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This is a study of the memoir of Tage Carlsson, a man from the margin who lived between1908-2002 in the small town of Sillerud, Värmland. The purpose of this study is to show howmodernization affected him during the 20th century; what he valued, which ideals he tried touphold and the way he narrated his life. His narrative and character are studied through the lensof the Life Writing field. Previous research on the Swedish phenomenon “skötsamhet” (wellbehaved-ness) and “folkbildning” (education of the people) lays the foundation of this study aspart of the modernization process. The content of the memoir is analyzed thematically and isdiscussed in three parts: the well-behaved person, the educated person, and the modern person.Tage fits well into all the above, and this study encourages research on the margin as it showsthat it mirrors the ideas of the center, and vice versa.

This thesis examines the relationship between foreign policy and military doctrine, specifically the problems that arise when military doctrine is politicized and the military is used as an instrument of diplomatic or economic power rather than military power. It contains original research on the conduct of military civic action (MCA) by the United States Air Force in Thailand from 1964 until 1976, based largely on archival material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency. MCA has been an element of counterinsurgency doctrine since President Kennedy directed it in 1961, a role often labeled "nation-building." Like Kennedy's foreign policy, MCA had its intellectual origins in the social scientific concept of modernization theory. MCA represents the politicization of military doctrine, a method of employing forces based on social scientific theory rather than military experience. As a result of this and the realities on the ground in Thailand, the objectives of MCA did not fit the context of the Thai situation, training did not provide necessary cultural awareness, and execution was haphazard. Ultimately, the USAF failed to achieve the policy goals of MCA in Thailand. Today the U.S. continues to employ military manpower in the diplomatic, economic, and information realms while only training service members in their core specialty. Policymakers and military leaders need to determine whether to sacrifice proficiency in core specialties to enhance cultural and diplomatic skills or to rely more on those agencies traditionally responsible for those instruments of national power. / History

Traditional studies of the modernization-instability thesis have neglected the simultaneous influence of time and place on the relationship between modernization (social mobilization and political participation) and political instability, and the possible causal linkage between the two concepts. Empirical support for modernization-instability hypothesis will be obtained if and only if there is a strong positive correlation between modernization and political instability and the former causes the latter unidirectionally. Only then can one assert that modernization is exogenous, and that a policy geared toward restricting modernization is a proper anti-instability policy. This work attempts to address the question of correlation and causality through a pooled time-series cross-sectional data design and the use of Granger-causality tests. Particular attention is paid to the error structure of the models. Using pooled regression, a model of political instability is estimated for a total of 35 countries for the period 1960-1982. Granger tests are performed on twelve separate countries randomly selected from the 35. The results indicate that there is the expected positive relationship between modernization and political instability. Further, political institutionalization and economic well-being have strong negative influence on political instability. With regard to causality, the results vary by country. Some countries experience no causality between modernization and political instability, while some witness bidirectional causality. Further, some nations experience unidirectional causality running from modernization to political instability, while some depict a reverse causation. The main results suggest that modernization and political instability are positively related, and that political instability can have causal influence on modernization, just as modernization can exert causal influence on political instability.

Sayyid Qutb's conceptions of man and society inform and are themselves informed by his theory of human and divine knowledge. Our aim in this dissertation is, first, to highlight the intricate relationships between Qutb's ontology and his epistemology, and, second, to point to the active context of Qutb's discourse: how did his theory of man, society, and knowledge relate to his language of political dissent and his strategy for change and revolution? Qutb remains an enduring influence on young Muslims and has left a deep mark on the discourse of politically activist Islamism. An underlying concern that runs through our analysis will be to address the question: why is Qutb still relevant? The answer we provide highlights the inseparability between Qutb's conception of human nature, his paradigm for the just and ideal society, his theories on mundane and revealed epistemology, and his strategy for social and political reform. We shall argue that the Qutbian discourse endures because Qutb offers his co-religionists a powerfully integrated conception of the "Islamic solution" that achieves a unique blending between the values of "authenticity" and those of "modernity". Qutb's writings articulate an unapologetic "life-conception" of Islam that insisted on standing on par with other "life-conceptions"; Muslims could take pride in knowing that Islam exhorted development, but with an eye towards maintaining a "balance" between the "material" and the "spiritual", unlike communism and capitalism, which neglected "spirituality" in favor of "animal materialism"; the "Islamic conception" outlined by Qutb provided the reader with a conceptual framework within which a sophisticated critique of colonialism could be carried out. Moreover, Qutb also provided the modern Islamist with a vocabulary that gives voice to the economic and social concerns of an emerging lower middle class aspiring to fulfill its mundane dreams in modern, mid-20th century Egypt. The language Qutb used in his works was not the language of the elite intellectuals, whether Westernized modernists or traditional 'ulema. Qutb consciously articulated his thoughts in a language easily accessible to a readership literate enough to read his works, but not necessarily trained to actively penetrate the arcane corpus of the 'ulema. Upon reading Qutb and contrasting his language with that of his predecessors, it becomes clear that Qutb, more than any other thinker in the Egypt of his days, articulated a conception of Islam that consciously attempted to lay the foundations for an Islamic epistemology on the basis of a putatively Islamic ontology, denied the authority of "foreign life conceptions", claimed for Islam universal validity, asserted the active character of the "truly Muslim", decried the economic injustices which the masses were enduring, and rejected the traditional conception of the state as intrinsically benevolent. In short, his was a powerful call to merge the values of authenticity - unapologetic anti-imperialism, anti-elitism, and the insistence on the centrality of Islam - with the values of modernity - the impulse for asserting a comprehensive world-view, the pretension to universal validity, and the positive valuation of action and change in the context of welfare liberalism beholden to the will of the people. / Ph. D.