Mildred Lewis Rutherford, as one of the most prominent members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, has been scantly researched in the past, however her speeches and writing had a profound impact on southern historical consciousness during the New South Period. Her influence, interestingly, was not entirely based in reality. A poststructural analysis of her speeches reveals that she strategically fabricated and excluded information in order to create a specific memory of the past in the minds of southerners. Rutherford had difficulty discerning whether or not the economic benefits of industrialization outweighed the accompanying social consequences. Yet, she used the power of text in an attempt to recreate the Old South social structure based on a racial hierarchy that was bound to be defeated by the rising tide of indu-strialization.

This thesis considers the social, economic and ideological climate in the German Democratic Republic in the last decade of its existence (the 1980s) when excessive labor demands lead the country to import tens of thousands of “contract workers” from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Focusing primarily on theoretical contradictions in GDR socialism, and their impact on the day to day lives Vietnamese workers, I will argue that ideologically freighted pronouncements of “socialist fraternity” with Vietnam functioned to obscure the true, economic reasons for labor importation.

The aim of this study is to increase the understanding of the causes of the first war between Russia and Chechnya. Empirical data consists of four half-structured interviews with former Russian and Chechen war participants that tell about their perspective of the causes of the war between Russia and Chechnya. The study used narrative method and the theoretical framework consists of International Relations theories such as Realism, Geopolitics, Liberalism and Marxism. Geopolitics sees the geostrategic interest, territory as a cause of war. According to realism warfare occurs because of the state’s endeavor after power and influence in term of territory. Liberalism sees political actors and misconceptions between the actors as a main reason behind war. According to Marxism war occurs because of differences between the classes. The capitalists’ volition to control means of production leads to war.   The result of the analysis concludes that theories explanations of war are found in war participants’ narrative about the war.  Chechen participants are more or less agree that geopolitical interests are largely the basis for war. The Russian participants, however, agree that the economic interests and political actors are the basis for war. Thus there is clear difference between the Russian and the Chechen war participants’ ways of looking at the causes of war.

This thesis mainly deals with the issue that if the policies of women&#039 / s emancipation implemented in Stalinist Central Asia were constructed on the basis of Marxist ideology. For this purpose, after how the issue of women

The embryo of higher education starts from medieval era. Along with the Renaissance, and Enlightenment, the domain knowledge in higher education comprises theology, philosophy and science. It is the most distinguish character in contemporary capitalism States that science and technology gradually becomes the leading productivity engine. The core competence of science and technology exists in the research and development (R&D) capability. Once the higher education involves in the development of science and technology, the State naturally regards it as one of key production elements. This essay is based on the theory of production relationship, studying the interaction between economy (infrastructure) and ideology (politics and education), and taking the evolution of higher education in Post-war Taiwan as an example. Here we called higher education in Taiwan in the period of 1954 to 1980 as Dominant State Apparatus. During this period the State practiced nationalism through elite politics and technocratic. In 50s and 60s, the State emphasized the political stability, so the ideology was one of the standards for selecting freshmen into higher education. In 60s to 80s, leaded by Council for Economic Planning and Development, the State adjusted the rate of higher education attainment and adjusted the proportion of different colleges/ departments in higher education according to the rational economic value. A report of manpower development by Council for Economic Planning and Development is encouraging a steady rise in the area of science, medicine, agriculture, and engineering, so called natural science in higher education. And the neglect of social science, Liberal Arts is resulted. From 80s, the higher education in Taiwan remains instrumentality, which is called Latent State Apparatus here. The higher education follows the State¡¦s strategic industry and technology policy accordingly. The State enforces higher education to develop some particular research areas by giving subsidiary. In this knowledge-based economy era, knowledge commercialized and education industrialized is going to be main trends. It is predictable that higher education would allocate its major resources in research areas, which can yield most economic value. At that moment, Higher Education would become not only the State Apparatus, but also Market Apparatus.

This dissertation traces the post-Marxist and materialist positions of two leading contemporary European thinkers: Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou. These thinkers, I argue, collectively offer a way between the traditional Hegelian Marxist's overarching meta-narrative of a necessary evolution from worse to better, and the post-modern pessimism of a lack of possibility for such a social evolution. It is this middle path, offered by these two thinkers, that this dissertation seeks to explore and further explain. The focal point of this dissertation is the type of philosophical materialism that is collectively offered by Badiou and Zizek, what I call the "New Materialism." I first explain the origins of this materialist position as it emerges in the thought of Louis Althusser, then I discuss how Badiou and Zizek, each in their own way, seek to correct the remaining problems that exist for the Althusserian position, while refusing to reject its core materialist insights. Finally, I assess the ways in which both Badiou and Zizek attempt to overcome the Althusserian problems, arguing that ultimately Zizek's corrective succeeds in remaining within the materialist paradigm laid out by Althusser, whereas Badiou's method brings him dangerously close to a kind of philosophical idealism that he wishes to avoid.

Mild psychological effects, such as sleep-deprivation, on an oppressed and tortured human being can be characterized as “normal”. However, Shame by Salman Rushdie uses magical realist style to describe the psychological effects of shame in a patriarchal society which is based on capitalistic class values. This essay will focus on the Marxist feminist reading of the novel with a psychoanalytical perspective which is going to help analyse the effects of the oppressed female characters, Bilquis Hyder, Sufiya Zinobia and Rani Harappa.  The essay focuses on different incidents in the lives of these characters with the help of critics such as Aijaz Ahmad and Timothy Brennan. Both have written critically about Rushdie. This essay will discuss the different aspects of Marxism, feminism as well as psychoanalysis and connecting them to the novel, which would give the answers as to what shame can do to a person’s psyche. The Beauty and the Beast fairy-tale gets a different perception in this story, as Sufiya Zinobia is both the characters in one.

This dissertation provides an analytical framework for understanding the left-indigenous cycle of extra-parliamentary insurrection in Bolivia between 2000 and 2005. It draws from Marxist and indigenous-liberationist theory to challenge the central presuppositions of liberal-institutionalist understandings of contemporary indigenous politics in Latin America, as well as the core tenets of mainstream social movement studies. The central argument is that a specific combination of elaborate infrastructures of class struggle and social-movement unionism, historical traditions of indigenous and working-class radicalism, combined oppositional consciousness, and fierce but insufficient state repression, explain the depth, breadth, and radical character of recent left-indigenous mobilizations in Bolivia. The coalition of insurrectionary social forces in the Gas Wars of 2003 and 2005 was led by indigenous informal workers, acting in concert with formal workers, peasants, and to a smaller degree, middle-class actors. The indigenous informal working classes of the city of El Alto, in particular, utilized an elaborate infrastructure of class struggle in order to overcome structural barriers to collective action and to take up their leading role. The supportive part played by the formal working class was made possible by the political orientation toward social-movement unionism adopted by leading trade-union federations. Radicalized peasants mobilized within the broader alliance through their own rural infrastructure of class struggle. The whole array of worker and peasant social forces drew on longstanding popular cultures of indigenous liberation and revolutionary Marxism which they adapted to the novel context of the twenty-first century. These popular cultures ultimately congealed in a new combined oppositional consciousness, rooted simultaneously in the politics of indigenous resistance and class struggle. This collective consciousness, in turn, strengthened the mobilizing capacities of the popular classes and reinforced the radical character of protest. At key junctures, social movement leaders were able to synthesize oppositional consciousness into a focused collective action frame of nationalizing the natural gas industry. Finally, throughout the left-indigenous cycle, ruthless state repression was nonetheless insufficiently powerful to wipe out opposition altogether and therefore acted only to intensify the scale of protests and radicalize demands still further. The legitimacy of the neoliberal social order and the coercive power required to reproduce it were increasingly called into question as violence against civilians increased.

By using contemorary work-theory this thesis aim to show how Yarden. En berättelse, puts into play the circumstances of precarian work, circumstances that have gender political as well as identity political overtones. It tries to show how the idea of ”class-jouney” is used as a conciliatory element. An element that, acitvitated increasingly towards the end of the text, is significant for the selfs posisiton in relationship to his class identity and the workers collective around him as well as other spheres. It is also significant in relationship to the work which is the writing, and to the product of that work, which is both Yarden and the litterary persona produced by Yarden. This is something that I try to trace to a conflict between class belonging and other identitory political projects that Yarden expresses. The reality which is produced by the text is not only a staging of a litterary persona and the following class-journey. In my thesis I try to show that it is also possible to read it in it self as something that gives us valuable insights on how reality is produced under the circumstances of precarity. Insights that in turn can show us both how the supression of labour is organised in contemporary late-capitalism, and what expressions resistance in turn might take.

This essay is a study of the portrayal of the theme of alienation in Eugene Ionesco's novel The hermit. In my study I examine the different ways in which the theme of alienation is portrayed and how the cause of the narrator's experience of alienation can be found in ideological, psychological and existential conflicts that the narrator has to face. The result is an experience of das unheimliche, a Freudian concept, which is a kind of uncanny detachment that the narrator experiences, when he is put up against an invisible force that lurks in the perifery of the world, which is portrayed in the story. The meaning of the ideological conflict is a portrayal of man's situation in a world that is ruled by capitalism, with marxism as a positive leveler and the meaning of the psychological conflict is a conflict in the narrator's own inner reality. The meaning of the existential conflict is a portrayal of man's situation in a world absent of God. The novel by Ionesco points at these conflicts and also offers a solution to the limitations, that are caused by alienation by transcending them. In my study I focus on the function of language, biblical imagery, allegory and the theories that are being used to define the ideological (marxist theory) and existential (Albert Camus' theory of the absurd) conflicts. In my analysis I have also used Camus' The stranger in comparison with Ionesco's novel.