Despite the devastation caused by environmental catastrophes, these phenomena have yet to garner significant attention as a subject of criminological inquiry. This thesis is framed by the following question: How can we problematize the notion of “natural” disaster to arrive at a criminological understanding of human culpability in the production of harm? I argue that the degree of human suffering caused by natural disasters is aggravated by imperialistic state crimes, which predispose populations to conditions of vulnerability and dependency. I substantiate this argument with an analysis of Haiti and demonstrate how its history of imperialistic exploitation by the US amounted to a pattern of state crime victimization that marginalized Haitians and, consequently, shaped their suffering from the 2010 earthquake. The story of Haiti exemplifies the relationship between the contemporary hardships of a natural disaster and the historical injustices of state crime, thus illuminating the relevance of a criminology of catastrophe. / UOIT

Paul Bonnetain (1858-1899) is a French author whose work has been largely forgotten. While the literary merit of much of his output is another matter, this thesis will show that the value of Bonnetains work is of considerable historical significance as a record of the ways in which the apparently contradictory notions of republican universalism and racial hierarchy were combined to form the French mission civilisatrice. The focus will be on Bonnetains two books gleaned from his time spent in Indochina as a correspondent for Le Figaro during 1884-1885, the compiled journalism of Au Tonkin (1884) and the Naturalist colonial novel LOpium. Both books exemplify the historical interest of Bonnetains work, which lies in its Naturalist quest for scientifically accurate literature and in its belief in the phenomenon of racial degeneration. This belief is coupled with a strongly implied materialist adherence to polygenism the belief that human races represent different species with distinct origins. However, these aspects of his work are brought into even greater relief by their juxtaposition with Bonnetains strongly leftist, anti-clerical, and materialist republican universalism. This thesis describes how his enthusiasm for miscegenation and métissage, as expressed in Au Tonkin and LOpium, allowed him to maintain a belief in racial hierarchy while also enthusiastically subscribing to republican universalism. In this way, métissage served as a framework in which these two seemingly contradictory positions could be held together.

Paul Bonnetain (1858-1899) is a French author whose work has been largely forgotten. While the literary merit of much of his output is another matter, this thesis will show that the value of Bonnetains work is of considerable historical significance as a record of the ways in which the apparently contradictory notions of republican universalism and racial hierarchy were combined to form the French mission civilisatrice. The focus will be on Bonnetains two books gleaned from his time spent in Indochina as a correspondent for Le Figaro during 1884-1885, the compiled journalism of Au Tonkin (1884) and the Naturalist colonial novel LOpium. Both books exemplify the historical interest of Bonnetains work, which lies in its Naturalist quest for scientifically accurate literature and in its belief in the phenomenon of racial degeneration. This belief is coupled with a strongly implied materialist adherence to polygenism the belief that human races represent different species with distinct origins. However, these aspects of his work are brought into even greater relief by their juxtaposition with Bonnetains strongly leftist, anti-clerical, and materialist republican universalism. This thesis describes how his enthusiasm for miscegenation and métissage, as expressed in Au Tonkin and LOpium, allowed him to maintain a belief in racial hierarchy while also enthusiastically subscribing to republican universalism. In this way, métissage served as a framework in which these two seemingly contradictory positions could be held together.

This paper examines critical responses to James Camerons most recent film, <i>Avatar</i>, to suggest that the ways in which critics have ignored its content because of Camerons innovative use of 3-D technology and effects or praised its content for offering a multicultural paradise are misguided at best and misleading at worst. Instead, what follows is an investigation into <i>Avatar</i>s content, specifically its plot, hero and, ultimately, its indivisible relationships to the Western genre and what I call the New Western genreKevin Costners <i>Dances with Wolves</i> (1990) will be representative of the larger genre which has continued to emerge in more recent films like Edward Zwicks <i>The Last Samurai</i> (2003). These relationships between, and crossovers within, genres prevent cross-cultural relationships based upon democratic forms of equality, what Costner is moving toward and what Cameron makes a claim for, from coming to fruition. As biological (colonial) and social/historical (imperial) notions of racial superiority and inferiority move across and arise within genres, the brief moments of cross-cultural cooperation and mutual respect within these films are subverted. In fact, Camerons film very clearly demonstrates how politics can be mobilized, despite a filmmakers unawareness, through big-budget blockbusters to advocate concrete and damaging political projectsin this case, Americas imperial projects around the globe. This paper attempts to do two main things: show how Cameron fails to notice what is a very clear advocacy for American imperialism in his film and display the ways in which a lasting egalitarian model of cross-cultural social organization is never established as a result of this failure.

No description available.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att enligt nämnda frågeställning utvinna en systematisk klassificering av Londons karaktärer utifrån Nietzsches text. Detta innebär i en imperialistisk kontext, med utgångspunkt i den postkoloniala teori formulerad av Edward Said, en problematisering av dikotomin västerländsk och icke-västerländsk samt ett uppdagande av en etnisk-kulturell hierarki, där det västerländska, i form av den londonska övermänniskan, gestaltas som högst och urinvånaren, det icke-västerländska, som lägst. Den kulturella representationen ska i denna studie undersökas i valda litterära texter av Jack London utifrån en nietzscheansk matris. Det är alltså inte en historisk granskning av hur imperialismen och kolonialismen i Nordamerika inverkat på dess urinvånare, även om denna studie undersöker en problematik som kan inplaceras i den historiska kontexten.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 47-48).

No description available.

The Path of Good Citizenship illuminates the role of public schools in attempts by white Americans to organize republican citizenship and labor along lines of race and ethnicity during a time of anxiety over immigration and the emergence of the U.S. as a global power. By considering U.S. schools as both national and imperial institutions, it presupposes that the formal education of children served as multilayered exchanges of power through which myriad actors constructed, debated, and contested parameters of citizenship and visions of belonging in the United States. Using the discursive narratives of American exceptionalism, scientific racialism, and patriotism, authors of school curricula imagined a uniform Americanness rooted in Anglo‐Saxon institutions and racial character. Schools not only became mechanisms of the U.S. imperial state in order to control belonging and access supposedly afforded by citizenship, but simultaneously created opportunities for foreigners and “foreigners within” to shape their own relationships with the nation. Ideological attempts to construct a nation that excluded and included on the basis of race and foreignness had very real implications. Using comparative case studies of Atlanta’s African‐Americans, San Francisco’s Japanese, and New York’s European immigrants, this dissertation shows how policies of segregation, exclusion, and Americanization both complicated and sustained designs for a national body of citizens and workers. Schools trained many of these students for citizenship that included subordinate labor roles, limited social mobility, and marginalized national identity rooted in racial difference. These localized analysis reveal the contested power dynamics that involved challenges from immigrant and non‐white communities to a racial nationalism that often slotted them into subordinate economic and social categories. Taken together, curricula and policy reveal schools to be integral to the mutually sustaining projects of nation‐building and empire‐building.