O objetivo deste trabalho é fornecer uma análise de formas contemporâneas de pensamento e atitudes fundamentalistas à luz do filósofo italiano Gianni Vattimo, que postula que existiriam duas maneiras de pensar no processo de interpretação e construção do sentido: uma forte, que pressupõe uma verdade absoluta, e a outra fraca, que pressupõe uma verdade construída, o que não implica uma ação fraca, mas a abertura de possibilidades para mudanças profundas. O processo de construção da verdade forte produz verdades violentas, no sentido de que exclui outras verdades concorrentes. Neste trabalho, tomamos como base os fundamentalismos religiosos para refletir sobre outras formas atuais de fundamentalismo. O trabalho representa uma tentativa para evitar diferentes confrontos violentos entre variados pensamentos fundamentalistas. / The objective of this work is to provide an analysis of contemporary forms of fundamentalist thought and attitudes, in line with the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo, who postulates that there are two ways of thinking in the process of interpretation and meaning making: a strong one, which presupposes an absolute truth, and a weak one, which presupposes a constructed truth though not implying a weak possibility of action, but an opening of new possibilities for profound changes instead. The process of truth construction produces violent truths in the sense that it strongly excludes other competing truths. In this research, forms of religious fundamentalism are taken as starting points in a reflection on other present-day forms of fundamentalism. This work aims at the avoidance of various violent confrontations among several kinds of fundamentalist thoughts.

M.Phil. (Personal and Professional Leadership) / Globalisation has dramatically impacted the way business is conducted. As business becomes more global, there is a growing need for employees, especially managers, with the right skillset to be successful in this international environment. Given the scarcity of internationally skilled employees, companies will have to look at new sources of potential talent. “Adult third culture kids” (ATCKs) are such a source of talent, as they have already acquired some of the skills necessary to be successful internationally, because of the way they had grown up. It appears, however, that ATCKs are an untapped talent source. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of managers within multi-national corporations (MNCs) regarding the potential of ATCKs as a source of talent. The study aimed to establish if awareness existed within MNCs of the ATCK phenomenon, and to explore some of the reasons for the apparent under-utilisation of this source of talent. A qualitative approach with a case study design was chosen to answer the research question, as this was deemed the best method to obtain an in-depth understanding of the perceptions within MNCs of the potential of ATCKs. Five research participants from five different MNCs were identified, based on their expertise in human resource management (HRM). Data were collected by means of individual, semi-structured interviews and supporting field notes. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse this data. Three dominant themes pertaining to the research question were identified. The findings of the research revealed that there is limited awareness of ATCKs within the MNCs selected for this study. Research participants acknowledged the characteristic skillset of ATCKs to be a valuable asset to their organisations. Possible reasons for the under-utilisation of this source of talent are the limited awareness of the ATCK phenomenon and the lack of knowledge of the actual contribution of ATCKs in the workplace.

This thesis examines the role of the helping imperative in Canadian foreign aid discourse. After weaving together post-development and decolonial theory and applying these theories to cosmopolitanism, I propose a reconstructed cosmopolitan theory - delinked cosmopolitanism - as a theoretical orientation for this analysis. In applying the discourse legitimation framework as an analytical tool, I conclude that the current discursive orientations of the Government of Canada are focused on helping while believing that Western ways of being, knowing and doing are the only way to live in the world. I then suggest possible applications of delinked cosmopolitanism and discourse analysis for future research, both in Canada and abroad, in order to support a possible shift in thinking and an improved ability to work across difference.

This thesis “Inherently Hybrid: Contestations and Renegotiations of Prescribed Identities in Contemporary Sri Lankan English Writing” examines work by Nihal de Silva, David Blacker and Vivimarie VanderPoorten to analyse their negotiation of identity, belonging and citizenship within contemporary Sri Lankan English Writing. This negotiation of identity is then placed in relation to the Eelam Wars as well as hybridity and cosmopolitanism, which have become a part of Sri Lankan identity because of the nation’s postcolonial past. Genre and form are employed as ways into exploring the tensions within Sri Lankan English writing, especially because they prescribe on the texts selected a specific way of approaching and presenting the ethnic conflict that is a widespread theme in much of contemporary Sri Lankan writing. The first chapter looks at De Silva’s adventure romance The Road From Elephant Pass. It examines how the novel engenders a renegotiation of identities through the effects of the ethnic conflict upon the attitudes, behaviours and ideologies of the island’s populations, symbolically represented through the narrator, who is a Sinhalese Buddhist officer in the Sri Lankan Army and his eventual lover, who is a rebel fighting for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. I analyse the arguments presented in the text around identity, belonging and patriotism and focus on the representations of ethnic and racial identity that ultimately expose the constructedness of these various positions, revealing the unacknowledged but real hybridity of the Sri Lankan peoples. I look at markers of cultural capital and tease out how class identities rely on cosmopolitanism, characterised by a knowledge of English, and how that further reveals the performativity of identity. The second chapter examines Blacker’s political thriller A Cause Untrue. Here I explore how the use of detail and description provides an appearance of imparting a complete and realistic perspective on the war. I demonstrate how the novel, through the calculated use of what I will characterise as a ‘reality effect’, takes on the manifestation of being an authority on the war. Blacker’s use of recognisable historical events allows him to create an alternative narrative of history, one that has all the hallmarks of being a true retelling even as it is apparent that his text utilises the ‘reality effect’ to imagine Sri Lanka creatively. This demonstrates how the selection of the thriller genre provides Blacker with a specific way of representing the nation and its diasporas’ in relation to the Eelam Wars. The third chapter focuses on VanderPoorten’s collection of poetry nothing prepares you. Here I investigate how the concepts of hybridity and cosmopolitanism are located within the language used to construct her poetry. I explore how this hybridity and cosmopolitanism of language works together with the form and content of her poems to provide a disquieting of fixed notions of identity, citizenship and belonging. The conclusion to the study revisits the issues that my three chapters deal with, bringing together an overall account of hybridity, cosmopolitanism and identity. I look at the constructedness and performance of identity with the aim of providing a nuanced reading of the renegotiations of identity and citizenship that are taking place because of the ethnic conflict. By summing up the different manifestations of the various gendered, ethnic and class identities represented and presented in the texts that I explore, I illustrate the wider implications of the points of connection between identity and power on the one hand and nationalism, dogma and political rhetoric on the other. Identities within the Sri Lankan nation blur the distinctions between alien and citizen, between one who belongs and subscribes to set expectations, norms and practices and one who challenges these markers of identity.

The fall of the Eastern Block, the dissolution of former Yugoslavia and the subsequent enlargement of the European Union to include former socialist countries contributed to an increase in the movement of people from Eastern to Western Europe which began about a decade earlier. Among them, the Roma are probably the most clearly recognizable group and surely the ones that received, and keep receiving, more media attention. While their presence in the media as subjects of discussion is a topic worth analyzing, the present work is about their presence in a particular medium, the Internet, as actors and producers of content. As a population of Indian origin spread across Europe over the past five centuries, Roma have often been regarded as a diaspora. Ethnographic studies about diasporas and their usage of the Internet have often described diasporic websites as discoursive spaces in which new, hydrid identities are negotiated and stereotyping and marginalizing discourses about diasporic subjects are challenged. The role of languages in these websites, however, has often been neglected. On the other hand, sociolinguistic studies have highlighted how the Internet provides a space for vernacular language usage in which the relaxation of language norms and users’ creativity play a crucial role in overcoming the limitations in text transmission imposed by the medium. A partial bridge between these two trends of studies has been provided by the analysis of code-switching in diasporic websites, which has shown how meaningful language alternation is used to flag users’ hybrid identities. The study of the relationship between diasporic languages and identities on the Internet clearly appears to be in its infancy and only few case studies have looked at the interactions between each diaspora’s specific cultural and sociolinguistic settings and the usage of the Internet. Furthermore, many diasporas, including the Roma, speak unwritten languages which have not been or are just starting to be standardized. Processes of language standardization have always involved both identity and language policies and have often been pivotal in struggles for nationhood or minority rights recognition. While so far such processes tended to be mostly centralized and top-down, the Internet is offering a space for the spontaneous transition from orality to literacy. Thus, analyzing the interaction between diasporic, non-standardized languages and the identities of their speakers as manifested on the Internet can provide new insights into the relations between diasporic languages and identities and into language standardization processes. The present work investigates these issues by analyzing the on-line usage of Romani, the Indic language spoken by many Roma. The study draws on data collected through an online ethnography from Radio Romani Mahala, a website created and used by the recently dispersed community of the Mitrovica Roma. The data are analyzed both qualitatively, using discourse analytic methods, and quantitatively, using traditional sociolinguistic approaches. Combining such approaches allows drawing a nuanced picture of the phenomena under observation accounting both for micro level, individual patterns of usage and macro level trends shared by all users involved. Particular attention is also paid to the emerging Romani spelling and the role played by individual users in the establishment of shared writing norms. The interdisciplinarity of this approach will show how the interplay between diasporic identities and attitudes, non-standard language ideologies and the possibilities offered by the Internet is leading to effective language codification without the intervention of a central authority and outside the frame of any nation-state policy. Such findings call for a re-thinking of current notions on linguistic human rights. Based on the viability of the Romani model, I thus propose a theory of linguistic pluralism in trans-national contexts centred around the notion of cosmopolitan sociabilities, non-utilitarian, everyday interactions creating open and inclusive relations across and even despite perceived cultural divides.

Political theorists disagree on the origin of justice. According to the cosmopolitan conception of justice, duties of justice are pre-political and universal. According to the political conception of justice, on the other hand, full duties of justice arise within and only within the context of a political community. Which one of these conceptions one adopts will have a comprehensive impact on ethical issues concerning global justice, such as migration ethics and foreign assistance. In this paper I argue that the political conception is problematic, since it cannot be applied in cases of anarchy. Since anarchic societies are not politically organized, the political conception implies that they are not bound by full duties of justice. Thus, the political conception is unable to criticize some rival theories of justice, such as anarchistic libertarianism, for being unjust. Reversely, if one does find anarchic societies unjust, this intuition speaks against the political conception of justice, but in favor of the cosmopolitan conception. I illustrate my argument by applying it in the case of liberal egalitarianism.

The problem this dissertation engages with is the role of state-defined pathways available for ‘legal’ Caribbean migrants to South Africa, to effectively become South African citizens through practices of assimilation; enabling them to claim citizenship, and thus belonging to a new national community. The concept of a singular, state-defined citizen, a conception that has dominated academic debates over the last hundreds of years, is today challenged by the activities and presence of migrants from everywhere in nearly every place. This new and contemporary dynamic is prompting scholars to conceptualise other images of belonging, images that transcend, move beyond, stretch and displace the centrality of national borders in defining citizenship. One view shifts the source of citizenship rights from the state to the individual, bringing to the fore a cosmopolitan or post-national citizenship. Conversations concerning the significance, or lack thereof, of the state in migration share a tendency to analyse migration from the macro-level that the state represents and interpret individual actions and outcomes from that point of view. In this dissertation I address the problem by investigating the lived experiences of immigrants, and analysing from the micro-level of individuals and their families, in order to understand their relationship to the meso- and macro-levels available within the wider society. In the process, I illuminate the pathways that are available to ‘legal’ Caribbean migrants as they seek to deepen their belonging to a new national community whilst retaining their connections to other national and transnational communities. / Dissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Anthropology and Archaeology / MSocSci / Unrestricted

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this thesis is to examine the integration of the Somali immigrants in Sweden and to explore the factors that impede or help in the process. The study in particular aims at looking at how culture, identity and migration form immigrants’ integration experiences. It will further explore the communication barriers with, mainly; the government institutions from the perspective of Somalis and how removing these barriers could help improve the situation.The thesis also discusses the theories of transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, immigration, and integration in relation to communication for development and social behaviour change.Qualitative research methods have been selected to explore the experiences of the Somali immigrants integrate into the wider Swedish community through the use of semi-structured interviews. The Somali immigrants have good networks among themselves in Sweden, and with home country, however they do not manage to establish a good networking with the Swedish society. The outcome of this study implies that most immigrants feel that there are communication barriers in the way to a better integration. Through the use of qualitative research in semi-structured interviews with selected Somali immigrants from various backgrounds, the study shows that there are many issues that might help the community to integrate into Sweden and proposes some recommendations on how the situation could be improved.

This dissertation examines the idea of a “phenomenology of the cultural Other” in its two sides: the phenomenological and cultural sides. To address the phenomenological side, this dissertation critically examines phenomenologies of the Other in Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, along with their prominent commentators. This group of philosophers has produced works that constitute a category of philosophical literature that may be referred to as a “phenomenology of the Other." To address the second, cultural side, a cultural aspect is added to the phenomenology of the Other. To cover the two sides of the question on the phenomenological appearances of the cultural Other, my study of will have three phases, that are presented in three chapters. In each chapter, I will look at the specific type of relations that are discussed in the phenomenologies of the Other within the philosophical traditions I mentioned above, and accordingly, I will describe a cultural phenomenon which reflects the attitude of the self toward the Other. In chapter one, the Other appears as the negation of the self and vice versa. In chapter two, the Other appears as the opposite pair of the self, and, in the final chapter, the Other appears as the co-existing pair of the self. For these three phenomenological appearances of the Other, I will suggest three considerations of the cultural Other respectively: the dehumanized Other, the Orientalized Other, and the cosmopolitan Other.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(文学) / 甲第18635号 / 文博第659号 / 新制||文||607(附属図書館) / 31549 / 京都大学大学院文学研究科行動文化学専攻 / (主査)教授 松田 素二, 准教授 太郎丸 博, 教授 竹沢 泰子 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Letters / Kyoto University / DGAM