In this research, I provide a foundation for theorizing and understanding institutionalized antiracism initiatives; under-examined sites of geographical research. Through an examination of three different research sites (Queen’s University, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), I seek to understand how organizations working in different contexts negotiate a range of variables so as to achieve the most effective outcomes possible. With a focus on site-specific context and its role in antiracist initiatives, this research combines a range of qualitative methods including interviews and researcher observations to assess the factors that influence the strategic directions and decisions of organizations. This thesis contributes to the exploration of social change and human rights strategies by positioning institutionalized antiracism initiatives as the focus of study; highlighting the importance of geopolitical context and other institutional factors in this work; identifying key challenges and opportunities; presenting findings on effective human rights strategies; and filling a gap in this area of geographic study. More specifically, this research demonstrates that institutionalized antiracism initiatives experience specific advantages and challenges as a result of factors internal and external to the organization. It also provides insight into the climate of social change in Canada and reveals some important findings with regard to antiracism strategies that can be used by organizations to improve the effectiveness of their initiatives and programs. / Thesis (Ph.D, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2014-01-31 08:45:08.578

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Political Science, August 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed May 25, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 417-456).

This thesis examines forms of activism among middle-class youth in the context of neoliberal urban change in Delhi. The research is set within four interdisciplinary bodies of literature reflecting the experiences of young activists: middle-class identity, everyday politics and new modalities of social action, intersectionality, and active citizenship. What emerges from each of these bodies is a view to the contradictory politics of the young middle-class. Focusing on new forms of social action at the community level, this thesis uses an expansive definition of both activism and middle-class to encompass a range of activities from social enterprise, to technology-enabled mobilization around social issues, to political campaigning among India’s expanding middle-class. The research is framed within young peoples' period of waiting: for full adulthood, marriage, and importantly, full-time employment. Grounded in qualitative fieldwork, this thesis concentrates on young people, aged 18 to 30, in the middle-class with putatively distinct activist practices. Young people in Delhi are engaged in various activities that loosely correspond to different ideals of social justice or social work. I illustrate the innate differences in these ideals, their motivations, and methods. I analyze the limitations of different activist projects and the extent to which the social action is constructive—in the sense of enhancing the capabilities of marginalized sections of society and promoting inclusivity. The young people at the core of this project contend to be anti-politics, yet they are quite political. Additionally, the interlocutors show contempt for the state and the commercial interests of the market but deploy and rely on strategies from both. My examination gives prominence to the improvised nature of young people's lives and the decisions they make at key life stages. Activation of the self, and actualization for the researched youth, manifests in entrepreneurial activity, community work short of politics, and the negotiation of class, caste, and gender on an everyday basis. This thesis argues for more scholarly attention to the everyday lives of middle-class youth that can offer insights into this key demographic and connect individual decisions to broader social and political change.

This thesis examines civil society, political space, and peacebuilding in post-war Burundi by critically engaging with international discourses and considering the extent to which they reflect the experiences and perspectives of activists on the ground. It is based on qualitative research with civil society groups and the individuals that work for them in Burundi. Fieldwork took place over five months between July 2014 and April 2015. This was a period of crisis in which civil society faced mounting restrictions, from the introduction of legislation that banned public gatherings, to the harassment and intimidation of prominent activists. The thesis analyses the extent to which civil society groups were able to navigate these constraints to create and maintain spaces for peace that transform dominant social norms which produce violence and repression. It also considers the factors that frustrated these efforts, from the sustained influence of past violence and trauma, to the climate of fear and uncertainty that emerged following the 2015 elections, and the divisive elite politics that continues to disrupt everyday peace in Burundi. It finds that emerging policy discourses on political space fail to engage with the historical, political, and discursive nature of government restrictions in Burundi, and the temporal and relational dimensions of violence, especially the ways in which it shapes the everyday lives of activists and their ability to challenge the institutions and structures within which violence is reproduced. The research situates these experiences in historical context – a process that enables it to consider broader questions about the evolution of civil society and the extent to which it becomes embedded in post-conflict contexts once international funding and attention decreases and external peacebuilding activities conclude. Civil society groups in Burundi received significant support from the international community in the post-war years, yet increasing restrictions suggest that the Burundian government has not accepted the presence of certain organisations which it views as a threat to its political authority and legitimacy. This leads the thesis to argue that curbs on civil society should be seen as part of a broader pattern of resistance to international peacebuilding in Burundi.

The increasing recognition of the myriad ways that peace may be enacted, contested and manipulated in different places has highlighted the complexity of peace. Peace making is now understood as a process rather than an event, made and unmade in the material and non-material socio-spatial relationships that people find themselves in. In this research I employ a qualitative case study methodology to describe how peace is made and unmade on Lough Neagh, the United Kingdom’s largest freshwater lake and the main source of Northern Ireland’s domestic water supply. I examine the everyday social relations of the users of this lake and the meanings, both material and non-material, that people have about this large water body. I ask how these local everyday practices and opinions intersect with broader politics within NI. I add to the growing body of literature within geography that recognizes that peace is made in many different ways, at different scales and in different places. / 10000-01-01

No description available.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Global human regionalization often depends heavily on conventions, especially the country model. Standardized “countries” are used as default regions, and influence other regionalizations as well. Proposed here is the preference for multiple independent systems of regions based on empirical criteria specific to each field of inquiry. These regions, defined by attributes of the landscape, would subsume formal and functional regions alike, as well as the very similar “trait geographies” and “process geographies”. Two specific inquiries are studied, politics and language; in both cases, existing data tend towards the conventional. A primary empirical regionalization for politics can be based on effective government control. A primary empirical regionalization for language can be based on mutual intelligibility of vernacular dialects. Examined in political geography are concepts of juridical and empirical statehood and the question of state territoriality; examined in linguistic geography are the question of language versus dialect and the standard reference ‘Ethnologue’.

La problématique de cette thèse porte sur les relations entre pouvoir(s) et territoire(s). Elle s’intéresse à la situation particulière de l’État libanais, que l’on peut considérer comme victime d’un processus de décomposition territoriale et sociétale, avec des effets sur le local influencés par le contexte régional externe. Elle cherche à comprendre pourquoi, sur le territoire libanais, se multiplient, à diverses « échelles » des conflits qu'ils soient libano-libanais, libano-étrangers, et étrangers-étrangers ? Cette thèse tente réfléchir sur les territoires et la territorialisation au Liban. Elle est formulée à partir de plusieurs interrogations : comment ces territoires naissent et s’organisent-ils ? Pour quelles raisons ? Et par quels acteurs ? / This thesis of geopolitics examines the relationship between powers and areas. It shows interest in the situation of the Lebanese state, which can considered as a victim of a process of territorial and societal breakdown, with effects on the local context influenced by the external regional context. It searches for understanding why many conflicts happen endlessly, repeatedly, and multiply on the Lebanese territory. Such conflicts are on various "scales"; Lebanese Vs Lebanese, Lebanese Vs foreign and foreign Vs foreign? This thesis is trying to understand the territories structures and the processes of territorial construction in Lebanon. The problematic is formulated from a number of questions: how are these territories born? What are their logics? By which players?

Orientador: Jayro Gonçalves Melo / Banca: Eda Maria Góes / Banca: Raul Borges Guimarães / Banca: Joseli Maria Silva / Banca: Olga Lucia Castrechini de Freitas Firkowski / Resumo: Esta pesquisa, pautada nas relações entre poder e espaço, tem como objetivo principal compreender como se dá a formação dos aqui denominados territórios conservadores de poder. O compilamento de dados secundários, as análises de jornais e das entrevistas, bem como a fundamentação conceitual, direcionaram a pesquisa. Assim, este trabalho, que tem como recorte territorial o centro-sul do estado do Paraná e mais propriamente o município de Guarapuava, aborda três linhas principais, em sentido amplo, que fundamentam a formação desses territórios. A primeira delas diz respeito à ocupação histórico-geográfica que, entende-se, se deu de maneira diferenciada regionalmente. A segunda se motiva nas características sócio-econômicas recentes, produto desse primeiro processo e de outros que ajudaram a evidenciar suas diferenças e similitudes. A terceira linha está motivada na vinculação política e nas relações conservadoras de poder, com elementos referidos às práticas clientelistas, à política sustentada na troca de favores com elevada associação personificada do poder em oposição a pouca ou a nenhuma mediação das instituições. Assim, são duas as abordagens vinculadas ao conservadorismo: uma no sentido de relações economicamente menos dinâmicas e outra no sentido de relações de poder politicamente arcaicas ou tradicionais. Esses aspectos foram considerados segundo a metodologia das redes sociais. Através das redes foi possível observar as articulações dos grupos de poder político locais e dar conta de uma realidade que não se revela de imediato. E se a rede representa a realidade, representa também, aqui, os territórios conservadores de poder, numa articulação que permite confundi-los e concebê-los num misto território-rede. Este trabalho tem... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This research, based upon power and space relations, establishes as a main objective to understand how happen the formation of the territories, here named conservative of power. The secondary data compilation, the newspapers and interviews analysis, as well as the fundamentality conceptual, gave direction to the research. So, this work, which has, as a territorial clip, the center south of Paraná State and more appropriate Guarapuava municipal district, approaches three main master lines, in an extensive sense, that justify or substantiate the formation of these territories. The first of them concerns to the historical-geographical occupation that, as understood, happened regionally by a distinguished way. The second motivates itself in the recent social-economic characteristics, as a product of this first process and others which helped to evidence their differences and similarities. The third line is motivated in the political link and power conservative relations, with elements referred to clientele practices, the politics supported by exchange favors, with high association personified of power, in opposite of little or no mediation of the institutions. So, two approaches are linked to the conservatism: one in order to relations economically less dynamics and other in order to power relations politically archaic or traditional. These aspects were considered according to the methodology of social nets. Through the nets was possible to notice the articulations of local politic power groups and show a reality that is not revealed immediately. And if the net represents the reality, it also represents, here, the power conservatism territories, in an articulation that allow to confuse and conceive themselves in a mixture territories-net. This work aims, still, to contribute to strength of studies between power and space relations in the ambit of Geography, therefore, Political Geography. / Doutor