The present study focuses on the local organizations and state extraction in rural China from 1949 to 1956. But in order to provide an understanding of context and processes the thesis at the same time examines the secular changes in local organizations and the historical experience of state extraction in rural China during a relatively long period from the fourteenth century to 1956. Specifically, the present study focuses on the relationships between local organizations and the efficiency (transaction costs) of state extraction in rural China from the fourteenth century to 1956, and finds that the actions and interactions of the state (or rulers), state agents (recorders in lijia organization and lineage leaders before the twentieth century, local bosses during the first half of the twentieth century, and heads and recorders in the collectives after 1949), and constituents (the common peasants) led to the changes of institutions in state extraction (forms of taxation, forms of contract between the state and state agents, structures of local organizations) and institutions in broader social context (informal institutions), and the changes in the efficiency (transaction costs) of state extraction, by using the historical experience of state extraction from villages in A County (a County in southeast China) from the fourteenth century to 1956 as a case study. The thesis therefore revises key aspects of the new institutionalism model (Williamson 1975; North 1981, 1991; Kiser 1994; Levi 1988), and develops a new model for understanding organizations, what might be called the process institutionalism model. In contrast to the new institutionalism model which emphasizes the efficiency properties of alternative forms of organization, and their centrality to the actions and interactions of organization participants and the other actors in broader social context, the process institutionalism model focuses on the processes whereby the organizational participants and the other actors in broader social context, having different interests and valuing various inducements, take actions and interact with each other, and emphasizes that the processes of the actions and interactions of organization participants and the other actors in broader social context are fundamentally important to the changes in organization structures and the other institutions in broader social context, and the changes in the efficiency of institutional patterns. Secondly, the present study follows the research approach opened by Schumpeter (1991) and develops a relatively complete framework to understand the changes in state institutions, and the efficiency of state extraction, not only in China, but also in the other countries after the fourteenth century (including the development of a relatively strong central representative institution in England in the seventeenth century and the establishment of bureaucratic monarchy in the major European continental countries in the eighteenth century).

In 2015, Europe experienced the most significant refugees' outbreak in modern history. Millions of displaced persons crossed the external borders of the European Union. Some of the EU member states represented and handled the outbreak as an opportunity. Some others framed and dealt with the migratory pressures as a security threat. The designation of an issue as an existential threat to a referent object constitutes a security speech act. According to the Copenhagen School of Security Studies, when extraordinary measures and the acceptance of the audience follow a security speech act, then we observe successful securitization. Motivated by the desire to examine the securitization of the refugee crisis in Europe, from a Copenhagen School's perspective, I performed a thorough assessment of the relevant literature which brought into the light a research gap. Despite the persistence of the Copenhagen School's scholars to underline the importance of their analytical framework's 'audience acceptance' component, most of the securitization literature focuses on the other two components of a successful securitization: the security speech act and the emergency action. As a result, the audience acceptance component suffers from under-theorization, underdevelopment, and under-assessment. To enhance the analytical potential of the Copenhagen School's theorem, I develop two methodological novelties -the Triangulation Method of Audience Identification and the Comprehensive Securitization Empirical Framework. The first guarantees the accurate identification of the securitization audience. The second classifies ten different forms of securitization based on the presence or absence of the three securitization components and on the placement of the 'audience acceptance' within the securitization's timeline. To demonstrate the applicability of the novel analytical tools, I test them on the securitization of the European refugee crisis. To support my findings, I perform a comparative case study of five case studies: Greece, Poland, Hungary, Germany, and the EU. To draw my conclusions, I consult thousands of official statements, hundreds of surveys and opinion polls, dozens of relevant books and peer-reviewed articles and several in-person interviews with renowned decision-makers. The outcomes of the research suggest that, in the case of the European refugee crisis, the primary targeted audience was the general public. However, the opinion of the general public about the designation of the existential threat and about the necessity of the extraordinary measures' adoption was rarely considered after the utterance of the security speech acts. In most of the cases, the securitizing actors assessed the feelings of the general public before uttering the speech acts. The findings of this research also indicate that the higher the negativity of the general public towards immigrants and refugees, the most likely the political elites to perform a security speech act and to resort to emergency action. Despite the indisputable impact of the public opinion, the final decision about the securitization of the refugee crisis belongs to the political actors

Adlerian Summer School, Clonmel, Ireland, July, 2006; McAbee-Maryland Adlerian Society, October, 2004; ICASSI, Cork, Ireland, July – August, 2004.

This text offers an analysis of the power apparatuses (dispositifs) employed in the management of the early 21st century Covid-19 pandemic. The paper is divided into two sections. The first part is oriented both towards a charac- terization of the mode of government that preceded the onset of the viral disease and towards an exposition of the power apparatuses it instrumentalized. This mode of go- vernment is referred to in the text as «capitalistic gover- mentality», a practice combining regimes of knowledge, economically encoded materialities, subjective formations and power apparatuses in order to maintain the valorization of private capital. The second part exposes the ways in which the apparatuses of capitalistic governmentality are modified and articulated in the context of the pandemic, through a phenomen given the provisional name of «viropolitics».

The increasing engagement of China in Africa after the cold war has steered debates concerning the growing complexion of this relationship. However, the emphasis of assessment has mainly been narrowed to the bilateral relationship between China and African countries. Insufficient consideration has been focused to the increasing relationship concerning China and African Union which is the continental Regional Organization of African states. This study explores the nature and impact of China-African Union relationship and its consequences to the African Union member states generally. The study examines the significance of this relationship and demonstrates how both China and African Union are using this relationship to fulfill their objectives and the ultimate effect to the African Union member states that have bilateral relations with China. By using qualitative design and the lens of constructivism this study has tested the extent of the application of China's objectives under the China African policy and the African Union objectives under the Constitutive Act and Agenda 2063 by analyzing the extent the parties are using this relationship to enhance the fulfillment of their objectives, by testing the study on the objectives of infrastructure development, peace and security, health, and capacity development as the research variables. This study shows the extent at which the parties' relations has led to the achievement of these objectives thus demonstrating the importance of the relationship between China and African Union. This relationship has enhanced peace and security preservation of the African continent, facilitated the development of African Union Centre for Disease Control and Prevention to boost the health objective on the continent, as well as aggrandized skill development through capacity development initiatives on the continent. China has also supported, consistently praised and acknowledged the role of the AU in solving African problems as well as constructing for it the biggest office block hence giving the continental organization a new face. Nevertheless, the study shows that China is using this relationship to project itself as a more active external partner for the AU and the African continent compared to the rest. Similarly, China is trying to use this relationship with the AU to socialize the AU member states towards its own priorities, and the relationship is positioning China to initiate, maintain and increase its Soft power interests on the African continent as well as advance its norms. Equally, China is carefully using its relationship with the AU to promote its geostrategic and political interests on the African continent for instance through its recent establishment of the Chinese military base in Djibouti. The study also highlights how Chinese Africa relations is not only based on interest of exploiting African resources entirely as described by previous authors, but there is also commitment towards increasing its engagement with the African Union basing on each other's policies and priorities in order to fulfill their objectives

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis turns to Martin Heidegger to develop an interpretive framework to answer the question that has increasingly been thrust to the fore of 21st century society: what is the nature of the relationship between technology and society? And related to this central question is the matter of how society and social being is altered by technology and its modalities of vision? The basic argument that has been advanced to address this question revolves around the fact that in as much as we use technology as a means to serve practical ends, it displaces certain tasks and functions, which would otherwise be necessary, and thus truncates or reduces the scope of social practices in our everyday social routines. However, it does not simply end there as we illustrate that social practices encompass, to varying degrees, a different range and scope of social relationships which are instantiated in their wake. Considered together we found that these relations constitute a nexus of social connections, which we take up as the quality of sociality. The implications for our argument that sociabilities and sociality converge to produce an understanding of social being means that any technological encroachments which displace our social practices and social connectives alters our understanding of social being and thus how we understand ourselves, the world and others. We take up this theme of the displacement of our social being, sociality and sociabilities by considering two outcomes that modern technology seems to open up: equipmentality and curiosity.Firstly, as regards equipmentality we have noted that it connect us to our sociality and sociabilities and thus inures our understanding of social being, however, by contrast Heidegger finds in (idle) curiosity a second outcome that dooms us to the dystopian fate of nihilism. There is thus no fait accompli as regards modern technology’s nihilistic tendencies. This does not mean that we can be complacent about our future. But it does mean, on a positive note, that we human beings do have a responsibility to recognize technology’s efficacious ontological dimension for disclosing our being and the world.By contrast, on the negative task, our responsibility does extend to resisting modern technology’s nihilistic ontological wasteland, which does not admit objects, things or for that matter human beings, but only the flattened insubstantial being of resources as standing reserve for the technological system, bereft of sociality, humanity and an understanding of social be-ing.

This study explores the ways contemporary English-Canadian elegists transform rituals of mourning in order to accommodate a broader set of losses than has been permitted by the conventions of elegiac tradition. Focusing on the poetry of Jordan Abel, Stephanie Bolster, Anne Carson, Anne Simpson, and Souvankham Thammavongsa, I explore the ways these elegists make use of unconventional translation practices — that is, translation practices that privilege creativity, process, and transformation rather than mimetic transfers of information — to capture the incommensurability of grief. By exploiting the transformative power of translation, these elegists use unconventional translation practices to create a version of elegy that shifts attention from elegy as product to elegy as enactment. These works find value in the ongoing process of lamentation rather than in the cessation of mourning that characterized pastoral elegy and has become understood as paradigmatic of elegy more broadly. For the elegiac works I discuss in this dissertation, translation functions as both a metaphor and a tool to deal with the dilemmas presented by mourning in the context of a new global reality characterized by unbridgeable geo-temporal distances and community fragmentation. Each chapter of this dissertation explores the way that the transformation of elegiac ritual occurs in the context of a particular kind of loss by analyzing one or two representative texts. Chapter One reads Anne Carson’s Nox as an example of the familial elegy in the context of community fragmentation, examining the ways that Carson’s abundant, amplificatory translation of Catullus’s “Poem 101” allows for the creation of an elegy that grapples with geo-temporal distances through the creation of an elegiac ritual that acts as a stand in for the funeral. Chapter Two considers Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Found as an example of the postmemorial elegy, arguing that the combination of found poetry and ekphrasis allows for the creation of an elegiac ritual that facilitates acceptance but is limited by a desire to protect both the elegist’s own privacy and the privacy of her father. Chapter Three analyzes Nisga’a poet Jordan Abel’s The Place of Scraps, arguing that the use of erasure in this text allows for the creation of an elegy that politicizes grief by challenging the subjects that are considered worthy of elegy and actively working toward the reclamation of identity through a rewriting of accepted colonial collective myths. Chapter Four pairs Anne Simpson’s “Seven Paintings by Brueghel” and Stephanie Bolster’s Long Exposure in order to consider the ways that the contemporary phenomenon of mediatized trauma can be mourned through ekphrastic elegies as well as the ways these works push the contemporary elegy to its limits by exploring the ethics of witnessing. By reading this group of elegies in the context of the history of the English elegy and through the lens of translation, I argue that these elegists open the field of elegy to voices that have frequently been excluded and challenge our understanding of readers as participants in elegiac community.

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