De toutes les grandes traditions religieuses le taoïsme est la moins connue. L’objectif de cette recherche est de dresser un panorama de ses représentations et de sa réception en Occident, plus particulièrement en France et en Europe, et d’en identifier les étapes et les modalités, les vecteurs et les publics à un moment charnière où il se diffuse en Occident et où son image de négative devient positive. Ce travail emprunte les voies de l’histoire, notamment missionnaire, de l’orientalisme et de la sinologie, et interroge le rôle joué par les différents acteurs et contextes de réception dans la fabrique de ses représentations qui essentialisent une tradition religieuse chinoise complexe et évolutive. Dans une approche plus socio-anthropologique, il analyse ses modes contemporains de diffusion et d’appropriation par le biais des différentes pratiques d’origine chinoise qui répondent à un souci de soi contemporain tourné vers la réalisation individuelle intramondaine. Empruntant une approche comparatiste qui fait appel à la réception des autres traditions asiatiques en Occident, et du taoïsme aux Etats-Unis, il tente de dégager les traits spécifiques de la fabrique d’un taoïsme occidental en régime de postmodernité. Fabrique qui s’inscrit à la fois dans le mouvement d’internationalisation et de globalisation du religieux et dans les dynamiques du puritanisme libéral anglo-saxon et du New Age qui font converger impératif de bien-être et de réalisation de soi, quête spirituelle individuelle et questionnement de la pensée européenne. / Of all the great religious traditions Taoism is the least known. The aim of this research is to provide a panorama of its representations and its reception in the West, particularly in France and in Europe: to identify its stages of development and its modalities, its vectors and publics. This occurs at a pivotal moment when its spread in the West correlates with an inversion in terms of its public image from negative to positive. This work draws on missionary history, orientalism and sinology. It questions the role played by the various actors and contexts of reception in the fabric of its representations that essentialise a complex and evolving Chinese religious tradition. In a more socio-anthropological approach, this thesis analyzes contemporary modes of diffusion and appropriation through various practices of Chinese origin which respond to a contemporary souci de soi oriented towards individual realization within the world. Using a comparative approach that considers the reception of other Asian traditions in the West and of Taoism in the United States, this study seeks to identify the specific features of the construction of Western Taoism in a postmodern age. This manufacture of Taoism is situated within the movement of the internationalization and globalization of the religious phenomenon and of the dynamics of Anglo-Saxon liberal puritanism and New Age movements. These dynamics bring together the imperatives of well-being and self-realization, individual spiritual quest and questioning of European thought.

This is a study that with critical eyes, studies schoolbooks that are meant for upper secondary school in the curriculum – Religion. I am studying how schoolbook authors portray Islam and its practitioners. Is there possibly any tendency towards orientalism to be found in them? Hopefully, none or very little. There are earlier studies that show how Muslims are portrayed as “the other”, the lesser, while Christians are portrayed as “we”, the normal. To be able to do this study I am using qualitative content analysis as a method. That way it is possible to systematically work through a larger text and cut it down to smaller themes. How are the authors portraying God? How is Islam´s view of man presented versus the Christian view of man? Finally, in what way has the representation of Islam changed over time?By using Edward Said’s theory of orientalism, I have been able to get the following result. It shows that the presentation of Islam and Christianity is still othering Islam and its practitioners, but differs on how easy you as a reader can see it. By using the theory of religious literacy, I have been able to identify how the author uses his/her language, if the author thought of conveying a deeper explanation and not just focus on small factual parts.

This project examines the connection between the representations of Chinese American women and the Orientalist discourse, as depicted in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Using a deconstructive and intersectional approach, the project focuses on four interconnected constituents that regulate the novel’s main structural and thematic elements: Narrative Structure; Mother-Daughter Relationships; Language, Writing and Identity; and Feminist Affirmations. The project’s aim is to understand the logic of the novel’s representation by juxtaposing and analyzing the contrasting arguments within each of the sections. Though somewhat inconclusive, this project addresses the ambiguity of Tan’s work in hopes of expanding the critical understanding of the novel.

Following the fall of the Islamic State, thousands of former IS fighters took refuge with their children in the camps of Al-Hol and Al-Roj where they have since been detained in degrading conditions by local authorities. In the camps are there about 27,500 children of foreign nationalities. Like the Lost Boys in Peter Pan, these children are left unclaimed as their respective countries hesitate to repatriate them. As such, the traditional understanding of children as innocent and in need of protection is defied. Drawing on the Copenhagen School of security studies and Edward Said’s theory of orientalism and employing a method of double reading, this essay examines how the political discourse in France on the Other enables the securitization of children by association with IS fighters. The analysis finds that the securitization theory can establish that the children are securitised, but it is insufficient in explaining how association facilitates the securitization process. By deconstructing the discourse through orientalism, the force of the association driving the securitization is understood through structures of power, defining the children as future threats to the republic as barbaric Others.

Thesis "Orientalism or Ornamentalism?" is dealing with two rather different explanations of the nature of British imperialism. The work compares Edward Said's concept of Orientalism with Cannadine's Ornamentalism. Both concepts are not seen as contestant theories that have to be necessarily in a clash with each other. An opinion is presented that both theories aspire to explain and describe an identical subject - British Empire. Only they do so from different standpoints. As a way out of understanding them as a contradictory approaches is suggested "cubist thinking" of Empire.

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Den här uppsatsen undersöker den åttonde internationella orientalistkongressen i Stockholm och Kristiania 1889, efter vilken den vetenskapliga disciplinen orientalistik och dess internationella relationer och möteskultur ställdes under omförhandling. Genom att lansera en i dessa sammanhang ny och välkomnande hållning gentemot icke-européer orsakade kongressens generalsekreterare Carlo Landberg en konflikt med de orientalister som strävade efter att behålla kongressens tydligt europeiska och vetenskapliga prägel. Ytterligare en orsak till konflikt var den karaktär av utställning och spektakel som kongressen ansågs ha. Inledningsvis var konflikten ideologisk men kom senare att ta nationella uttryck, främst genom konkurrensen mellan franska och tyska orientalister. Tyskarna var i stor majoritet vid kongressen, och hade dessutom besegrat Frankrike i krig mindre än 20 år tidigare. Undersökningen visar att konfliktens olika sidor mycket väl kunde vara överens om allmänna uppfattningar gällande de så kallade ”österlänningarnas” icke-vetenskapliga karaktärer och låga vetenskapliga förmågor, och att konflikten snarare gällde i vilken utsträckning själva orientalistkongresserna skulle ha som uppgift att åtgärda denna ”österlänningarnas” brist på vetenskaplighet. När ett särskilt kongressutskott mot slutet av kongressen öppnar för att förlägga nästkommande kongress i ”Orienten” svarar franska och engelska orientalister, som inte fick vara med i utskottet, först med en skarp protest och senare med att hålla en mot-kongress i London. Gällande detta visar undersökningen att detta troligen grundade sig på en prestigeförlust för fransmännen, som var de första som höll i en orientalistkongress, och en engelsk strävan efter att styra kongressernas innehåll, bland annat att göra handeln till ett ämne för förhandlingarna.

In this article, I undertake several lines of enquiry in the history of ideological and political movements centered on the “modernity” polemic at the transnational level. By analyzing these movements in juxtaposition, I explore the possibility of more diverse narratives of modernity and antimodernity than are assumed by conventional dichotomies in contemporary academic writings. The results of my enquiry challenge several pervasive “dogmas” of post-colonial theory: that orientalism is a purely modernist intellectual project, while anti-orientalism is by necessity its more “local” discursive counterpart in a dualism of East and West.

Denna studie har undersökt hur män som kommer från, och lever i, Norrbotten tycker att tv-serien Leif och Billy, som verkar under Sveriges Television, representerar maskulinitet och Norrbotten. För att ta reda på det har sju kvalitativa forskningsintervjuer gjorts, där intervjupersonerna är män i 20 till 50 årsåldern. Intervjupersonerna har tagit del av klipp och avsnitt från serien innan intervjutillfällena. Syftet med undersökningen har varit att ta reda på hur männen ser på maskuliniteten som serien representerar, om det förekommer stereotyper i representationen av Norrbotten samt om männen kan relatera serien till sina egna verklighet. Det med tv-serien som grund och utgångspunkt. Studien utgår från en kvalitativ undersökning som från teori om representation, intern orientalism samt maskulinitet analyseras. Analysen av respondenternas utsagor har resulterat i fyra stycken övergripande teman; norrbottniska stereotyper, landsbygden kontra det urbana, alfahannens känslor och verklighetsförankringen. Centralt i undersökningen är respondenternas upplevelse av att Leif och Billy porträtterar stereotyper i Norrbotten i form av bland annat deras intressen och ekonomiska situation. Studien visar även att respondenterna upplever att det finns en maskulinitet präglad av aggression och en strävan efter en roll som alfahanne hos karaktärerna.

This essay explores the concept of hybridity and its relation to cultural identity in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). Changez' identity is analysed by using postcolonial theory and its notion of hybrid identities. By analysing Changez' cultural identity, I came to the conclusion that his hybridity is not fixed, but rather fluid and changing. At the beginning of the novel, Changez' hybrid identity is fractioned and unstable, leading him to become ashamed and uncomfortable with who he is and his Pakistani culture. At the end of the novel he realises that his experiences in America will always be part of who he is - part of his identity - and his hybridity becomes harmonious and stable, in turn allowing him to use Western culture against itself; a key part of hybridity in postcolonial theory.