In this thesis I analyze semi-structured interviews I conducted with fifteen young French and American business students and professionals in order to uncover cultural models relating to work, while paying particular attention to the acceptance or rejection of neoliberal ideas. To contextualize the analysis, I first review the history of neoliberal ideology along with its arrival and political and institutional influence in both countries. In the U.S., the neoliberal transition was rapid and dramatic under the Reagan administration, which constitutes a critical institutional juncture and a shift in the dominant paradigm of governance. In France, in contrast, neoliberal policies have been implemented reluctantly and incrementally, suggesting traditional French values relating to the state and its role in regulating the economy remain largely intact. In line with these historical patterns, the Americans I spoke to primarily conceptualize work as a commodity, accepting the definition of work as defined in the market; while the French interviewees conceptualize work as personal fulfillment and occupational citizenship, emphasizing the human and psychological essence of work and the need for moral regulation of the market economy, perceived as immoral and anarchic. Overall, the Americans much more readily accepted neoliberal ideas and policy directives and towards which the French were far less welcoming. In particular, I argue that the traditional role of the French state as responsible for the wellbeing of its citizens presents a major obstacle to neoliberal ideology, historically on an institutional level as well as in the minds of the French interviewees.

I denna kandidatuppsats har vi studerat hur nyckelpersoner i internationella omorganiseringar använder sig av strategiska diskurser för att förmedla sina budskap i tryckt press. Syftet har varit att ta reda på hur nyckelpersoner strategiskt utnyttjar rationella eller nationella diskurser vid en internationell sammanslagning och framför allt hur dessa kan kopplas till specifika teman som i sin tur uppmärksammas i den mediala bevakningen. Företaget som valts för undersökningens fallstudie, är fusionen mellan Telia (Sverige) och Sonera (Finland) i slutet av 2002. Studien har genomförts, genom att undersöka tidningsartiklar från en dagstidning och en affärstidning från både Sverige och Finland, under en femårsperiod (2002-2006). Vi har sedan gått igenom dessa artiklar för att finna citat av sammanslagningens nyckelpersoner. Citaten har analyserats och kategoriserats med hjälp av kritisk diskursanalys för att avgöra hur olika personer har använt sig av rationella respektive nationella diskurser och inom vilka teman man kan se olika diskurser. Begreppet diskurs har i denna studie definierats och använts som ett sätt att åberopa och urskilja olika typer av innehållsliga perspektiv i utvalda ämnen. Kritisk diskursanalys var ett lämpligt verktyg för att kunna kartlägga och förstå användandet av olika typer av diskurser. Exempelvis möjliggörs en medveten analys av uttalanden, deras syften i sina ursprungliga sammanhang och hur de kan påverka olika typer av tilltänkta mottagare. Undersökningens resultat visade att de mest uppmärksammade teman vi fann var frågor gällande ägarskap, fördelning av ledningsposter i det nya företaget, samt nedläggningar. Resultaten visade vidare att nyckelpersonernas diskurser och uttryck varierade beroende på vad man hade för roll i företagets fusion. Rationella diskurser användes mest och av flest nyckelpersoner. De som var helt konsekventa i sin rationalitet, och även uttalade sig mest, var de nyckelpersoner som vi kategoriserade som de operativa nyckelpersonerna. Även styrelseledamöter och andra nyckelpersoner nära kärnan av fusionen och organisationen var oftast rationella. De tillfällen där det var tydligast att man använde sig av nationella diskurser var när nedläggningar och fördelningar av ledningsposter diskuterades.  I dessa fall var det fackliga representanter och avgångna nyckelpersoner som använde nationella diskurser mest. Resultaten och analysen visade en tydlig konsekvent hållning i uttalanden från nyckelpersonerna i styrelse och operationell ledning. Därmed är en av slutsatserna att företaget lyckades bra med att hålla en enhetlig rationell diskurs kring ämnen som relaterade till sammanslagningen. Detta tyder på att man hade en tydlig strategi kring hur dessa frågor skulle hanteras. / Aim: To identify the ways in which key actors, in corporate cross-border mergers, make use of strategic discourse in printed media texts. Moreover, we sought to link these discourses to specific themes and issues in order to determine possible patterns. Material and Method: We have made a quantitative (phase 1) and qualitative analysis (phases 2 & 3) of the media coverage of the merger between the companies Telia (Sweden) and Sonera (Finland) in 2002. The study was made through analyzing a number of articles in selected Swedish and Finnish printed media between January 2002 and December 2006. By studying certain themes and issues more closely the motive was to detect how key actors in the company use discursive strategizing methods to maneuver the presentation constructed in the media. The term discourse has in this study, essentially been defined as a framework in which key actors are able to draw on certain content specific perspectives and themes in order to deliver a certain point of view. Critical discourse analysis is therefore an important tool in order to identify the different messages within these discourses. In processing the results with critical discourse analysis, we have tried to explain how the key actors in the merger, have used these discourses to mobilize and highlight certain issues. Main Results: Based on the results of our research, the issues that were given the most attention in the media coverage were ownership, corporate governance in the merged company as well as shutdowns. Our main conclusion was that different actors used different discourse strategies to mobilize these three issues. Subsequently, the results show that rational discourses were most frequently used. Thus, actors with operational responsibilities, within the merged company, maintained a consistency in keeping to rational discourses. This was true regardless of background and theme. In contrast, national discourses were primarily maintained by union representatives and by former members of the board or other former leaders within the company. These national discourses could primarily be linked to discussions about corporate governance and shutdowns. Finally, this study proves that the key actors within the new merged company used rational discourses consistently. Our conclusion of this is that it is the result of successful strategizing on how these issues were mobilized within the company.

This thesis is a qualitative study of a new law that was applied in December 2010. The law is called Lagen om etableringsinsatser för vissa nyanlända invandrare, and is meant to help newly arrived immigrants that come to Sweden to establish themselves in the Swedish society. The aim of the study is to see what discourses the Swedish government produces as a result of this new law. Interesting for the study is to see what happens in the implementation stage at a local level, in this case in the municipality of Örnsköldsvik. Theoretically and methodologically I emanate from critical discourse theory and institutional theory. Previous research about the production of knowledge and power that originate from a post colonial theory is central throughout the study. The key findings are that the discourses that are being produced as a result of this new law build much on previous discourses within the field of integration policy. The main discourses that are being produced and reproduced are a care providing discourse, a market discourse and a state controlling discourse. A momentous problem is however the presumption of “Us and Them” which is connected to institutional structures and leads to an unequal power relationship. / Maria Strandberg

In this thesis, the competing and shifting hegemonic discourses in Turkey-EU relations in the period between 1999 Helsinki European Council and 3 October 2005 are discussed in the framework of neo-Gramscian perspectives. In this study, initially the classic theories of European integration are analyzed and on the basis of the argument that the classic theories of European integration exhausted their potentials in explaining the European integration process, the neo-Gramscian perspectives are presented as an alternative theoretical framework. Deriving from the wavering character of Turkey-EU relations, the turning points in the related time period are defined and competing and shifting hegemonic discourses for both sides are discussed. The main argument of this thesis is that, since the very beginning of Turkey-EU relations, it has a wavering character and these relations are reproduced through the redefinition of competing and shifting hegemonic discourses with the active contribution of social actors in the related time period.

Le présent mémoire a pour objectif de défendre la thèse selon laquelle Machiavel est un nationaliste italien et démontrer que le concept de nationalisme italien peut philosophiquement servir de fil conducteur entre le Prince et les Discours sur la Première Décade de Tite-Live. / The aim of this essay is to defend the thesis according to which Machiavelli is an Italian nationalist, and to demonstrate that the concept of Italian nationalism can philosophically be used as a thread between the Prince and the Discourses on Livy.

<p>This dissertation explores local people's framing of externally driven biodiversity conservation approaches in the context of transfrontier conservation initiatives. It uses data from the Madimbo corridor, a specific locality within the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area, situated to the northeast of South Africa along the South Africa-Zimbabwe boundary. It shows that livelihoods, historical experiences with external interventions and exclusion from policy-making processes and programme implementation influence local strategies for engaging with external interventions. Thus, an analysis of framing of external interventions at a local level should establish the following: the role of natural resources in sustaining local livelihoods / local historical experiences with an external intervention / iii) the nature of multi-level actor interactions from local resource dependent people, to national, regional and global actors involved in or affected by an intervention. The study uses a detailed case study of Bennde Mutale village to trace local people&rsquo / s ideas, ways of speaking and actions in response to the implementation of a large-scale transfrontier conservation initiative. The study finds that local livelihoods play a central role in local responses to the changes that transfrontier conservation bring upon people's lives. Many see further exclusion, while some also see and hope for a restoration of the socio-cultural border region. The globally significant biodiversity - to be conserved for &lsquo / future generations&rsquo / &ndash / at the same time constitutes the natural resources that sustain local people&rsquo / s livelihoods. Further, local livelihoods are more diverse than is commonly acknowledged in literature advocating for transfrontier conservation. This lack of acknowledgement of local diversification contributes to the main observation made in this study: that current processes of transfrontier conservation end up replicating and re-inventing the multiple forms of exclusion that have characterised state conservation practices for over a century. While transfrontier conservation enables the freer movement of wildlife, it in fact further constrains the movements of people whose mobility within less closely controlled border regions remains centrally important to survival. At the same time, state actors come into the area with contradicting and conflicting demands ranging from the beneficial advocacy role for land rights to the enforcement of conservation through fences and game rangers, experienced as a direct infringement on livelihood possibilities. The study concludes that there is a need to rethink transfrontier conservation interventions. The diversity of local livelihood approaches needs to be considered more centrally and clearer understanding needs to be developed of how the promises of opportunities, betterment of lives and increased human mobility actually unfold in practice. In order to succeed and deliver on site - not only to high-class tourists seeking to view unique biodiversity but to local people - transfrontier conservation efforts need to engage multiple actors directly from the ground up and throughout the process of policy-making, programme conceptualisation and implementation.</p>

Ce mémoire de maîtrise s’intéresse aux exercices participatifs liés à la planification et à la gouvernance des infrastructures routières en milieu urbain. Une étude de cas a été effectuée concernant la modernisation de la rue Notre-Dame. Celle-ci alimente des controverses socio-politiques depuis plus de 30 ans et une décision publique est attendue. Pour arriver à un compromis satisfaisant, les élus ont convié les acteurs socio-économiques à participer à un débat public. L’analyse de cas a permis de rendre compte de la variété des acteurs en présence et de la diversité des demandes formulées à l’occasion du débat public. Si les demandes formulées peuvent parfois être compatibles, l’étude de cas montre que ces demandes peuvent aussi s’éloigner les unes des autres, cela s’expliquant avant tout par la spécificité et la position des acteurs en présence. Les élus municipaux et provinciaux sont alors placés dans une position complexe, puisqu’ils doivent rendre une décision publique. L’analyse a permis de rendre compte des bénéfices, mais aussi des limites du débat public organisé par rapport à l’enjeu de la modernisation de la rue Notre-Dame. L’étude de cas révèle finalement que certaines limites ont trait à la participation des acteurs aux processus de consultation publique. En fait, trois discours majeur s’affrontent. Chacun d’eux appréhende à partir de valeurs distinctes la question de la régulation sociale et l’élaboration des politiques publiques. / This master's thesis is an analysis of participative mechanisms in the planning of road infrastructures in urban zones. The modernization of Notre-Dame Street, in Montréal, for which a decision has yet to be made, and which has been the object of controversy over the past thirty years, serves as a case study. In order to arrive at a compromise, elected representatives agreed to have several actors participate in public consultations. The analysis centers around requests formulated by participants in the course of these consultations. While the requests that were made were quite similar, they were also very different, thus rendering the actors' other characteristics irrelevant from an analytical standpoint. Municipal and provincial representatives were then placed in a difficult position if they were to modernize the main highway. This entailed arriving at a sociopolitical compromise. In fact, three main discourses characterized the debate. Each of them dismissed, in various ways, matters related to social regulation and public policy. This analysis finally illustrates the limits of public consultation on actors' participation.

The prevalent frame of 'tourism as vacation' explicitly implies that one vacates 'the familiar' and escapes to 'the foreign'. Discourses of escape, therefore, function on the assumption that a rather clean and uncomplicated rupture between the familiar and foreign takes place (an assumption not only informing conventional readings and practices of tourism, but also the modern logic of states and citizenship and modern thought more broadly). A failure to account for the effects of this escapist logic on both the performance and materialization of tourism, as well as the ways in which tourism has come to reflect profound political problematics endemic to modern thought, has produced a serious gap in 'critical tourism' literature. To contest this notion of rupture, or, to disrupt escape, requires what Judith Butler terms a ‘radical re-articulation’ of tourism. In hopes to excite such a disruption, my work draws on Jacques Derrida’s texts concerning ‘non-arrival’ and ultimately re-articulates tourism as a practice of everyday life.

This thesis investigates the ways in which higher education in Africa has been construing its mission for Africa’s development and how such constructions are shaped by particular global regimes of knowledge on development. The thesis unpacks the ways in which such regimes are deployed using specific technologies: neo-liberal precepts on economic development. To that end, I pose a set of questions which can be summarized in these two: How has higher education in Africa discursively construed Africa’s experiences? Second, in which terms such constructions have helped responding to Africa’s problems of development? Taking Mozambican higher education as a unit of analysis, I used postcolonial theory to unsettle neo-liberal regimes of development and to show how contingent they are. Methodologically, a historical critique was carried out to historize neo-liberal globalization as a contingent process and to understand multiple possibilities of construing Africa’s experiences. My data consisted of texts discussing ways in which Africa is discursively understood by both, African and Western scholarship, higher education policy in Mozambique, interviews with senior administrators of some Mozambican higher education institutions and text materials from higher education institutions’ websites in Mozambique. The findings suggest that, on the one hand, constructions of Africa as being in crisis are not new. In fact, for centuries Africa has always been a subject of knowledge from which the West constructs its differences. It is from such differences that the West assumed a civilizing mission in order to integrate African peoples in the world order. On the other hand, African scholars’ responses to Western constructions of Africa’s experiences end up building another crisis at the theoretical level: the difficulties of thinking effectively on Africa so as to solve its problems. The second finding is that Mozambican higher education’s responses to the crisis have been marked by a development agenda within the broader context of Mozambique’s history from late the 1970s onwards: first, within the socialist model of central planning economy and, second, within the international agenda of global neo-liberal market economy. My analysis suggests that both development practices reflect, to some extent, continuities of colonial regimes of development which did not take into account the contextualities of the colonized. Finally, my investigation found that higher education institutions in Mozambique are responding to development challenges based on very technological conceptions of development following global trends. The thesis contends that an engagement with the ethics of knowledge and development would lead to a development model more preoccupied with the social contexts beyond market rationalities.

This thesis investigates the ways in which higher education in Africa has been construing its mission for Africa’s development and how such constructions are shaped by particular global regimes of knowledge on development. The thesis unpacks the ways in which such regimes are deployed using specific technologies: neo-liberal precepts on economic development. To that end, I pose a set of questions which can be summarized in these two: How has higher education in Africa discursively construed Africa’s experiences? Second, in which terms such constructions have helped responding to Africa’s problems of development? Taking Mozambican higher education as a unit of analysis, I used postcolonial theory to unsettle neo-liberal regimes of development and to show how contingent they are. Methodologically, a historical critique was carried out to historize neo-liberal globalization as a contingent process and to understand multiple possibilities of construing Africa’s experiences. My data consisted of texts discussing ways in which Africa is discursively understood by both, African and Western scholarship, higher education policy in Mozambique, interviews with senior administrators of some Mozambican higher education institutions and text materials from higher education institutions’ websites in Mozambique. The findings suggest that, on the one hand, constructions of Africa as being in crisis are not new. In fact, for centuries Africa has always been a subject of knowledge from which the West constructs its differences. It is from such differences that the West assumed a civilizing mission in order to integrate African peoples in the world order. On the other hand, African scholars’ responses to Western constructions of Africa’s experiences end up building another crisis at the theoretical level: the difficulties of thinking effectively on Africa so as to solve its problems. The second finding is that Mozambican higher education’s responses to the crisis have been marked by a development agenda within the broader context of Mozambique’s history from late the 1970s onwards: first, within the socialist model of central planning economy and, second, within the international agenda of global neo-liberal market economy. My analysis suggests that both development practices reflect, to some extent, continuities of colonial regimes of development which did not take into account the contextualities of the colonized. Finally, my investigation found that higher education institutions in Mozambique are responding to development challenges based on very technological conceptions of development following global trends. The thesis contends that an engagement with the ethics of knowledge and development would lead to a development model more preoccupied with the social contexts beyond market rationalities.