In the 1850s, the government of Canada West initiated a project to colonize a vast region of the Canadian Shield known as the Ottawa-Huron Tract. Later, in his influential interpretation, Arthur Lower argued the myth of the inexorable forward movement of the settlement frontier was here shattered by a reality of lakes, rocks, and forest inherently unsuitable for farming. This refrain continues to be repeated by proponents of what I call the failed-settlement narrative. A contrasting narrative emphasizes the perseverance of settlers and their descendants. This dissertation was born of an interest in the tension between these competing narratives. On the one hand, the failed-settlement narrative ignores the fact many people succeeded in farming on the Shield. On the other hand, the romanticized image of the pioneer is disconnected from the larger historical contexts which shaped the settlement process and informed those notions of success and failure by which we judge the actions of people in the past. If the colonization project was an unmitigated failure, how do we account for the persistence of settlers and their descendants? If the landscape and soils of the Shield were unsuited to cultivation, why did people continue to cultivate the land for decades after the settlement project was condemned? What follows is an exploration of these questions, focusing on the township of Brudenell, Ontario as a site of Canadian colonial experimentation. Failure and desertion were certainly important parts of the settlement experience in the Ottawa-Huron Tract, but these themes have been overemphasized by historians. Early on, many settlers realized the variability of the landscape in places like Brudenell and found small parcels of land which they turned to a variety of purposes. Settlers took advantage of government policies that made landowning a realistic goal even for those of modest means and diverse backgrounds. By embracing new and emerging forms of local authority settlers were also able to tune the structures of the colonial state to further their own interests. They profited from the proximate shanty market for agricultural produce wherever practicable, while also pursuing economic activities oriented toward local, regional, and national markets. Economic opportunities and the accessibility of land in Brudenell allowed cultural groups to develop spatially-distinct communities, which expanded to fill much of the available land in the township. This revision of the failed-settlement narrative stands out in the historiography of the Ottawa-Huron Tract, but dovetails with histories of settlement in other agriculturally-marginal regions of nineteenth-century Canada. / Graduate / 2019-03-01

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The aim of this thesis is to probe how Mozambican people were represented or constructed in the colonial and post-colonial periods through the columns of the Portuguese newspaper, ‘O Século de Joanesburgo’. The study examines a corpus of 58, 070 tokens (consisting of 100 articles, 50 for colonial and 50 for postcolonial periods), which were systematically selected from the political, sport, letters to the reader and editorial domains published from 1970 to 1980. The analytical framework for this study is threefold. It is informed by corpus linguistics (CL) as described by, amongst others, McEnery and Wilson (1996/2001) and Bennett (2010); critical discourse analysis (CDA), in particular the work of Van Dijk (1996; 2003), Wodak (1995; 2011) and Wodak and Meyer (2009) and multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) as used by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996; 1998; 2006), Kress (2010) and Machin and Mayr (2012)

Since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s final report in 2015, there has been a political and societal focus on the atrocities that occurred in residential schools. The abuse, sexual abuse, murder, and genocide of Indigenous children through the residential school system has become the main focus for many settlers in Canada. However, focusing our attention on the most heinous acts alone can obfuscate manifestations of Indigenous regulation and oppression that are subtler or more covert. This project takes a genealogical approach to allow for the exposure of naturalized settler colonial logics, while also placing residential schools within a continuum of Indigenous regulation and oppression. This project uses Foucault’s concepts of power (disciplinary power, biopower, governmentality) and contemporary colonial concepts of recognition and accommodation to uncover the governmental technologies used within the residential school system and the Correctional Service of Canada’s approach to Indigenous corrections. This project challenges the progression fallacy which states our current epoch is more ethical than any other that came before by arguing the political rationalities of Western superiority and settler colonial benevolence that justified the creation of residential schools still exist today. This project examines the Correctional Service of Canada’s approach to Indigenous corrections as a contemporary illustration of how the political rationalities of Western superiority and settler colonial benevolence not only serve as justifications for harmful policies, programs, and initiatives, but also aid in the production of new Indigenous subjects and populations. Although the manifestations of Indigenous oppression have changed throughout time, the political rationalities that underpin them have stayed the same.

This study concerns the alliance against clearcutting that has been formed between the Swedish environmental movement and the Sami movement. Earlier studies on environmentalist/Indigenous alliances have found that such cooperation often has been formed through reproductions of a colonial political relationship, perpetuating Indigenous peoples' structural marginality. This study therefore examines the production of solidarity within this alliance, and attends to how they challenge or reproduce a colonial power asymmetry. The analysis shows that the alliance has formed solidarity over identity and community borders, through conscious commitment to pluralism. This commitment has further shown to rely on the alliance functioning as a site of knowledge-sharing, placing embodied knowledge-practices central to a solidarity production of decolonization. The environmentalists in the alliance have by understanding and recognizing the forests they are seeking to protect as Indigenous land, and as occupied territory central to traditional cultural Indigenous life, enabled a decolonizing reconfiguration of the environment. Notwithstanding, the study problematize certain findings in relation to the risks they demonstrate of reproducing a colonial power asymmetry, and discusses the complexities of environmentalists claiming authority within foreign cultural landscapes, and carrying out protests affecting the social dynamics of Indigenous local communities. / Denna studie rör den allians mot kalhygge som bildats mellan den svenska miljörörelsen och den samepolitiska rörelsen. Tidigare studier om allianser mellan miljöaktivister och urbefolkningar har funnit att sådant samarbete ofta har bildats genom reproduktioner av en kolonial politisk relation, vilket vidmakthåller urbefolkningens strukturella marginalitet. Denna studie undersöker därför produktionen av solidaritet inom denna allians, och utforskar hur de utmanar eller reproducerar en kolonial maktasymmetri. Analysen visar att alliansen skapar solidaritet över identitets- och samhällsgränser, genom ett medvetet engagemang för pluralism. Detta engagemang möjliggörs genom att alliansen fungerar som en plats för kunskapsdelning, vilket placerar förkroppsligade kunskapspraktiker centralt för en solidarisk produktion av avkolonisering. Miljöaktivisterna i alliansen har, genom att förstå och erkänna skogarna som de försöker skydda som ockuperat territorium centralt för traditionellt kulturellt liv, möjliggjort en avkoloniserande omstrukturering av sin framställning av miljön. Studien problematiserar vidare vissa fynd i förhållande till de risker de utgör i att reproducera en kolonial maktsasymmetri, och diskuterar komplexiteten i att miljöaktivister gör anspråk på auktoritet inom främmande kulturlandskap och genomför demonstrationer som påverkar den sociala dynamiken i urbefolkningens lokalsamhällen.

This thesis will examine and evaluate how post-colonial and universal key concepts reflects on The Universal Declaration of Human rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, and the ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights in order to provide diverse understandings of the concept of rights. The purpose of the study is to examine and evaluate how some of the key concepts of post-colonialism and universalism are reflected in these three declarations. The research questions is “How do post-colonial and universal key concepts reflect on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, and the ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights?”. Through a qualitative content analysis on these three declaration, the study will employ the ideal type method to outline the ideal types of post-colonialism and universalism and then apply the three declarations on these the ideal and key concepts. According to my findings, some key concepts of post-colonialism and universalism are explicitly and implicitly reflected in the declarations, some more heavily than others. While some of the concepts are shared across all three declarations, they differ in others. The African charter and ASEAN declaration tend to be more post-colonial in its approach while the Universal declaration of human rights takes a more universalistic stance. Human rights play a significant geopolitical role. In its name, it has acted as a uniting force, not least with the Universal declaration of human rights. However, ironically, it has also served as justification for war, invasions and other crimes against humanity. As much as this thesis is about human rights, it is also about colonialism, moral doctrine, cultures and the question about who to define these concepts. I hope that this thesis gives the reader a better understanding of human rights in a more pluralistic sense. I do also hope that this can help us increase our tolerance towards each other as humans and bring us closer to a more consensus in how we understand rights.

This thesis explores how the post-colonial structures in Ghana and Angola are affecting the mentality of the youth members in the political parties of NPP Youth Wing and JMPLA. The purpose is to discover whether the Political Youth Parties are able to provide ideas that challenge the current western influence in their politics. Angola and Ghana are the selected countries because despite their grand historical and cultural differences, the results are contributing to the claim that both are sharing the same struggle, coloniality. This research has been conducted with discourse analysis in official documents and semi-structured interviews with respective political youth parties. The theory used to analyse the content is social constructivism which has enabled this study to identify the mentality of the youths with its concept of social construction of reality. With regards to the result of the data, the youths provide possible solutions for reducing western influence but neglect the fact that those ideas are directed to neo-colonial structures, therefore this thesis concludes that the mentality of the youths remain colonised as its ancestors.

Since the 1940s, many works of Catalan literature have taken place in Cuba. While anthologies mention the genre, there has been as of yet no thorough examination of the importance of this trend. Starting with the long history of the relationship between Catalonia and Cuba, this dissertation employs a transatlantic approach to understanding the significance of the island to Catalan literature and identity. The Catalan protagonists, through their contact with Cuba, undergo change that is accompanied by a redefinition of both personal and national identity. The thesis is structured by various journeys from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. In Por el cielo y mandamp;aacute;s allandamp;aacute; (2000), Carme Riera tells the story of a voyage which takes place in the late colonial period and in the early days of the Cuban fight for independence. Chapters from Gent del meu exili: inoblidables (1975) by Teresa Pamies and Records vells, histandamp;ograve;ries noves (1941) by Josep Maria Poblet personify the voices of Catalan Republican exile in Cuba. Habanera (1999) by Angeles Dalmau focuses on the overseas experience of a modern-day tourist. The methodology of this dissertation draws on literary geography, the study and interpretation of writers representations of physical space, and focuses particularly on the role that Cuba plays in redefining the protagonists of the works examined. Theories of historical memory and feminism, as well as concepts related to postcolonialism and cultural geography also contribute to the conclusion that the physical and cultural space of Cuba reshapes the identity of the fictional Catalans who encounter it.

Identities are forged through interaction, as people simultaneously seek to distinguish themselves from--and are influenced by--other populations. This dynamic is especially pronounced along frontiers, where multiple societies engage in sustained contact. Centuries of interaction between Spanish colonial and indigenous populations in New Mexico blurred the traditional social categories of caste and race, prompting the colonists to conceptualize themselves in new ways. In the late eighteenth century, Hispanic New Mexicans began to self-identify as Vecinos (literally, "neighbors"). This term described a civic rather than ethnic identity, characterizing individuals as residents and members of a Hispanic corporate community. This social category was particularly relevant in the multiethnic settlements along the eastern frontier, where Vecinos regularly interacted with Plains Indian nomads, Pueblo villagers, semi-nomadic Apache bands, and American traders and immigrants. One such settlement was San Miguel del Vado, established around 1794 as part of a community land grant in the Upper Pecos River Valley. Situated just east of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains beside a ford ("vado") in the river, this settlement served as a gateway between New Mexico and the Great Plains, hosting Plains Indian and American traders during the Spanish colonial and Mexican periods and American immigrants after the United States conquered the territory in 1846. These interactions shaped Vecino identity within San Miguel del Vado, motivating residents to distinguish themselves from outsiders while introducing foreign goods and concepts. Vecino identity was expressed and reinforced through the structure and routine of daily life within Hispanic villages; therefore, it can be interpreted archaeologically through an examination of spatial organization and the material remains of daily practices. Similarly, distinctive regional or temporal patterns within these data can provide insight into the different forces shaping Vecino identity across space and over time. In this way, this dissertation utilizes archaeological data to explore the expression and evolution of Vecino identity at San Miguel del Vado, and to place this site within a regional and historical framework. These archaeological data are supplemented with historical sources and interpreted using a framework derived from archaeological theories of culture contact, identity, and practice.

This dissertation examines the ways in which socio-cultural, economic and religious ideologies shape discourses on women’s rights, higher education and empowerment in Ghana. The study starts from the premise that female identity in Ghana is constructed through discourses of reproduction that produce and reproduce unequal gender relations that negatively impact women’s higher socio-economic and educational attainments. Consequently, discourses of women’s rights and empowerment are inextricably linked to normative reproductive labour expectations. Using a postcolonial feminist theoretical framework, I argue that women’s rights and empowerment issues must be located within particular historical, local and global socio-cultural and political discourses in postcolonial societies. Subsequently, this study situates women’s rights concerns within the larger framework of global systemic inequalities that reinforce the local socio-cultural, political and economic disadvantages of women in Ghana. I interviewed women’s rights activists, conducted focus group discussions with male and mostly female participants during an intensive six-month field study. In line with postcolonial feminist epistemologies, I consider participants as knowledgeable subjects in the production of knowledge about their lived realities, by centering their voices and experiences in my analyses. The experiences of research participants (heterogeneous as they are) provide excellent insights into transnational feminisms, gendered postcolonial landscapes, and global cultural patriarchal hegemonies. These experiences also illustrate how global discourses of rights provide leverage to simultaneously challenge and politicize colonial discourses of race and gender in the global south. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2013-02-08 16:23:06.155

Volunteer tourism is a popular way for young Westerners to discover the world and at the same take on the role as an international aid worker. For a short time they get an opportunity to improve the life conditions of people in development countries and get to know a new culture. The discourse of “making a difference” is dominating the marketing and promotion of the volunteer trips, yet little research is to be found about what the volunteers contribute with and what “help”, provided by them consist of. The main purpose of this study was to explore eventual post-colonial legacies or structures in the practice of volunteer tourism by exploring how help, in the actual context is described and defined by the volunteer tourists themselves. The thesis is based on a field study, conducted during two months in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Data was collected through 14 semi-structured interviews with volunteer tourists and observations at the volunteer sites. The data was further analysed by using terms and perspectives from post-colonial theory. The analysis show that the help from the volunteer tourists principally were supposed to compensate for deficiencies in the host community and that it was directed towards individual advancement for the kids that the volunteers encountered in the projects. Tendencies that the help-actions sometimes were based on assumptions, rather than facts about the conditions in the host community were also identified. Furthermore that the actions taken on by the volunteers sometimes implied simplified notions on ways to achieve development.