The Main Thing is that You did Your Best - a comparative study about how a male respectively a female failure from Swedish national teams in football is portrayed in tabloids aims to examine how Swedish tabloid is influenced by current societal ideologies in their portraying of failures performed by the male respectively the female national team in football. To examine this, the study uses three main theories with perspectives considering power-settings in society. Philosopher Antonio Gramscis theory about hegemony helps the study to understand how different social groups dominate eachother. Linguistic professor Norman Faircloughs theory about discourse gives tools to understand how this dominance and power is confirmed or challenged in language and in this specific study in text. The final theory that this study uses is sociologist Raewyn Connells ideas about that there is a patriarchal hegemony in the society and theories about how it arises. Rooted in these theories the study uses Faircloughs three-dimensional model as the method and tool to investigate the material for traces of power-structures between women and men. The main result of the study shows that the male failure receives far greater critique from the tabloids, despite the fact that the female failure based on pure performance was at least as big. The male failure was in that sense portrayed as more important than the female equivalent. The results also shows that when the female athletes got critique, their abilities were portrayed as amateurish. Another interesting result was that in our study there were no trace of objectifying the women. which opposes the result of other studies about the subject. These results add to the conclusion that there is a patriarchal hegemony surrounding the tabloid portrayal of failure performed by the Swedish national teams in football. A hegemony which to some extent is challenged.

no / A deconstruction of the role of peace support operations suggests that they sustain a particular order of world politics that privileges the rich and powerful states in their efforts to control or isolate unruly parts of the world. As a management device it has grown in significance as the strategic imperatives of the post-industrialized, capitalist world have neutered the universal pretensions of the United Nations. Drawing on the work of Robert Cox and Mark Duffield, this essay adopts a critical theory perspective to argue that peace support operations serve a narrow, problem-solving purpose - to doctor the dysfunctions of the global political economy within a framework of liberal imperialism. Two dynamics in world politics might be exploited to mobilize a counter-hegemonic transformation in global governance. First, a radical change in the global trade system and its problematic institutions will create opportunities to emancipate the weak from economic hegemony. Second, future network wars are likely to require increasingly subtle and flexible teams, similar to disaster relief experts, to supply preventive action, economic aid and civilian protection. This might only be achieved by releasing peace support operations from the state-centric control system, and making them answerable to more transparent, more democratic and accountable multinational institutions.

Never before have developing nations been able to compete at the international level, both economically and militarily. But, we are currently in an age where developing nations, such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China, are able to develop so rapidly that they are able to excel within the international economy, which allows for an increased investment in military and technological capabilities. Consequently, these rapidly developing nations are able to influence the international system. To see how much of an effect these rapidly developing nations are having within the international system, they will be measured against 5 indicators that correlate with becoming a rising regional hegemon, a feature of a multi-polar system. The multi-polar international system that we see emerging is contrary to Kenneth Waltz's assertion that a multi-polar international system is unstable, and a bi-polar international system is preferred. New global conditions indicate that Waltz's analysis may not stand the test of time. / Master of Arts

Reality TV is a growing form of entertainment, with streaming giants like Netflix and Hulu offering an extensive array of programs catering for different audiences. Currently one of the most popular franchises is “The Real Housewives”, within the franchise itself “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” is ranking at the top. Despite it`s high entertainment value, much of Reality TV has been critiqued for perpetuating harmful stereotypes.  This study therefore aimed to uncover the underlying messages regarding femininity, power, and social roles that are communicated to the viewers of the popular reality show “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”. The following research question was formulated; How does "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" portray women in ways that either challenge or reinforce (gender) stereotypes? The study has employed a multimodal critical discourse analysis to the last three episodes of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” latest season (season 13). The episodes were watched and discussed multiple times, leading to the identification of four overarching themes; romantic relationships, career, conflict and physical appearance. Scenes from the show regarding these themes were analyzed, using theoretical frameworks concerning stereotypes, hegemony and gender.  The results showed some gender stereotypes being reinforced while others were challenged. The reinforcement of stereotypes through “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” lies in stereotypes being used as a weapon by the women against each other, portrayed by the network. The challenge of stereotypes lies in the way the program portrays the women as they contradict these narratives.

The term “at risk” is a label that is used to describe students who encompass a host of prominent socially and politically constructed titles that are intended to simplify student understanding and awareness and allow for clear reporting. The purpose of this study was to demythologize the concept of “at risk” by creating the conditions for student voice and critical dialogue to emerge, through the use of narrative inquiry. This research hoped to provide an outlet for young people to find and use their own voices, while finding their own place within their lived histories. The research also aimed to raise awareness of the reality of the contemporary U.S. educational system: we often create policies and programs without considering the perspectives of the young people whom these services are designed to serve. Through critical narrative inquiry, six former student’s engaged in unstructured interviews and a focus group. Through analysis of the data set, five themes emerged and include 1) relationships with bicultural adults who understand, 2) instrumentalizing pedagogy, 3) the impact of money-driven policy, 4) the awareness of limitations of opportunities, and 5) the overall theme of the transparency of hegemony. This research hoped to problematize the label in an effort to move toward an emancipatory understanding of how we speak about young people and make sense of the circumstances these young people must navigate through their education and their world.

Despite the expressed need for bicultural teachers, research on teacher attrition has demonstrated that a growing number of bicultural educators are leaving the classroom. Bicultural male teachers, in particular, experience high rates of teacher attrition. Schools, unfortunately, are contexts in which Latino male teachers are constantly experiencing dilemmas related specifically to both their gendered and racialized positionality as males of color. Grounded in Antonia Darder’s critical bicultural framework, this autoethnographic study explored the complex factors that drive Latino male teachers out of the classroom, through an in-depth and grounded examination of a Latino male teacher who left the classroom. The study contributes to the conversation on bicultural teacher attrition, gendered relations, and their relationship to both teacher preparation and the education of bicultural students. Furthermore, the study explored how racism, sexism, classism, trauma, and heteronormativity mitigate the experiences of Latino male teachers, and how these manifest themselves through the hidden curriculum, asymmetrical relations of power, gendered essentialism, policing of behavior, the culture of silence, conditions of isolation, and disabling cultural response patterns. The implications of such factors in the life of one Latino male teacher are carefully analyzed and discussed, in an effort to consider their significance in rethinking teacher preparation programs, with respect to the needs of Latino males. Moreover, the study offers an engagement with critical autoethnography as a significant tool of reflection in the educational process and emancipatory process of bicultural teachers.

The concept of self-esteem has so thoroughly infiltrated American education that “most educators believe developing self-esteem to be one of the primary purposes of public education” (Stout, 2001, p. 119). That the available scholarship challenging the validity of self-esteem principles has had little to no impact on schooling and school policy demonstrates the need for more a comprehensive interrogation of a concept that has become so pervasive and commonsensical that many administrators and teachers do not even think to question its place in traditional pedagogy, let alone consider the possibility that self-esteem is a damaging ideological construct. The rhetorical (and impossible) promise of self-esteem as both a quantifiable and fixed human resource has proliferated in educational language as schools continue to promote self-esteem among racialized and poorly performing students, while the structural conditions that negatively impact these students’ performance in the first place remain intact. The legacy of self-esteem in educational discourse requires a critical interpretation, or re-interpretation, by educators who wish to challenge oppressive commonsense assumptions and feel-good principles that covertly help to maintain “dominant cultural norms that do little more than preserve social inequality” (Darder, 2015, p. 1). This study takes a decolonizing approach that involves a substantive interrogation—historical, political, and philosophical—of the Eurocentric epistemological concept of self-esteem, in order to demonstrate the debilitating effects that self-esteem has on students from working-class communities of color. It then suggests an emancipatory understanding of the self and alternative critical pedagogical principles of social empowerment.

This dissertation explores bullerengue music as an oral and aural practice, tradition, and social space through which cantadoras—elderly women singers—construct and preserve knowledge, memory, and affect in the Caribbean region of Montes de Maria in northern Colombia. This study delves into bullerengue as a struggle of forms and cultural practices that cantadoras articulate through musical performance to resist marginalization and embody constructive ways of being in the world. The cantadoras realize a force and artistry directly related to their Maroon history, ontologies based on respect for life and nature, and the affective dimensions of bullerengue performance. My research goal is to assess, question, and impactfully revert the long history of discrimination and oppression in capitalist modernity—by gender, race, and age—while revealing how the hegemonic notions of music, poetry, and politics in Colombia have ostensibly excluded women, Afro-descendants, and therefore, Afro-descendant women. The importance of this dissertation lies in amplifying the cantadoras’ voices in academia through bullerengue as a vehicle for musical, social, and political possibilities to recognize the cantadoras’ ontologies that uphold life and nature over the capitalist extractivist ideology that has brought the global crises of wars. The research methodology includes music-recording production, participant observation, interviews, and archival research, reflecting on 15 years of collaboration with cantadoras. Chapter One discusses how folkloric constructions of bullerengue have been based on the silencing of cantadoras, given that researchers, as outsiders, could not grasp the influence of Afro-descendant elderly women. To revert the epistemological framework of white men producing ignorance about a tradition led by Afro-descendant women, the archival exploration unsilences women through the sound archive and oral memories of their heiresses. Chapter Two explores bullerengue song as a “technology of sound inscription”(Ochoa Gautier 2014), a women’s archive that shapes culture (Brooks 2021), and a political and epistemic expression within counter-hegemonic sites (Collins 1999; Davis 1999). I argue that song functions as a (re)sounding historical vehicle for the ancestresses and their heirs to communicate cross-generationally, overcoming the silencing of hegemonic politics and death. Chapter Three ethnographically investigates the lifelong processes of building the bullerengue-voice, drawing from cantadoral testimonies, concepts, and theories in dialogue with academic sources. Chapter Four chronicles the production of the album Ancestras, focusing it as a lens through which to study Petrona Martinez’s bullerengue-voice as an entity that united Afro-diasporic women while blurring symbolic, material, and geopolitical boundaries through song and sound reproduction technologies despite her tragic loss of material voice. I argue that her bullerengue-voice crossed such boundaries thanks to its epistemic aurality—a mutual construction relating voice and worlding—and poetics of collaboration. I also reflect on the album’s cross-cultural collaborations and how I—Petrona’s producer and friend— sought to help her amplify her voice, thought, and oral memory.

Canons have been constructed for nearly 2000 years, providing collections of great works throughout history. With roots embedded in religious texts, canons today still exist with an aura of authority. In the fall of 2022, the Swedish government agreed to construct a national canon of culture. The ambition is for the canon to act as a social glue, creating a shared sense of unity. Within the next few years, there will be a list of what Swedish works of art are deemed essential to the country's cultural history. The decision was inspired by a similar canon constructed in Denmark in 2006; one that is mostly forgotten about today. Looking at the significance and inherent meanings of political efforts to use culture as a tool to unite a nation, this thesis presents a qualitative critical discourse analysis of the topic, using theories on collective memory, cultural hegemony, and theoretical approaches to canonisation. The objects of analysis consist of a radio segment, a debate article, and a visual novella; all of which were published within a few months after the decision was announced. The commitment to construct the canon has been met with criticism, partly stemming from the lack of impact the initiative had in Denmark. However, the focal point of criticism presented in the discourse analysis stems from the intentions behind the decision, as well as resistance against instrumentalization of culture.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study explores the impact of primary energy on the measurement of state power and hegemony. Through an examination of British and American hegemonies, the role of coal, oil and petroleum on the hegemonic cycle is assessed, and the argument is presented for the inclusion of energy as a primary element underpinning the state power base. Utilising the Hegemonic Stability Theory approach to the study of global hegemony, a framework for the assessment of the role of energy on international hegemony is constructed. The Hegemonic Stability Theory approach employed in this study is augmented through the incorporation of several complimentary theoretical approaches, in order to improve the theory’s applicability to multiple cases. Through an examination of the economic, financial, and military/naval ‘pillars’ of the respective hegemonic powers, the study determines that energy has had a marked impact on both British and American hegemonies. Technological developments, notably the steam engine, and the subsequent conversion of the Royal Navy, the cornerstone of British hegemony, from sail to steam, made coal vital to the British Empire. In contrast, the use of oil and petroleum during the United States hegemonic reign indicate that access to oil and petroleum not only benefitted the United States material power base, but has become vital to sustaining American hegemony. This study makes a plausible case for the inclusion of energy as a factor in the assessment of state power, and draws attention to the importance of ensuring energy security and maintaining technological leads. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie verhandeling ondersoek die impak wat grond-energie het as maatstaf op staatsmag en hegemonie. Na afleiding van ‘n gevalle studie van beide Britse en Amerikaanse hegemonies - die rol wat steenkool, olie en petroleum speel op die hegemoniese siklus – stel hierdie navorsingstuk voor dat grond-energie ingesluit moet word as ‘n kriterium van hoe staatsmag gemeet word. Hierdie tesis wend Hegemoniese Stabiliteitsteorie aan om internasionale hegemonie te ondersoek. ‘n Raamwerk om die belang van energie te meet in internasionale hegemonie word opgestel. Die Hegemoniese Stabiliteitsteorie aanslag word aangepas deur verskeie komplimentêre teoretiese benaderings te inkorporeer en sodoende die teorie meer toepaslik te maak op verskeie gevallestudies. Deur die ekonomiese, finansiële en militêle/vloot ‘pilare’ van die onderskeie hegemoniese magte te ondersoek, bevind hierdie verhandeling dat energie ‘n bepalende invloed gehad het op beide Britse en Amerikaanse hegemonies. Tegnologiese ontwikkelings, mees opmerklik die stoomenjin en die gevolglike oorgang van die Koninklike Vloot (die hoeksteun van Britse hegemonie) van seil- na stoomenjins, was die gevolg dat steenkool van uiterse belang geword het vir die Britse Ryk. In kontras word aangedui dat die gebruik van en toegang tot olie en petroleum tydens die hegemoniese bewind van die Verenigde State van Amerika nie net die materiële magsbasis bevoordeel het nie, maar asook bepalend geword het om Amerikaanse hegemonie te handhaaf. Hierdie verhandeling maak die aanneemlike voorstelling dat energie ingesluit moet word as ‘n faktor om staatsmag te meet, en dui die belang daarvan aan om tegnologiese vooruitgang te onderhou en sodoende energie sekuriteit te verseker.