); Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident (chapter 4), and Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey and Richard Perry’s Montgomery’s Children (chapter 5). Hogue’s book goes far in positing alternative ways to view the racial tradition within the dictates of modernism and posmodernism. As the title suggests, “race” alone does not determine the positionality of a text or its author within certain intellectual communities in this country. Yet his analysis left me asking whether “white” America itself does not speak from its own “racial tradition.” If the answer to this question is yes (and I believe that it is given the move in certain theoretical circles to include “whiteness” as a cultural/racial category in and of itself), where does that leave the term “people of color” given the [End Page 397] philosophical tenets of modernism and postmodernism...

Ethnic Entrepreneurs in America's Largest Metropolitan Areas

Using 1990 census data, the authors compare 77 immigrant and ethnic groups in the 16 largest metropolitan regions in the United States. They find that the interaction effect of location and ethnicity on ethnic entrepreneurship is evident not only in self-employment rates but also in niche concentrations and niche competition. Their results reveal a distinction between main-stream groups and nonmainstream groups. Compared to mainstream groups, nonmainstream groups are more context resistant. That is, they concentrate in few entrepreneurial niches and display high niche continuity across metropolitan regions. Group competition influences niche concentrations, but an adverse impact on black entrepreneurship is not apparent.

Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone

Louise Pratt points out that while colleges and universities have increasingly deployed a rhetoric of diversity in response to the insistence of non-mainstream groups for fuller participation, the import of remains for grabs across the ideological spectrum (39). I begin with Pratt's reminder because I want to call attention to the images of grabbing and import. These depict as a construct whose importmeanings, implications, and consequences-is available only to those willing to expend the energy to grab it: to search, envision, grasp, articulate, and enact it. And these images conjure up the act of importing-of bringing in-perspectives and methods formerly excluded by dominant institutions. I want to articulate one import of multiculturalism here by exploring the question of how to conceive and practice teaching methods which invite a multicultural approach to style, particularly those styles of student writing which appear to be ridden with errors. And I situate this question in the context of English Studies, a discipline which, on the one hand, has often proclaimed its concern to profess multiculturalism but, on the other hand, has done little to combat the ghettoization of two of its own cultures, namely composition teaching and student writing. My inquiry is motivated by two concerns which I believe I share with a significant number of composition teachers. The first results from a sense of division between the ways in which many of us approach style in theory and in our teaching practices. I have in mind teachers who are aligned in theory with a view of composition which contests the separation of form and meaning and which also argues against a conception of academic

Essayist Literacy and Other Verbal Performances

The style of discourse underlying writing instruction in this country, which has been termed essayist literacy by Scollon and Scollon and others, is grounded historically and culturally in the development of Western civilization. This style of discourse is the register of English used in academic situations, and it also has been found to be characteristic of some educated (especially male) mainstream speakers in other contexts. Because this register often differs from the naturally acquired discourse styles of students from nonmainstream groups, many such students face difficulties in writing instruction that mainstream students do not face. Given the importance of the essayist literacy register in this society, it is important (a) to make the characteristics of this discourse style explicit in order to increase the likelihood that writing instruction will be clear and available to all students, and (b) to learn about other discourse styles that are already known and used by students from a range of communities. A conceptual framework from the ethnography of communication is presented for studying verbal performances in different cultural contexts, and two examples of persuasive oral performances from ongoing research among Mexican immigrants are analyzed within this framework.

Family structure, family attributes, and delinquency in a sample of low-income, minority males and females

A popular thesis in criminology links "broken homes" to juvenile delinquency. This thesis has been invoked to explain higher rates of delinquency among youth from low-income, minority families than among youth from mainstream backgrounds. The study reported here employs data collected at two points in time to assess the thesis that family structure is significantly associated with self-reported delinquency within a sample of black males and females from low-income families. The relationships between an array of family variables, including family structure, and each of four types of self-reported delinquency are examined in analysis conducted separately for males and females. Findings indicate that few family factors are significant for delinquency and family structure is of minimal importance for the types of delinquency examined. The results differ for males and females. These findings raise serious questions about the cogency of the broken-home thesis of delinquency to explain delinquency among nonmainstream groups in our society.