published_or_final_version / Geography and Geology / Master / Master of Philosophy

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In 1949 the newly created Federal Republic of Germany lacked freedom of action. The country was under Western Allied occupation, its new Government under supervision by the Allied High Commission. After coming to office in September 1949, chancellor Konrad Adenauer was determined to achieve West Germany's firm anchoring in the Western community, sovereignty, political, economic, and military security, and Western European integration. However, his later success should not obscure the fact that his policy was risky. In 1949-50 his course was complicated by the Saar issue, sparse Allied granting of sovereign rights, the rearmament question, and the problem of German unity. Meanwhile, the Opposition social Democrats under Kurt Schumacher criticized the concessions to the Allies and, as western integration assumed a quicker pace, stressed the primacy of German unity. Even members of the Bonn Cabinet started to doubt a policy that seemed likely to solidify German division. The West German press mirrored and judged the domestic fight over foreign policy. Four of the five leading publicists examined in this study tended to support economic and political integration in Western Europe, while not prepared to cede to French interests and to renounce German claims on the Saar, they did support the Petersberg Agreement on dismantling, accession to the Council of Europe, and involvement in the Schuman Plan negotiations. The issue of German unity played a limited role in their editorials. Two pundits, Paul Sethe and Hans Baumgarten, never mentioned it, while two others, Richard Tungel and Ernst Friedlaender, believed that western integration offered perspectives to regain East Germany in the future. Moreover, Schumacher's opposition found little positive echo. Only Rudolf Augstein and Sethe at times backed similar policies to that of the SPD. Although the broad tenets of Adenauer's course were accepted, there was consistent criticism of his diplomatic methods, in fact, in the spring of 1950 three commentators called on the Chancellor to surrender diplomatic affairs to someone else. Amongst the editorialists examined, only Augstein advocated a neutralist policy, hoping it would facilitate German unification. However, he did not sufficiently discuss the great risks associated with German neutrality. Augstein was also the only commentator to oppose West German rearmament categorically. Although none of the commentators supported outright rearmament, the pundits backed a para-military federal police against the perceived East German threat. The question of direct remilitarization was ignored or made dependent on Allied concessions.

This thesis examines the identities and the narratives of Overseas Chinese. Through discussing their history, I explore how the overseas Chinese came to imagine themselves as a community called 'Chinese Diaspora', which is ostensibly held together by the imagination of a 'homeland' in a faraway place in the distant past. By examining autobiographical texts, I discuss how the 'Chineseness' they maintained throughout the migration is founded upon such a virtual reality, and how this in turn is experienced by the individuals. Taking the narratives as something that both reflect and construct their identities, I explore the conundrum women in diaspora face in representing their own experiences of the community on the basis of Maxine Hong Kingston's memoir. Chinese women of diaspora have particular difficulties in claiming their individuality through narrations, especially because the community that sustains the 'traditional' Chineseness is rapidly transforming.

The current study aimed at investigating the impact of foreign banks on domestic banks in (Brazil, Russia, India and China) BRIC group of countries during 2001-2011. The importance of this topic is due to instability of financial industry and continuously changing financial markets. Financial liberalization did not only give boom to banking industry but also made it more competitive and unstable. To stay in competition, banks follow risky practices that do not only create problems within financial industry but also become cause of financial crisis. Financial crisis in 2008 is one of the examples of risky practices. Due to the importance of this topic, many researchers conducted studies on it. One of the famous studies on that topic was conducted by Claessens et al in (2001). Their study examined foreign and domestic banks in developing and the developed countries. It was found that foreign banks became the cause of reduction in domestic banks’ income, profit and cost in developing countries. Current study was the extension of Claessens et al (2001) with some amendments. First of all, current study focused on BRIC countries only which are the fastest growing developing countries. Second, this study compared foreign bank’s profitability with domestic bank’s profitability. Whereas, return on assets and return on equity was used as an indicator of profitability. Nearly 1600 bank’s financial data was collected from Bankscope database and Thomason Reuter’s DataStream. The current Study followed a Quantitative research method in order to investigate two research questions; first was the impact of foreign bank’s profitability on domestic bank’s earnings during 2001-2011 and second was foreign and domestic bank’s financial performance during financial crisis. Hierarchical multiple regression in the absence of control variables (foreign bank’s market share, inflation rate, real interest rate and GDP growth rate) explained that foreign banks were positively related with domestic banks in BRIC during 2001-2011. This Study rejected previous research results that foreign banks had negative relation with domestic banks in developing countries. Second result showed that in fast growing developing countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China, domestic banks performed better than foreign banks during financial crisis whereas foreign bank’s profitability had high volatility then domestic banks in financial crisis.

Abstracto: La alternancia entre sujetos expresos y tácitos constituye una característica fundamental del castellano. Orozco (under review:15) indica que el uso variable de los pronombres sujetos es una característica morfosintáctica heredada del latín. Leonetti (2009: 8) propone que la alternancia no es siempre del todo libre, ya que está determinada por algunos factores gramaticales y discursivos, pero podemos afirmar que en un buen número de contextos realmente existe la posibilidad de optar libremente entre usar un pronombre explícito y usar uno implícito o tácito. El presente estudio explora la variación en el uso de los pronombres personales de sujeto en dos comunidades puertorriqueñas. La primera es la comunidad puertorriqueña que vive en Puerto Rico y la segunda es aquella cuyo lugar de residencia es el estado de Luisiana. Los datos de esta investigación son obtenidos de información recogida de diez puertorriqueños residentes del estado de Luisiana y diez de Puerto Rico, diez mujeres y diez hombres. El análisis estadístico fue hecho utilizando Goldvarb. El número de muestras incluidas en el estudio es de 2,266. Los constreñimientos utilizados son una modificación de los constreñimientos utilizados por Orozco y Guy (2008). La tasa pronominal encontrada es de 37.0% para los puertorriqueños en Luisiana y 37.8% para aquellos que residen en la isla. Las mismas son muy representativas del castellano del caribe y concuerdan con lo que han reportado Lipski (1994:241) y López Morales (1992:137). Los factores lingüísticos que afectaron el uso pronominal fueron seis: persona y número del pronombre sujeto expreso o nulo, continuidad del sujeto, tiempo, modo y aspecto del verbo, realización del sujeto anterior, tipo de cláusula, contenido léxico del verbo, realización del sujeto de cláusula anterior mientras que sólo un factor social afecta significativamente el uso: el corpus. Estos resultados, en general, concuerdan con lo encontrado anteriormente: que los factores internos juegan una parte muy importante en el uso de los pronombres sujetos. Aunque las tasas pronominales varían, los constreñimientos condicionando el uso de los pronombre sujetos han presentado resultados bastante uniformes.  Abstract: The use of the pronominal subjects is one of the most basic foundations of the Spanish grammar. The Spanish language has an interesting ability: it is not an obligatory function to use the pronominal subjects. By the context and the conjugation of verbs that follow, the subject can be deduced. Many aspects of Spanish have been studied, including the use of the pronominal subjects relating to the null and expressed pronouns. The pronominal subjects can be null or you express, present or absent. The complete sentence in Spanish does not have to contain an expressed subject. Therefore, there is a variable use of the pronominal subjects in Spanish. This focuses on identifying in which contexts the participants employ the expressed and null pronouns. It is a comparative study of twenty Puerto Ricans, ten women and ten men. Of the twenty, ten live in Louisiana and ten live in the island of Puerto Rico. 2,226 tokens were analyzed using the statistical analysis program Goldvarb. The pronominal rates found were 37.0% for the Puerto Ricans in Louisiana and y 37.8% for those in the island, which is representative of Caribbean Spanish. The results, in general, agree with what has been found before: that the internal factors play a very important part in the use of subject pronouns. Although the pronominal rates vary, the constraints conditioning the use of the pronoun subject have submitted results fairly uniform.

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