The first codes of the Internet made their tentative steps along the information highway in 1969, connecting two computers at UCLA. Since that time, the Internet has grown beyond institutions of research and scholarship. It is now a venue for commerce, popular culture and political discourse. The last decade, following the development of the World Wide Web, has seen access to the Internet, particularly in wealthy countries such as Australia, spread throughout the majority of the population. While this proliferation of users has created many opportunities, it also profiled questions of disadvantage. The development and continuation of a digital divide between the information ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ was framed as a problem of ‘access.’ In the context of the increasing population online, debates into social inequity have been directed at technical barriers to access, the physical infrastructure and economic impediments to the adoption of the medium by all members of society. This doctoral research probes questions of access with greater subtlety, arching beyond the spread of broadband or the expansion of computers into schools. Forging dialogues between Internet and Cultural Studies, new theories of the screen – as a barrier and border – emerge. It is an appropriate time for such a study. The (seemingly) ever expanding growth in Internet access is stalling. New approaches are required to not only understand the pattern of events, but the type and mode of intervention that is possible. This doctoral research takes theory, politics and policy to the next stage in the history of digital access. By forging interdisciplinary dialogues, the goal is to develop the concept of ‘cultware’. This term, building on the history of hardware, software and wetware, demonstrates the imperative of understanding context in the framing and forging of exclusion and disempowerment. Mobilising the insights of postcolonial theory, Popular Cultural Studies, literacy theory and socio-legal studies, a new network of exclusions emerge that require a broader palette of interventionary strategies than can be solved through infrastructure or freeing codes. Commencing with the Universal Service Obligation, and probing the meaning of each term in this phrase and policy, there is a discussion of networks and ‘gates’ of the Digital Empire. Discussions then follow of citizenship, sovereignty, nationalism and the subaltern. By applying the insights of intellectual culture from the analogue age, there is not only an emphasis on the continuities between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, but a confirmation of how a focus on ‘the new’ can mask the profound perpetuation of analogue injustices. Access to the Invisible Empire occurs for each individual in a solitary fashion. Alone at the screen, each person is atomised at the point where they interface with the digital. This thesis dissects that point of access. The three components of access at the screen – hardware, software and wetware – intersect and dialogue. All three components form a matrix of access. However, the ability to attain hardware, software and wetware are distinct. An awareness of how and where to attain these literacies requires the activation of cultware, the context in which the three components manifest. Without such an intersection, access is not possible. The size of the overlap determines the scale of the gateway and the value of access. There is an interaction between each of these components that can alter both the value of the access obtained and the point at which the gateway becomes viable and stable for entry into the digital discourse. A highly proficient user with developed wetware is able to extract more value, capital and currency from hardware and software. They have expert knowledge in the use of this medium in contrast to a novice user. In dissecting the complexity of access, my original contribution to knowledge is developing this concept of cultware and confirming its value in explaining digital inequalities. This thesis diagnoses the nodes and structures of digital and analogue inequality. Critical and interpretative Internet Studies, inflected and informed by Cultural Studies approaches and theories, offers methods for intervention, providing contextual understanding of the manifestations of power and social justice in a digital environment. In enacting this project, familiar tropes and theories from Cultural Studies are deployed. Particular attention is placed on the insights of postcolonial theorists. The Invisible Empire, following the path of the digital intellectual, seeks to act as a translator between the digital subaltern and the digital citizen. Similarly, it seeks to apply pre-existing off screen theory and methodology to the Invisible Empire, illuminating how these theories can be reapplied to the digitised environment. Within this context, my research provides a significant and original contribution to knowledge in this field. The majority of analyses in critical and interpretative Internet Studies have centred on the United States and Europe. While correlations can be drawn from these studies, there are features unique to the Australian environment, both socially and culturally, as well as physical factors such as the geographic separation and sparse distribution of the population, that limit the ability to translate these previous findings into an Australian context. The writer, as a white Australian, is liminally positioned in the colonial equation: being a citizen of a (formerly) colonised nation with the relics of Empire littering the symbolic landscape, while also – through presence and language – perpetuating the colonization of the Indigenous peoples. This ‘in-betweenness’ adds discomfort, texture and movement to the research, which is a fundamentally appropriate state to understand the gentle confluences between the digital and analogue. In this context, the screen is the gateway to the Invisible Empire. However, unlike the analogue gate in the city wall that guards a physical core, these gates guard a non-corporeal Invisible Empire. Whereas barbarians could storm the gates of Rome without the literacy to understand the workings of the Empire within, when an army masses to physically strike at these gates, the only consequences are a broken monitor. Questions cannot be asked at the gate to an Invisible Empire. There is no common space in which the digital subaltern and the digital citizen cohabitate. There is no node at which translation can occur. These gates to the Invisible Empire are numerous. The walls cannot be breached and the gates are only open for the citizenry with the required literacy. This literacy in the codes of access is an absolute requirement to pass the gates of Invisible Empire. The digital citizen transverses these gates alone. It is a point where the off screen self interfaces the digital self. Social interaction occurs on either side of the screen, but not at the gateway itself. Resistance within the borders of Invisible Empire is one of the founding ideologies of the Internet, tracing its origin back to the cyberpunk literature that predicted the rise of the network. However this was a resistance to authority, both on and off screen, by the highly literate on screen: the hacker and the cyber-jockey. This thesis addresses resistance to the Invisible Empire from outside its borders. Such an intervention is activated not through a Luddite rejection of technology, but by examining the conditions at the periphery of Empire, the impacts of digital colonisation, and how this potential exclusion can be overcome. Debates around digital literacy have been deliberately removed or bypassed to narrow the debate about the future of the digital environment to a focus on the material commodities necessary to gain access and the potential for more online consumers. Cultware has been neglected. The Invisible Empire, like its analogue predecessors, reaches across the borders of Nation States, as well as snaking invisibly through and between the analogue population, threatening and breaking down previous understandings of citizenship and sovereignty. It invokes new forms of core-periphery relations, a new type of digital colonialism. As the spread of Internet access tapers, and the borders of Empire close to those caught outside, the condition of the digital subaltern calls for outside intervention, the place of the intellectual to raise consciousness of these new colonial relations, both at the core and periphery. My doctoral thesis commences this project.

The museum and the gallery are two sites in Canada that are instantly imagined as spaces that house the history and culture of the white man. This statement of course is a generalization. However, in my youth, this is how I visualized these particular sites of culture housed here in the west. I know now that there is a rich Indigenous counter-history within the still white spaces of the gallery and museum. My personal interest is with this Aboriginal narrative as it is voiced by artists, writers and curators whose work is tied to the gallery or museum space. This thesis is a reflection on my own praxis as a curator that has since 1997 taken me to both museum and gallery sites. The existence of Indigenous public institutionssuch as an Aboriginal community museum or an Aboriginal contemporary art gallerycreates a red shift within a communitys cultural imaginary. In Canada, many Aboriginal artists, curators, scholars, educators and writers have engaged tirelessly for many decades in decolonizing cultural work that centers Aboriginal voice, history and collective memory. In my curatorial work as co-founder and director of The Red Shift Gallery: an aboriginal contemporary art space in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, I am indebted to, and inspired by, the experience, example, creativity and wisdom of these cultural workers who continue to forge the way: infiltrating, appropriating, and re-making existing institutions and discourses, as well as creating new Aboriginal-centred events, places, and images, they are shifting the boundaries of what is considered to be relevant both in art, in history, and in the present. In this thesis, I will discuss my emerging praxis as a curator. In the Introduction: Nachimowin-My Story, I reflect on my early life in Cumberland House, Saskatchewan and the cultural lessons I have retained from living with my Cree grandparents, Peter and Margaret Buck, and, the colonial lessons I have learnt in the wider community of Cumberland House. I also talk about the founding of the Misti Saghikan Historical Committee in Cumberland House, which is still to this day a fledgling project. In Chapter 1: Methodology in Motion, I examine how my thinking about curatorial work has been influenced by a number of Aboriginal educators and cultural theorists, including Marie Battiste, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Graham Hingangaroa Smith, and the cultural workers who participated in the Making a Noise conference and publication, among others. In Chapter 2: The Red Shift, I talk about co-founding The Red Shift Gallery with Joi Arcand and I discuss selected exhibits that I have curated and programmed as director of this gallery and as an independent curator. In chapter 3: Othered Women, I discuss an exhibition I curatedOthered Women (2008)that examine the discursive and material violence of imperialism and its impacts on the lives of Aboriginal women, past and present. In 2008, I was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Aboriginal Curatorial Residency at aka gallery, Saskatoon. As part of this residency, I developed a three-gallery exhibition, Othered Women, which foregrounds the agency and voice of six contemporary Aboriginal women artists. In selected works, these artists testify to the role of Aboriginal women in the fur trade and the formation of Canada as a country, and, to the multiple ways in which Aboriginal women have been fixed in mainstream Canadian histories under the sign of the Other. This exhibit reveals how these six artists are appropriating, dismantling and transforming the cultural controls of colonial discourse, and, how they are giving voice to their own situated Indigenous-centred knowledge(s) across a range of visual media, including textiles, photo-based work, and installation.

The museum and the gallery are two sites in Canada that are instantly imagined as spaces that house the history and culture of the white man. This statement of course is a generalization. However, in my youth, this is how I visualized these particular sites of culture housed here in the west. I know now that there is a rich Indigenous counter-history within the still white spaces of the gallery and museum. My personal interest is with this Aboriginal narrative as it is voiced by artists, writers and curators whose work is tied to the gallery or museum space. This thesis is a reflection on my own praxis as a curator that has since 1997 taken me to both museum and gallery sites. The existence of Indigenous public institutionssuch as an Aboriginal community museum or an Aboriginal contemporary art gallerycreates a red shift within a communitys cultural imaginary. In Canada, many Aboriginal artists, curators, scholars, educators and writers have engaged tirelessly for many decades in decolonizing cultural work that centers Aboriginal voice, history and collective memory. In my curatorial work as co-founder and director of The Red Shift Gallery: an aboriginal contemporary art space in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, I am indebted to, and inspired by, the experience, example, creativity and wisdom of these cultural workers who continue to forge the way: infiltrating, appropriating, and re-making existing institutions and discourses, as well as creating new Aboriginal-centred events, places, and images, they are shifting the boundaries of what is considered to be relevant both in art, in history, and in the present. In this thesis, I will discuss my emerging praxis as a curator. In the Introduction: Nachimowin-My Story, I reflect on my early life in Cumberland House, Saskatchewan and the cultural lessons I have retained from living with my Cree grandparents, Peter and Margaret Buck, and, the colonial lessons I have learnt in the wider community of Cumberland House. I also talk about the founding of the Misti Saghikan Historical Committee in Cumberland House, which is still to this day a fledgling project. In Chapter 1: Methodology in Motion, I examine how my thinking about curatorial work has been influenced by a number of Aboriginal educators and cultural theorists, including Marie Battiste, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Graham Hingangaroa Smith, and the cultural workers who participated in the Making a Noise conference and publication, among others. In Chapter 2: The Red Shift, I talk about co-founding The Red Shift Gallery with Joi Arcand and I discuss selected exhibits that I have curated and programmed as director of this gallery and as an independent curator. In chapter 3: Othered Women, I discuss an exhibition I curatedOthered Women (2008)that examine the discursive and material violence of imperialism and its impacts on the lives of Aboriginal women, past and present. In 2008, I was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Aboriginal Curatorial Residency at aka gallery, Saskatoon. As part of this residency, I developed a three-gallery exhibition, Othered Women, which foregrounds the agency and voice of six contemporary Aboriginal women artists. In selected works, these artists testify to the role of Aboriginal women in the fur trade and the formation of Canada as a country, and, to the multiple ways in which Aboriginal women have been fixed in mainstream Canadian histories under the sign of the Other. This exhibit reveals how these six artists are appropriating, dismantling and transforming the cultural controls of colonial discourse, and, how they are giving voice to their own situated Indigenous-centred knowledge(s) across a range of visual media, including textiles, photo-based work, and installation.

This research explores the history of an enslaved African-American family who descend from an eighteenth-century ancestor named Anakah, through archival records in order to uncover any inconspicuous clues and a preponderance of evidence positively linking her family to its West African origins. This research also unearthed the Africanisms that prevailed within her family during slavery. Anakah's family was linked to two possible regions in West Africa, but no concrete evidence was found to definitively link the origins of her family to one of those regions. Additionally, familial customs and practices that mirrored West African customs were found among four generations of her enslaved descendants in South Carolina and Mississippi. This research displayed how definitive links to specific West African regions can be plausibly asserted in some families through an in-depth, historical analysis. Although certain Africanisms can not serve as conclusive evidence to adequately identify the West African origins of this family or any African-American family, the documentation of the West African cultural retentions served as an integral part of successfully bridging the gap between Anakah and her family in America and West Africa.

This research was designed to examine the transformation of Stokely Carmichael from a reformist in the Civil Rights Movement to a militant in the Black Power Movement due to experiences which he encountered while an organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The three factors which Stokely Carmichael, as well as some of his corroborators in SNCC, spoke most of were soured relationships with white liberals, the ineffectiveness of moral appeals to the government and white southerners, and the significance of black nationalist politics These factors contributed to Carmichael's shift in ideology and caused many members of SNCC to follow him. The research suggests that Stokely Carmichael and his comrades in SNCC made the transformation to Black Power due to their disappointment with the results of civil rights tactics. However, due mostly to repression fiom the government, they were never able to move past ideological explanations to actually implementing a program The African-American community made the transformation in much the same way that Carmichael and SNCC did Self-pride and a self-definition became prevalent topics of discussion in the African-American community. However, the psychological gains did not cross over into their economic and political lives There was a definite interest in black nationalist politics in the African-American community However, again, any efforts to mobilize the African-American community into a powehl force working for its own self-interest were squashed by the FBI who sought to eliminate any potential black militant leaders.

No description available.

This thesis is about the co-evolution of non-interventionist norms and interventionist practice among African states in the post-colonial era. To understand this co-evolution, this study begins from the year 1957, when the first post-colonial state emerged, and is divided into three phases: the early post-colonial period (1957-1970), the post-independence period (1970-mid 1980), and the post-Cold War period (1990-April 1998). Each phase looks at examples of African involvement in internal disputes to consider how the practice of intervention has evolved alongside the clause of non-intervention in Article 3(2) of the Charter of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The cases studied illustrate the view that African leaders, to justify intervening in internal disputes, have often cited two persistent and recurrent themes: "African exclusivity" (often defined as "African solutions for African problems") and "African Unity" (often called "solidarity"). These however are not the only themes that explicate how intervention has evolved in African affairs. There are complex regional political realities and sensitivities and factors such as the problem of regional instability posed by internal disputes, the spread of arms and the overflow of refugees into neighbouring countries that impinge on the thinking of intervention and non-intervention. While there is an apparent contradiction between non-interventionist norms and interventionist practice in the history under investigation, the thesis concludes that instead, it represents a careful and pragmatic balance of coping with short-term contingencies (through intervention) and longer-term security (through strengthening the norm) without undermining the undoubted interest of African leaders to secure non-interventionist norms for Africa.

An expanding body of research explores the social, political, cultural and personal challenges presented by the Western emphasis of curricula around the world. The aim of my study is to advance this field of inquiry by gaining insight into perceptions of Western modern science presented by students, teachers and administrators in a given Caribbean setting. Through this study I asked how my research participants described the nature of scientific knowledge, how they related scientific knowledge to other culturally-valued knowledges and the meanings they attached to the geographic origins of science teachers. Situating this work firmly within the practice of Foucauldian critical discourse analysis, I have utilised a conceptual framework defined by the power/knowledge and complicity/resistance themes of post-colonial theory to support my interpretation of participant commentary in an overall quest that is concerned about the ways in which Western modern science might be exerting a colonising influence. Fourteen students, nine teachers (both expatriate and local) and three administrators participated in the study. I combined a semi-structured question and answer interview format with a card sort activity. I used a procedure based on my own adaptation of Stephenson’s Q methodology, where the respondents placed 24 statements hierarchically along a continuum of increasing strength of agreement, presenting their rationalisations, personal stories and illustrations as they sorted. I used an inverse factor analysis, in combination with the interview transcripts, to assist me in the identification of three discourse positions described by my research participants: The truth value of scientific knowledge, The pragmatic use of science to promote progress, and The priority of cultural preservation. The interview transcripts were also analysed for emergent themes, providing an additional layer of data interpretation. The research findings raise concerns regarding the hegemonic potency of certain scientific assumptions and assertions of participants, leading me to emphasise the importance of developing teachers’ knowledge of the historical, philosophical and social background of Western modern science as well as focusing on developing the conceptual and intellectual engagement of students with Western modern science without demanding the kind of belief commitment that would insist that students replace alternative modes of meaning making.

An expanding body of research explores the social, political, cultural and personal challenges presented by the Western emphasis of curricula around the world. The aim of my study is to advance this field of inquiry by gaining insight into perceptions of Western modern science presented by students, teachers and administrators in a given Caribbean setting. Through this study I asked how my research participants described the nature of scientific knowledge, how they related scientific knowledge to other culturally-valued knowledges and the meanings they attached to the geographic origins of science teachers. Situating this work firmly within the practice of Foucauldian critical discourse analysis, I have utilised a conceptual framework defined by the power/knowledge and complicity/resistance themes of post-colonial theory to support my interpretation of participant commentary in an overall quest that is concerned about the ways in which Western modern science might be exerting a colonising influence. Fourteen students, nine teachers (both expatriate and local) and three administrators participated in the study. I combined a semi-structured question and answer interview format with a card sort activity. I used a procedure based on my own adaptation of Stephenson’s Q methodology, where the respondents placed 24 statements hierarchically along a continuum of increasing strength of agreement, presenting their rationalisations, personal stories and illustrations as they sorted. I used an inverse factor analysis, in combination with the interview transcripts, to assist me in the identification of three discourse positions described by my research participants: The truth value of scientific knowledge, The pragmatic use of science to promote progress, and The priority of cultural preservation. The interview transcripts were also analysed for emergent themes, providing an additional layer of data interpretation. The research findings raise concerns regarding the hegemonic potency of certain scientific assumptions and assertions of participants, leading me to emphasise the importance of developing teachers’ knowledge of the historical, philosophical and social background of Western modern science as well as focusing on developing the conceptual and intellectual engagement of students with Western modern science without demanding the kind of belief commitment that would insist that students replace alternative modes of meaning making.

Several writers have described the aim of global citizenship education as developing in students a global ethic of social justice. Western post-secondary institutions have endeavored to educate students for global citizenship by traveling to and volunteering in developing countries. Such programs have the potential to perpetuate the epistemic violence of colonialism by ignoring the ways in which students appropriate the developing world as ‘other’ as use these experiences to solely benefit themselves. In order to address such issues and concerns, this qualitative study used post-colonial theory to analyze the experiences and reflections of six participants who participated in a Canadian university global citizenship program in Thailand. The study suggests that culture and perceived cultural differences have a major effect on how students understand their identity and agency as global citizens, bringing forth dimensions of ambivalence and cultural hybridity. In order for programs to develop a global ethic of social justice, however, students need to be informed and reflexive about the social-historical context of the country they are visiting as well as their positionality in relation to the people they engage with. / Theoretical, Cultural and International Studies in Education