The nation-state has for a long time appeared to have eluded the attempts of scholars to encapsulate its essence in theory. Rather than propose another attempt at encapsulation, this dissertation represents a form of geographical supplementation to these efforts. As a work of geography it focuses on the negotiation of nation-states, and, in doing so, traces a double displacement of encapsulation. Primarily, the four major studies comprising the dissertation represent geographical research which, using a wide range of archival and contemporary media material, makes manifest the irreducible complexity of the negotiations in, over and between nation-states at the end of the twentieth century. Focused on Canada and the USA, these studies trace how a diversity of cultural as well as political-economic processes come together in the inherently geographical negotiations of First Nations struggles, Canadian constitutional politics, continental free trade developments, and American patriotism. These are negotiations where no one process fully encapsulates an explanation of the events and where their collective but contested territorialization calls out for an open-ended and anti-essentialist analysis. Secondarily, while the dissertation's first and more central work of displacement is enabled by poststructuralist critiques of essentialist explanation, its other displacing effect comes in the form of a geographical deconstruction of so-called poststructuralist theory itself. This represents an attempt to turn the elusive nature of the nation-state vis-a-vis theory into a living and politicized site for investigating the limits of poststructuralist theorizing. Overall, the geographical investigations of the dissertation illustrate the value of anti-essentialist arguments for furthering geographical research into the nation-state while simultaneously calling these epistemological innovations into geographical question. Using such questioning to critique the limited geographical representation of the nationstate, it is concluded that geographers cannot not persistently examine such limits.

This thesis presents a history of the concept of the state as a political community. Beginning with the early-nineteenth century and using debates about state formation and state recognition as its source material, it uses the language of English-speaking policy makers and political commentators to explore understandings of statehood across different time periods. The thesis argues that the meaning and connotations of the state have changed significantly in the past two hundred years, as it has become more salient in images of world politics. In particular, the state has evolved to incorporate the idea of the 'nation,' such that when governments act they are perceived to have their populations 'in tow.' These conceptual changes are surprisingly recent, solidified particularly since the Second World War. Four broad themes structure the argument in each chapter. First, the historical 'nation' has become an increasingly dominant way of conceptualising the populations of states. Second, the state has come to be construed as the inevitable unit of world politics, corroborated by the assumption that each one arises out of a pre-existing 'nation.' Third, the state has increasingly been perceived as a unitary actor with its own consciousness, separate from 'government.' Finally, the state with its nationalist implications, has come to define the dynamics of international politics, a means of simplifying an ever more complex world. The thesis roots contemporary (English language) understandings of the state in a particular historical and political context, defined by the contestation between 'American' and 'British' worldviews, the triumph of liberal internationalism and the multiple interests at stake in the image of the state as a nation. The thesis thus exposes the intensely political nature of language and the complacency of International Relations with regard to its own use of words and conventional narratives.

Thesis (M.S. in Defense Analysis)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2010. / Thesis Advisor: Lee, Doowan. ; Second Reader: Berger, Marcos. "June 2010." Description based on title screen as viewed on July 16, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: Terrorist networks, organized crime, illicit activities, money laundering, financial crimes, nation-state, exploit, infrastructures. Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-50). Also available in print.

This paper examines a series of emerging utopian discourses that call for the creation of autonomous libertarian enclaves on land ceded by or claimed against existing states. These discourses have emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and can be seen as a response to the crisis on the part of freemarket advocates who critique previous waves of neoliberal reform for failing to radically transform the existing structures of the state. Enclave libertarianism seeks to overcome neoliberal capitalism's contradictory relationship to the liberal democratic state by rethinking the state as a "private government service provider" and rethinking citizens as mobile consumers of government services. Citizens are thus called to "vote with their feet" by opting-in to the jurisdiction that best fits their needs and beliefs. The paper argues that these utopian imaginaries are key to understanding specific new manifestations of post-crisis neoliberalism, and calls for more research into the diversity of discourses and imaginaries that circulate through networks of neoliberal actors beyond specific policy initiatives.

The nation-state has for a long time appeared to have eluded the attempts of scholars to encapsulate its essence in theory. Rather than propose another attempt at encapsulation, this dissertation represents a form of geographical supplementation to these efforts. As a work of geography it focuses on the negotiation of nation-states, and, in doing so, traces a double displacement of encapsulation. Primarily, the four major studies comprising the dissertation represent geographical research which, using a wide range of archival and contemporary media material, makes manifest the irreducible complexity of the negotiations in, over and between nation-states at the end of the twentieth century. Focused on Canada and the USA, these studies trace how a diversity of cultural as well as political-economic processes come together in the inherently geographical negotiations of First Nations struggles, Canadian constitutional politics, continental free trade developments, and American patriotism. These are negotiations where no one process fully encapsulates an explanation of the events and where their collective but contested territorialization calls out for an open-ended and anti-essentialist analysis. Secondarily, while the dissertation's first and more central work of displacement is enabled by poststructuralist critiques of essentialist explanation, its other displacing effect comes in the form of a geographical deconstruction of so-called poststructuralist theory itself. This represents an attempt to turn the elusive nature of the nation-state vis-a-vis theory into a living and politicized site for investigating the limits of poststructuralist theorizing. Overall, the geographical investigations of the dissertation illustrate the value of anti-essentialist arguments for furthering geographical research into the nation-state while simultaneously calling these epistemological innovations into geographical question. Using such questioning to critique the limited geographical representation of the nationstate, it is concluded that geographers cannot not persistently examine such limits. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

Essän gör anspråk på att separera språk och idén om nationalstaten genom min konstnärliga praktik. Texten öppnar genom att betraktaren/läsaren befinner sig i en hiss på väg till en bostadslägenhet vars brevinkast det står Vad vore språk om det uppstod här? på. Genom text, ljud och rumsliga installationer i lägenheten hamnar betraktaren mitt i frågan och gestaltningen av språk som en specifik erfarenhet. Ett antal nedslag görs för att ringa in den specifika erfarenheten med hänvisningar till modersmålsundervisning, skam för utebliven språkkunskap och kroppsliga erfarenheter av att störa nationalstaters narrativ. Sedan kopplar och begripliggör texten den specifika erfarenheten genom nedslag i strukturella företeelser som har varit med och skapat förutsättningarna för det specifika språket. De är t.ex. hur nationalstater använt sig av arkeologi för att skapa en linjär berättelse som något befästande av en slags sann gemensam nationell historia. En problembild beskrivs där nationalstaten har ägandeskap av språk trotts att språkets uppkomst är mer komplext än så. Problembilden bemöts av andra fält som arbetat på liknande sätt, t.ex. inom språkforskning och pedagogik. Den egna konstnärliga praktiken presenteras därefter som redskap för att fånga komplexiteten i språkets tillblivelse med verktyg som bl.a. poesin, översättning och gemensamt kunskapande. Essän avslutas med följande resonemang: När vi talar om språk som egendom tillhörande en nationalstat försvinner nyanser som lägger sig i tiden och i kroppen. Det här är en diskurs som förs på det konstnärliga fältet, men den kommer ifrån barnet, från kampen om gränser förd av människor som känner gränser våldsamt varje dag. Den kommer ifrån konstaterandet att vi lever i en kolonial samtid, så vad gör vi nu? / The essay intends to describe the separation between language and the idea of ​​the nation state through my artistic practice. The opening of the text situates the viewer/reader in an elevator. They are on their way to a residential apartment. On the letterbox, it reads; what would language be if it arose here? Through text, sound and spatial installations in the apartment, the viewer ends up in the middle of the question and portrayal of language ​​as a specific experience. A number of events are explored to address the specific experiences of language by looking closer to mother tongue education, shame for lacking knowledge in a language and interfering and disturbing the nation state’s narratives through bodily and linguistic attributes.  The text connects and makes the specific experience comprehendible through looking into the impacts to large political initiatives that have contributed to and created the conditions of the specific language. Examples are nation-states usage of archaeology to create a linear narrative to point at origin as affirmation and upholding of a true common national history. The similarities of how this is done to language is explored in the text.  The nation state claims ownership of languages ​​and this is problematised by talking of language origin as something far more complex.  This problem is addressed by other fields as well. The essay mentions some, e.g. linguistics and pedagogy. My own artistic practice is then presented as a way to capture the complexity in the becoming of language by using tools such as poetry, translation and creating ways to practice common knowledge. The essay concludes by reasoning in the following way: When we talk about languages ​​as property belonging to a nation state, nuances that settles in time and body disappear. The discourse and this essay is carried out in the artistic field, but it comes from the child, from the struggle of people who experience borders violently every day. It comes from the ascertainment that the contemporary is colonial, so what do we do?

There are seventeen million people in the world who are stateless, not considered as citizens by any state. They suffer due to the current function of citizenship in the nation-state system, occupying a legal space outside of the system, yet, their lives are very much blighted by the system itself. This research examines the possibility that global citizenship could be a means to address statelessness. Global citizenship, unlike (national) citizenship, is, in theory, inclusive, and membership is based on our shared humanity. However, when approaching the global citizenship literature, two concerns became apparent. First, there is a significant lack of theorisation on the stateless in the discourse, and second, some scholars make the assumption that a global citizen has citizenship of a state – which the stateless do not. To begin to overcome these concerns, this research develops and implements a stateless centric perspective on global citizenship, using it to analyse the situation of the stateless in the case of Lebanon. The stateless centric approach developed here, views global citizenship through the actions and perspectives of those addressing statelessness. With four large and protracted stateless populations, Lebanon provides an empirically rich context, within which to undertake this research. The findings of the stateless centric perspective problematise the received wisdom of citizenship, the nation-state and allows for the exploration of the expressions and tensions in the practices of global citizenship. Drawing on a contextualised understanding of these practices, a ‘patchwork’ approach to global citizenship is proposed. This sees the creation of a public political space as an act of global citizenship, when it draws on universal principles. These universal principles are used to justify this space, taking on an instrumental role. It is a patchwork as these spaces can be seen in the wider global context, as either directly or indirectly connected, through their shared use of universal principles. By centralising the stateless in our conceptualisations of the nation-state, citizenship and global citizenship, the value of taking a stateless centric perspective, and its ability to draw out further nuances in the debate, is shown.

No description available.

This thesis employs an approach of discourse analysis on male homosexuality in postwar Japan from the viewpoint of the tense relations between Japanese cultural nationalism and the globalisation/Westernisation, along with the shifts of discourses of sexuality in the United States and the UK. Through analysing the discourses of sexuality in post-war Japan, I will theoretically indicate the historical and political relationship between problems of gender and sexuality, and national problems such as national identity between Japanese and Western cultures, ideal image of the nation, and its modern development. Firstly, I argue the works of Mishima Yukio (1925-1970), who is one of the representative writers in post-war Japan, especially famous for his gaythemed works and far-right political activism including his attempt of coup d'état. Then, I explore the political dynamics of gay shame in Japan, focusing on Togo Ken (1932-2012), a pioneer of Japanese gay activism who had challenged national elections since 1971 as an openly homosexual candidate. Next, I discuss how the AIDS crisis has changed the discourses of sexuality and the sense of national and cultural borders in Japan. I then discuss the Japanese homonormativity in the 2000s, analogous to Lisa Duggan's new homonormativity in the US context. Finally, I analyse Japanese ‘LGBT' political phenomena under the transnational influence of the Obama administration's LGBT-friendly policy in the contemporary Japan, and point out problems under the influences of ‘global' LGBT activism in contemporary Japanese society.

This thesis traces the emergence of the Zionist political movement from the mid nineteenth century until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The thesis explores the impetus behind the mainstream political movement which led to the establishment of the State, throwing light on the kaleidoscope of spiritual and political Zionisms. However, the ultimate focus is on the statist form of Zionist ideology which marginalised other forms of Zionism rendering them historical curiosities devoid of meaningful political impact. I analyse the texts of some prominent Zionist ideologues through the theoretical framework of nationalist, colonial and post-colonial theories forging the concept of colonial nationalism to interpret and analyse Zionism. I limit my work to Zionist political texts and their anchor in the surrounding milieu of European nationalism and colonialism in the 19th century. The chapters deal with different trends within the then emergent movement from spiritual Zionism and the religious justification of political Zionism through liberal and bi-national Zionisms. Each chapter engages with Zionist political thought offering textual analysis and historical contextualisation of the major forms of the movement. I argue that at its inception, Zionism was anchored in European ethno-nationalism and colonialism and a modern and highly contingent interpretation of the Hebrew biblical traditions. As such it is rendered a reactionary and regressive form of ethno-nationalist colonialism that, as an ideology in the contemporary world, it can only survive when it is premised on ideas of cultural supremacy. Thus post-Zionism with its espousal of a multiplicity of narratives and valorisation of minority rights is, rather than forging a new de-territorialized identity, a return to a model of diasporic Jewish identity where a common cultural heritage is disparate from citizenship and nationality.