Music is an inviolable imaginative litmus diagnosis on a constellation of ideational and conceptual contestations which elicit mutually exclusive and inclusive versions of patriotic consciousness in the Zimbabwean polity. The study specifically analyses the renditions of patriotic consciousness as expressed through selected musical compositions in Shona, Ndebele and English conceptualised as Zimbabwe-centred musical texts. It unfurls in the context of the interplay between music and politics in which music is seen as intricately interwoven with national politics causing shifts of realities. The research approaches and conceptualises patriotic consciousness as a heuristic construct and a measure of development that constitutes an instrument for ideological and conceptual contestations in specific political argumentative settings within the period 1970 to 2015. It deploys the critical tenets of Afrocentricity and the Socio-semantic theory of music to advance the contention that patriotic consciousness as a concept for political analysis enables the criticism and explanation of existing rival sentiments, different wants, competing needs and opposing interests in the Zimbabwean polity. Musicians who contribute to Zimbabwe-centred musical texts also (un)consciously become part of the ideological and conceptual battlefield for political legitimacy. The study pays attention to the lyrics’ content, the historical epoch from which the lyrics respond to and ideological influences embedded in the lyrics, which potentially trigger ideational and conceptual clashes. It engages the song lyrics of musicians, whose music constitute Zimbabwe-centred musical texts, as a mode of art that (in)directly conveys political ideas, identities and interests on the notion of love and object of allegiance in national politics thereby engaging in ideational and conceptual contestations. / Linguistics and Modern Languages

Honor ideology and militarized masculinities have recently gained more attention within the research field of peace and conflict studies. It has been found that attitudes related to honor and gender equality are associated to the use of violence on both an individual level and on state level. This thesis is exploring honor ideology in a post-war context in order to investigate if honor ideology is connected to attitudes regarding coexistence. By using new survey data collected in north-eastern Sri Lanka, ordinal logit regressions are used to test the hypotheses that individuals with higher levels of masculine toughness, patriarchal values and honor ideology are less willing to coexist with people from former ‘rivalling’ groups. From the regression analyses, it was found that there seems to be a relationship between higher levels of masculine toughness, patriarchal values and honor ideology, and lower levels of willingness to coexist with people from former ‘rivalling’ groups – findings that were statistically significant on 95-99% confidence interval. However, the results are not very robust and further research is needed to investigate how honor ideologies affect other attitudes that are important for peace.

In the globalized world of today, more and more countries are constructing themselves as authentic and unique in order to attract potential tourists. Nation branding is being used as a tool to commodify the country. This thesis is a critical discourse analysis that takes interest in examining how the Netherlands is discursively constructed as a nation brand on the website Holland.com. The thesis draws on theories of national identity, nation branding, commodification and authenticity, all from a critical point of view. Using critical discourse analysis as a method, this thesis is able to reveal the underlying ideologies and interests that are being promoted through the website. This is done by using specific tools, to discover what information is being made salient on the website and what information is being suppressed. The analysis of the website reveals three main findings: the Netherlands is constructed as authentic, with the purpose of commodifying the country to become as attractive as possible for potential visitors. Another finding shows how nation branding is used to reshape and reconstruct national history, as well as geography. Lastly, the analysis uncovers forms of nationalism found in the texts on the website.

The project of sustainable development, as reflected in the Agenda 2030 and the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals, plays a central role in the story of crisis and transformation today. Yet, this project has rarely been the object of ideology critique. This paper formulates an ideology critique as a form of immanent critique of the project of sustainable development with a basis in Herbert Marcuse’s one-dimensionality thesis. The analysis of the ideology of sustainable development is structured around the three-pillar conception of sustainability which is applied in the Agenda 2030. The transformative potential of the project of sustainable development is assessed on the background of the analysis. The transformative potential in each of the three pillars is found to be inhibited by the project of sustainable development and the paper identifies and explains the ideological mechanisms through which this inhibition takes place. The research suggests that the project of sustainable development cannot be seen as a transformative project.

This thesis will explore the complex relationship between marketplace exclusion and symbolic resources mediated by the market, for older consumers who have traversed from a socio-cultural identity in the majority to stand on the periphery of consumption. Employing a Consumer Culture Theory influenced perspective and using Baudrillard critical theory of symbolic exchange and death as a lens of analysis, this thesis will utilize a psycho-social method to explore how and why older consumers find themselves excluded from the market. As well as how this absence is negotiated in a society where inclusion in social life is dependent on consumption. This thesis postulates the market as an ideological structure that promulgates a capitalist ideology of life as an affirmatory force and, therefore, negates death. In doing so this thesis problematizes the dominant notion of the market in theory and practice, in particular, the notion of the market as a free and open space for participation. Contributing to an explorative effort to shed light on the complex relationship between exclusion and sign-value, marketplace representation and ideology.

Esta dissertação parte da discussão sobre a relação entre as pessoas e as imagens, cujo marco de relacionamento é o capitalismo baseado no emocional e simbólico. Nessa medida surge uma visão crítica aos produtos multimídia no espaço público que alteram a relação do sujeito com o mundo que o rodeia. Este espaço também é alterado pelos discursos da publicidade e sua projeção dos imaginários comerciais no tecido social. As transformações das tendências artísticas e imagéticas no século XX nos oferecem elementos para usar o conceito de espetáculo, como espaço regulador da prática artística e publicitária na sociedade, levando em consideração que aspectos da interação nesses espaços têm raízes político-econômicas que suscitam posturas ideológicas nas artes em razão à relação usuário-interator e obra-produto, no contexto da hegemonia do capitalismo atual. O branding ao converter-se em eixo da criação estética contemporânea, junto à economia de consumo e a cidade como espaço para sua expansão, modificou através da semiose corporativa as linguagens artísticas e seus métodos, homogeneizando sua produção e recepção na superprodução de informação; o que, em resposta, propiciou nas artes a possibilidade de somar essas técnicas como matéria de trabalho plástico e conceitual. Para um aprofundamento nestas questões, analisam-se as obras Mecânica das emoções de Maurice Benayoun (2004-2011), 1000 platitudes (2003) de Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pure murder (2004) de Minerva Cuevas, Toywar - Etoy.share (2000-2001) de Etoy. Estes trabalhos artísticos integram usos particulares do branding, como parte da sua estratégia estética, poética e de conceito, que, ao fazer uso das estruturas de comunicação, contrasta os usos político-econômicos convencionais da imagem com táticas e estéticas que gerem posturas e atividades nos interatores, como possíveis formas de intervenção na sociedade do espetáculo. / The present dissertation stems from the debate on the relation between people and images, whose relational hallmark is capitalism based upon the emotional and the symbolic. Hence a critical view on multi-media products pervading public spaces, which change the relation between the subject and the world surrounding him. Public spaces themselves are also changes by the publicity discourses and their projection of commercial imaginaries onto the social tissue. The transformation of imagetic and artistic tendencies throughout xx century offer elements to validate the term spectacle as the regulating environment for social artistic and publicitary practices, taking into account that aspects of the interactions in such spaces have political and economic stems which originate ideological postures within the arts due to the relation between user-interactor and opus-product, in the present capitalist-hegemony context. As branding reaches the axis of contemporary aesthetic creation, together with consumption economy and the city as the place for its expansion, has changed, through corporative semiosis, the artistic languages and their methods, rendering homogeneous their production and reception within information over-production; such has permitted the appropriation of those techniques as matter for plastic and conceptual work in response. In order to produce a deeper understanding of the issues, we analysed The mechanics of emotions by Maurice Benayoun (2004-2011), 1000 platitudes (2003) by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pure murder (2004) by Minerva Cuevas, Toywar - Etoy.share (2000-2001) by Etoy. The former artistic Works integrate particular usages of branding, as part of their aesthetic, poetic and conceptual strategies, which, in using communication structures, contrast conventional political economic uses of images with tactics and aesthetics which generate postures and activities within interactors, as a possible means of intervening int the society of the spectacle.

As profundas transformações econômicas, sociais e tecnológicas ocorridas a partir da década de 1950 mudaram substancialmente a maneira de viver e de enxergar a vida, alteraram também as formas tradicionais de reprodução social. O eixo central do capitalismo, ocupado pela indústria, se desloca para o consumo. O protagonismo deste é fundamental para o entendimento das transformações impostas pelo capital à sociedade. A necessidade de controlar o que é consumido, para sustentar a reprodução ampliada do capital, se materializa nos câmbios da forma de viver, se manifestam no cotidiano. Entretanto, práticas sociais e representações tradicionais, emergem como resistência às incursões capitalistas no universo camponês. Para entendê-las, o modo de vida se apresenta como uma categoria substancial, devendo ser entendida, a partir de uma perspectiva ampla, em seu conjunto de relações que lhe confere sentido. Nesta pesquisa, temos por objetivo redefinir o conceito de modo de vida, aplicando-o aos camponeses, tendo como meta entendê-los para além da classe social, como um modo de vida, composto pela tensão constante entre os efeitos e consequências da expansão das relações capitalistas no campo e a resistência dos costumes e práticas que hora estão subordinados à lógica hegemônica e hora a subverte. Para isso, partimos de uma minuciosa pesquisa sobre as definições de modo de vida no pensamento social moderno. Em seguida, analisamos as principais referências analíticas sobre o campesinato no pensamento marxista, produzidas entre o final do século XIX até hoje, buscando identificar as contribuições e limites das mesmas para pensar os processos de permanência e (re)produção do campesinato atual / The profound economic, social and technological changes that occurred from the 1950s substantially changed the way of living and seeing life also changed the traditional forms of social reproduction. The central axis of capitalism, occupied by industry shifts to consumption. The role is fundamental in understanding the transformations imposed by capital to society. The need to control what is consumed to sustain the reproduction of capital, exchange materializes in the form of live, manifest in everyday life. However, social and traditional representations, practices emerge as resistance to capitalist inroads into peasant universe. To understand this phenomenon, way of life presents itself as a substantial category, and should be understood, from a broad perspective, in their set of relations that gives it meaning. In this research, we aim to redefine the concept of mode of life, applying to farmers, aiming to understand them beyond social class, as a way of life, made up of the constant tension between the effects and consequences of the expansion of relations capitalists and resistance in the field of customs and practices that time are subject to the hegemonic logic and time subverts. For this, we start from a thorough research on the mode settings of life in the modern social thought. Then we analyze the main analytical results for the peasantry in Marxist thought, produced between the late nineteenth century until today, seeking to identify the contributions and limits of the same thinking to the process of permanent and (re)production of the current peasantry

Esse trabalho aborda a construção histórica de uma ideologia contemporânea que defende a visão de que a internet deveria ser aberta e livre. Essa ideologia, chamada por muitos autores de ideologia \"ciberlibertária\", possui um caráter híbrido e é defendida por grupos à direita e à esquerda do espectro político. A visão que a sustenta é produto de uma síntese de ideias da cibernética dos anos 1940, com um romantismo individualista característico da contracultura dos anos 1960, e o discurso neoliberal em ascensão nos Estados Unidos dos anos 1980. Essa síntese foi realizada principalmente pelo catálogo contracultural Whole Earth Catalog, publicado nos anos 1960 nos EUA, e propagada pela rede de pessoas que se articulou em torno desse catálogo e de suas publicações derivadas. Ela emergiu nos anos 1990 na região do Vale do Silício como uma ideologia, alimentando a bolha da internet e o discurso de que a rede era uma mídia excepcional, de caráter democrático e transparente, um espaço de exercício da liberdade e maior exemplo dos benefícios do livre mercado. Ao definir esse discurso como ideológico nós defendemos aqui que ele funciona como um campo de disputa pelo poder e legitimação, entre grupos sociais significativos, dentro da sociedade. Neste sentido, essa ideologia não estaria beneficiando de forma exclusiva nenhum dos grupos em disputa, mas obedeceria à dinâmica de luta pelo poder político, que ora coloca um grupo em vantagem, ora coloca outro. A tese de que essa ideologia está a serviço da direita neoliberal, defendida por alguns autores, é, portanto, rebatida aqui por nós. A nossa tese é a de que, apesar de ter contribuído para a reestruturação do capitalismo a partir dos anos 1980, e ainda continuar contribuindo para a propagação de suas práticas em alguns contextos, essa ideologia também favorece o florescimento de algumas práticas que o desafiam. De modo que não devemos crer que a esquerda é totalmente desarmada por esse discurso e tem necessariamente em toda e qualquer situação a sua resistência política anulada ao se alinhar a ele. Para sustentar o nosso argumento, apresentamos o debate da neutralidade da rede, que se desenvolveu em vários países a partir dos anos 2000, como uma demonstração clara disso. Esse debate, que está ancorado na defesa de uma internet neutra e aberta, pode ser uma vitrine através da qual podemos perceber essa ideologia funcionando como um campo de disputas entre grupos da esquerda e da direita. Através da comparação entre o debate sobre a neutralidade da rede no Brasil e nos Estados Unidos, foi possível perceber que as implicações desse discurso podem se manifestar em direções inclusive opostas, resultando, por exemplo, na defesa da democracia ou na defesa do mercado. / This work addresses the historical construction of a contemporary ideology that defends the view that the internet should be open and free. This ideology, called by many authors of \"cyberlibertarian\" ideology, has a hybrid character and is defended by groups on the right and left side of the political spectrum. The vision that sustains it is the product of a synthesis made of cybernetic ideas of the 1940s, with an individualistic romanticism of the counterculture of the 1960s and the neoliberal discourse on the rise in the United States of the 1980s. This synthesis was carried out mainly by the countercultural catalog Whole Earth Catalog published in the 1960s in the USA and propagated by the network of people who articulated around this catalog and its derived publications. It emerged in the 1990s in the Silicon Valley region as an ideology, fueling the internet bubble and the discourse that the network was an exceptional, democratic and transparent media, a space for the exercise of freedom, and a greater example of the benefits of free market. In defining this discourse as ideological we argue here that it functions as a field of dispute for power and legitimation among significant social groups within society. In this sense, this ideology would not be exclusively benefiting any of the groups in dispute, but would obey the dynamics of fighting for political power, which sometimes puts one group in advantage, and sometimes puts another. The thesis that this ideology serves the neoliberal right-wing, defended by some authors, is thus countered here by us. Our thesis is that, although it has contributed to the restructuring of capitalism since the 1980s, and continues to contribute to the propagation of its practices in some contexts, this ideology also favors the flourishing of some practices that challenge it. So we must not believe that the left-wing groups are totally disarmed by this discourse and have necessarily in any and all situation their political resistance nullified by aligning themselves with it. To support our argument, we present the net neutrality debate, which has developed in several countries since the 2000s, as a clear demonstration of this. This debate, which is anchored in the defense of a neutral and open internet, can be a showcase through which we can perceive this ideology functioning as a field of disputes between left and right-wing groups. Through the comparison between the debate about net neutrality in Brazil and in the United States, it was possible to perceive that the implications of this discourse can manifest in even opposing directions, resulting, for example, in the defense of democracy or in the defense of the market.

Esta dissertação apresenta uma reflexão de teoria política normativa a respeito da tolerância no plano mundial adotando uma perspectiva tributária do individualismo ético e dos contratualismos rawlsiano e kantiano. Sua argumentação defende uma interpretação individualista e universalista da tolerância enquanto virtude política institucional. Justificar-se-á a idéia de que a tolerância requer uma lista ampla de direitos humanos e que é um critério normativo de legitimidade política frente às comunidades internas e global / This dissertation presents a reflection of Political Theory about toleration in world plan adopting a perspective of ethical individualism and Rawlsian and Kantian contractualism. Its argumentation defends an individualist and universalist interpretation of toleration while institutional and political virtue. The idea will be justified as toleration requires an extensive list of human rights and that it is a moral criterion of politics legitimacy in front of internal and global communities

Dogville é um filme que suscitou reações opostas e viscerais. Essa dissertação aborda dois aspectos desse fenômeno. Em primeiro lugar, uma leitura do filme especialmente no que diz respeito a seu princípio contraditório. Não se trata apenas de abrigar aspectos realistas da chamada linguagem clássica do cinema conjuntamente com aspectos antiilusionistas de inspiração assumidamente brechtiana. Trata-se de compreender como essa contradição é o coração do filme e produz seu sentido. Em seguida, uma leitura da crítica publicada nos veículos de comunicação de grande circulação procura identificar como esses textos encaram ou ignoram essa contradição, bem como as pré-concepções que permitem que eles assim o façam e que determinam as análises que produzem. / Dogville is a movie to which most people reacted passionately, whether in favor or against it. This dissertation approaches two aspects of this phenomenon. First, it provides a reading of the film that focuses on its contradictory principle. It is not only about the fact that some of it resorts to classic realism whereas some other aspects question this illusionism by deriving from a Brechtian inspiration. It is about understanding how this very contradiction is the heart and soul of the movie and how it is this that produces its content. Then, a reading of reviews published in wide circulation papers attempts to identify how these texts either address or ignore this contradiction, as well as the pre-conceptions that allow them to do so and that determine the analyses they produce.