This account of British interest in Egypt in the late 18th century, whilst not attempting to be exhaustive, aims to suggest the many-sided importance and interrelation of British interest in Egypt during 1775-1798. Topics include: British interest engendered by the Levant company; antiquarian research; British conceptions of Arab life and literature; British travellers’ impressions of Egypt (political and commercial interest); the Indian factor; the importance of Egypt on an envisaged new route to India; international competition for trade via Egypt; the decline of British interest in Egypt; and the growth of British policy towards the Ottoman Empire.

In 1990, secondary schools in Libya were transformed into specialized schools; a move, which require all Libyan students to choose a specialty subject which would become the focus of their secondary school learning and determine the academic direction of their future education. This ethnographically-oriented mixed-methods study is concerned with the motivation to learn English as a Foreign Language (EFL) among students in English-specialty secondary schools in Libya. Conceptually, this study builds on Dörnyei’s (2005) L2 Motivational Self-System with the aim to investigate empirically a largely unexplored area within this theoretical framework: the relationship between the learners’ possible L2 selves and their L2 learning situation. The study was conducted in one secondary school in the north west of Libya over a period of one academic year. The data come from a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The quantitative data provide a bigger picture of English specialty secondary school students’ motivational orientations, future self guides and their interaction with classroom-specific variables. The focus of the qualitative component is on three key student participants from the same school with the aim to obtain a fine-grained picture from interviews, classroom observations and student diaries of the interaction between their future self guides, their learning experience and their engagement in learning tasks in EFL classes. The findings show that the relationship between the L2 learning situation and the L2 selves is an intricate and complex one. First, the L2-self construct itself has emerged from this study as a complex nested system of multiple L2 visions that the students entertain in their working self-concept as they choose their specialty. The findings further indicate that the L2 learning situation plays a key role in foregrounding or, in contrast, rendering irrelevant specific L2 selves that the students bring to the L2 learning situation. And finally, the study shows that the students constantly negotiate the relationship between their future guides and their L2 learning situation by either adjusting and adapting their L2 visions in order to give meaning to their L2 learning experience or by actively engaging or disengaging with aspects of their learning situation in order to remain connected with their well defined future L2 selves.

The notion of prophecy is a Leitmotiv, both in Scripture and in the Church. However, the popular form of prophecy that is witnessed in the Church today is the charismatic prophecy manifestations in the Pentecostal- charismatic movement. Although the latter is now billed as the fastest growing Christian movement in church history, and has brought to the fore the biblical notion of the charisms of the Holy Spirit, the subject of charismatic prophecy has received limited attention in Pentecostal studies. There is therefore a gap in knowledge. The present study is an attempt to address the lacuna; it is an empirical-biblical investigation of the nature and significance of prophecy in the Pentecostal- charismatic experience. The study presents a particular thesis: that charismatic prophecy, as observed in Pentecostal- charismatic congregational settings in the African context, is sacramental in its nature and parakletic in its functional significance. Thus, the charismatic prophecy experience is viewed as an intense moment of a participatory interface between the divine Spirit and the human spirit in which the divine Spirit infuses the human conscious dimension with revelatory impulses. The experience is parakletic in the sense that it edifies, encourages, and comforts the church in congregational settings.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989, is the world’s most widely and rapidly ratified international convention. Although it was hoped that the Convention would have an enormously positive impact on all children, this has not happened in many parts of the world for a variety of reasons, including its western bias, which has, hitherto, dominated the debate on children’s rights. However, this universality vs. relativity dichotomy does not help us to protect children on the ground. Hence, it is necessary to move beyond the binary debate relating to the universality and relativity of children’s rights and engage with children’s local realities, which illustrate that there is, indeed, a middle ground in which people live their lives that may facilitate dialogue on children’s rights with local communities. In order to identify this middle ground the thesis focused on eliciting the perceptions of adults and children in two local communities in Accra, Ghana, the first country to ratify the Convention in February 1990, on children’s rights, constructing childhood and the socialization of children and their implications for the implementation of the Convention. Special attention is given to Article 12, which has caused controversy in countries around the world.

Many Sub-Saharan African economies experienced high growth rates over the last decade, a welcome change from the depression and stagnation which characterized them during the 1980s and 1990s. However, improved economic performances were mostly driven by an increase of both price and demand for the natural resources of which the continent is rich, so that these growth rates were not associated with a significant increase in industrial diversification. The poor quality of the power infrastructure of many African economies represents one of the major obstacles to their structural transformation. In this thesis we investigate the effects of an unstable power supply on the profitability of Sub-Saharan African firms. To avoid estimation issues related to the possible endogeneity of the relationship between power supply and productivity we develop an instrument based on the water available for hydropower production. Our results show that frequent power outages are indeed a very significant drag on firms’ performance, much more so for firms without access to back-up capacity than for the overall sample. The final part of the thesis also investigates the general relationship between hydropower production and economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa through the use of night-light data.

This thesis explores the embalming ritual of the Egyptian Late Period through Ptolemaic era (664 – 30 BC). Using an interdisciplinary approach, I incorporate primary and secondary texts, Egyptian funerary art and archaeological remains into my study. I utilize these lines of evidence to reconstruct the embalming ritual to the degree possible and analyze the ways in which its various stages were believed to fulfill the ultimate goal of this rite: preservation of the physical body and eternal life for the deceased. I focus particularly on the archaeological material and explore the visibility of religious practice in the archaeological record. I identify key changes and developments in the embalming ritual from the Late Period through the Ptolemaic Period in order to highlight religious significance placed on embalming during this time period. Funerary art, literature, and archaeological material of the Late through Greco-Roman Periods illustrate an increased focus on the integrity of the corpse as well as the manifestation of decay, the liquid \(rDw\). I examine these ancient sources in order to better understand the nature and development of body-centered funerary practices during this period of Egyptian history.

This thesis intervenes in one of the most prominent recent debates in development theory – that between post-development theorists and their critics – and brings to it insights drawn from the experiences of a Senegalese non-governmental organisation, Enda Graf Sahel. I begin by providing a critical discussion of the post-development debate and then detail the question which guides this investigation, namely: how can we, the relatively privileged, respond meaningfully to poverty and injustice in the light of the post-development debate? I present three possible responses to my research question. Firstly, I argue that the relatively privileged have a role to play in rethinking the concepts of ‘poverty’ and ‘injustice’. Secondly, I discuss the kinds of support that we may provide to popular organisations; and finally, I describe ways in which those of us who are relatively privileged may change aspects of our own lives and settings in solidarity with the struggles of the poor and oppressed. Throughout, I draw extensively both on the post-development debate and on the experiences and insights of Enda Graf Sahel to show how we can move past a simple defence or rejection of post-development theory in order to meaningfully respond to poverty and injustice.

This thesis uses the theory of ‘social consciousness’ to analyse elite perceptions of poverty in Malawi,and identify the circumstances under which elites are willing to mobilize resources for poverty reduction. ‘Social Consciousness theory’ stipulates that pro-poor policies in European welfare states developed as a result of ideological and pragmatic concern about the negative impact of poverty on elite welfare. This study shows however that although elites in Malawi have a deep understanding and appreciation of the extent and severity of poverty and are linked with the poor through strong social networks and the extended family structure, they do not perceive the poor as a threat to their welfare. Therefore collective action to address the problem of poverty has not occurred. In circumstances where elites acknowledge some negative externalities of poverty requiring action, individual solutions are sought. However, elite perceptions still illuminate the following: first, there is a causal explanation between elites’ perceptions of the causes of poverty and their support for particular policies. Second, elites’ perceived causes of poverty include structural, behavioural and the perceived future actions of the poor, such as laziness, following implementation of redistributive policies. Third, elites’ seem to support policies with wider benefits for society.

This thesis attempts an intervention in popular music classification. It argues that popular musicians do not only choose the titles to their works, but go further to define the genres of these works. The dynamic at play is such that most popular musicians claim to produce works of different and new genres with each new work they create. By engaging with the works of a selection of Nigerian popular musicians, the thesis demonstrates that the disorderliness in popular music branding can be restricted. Through a critical discourse analysis of the textual elements of the material and of ‘alternative’ audience contributions, the thesis advocates a new genre of popular music, namely the genre of ‘political music’. This distinctive genre is extractable from the otherwise conventional genres of popular music, and is composed of three comprehensible subgenres namely protest political music, unity political music and terrestrial praise political music. The study’s selection is made of popular music material from hip hop, reggae, afro-beat, and juju genres. They are delivered in popular Nigerian languages ranging between Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, English and Pidgin English.

For over a century, several minority caste groups have suffered discrimination in eastern Nigeria. They include former slaves and servant groups known as osu or ohu as well as other names and are generally referred to as caste groups. Forbidden to associate freely with the freeborn, these groups still maintain their stigma. The origins of the caste groups lie in the past. However, after 1900, they started to struggle for emancipation. Since then, discrimination against them has been abolished many times. Yet the practice remains persistent. At the same time, the discrimination against the caste groups continues to exercise the public and private imagination and it is depicted and discussed in various ways in the media, from newspapers to films and even in internet forums. Using oral sources and commentaries in the media, this thesis argues that Igbo socio-political life has continued to sustain this practice even as it pretends to reject it. The general attitude to discrimination against the caste groups has been that it is barbaric. Yet, the freeborn still find it difficult to embrace them. Reasons for this include a range of fears, but most importantly fear of social ostracism. The thesis argues that the media has engaged in the struggle to change the situation by providing a platform for debate about the practice. However, this has had little impact because of the nature of Igbo socio-political life.