<p>This dissertation focuses on raiding and sovereignty in the Central African Republic's (CAR) northeastern borderlands, on the margins of Darfur. A vast literature on social evolution has assumed the inevitability of centralization. But these borderlands show that centralization does not always occur. Never claimed by any centralizing forces, the area has instead long been used as a reservoir of resources by neighboring areas' militarized entrepreneurs, who seek this forest-savanna's goods. The raiders seize resources but also govern. The dynamics of this zone, much of it a place anthropologists used to refer to as "stateless," suggest a re-thinking of the modalities of sovereignty. The dissertation proposes conceptualizing sovereignty not as a totalizing, territorialized political order but rather through its constituent governing capabilities, which may centralize or not, and can combine to create hybrid political systems. The dissertation develops this framework through analysis of three categories of men-in-arms -- road-blockers, anti-poaching militiamen, and members of rebel groups -- and their relationships with international peacebuilding initiatives. It compares roadblocks and "road cutting" (robbery) to show how they stop traffic and create flexible, personalized entitlements to profit for those who operate them. The dissertation also probes the politics of militarized conservation: in a low-level war that has lasted for twenty-five years, the European Union-funded militiamen fight deadly battles against herders and hunters. Though ostensibly fought to protect CAR's "national patrimony" (its animals and plants), this war bolsters the sovereign capabilities of a range of non-state actors and has resulted in hundreds of deaths in the last few years, many of them hidden in the bush. The dissertation then shows how CAR's recent cycle of rebellion has changed governance in rural areas. Though mobile armed groups have long operated in CAR, they used to work as road cutters and local defense forces and only recently started calling themselves "rebels" -- a move that has landed them in new roles as "governors" of populations while leaving them without the welfare largess they seek. Throughout these various raiders' projects, the idea of the all-powerful state serves as a reference point they use to qualify themselves with sovereign authorities. But their actions as rulers undermine the creation of the unitary political authority they desire and invoke. Failure to appreciate these non-centralized micropolitical processes is a main reason peacebuilding efforts (such as disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration) in the region have failed.</p> / Dissertation

Hong Kong¡¦s return of sovereignty to China was the focus of world attention, especially how to combine the two different systems in political, economical and social fields, etc. Although Deng Xiao-ping excogitated ¡§One Country, Two systems¡¨, it didn¡¦t figure out all problems. After many years¡¦ separation, Hong Kong was still impressed by the historical miserable memories and the fears of the unknown future. ¡§One Country, Two systems¡¨ perhaps offered an initiative compromise. But the people in Hong Kong were still forcing to face the immediate clash of their identities. The aim of this thesis is to discuss the people in Hong Kong how to deal with the relations of Hong Kong and China, including the feelings of ¡§self/the other¡¨ and ¡§superior/inferior¡¨. Not only the Hong Kong's developments of political freedom, economy and the standards of living are more advanced than China, but also the emergence of a commonality shared by the population as a whole in Hong Kong. How to fill the gap between both of them is an important issue of the people in Hong Kong. It seems a mess when we talk about the identities in Hong Kong, since ¡§the Chinese Citizen¡¨ and ¡§the Hong Kong Citizen¡¨ are thought conflicting. The global age also brings the new choice to people in Hong Kong, and especially the value behind the globalization is brand-new idea of identities may reduce their patriotism. As the world¡¦s economy shifts so immediately, whether Hong Kong bends the knee to China for the aids is also the topic we want reach in this thesis. In the article, we try to explain the relations between Hong Kong and China under the age of the globalization by the approach of postmodernal identity. At the same tome, we regard ¡§the Chinese Citizen¡¨ and ¡§the Hong Kong Citizen¡¨ as the ¡§national¡¨ and ¡§urban¡¨ identity in different layers. And we also suppose the people in Hong Kong deal their own choices of identities by the ¡¨consumer culture¡¨ which comes along with the global society. As the respect of postmodernal identity reveals: the identification is always in the status of¡§becoming¡¨along with different environmental settings.

This thesis analyses the role of the International Community in the democratisation in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH). The main theoretical approach adopted is the Critical Theory as represented mainly by Robert Cox. Cox argued that there was an interaction between the organisation of production, the forms of state, and the world orders. The form of state that the International Community aimed at establishing in BiH following the Dayton Agreement is analysed in relation to the transnationalisation of the world order. It is concluded that the aim of the International Community has been the integration of BiH into the transnationalised world order by the establishment of a limited sovereignty and maintenance of a minimum stability. The limited sovereignty of BiH can be observed in the text of the Dayton Agreement, which includes also the constitution of this country, as well as its later implementation. The main obstacle for the International Community&amp / #8217 / s efforts has been the nationalist political parties. Therefore, the main aim of the International Community in the democratisation of BiH has been the eradication of their power. As a result of the failure of the International Community to destroy the power of the nationalist political parties, a form of controlled democracy has been established. The controlled democracy is operated through the OHR that is an ad hoc international organisation in BiH. This signified that BiH has been effectively an international protectorate in which the three constituent nations were politically monopolised by their respective nationalist political parties.

The critical tradition in International Relations Theory has placed great emphasis on the metaphysical nature of sovereignty, the concept assumed to be pivotal to the modern states system. The present study offers an explanation for the metaphysics that characterizes the prevailing notion of sovereignty via insights provided by Bataille. The study focuses on the ontological implications to which Bataille&rsquo / s formulation of sovereignty gives rise. Underlying this endeavor is to probe into the ways in which these implications enrich our understanding of sovereignty. One of the most important achievements of Bataille&rsquo / s approach to sovereignty is that it does not treat sovereignty as merely an administrative and legal issue. This achievement is highly critical in the sense that it enables us to realize the metaphysical dimension of sovereignty. This metaphysics has an important potential to render the problematic points in sovereignty visible. Through the analysis of these points, this study elaborates on the historical development of political authority and state sovereignty. Taking the anthropological data provided by Bataille into account the study claims that with the emergence of modernity, there came into existence a new metaphysical representation of sovereignty.

Thesis--Toulouse, 1914. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [227]-232).

Humanitarian intervention is a concept that generates several problems in our time. The idea of humanitarian intervention concerns the modern norms of sovereignty and noninterventional principals. It also concerns the conventional norm, which declares that states are not allowed to interfere in other states’ internal affairs. The use of military force to implement humanitarian intervention is restricted according to international law. This is what this thesis intends to investigate. The purpose was to find out the causes behind the intervention in Libya, which was carried out by NATO. The main questions were (1) to find out if the intervention in Libya was a humanitarian intervention (2) or if there were other motives that were behind the intervention. Two classical international relations theories have been utilized for the analysis. The analysis focused on the five UN Security Council members’ statements and arguments, which have been expressed in the UN Security Council. This issue created a gap between the members of the Security Council, especially between the Western states and the Russian and Chinese authorities

In order to determine how Britain’s governance and sovereignty have changed since 1950, I developed a historical case study tracing Britain’s political and economic integration into the E.U. starting from the early post-World War II governments through the end of the Thatcher administration. This study uses Historical Institutionalism, which seeks to explain how changes in governance and state sovereignty come about outside of state control, as a ‘testing’ theory to determine whether Britain’s governance and sovereignty have changed since 1950. The hypothesis of this case study is: Did the past decisions on E.C. integration, made by Britain’s government officials and policy-makers, have unintended consequences which caused Britain to become dependent on or locked into paths which led to losses in British state sovereignty? This study concluded that ‘unintended consequences’ and ‘path dependencies’ were important factors in Britain’s integration into the E.U. However, I found a number of antecedent conditions such as Britain’s status as a weakening nation-state, its insecurities in an economically interdependent world, deteriorating trade relations with iii the Commonwealth and the misperceived status as an equal partner with the U.S. that should also be taken into account in providing a comprehensive explanation. Finally, this study found that ‘unintended consequences’ and ‘path dependencies’ did not lead to a loss of sovereignty for Britain. This case study embraces a nontraditional concept of sovereignty which defines it as constantly changing and which does not have to be linked to its territory. This new definition allows for Britain to lose sovereignty in traditional ways (domestic) and gain it in unconventional areas (E.U.). Therefore, I have determined that Britain’s sovereignty and governance have changed rather than been mistakenly ‘given away’.

International Relations theory includes realist concepts of sovereign nation-states interacting in an anarchic world as they rationally determine their own national interests based upon ever-changing competition for power. In this interplay for power, nation-states may affect each other politically, economically, ideologically or militarily. This thesis focuses on effects of U.S. foreign policy and U.S. intervention in Guatemala in the time period surrounding the Guatemalan Revolution (1944-1954), with its "liberation" in 1954, and then into the early 1960s as the Guatemalan state began to be militarized. In this thesis I will answer the following question: How did the United States affect the sovereign nation of Guatemala, through economic policy, Cold War rationale, and military operations and thereby contribute to and facilitate the establishment of the nature of the Guatemalan counterinsurgency state? Through historically documented and officially acknowledged events an assessment will be made as to how these three elements singularly and also collectively influenced the internal workings of the Guatemalan state.

This dissertation explores politico-symbolic deployments of death in figurations of national identity and sovereignty in the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. Many Kurds have died in their successive rebellions over the last century. However, biological death has not necessarily excluded them from Kurdish culture and politics. Rather, through a symbolic economy of “gift” the Kurds resurrect their dead as martyrs – affective forces that powerfully shape public, political and daily life and promote Kurdish national identity as a sacred communion of the dead and the living. For its own part, the Turkish state has been endeavoring to eradicate this persistent power of the Kurdish dead by obstructing their appropriation and assimilation into the regenerative realms of Kurdish national-symbolic. While these struggles are still in effect, with the shift in Kurdish politics away from the original goal of national independence in 1999, the Kurdish dead emerged as a site of contention also among the Kurds. At least until 2005 the place of the dead in Kurdish politics also shifted with a new politics of memory that the leadership of Kurdish movement initiated to buttress the “peace process”. Based on two-year fieldwork in Diyarbakır, the informal capital of Kurds in Turkey, this study explores the Kurdish political imaginaries and subjectivities that are generated in and through these multiple struggles and contentions over the Kurdish dead, situating death as a central symbolic and semantic field constitutive to national identity and sovereignty. This study contributes to the ethnography of the Kurds, Turkey and the Middle East as well as theories of death, the body, nationalism, sovereignty and political subjectivity. / text

My research builds upon interdisciplinary trends in Native scholarship emphasizing tribal-specificity; attention to understudied periods, writers, and texts; and a political commitment to engage contemporary challenges facing Indigenous communities. My dissertation examines the persistence of nationhood in Cherokee writing between the dissolution of the Cherokee government preceding Oklahoma statehood in 1907 and political reorganization in the early 1970s. Situating writing by John Milton Oskison, Rachel Caroline Eaton, Rollie Lynn Riggs and Ruth Muskrat Bronson explicitly within the Cherokee national contexts of its emergence, I attend to the complicated ways they each remembered, imagined, narrated and enacted Cherokee nationhood in the absence of a functioning state. Often read as a transitional “dark age” in Cherokee history, this period stands instead as a rich archive of Cherokee national memory capable of informing contemporary debates in the Cherokee Nation and Native Studies today. / text