This study took place in the city of Rasht, which is the capital of Gilan Province, situated in North-Western Iran. The aim has been to investigate how a group of young Rashti women constitute their identities through their talk-in-interaction, and how they relate to the concept of Rashti, be it the dialect, people living in a geographical area, or a notion of collective characteristics. The participants constitute their identities by using different social categories to position and categorise themselves and contrast themselves with others. In positioning and categorising they use various discursive means, such as code-switching, active voicing, and extreme-case formulations. Moreover, the social categories also overlap and work together when the participants negotiate and re-negotiate their identities, making an intersectional approach highly relevant. The methods used in this study are of a qualitative nature and belong in the third wave of sociolinguistics (Eckert 2012). The analysed data consists primarily of staged conversations, whereas participant observation, field notes, and natural conversations have been used to help the researcher in understanding the field. The study adopts an emic or participants’ perspective through the use of membership categorisation analysis and conversation analysis, but also within a theoretical intersectionality framework. In many of the conversations, the culture of Rasht and Gilan is a re-emerging theme, and it is contrasted with that of the rest of the country. Gender norms and gender roles are very central to the study, as these young women describe themselves as much freer and less controlled than women in other parts of the country. Gender is made relevant when the participants discuss how the local traditions surpass both national (religious) laws and social codes in other places. The Rashti and Gilaki language varieties also play a role in the constructing of the Rashti identity of the participants. There is, however, a discrepancy between the participants’ values vis-à-vis Rashti and Gilaki as a dialect or a language, and how they value being a Rashti as well as the Rashti and Gilaki culture. In the majority of conversations the participants express a highly positive opinion regarding their Rashti identity, while at the same time the Rashti and Gilaki language varieties are mostly valued in very negative ways.

This study deals with empirical collection and analysis regarding terrorist attacks in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain during the Economic crisis and the effects of the economic crisis on certain types of terrorist groups. The aim of the study is to contribute empirically to the “root causes” debate within Terrorism studies. It also contributes by making certain adjustments to existing categorisation of terrorist groups. The research methods used are both quantitative and qualitative and the research strategy is of a hypothetical-deductive nature. Findings conclude that the Puritanical Anarchist type of terrorism has seen an increase during the crisis, but only the Social Revolutionary type shows a propensity for using the crisis as a reason behind attacks. The study contributes to the barren empirical and theoretical landscape within Root causes.

This dissertation reports on an exploration of school leadership from the perspective of how school leaders bring multiple cognitive interests to bear in their leadership practice. By analysing the discourse of practising school leaders this study has enabled insight to be gained into school leaders’ reflections-on-actions in given leadership situations. On the basis of the analysis of discourse it is concluded in this study that school based leadership, and school leadership preparation, can be enhanced when illuminated through a cognitive perspective grounded in Habermas’ theory of knowledge-constitutive interests (1971). Recommendations are given in this dissertation for the development of an approach to school leadership preparation built on a cognitive interests framework. Based in qualitative research techniques the main evidentiary material was elicited by the use of semi-structured interviews, and the collection of narratives, and was analysed with a variation of Membership Categorisation Analysis (Sacks, 1972).

Text categorisation is an important feature for organising text data and making it easier to find information on the world wide web.  The categorisation of text data can be done through the use of machine learning classifiers. These classifiers need to be trained with data in order to predict a result for future input. The authors chose to investigate how accurate two classifiers are when classifying recent news articles on a classifier model that is trained with older news articles. To reach a result the authors chose the Naive Bayes and Support Vector Machine classifiers and conducted an experiment. The experiment involved training models of both classifiers with news articles from 2005 and testing the models with news articles from 2005 and 2017 to compare the results. The results showed that both classifiers did considerably worse when classifying the news articles from 2017 compared to classifying the news articles from the same year as the training data.

This thesis is concerned with the extent to which hostility towards asylum seekers/refugees frames advocacy talk. Using a dialogical approach, I analyse how the identities of asylum claimants are dealt with by refugee advocates, in order to counter this hostility. My analysis is based on the collection of publicity materials from four refugee organisations, and from Narrative Biographical Interviews conducted with their staff, volunteers and asylum-seeking clients. Using the notion of dialogical network, I demonstrate how hostility enters advocacy talk, how it frames contemporary advocacy representations of refugees, and how it is challenged. In particular, I use Membership Categorisation Analysis to analyse how members of these organisations, the staff, volunteers and campaigners, maintain or challenge the frames provided by the organizations in their publicity materials. I demonstrate how asylum seekers/refugees themselves deal with the hostility and to what extent they are complicit in maintaining or challenging both hostile and advocacy representations of themselves. Hostility routinely enters the publicity materials and is countered through formulations of refugee identities along the lines of biographical contrasts that work to make the hostility irrelevant. These contrasts are socially resourced, and are organised along a set of 'sympathy themes', whereby asylum seekers are represented as having little choice, as naïve, as victims of violence and as having poor mental health. However, advocates, in their interview talk, push the boundaries of these frames of representation. They present new challenges to established practices of refugee representation, and demonstrate that the moments of antagonism called for in the literature already exist within mainstream advocacy organisations. Similarly, the narratives shared by asylum seeker/refugee informants challenge established representations of refugee-hood, in both mainstream and advocacy practices, providing rich and diverse images of themselves which go beyond representations of 'mute victims'. These cracks, these moments of ethical antagonism, suggest new ways forward for refugee advocacy. Importantly, even within mainstream services, these are live issues for their members. The challenge is to make them visible.

La thèse s’intéresse à la construction et l’évolution de sous-classes de réfugiés au sein du système international de protection mis en place par le Haut Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les Réfugiés depuis les années 1950. Par un premier travail d’analyse des archives de l’organisation internationale, elle montre comment le système de protection a toujours fonctionné en opérant un tri parmi les réfugiés statutaires. L’analyse porte plus particulièrement sur la manière dont les « réfugiés africains » ont, dès leur arrivée dans le système international durant les années 1970, été pensés et traités comme des réfugiés particuliers. Par un second travail qualitatif mené au Maroc entre 2014 et 2015, la thèse s’intéresse au prolongement et à l’actualisation de ces enjeux en analysant le cas des « réfugiés subsahariens ». Réfugiés statutaires, ils constituent pourtant l’incarnation du « faux réfugié » sur lequel pèse un soupçon permanent. La thèse s’intéresse alors à l’expérience des individus pris dans cette sous-classe et à leurs tactiques pour tenter d’être reconnus et traités « comme des réfugiés à part entière ». / This PhD research focuses on the construction et evolution of refugees’ subclasses within the international protection system implemented since the 1950s by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This work firstly explains, based on this international organisation’s archives, how the protection system has always operated by selecting within recognised refugees. The analysis examines how « African refugees », since their arrival in the international system in the 1970s, have been thoughts of and treated as peculiar refugees. Secondly, a fieldwork in Morocco between 2014 and 2015 addresses the realisation of these issues thanks to a case study analysis of the « sub-Saharan refugees ». Despite being recognised refugees, they embody the « bogus refugee » under constant suspicion. This research focuses on the experience of individuals caught up in this subclass and on their tactics in order to be recognised and treated as « full-fledged refugees ».

Partant du constat que la catégorisation des individus en un « Nous » et un « Eux » peut suffire à provoquer un traitement inégal des membres de ces groupes, certaines stratégies ont proposé d’atténuer la frontière ainsi créée en recatégorisant l’ensemble des membres des deux groupes au sein d’un ensemble supraordonné. Cependant, cette stratégie peut s’avérer inefficace, voire contreproductive, précisément quand elle menace les fonctions remplies par les identités initiales. Parmi ces fonctions, la possibilité de se définir comme différents des autres (ie. la distinctivité) est particulièrement concernée. La présente recherche a pour objet de tester, à travers 5 études : 1) si la recatégorisation provoque effectivement une menace sur la distinctivité 2) ses conséquences sur les biais intergroupes 3) la pertinence d’une stratégie de préservation de la distinctivité par l’ajout de catégories sociales.Les résultats ont montré, sur des groupes minimaux, mais aussi nationaux, que de la recatégorisation émanait une menace qui s’exprime tant sur des mesures implicites qu’explicites du biais intergroupe même si des processus propositionnels semblent modérer l’impact de la menace sur ces derniers. De plus, proposer des catégorisations supplémentaires a permis de réduire cette menace et le biais intergroupe associé, sans faire émerger d’effet délétère mesurable.Ces résultats soulignent l’apport de croiser les approches fonctionnelles et sociocognitives des catégorisations sociales et incitent à reconsidérer ces dernières non pas nécessairement comme des problèmes, mais également comme ressources dans les stratégies visant à l’harmonisation sociale. / On the premise that categorising individuals into “Us” and “Them” can be enough to elicit unequal treatment between the members of those groups, some strategies suggest recommend to blur group boundaries by recategorising all the members of both groups into one superordinate group. However, this strategy may prove inefficient or even counterproductive, precisely when it threatens initial identities functions. Among those functions, being able to define oneself as different from the others (ie. distinctiveness) is especially affected. This research aims at testing, in 5 studies: 1) if indeed recatégorisation produces a threat to distinctiveness 2) its consequences on intergroup bias 3) the relevance of a distinctiveness preservation strategy by social categories addition.Results, on both minimal and national groups, showed that a threat stemmed from recatégorisation which had impact on both implicit and explicit measures of intergroup bias, although propositional processes seem to moderate threat’s influence on the latter. Moreover, offering additional categorization allowed for a threat and related intergroup bias reduction, with no measurable harmful effect arising.These results underline the contribution of putting together functional and sociocognitive approaches of social categorisations and encourage rethinking the latter not necessarily as issues but also as resources in social harmonization strategies.

By means of return-based style analysis (RBSA), heterogeneous style sub-categories were identified within the TARR category of the South African unit trust market to create a framework for sub-categorisation. The study dealt with TARR funds and their place within the investment universe. The literature review emphasised the importance of asset allocation, which supports the use of RBSA to identify asset allocation. The literature review further provided a motivation for the semi-strong form of RBSA applied to the sample data. In the study, RBSA was applied to two groups within the sample data, namely funds that have data points for the full measurement period (Group 1) and funds that have less than 75 data points (Group 2). A four-phase process was applied to the sample data. The findings suggest the following:<ul><li> in general, return-based style analysis applied to each fund identifies the asset allocation for the fund and is valid; but it is emphasised that for specific periods, the explanatory power of the regression model may become questionable; </li><li> the collective results of return-based style analysis applied to the funds can be used to create a framework for sub-categorisation. The framework proposed was the result of nine out of a potential 54 funds. The explanatory power of the regression results was less questionable. The proposed framework was applied to the remaining 45 funds (Group 2), but there were indeed inconsistencies in the application; </li><li> the framework created did not raise any concerns as a result of the Group 1 analysis. However, it was questionable when applied to the Group 2 funds in its entirety; </li><li> sub-categorisation based on only the allocation to the domestic short-term asset class was definitely a criterion that was true irrelevant of which sample group it was applied to. </li></ul> / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Financial Management / unrestricted

This study has intended to demonstrate the effects of categorising climate change as a developmental issue rather than a security issue on the conflict in Darfur. This was achieved by studying the following research questions: (I) What is the role of climate change adaptation in developmental work in Darfur? (II) What is the role of climate change adaptation in security work in Darfur? (III) How is the work on climate change adaptation connected to the course of the conflict? These questions have been answered by collecting material relating to development and security in Darfur. This material was then analysed with the help of models by McGray et al., Barnett et al. and Matthews to identify the work that has been done with climate change adaptation in the two areas. This showed that the developmental work mainly focused locally on drivers of vulnerability and that the security work did not regard climate change up until 2016. The merely local approach by development work and the lacking attention to climate change in the missions caused a lacking national plan, a lacking disaster risk programme, no focus on land tenure rights, a wrong attitude towards conflict reconciliation, and an incomplete approach to vulnerability. These missing points of integration were all found to have negatively impacted peace consolidation, which has allowed for violent communal outbreaks to continue.

Now and then other people’s comments and/or behaviour reminds me that I look different and that my external features are connected to something beyond my Swedish identity. My black hair, dark brown eyes and my brownish skin color talk about something else. My appearance is connected to an identity, cultural identity and a country I have little knowledge of and a language I do not master. But still the way I look is a part of my heritage, a part of who I am and a part of me which I am proud of. It makes me wonder what actually makes up an identity and the power we all possess in deciding what or who another person is based on appearance. What do we become in the eyes of the beholder? Personal experiences from being Swedish, and adopted from another country, becomes the starting point for my investigation where the color of the skin leads to questions about norms, categorisations and the power of labelling another person. Living in the western world, my skin color automatically place me outside the norm. In a way that amazes me, that a single color can determine so much. As a jeweller maker in this degree project I make brooches. I use them as a method and as tools to both investigate the relationship between personal and social identity and to shed light on how structures in society and other peoples gazes push us into categories consciously and unconsciously. I use my objects as conversations pieces to reflect on history, present and future, from my perspective. There is always a beginning, but it is  in the middle of the process it all comes alive. This is where I explore material, techniques and methods and where the brooches are born. They all have a history and part of it is public. At first sight you see the surface. But the brooches are like our bodies, they also have an inside/backside which creates an intimate relationship with the wearer. The brooches are more than ornamented pins, I want them to raise awareness of diversity, different perspectives, care and their ability to communicate as they move through various places attached in different ways to the body. My degree project, Who I am and who you see, touches upon questions and emotions about belonging, inclusion and exclusion and the state of being in-between. What makes up an identity? What different parts make up a whole? Which layers are added and which are peeled off? All these questions triggers my curiosity and search for more knowledge about the human being and being human.