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This thesis examines the place of information communications technology (ICT) as a form of power in International Relations (IR) theory. Through an examination of the dominant approaches to ICTs in IR I outline the need to introduce a concept of technological power which can account for agency and culture in the process of technological design and development. Turning towards the critical theory of technology of Andrew Feenberg, the thesis argues that conceptualizing technology as biased but ambivalent provides the space within which agency may be considered alongside the structuring characteristics of technology to provide a more theoretically balanced and analytically productive account of the politics of technology. Building upon this foundation, the thesis outlines ICTs as a form of institutional power in international politics, acting upon agents at a distance in both space and time. This form of power is enmeshed in, and supported by, structural power relations and the interrelated discursive and ideological forms of power which maintain these structures. I examine the utility of these concepts through an extending empirical illustration of the role of the Internet in American Foreign Policy. This analysis argues that the Internet, as a product of American technological development, expresses a bias towards liberal capitalist values which forces other states to either alter their social practices or enact costly filtering regimes. The open networks of the Internet thereby facilitate the pursuit of an Open Door foreign policy by the United States government. Accounting for the technologically embedded cultural norms of the Internet casts a different light upon the nature of power in international relations, and requires that we take the constitution of an global material culture into account in our theories of international relations.

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In the chapters that follow, the porous boundary between the public and the private in Jeremy Cronin’s poetry is investigated in his three collections, Inside (1983), Even the Dead: Poems, Parables and a Jeremiad (1996) and More Than a Casual Contact (2006). I argue two particular Marxist theorists are central to reading Cronin’s poetry: Bertolt Brecht, and his notion of the Verfremdungseffekt, and Walter Benjamin and his work on historical materialism, primarily the essay On the Concept of History / Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940). Both theorists focus on the work of art in a historically contextualized manner, which extends the challenge to the boundary between the public and the private. Their work is underpinned by the desire to draw out hidden narratives occluded under the grand narratives of history and capitalist ideas of progress. I argue that these are the major preoccupations in Cronin’s oeuvre as well. As such Cronin’s poetry may be seen to write against a perspective that proposes a linear conceptualisation of history. The poetry therefore challenges the notion that art speaks of ‘universal truths.’ Such ideas of History and Truth, if viewed uncritically, allow for a tendency to conceive of the past as unchanging, which subconsciously promotes the idea that social and political realities are merely logical evolutionary steps. I argue that Cronin’s poetry is thus purposefully interruptive in the way that it confronts the damaging consequences of the linear conceptualisation of history and the universal truth it promotes. His work attempts to find new ways of connection and expression through learning from South Africa’s violent past. The significance of understanding each other and the historical environment as opposed to imposing perspectives that underwrite the symbolic order requires the transformation rather than the simple transferral of power, and is a central focus throughout Cronin’s oeuvre. This position suggests that while the struggle for political freedom may be over, the necessity to rethink how South Africans relate to each other is only beginning. Chapter One will focus on positioning Cronin, the poet and public figure, in South African literature and literary criticism. In this regard, two general trends have operated as critical paradigms in the study of South African poetry, namely Formalism (or ‘prac crit’) and a Marxist inflected materialism, which have in many ways perpetuated the division between the private and the public. This has resulted in poetry being read with an exclusive focus on either one of these two aspects, overlooking the possibilities of dialogue that may take place between them. Cronin’s perspective on these polarised responses will be discussed, which will illustrate the similarity of his position to Ndebele’s notion of the ‘ordinary’ which suggests a way beyond these binaries. This will lead to a discussion of how South African poets responded to the transition phase, suggesting that the elements of the polarisation still remained. Considering the major influences and paradigms when reading Cronin’s oeuvre provides a foundation for the following three chapters. These include Cronin’s use of Romanticism, Bertolt Brecht and the V-Effekt and Walter Benjamin’s perspectives on historical materialism. In addition to these three theoretical paradigms, the relevance of Pablo Neruda’s poetry to Cronin’s work is also foregrounded. In Chapter Two, the focus will be on Cronin’s first collection of poetry, Inside, concentrating on Cronin’s use of language as a way of constructing poetry in the sparseness of the prison experience. This will show an abiding preoccupation of learning to speak in a language that considers the material context out of which it emerges. In this regard, the poems “Poem-Shrike” “Prologue” and “Cave-site” are analysed. In addition, one of the central poems in Cronin’s oeuvre, “To learn how to speak […],” will be examined in order to illustrate how the poet extends this project on a meta-poetic level, asking for South African poets to ‘learn how to speak’ in the voices of South African experience and histories. I will show how this is linked to Cronin’s “Walking on Air” which illustrates how the V-Effeckt recovers the small private histories through re-telling the life story of James Matthews, a fellow prisoner incarcerated for his anti-apartheid activism, revealing how this story is intimately connected to the public sphere. In Chapter Three, Cronin’s second collection: Even the Dead: Poems, Parables and a Jeremiad will be examined. In the poem “Three Reasons for a Mixed, Umrabulo, Round-the-Corner Poetry” Cronin resists inherited Western poetic conventions by incorporating and subverting versions of the Romantic aesthetic, arguing for poetry to be immersed in South African multi-lingual and multi-cultural experiences. “Even the Dead” reveals how Cronin uses Walter Benjamin’s perspectives on historical materialism to confront amnesia. In terms of the themes established in “To learn how to speak […]”, the poem “Moorage” demonstrates how the public and private can never be separated in Cronin’s work. The final section of this chapter will examine how Cronin responds to Pablo Neruda’s poems “I am explaining a few things” and “The Education of a Chieftain,” and how these poems challenge narratives that privilege the ‘great leader’ instead of the so-called smaller individuals’ stories. Chapter Four examines selections from Cronin’s third collection, focusing on Cronin’s use of the automobile, charting an ambiguous trajectory through the ‘new’ South Africa. The examination of the poems “Where to begin?”, “Switchback” and “End of the century - which is why wipers,” all attempt to include individuals left on the margins of the narrative of global freeways and neo-liberal capitalist progress. The poems present an interrogation of how ‘vision’ is constructed. This will show that the poetry responds to the experiences of the marginalised under these grand narratives in a primarily fragmentary and interruptive manner. This in effect constitutes the culmination of Cronin’s poetic journey and the search for new ways of envisaging South Africa’s future and finding a new language with which to speak it.

This contribution shares Ulrich Brand's reliance on critical theories of the state and hegemony. Based on three points of criti-cism, the author argues for a better elaboration of the context of policy making. First, he proposes to consider a broader range of theoretical currents than the interpretive accounts introduced by Brand: (1) A strategic-relational interpretation of historical institutionalism will be introduced, (2) featuring the concept of "periodisation" for a systematic understanding of historically evolving structures. In addition to the introduction of a broader range of theoretical currents, (3) Brand's proposed concept of "selectivities" will be further refined and specified to be better able to grasp the workings of the "institutional condensation of the correlation of forces" in the policy cycle. The proposed conceptualisation of historical-materialist policy analysis will be exemplified by a short stylised example of research on equalityoriented policies in South Africa. (author's abstract)

Traditional Marxist historical materialism employs a material analysis that privileges how capitalism interacts with subject formation and has been used in recent historicizations of sexuality. This paper understands that line of analysis to be gendering, racializing, and pathologizing and examines LGBTQ history as a starting point to decenter capitalism from the analysis. Using Roderick Ferguson's "queer of color" critique, this paper maintains that more specifically, history should attend to the emergence of surplus populations which capitalism keeps hidden. Under the umbrella of queer of color critique, migration studies, transnational perspectives, and the destabilizing nature of queer theory all have the capacity to provide a fuller view of sexual difference and the histories of LGBTQ and other surplus populations. Furthermore, a legal framework provides an opportunity to take theory into practice by examining legislation with the analytical scope of queer of color and from an anti-capitalist vantage point.

Despite nearly twenty years of official peace in Guatemala since the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords, violence continues to remain a grave problem throughout the country. In particular, extreme forms of gender-based violence have been reportedly problematic over the past two decades, with a conversation on femicide, the targeted killing of women by men based on their gender, emerging in recent years between activists, politicians and practitioners alike. To respond to the crisis around femicide, in 2008, the Law on Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women was passed by Guatemala’s congress, mandating the creation of a specialized justice system to criminalize such acts. Guatemala’s legal innovations around femicidal violence is widely believed by many observers as a victory for human and women’s rights defenders in the country. However, despite these legal interventions, femicidal violence has continued unabatedly in Guatemala. In this thesis, I present a two-pronged argument. First, I will argue that the tensions inherent to neoliberalism in Guatemala create a landscape in which women are vulnerable to experiencing femicidal violence, beyond the scope explored by both the mainstream and critical literature, and moreover, beyond the scope of the Law on Femicide. Second, I posit that the Law on Femicide, which is inserted as a neutral, technical fix to the ongoing and pervasive issue of femicide and violence against women, depoliticizes femicide in Guatemala, removing it from neoliberal capitalist context and individualizing the responsibility of the crime to perpetrators, rather than the neoliberal state. Simultaneously, the rule of law as expressed through the Law on Femicide must be understood in the context of the neoliberal landscape in Guatemala, in particular, in the context of neoliberalism’s “crisis of social reproduction” (LeBaron and Roberts 2012, 26). / Thesis (Master, Global Development Studies) -- Queen's University, 2014-06-18 10:26:03.879

Please read abstract in the main document / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2015. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar o filme À procura de Eric(2009), do cineasta inglês Ken Loach. A análise procura fundamentar de que forma a narrativa do filme apresenta aspectos formais e conceituais que permitam aproximar os elementos constitutivos do jogo de futebol com possibilidades de explicações do mundo da pós-modernidade pautadas pelo materialismo histórico. Para tal, será necessário compreender a noção de Mapeamento Cognitivo, de Fredric Jameson, visando delimitar de que forma é possível situar os vínculos históricos do sujeito inserido na pós-modernidade. Não obstante, será necessário compreender como as práticas culturais da classe operária podem ser um bom indicativo para a aplicação desse mesmo conceito, retomando noções importantes como a manifestação de práticas Dominantes, Residuais e Emergentes, de Raymond Williams, bem como a possibilidade de mudanças sociais a partir da noção de Utopia de Ernst Bloch. Tais ideias estão dispostas na obra em questão a partir da manifestação de valores históricos em objetos culturais da indústria cultural. A narrativa busca estabelecer como esses elementos podem constituir aquilo que Pierre Nora conceitua como Lugares de Memória os quais, se ressignificados, podem ser a ponte para reestabelecer as conexões históricas entre o indivíduo e a sociedade. / This paper aims to analyze Ken Loachs movie Looking for Eric (2009). The analysis seeks to establish how the movie narrative presents formal and conceptual aspects that enable us to compare the constitutive elements of a football match with possibilities of explanations for Postmodernity oriented by the framework of Historical Materialism. In order to do so, it will be necessary to understand Fredric Jamesons notion of Cognitive Mapping, to depict how it is possible to situate a subjects historical connections in the context of Postmodernity. Nonetheless, it will be necessary to comprehend how the working class cultural practices can be an interesting sign for the application of that same concept, doing so by the assessment of important notions such as the existence of Dominant, Residual and Emergent cultural practices, as established by Raymond Williams, as well as the possibility of social change through Ernst Blochs idea of Utopia. These ideas are depicted in the work being analyzed through the manifestation of historic value in cultural objects that come from the Cultural Industry. The narrative seeks to establish how these elements can constitute what Pierrre Nora repute as Places of Memory and, if signified through a diferent perspective, could be a bridge for the establishment of historical connections between the individual and society.

Orientador: Abílio da Costa-Rosa / Banca: Sílvio José Benelli / Banca: Erika Alvarez Inforsato / Resumo: Nosso objetivo principal foi pensar as práticas em Terapia Ocupacional à luz da análise paradigmática postulada por Costa-Rosa, que define o Paradigma Psicossocial como um passo além da Reforma Psiquiátrica brasileira. A partir da práxis clínica e institucional, tentamos fundamentar uma modalidade de terapia ocupacional na qual a psicanálise do campo de Freud e Lacan e o Materialismo Histórico são os referenciais teóricos técnicos e éticos políticos. Especificamos o enfoque desta reflexão no campo da Saúde Coletiva, na Atenção Psicossocial. Partimos do Dispositivo Intercessor, como um novo Modo de Produção de subjetividade e conhecimento. De natureza transdisciplinar, o Dispositivo Intercessor parte, principalmente, da psicanálise e do Materialismo Histórico - bem como de inspirações da Análise Institucional francesa e da Filosofia da Diferença - para definir dois momentos de produção radicalmente diferentes: o momento da práxis clínica junto aos "sujeitos do tratamento" e da práxis institucional junto ao "coletivo de trabalho"; e o momento da reflexão teórica, produzida a posteriori, sobre o processo de produção realizado no primeiro momento. Nossas reflexões pretendem demonstrar que (re)inventar a clínica na Terapia Ocupacional no contexto do Paradigma Psicossocial é tão possível quanto eticamente necessário. Na terapia ocupacional psicossocial, a saúde e a subjetividade são tomadas em sua continuidade moebiana e as dimensões subjetiva e social são indissociáveis. O sujeito... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Our main objective was to reflect about Occupational Therapy's practices in the light of the paradigmatic analysis postulated by Costa-Rosa, who defines the Psychosocial Paradigm as a step beyond the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform. From a clinical and institutional praxis, we have attempted to found a modality of occupational therapy in which Freud and Lacan's psychoanalysis and the historical materialism are the technical theoretical and ethical political references. We specify the focus of this reflection in the field of Collective Health, in the Psychosocial Care. We start from the Intercessor Device as a new Mode of Production of subjectivity and knowledge. Of transdisciplinary nature, the Intercessor Device originates mainly from psychoanalysis and Historical Materialism - as well as from inspirations of the french Institutional Analysis and Philosophy of Difference - to define two radically different moments of production: that of clinical praxis together with the "subjects of treatment" and of institutional praxis with the "collective of work"; and the moment of theoretical reflection, produced a posteriori, on the production process carried out along the first moment. Our reflections intend to demonstrate that (re)inventing the clinic in Occupational Therapy in the context of Psychosocial Paradigm is both possible and ethically necessary. In the psychosocial Occupational Therapy the health and the subjectivity are taken in their mobius continuity, so the subjective and ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre