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This is a qualitative study exploring the use of workshop theatre in post-apartheid South Africa, with the objective of making a contribution to the knowledge-base regarding its use in current times. Workshop theatre is changing in response to a new socio-political reality and emerging trends in theatre practice. The case study, of developing a play on Oystercatchers with a Grahamstown group of artists, revealed the difficulties and challenges of using workshop theatre in this dynamic context. Data collection included a focus group, observation, reflective discussion and in-depth interviews that were analysed in relation to available literature on workshop theatre in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. It is proposed that workshop theatre has continued relevance in post -apartheid South Africa. The process of creating workshop theatre with diverse artists has great potential to transform relationships, address issues of personal identity and to provide an underlying purpose to a workshop theatre -making context.

The field of media assistance has grown ever more complex with the inclusion of ‘new media’ networks, channels, tools and practices (such as the Internet, satellite television, mobile devices, social media and citizen journalism) to the media development mix. Adding to the ferment is the increasing convergence between the formerly discrete terrains of ICT for development, media for development and (mass) media development. Much of the discussion regarding the utility and objectives of media development in general and ‘new media’ in particular has been viewed through a modernist and techno-determinist prism which offers a limited ideological view of media development and its objects and consequently, a limited set of communication approaches and strategies. This study contextualises the assumptions of media development historically and critically, with particular focus on new media’s roles and relationships with the media environment, and its objectives democratisation and development. Through the application of literature, theory and various research studies, this thesis establishes a broader view of new media’s role and diverse consequences for media development, democracy and development. The study recommends greater collaboration, contextual research and theorisation of media development and new media as part of mixed media systems and cognisant of the multi-dimensional natures of its objects of democracy and development. One implication is the need for professionalisation of the media development and media assistance sector. In relation to the influences of new media on media use and the media as an institution, it motivates the need to address digital divides and emphasise the sustainability of the practice of journalism.

As China was recovering from disease, starvation, and death that resulted from the authoritarian policies of the Great Leap Forward, Chinese officials looked outwards to “heal” Africa. From 1963, a steady trickle of Chinese doctors and nurses arrived in Algeria, providing health care for rural and suburban communities, before expanding their care throughout the continent of Africa. This dissertation explores the experiences of the medical mission workers in Algeria during the first two decades of China’s medical aid program. It documents the rise of a globalizing China in the post-colonial world through the highly significant, yet heretofore overlooked, medical and humanitarian networks between Chinese provincial health institutions and Algerian medical facilities. It shows that the exchange of medical technology, drugs, and practices between China and Algeria crossed not only physical borders, but also boundaries between different systems of medicine and visions of development. Amidst the geopolitics of the Cold War, Chinese medical aid formed an alternative model of postcolonial international health care intervention in Third World countries. Central to this model was what I call “Chinese socialist medicine,” a body of hybrid medical knowledge and socialized health care delivery. Chinese socialist medicine not only challenged medical elitism by devising new, egalitarian approaches and ethical models, but also heavily relied on improvised medical technology and “scientized” acupuncture, which crossed epistemological boundaries between Western and Chinese medicines. Using a combination of Chinese, Arabic, and French textual and video sources, oral interviews, and clinical observations, this study analyzes the mobilization of human resources to Algeria, the application of mixed technologies of biomedicine and Chinese medicine, efforts to build medical supply infrastructure to manage local health problems, and China’s ambitions to transplant Chinese socialist healthcare ethics and ideals to Algerian communities. During this process, China’s socialist medicine emerged as a hybrid and flexible product of Maoist ideals for social welfare and internationalism. It constantly redrew its boundaries in Algeria by competing with medical missions from other socialist countries and recruiting local health actors to its enterprise. The dissertation argues that China’s medical aid in the form of socialist medicine was a channel for the projection of China’s soft power in global health governance. It demonstrates that medicine and internationalism were integral to China’s political history in the Mao period. Mao’s China was hardly “xenophobic” or inwardly focused, but rather tangibly connected with the rest of the world by flows of people, ideas, materials, and technologies. Socialist China during this era was in fact committed to building its global presence through networks of soft power, including humanitarian aid and medicine. Resting at the intersection of Cold War politics, the history of medicine, and global humanitarianism, the dissertation shows that China’s medical missions served as an ideological and methodological alternative in postcolonial health management within the global South.

This study examines the role of politics in the removal of the 106-foot tall San Clemente Dam. The removal project and negotiations provide a case study of the contemporary phenomenon of dam removal. My analysis joins a growing body of social science literature on the social, political, and human dimensions of removal. The San Clemente Dam, which impounded the Carmel River near Monterey, California, was removed in 2015, the largest such project completed in California. Drawing on political ecology and science and technology studies, and using a mixed qualitative approach, I assess both the role of politics in shaping the project and the politics affected through or by the removal. I use a broad, historically attentive analysis of the region to contextualize the political elements of the project. My findings demonstrate and focus on several political dimensions of the removal project, including funding, micro-political strategies, and the prioritizing of particular ecosystem functions and services in the post-removal landscape.

This research into Indonesian socialist-realism art, examines how art has shaped the political and social environments of the new order government. This text examines contemporary artists’ attitudes toward social commitment and social commentary during the period 1980-1995. Conflicting views of contemporary Indonesian artists were obtained from research undertaken in Indonesia in 1995. In this thesis, the problem is raised that Indonesian socialist-realism art is not only a style of art for contemporary Indonesian artists, but also as a union of artists’ attitudes towards Indonesian society. This argument is used to further understand modern Indonesian art from the ‘inner’ point of view / Master of Arts (Hons)

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-195)

This thesis explores how an adherence to professional principles can be reconciled with a commitment to inclusive participatory planning processes in urban governance. Two themes are drawn together. First, the study concerns recent shifts in thinking about public participation that have resulted in innovative approaches to engaging citizens in urban governance processes through deliberative, interactive workshops and forums. Second, the study focuses on power relations that are inherent in such forums, particularly when a variety of different knowledges (expert and lay) interact. The two themes are brought together by focusing on the participatory practices of the urbanist movement - an urban form movement that draws specific principles from the urbanism of traditional towns and cities in order to create socially and environmentally sustainable places. Within urbanist participation, professional principles for the built environment and a commitment to a form of deliberative democracy are combined. In this study, the crucial question asked is: what is the nature and effect of the power relations on the democratic character of public involvement in participatory planning processes? To explore this issue, two urbanist Enquiry by Design processes were selected as retrospective case studies. One case involved a regeneration project for an inner urban area of a north England industrial town, while the other case involved a greenfield urban extension in the south west of England. The empirical research, undertaken in mid 2005, comprised 52 semi-structured interviews, analysis of extensive background material, and site visits. Research participants were selected to capture a range of perspectives and experiences of each process. To understand the power relations in the cases a two pronged approach was taken. The study was informed by literature from communicative planning theory and deliberative democracy. From this literature, an Ethic for Communicative Participation was developed as a heuristic device to evaluate urbanist participation. Concomitantly, to understand the nature of the power relations involved in the deliberative forum, the study employed a discourse theory perspective after Laclau and Mouffe (2001). Thus, power was understood as relational and imbricated within all social relations, while conflict was conceived of as an indicator of power. The study found that the urbanist discourse, as a hegemonic project, had a significant effect on the nature of the participatory processes. In disseminating and instituting a particular vision for urban sustainability, the urbanist participatory process was found to be instrumental to realising the urbanist vision in each locality. As such, the cases studied displayed a thin commitment to democracy. Moreover, the discursive constructions of concepts of community, representation, consensus and participation evident in the cases, exposed a unified and homogeneous understanding of social groups. Consequently, the complexity of power relations and conflict inherent in the processes were bracketed, resulting in the exclusion of certain perspectives. Nevertheless, the study illustrated the value in understanding the inherently antagonistic nature of the public sphere for both research and practice. The study supported emerging claims for a democratic politics in which antagonism is transformed into agonism - a space of reciprocity and mutual respect in which contestations over meanings can be articulated. In the cases, the participatory space allowed participants to challenge the hegemonic nature of the dominant discourses. Therefore, the thesis argues for two important ways to rethink power in both theory and in practice. First, there must be a willingness to engage with conflict and power. Second, there must be an interrogation of claims to unity or collectivity. Understanding the public sphere as inherently antagonistic, heterogeneous, and criss-crossed with complex power relations potentially provides conditions in which hegemonic forces can be contested. An agonistic politics has the potential to facilitate the open contestation of different knowledges and transform the dominant power relations such that an enhanced democracy can ensue.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-195) / v, 195 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Depts. of Politics and Social Inquiry, 2002

"October 2003" / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 364-412) / x, 412 leaves : ill., maps ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Establishes a unifying theory for the concept of middle power. Hybridisation theory is presented as a basis for analysis, policy development and prediction of middle power statecraft and perceived power. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, Discipline of Politics, 2004