The authors realized the importance of being flexible in cultural values in the current environment of today’s economy. This environment is called ‘globalization’ that has become an interesting topic in the academic world. Beyond the different challenges, the most important challenge regarding to the thesis topic is the cultural challenge. The authors have combined these elements and  wanted to investigate how these factors influence marketing advertising in the Middle East. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to reach an understanding about how cultural differences in global marketing advertising can be handled by global companies in the Middle East.  The findings of the thesis reflect upon the question of "how global companies can better address cultural differences in marketing advertising in the Middle East" by first understanding and respecting the culture and religion of the region, following the regulations and guidelines for advertising in every specific country, cooperating with local agencies and adapting the marketing advertising strategy with a glocal ‘think global, act local’ approach.

Les localités de la moyenne montagne du Mont-Liban sont souvent présentées comme des bastions des communautés religieuses et des chefs politiques. Cet espace subit, cependant, depuis plus de quatre décennies, de profondes transformations suite à différents processus comme la villégiature, les déplacements de populations durant la guerre, ainsi que la périurbanisation et les investissements des ressortissants du Golfe et des émigrés. Au-delà du mythe de la montagne, refuge des minorités persécutées en Orient, cette thèse vise à interroger ce terrain sur l’évolution des territoires hérités, construits par des générations précédentes d’acteurs, dans un processus de mondialisation et de métropolisation. La place des communautés religieuses et des zaïm-s libanais dans l’échiquier politique national ou régional reste prédominante dans les logiques d’urbanisation des différentes régions libanaises. Cependant, l’évolution des différentes parties de la moyenne montagne autour de Beyrouth reste liée aux contraintes physiques et économiques (altitude, accessibilité, ressources…) plutôt qu’aux spécificités « héritées ». Les autorités qui s’imposent dans les localités de la moyenne montagne, en revendiquant un pouvoir basé sur le passé, sont elles-mêmes obligées de renouveler leurs stratégies et alliances pour relever les défis de la mondialisation et des logiques de compétitivité économique. / Moderate altitude localities of Mount Lebanon are often presented as bastions of religious communities and political leaders. During the last four decades, this space however witnessed profound changes due to various processes such as tourism, population movements during the war, suburbanization and investments of nationals from the Gulf and emigrants. Beyond the myth of the Lebanese mountain, a shelter of persecuted minorities in the Middle East, this thesis aims to examine the evolution of inherited territories built by previous generations of actors in a process of globalization and metropolization.The logics underlying the urbanization of different Lebanese regions remain strongly influenced by religious communities and zaim-s (political leaders). However, the evolution of the localities surrounding Beirut remains related to physical and economic constraints (altitude, accessibility, resources ...) rather than "inherited" specificities. Authorities claiming power based on the past are themselves forced to renew their strategies and alliances to meet the challenges of globalization and economic competitiveness.

This study is essentially a critique of how the three dominant paradigms of explanatory international relations theory - (neo-)realism, liberalism, and systemic constructivism - conceive of, analytically deal with, and explain ethnic conflict and sovereignty. By deconstructing their approaches to ethnic identity formation in general and ethnic conflict in particular it argues that all three paradigms, in their epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies through reification and by analytically equating ethnic groups with states, tend to essentialise and substantialise the ethnic lines of division and strategic essentialisms of ethnic and ethno-nationalist elites they set out to describe, and, all too often, even write them into existence. Particular attention, both at the theoretical and empirical level, will be given to the three explanatory frameworks explanatory IR has contributed to the study of ethnic conflict: the 'ethnic security dilemma', the 'ethnic alliance model', and, drawing on other disciplines, instrumentalist approaches. The deconstruction of these three frameworks will form the bulk of the theoretical section, and will subsequently be shown in the case study to be ontologically untenable or at least to fail to adequately explain the complex dynamics of ethnic identity formation in ethnic conflict. By making these essentialist presumptions, motives, and practices explicit this study makes a unique contribution not only to the immediate issues it addresses but also to the wider debate on the nature of IR as a discipline. As a final point, drawing on constitutive theory and by conceiving of the behaviour and motives of protagonists of ethnic conflict as expressions of a fluid, open-ended, and situational matrix of identities and interests without sequential hierarchies of dependent and independent variables, the study attempts to offer an alternative, constitutive reading of ethnic and nationalist identity to the discourses of explanatory IR. These themes that are further developed in the empirical section where, explanatory IRA's narratives of ethnic group solidarity, ethno-nationalism, and national self-determination are examined and deconstructed by way of the case study of the relations between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Iraqi Kurdish ethno-nationalist parties in the wider context of the political status of the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq. With this ambition this study makes an original empirical contribution by scrutinising these relations in a depth unique to the literature.

Outdoor air pollution is increasingly considered as a serious risk factor for cardiovascular diseases (CVD). High levels of airborne particulate matter (PM) constitute the greatest international air pollution threat. The purpose of this thesis is to broaden our knowledge regarding the relationship between outdoor air pollution and cardiovascular diseases in the Middle Eastern countries, specifically in Lebanon. Moreover, we aimed to develop a scale as CVD screening tool among the Lebanese population. To achieve these goals, we conducted three studies. The first was a systematic review of the literature aiming to assess levels and sources of PM across the Middle East area and to search for an evidence of relationship between PM exposure and CVD (Paper I).The second manuscript was a multicenter case-control study investigating the association between outdoor pollutants and cardiovascular diseases among Lebanese adults (Paper II) while the third study was conducted to develop a score that can be used as a screening tool in clinical and epidemiological settings among the Lebanese adults (Paper III).The annual average values of PM pollutants in the Middle East region are considered to be much higher than the WHO 2006 tolerated levels (PM2.5 = 10 µg/m3, PM10 = 20 µg/m3). We uncovered evidence of an association between PM and CVD in 4 Middle East countries: Iran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Ambient PM pollution is considered a potential risk factor for platelet activation and atherosclerosis. Moreover, it was associated with CVD and found to be linked with an increased risk for mortality and hospital admissions (Paper I). Increased risk of CVD with an odds ratio OR of 5.04, 95% CI (4.44-12.85) for living near busy highway and 4.76, 95% CI (2.07-10.91) for living close to local diesel generator was noticed among population exposed to outdoor air pollution (Paper II). In addition, our results highlight the importance of scale generation, which includes air pollution as predictive factor, as screening tool for patients at risk of CVD. This scale can foresee the cardiovascular disease outcomes better than the established score which use the traditional CVD risk factors (Paper III).In conclusion this study brings new evidence regarding the effects of particulate matter on cardiac diseases, points out the harmful role of diesel exhaust on health and suggest a an important role of traffic exhaust particles in exacerbating heart diseases in the Middle East Region. The developed scale could detect persons at high risk for CVD in the clinical and epidemiological settings. In addition, it serves as an essential public health screening tool for the primary prevention of CVD. / Doctorat en Santé Publique / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Outdoor air pollution is increasingly considered as a serious risk factor for cardiovascular diseases (CVD). High levels of airborne particulate matter (PM) constitute the greatest international air pollution threat. The purpose of this thesis is to broaden our knowledge regarding the relationship between outdoor air pollution and cardiovascular diseases in the Middle Eastern countries, specifically in Lebanon. Moreover, we aimed to develop a scale as CVD screening tool among the Lebanese population. To achieve these goals, we conducted three studies. The first was a systematic review of the literature aiming to assess levels and sources of PM across the Middle East area and to search for an evidence of relationship between PM exposure and CVD (Paper I).The second manuscript was a multicenter case-control study investigating the association between outdoor pollutants and cardiovascular diseases among Lebanese adults (Paper II) while the third study was conducted to develop a score that can be used as a screening tool in clinical and epidemiological settings among the Lebanese adults (Paper III).The annual average values of PM pollutants in the Middle East region are considered to be much higher than the WHO 2006 tolerated levels (PM2.5 = 10 µg/m3, PM10 = 20 µg/m3). We uncovered evidence of an association between PM and CVD in 4 Middle East countries: Iran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Ambient PM pollution is considered a potential risk factor for platelet activation and atherosclerosis. Moreover, it was associated with CVD and found to be linked with an increased risk for mortality and hospital admissions (Paper I). Increased risk of CVD with an odds ratio OR of 5.04, 95% CI (4.44-12.85) for living near busy highway and 4.76, 95% CI (2.07-10.91) for living close to local diesel generator was noticed among population exposed to outdoor air pollution (Paper II). In addition, our results highlight the importance of scale generation, which includes air pollution as predictive factor, as screening tool for patients at risk of CVD. This scale can foresee the cardiovascular disease outcomes better than the established score which use the traditional CVD risk factors (Paper III).In conclusion this study brings new evidence regarding the effects of particulate matter on cardiac diseases, points out the harmful role of diesel exhaust on health and suggest a an important role of traffic exhaust particles in exacerbating heart diseases in the Middle East Region. The developed scale could detect persons at high risk for CVD in the clinical and epidemiological settings. In addition, it serves as an essential public health screening tool for the primary prevention of CVD. / Doctorat en Santé Publique / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This essay consists of a case study of Tunisian democratization process which came along the events of the Arab spring in 2010-11. The aim of the research is to understand why Tunisia took a distinctive path during the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa in 2010-11. The case study is within the theoretical framework of traditional democratization literature. These theories are modernization theory, historical sociology and the agency approach. Using the methodological approach of qualitative content analysis, I have analyzed academic articles and come to the conclusion that seven factors played a crucial role for democracy in Tunisia: (1) increased level of education, (2) increased level of information, (3) existing formal and informal organizations in the civil society, (4) transnational power structure, (5) the size of coercive apparatus, (6) compromises among political actors and (7) existing political community. I argue that both the structure of the civil society and the political foundation in Tunisia played a vital role for the distinctive path it took towards democracy.

The diploma thesis surveys the current legal regulation of state citizenship in the Czech Republic in relation to selected states of the Middle East. The thesis contains descriptions and analysis of the legal regulation in force regarding the state citizenship in the Czech Republic, the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; it also describes the complicated legal situation in the Palestinian territories. In the part focused on the Middle East, the thesis deals with three fundamentally different yet comparable, historically and politically interconnected, state formations - Jewish parliamentary republic, Arab Muslim constitutional monarchy and a state formation sui generis. Besides the introduction and the conclusion, the diploma thesis consists of five chapters. The first four chapters successively deal with the Czech Republic, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, whereas the fifth one compares them. The chapters dedicated to the Czech Republic, Israel and Jordan focus on the study of acquisition and loss of citizenship in the said state, characteristic of citizenship, multiple citizenships and development of relevant legal regulation. In the cases of Israel and Jordan, the thesis also addresses legal history of the relevant state, selected particularities of its public...

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This dissertation assesses the historical engagement of Canadian state and society with the Palestine problem. Canada’s contemporary position on the pro-Israel edge of the spectrum of world politics raises questions about long-term patterns of change and continuity in Canadian politics concerning the Middle East. Liberal patriotic historical narration of Canadian foreign policy conventionally invokes what Lester B. Pearson referred to as ‘the broad and active internationalism’ with which Canadian officials approached the world in the years after World War II. Moderate voices within the contemporary Canadian mainstream typically counterpose this history to a narrow support for Israel that pits Canada against a majority of the world community. This dissertation argues that contemporary political opposition in Canada needs to find other historical precedents to build upon. The established liberal internationalist framing obscures the formative influence upon Canadian foreign policy of a racialized politics of empire. The development of Canadian politics within the framework of the British Empire, and the domestic structures of racial power that formally endured into the twentieth century, need to be taken into account if the historical evolution of Canadian external affairs policy on Palestine – as more generally – is to be understood. Historical and political analysis structured around the assertion of national innocence undercuts the kind of understanding of the past that can inform constructive engagement with the problems of the present. As against the pervasive theme of fair-minded Canadian innocence, this dissertation finds that the implication of both the Canadian government and Canadian civil society in the denial of Palestinian rights has deep historical roots. It is critical to look not only at the scope of internationalist tendencies within Canadian political history, but also at their exclusionist boundaries. In so doing, this study positions Canada within wider Western structures of support for Israel against Palestinian and neighbouring Arab societies.

This thesis examines variation within the microlith industries of the Later Stone Age (LSA) of Northwest Africa, around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) until the onset of the Holocene, between ∼25 - 11.5 ka. The traditionally held view is that whilst there is variation amongst the lithic assemblages, this can all be accommodated by a single definable industry, known as the Iberomaurusian. This thesis indicates an alternative scenario. Based on the typo-technological analysis of 16,689 lithic artefacts recovered from recent excavations at the site of Grotte des Pigeons (Taforalt, Morocco) and the re-analysis of published data using the multivariate statistical approach of correspondence analysis (CA), this thesis shows that there was much greater variation than previously proposed within the Pleistocene LSA. This thesis indicates that the LSA industries can be sub-divided into four chronologically distinct variants, an Initial LSA time-coincident with the first appearance of microlithic technology from ∼25 ka and lasting up until Heinrich event 2, a succeeding Early LSA at ∼22 ka that continued until Heinrich event 1, a Middle LSA marking a shift in technologies around this event at ∼16 ka, and an Upper LSA occurring with the climatic amelioration of the Bølling-Allørod at ∼14.5 ka. The proposed chronological model provides a new framework for categorising variation within the LSA, which is a necessary pre-requisite for potential future research addressing wider anthropological and archaeological issues, such as reasons for shifts in subsistence and settlement.