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Women and women’s issues receive a great deal of attention on Al-Jazeera English, increasing the visibility of feminist ideologies in the transnational media and promoting a space for new and greater feminist discourse. This thesis seeks to discover how and why Al-Jazeera undertakes such promotion and what links it possesses to the larger sociopolitical climate of the Middle East as a whole. In pursuit of these goals, the study examines the journalistic content, unconscious style, and linguistic structures used in articles about women on the Al-Jazeera English website to conclude that this attention is primarily supportive of feminist ideologies, though more so with regards to women from areas that fall outside of the regions dominated by the hegemonic Anglo-American media establishment. In circumstances of revolution and change, Al-Jazeera invokes women to highlight their active agency and demonstrate their social power. Where such change is not possible, articles employ more reserved and passive techniques to convey the stagnancy of the situation. When this stagnant situation occurs in the United States or Europe, however, Al-Jazeera journalists express much less sympathy than when similar situations occur in less developed countries. Women from these less developed areas are also highlighted more often in positions of power and influence. Based on this evidence, the study concludes that Al-Jazeera’s attention to women plays a role in a larger movement to develop an ideological culture base without roots in the United States or Europe. By building a feminism tied to local women, Al-Jazeera is providing an alternative to the widespread and diametrically opposed systems of cultural imperialism and stalwart traditionalism. By proving that feminist ideologies can consist of Arab, African, or Indian ideas as much as American or European ones, Al-Jazeera paves the way for discrete ideological development in regions suffering from the aftershocks of cultural appropriation and imperialism. / text

Providing an improved basis for articulating the nature of transnational television and its potentials for improving relations among nations, is the central focus of this study. We are motivated to research this subject because we believe the existing perspectives on it need to be revised in line with present day reality. Our point of departure is the thorny issue of "cultural imperialism." In re-evaluating this issue, some fundamental questions are raised to determine whether past perspectives fit present day realities. Using the elite theory of power in various societies, aided by Johan Galtung's model of a global communication in "four worlds," we see a pattern of global television that suggests commonalities in underlying reasons for their establishment in various countries. In both developed and developing countries. We acknowledge with the support of a literature and data existence of a global systemic domination by the technology rich nations over the technology poor ones. But there are also substantial evidence to prove that some of the poorer nations exercise some degree of autonomy. That makes more difficult to try to explain "cultural imperialism" simply as a relationship that sees developed and developing nations as simply a dominant/subordinate association. Through a strategy of originating intent we are able to show that the elite in various societies acquire television mainly to satisfy either their political, economic or social interests.

Capitalism's success, according to Karl Marx, is based on continued development of new markets and products. As globalization shrinks the world marketplace, corporations are forced to seek both new customers and products to sell. Commodification is the process of transforming objects, ideas and even people into merchandise. The recent growth of the World Wide Web has caught the attention of the corporate world, and they are attempting to convert a free-share-based medium into a profit-based outlet. To be successful, they must change Web users' perception about the nature of the Web itself. This study asks the question: Is there mythic evidence of commodification on the World Wide Web? It examines how the World Wide Web is presented to readers of three national publications-Wired, Newsweek, and Business Week-from 1993 to 2000. It uses Barthes' two-tiered model of myths to examine the descriptors used to modify and describe the World Wide Web. The descriptors were clustered into 11 general categories, including connectivity, social, being, scene, consumption, revolution, tool, value, biology, arena, and other. Wired articles did not demonstrate a trend in categorical change from 1993 to 2000; the category of choice shifted back and forth between Revolution, Connectivity, Scene, and Being. Newsweek articles demonstrated an obvious directional shift. Connectivity is the dominant myth from 1994 to 1998, when the revolution category dominates. Similarly, Business Week follows the prevailing myth of connectivity from 1994 to 1997. From 1998 on, the competition-related categories of revolution and arena lead all categories. The study finds evidence of commodification on the World Wide Web, based on the trend in categories in Newsweek and Business Week that move from a foundational myth that presents a perception of cooperation in 1994 to one of competition in 1998 and later. The study recommends further in-depth research of the target publications, a review of articles in less-developed countries, and content analysis and ethnography online.

Emerging consensus tends to suggest there is overwhelming American dominance of New Zealand radio in music. This study sets out to investigate such claims by looking at music, and incorporating a study of technology, announcing and programming as well. There is evidence emerging that instead of overwhelming dominance, there is a mixture of American as well as British influence. Foreign influence in the radio scene has been apparent since the time it became a popular addition to the New Zealand household in the 1920’s. Over the following decades, the radio industry has turned to the dominant Anglo-American players for guidance and inspiration. Now with a maturing local industry that is becoming more confident in its own skin, this reliance on foreign industry is coming under question regarding its effect on indigenous culture. The cultural cringe is slowly disappearing, but what is replacing it has been the centre of cultural debate. Utilising methods of content analysis and interviews, we set out to question which theory best describes the new landscape that the radio industry finds itself in, and how this is affecting the production of content received by the listening public. Working within a framework of cultural imperialism and hybridity, the findings indicate a complex mixture of the local and the global that could not be explained by simplistic notions of hybridity.

From the campaign waged by Revolutionaries like Barère and the Abbé Grégoire against those regional languages they referred to pejoratively as 'patois', to the educational policies of Jules Ferry a century later, successive governments of France engaged in a broadly successful struggle to force the French to speak French. Inverting the logic of cultural nationalists like Herder, who claimed a shared language as the legitimate basis of national polities, French legislators sought to impose French as a common language on a linguistically diverse population that had already been constituted as a state. Recent historical work has shown the particular significance of such projects during the Napoleonic period. Historians have begun considering how far the Napoleonic regime was characterized by cultural imperialism. While the ideological nature of such projects- the 'view from the centre', so to speak- is now well understood by historians, this thesis is concerned with the practice of Napoleonic imperialism in one sphere of action: language. By focusing on the practice of linguistic imperialism under Napoleon this thesis makes an important contribution to understandings of the cultural politics of the period as well as Napoleonic state-building policies more generally.

Entre 1855 e 1862 o físico e fisiologista Hermann von Helmholtz dedicou-se primariamente a questões relativas à física e fisiologia acústicas, e à aplicação dos resultados obtidos à epistemologia da música e à estética musical. Ainda que tais investigações tenham sido desenvolvidas por período restrito, seus principais frutos cuja apresentação mais completa se encontra na obra de 1863 Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik (que traduziríamos por A doutrina das sensações tonais como uma base fisiológica para a teoria da música) tiveram impacto imediato e duradouro sobre a musicologia ocidental. Em um primeiro momento, o presente trabalho objetiva analisar os antecedentes filosófico-científicos que orientaram tal empreitada, bem como a metodologia empregada na mesma; isso a fim de podermos, em um segundo momento, abordar criticamente a forma como Helmholtz aplica seus resultados ao âmbito da estética musical. Afinal, ao fixar deterministicamente causas físicas e fisiológicas para noções eurocêntricas de musicalidade, não estaria Helmholtz operando certa naturalização dos sistemas de organização tonal imperantes em sua conjuntura histórico-cultural em detrimento de sistemas oriundos de outros períodos e culturas, amiúde dotados de critérios distintos de ordenação sonora? O trabalho proposto ganha em complexidade na medida em que a musicologia de Helmholtz, particularmente em sua dimensão epistemológica, não se mostra inteiramente insensível a riscos dessa espécie. Assim, figura entre nossos objetivos avaliarmos em que medida tal musicologia, de grande rigor científico, é capaz de coexistir com sistemas musicais que escapem às diretrizes estéticas que busca naturalizar. Seríamos mesmo racionalmente compelidos a adotar, como parece tacitamente sugerir a obra de Helmholtz, uma espécie de hierarquia valorativa no que toca aos sistemas musicais de diferentes períodos e culturas? Dentre tais sistemas, seriam alguns verdadeiramente mais aptos que os demais em plasmar uma suposta musicalidade universal? Acreditamos que, por meio de investigação renovada do nó epistêmico presente na percepção musical na qual se veem entretecidas considerações de natureza física, fisiológica, psicológica e filosófica , algumas distinções possam ser esboçadas entre fatores determinantes necessários (físicos e fisiológicos e, portanto, transculturais) e contingentes (biográfico-culturais) da mesma, e o problema devidamente atacado. / In the second half of the nineteenth century, German physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz devoted himself to the investigation of questions pertaining to physical and physiological acoustics, and to the application of the results of said research to the epistemology of music and musical aesthetics. While such endeavors represent a relatively brief part of his career, the chief innovations they brought forth the most thorough presentation of which may be found in On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (originally published in 1863) have had a lasting impact on the whole of Western musicology. An analysis of the philosophical and scientific foundations and methodological principles his investigations rested upon occupies the opening chapters of the present work. Subsequent chapters present, in addition, a critical assessment of the scientists problematic attempt to extend the reach of his results to the sphere of musical aesthetics. The following two questions are central to our efforts: by establishing material and physiological traits as an ultimate, deterministic ground for the criteria for sound classification and ordering prevalent in nineteenth-century European art music, was Helmholtz not arguing for the naturalization of the musical systems prevalent in his own historical and cultural juncture? And, should this indeed be the case, would such a naturalization not be accomplished to the detriment of musical systems employed in other cultures and/or historical periods, often based on distinct modes of classification and ordering? Ultimately, then, the central aim of the present work is to evaluate and discuss to what an extent the rigorous scientific component of a musicology such as Helmholtzs is able to coexist with musical systems that obey aesthetic principles other than the ones said musicology espouses. Are we indeed rationally compelled to adopt a value-based hierarchy in regards to the systems of different cultures and/or historical periods, as the scientists work appears to suggest? Are certain musical systems indeed more apt than others to actualize human musicality? We believe an investigation of the epistemic knot which characterizes musical perception a phenomenon in which physical, physiological, psychological and philosophical strands are intricately intertwined may allow us to advance a few preliminary distinctions between its necessary (physical and physiological, which is to say transcultural) and its contingent (cultural and biographical) determinants, and thus properly attack the problem.

With the onset of the independence of the Pacific Island States, the role of the mass media and their developmental processes began to be examined. This was of particular interest due to the obvious lack of a sufficient native media infrastructure to meet the demands of an indigenous population who were being introduced to a new world sphere and system. The main problem of mass media development in the Pacific lies in the fact that the nations in this area are still relatively behind in the basic structures of media participation. They lack technological knowledge of the various forms of media, the basic training and skills, and, moreover, the monetary means to address such deficiencies in the media. The outcome of this circumstance has been that Pacific media have become increasingly dependent upon the Western, industrialized nations such as the USA, Australia and New Zealand. Such dependence on these foreign nations has given rise to the question of 'cultural imperialism'. The aforementioned countries have a large influence in the Pacific through the unequal relaying of communication and cultural products and in the ownership of mass media agencies. This history of foreign based, imported culture has manifested itself in increased urbanization, social disruption, and greater commodity dependence and consumerism in the Pacific. This study will therefore be an attempt to analyse the media development processes of the Pacific by using Fiji as a case study. The critical analysis will come from Wallerstein's World System perspective. Further, it will be shown how Fiji's historical, involvement in the 'capitalist world economy', and her history of racism in the political and communication aspects of her society have helped shape her present media system. The underlying premise of the argument, will be that these factors have not been beneficial to achieving mass media development based on self-sufficiency, nor on harmony between the ethnic groups of Fiji.

¡@In view of the political economy of education, the purpose of this thesis is to study the educational thought of Martin Carnoy, who is a political economist and an educationist in the U.S. We are concerned with the relationship between education and capitalist state.¡@Central to this thesis is the state theory and discuss the functions and roles of education in different context, including colonial period, developing countries and advanced capitalist state. ¡@Since the spread of imperialism in colonial period, the colonial schooling is dominated by the colonizer and rationalizes the colonialism. The colonial schooling is therefore a liberating force to help the colonized against the colonizer. According to Lenin¡¦s imperialism, Carnoy explains the relation between colonial education and colonizer in the colonial period. ¡@In developing countries, both the conditioned capitalist state and transition state, the state bureaucracy makes national economic growth its first priority and so does the educational goal. People desire their children to learn more knowledge, however, to increase mass education rapidly. Based on educational dependency theory, Carnoy accounts for the roles of education in the Third World state. ¡@In advanced capitalist state, the state is a product and shaper of class struggle. Thus, the source of education change is pressed by economic reproductive and democratic dynamics. According to the last thought of Poulantzas, Carnoy constructs the ¡§social-conflict theory¡¨ to predict that economic development and social movements influence the education policies. ¡@It should be concluded, from Carnoy¡¦s educational thought, that the core of Carnoy¡¦s education work is the state theory. He criticizes the problems of capitalist education and approves the positive functions of schooling.

Prior studies have shown that the information and cultural product flow is dominantly one direction from large/wealthy markets to smaller markets. Extending this position through the underlying research, it is expected that the audiences in the United States, one of the largest cultural product exporters, may have shaped certain perceptions on the scarcity of Korean films in their domestic film market. By studying the users in an internet film discussion community, this research aims to provide useful ideas about how American audiences perceive Korean films. This qualitative case study conducted a content analysis of the actual postings by the participants on the Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com) as they discuss the Korean movie "OldBoy." Then, in-depth interviews with volunteered users were performed.Foreign films, such as Asian films like OldBoy, seem to especially satisfy their needs of alternatives due to these films' scarcity in U.S. market. In other words,participating in community discussion is a means of finding new foreign films, and watching new foreign films works as a way of contributing to their film viewing communities. Also, contributing the community enhances their perceived prestige as film enthusiasts. The investigator started this research from the assumption that the scarcity of Korean films made U.S. audiences ethnocentric. However, study observed that the scarcity of Korean films and the foreignness of this film is treated as one of the most attractive aspects to this subset of viewers. This study has shown that by contributing to and participating in message board discussions, the viewers built a film viewing community in the IMDb website. The discussions with others in the film viewing community helped them build and enhance their prestige as serious film-goers as they built an interpretive community. Tracking the posts and respondents' answers, the investigator could predict that they are building exchange networks in their foreign film viewing community, and this process may influence to their future foreign film viewing.