Entre 1969 et 1979, les metteurs en scène lisboètes Luis Miguel Cintra et Jorge Silva Melo façonnent un répertoire qui est d’abord une réponse au contexte où s’inscrit leur action. Malgré des conditions matérielles contraignantes, leur compagnie parvient à proposer une programmation cohérente qui reflète l’évolution de la société portugaise : contournement de la censure (par les classiques) jusqu’en 1974, euphorie révolutionnaire entre 1974 et 1975 (Brecht, Gorki) puis, jusqu’à la fin des années soixante-dix, ouverture à l’Europe, à travers l’écriture dramatique allemande et française (Chartreux et Jourdheuil, Théâtre du Quotidien, Horváth, Büchner et Karl Valentin). Leur répertoire est surtout le fer de lance d’un projet novateur qui concilie l’engagement dans le monde, l’exigence artistique et le souci d’éduquer le spectateur. Il repose, dans la lignée du théâtre d’art, sur le renouvellement du répertoire et la mise en place d’une programmation dynamique. Il est, enfin, le miroir de leur œuvre théâtrale, reflétée à la fois dans les textes et le discorso (Strehler) qu’ils engendrent. Leur quête artistique s’articule autour de trois axes incessamment reformulés : la critique de la société, la représentation de la période révolutionnaire et un langage qui privilégie le détour et les croisements interculturels pour dire le monde. / From 1969 to 1979, Lisbon’s directors’ theater Luis Miguel Cintra and Jorge Silva Melo shape a repertory that, first of all, is a response to the context in which their action takes place. In spite of their binding material conditions, their theater group is able to put forward a coherent programming which reflects the evolution of Portuguese society: bypassing censorship with classic authors until 1974, revolutionary euphoria between 1974 and 1975 (Brecht, Gorki) then, until the late seventies, an opening to Europe, through German and French playwriting (Chartreux and Jourdheuil, Théâtre du Quotidien, Horváth, Büchner and Karl Valentin). Their repertory combines engagement in the world, artistic exigency and the desire to educate the spectator. Just like Théâtre d’art, it is based on the renewal of repertory and on a dynamic programming. It is also the mirror of their theatrical work, reflected both in the texts chosen and in th! eir discorso (Strehler). Their artistic quest revolves three constantly reformulated aspects: criticism of society, representation of the revolutionary period and a language that emphasizes the detour and intercultural crosses to say the world.

The Czech opera production of the so called "Pre-Smetanian" era represents a topic quite neglected by music historians. It is therefore the goal of this master's thesis to repay this debt by showing Kittl's opera, Bianca und Giuseppe oder Die Franzosen vor Nizza, (the libretto, written by Richard Wagner, based on the novel, Die hohe Braut, by Heinrich König) as a work of art which illustrates the high quality of the Prague opera scene in the mid-1800s. The core of this thesis consists of a dramaturgical analysis of the final form of the mentioned opera. This analysis advances in three steps. 1. The main idea of König's novel and its aesthetic are presented in the light of his life. 2. The following chapter concerns Wagner's libretto. Apart from showing the differences between the novel- and opera aesthetics, the emphasis is on the dramaturgical means which Wagner employs: various usage of the couleur locale, ensemble of the pezzo concertato type, working with specific time structures in the opera or allegorical usage of the so called - as Frenchmen say - spectacle d'optique. 3. The next chapter strives to assess the extent to which Kittl succeeded in expressing Wagner's intentions or, in another words, the extent to which Wagners's "poetic intention" (dichterische Absicht) came true in Kittls's music....

This thesis examines the nature of mass factionalism and rebellious alignment during the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1968. This period in Chinese history presents an internecine mass conflict that boasts the largest political upheavals of the 20th century. The most puzzling question of the explosion of this intense rebellious rivalry lies in the mechanisms and processes of insurgents’ political choices: Why did people join and affiliate with different insurgent groups? What decision did people make and what were their reasons? In conventional social structural analyses of contentious politics, mass actors’ decisions are affected by functionally differentiated interests inherent in their pre-existing social positions. This model defines mass rebellion and factional alignment as a form of interest group politics, attributing political choices to participants’ pre-existing sociopolitical status quo and thus pits different social groups against one another. As a result, similar occupational and status groups in the previous hierarchical structure would make similar political choices that lead them to form well-defined competing factions. In contrast to this static structural interpretation, I propose a contextual process model to analyze processes of political division and factional contention within political movements. With a case study of Guangzhou, I argue that rebellious alignment was rooted in their political interactions in a rapidly evolving phase of the conflict, rather than rising from the tensions that existed between different socio-economic layers of society. During the times of radical instability such as the Chinese Cultural Revolution, political ambiguity and contingency were the defining characteristics. In such unstable political environment, the basic elements of the movement changed so many times: each phase of the rebel movement projected itself by means of different actors, agendas, targets, and so on. Consequently, individual rebels observed their embedded local political environment, interpreted it, and subsequently chose a course of action in a dynamic process. In this regard, mass actors from identical social strata in the previous hierarchical structure would make different political choices and tactically choose their factional camp.

This thesis examines the relationship between work and identity amongst letterpress printers in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. It probes the sources of work-based identity and considers efforts to maintain, and even manipulate, a distinctive sense of trade belonging. The effect of work on other interrelated personal and social identities is also examined. In contrast to other histories of work, particularly class-based studies, all levels of the trade are scrutinized, from apprentices through journeymen to masters and proprietors. Differences in the experience of work between these varying members of the trade are analysed, together with their effect on working relationships. The first part of this thesis follows the hierarchy of the trade with chapters on apprentices, journeymen and masters. Apprentice printers endured increasingly exploitative conditions and came from more diverse social backgrounds than was commonly assumed. Journeymen took pride in the history of their trade, and had a strong tradition of fraternity, but their sense of identity was increasingly threatened by rising unemployment levels. Meanwhile, masters were less likely to have been brought up to the trade, and had few formal or informal trade associations. The second part of the thesis looks at how work-based identities intersected with familial, political, and socio-economic identities. Family relationships were crucial to the success of many printing businesses with intergenerational transfer being unusually prevalent compared with other trades. Political discussion played an important role in the formation of printers’ collective identity, particularly where campaigns for freedom of the press were concerned. Finally, social mobility became increasingly divergent among printers in the early industrial period. The changes highlighted in this thesis had a profound effect on working relationships. A new generation of master printers was distant from the physical process of work and at times dismissive of the culture and customs of the workplace. This led to tension and conflict with journeymen over issues such as apprentice numbers. But there were also many stabilizing influences, such as the strength of journeymen’s fraternity, or a shared belief in the history and social significance of the press. By uncovering these complexities, even within a single trade, this thesis argues that occupation is a poor basis on which to base socio-economic classifications. Furthermore, the specific characteristics of occupational communities were in themselves strong contributors to personal and social identity, influencing working relationships, as well as the way in which people interacted with wider society.

This paper has two purposes. The first one is to explain the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia by analyzing four cases which has brought about and consolidated their power struggle. This gives the reader a historic background of the two countries relations, underlying reasons for their rivalry and a greater picture of their interests in the Middle East. It also leads up to the second purpose, which is to in depth examine Iran and Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy in Yemen, the latest conflict between the two countries. The papers research design is a qualitative case study with realism as its theoretical framework. The paper concludes that the Iranian revolution set off the rivalry due to Iran’s willingness to export its revolution and its Shia ideology to neighboring countries in the region. Saudi Arabia’s support to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War helped contain Iran’s hegemonic ambitions and made Saudi Arabia the most dominant power in the Middle East. In Syria, Iran has a lot at stake if the regime falls, which is why Saudi Arabia is trying to topple Bashar Al-Assad. The execution of Nimr al-Nimr further deteriorated tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. in Yemen, Iran seeks to expand its power to the Arabian Peninsula, whereas Saudi Arabia seeks to push out Iranian influence and regain its dominance.

Although secularization has early antecedents in Mexico's history, the generation who embodied the Constitutionalist faction of the 1910 Revolution undertook an unprecedented campaign to achieve it. Strong anticlerical provisions proclaimed in the 1917 Constitution were implemented and gradually escalated in intensity by the administrations of Presidents Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elias Calles. This ignited an armed uprising known as the Cristero Rebellion that arose in rural Mexico in 1926. Beyond the armed conflict, this dissertation analyzes the cultural effects caused by the implementation of such a legal and institutional agenda that reveal a substantial confrontation in the public sphere between two opposed concepts of society-religious and non-religious. As a result, society became highly polarized while the government pushed its secularization aims to the extreme as never before. New laws intervened more intensely on private rights, transforming people's everyday ideas about religion, nation, law, justice and citizenship. By looking at citizens' experiences with such law enforcement, this work elucidates how the state finally neutralized radical Catholicism by stigmatizing it as non-patriotic in the public sphere. This phenomenon that happened between 1917 and 1929 can be conceptualized as the secularization of patriotism and the transformation of people's notions of the legal system- defined as the legal popular culture- that was central to Mexico's social and cultural Revolution.

La transgression discursive que constitue le street art peut s’exprimer dans divers espaces. Si les œuvres apparaissent tout d’abord dans la rue, leurs reprises sur les réseaux socionumériques leur octroient de nouvelles spatialité et temporalité ; elles sont alors non seulement inscrites dans la durée, mais également intégrées dans un nouvel « effet de sens ». Passant d’un mur urbain à un mur socionumérique, cet acte subversif engage à la constitution d’une communauté autour d’une thématique ou un centre d’intérêt plus ou moins politisé. L’Egypte voit le street art soudainement apparaître dans ses rues et se répandre comme une traînée de poudre sur les réseaux socionumériques dès le soulèvement insurrectionnel de janvier-février 2011. A partir de ce constat, il s’agit d’étudier la contribution de la médiation socionumérique du street art, prise en charge par des communautés activistes, à un agir des collectifs politiques. Ce travail de thèse a pour principal objectif de vérifier dans quelle mesure ces collectifs s’instituent en un public politique revendiquant la chute d’un régime ainsi que la mise en place d’un pouvoir civil et démocratique. Une approche pragmatiste, associant une « théorie de l’action » deweyienne à une sémiotique peircienne, est mise à l’œuvre afin d’observer les actions d’un public. Celles-ci sont suscitées par des dispositifs médiatiques, dont les auteurs insèrent dans leur discours des images street artivistes, générant des récits mythographiques victimaires et martyrologiques. / The discursive transgression of street art can be expressed in various spaces. In the street for a first appearance, but the coverings on the social networks give new spatiality and temporality to a work, they now inscribe it in duration as well as in a new "effect of meaning". Moving from an urban wall to a sociodigital wall, subversion commits to the constitution of a community around a thematic or a more or less politicized center of interest. Egypt in 2010 sees street art suddenly appearing in its streets and spreading like wildfire on the sociodigital networks from the insurrectional uprising of January-February 2011.From this observation, it will be necessary to study the contribution of the social media mediation of street art, taken over by activist communities, to incite political collectives to an action. This work of thesis will try to verify to what extent these collectives are instituted in a political public demanding the fall of a political regime as well as the establishment of a civil and democratic power. A pragmatist approach will combine a deweyian "theory of action" with a Peircian semiotics in order to observe the actions of a political public. These are aroused by media devices, which include street artivist images in their speeches, generating victimary and martyrological mythographic narratives.

The thesis is about what the buildings at manor estates, vicarages and farms looked like and how they changed during the agrarian revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. Through new clearings, mechanisation, land partition, and increased work distribution and specialisation, production increased vigorously during the period, which generally caused an increase in prosperity and lay the foundation for the subsequent industrial revolution. The aim was to study how houses and outbuildings were affected by changes in agriculture, household composition and work organisation, an area which to date has been relatively unexplored. The study, which was based on conditions in Lagunda, a flat-country town in central Sweden, shows that there has been both change and continuity in building developments. The buildings became increasingly larger as arable land acreage and livestock numbers increased, and they were also gradually rendered more efficient to facilitate production. The increase in profit led in turn to an increase in the standard of living and both houses and outbuildings were increasingly lavishly built. However the increasingly larger and better buildings were not only a product of improved economy but also a response to the increasing need for manifestation felt by the manor owners, clergymen and farmers whereby they could clearly mark their positions in relation to each other and to a growing class of non-propertied people. The boundaries between family and employee, as well as between ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ functions, were all the more clearly demarcated, both indoors and outdoors. Even if the changes were considerable on the whole, there was a clear line of continuity. Household reproduction was the primary aim and providing for the family could not be jeopardised, which explains why most changes took place in small steps at a time.

The problem which confronts us at the outset, is the problem which has been facing historians for the past three hundred years: What were the causes of the English Civil War? What matters were responsible for the decisive split between Crown & Parliament into two distinct parties, and which ultimately led to civil war? Many theories and interpretations have been given. In this chapter, we will find that there are three major interpretations. The first is that it was a religious struggle - and so the Civil War became known as the 'Puritan Revolution'. The second is that it was a purely political conflict between the Crown and its Ministers, on the one hand, and the House of Commons, which had by then become the 'mirror' of the Puritan element in the country, on the other. And the third is that it was a class, or economic, war. Contemporary historians tended to regard it as a twofold struggle - a conflict over religion on the one hand, and the constitution on the other. It was they who coined the phrase 'Puritan Revolution'. This interpretation, however, has subsequently been challenged, in the light of the detailed research which has been conducted - especially in the field of economic history. And so the Civil War has been interpreted in terms of a social and economic conflict - it is said to be a class war. The social and economic factors have tended to become emphasized while the religious have been pushed into the background - often excluded altogether. It is my intention in this thesis, therefore, to assert once again the very real part played by religious matters in the origins of the English Civil War. Intro., p. 1.

Le second dix-huitième siècle est marqué par une profonde reconfiguration du cadre politique qui se traduit par un essor concomitant de la critique publique et du patriotisme. Le théâtre participe au mouvement. Dans le sillage de Voltaire, des auteurs très divers s’emparent de l’Histoire de France, renouvelant les genres théâtraux et le rapport au spectacle. Aux pièces épiques ou sentimentales du « genre troubadour » s’ajoutent bientôt les anecdotes biographiques consacrées aux Grands Hommes, puis les « apothéoses dramatiques » et les « faits historiques » contemporains de la Révolution. Cet ensemble hétéroclite de pièces jouées sur des théâtres officiels, en société ou seulement diffusées par écrit, constitue ce que nous appelons le théâtre national des Lumières et de la Révolution. À travers l’étude des textes et de leur réception, nous analysons comment la représentation de l’Histoire de France participe aux transformations des mentalités, selon un effet de miroir passé-présent plus ou moins explicite. Aux enjeux esthétiques et dramaturgiques emblématiques de cette période charnière entre classicisme et romantisme, le théâtre national mêle des enjeux politiques et mémoriels : plus qu’un divertissement moral, il est conçu comme un dispositif civique. Il construit un patrimoine historique collectif avec des mythes et des légendes, mais les intentions idéologiques divergentes des auteurs et la participation active des publics en font un lieu de dissensus. Le théâtre national médiatise également les tensions de la société et recherche des émotions qui oscillent entre l’admiration, l’attendrissement, la déploration indignée et l’horreur face aux blessures du passé. / The second half of the eighteenth-century is characterized by a thorough transformation of the political world, a change which reflected the simultaneous development of public criticism and patriotism. Theatre plays a key role in this process. Following Voltaire, a variety of playwrights use French history for their plots, and in so doing they update genres and audience expectations. Alongside epic or sentimental plays of the troubadour genre, bio-dramas of “Great Men” soon appeared, followed by dramatic apotheoses and the Revolution’s “faits historiques”. This varied corpus of plays – performed ¬ or not, on official or private stages – constitutes what we may call the national drama of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.By studying these texts and their reception, I analyse how the theatrical representation of French history and its ability to act as a mirror between the past and the present contribute to the contemporary changes in thought. National drama not only showcases the esthetical and dramaturgic debates of this turning point between classicism and romanticism, but it additionally implicates issues of politics and memory: it is more than simple moral entertainment, it has civic value. These productions create a collective historical heritage with its own myths and legends, but the playwrights’ contradictory ideological intentions and the audiences’ active participation also make this theatre a site of dissent. National drama also expresses contemporary social strains and seeks to evoke specific emotions such as admiration, empathy, outrage and horror in the face of the past’s wounds.