The purpose of this study is to investigate binary discourses of self and other constructed by Canadian media in the representation of Saudi women. One of the modest aims of this research is to expound on the status of centralized media coverage in Canada. Drawing on Hegel’s model of dialectics, as framed by Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) and David Nikkel’s conception of a moderate postmodernism, this research also aims at contributing to the ongoing modern-postmodern discussion by delineating and examining the ways in which dialectical analysis can aid in the deconstruction of metanarratives in Western culture. Utilizing a qualitative research design that employs multidimensional modes of textual analysis, the thesis examined the changes in the portrayal of Saudi Women through a non-probability sampling of 88 Canadian newspaper articles selected from the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and National post between 2001-2009. One major finding was that the metanarratives guiding these representations did not change significantly despite changes in narratives as brought about by several major political events. The implications of this thesis revealed what the ideological influences framing these depictions, as well as whether or not the changes that they have undergone, were self-reifying in nature. The research also highlighted the implications resulting from assessing the ontological identities of Saudi women vis-à-vis a Western framework of values.

The purpose of this study is to investigate binary discourses of self and other constructed by Canadian media in the representation of Saudi women. One of the modest aims of this research is to expound on the status of centralized media coverage in Canada. Drawing on Hegel’s model of dialectics, as framed by Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) and David Nikkel’s conception of a moderate postmodernism, this research also aims at contributing to the ongoing modern-postmodern discussion by delineating and examining the ways in which dialectical analysis can aid in the deconstruction of metanarratives in Western culture. Utilizing a qualitative research design that employs multidimensional modes of textual analysis, the thesis examined the changes in the portrayal of Saudi Women through a non-probability sampling of 88 Canadian newspaper articles selected from the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and National post between 2001-2009. One major finding was that the metanarratives guiding these representations did not change significantly despite changes in narratives as brought about by several major political events. The implications of this thesis revealed what the ideological influences framing these depictions, as well as whether or not the changes that they have undergone, were self-reifying in nature. The research also highlighted the implications resulting from assessing the ontological identities of Saudi women vis-à-vis a Western framework of values.

The purpose of this study is to examine the medial depiction of Muslims in the case of Pastor Terry Jones' intention to burn the Quran. Our study is based on theoretical framework regarding an alleged clash of civilizations, how that leads to global conflicts and controls the world politics. It’s also based on the western way of characterize Muslims as violent, irrational human beings, and how mass media have a tendency to depict Muslims as “the others”. The questions we aim to seek answers to are: How were Muslims portrayed in CNN's and Al-Jazeera's reporting regarding Terry Jones plan to burn the Quran? Which discourses exist about Muslims in each news channel and what are the main differences between them? The qualitative method used is a critical discourse analysis on empirical data consistently of twelve articles. A profound thematic and schematic analysis of each article is applied in order to make interpretations and relate the result to our theoretical framework. The result of the study shows that Muslims are, to a high level, portrayed as violent or dangerous with a strong connection to terrorism. A slight difference existed in the themes and discourses between each news channel. CNN objectified Muslims, as a whole, as a safety threat to the western community when Al-Jazeera, on the other hand, had the similar portraytion, but with an explanatory approach.

Utgångspunkten för min studie har varit att se på ur vilket perspektiv Islam behandlas i tre västerländska nyhetskanaler eller nyhetsprogram. De tre undersökta nyhetskanalerna har varit Euronews, Aktuellt och TV4s nyheter. Undersökningen har gjorts under mars månad år 2000. Ett nyhetsprogram från var och en av de tre kanalerna spelades in varje dag. För att en korrekt tolkning skall ha varit möjlig har jag vidare studerat en mängd litteratur. En del har behandlat vad Islam är, medan annan litteratur behandlat hur media använder olika stereotyper och schablonsbilder när de skall beskriva ett nyhetsfenomen. När det gäller mediabilden så förekommer det i arbetet en separat punkt som just behandlar media och dess bilder av verkligheten. En annan kompletterande litteratur har rört ämnet "orientalism" vilket kan beskrivas som ett specifikt sätt att beskriva Orienten på. Detta har föranlett att en separat punkt med ämnet "orientalism" finns i mitt arbete. Vidare innehåller arbetet en enkätundersökning utförd på Högskolan i Gävle 000828. I enkäten frågas om olika ords värdeladdning. Nästan samtliga ord som förekom i enkäten har en anknytning till ett islamiskt sammanhang.

Die Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig hat sich entschlossen, die bislang mit verschiedenen Systemen realisierten und nur lokal zugänglichen Spezialkataloge für Japanologie, Arabistik, Indologie und Sinologie abzubrechen und Neuerwerbungen sowie retrospektive Aufnahmen im Verbundkatalog des Südwestdeutschen Bibliotheksverbundes (SWB) und im OPAC nachzuweisen. Außerdem wurde im SWB damit begonnen, zusätzlich die Originalschriften im Katalogisat aufzunehmen.

Ce mémoire de maîtrise vise à comprendre la problématique de l’intégration des migrants Nord-Coréens en Corée du Sud à travers l’analyse de la dynamique des relations entre Nord et Sud-Coréens. Les objectifs particuliers sont d’identifier un processus d’ethnicisation dans la nation coréenne, de déterminer la place des cultures nord et sud-coréennes dans l’identité coréenne et de définir la reconfiguration identitaire nécessaire afin d’accéder à la reconnaissance du groupe majoritaire. Un séjour en Corée du Sud a été effectué en septembre 2010 afin de réaliser quatre entrevues avec des Nord-Coréens, en plus de rencontrer les gens travaillant dans des organismes promouvant l’intégration des Nord-Coréens en Corée du Sud. L’analyse des données a permis de comprendre de quelle manière la division de la nation coréenne persiste et comment elle influence le processus d’intégration des Nord-Coréens. En premier lieu, l’appartenance au groupe Hanminjok (nation coréenne) est conférée, mais la mise en relief de « marqueurs culturels » contraint l’accessibilité au groupe majoritaire. Deuxièmement, la présence de discours essentialistes exacerbent des représentations sociales négatives qui entravent l’intégration sociale et symbolique à la société sud-coréenne. Finalement, les résultats démontrent que le manque de liens sociaux entre Nord et Sud-Coréens tient une part importante dans la problématique de l’intégration, en plus de nuire à l’accessibilité au marché du travail ce qui compromet l’intégration économique. / This Master’s thesis aims at furthering the understanding of the integration process of North Korean migrants into South Korean society, through the analysis of the relationships between North and South Koreans. The specific objectives hereof are to identify an ethnicisation process, to define the place of North and South Korean culture in the Korean identity and to identify the identity reconfiguration necessary in order to access the recognition of the majority group. Fieldwork was completed in South Korea in September 2010, allowing for the interview of four North Koreans and the meeting of people working in organisations promoting North Korean integration into South Korea. The data analysis led us to a better understanding of how the division of the Korean nation is persisting and how it is influencing the integration process of North Koreans in South Korea. In the first place, belonging to the group Hanminjok (Korean nation) is granted, but the prominence of “ethnic markers” is restraining accessibility of North Koreans to the majority group. Secondly, the presence of essentialist discourses is deepening negative social representations which are deleterious to the social and symbolic integration of North Koreans into South Korean society. Finally, the results show that the lack of social relations between North and South Koreans plays a major role in the problematics of integration and is compromising accessibility to employment and therefore to economic integration.

Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803-1863) set out on his only trip to Greece and Turkey in 1828 to return to France and produce visual images of the Orient at a time when no major European artist had traveled to the Near East and at a time when the Orient had yet to be experienced, understood, and interpreted. Decamps’ highly original and personal interpretation of the Orient in painting has been studied by present-day scholars exclusively within the context of Romantic Orientalist genre painting. Studying criticism written on his work throughout the 19th century and working closely with his paintings, certain issues in his Orientalist paintings question the longstanding categorization of his work as solely Romantic Orientalist genre paintings. The fact that the artist never returned to the Orient; the fact that he invested his Orientalist landscapes with a Rembrandesque rather than Oriental light; his constant inclusion of contrasting opposites in the ostensibly subdued compositions he produced; the striking differences between his Oriental visual expressions and those of his Romantic contemporaries; and his own sentiment of being a failed artist, reveal alternative, less settled, readings of his work. Studying Decamps’ Orientalist oeuvre in its social and political contexts and taking into account the artist’s personal ambitions demonstrates the lasting resonance of this work, of the artist’s highly original working methods, and of his innovative technique. This study provides an assessment of Decamps’ Oriental work; it also delineates its relevance and influence in movements beyond Romanticism and into trends that developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. / Thesis (Master, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2008-12-11 20:43:05.08

L’objectif de ce mémoire est de rendre compte d’une figure particulièrement dynamique dans l’écriture de Leïla Sebbar, celle de l’adolescent fugueur. Mohamed dans Le Chinois vert d’Afrique (1982) et Shérazade dans Shérazade, 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts (1984), personnifient une réalité autre que celle accolée aux jeunes descendants de l’immigration maghrébine (surtout algérienne), partagés entre les codes culturels du pays d’origine et ceux du pays de naissance. L’hybridité des personnages et leur mobilité aléatoire permettent de réévaluer les discours sociaux dominants émis en France, pays tiraillé entre les aspirations d’unité nationale et l’histoire coloniale. Le premier chapitre fera état du contact des fugueurs avec la représentation picturale et sa place dans la constitution de leur identité. À la lumière de ces observations, la seconde partie du travail se penchera sur la prise de conscience du regard de l’Autre et le questionnement de l’image préconçue de l’adolescent de banlieue inculte en mal d’insertion sociale. La déconstruction de ce cliché permettra dans le troisième chapitre d’aborder la réappropriation de l’objet culturel par les fugueurs, procédant à une véritable démocratisation de la culture élitiste. Le quatrième chapitre sera enfin consacré au mouvement des fugueurs dans l’espace et dans le temps. Nous y verrons comment les fugueurs, intermédiaires entre la ville et sa banlieue mais aussi entre le paradis perdu du pays d’origine et le désarroi des parents immigrés, provoquent la relecture de l’histoire des générations passées tout en gardant un œil critique sur l’avenir. / The purpose of this master’s thesis is to study the dynamic figure of the runaway in the writing of Leïla Sebbar. Mohamed in “Le Chinois Vert d’Afrique” (1982) and Shérazade in “Shérazade, 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts” (1984), personifie a reality that the young descendants of the North African immigration must encounter, torn between the cultural codes of the country of origin and the country of birth. The blend of the characters’ culture and their constant mobility reassess the dominant social discourse during a time when France was torn between the aspirations of a national unity and colonial history. The first chapter examines the cultural blend of the runaways with the pictorial representation and its place in the formation of the young protagonists’ identity. In light of these observations, the second part of the thesis will focus on the characters’ awareness of the Other’s perception. The stereotypical suburban teenager lacking culture resulting in the character feeling out of place is being questioned. The breakdown of the “cliché” in the third chapter will address the importance of culture by characters, allowing for a democratization of an upper class culture. The fourth chapter is devoted to the movement of the runaways in space and time. Between the city and its suburbs, the lost paradise that Algeria represents, and the distress of the parents that have left their beloved country, the last part of this study will focus on the characters’ contribution to the rewriting of the history of past and future generations.

This thesis takes as its point of departure the question "is there a connection between ordinary Swedish Christianity and the extreme forms of various examples?". As a way of concidering possible connections, a "normal" spiritual context in the Swedish setting is studied: the Christian magazine "Pilgrim. A magazine for spiritual guidance". The book presents an investigation of the magazine and its notion of spirituality over a period of twelve years (1994-2006). Questions that guide the investigation are: Which are the fundamental notions of spirituality in the magazine? How can someone be spiritual due to the magazine? Which are the bodily norms which are assumed when it comes to gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class? Which connections between the normal and the extreme in contemporary Swedish spirituality can an investigation of Pilgrim as an example of "ordinary" spirituality reveal? The work is carried out as a discursive reading of Pilgrim with the help of Michel Foucault and his notion of "discourse". Furthermore some of the insights from the feminist discussion on so called "intersectionality" are used to widen the methodological scope. More specifically, the magazine is approached as a single textual surface. After qualification of the rules of the discourse, they are applied to identify the discursive formation of Pilgrim. By analyzing the strategies which constitute spiritual guidance, the forms of spirituality (subject positions) that the magazine constructs are revealed. The way that social categories - gender, sexuality, ethinicity, class - are characterized in the magazine reinforce heteronormativity, orientalism and a class-structure. Through the magazine social categories function together with other vital categories in a way that the outcome is one and only construction of the ordinary subject: i.e. the western rich man as a spiritual subject. In conclusion this study suggest that ideas about spiritual growth that flourish in an ordinary Christian cultural and intellectual environment (exemplified by the magazine Pilgrim), like ideas of resistance against the postmodern world and society's superficiality, might have a structure that can be found also in more extreme Christian contexts, and, more importantly, as a part of the problematic of these extreme examples. The extreme resides in the ordinary, and the ordinary resides in the extreme. There seems to be an order of notions, of subjects and of bodies: the Order of Spirituality.

The thesis analyses the continuously changing discourse of cultural diversity. The focus of this study is the ways in which this discourse is shaped within contemporary Swedish cultural politics in general, and how it unfolds and further changes through the specific activities performed by a cultural institution in Stockholm – Södra teatern. Where as the cultural diversity inspired cultural politics seems to be caught in the tension between defending the autonomous position of culture in society and arguing for the supposed positive integrative consequences of such a perspective the Södra teatern mirrors a similar complexity in their ways of performing cultural diversity. This complexity is expressed through the three aspects of cultural diversity the thesis analyses – the real, the good and the cool cultural diversity. Each of the three aspects expresses a search for authenticity as well as a resistance towards the very same notion; a belief in the enlightenment of knowledge at the same time as the content of the very same knowledge is questioned; and finally that ethnic differences some times is enforced through utterances that stresses tradition where as the supposed hybrid forms in other situations is celebrated. The three aspects of cultural diversity analysed here all express how cultural diversity works as a hyper complex concept within cultural policy where no single possible meaning erases other potential meanings. On the contrary: different and even contradictory meanings of the concept exist side by side. Thus the thesis argues that the discourse of cultural diversity expresses a hyper complex problem. / Avhandlingen analyserer hvordan mangfoldsdiskursen formes på det kulturpolitiske området ved å studere hvordan denne formes i så vel Södra teaterns virksomhet som i den statlige kulturpolitikken. Mens den statlige mangfoldsorienterte kulturpolitikken preges av en spenning mellom på den ene siden å forsvare kulturens autonome stilling og på en andre siden å forsvare det man kan kalle for integrasjonspolitiske hensyn, så uttrykker Södra teaterns arbeid med kulturelt mangfold en lignende kompleksitet. Denne kompleksiteten uttrykks gjennom de tre ulike aspekter av den mangfoldsdiskursen avhandlingen analyserer – det ekte, det gode og det coole mangfoldet. De tre aspektene uttrykker hver for seg både en søken etter autentisitet og en motstand mot autentisitet; en opplysningstro så vel som en selvrefleksivitet i forhold til hva det opplyses om; og til slutt at etnisitetsforskjeller i visse situasjoner forsterkes gjennom ytringer som vektlegger tradisjon, mens andre ytringer snarere hyller det som oppfattes som hybride uttrykk. Disse tre delanalysene visere hvordan kulturelt mangfold fungerer som et hyperkomplekst begrep innenfor kulturpolitikken da tilsynelatende ulike og motsigelsesfulle tolkninger kan eksistere side ved side. Således argumenterer avhandlingen for at mangfoldsdiskursen uttrykker et hyperkomplekst problem.