On 28 October 1726 Gulliver’s Travels debuted on the literary scene as a political and philosophical satire meant to provoke and entertain an audience of relatively educated and wealthy British readers. Since then, Swift’s work has gradually evolved, assuming multiple forms and meanings while becoming accessible and attractive to an increasingly broad readership in and outside Britain. My study emphasises that reworkings, including re-editions, translations, abridgments, adaptations and illustrations, have played a primary role in this process. Its principal aim is to investigate how reworkings contributed to the popularity of Gulliver’s Travels by examining the dynamics and the stages through which they transformed its text and its original significance. Central to my research is the assumption that this transformation is largely the result of shifts of a translational nature and that, therefore, the analysis of reworkings and the understanding of their role can greatly benefit from the models of translation description devised in Descriptive Translation Studies. The reading of reworkings as entailing processes of translation shows how derivative creations operate collaboratively to ensure literary works’ continuous visibility and actively shape the literary polysystem. The study opens with an exploration of existing approaches to reworkings followed by an examination of the characteristics which exposed Gulliver’s Travels to continuous rethinking and reworking. Emphasis is put on how the work’s satirical significance gave rise to a complex early textual problem for which Gulliver’s Travels can be said to have debuted on the literary scene as a derivative production in the first place. The largest part of the study is devoted to textual analysis. This is carried out in two stages. First I concentrate on reworkings of Gulliver’s Travels published in eighteenth- and in nineteenth-century Italy. These illustrate how interlingual translation operated alongside criticism, abridgment, adaptation and pictorial representation to extend the accessibility of Swift’s work and eventually turned it into a popular and children’s book. Then, I examine British reworkings and how the translational processes which they entail contributed to the popularity and the popularisation of Gulliver’s Travels in eighteenth-century Britain.

The aim of this research is to examine the fisi practice and HIV/AIDS in a high HIV prevalence country and to highlight implications for HIV/AIDS policies and programmes. Five objectives were identified to meet this aim. First, it assesses the extent to which the Malawian elites (educated Malawians working on HIV/AIDS) are reframing the AIDS epidemic to further their goals and self interests. Second, it investigates whether the debates on HIV prevention in Malawi are facilitated or constrained by international donors (bi and multilateral agencies). Third, it explores whether or not HIV/AIDS is being represented as an exceptional circumstance, justifying policies that would not normally be applied to other public health crises, for example to other Sexually Transmitted Infections. Fourth, it ascertains and examines the extent to which international frameworks, agendas and paradigms are influencing and impacting on traditional cultural practices, resulting in changes to legislation to ban such practices. And finally, it assesses the implications of the findings for the conceptualisation and provision of current and future HIV/AIDS policies and programmes in Malawi. In-depth interviews (n=60) were carried out to foreground stakeholders’ own views and to understand how constructions of narratives linking HIV/AIDS and harmful cultural practices came about. These data are also supported with interview data (n=28) I collected during a consultancy for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, interviews I conducted in a village in Lunzu (n=45), newspaper articles, policy documents and field notes. Findings demonstrate that due to the epidemiology of HIV the fisi practice does not contribute significantly to the spread of HIV/AIDS in Malawi. Instead, I argue that the way that harmful cultural practices have been linked to the spread of HIV/AIDS is a distortion of the reality and what becomes lost is a critical understanding of how harmful cultural practices impact negatively on women’s lives and feed into patriarchal values.

This thesis has two categories of contribution, the first of which is theoretical, while the latter may be considered practical or applied. The thesis makes theoretical contributions both to nonviolence theory and to the field of Girardian studies. With regard to the former, the thesis challenges entrenched categorisation methods within nonviolence research that risk homogenising the movements under study. In demonstrating how Girardian theory can provide one additional analytical angle from which to view and understand nonviolent movements, it is argued that our analyses of these movements needs to be broadened still further. The thesis also contributes to Girardian theory directly by challenging its most problematic element: Girard’s insistence on the primacy of Christianity. By bringing Girard’s ideas into conversation with Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, this particular aspect of his thought is challenged, thereby making the rest of his corpus more accessible (and more acceptable) to a multicultural audience. Additionally, while Girard himself has very little to say about how his own style of nonviolent ideals might actually be pursued in the contemporary world, this thesis offers an original example of how his goals have been realised in a real-life political (and non-Christian) situation: the Tibetan freedom movement. Thus, the thesis aims to expand the range of Girard’s applicability by thinking about how his ideas could inform our understandings of contemporary political activity for Tibet. Further to this, the applied aim of this thesis is to illuminate the internal dynamics of the Tibetan freedom movement. Although this movement has a strong collective identity, I seek to reveal internal disparities that may be preventing it from achieving positive results. My research in McLeod Ganj, a Tibetan refugee settlement in northern India, shows that members of the refugee population generally have strong opinions about what constitute acceptable nonviolent methods in their freedom movement, and believe that these are in confluence with the philosophy of the Dalai Lama, their traditional temporal and spiritual leader. However, through the application of Rene Girard’s analytical perspective, this thesis reveals a fundamental (and generally unrecognised) variation between the understandings of the public and the Dalai Lama with regard to nonviolence as practiced.

This study focuses on possible approaches that can be undertaken at university to prepare undergraduate students with English language communicative competence required at the workplace. In exploring how English is taught at a university and whether English education met the needs of business, the main concern of this study is how materials design and teacher education can support learners to develop the skills to communicate effectively in the Vietnamese workplace. The purpose of the study was to (1) learn about the reality of English in the workplace to see what graduates’ needs at the workplace are, (2) undertake observational study at a university to see how needs were being met and (3) explore how minor interventions influence teachers and their English teaching practice. The study employed a qualitative research methodology. The data collection methods employed were observations and interviews and a survey was undertaken. This is also to provide the basis for the reliability of studies and the validation of findings in terms of their accuracy, checking for bias in research methods and the development of research instruments. The data from these three resources was analysed through discourse analysis in order to address the analytic issues and the concern for an ‘in-depth’ focus on people’s activities of a qualitative research. There were two main stages of research in the study. In the companies stage, the results reveal that meaningful conversations that required graduates at the workplace are often absent in language classroom and teaching materials. This raises the importance of achieving balance between transactional and relational talk in language teaching materials. It also raises the importance of communicative language teaching at university that can support in various aspects of discourse. In the university stage of the research, the findings disclose that this was not an environment necessarily conducive to supplying the workplace with suitably communicatively competent graduates. There were various problems identified concerning teacher’s contextual realization, their questioning and their use of CLT activities that did not stimulate communication. By contrast, traditional teaching methods were noted, including the patterns of teacher fronted, form focused practice, with few student-student interactions. Importantly, the analyses of the results indicate that action research can help to bring improvement of teachers’ teaching practice. Though limited in number, considerable positive changes made by the teachers were identified. These changes were primarily in terms of materials adaptation and the number of classroom interactions. The other significant finding was that teachers understanding of the study’s interventions had a positive impact on their practice. They also showed their positive attitude towards the changes and were pleased to engage more students through adopting these changes. Based on the findings of the study, major issues are identified. The study’s findings have implications for materials development, teacher development and school management. The research also reveals the importance of conducting a needs analysis for stakeholders. Finally, the study’s limitations, together with recommendations for further research based on authentic transcripts/materials of workplace talk, or further interventions, observations and feedback in terms of teachers’ process in engaging action research, are discussed.

The aim of the thesis is to develop a critique of current liberal conceptualizations of international order. In order to conduct this critique, this thesis revisits the arguments first put forth by the German legal and political theorist Carl Schmitt. Schmitt conceptualizes a tripartite unity between law, order, and place. This unity, established at the constituent moment of land-appropriation, forms a concrete nomos, which subsequently creates the contours of the legal and political order. The establishment of the concrete order is necessarily the construction of a territorial boundary that designates an inside and an outside of the polity. By speaking of a nomos of the earth, Schmitt globalized this understanding of concrete order by looking at the various historical developments that created a "line" between the concrete applicability of interstate norms and a region where the exceptional situation prevails. The critique presented in this thesis is concerned with the lack of concrete boundary conditions within the current international legal order. It is argued that this lack of a well-defined boundary condition is what results in extreme forms of violence that were traditionally bracketed.

A study of the possible correlation between drastic neo-liberal economic reform and the undermining of democratic mechanisms in late twentieth century Argentina. The adoption of free market mechanisms, within the Modern Political Economy theoretical perspective, may tend to erode the workings of western style democracy leading to a situation of increased domestic sociopolitical and economic tensions in Argentina. The foregoing is especially applicable as the continues to endeavors to maintain its neo-liberal economic reform program on track.

In this thesis I assessed the state responses to social movements and in turn the impact of these movements on state policy within the context of the democratization occurring in Bolivia. The democratization process is affected by the conflict between political and economic goals. Politically the governments are faced with the demands from social groups. At the same time, the Bolivian government faces an economic crisis which requires stabilization, impairing the same individuals needed for legitimacy and political support. Two cases which depicted the key issues of this thesis are: the indigenous groups in the Bolivian Beni region and the coca growers, mainly of the Chapare area in the Cochabamba department of Bolivia. To achieve support and legitimacy, the new civilian administrations had no choice but to listen to the requests of the social mobilizations. Because of the economic crisis, conflicting domestic pressures and international influence, however, the government could not accede to all their demands.

This study compares the status of women under the secular government of the Pahlavi Dynasty with the Islamic Republic of Iran. It relies on Hisham Sharabi's theory of neopatriarchal society and Fatima Mernissi's psychological analysis of the dynamics of gender relations in Islam. Both the Pahlavi dynasty and the Islamic regime promoted a perception of women's rights which were conducive to the ideologies of secularism and Islamism. Both regimes, however, worked within the framework of a patriarchal society by instituting policies that were misogynous in nature. This study found that the majority of Iran's female population was not greatly affected by the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty and the subsequent implementation of the Islamic regime. The basis of this argument lies in the fact that despite the contrasting ideologies of both governments, where women's issues are concerned, the patriarchal social structure remained virtually intact.

Two NATO allies, Great Britain and France, exerted greater influence on US foreign policy than most analysts assume. They did so even during the 1950s and early 1960s when the United States enjoyed undisputed economic and military supremacy in the alliance. This study hypothesizes that the British and French influence on US foreign policy is explained both by the existence of transnational and transgovernmental coalitions and by the cohesion of weak allies toward the alliance leader. Yet although both cohesion and coalitions are complementary in influencing US foreign policy, the relationship between coalitions and influence is more critical. To investigate the proposed relationships, the study relies on an analysis of three events during which both Great Britain and France challenged US policies: the Korean War, the Suez crisis, and the 1958-1963 test ban negotiations.

This study examines what many scholars have neglected to investigate when addressing post Civil War issues in Lebanon. Most studies have addressed political issues surrounding activities of Shiite movements, such as Harakat Amal or Hizb Allah, while socioeconomic issues have been neglected. Imam Musa Sadr challenged the power of traditional Shiite leaders by creating official Shiites institutions and movements like Amal. The Iranian Revolution and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 sparked the creation of Hizb Allah which, not only struggled against its foes, but also provided social services to the Shiites. This development program has been central in creating political legitimacy for Hizb Allah, regardless of its military situation, which suggests that socioeconomic development can transform a militia into a legitimate actor on the Lebanese political scene. The survivability of Shiite parties is therefore tantamount to not only their military might, but also to their social involvement.