Mallon chrēsai in 1 Cor. 7:21 is considered to be one of the more difficult texts to interpret in the New Testament. The text has a long history of exegetical debate on Paul’s view on the manumission of slaves, in which the text is mainly understood as either ‘use the present condition of slavery’ or ‘use the condition obtained by becoming a freedperson’. The main trend of recent studies has been to maintain the so-called ‘take freedom’ interpretation; however, there is still a need for a clearer understanding of the social meaning of becoming a freedperson within the context of first-century CE Corinth. This study discusses the crux of 1 Cor. 7:21 in the light of the social setting of Roman Corinth, with a particular focus on the nature of manumission and its influence in the context of Roman control over the Greek province. It is known that, after manumission, ex-slaves entered into the relationship of patronatus with their former owner, and ultimately with the emperor. This study argues that manumission in the province was an important means of imperial rule which gained cultic character. The study also discusses the issue of food offered to idols (1 Cor. 8:1-11:1), an issue that shares the same cultic context. The situation of the Christ-followers in Corinth was that their attachment to the imperial cult would put some of them at risk of falling back into idol worship; hence, Christ-followers were to relinquish their right to consume food offered to idols. In the light of this background, in which the imperial cult had a marked influence, it is considered that Paul also counselled Christ-followers not to obtain manumission even if they were legally eligible. Finally, the study explains this reading of 1 Cor. 7:21 in relation to the immediate context of the passage.

This thesis sets out to examine five separate arenas within the Angolan public sphere, and investigate their contribution to peace discourse. The five arenas are: the Angolan churches, private media, civil society organisations, community based material and traditional authority. The objective of this thesis is to highlight these discourses, and to investigate their importance to Angolans as arenas of peace engagement. These peace discourses have remained poorly developed or ignored within the Angolan literature. Collectively, these five discourses offer a perspective `from below' on peace and conflict in Angola, and are analysed within a Habermasian public sphere framework. The thesis argues that many Angolans have been critical of the various peace processes, seen as agreements between the militarised elements of Angolan society. The exclusion of national civic forces from these agreements, such as the churches and civil society, is regarded as a reason for the failure of the Bicesse and Lusaka peace agreements. The thesis sets out criticism of international mediation efforts, interpreted in some arenas as an obstacle in the search for peace, because economic interests were seen as taking priority. By focusing on oft excluded actors, an emphasis is placed on Angolan `agency' in favour of peace, demonstrating significant Angolan peace engagement throughout the years of conflict. The thesis also underlines the importance of addressing traditional and cultural issues in understanding the causes of the Angolan war, and in developing new approaches to building peace. Simultaneously, another finding concerns the fundamental role Angolan history has played in shaping the Angolan public sphere, and how this impacted negatively on the ability of Angolans to organise collectively and address peace issues.

This thesis explores the relationships between political elites and their constituencies, looking specifically at the emergence and production of a new type of political elite in post-war Lebanon. Based on micro-level ethnographic research amongst Beirut’s Sunni communities, mainly within Nejmeh Sports Club, I explore the crystallisation of the model of an ‘entrepreneurial elite’ as exemplified by the late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, who came to be the club’s patron. The most popular football club – and indeed sports club – in Lebanon, Nejmeh embraced members from different social classes, sectarian affiliations and political camps. It therefore provided a rare fieldwork site from which to observe the negotiation of clientelistic relationships, and to do so over an extended period, including times of heightened political – and occasionally violent – conflict. The stadiums provided a theatre for the spectacular performance of politics, wealth and power, and the events which took place in them mirrored the interplay of both local and global transformations occurring over the span of almost two decades. My research argues that the post-war period ushered in a new ‘glocal’ model of political elite which combined a corporate background and the performative use of wealth with well-tried tactics of ascendance to power, namely philanthropy, sectarianism and clientelism. It is a model which amalgamated seemingly contradictory rhetoric and practice. Its rhetoric of professionalism, democracy, championing of state institutions, and nonviolence often paralleled practices of corruption, vote-buying, and the support of strong-arm racketeering. This model of an elite functioning at the highest level of Lebanese politics, moved the locus of power, as well as economic opportunities, into the control of an ever smaller number of people, marginalising both the power and roles of those actors operating further down the class and clientelistic hierarchy of relationships. Within such a hierarchy, public demonstrations of loyalty performed by those in the lower echelons of society served to simultaneously lay claim to the elite’s favours and to suppress alternative or dissident voices.

Les trames de soi cherche à expliquer comment, dans le contexte de l’adoption de l’Autonomie Indigène Originaire Paysanne (AIOC), les habitants de Tarabuco, localité des Andes méridionales boliviennes « se trament » entre différents politiques du monde afin de s’approprier une nouvelle catégorie juridique, celle du sujet de droit « Indigène Originaire Paysan ». Ce nouveau sujet est dépositaire du droit à l’autogouvernement, nouveau régime destiné aux populations indigènes ayant été proclamé par la constitution bolivienne de 2010. Afin d’y accéder, les habitants de cette municipalité sont astreints à s’auto-définir en démontrant leur connaissance d’eux-mêmes, de leur histoire et leur culture. Pris en étau par l’injonction d’identification, ces acteurs (syndicat paysan, ayllus et habitants de la ville) sont entrés en conflit pour défendre différentes visions de ce que doit être l’ethos tarabuqueño. Cette ethnographie montre qu’entre les univers de sens de ces individus en conflit, il existe cependant tant de discontinuités que de convergences. Ces dernières se situent dans le partage de significations liées à des pratiques sociales que l’adoption de l’AIOC pousse à redéfinir, à transformer, ou à écarter, en vue de la production d’un « sujet indigène » doté d’une culture et d’une nature objectivables, et ce à l’ère de l’injonction de décolonisation promue par l’avènement de l’Etat Plurinational. / In 2010 was approved, in Bolivia, a brand new Constitution giving the right to the indigenous people to self-government according to each nation and indigenous people customs. The right to self-government was incorporated within the framework of the Peasant-Native-Indigenous Autonomy (PNIA). Nevertheless, The municipalities need to respond to the identity and identification criteria proposed by the PNIA in order to have access to a certain number of rights offered by the new dispositive. The Wefts of the Self aim to explain how the inhabitants of a small municipality located in southern Andes, weave themselves between different cosmopolitics in order to internalize a brand new legal category: subject of law “Peasant Native Indigenous”. Indeed, several and strong struggles appeared between different social organizations inside the Tarabuco Municipality, the peasant union, the indigenous communities and the neighbor’s assemblies. These conflicts had interrupted the conversion process. The three different social organizations fight over the values and norms that should regulate the incoming society. However, this fieldwork demonstrate that despite the conflicts the three social organization members share a underlying universe of meaning which the adoption of the PNIA force to redefine, transform or remove in order to produce a “indigenous subject” fitted with objective culture and nature. This phenomenon takes place under the decolonization injunction promoted by the coming Plurinational State. This work will contribute to understand how the State withdrawal in favor of indigenous people, in terms of decentralization of prerogatives, goes along with a normative redeployment through forms of identity categorization and assignment. And, subsequently, how local actors deal with these forms of categorization and assignment in the design of values and norms of their incoming society.

This thesis examines the mobilisation practices of one of the largest social movement organisations to have emerged in post-apartheid South Africa, the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF). Making a contribution to the growing field of scholarship on the global justice movement, this thesis presents an analysis of the micro-levels of mobilisation in order to provide a deeper understanding of the everyday forms of resistance articulated and enacted by the APF and its affiliated community-based organisations. Locating itself within the political process paradigm as developed by Doug McAdam (1982, 1996), Sidney Tarrow (1988, 1994, 1998) and Charles Tilly (1978, 2008), the study of micro-processes of mobilisation is advanced through an analysis of the interaction between mobilising structures, political opportunities and framing, in order to tease out the internal political, strategic and organisational differences within the APF. I propose that the APF and its affiliates should be conceptualised as a ‘social movement community’, arguing that such a conceptualisation places a critical focus on the significance of political scale, the importance of space and place as well as a consideration of the political, social and cultural aspects of collective action. By combining perspectives from social movement theory with a Gramscian perspective on resistance and counter-hegemony, this thesis presents an empirically and theoretically grounded analysis of the conditions which both facilitate and constrain the emergence and practice of transformative collective action. With a close focus upon the internal practices of mobilisation, the analysis presented contributes to a flourishing field of scholarship which analyses social movements as alternative public spaces in which individuals contest dominant practices of citizenship and democracy and forge potentially counter-hegemonic relations. Utilising James Holston’s (1998, 2008, 2009) concept of ‘insurgent citizenship’ this thesis examines the paradoxes of the post-apartheid democratic settlement, where the constitutional rights which have been extended to all sections of the polity have been undermined by neoliberal policies which have resulted in the privatisation of basic services and reshaped relations between the citizen and the state. Furthermore, as I will demonstrate, the quality and experience of democracy post-apartheid has also been undermined by increasing violence and inefficiencies within the justice system. This thesis argues that social movements provide important spaces for the alternative practice of citizenship and democracy in which socio-economically marginalised groups seek not only to be accommodated within the polity but also challenge the economic, political and social foundations upon which the polity is built. However, while social movements may offer progressive challenges to hegemonic relations through the course of collective action it is also possible that some forms of inequalities will become further entrenched. Thus, the analysis which follows offers a critical account of the insurgent citizenship practices of the APF which considers how some forms of inequalities, particularly in relation to gender, may become entrenched through the processes of mobilisation.

Cette thèse étudie comment la révolution maoïste a évolué au Népal et comment, au fil du temps, elle a dévié de sa direction politique et militaire et s'est complètement suspendue. En examinant les documents historiquement importants et les points de vue, les représentations et les idées des acteurs maoïstes des points de vue marxiste, structurel et politique, cette thèse montre que la période d'un système politique fermé sous une autorité monarchique autoritaire a fourni un terrain fertile à la montée des maoïstes portant un objectif idéologique de briser l'Etat existant et d'établir un nouvel ordre démocratique, qui a mis en œuvre la révolution armée dans la structure politique, économique et militaire relativement ouverte et partiellement réformée des années 1990. L'analyse du cours de la révolution suggère que la révolution a connu une forte progression principalement en raison des intérêts conflictuels et des contradictions entre les principales forces politiques. En effet, la participation active de l'Inde, des Etats Unis d’Amérique et du Royaume-Uni au Népal a contraint les maoïstes à stopper leur révolution, abandonnant leur objectif et leurs stratégies. Cette thèse montre enfin que bien que les maoïstes et d'autres partis politiques aient réussi à abolir la monarchie, ils ont échoué à entreprendre les politiques et les programmes radicaux promis pendant la guerre. En examinant de manière critique les politiques maoïstes et les trajectoires des acteurs impliqués dans la révolution, cette recherche montre que les incohérences dans les objectifs, les stratégies, la culture et la politique des Maoïstes sont responsables de leur échec à transformer la structure étatique existante et la nature de l'économie. / This dissertation explores how Maoist revolution evolved in Nepal, and how over the time it detoured from its political and military direction and came to a complete halt. Examining historically important documents, and views, perceptions, and insights of the Maoist actors from Marxist, structural, and political conflict perspectives, this dissertation demonstrates that the period of a closed political system under an authoritarian political system provided fertile ground for the rise of the Maoists with an ideological objective of smashing existing state and establishing a new democratic order, which implemented the armed revolution in the relatively open and partly reformed fluid political, economic and military structure in the 1990s. The analysis of the course of revolution suggests that the revolution made a very powerful headway mainly beause of the conflicting interests of and contradictions among the major political forces. Indeed, the active involvement of India, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom in Nepal forced the Maoists to halt their revolution, abandoning their core aim and strategies. This dissertation reveals that although the Maoists along with other political parties succeeded to abolish the monarchy, they failed to undertake the radical policies and programs promised during the war. Critically examining the Maoist politics and trajectories of actors involved in the revolution, this dissertation concludes that the inconsistencies in the Maoists’ aims, strategies, culture, and politics are also responsible for the failure of the Maoists to transform the existing state structure, the class relation, and nature of the economy.

The central themes of this thesis are to highlight the importance of national symbols and ceremonies in the formation of nations and national identities, and examine how they contribute to the expressions of nationhood. The research has been conducted by means of a systematic investigation of national symbols and ceremonies, analysed as an integral part of identity-making, maintenance and change. The focus is on the contemporary European nations, and conclusions have been drawn with regard to their symbolism and ceremonies. The overall study has been complemented by three case studies; of Britain, France, Norway, with Germany as an analytical counter-case. Throughout this thesis evidence will be provided to the effect that national symbols and ceremonies express deeper aspects and meanings of the nation, and function as integrative and/or divisive forces. Moreover, national symbols and ceremonies form a central part of a `secular' religion which provides anchorage in a dynamic world. National symbols and ceremonies also have an effect upon the community they represent; that is, they raise collective consciousness of `who we are' and `where we are from'. Finally, it has been argued that nations cannot be dated in a precise manner since they come into being by stages, marked by the adoption of national symbols, such as the national flag and the national day. These stages have been linked to three main symbolic regimes (termed `old', `modem' and `new') and understood as a function of national independence and continuity, the implication being that the whole process of nation building forms a complex that is constituted along a continuum of re-discovery and invention.

Within a growing body of research there is a tendency towards a depoliticisation of citizenship education (CE) which seems to be replicated by different programs in school. In this thesis, however, I argue for CE that engages with a political perspective through the enhancement of students’ experiences of participation within their daily contexts, particularly the school. The argument develops from an in-depth analysis of students’ representations of political participation (PP) and a consideration of implications for CE in Mexico City’s secondary schools. Based on a mixed methodology that included qualitative work in two schools from contrasting delegaciones (municipalities) of Mexico City, and a representative survey (n=828) of third grade students from all the general secondary schools in these two areas, the thesis finds that students experience a general condition of exclusion from PP. They are largely excluded from a) their own representation of PP, b) the curricular characterisation of PP, and c) quality participation in their schools, families, and broader communities. This account coexists, however, with an ideal characterisation of PP embraced by students and teachers, which reaches its highest level in the curriculum of Civic and Ethical Formation. It turns considerably idealistic due to the lack of practical instrumentation and a strong discrepancy with participants’ representations of actual student involvement in school. Thus, the expected distance in education between real and ideal becomes nonsense. As the ideal is no longer an achievable point of reference, it loses the capacity of orienting a significant pedagogical practice. One of the main consequences of this gap is that students, teachers and principals learn the puerile and politically correct discourse about democracy and student participation. Simultaneously they are socialised into a rather authoritarian school system, where democracy is a marginal and sporadic phenomenon. In spite of this situation that reflects the current priorities of secondary schools, the thesis shows that students’ participation in school is a key factor to developing a virtuous circle of participation with the family and broader communities. For this purpose, enhancing quality political participation in school is vital. I call this the politicisation of CE. While previous works identify PP with the domain of politics, or dissolves any distinctive meaning by ambiguously interchanging the term with others like civic engagement, the thesis provides a more meaningful theoretical approach, clearly inclusive of adolescents, and specially thought to be enacted in the school. It is proposed that its performance entails the construction of a ‘school of proximal development’, the scaffold through which students’ politicity can evolve in an authentic, autonomous and efficacious way.

Since 2001, there are more than 50 national border barriers around the globe — proposed, under construction, or finished. My dissertation considers this new infrastructure inside larger questions of sovereignty, governance, immigration, and security in the “borderless” age of globalization. To approach this work I used an epistemological framework of border thinking, a “third space” hermeneutics that locates the border as a central place to theorize the complex geopolitical and postcolonial relationships. I conducted two case studies of this fortress infrastructure, one along the U.S.-Mexico border and another along the Costa Rican border with Nicaragua, considering how new border walls are material manifestations of inchoate sovereignty, occupying claims in the borderlands — one of the latest frontier zones of global capital. Broadly, this project calls for us to consider the global proliferation of national border walls and fences in a way that invokes collective action against the persisting operative logic of race/culture thinking that underpins securitization as both a form of governance and an ideology. It situates the urgency of this intellectual work inside the expanding sovereign jurisdictions of capital and opens up new sets of questions about how national border barriers are integral structures inside the changing ideo-political frameworks of war, sovereignty, and governance in the age of the drone.

La perspective théorique des représentations sociales constitue une approche alternative aux modèles dominants des sciences humaines et sociales (sciences politiques, sociologie, économie, géographie, etc.) qui visent à expliquer les comportements électoraux. L’étude porte sur un comportement politique : l'abstention. Ce comportement qui est fréquemment pratiqué par les individus au Gabon, fait malgré tout l’objet de peu de travaux scientifiques. Toutefois, les rares chercheurs qui ont abordé la question ont fait l’hypothèse que ce comportement était une réponse des citoyens aux égarements politiques dans ce pays. Afind’éprouver empiriquement cette hypothèse, l'objectif de notre étude a consisté à étudier les représentations sociales et attitudes exprimées envers la sphère politique et leurs liens avec l'abstention électorale au Gabon, en partant du principe que les composantes affectives des représentations sociales peuvent être évaluées à partir des outils propres aux attitudes.Dans la littérature de la psychologie sociale, il existe des relations avérées dans d'autres champs de recherches, entre ces trois notions (représentation sociale, attitude et comportement). Il a été donc possible de supposer que les représentations sociales soient le réservoir sociocognitif ou les attitudes prennent formes (Moliner, 1997 ; Rateau, 2000 ; Sales-Wuillemin, 2004 ; et Bengamaschi, 2011) pour déterminer les comportements. Nous avons mis à l’épreuve, dans cette thèse, l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’abstention électorale au Gabon soit la conséquence de l’activation et/ou l’actualisation des images négatives que les individus ont des hommes politiques et des élections dans ce pays. A cette fin, notre recherche qui a été menée sous une configuration exploratoire avait un double objectif théorique. Dans un premier temps, une pré-enquête a été réalisée auprès d'un échantillon de quatrevingt-onze (91) jeunes résidents des quartiers (6) de Libreville au Gabon. L’objectif a consisté à savoir l'image que ces derniers avaient de la sphère politique du pays. Les données ont été recueillies à l'aide d'associations libres (techniques évocations hiérarchisées en contexte normal et en contexte de substitution) avec comme mots stimuli : hommes politiques de la majorité au pouvoir, hommes politiques de l'opposition, élections politiques. Et, celles-ci ont été traitées par des analyses prototypiques. Dans un deuxième temps, une enquête par questionnaire a été réalisée auprès d'un échantillon expérimental de deux cent dix-huit (218) étudiants de l'Université Omar Bongo, dont l'objectif a consisté à tester un modèle théorique qui voulait vérifier le lien entre les attitudes envers la sphère politique et l'abstention électorale lors des élections présidentielles et législatives. Le questionnaire était composé de plusieurs parties distinctes. Un recueil d'attitudes concernant la sphère politique, construit à partir du dictionnaire d'opinions extrait de la pré-enquête et des questions sur les comportements électoraux, la politisation, l'identification partisane, le sexe et les filières d'étude. Les principaux résultats de la pré-enquête ont montré que les personnes interrogées se représentaient la politique au Gabon à travers ces égarements. Cette image négative de la politique s’est déclinée en trois dimensions avec une forte résonance avec l'actualité politiquegabonaise : une dimension éthique, une dimension mystico-religieuse et une dimension criminalités/perversions. De même, les jeunes interrogés n'ont pas une image des hommes politiques de l'opposition plus gratifiante par rapport à l’image qu’ils ont des hommes politiques de la majorité au pouvoir. Au contraire, la classe politique gabonaise est considérée comme « un tout ».Enfin, quant aux principaux résultats de l'enquête, il semble que les individus interrogés aient une attitude très négative envers la sphère de la politique, et celle-ci était très dépendante de l'attitude négative envers... / The theoretical perspective of social representations is an alternative approach to the dominant models of human and social sciences (political science, sociology, economics, geography, etc.) that explain voting patterns. The study focused on political behavior: abstaining. This behavior is commonly practiced by individuals in Gabon, is still the subject of some scientific work. However, the few researchers who have addressed the issue have made the assumption that this behavior was a response to the political aberrations of citizens in this country. To empirically test this hypothesis, the objective of our study was to explore the socialrepresentations and attitudes expressed towards politics and their links with the electoral abstention in Gabon, on the assumption that affective components of social representations can be evaluated from the own attitudes tools. In the literature there are proven relationships in other fields of research, these three concepts (social perception, attitude and behavior). It was therefore possible to assume that social representations are sociocognitive tank or attitudes take shape (Moliner, 1997; Rateau, 2000 Sales-Wuillemin, 2004; and Bengamaschi, 2011) to determine the behavior. We put to the test, in this thesis, the hypothesis that electoral abstention in Gabon is the con-sequence of the activation and / or updating of negative images that people have of politicians and electionsthis country. To this end, our research which was conducted under an exploratory theoretical configuration had a double objective.Initially, a pre- survey was conducted among a sample of eighty-one (91) young neighborhood residents (6) Libreville, Gabon. The objective was to know the image that they had of the country's political sphere. Data were collected using free associations (technical evocations prioritized normal context and context substitution) with words as stimuli: politicians from the ruling majority, politicians of the opposition, political elections. And, they were treated with prototypical analyzes. Secondly, a questionnaire survey was conducted among a sample of experimental two hundred and eighteen (218) students of the University Omar Bongo, whose objective was totest a theoretical model that would verify link between attitudes towards politics and electoral abstention in presidential and legislative elections. The questionnaire was composed of several separate parts. A collection of attitudes to the political sphere, built from the dictionary of opinions extracted from the pre- investigation and questions about voting behavior, politicization, party identification, gender and courses of study. The main results of the preliminary survey showed that respondents represented policy in Gabon through these aberrations. This negative image of politics has declined in three dimensions with a strong resonance with the Gabonese political news: an ethical dimension, a mystical- religious dimension and a dimension criminality / perversions. Similarly, young people surveyed do not have an image of the politicians of the most rewarding opposition to the image they have of politicians from the ruling majority. Instead, the Gabonese political class is seen as "a whole". Finally, as to the main results of the investigation, it appears that individuals surveyed have a very negative attitude towards the sphere of politics, and it was very dependent on thenegative attitude towards the politicians of the ruling majority. The results showed ultimately relatively modest relationship between certain items of representational world of politics (ritual crimes, Freemasons / sects, liars, frauds) and behaviors voters during the presidential and legislative elections. This thesis has shown that voters - citizens also possessed, beyond the classic variables,belief systems (social cognition) of the political sphere which encourage them in their decision-election decision or policy choices...