The Va nationality, despite its small population compared to other nationalities in China, has preserved most of its traditions largely due to limits placed by historical circumstances and geographical isolation. To non-Chinese anthropologists, the Va people still remain unknown, as there is little or no information about them in English or other Western languages. One of the purposes of this study is to narrow this gap by presenting an ethnographic description of the Va, giving them a place in the world anthropological studies. Since the Va have retained their own cultural characteristics, their societal development has been rather slow. Part of the reason for this slow development is inherent in the basic nature of Va culture, and part of it lies in misguided administrative policies and programs. This study proposes ways to help the Va make progress toward development without destroying their culture and examines several possible ways of modifying or revamping government policy and programs directed toward the Va people. / Graduation date: 1992

The aim of this thesis is to study how public libraries can work to support and promote a national minority language. In the thesis Uppsala Library’s work with the Finnish language is reviewed from 2000 to present.  The data was collected through qualitative interviews with five key figures from Uppsala Library and the Uppsala municipality, visits in four local public libraries and the digital library during the spring 2019 and by examining the official documents of the municipality and information that the local public libraries have produced between 2000 and 2019. Uppsala Library’s work with the Finnish language is discussed in the thesis through themes of power, nationalism and identity processes and analyzed in terms of language revitalization. The findings show that during the first decade Uppsala treated the Finnish language as any other foreign language. It provided access to media in Finnish, but the Finnish language was not visible in the library policy or in the library’s information material and program activities in Finnish were few. A major change in Uppsala Library’s work with the Finnish language started in 2010 when the municipality joined the administrative area for the Finnish language. Since 2010 Uppsala Library has with special efforts supported and promoted the Finnish language. Finnish is used in the library’s information material and is visible in the municipality’s and the library’s documents. Uppsala Library offers many kinds of media in Finnish. The library has organized events where the Finnish language is used for children and adults. The events have also brought to light the Swedish Finns’ experiences and the historical connection the Finnish language has to Sweden. Information in Finnish in the physical and digital libraries, however, could be improved. The objective of the Swedish policy on minorities is to provide support for the historical minority languages so that they are kept alive. Uppsala Library’s work during the 2010s shows public libraries’ potential as a forum for minority politics and their importance in the work with minority language revitalization. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.

This thesis examines the central place of racial theories in the nationalist ideology of the Croatian Ustasha movement and regime, and how these theories functioned as the chief motive in shaping Ustasha policies toward the minorities of the Nazi-backed Independent State of Croatia (known by its Croatian initials as the NDH), namely, Serbs, Jews, Roma and Bosnian Muslims, during the years 1941 to 1945. This thesis is divided into three parts. The first part deals with historical background, concentrating on the history of Croatian national movements from the 1830s to the 1930s. The second part covers the period between the founding of the Ustasha movement in 1930 and the creation of the NDH in 1941. The third part examines the period of Ustasha power from 1941 to 1945. Through the above chronological division, this thesis traces the evolution of Ustasha ideas on nation and race, placing them within the historical context of processes of Croatian national integration. Although the Ustashe were brought to power by Nazi Germany, their ideology emerged less as an imitation of German National Socialism and more as an extremist reaction to the supranational and expansionist nationalist ideologies of Yugoslavism and Greater Serbianism. In contrast to the prevailing historiographical view that has either ignored or downplayed the significance of racial theori! es on Ustasha policies toward the minorities of the NDH, this thesis highlights the marked influence of the question of 'race' on Ustasha attitudes toward the 'problem' of minorities, and on the wider question of Croatian national identity. This thesis examines the Ustashe by focusing on the historical interplay between nationalism and racism, which dominated so much of the modern political life of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. The fusion of nationalism and racism was not unique to Ustasha ideology, but the evolution and nature of Ustasha racism was. Ustasha racial ideas were therefore the product of both specific Croatian and wider European historical trends. This examination of the historical intersection between nationalism and racism in the case of the Ustashe will, i hope, broaden our understanding of twentieth-century nation-state formation, and state treatment of minorities, in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.