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The United Nations category Least Developed country (LDC) was created in 1971 to ameliorate conditions in countries the UN identified as the poorest of the poor. Its administration and operation within UN development discourse has not been explored previously in academic analysis. This thesis explores this rich archive of development discourse. It seeks to situate the LDC category as a vehicle that both produces and is a product of development discourse, and uses gender analysis as a critical tool to identify the ways in which the LDC category discourse operates. The thesis draws on Foucauldian theory to develop and use the concept ‘technologies of knowledge’, which places the dynamics of LDC discourse into relief. Three technologies of knowledge are identified: LDC policy, classification through criteria, and data. The ways each of these technologies of knowledge operates are explored through detailed readings of over thirty years of UN policy documents that form the thesis’s primary source material. A central question within this thesis is: If the majority of the world’s poor are women, where are the women in the policy about the countries that are the poorest of the poor? In focusing the analysis on the representation of women in LDCs, I place women at the centre of the analytic stage, as opposed to the marginal position I have found they occupy within LDC discourse. Through this analysis of the reductionist representations of LDC women, I explore the gendered dynamics of development discourse. Exploring the operation of these three technologies of knowledge reveals some of the discursive boundaries of UN LDC category discourse, particularly through its inability to incorporate gender analysis. The discussion of these three technologies of knowledge – policy, classification through criteria, and data – is framed by discussions of development and gender. The discussion on development positions this analysis within post-development critiques of development policy, practice and theory. The discussion on gender positions this analysis within the trajectory of postmodern and postcolonial influenced feminist engagements with development as a theory and praxis, particularly with debates about the representation of women in the third world. This case study of the operation of development discourse usefully highlights gendered dynamics of discursive ways of knowing.

This thesis contains a detailed academic analysis of the complete rise and fall of Christopher Skase and his Qintex group mirage. It uses David Harvey's 'Condition of Postmodernity' to locate the collapse within the Australian political economic context of the period (1974-1989). It does so in order to answer questions about why and how the mirage developed, why and how it failed, and why Skase became the scapegoat for the Australian corporate excesses of the 1980s. I take a multi-disciplinary approach and consider corporate collapse, corporate regulation and the role of accounting, and corporate deviance.

The field of adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) has undergone dramatic changes in recent years with the advent of labour market programs, accreditation, competency-based assessment and competitive tendering for program funds. Teachers' working conditions have deteriorated and their professional autonomy has been eroded. ALBE has been increasingly instrumentalised to fulfil the requirements of a marketised economy and conform to its norms. The beliefs and value systems which traditionally underpinned the work of ALBE teachers have been reframed according to the principle of 'performativity' and the demands of the 'performative State' (Lyotard, 1984: 46, Yeatman 1994: 110). The destabilisation of teachers' working lives can be understood as a manifestation of the 'postmodern condition' (Lyotard 1984; Harvey 1989): the collapse of the certainties and purposes of the past; the proliferation of technologies; the impermanence and intensification of work; the commodification of knowledge and curricula; and the dissolving of boundaries between disciplines and fields of knowledge. The critiques of the modernist grand narratives which underpin progressivist and critical approaches to adult literacy pedagogy have further undermined the traditional points of reference of ALBE teachers. In this thesis I examine how teachers are teaching, surviving, resisting, and 'living the contradictions' (Seddon 1994) in the context of struggles to comply with and resist the requirements of performativity. Following Foucault and a number of feminist poststructuralist authors, I have applied the notions of 'discursive engagement' and 'the politics of discourse' (Yeatman 1990a) as a way of theorising the interplay between imposed change and teachers' practice. I explore the discursive practices which take place at the interface between the 'new' policy discourses and older, naturalised discourses; how teachers are engaged by and are engaging with discourses of performativity; how teachers are discursively constructing adult literacy pedagogy; what new, hybrid discourses of 'good practice' are emerging; and the micropractices of resistance which teachers are enacting in their speech and in their practice. My purpose was to develop knowledge which would support the reflexivity of teachers; to enrich the theoretical languages that teachers could draw upon in trying to make sense of their situation; and to use those languages in speaking about the dilemmas of practice. I used participatory action research as a means of producing knowledge about teachers' practices, structured around their agency, and reflecting their standpoint (Harding 1993). I describe two separate action research projects in which teachers of ALBE participated. I reflect on both projects in the light of poststructuralist theory and consider them as instances of what Lather calls 'within/against research' (Lather 1989: 27). I analyse written and spoken texts produced in both projects which reflect teachers' responses to competency-based assessment and other features of the changing context. I use a method of discourse mapping to describe the discursive field and the teachers' discursive practices. Three main configurations of discourse are delineated: 'progressivism', 'professional teacher' and 'performativity'. The teachers mainly position themselves within a hybridising 'progressivist /professional teacher' discourse, as a discourse of resistance to 'performative' discourse. In adapting their pedagogies, the teachers are in some degree taking the language and world view of performativity into their own vocabularies and practices. The discursive picture I have mapped is complex and contradictory. On one hand, the 'progressivist /professional teacher' discourse appears to endure and to take strength from the articulation into it of elements of performative discourse, creating new possibilities for discursive transformation. On the other hand, there are signs that performative discourse is colonising and subsuming progressivist /professional teacher discourse. At times, both of these tendencies are apparent in the one text. Six micropractices of resistance are identified within the texts: 'rational critique', 'objectification', 'subversion', 'refusal', 'humour' and 'the affirmation of desire'. These reflect the teachers' agency in making discursive choices on the micro level of their every day practices. Through those micropractices, the teachers are engaging with and resisting the micropractices and meanings of performativity. I apply the same multi-layered method of analysis to an examination of discursive engagement in pedagogy by analysing a transcript of the teachers' discussion of critical incidents in their classrooms. Their classroom pedagogies are revealed as complex, situated and eclectic. They are combining and integrating their 'embodied' and their 'institutional' powers, both 'seducing' (McWilliam 1995) and 'regulating' (Gore 1993) as they teach. A strong ethical project is apparent in the teachers' sense of social responsibility, in their determination to adhere to valued traditions of previous times, and in their critical self-awareness of the ways in which they use their institutional and embodied powers in the classroom. Finally, l look back on the findings, and reflect on the possibilities of discursive engagement and the politics of discourse as a framework for more strategic practice in the current context. This research provides grounds for hope that, by becoming more self-conscious about how we engage discursively, we might become more strategic in our everyday professional practice. Not withstanding the constraints (evident in this study) which limit the strategic potential of the politics of discourse, there is space for teachers to become more reflexive in their professional, pedagogical and political praxis. Development of more deliberate, self-reflexive praxis might lead to a 'postmodern democratic polities' (Yeatman 1994: 112) which would challenge the performative state and the system of globalised capital which it serves. Short abstract Adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) teachers have experienced a period of dramatic policy change in recent years; in particular, the introduction of competency-based assessment and competitive tendering for program funds. 'Discourse politics' provides a way of theorising the interplay between policy-mediated institutional change and teachers' practice. The focus of this study is 'discursive engagement'; how teachers are engaged by and are engaging with discourses of performativity. Through two action research projects, texts were generated of teachers talking and writing about how they were responding to the challenges, and developing their pedagogies in the new policy environment. These texts have been analysed and several patterns of discursive engagement delineated, named and illustrated. The strategic potential of 'discourse polities' is explored in the light of the findings.

This dissertation uses theories of cognitive conceptual integration (as outlined by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner) to propose a model of narrative reading that mediates between narratology and theories of reception. I use this model to demonstrate how new experimental narratives achieve a potent balance between a determinate and open story-form. Where the high postmodernists of the 1970s and 80s created ironic, undecidable story-worlds, the novels considered here allow readers to embrace seemingly opposite propositions without retreating into ironic suspension, trading the postmodernist “neither/nor” for a new “both/and.” This technique demands significant revision of both descriptions of radical experimentation in twenty-first-century novels, and of earlier narratological accounts of the distinction between story and discourse. Each novel considered in this dissertation encourages its reader to recognize combined concepts in the course of the reading process. Shelley Jackson’s Half Life combines singular and plural identity, reimagining individualist subjectivity and the literary treatment of (dis)ability. Mark Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions combines objective and subjective temporality, offering a new perspective on American myth-making in the popular post-Kerouac road-novel tradition. Percival Everett’s Erasure combines reliable and unreliable narration to create a complex critique of the idea of an African American novel tradition. M.D. Coverley’s hypertext novel Califia involves the reader in all three of these discursive dimensions at once, updating the marginalized art of hypertext fiction by inviting the reader to see his or her role in navigating the text as both creative and determined—the epitome of open-and-closed form. My analysis demonstrates how cognitive blending is a precise method for describing how a reader interprets complex narrative structures. I propose this blending-model as a new approach to contemporary experimental fiction from the perspective of the reader’s cognitive work, and show how it offers new readings of important contemporary fiction. I argue that twenty-first-century authors attempt simultaneously to construct “open” forms, and to address real socio-cultural concerns in the world; I also argue that a narratology founded on theories of cognitive processes is best-equipped to describe the operations of reading and understanding these complex narrative forms.

Despite the ubiquity of images depicting disability in the narratives that have contributed to the shaping of Canadian national identity, images of unconventional bodies have not drawn critical attention. My study begins to address this neglect by revisiting selections from Canadas historical literary canon using Disability Studies theory. I examine eight Anglophone novels selected from the reading requirements list for field examinations in Canadian literature at the University of Saskatchewan. Because fictional representations inform the ways we interpret reality, I argue that the application of Disability Studies theories to a Canadian context provides new insights into the meaning of Canadian nationhood. The study begins with Thomas McCulloch. His Stepsure Letters provides a counter-discourse to the commercialized ethos of his time. The disabled Stepsure exemplifies the ideal citizen. While Gwen, in Ralph Connors Sky Pilot, presents a sentimentalized stereotype of disability, her role also foregrounds the imperative of human relationship. Connors Foreigner, on the other hand, intertwines disability with ethnicized difference to form images of subhumanity that the novel suggests must be assimilated and/or controlled. Lucy Maude Montgomerys Emily trilogy echoes Connors later use of disability to embody a sinister Other that threatens the British-Canadian mainstream. In Such Is My Beloved, Morley Callaghan realistically depicts the power investments involved in configuring difference as social menace, defying the eugenic discourse of his day. While Malcolm Rosss As for Me and My House seems to revert to the exploitation of disability as a trope for trouble, at the same time the story subverts convention by failing to affirm normalcy. In Ethel Wilsons Love and Salt Water disability signifies the complexity and depth of humanity. In Mordechai Richlers The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, betrayal and rejection of responsibility to Other is the source of human suffering. The marginalized figures of Adele Wisemans Crackpot, the last novel examined in this study, defy their abject roles, pronouncing the right of being within ones difference.<p>Defamiliarizing the function of portrayals of disability brings into consciousness biases that have been systemically naturalized. Exploring constructions of difference reveals constructions of normalcy. Just as interrogating Whiteness uncovers hidden processes of racism, questioning normalcy illuminates a discriminatory ableism. My reading reveals a struggle within the national imaginary between ableism and a desire for inclusive pluralism. Disability Studies readings may help to liberate the collective psyche from tyrannical impositions of normalcy to a greater realization of the richness of human diversity.

Syftet med den föreliggande studien har varit att beskriva och skapa en djupare förståelse för vad det innebär att vara sopdykare i ett postmodernt konsumtionssamhälle. Den teoretiska delen i studien har bestått av Zygmunt Baumans teorier om konsumtionsliv, globalisering och postmodern etik. Material har bestått av fem intervjuer med två kvinnor och tre män som sopdyker regelbundet. Den metodologiska utgångspunkten har varit att tolka materialet utifrån ett hermeneutiskt förhållningssätt i tre olika nivåer. De begrepp som tillsammans utgör en huvudtolkning om vad det innebär att vara sopdykare i postmoderniteten är: En ambivalent konsumtion, alternativa kicksökare, den kollektiva gemenskapen, tänk globalt – agera lokalt, den gode stråtrövaren och gammaldags moral. Resultat som framkommit är att sopdykarna lever i en Robin Hood kultur som goda stråtrövare där det anses vara okej att ta från de rika och ge till de fattiga. Resultatet visar även att sopdykarna är ambivalenta i sina handlingar eftersom de har en tanke om att inte bidra till konsumtionssamhället samtidigt som det faktiskt är vad de gör. Sopdykarna som fenomen skulle inte kunna existera om de inte livnärde sig på konsumtion. / The purpose of this study is to describe and bring deeper understanding as to what dumpster diving means in a postmodern consumer society. Also, the theoretical framework of this study will be derived from the works of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in which he discusses consumption lifestyles, globalization and postmodern ethics. The data consist of interviews with three men and two women who have been dumpster diving continuously for extensive amounts of time. The methodological point of departure is a hermeneutic approach and the material is interpreted on three levels. Moreover, the results of the study will be divided into themes. An ambivalent consumption, rush seekers, think globally – act locally, the righteous brigand and old-fashioned morals are those terms that aligned comprise the principal interpretation of what it means to be a dumpster-diver in the postmodern world. The results it shows that dumpster divers live in a Robin Hood culture as righteous brigands where it is considered justified to take from the rich and give to the poor people. Dumpster divers are significantly ambiguous in their actions due to the fact that they have an idea that they are not contributing to consumption society, but in reality they do indeed. In fact, this study shows that dumpster divers would not exist if they were not fed by consumption.

Despite the ubiquity of images depicting disability in the narratives that have contributed to the shaping of Canadian national identity, images of unconventional bodies have not drawn critical attention. My study begins to address this neglect by revisiting selections from Canadas historical literary canon using Disability Studies theory. I examine eight Anglophone novels selected from the reading requirements list for field examinations in Canadian literature at the University of Saskatchewan. Because fictional representations inform the ways we interpret reality, I argue that the application of Disability Studies theories to a Canadian context provides new insights into the meaning of Canadian nationhood. The study begins with Thomas McCulloch. His Stepsure Letters provides a counter-discourse to the commercialized ethos of his time. The disabled Stepsure exemplifies the ideal citizen. While Gwen, in Ralph Connors Sky Pilot, presents a sentimentalized stereotype of disability, her role also foregrounds the imperative of human relationship. Connors Foreigner, on the other hand, intertwines disability with ethnicized difference to form images of subhumanity that the novel suggests must be assimilated and/or controlled. Lucy Maude Montgomerys Emily trilogy echoes Connors later use of disability to embody a sinister Other that threatens the British-Canadian mainstream. In Such Is My Beloved, Morley Callaghan realistically depicts the power investments involved in configuring difference as social menace, defying the eugenic discourse of his day. While Malcolm Rosss As for Me and My House seems to revert to the exploitation of disability as a trope for trouble, at the same time the story subverts convention by failing to affirm normalcy. In Ethel Wilsons Love and Salt Water disability signifies the complexity and depth of humanity. In Mordechai Richlers The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, betrayal and rejection of responsibility to Other is the source of human suffering. The marginalized figures of Adele Wisemans Crackpot, the last novel examined in this study, defy their abject roles, pronouncing the right of being within ones difference.<p>Defamiliarizing the function of portrayals of disability brings into consciousness biases that have been systemically naturalized. Exploring constructions of difference reveals constructions of normalcy. Just as interrogating Whiteness uncovers hidden processes of racism, questioning normalcy illuminates a discriminatory ableism. My reading reveals a struggle within the national imaginary between ableism and a desire for inclusive pluralism. Disability Studies readings may help to liberate the collective psyche from tyrannical impositions of normalcy to a greater realization of the richness of human diversity.

<p><p>Following World War II, the network emerged as both a major material structure and one of the most ubiquitous metaphors of the globalizing world. Over subsequent decades, scientists and social scientists increasingly applied the language of interconnection to such diverse collective forms as computer webs, terrorist networks, economic systems, and disease ecologies. The prehistory of network discourse can be traced back to descriptions of cellular formations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the invention of the electrical telegraph in the nineteenth century. Even so, it was not until the 1940s that researchers and writers began to rely on a more generalized network vocabulary to reflect fledgling material modes of interlinked organization and construct a new postwar vision of the world.</p></p> <p><p>Since the 1970s, the field of network science has given rise to an even wider range of research on complexity, self-organization, sustainability, group interactions, and systemic resilience. Scientists such as Albert-Laszlo Barabasi have studied network design and new media critics such as Alexander Galloway have addressed network ontology. This dissertation contends that to grasp the effects of networks on globalization, we must also look at the fears, hopes, and affects that they generate. While network scientists have been less concerned with the cultural fears, political investments, and changes in human subjectivity signaled by networks, my study of American literature focuses on writers, filmmakers, and media innovators who have captured the deep transformations of the era of interconnection. These artists have achieved insights about networks not through scientific analysis, but through aesthetic, narrative, and media-specific experimentation.</p></p> <p><p><italic>Network Aesthetics</italic> examines how contemporary American literature, film, television, and new media dramatize the affects -- alternatively terrifying and thrilling -- of interconnection. This interdisciplinary project combines numerous methodologies, including literary analysis, media studies, cultural criticism, and political theory. Given the importance of networks to representation, communication, and computing, these structures serve as an ideal hinge for operating intermedia exchanges. Using varied tools, I analyze terrorist networks (Stephen Gaghan's <italic>Syriana</italic>), financial systems (Don DeLillo's <italic>Underworld</italic>), computer webs (Marge Piercy's <italic>He, She, and It</italic>), neoimperial networks (Thomas Pynchon's <italic>Gravity's Rainbow</italic>), social networks (David Simon's <italic>The Wire</italic>), and interactive game networks (Persuasive Games' <italic>Killer Flu</italic>). In the end, I argue that obsessions with abstract network threats and solutions reveal a change in the most dramatic social protocols of our connected world. Understanding how networks have formally come to evoke fear can help us grow less susceptible to an American politics of terror and more able to act justly as we negotiate our interconnected world.</p></p> / Dissertation

This study examines changes in culture, economics and politics in Taiwan. Ronald Inglehart suggests that culture, economics and politics are mutually connected and these dynamics shape each other over time. Richard Florida argues that the driving force behind the transformation of a society¡¦s lifestyles, worldview and values is the rise of human creativity. In order to observe the changes over time, Inglehart and his colleagues have been collecting data through questionnaires (World Values Survey) in countries around the world. The purpose of this study is to measure and interpret the recent changes in Taiwan. Data collected from Taiwan is compiled in a unique database for analysis. This paper discusses the findings from this analysis and interprets the direction of change brought by intergenerational change. In addition, a cross-cultural analysis between Sweden and Taiwan is performed using the latest data collected from the two countries. Results suggest that Taiwan¡¦s shift is in the direction of Postmodernity. In addition, younger people are found to be more tolerant against different groups of people compared to the older generation.