In this thesis, I explore the variety of ways museums operate in a neoliberal, global economy. I describe interactions between museums, people, governments and money. These articles examine the different dimensions and connections between these discursive relationships, such as the ways in which museums work for and also work with governments, schools, tourists and local citizens in their communities. Additionally, I discuss my experiences as an anthropologist who is studying institutions controlled by elites. I use Larua Nader's (1969) theory of "studying up," to describe how anthropolotists must be increasingly flexible when researching museums in the age of neoliberalism. I present findings that suggest people working in museums have a heightened sense of awareness of the economy, and I show how they have a working vocabulary of "economic terms" that is ever present. Additionally, I discuss my assumptions that museum professionals no longer feel a sense of personal agency, instead they demonstrate feelings of being "controlled by the market."

This thesis explores the work experiences and life histories of a group of Latina migrant women who work in specific sectors of the service industry in Atlanta, Georgia. I focus on janitorial/custodial as well as domestic labor in order to confront the social issue of the continued devaluation and exploitation of feminized wage work. This ethnography reveals how education and English proficiency tie into how migrant labor is viewed in the United States specifically, and asks how Latina migrant women might be able to achieve labor legitimacy in the future. My findings are based on in-depth interviews that I collected from ten Latina migrant women who live and work in the Atlanta metro-area.

This study uses discourse analysis to investigate and compare the coverage of America in two Chinese official newspapers, the Chinese language People’s Daily and the English language China Daily in January in 1989, 1999, and 2009. This study compares the two newspapers in four aspects of the texts: topic selection, headline design, writing tactics, and visual components use, to find any differences in reporting tactics according to their different readerships. People’s Daily employed a constant editorial preference for political content and a provocative reporting tactics. Meanwhile, China Daily used a more global editorial approach. Its content and its reports were increasingly consistent with Western journalism criteria: accurate, brief, and clear.

In response to the globalizing queerness argument and the cultural specificity argument in queer cultural studies, this thesis examines the emerging modern queer identity and culture in the contemporary People’s Republic of China (PRC) in an intercultural context. Recognizing Chinese queer culture as an unstable, transforming and complex collection of congruent and/or contesting meanings, not only originated in China but also traveling across cultures, this thesis aims to exorcise the reified images of Chinese queers, or tongzhi, to contribute to the understanding of a dynamic construction of Chinese queerness at the turn of a new century, and to lend insight on the complicity of the elements at play in this construction by analyzing the underground films with queer content made in the PRC.

This essay is about the history of the Swedish board game-industry from the 1970’s to today. The essay focuses on the companies in the business and how they change during this period and about the causes of this change. This essay aims both at accurately describing the development of the industry as well as asking the question of what influence factors from outside of the industry have upon the change during this period of time. The material used in this essay is mainly extracts from interviews with people who have been working in the industry during the period, as well as literature on the subject and product-catalogues from certain years in the time-frame. From this material I have outlined the basic history of the industry. From a nearly monopolized industry in the 1970’s to the global market of today with a wide spectrum of different companies competing for the attention of consumers. I have looked at the different kind of games that enter the shelves in the stores and what trends have come, like the party and trivia games, and what have gone, like the electronic board games and the DVD-board games. I have also applied a theory of society affecting the board gaming industry and looked at if this is true of other factors than just the theme of games. I found that the theme of games is more affected by outside factors than the mechanics are. I also found that while the industry is competing with the quickly growing industry of digital games, board games still sell almost as much today as they did forty years ago. When it comes to the business part of the industry, the globalization and the new ways to fund and distribute products have affected the consumers more than the companies in the Swedish industry. The big Swedish companies still work mainly for a Swedish market and mostly in the same working methods as earlier.

The globalization is the period of economic transformation according to the business competition. A number of multinational companies from industrial countries have to move their productions to a new emerging country which has a lower-labor cost, a strategic location, as well as an access to production material. Sweden is one of those countries that decide to re-locate their business center in other countries. The capital of Swedish companies has been distributed especially in Asian countries. Thailand is one of destinations that Swedish companies prefer to put the capital because of its labor cost, human quality, and strategic location. The objective of this thesis is to present the consequence of multinational companies from Sweden in Thailand as the main purpose. The economic relationship and cultural harmonization between these two countries will be discussed. This study is a qualitative research which requires qualitative methods to analyze data. Qualitative interviewing, case study and second data analysis has been the main approaches for data collection. The result of the study brings the conclusion that the capital movement from Sweden to Thailand during the globalization brings the positive development to both sides. Sweden gains more business revenue both in Thailand and Asian region, while Thailand gains wealth and sustainable development from the Swedish investment.

This study was based on the assumption that globalization is behind the initiative for higher education reform in Jordan. The changes stemming from globalization are of such magnitude that they are impacting higher education systems almost everywhere, in varying degrees of intensity. / The conceptual framework of this study is shaped by qualitative methodology, and guided by a social constructivist paradigm, using a case study strategy. My aim is to choreograph this inquiry based on the post-modern notion that there is no single correct interpretation that captures reality. In this study, I identify the forces responsible for the restructuring of higher education in Jordan, to help gauge the scope and dimensions of the changes advanced under the banner of reform. / My aim in this study is to expand the ongoing debate on higher education in the context of globalization. And most importantly for Jordan, I aim to help develop a more coherent, multi-linear view of the dynamics underlying the reforms advanced, and the various impacts of globalization. By providing insight into the relationship between globalization and the needs advanced for higher education policy reforms, this study aims to help work with globalization rather than against it, and invest every effort to benefit from its opportunities.

This Masters thesis conducts an ideological critique of the way 'the global' is constructed conceptually, particularly by transformative politics and the anti/alter global left. In addition it attempts to foreground the importance of ontological inquiry as an essential component of effective ideological critique. It has four chapters(plus an intro and conclusion); The first chapter looks at the ways that globality is currently constructed conceptually, both as an object of study by academia, and as an object of intervention by the global left. The analysis and critique in this chapter will establish the need for an ontologically informed approach to globality. The second chapter explores the precise meaning of the term 'ontology' as well as some of its common misuses by social science. It will focus on examining the ways that ontology is inherently political, and can be infiltrated by ideology. The third chapter draws heavily from the work of Zizek to develop a theoretical model for understanding the ontological production of globality, and how ideology is implicated. The fourth chapter attempts to take the conclusions from the theoretical model and use them to suggest alternative approaches to globality which might better the prospects for an effective transformative `global` politics. In particular this chapter draws heavily upon the Deleuzean notion of Immanence.

Two centuries after the printing press was invented, the first scholarly journal appeared in 1665. Less than two decades after the journal went online, the digital format is reshaping scholarly communication rapidly. We are moving quickly towards an open system of scholarship, and from a Western heritage of print scholarship to a future of global knowledge, a shift driven by the communications revolution. This thesis provides data describing the size and growth of the universe of scholarship, its global reach, how much of it is accessible free of charge on the internet and the rate at which that share is growing. Open Access together with development programs aimed at reducing price barriers to subscription journals have vastly increased the possibilities for accessing research in the South. The relevance to globalization and development is explored conceptually and revealed in the results.

This study tried to emphasize the differences between Sweden and the US when it comes to women’s career advancement to leading positions within the academic world. The differences between the countries were examined by studying women in leadership positions in universities in both countries. The three main research questions that this study was supposed to answer were: -          What are the different barriers women in leadership positions in the academic world encounter when advancing in Sweden and the US? -          How high is the importance of and different ways of networking, necessity of past experience, primary obstacles and other qualities or factors for career advancement in Sweden and the US? -          What stimulates and inspires a woman in Sweden versus a woman in the US to make career advancements to leading positions in academia? The main method that was used in this study was interviews and comparison of the answers from the interviews with earlier research and theories within the subject. Seven women with some kind of leading position within academia were interviewed; three in Sweden and four in USA. The results showed that the main differences and similarities in factors between the participants in Sweden and the participants in the US were (1) balancing family and work, (2) sex discrimination, (3) working conditions and promotions, (4) networking and mentorship and the last unexpected factor was (5) culture. The last factor, the cultural factor, was not processed in this study because this factor was a result of our research and was not researched about prior to the interviews. To conclude, the results showed that gender equality is higher in Sweden according to the responds of the participants.