African Cinema is an entity as diverse as the various countries, languages and cultures on this continent. The entertainment value of Cinema has been more popular than the study of its ideological significance, but nevertheless in a contemporary Africa where politics affect the social, cultural and economical survival of its citizens, Cinema can be used as a valuable asset and a powerful means of communication that can conscientize and educate African audiences. Thomas Hobbes’s leadership model and political theory of sovereignty, though a XVIIth century framework, can theoretically contribute in the analysis of the representation of African leadership styles in Cinema. This article analyzes four fiction films representing four different political leaders in, respectively, South Africa, Uganda, Cameroon and Nigeria. A film content analysis will explore the different representation of leadership styles, the personality of each leader, the power struggles in each society and how this may suggest value judgments about African leadership to the films’ various target audiences.

Recently, many authors from various theoretical backgrounds have written books or articles trying to clarify what the role of the sovereign state is within the wider political context of “global politics.” This thesis seeks to critically engage with the way in which this debate has been framed by the vast majority of these authors. Indeed, while most authors frame this debate as an essentially empirical disagreement concerning the objective composition of global politics, we will be arguing that it is really a debate that concerns the problem of political foundation and the possibly changing nature of the dominant ways of answering this problem in contemporary “global politics.” From this perspective, the vast majority of those involved in this debate simply pass over - as somehow analytically uninteresting - most of the questions that would really need to be explained and understood. This thesis seeks to address this crucial oversight

Since colonial contact, settlers have been targeting the Indigenous female reproductive body. They attempted to severe the inherent connection between the Indigenous female body and the land through extreme resource extraction. This project investigates the impacts of colonization on Indigenous birthing practices and the current Indigenous birth resurgence happening within the colonial confines of Canada. In this context Indigenous birth resurgence is defined as the honouring and reclaiming of Indigenous teachings that support sovereignty over the Indigenous female body. This investigation is presented through semi-structured interviews with seven Indigenous birthworkers residing and practicing on Ktunaxa and Sinixt land. Three key themes were observed throughout these interviews the first being that each birthworker had a very hard time finding any traditional teachings surrounding birth from their communities due to colonization displacing this vital information, secondly all of the birthworkers had to go through Western Eurocentric education in order to be granted “qualifications” to practice birthwork, and finally each of the birthworkers stated that if Indigenous birth resurgence is fully realized it would have a profoundly positive effect on Indigenous families and Indigenous health in general.. The interviews and key findings are further investigated through a podcast entitled Reclaiming Birth in a Settler State / Graduate

Dustin Breitling Thesis Advisor: Martin Riegl, PhD. Small Island Developing States and Statehood Abstract: The spate of warnings that have been issued concerning Climate Change and its damaging impact upon the livelihood of populations has garnered increasing acknowledgement and critical concern. In a century where the potential for states to be submerged, concerns are being raised about how states, especially Small Island Developing States, are susceptible to losing Statehood. Small Island Developing States are already being ravaged by higher sea levels and dramatic loss of livelihood through inundation and potential submergence of their territory by the end of the century. Already these concerns are catalyzing Small Island Developing States to seek out alternative arrangements for their populations and importantly to preserve their legal personality. These arrangements tie in decisive concerns that connect how States are understood within in the international community as possessing a permanent territory, effective governance, permanent population and the capacity to be recognized by others. The angle offered and explored here becomes what happens once a permanent territory is undermined by seawaters and populations are relocated to Host States. If these issues are bound to occur then can historical...

This work assesses the evolving link between drone warfare and the concept of state sovereignty. In doing so, the paper critiques the existing realist and neo- realist discourses that maintain anthropocentric and state-centric assumptions in the analysis of not only the field of Security Studies, but International Relations as a whole. The phenomenon of drone warfare proves the opposite of such assumptions. The role of the state, and indeed the human, is continually decreasing with the involvement of hybrid actors. The drone is the embodiment of complex hybridity combining human and non-human actors alike. To better understand the contemporary execution of sovereignty, particularly in its role of maintaining the monopoly on violence, this paper will explore the premises of post-human perspectives in International Relations. In particular, this paper is inspired by the insights of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which emphasises equal analysis of human and non-human actors. Sovereignty remains a relevant topic, but through the involvement of hybrid actors, it is devolving into a seemingly arbitrary distribution of violence. The role of human actors in drone warfare is decreasing with the technological improvement of military drones and the military demand for increased drone autonomy. As a result,...

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Despite the frequency of use amongst scholars of IR, myth remains largely a term of colloquiality. However, this paper aims to argue that as a distinct temporal and normative structure within discourse, it is a powerful tool for understanding the ways in which narratives give meaning to political phenomena, not just by describing how they are, but how they ought to be. To explain the function of myth, a case study of Kosovo has been conducted. Much scholarly debate on the nature of internationally contested states exists, but we will make the argument that Kosovo is best understood as a being in a state of liminality, due to the conflicting nature of its political structures and foreign intervention. By joining the theory discourse of Laclau and Mouffe, with insights from psychoanalysis we suggest a framework for analysing the distinct nature of political myths. The utopian horizons of myth spell out two antagonistic narratives of sovereignty in Kosovo: one of European integration and market liberalisation, and one of unification with Albania.

The present study explores the relationship between trust placed in national institutions and opinion of globalization. A secondary data analysis is conducted using data collected by the European Commission in a 2004 Eurobarometer survey of European Union (EU) citizens on various issues regarding the EU, globalization and national challenges. A prominent theme in the literature is that, in recent times, globalization has had the effect of compromising the sovereignty of nation-states. This has generated a backlash of nationalistic attitudes wherein globalization is posited in opposition to the nation-state. This surge in nationalism has reinforced a culture wherein any external force that has the capacity to compromise or merely challenge national sovereignty is deemed undesirable. The EU represents a unique response to the phenomenon of globalization. It is the only economic bloc that attempts to manage globalization and mitigate its negative effects through the promotion of a free market system that is actively reinforced by political and social transnational unity. By assessing EU citizens' opinion of globalization and its relation to national attachment, one can investigate whether in living in a system of shared national sovereignty, which attempts to actively manage globalization, one experiences globalization not as an external invasive force, but as an integral component of the nation-state.

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