Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

This thesis attempts to distinguish varying styles in a particular set of massive carvings from the Northwest Coast of North America, the totem poles of the Niska and Gitksan. The method of investigation is based on the use of hierarchical clustering and multi-dimensional scaling computer programmes. These programmes are of a type used in ecological, geological, and archaeological studies. Their purpose is to establish a numerical taxonomy from which inferences may be drawn. The data used in the study are based exclusively on photographs, and it is possible to include artifacts no longer in existence. There is an ethnographic record against which the success of the methodology is measured. It is concluded that there are four distinctive styles of carving and organizing the totem poles. Two of these are attributed to the Niska and two to the Gitksan. A rhythm of order is demonstrated in the placement of figures on the poles. It is concluded that the taxonomy gives positive support to the hypotheses of previous investigators in regard to clan formation: originally there was a two-fold rather than a four-fold division among these Tsimshian groups. Traits associated with individual artists are not defined by the programmes, although associated traits preferred in certain locations are described. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study is to examine the symbolic use in sports and thus discuss the limits of what can be seen as religion and what can be said to be sacred and profane in our time. Data were collected through participant observation during and in connection with the ice hockey games in Löfbergs Arena in Karlstad. Collected data is then analyzed based on Émile Durkheim's theory of the elementary forms of religion. The results indicate that the club badge and club colours of Färjestad BK can be interpreted as totems both before, during and after a ice hockey game. The symbols appear in a number of different contexts, and in some more exposed than others. They share largely the function of the totems in the Australian and North American tribes that Durkheim studied because it bind together and create identification between the fans of Färjestad. Färjestad's symbols are those that to some extent create and maintain sacred and profane, maintain the group and at the same time separates it from others. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka symbolanvändning inom sport och därigenom diskutera gränserna för vad som kan ses som religion och vad som kan sägas vara heligt och profant i samtiden. Data har samlats in via deltagande observationer under och i anslutning till ishockeymatcher i Löfbergs Arena i Karlstad. Insamlad data har sedan analyserats utifrån Émile Durkheims teori om religionens elementära former. Studiens resultat pekar på att Färjestad BK:s klubbmärke och klubbfärger kan tolkas som totems både inför, under och efter en ishockeymatch. Symbolerna uppträder i en rad skilda sammanhang och är i vissa mer exponerade än i andra. De delar till stor del funktion med de totems Durkheim studerade hos australiensiska och nordamerikanska stammar, i den meningen att de binder ihop och skapar identifikation Färjestadfansen emellan. Färjestads symboler är de vilka i viss utsträckning skapar och upprätthåller heligt och profant, upprätthåller gruppen och samtidigt avgränsar den från andra.

In the years immediately following World War II in Vancouver, native Northwest Coast images and objects were frequently made visible in the public spaces of the city, claimed and exchanged physically and symbolically in events involving both aboriginal and non-native participants. Like the political and social relations surrounding them, the meaning and purpose of these objects and images was, arguably, pliable and constantly shifting. The Totemland Pole, commissioned in 1950 by Vancouver's fledgling Totemland Society, and designed by local Kwakwaka'wakw carver Ellen Neel, was one such object-as-symbol. Numerous individuals and communities, aboriginal as well as non-native, were implicated in the object's production. Following anthropologist Anthony Cohen's work on social symbols in The Symbolic Construction of Community, I argue that while the symbol itself was held in common, its meaning varied with its participants' unique orientations to it. The differently motivated parties, specifically the work's creator, Ellen Neel, and its commissioners, the Totemland Society, attributed divergent meaning to the Totemland Pole simultaneously. As Cohen suggests, I propose that this difference did not lead to argument. Rather it was the form of the Totemland Pole itself, its impreciseness or "malleability," within the particular socio-political climate of its production, which enabled these divergent meanings to co-exist. In order to investigate ways in which the Totemland Pole was understood simultaneously as symbolically meaningful, this project attempts to map out the subject positions of and relations of power between Ellen Neel and the members of the Totemland Society, in relation to the particulars of the local historical moment. The forgotten details of the Totemland Commission and the lack of a legitimizing discourse of Neel's production, both fuelled by the gendered, class and race inflected politics of knowledge construction, have necessitated that the concept of absence be fundamental to my project. I have therefore approached the Totemland Commission from a number of surrounding institutional and social discourses, which form trajectories I see as intersecting at the site of the Totemland Pole. Any one of these trajectories may have been taken as the singular approach for the investigation of such an object. However, I wish to deny the autonomy normally granted these discursive fields, emphasizing instead the ways they are interdependent and may operate in tandem to enrich our understanding of an object which was the result of, and relevant to, shared histories.

L’étude de la relation de l’homme avec la nature n’est pas un fait nouveau, surtout en ce qui concerne le triptyque homme/animaux/plantes. En effet, un bon nombre de travaux réalisés en sciences sociales a permis de mettre à jour différents niveaux de compréhension dans lequel l’humain met en évidence la faune et la flore dans ses activités quotidiennes. C’est le cas de notre sujet qui porte sur les usages et les représentations des totems chez les Nzèbi du Gabon. Toutefois, ce qui fait la richesse d’une recherche c’est avant tout sa spécificité et sa capacité à enrichir la science. Ainsi, notre recherche repose sur les discours et les légendes de la société nzèbi sur ses totems. Cette société qui se trouve repartie dans trois provinces sur les neuf que compte le Gabon, les nzèbi ont gardé une partie importante de leur héritage ancien, notamment celui qui les lie à leurs totems. Basée sur le principe de l’oralité, cette société véhicule l’essentiel des connaissances sur les totems par un enseignement qui se fait en des lieux et des circonstances souvent déterminé dans un cadre traditionnel. Si le totem a toujours fait partie de la cosmogonie nzèbi ; c’est-à-dire depuis la création de l’univers comme le présentent certains récits comme le mythe Koto, qui retrace l’histoire des Nzèbi, mais aujourd’hui, cette société ne vit pas en marge des évolutions contemporaines. C’est dans cette logique que cette étude tente aussi d’apprécier à partir des influences que connaissent les Nzèbi, de faire l’état actuel des usages et des représentations des totems dans la société contemporaine nzèbi. / The study of the relation between man and nature is not a new fact, particularly regarding the triptych man / animals / plants. Indeed, many works in social sciences allowed to update various levels of understanding in how the human being highlights the flora and fauna in his daily activities. It is the case of our subject which concerns the uses and the representations of the totems among Nzèbi population, in Gabon. However, what makes the value of a research is the specificity and its capacity to enrich the science. Therefore, our research focuses on the speeches and the legends about totems in the nzèbi society. Nzèbi people which lives in three provinces on nine that count the Gabon, have guarded an important part of their old inheritance, in particular the one who binds them to its totems. Enriched by its oral tradition, this society conveys the main part of their knowledge on the totems by an education which takes place in a traditional frame that is in particular places and circumstances. Totems have always been a key element of the nzèbi cosmogony that is since the creation of the universe to today, as presented in the myth Koto which redraws the history of Nzèbi, but today, this society does not live outside the contemporary evolutions. It is in this perspective that our study also tries to analyse the present issues in nzèbi society, to understand the current state of the uses and the representations of the totems in the nzèbi contempory society.

In the years immediately following World War II in Vancouver, native Northwest Coast images and objects were frequently made visible in the public spaces of the city, claimed and exchanged physically and symbolically in events involving both aboriginal and non-native participants. Like the political and social relations surrounding them, the meaning and purpose of these objects and images was, arguably, pliable and constantly shifting. The Totemland Pole, commissioned in 1950 by Vancouver's fledgling Totemland Society, and designed by local Kwakwaka'wakw carver Ellen Neel, was one such object-as-symbol. Numerous individuals and communities, aboriginal as well as non-native, were implicated in the object's production. Following anthropologist Anthony Cohen's work on social symbols in The Symbolic Construction of Community, I argue that while the symbol itself was held in common, its meaning varied with its participants' unique orientations to it. The differently motivated parties, specifically the work's creator, Ellen Neel, and its commissioners, the Totemland Society, attributed divergent meaning to the Totemland Pole simultaneously. As Cohen suggests, I propose that this difference did not lead to argument. Rather it was the form of the Totemland Pole itself, its impreciseness or "malleability," within the particular socio-political climate of its production, which enabled these divergent meanings to co-exist. In order to investigate ways in which the Totemland Pole was understood simultaneously as symbolically meaningful, this project attempts to map out the subject positions of and relations of power between Ellen Neel and the members of the Totemland Society, in relation to the particulars of the local historical moment. The forgotten details of the Totemland Commission and the lack of a legitimizing discourse of Neel's production, both fuelled by the gendered, class and race inflected politics of knowledge construction, have necessitated that the concept of absence be fundamental to my project. I have therefore approached the Totemland Commission from a number of surrounding institutional and social discourses, which form trajectories I see as intersecting at the site of the Totemland Pole. Any one of these trajectories may have been taken as the singular approach for the investigation of such an object. However, I wish to deny the autonomy normally granted these discursive fields, emphasizing instead the ways they are interdependent and may operate in tandem to enrich our understanding of an object which was the result of, and relevant to, shared histories. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

Mitinis žmogus - šiuolaikinėje visuomenėje atspindintis senosios kultūros pasaulėžiūros suvokimą. Žmogus sąmonės lygmenyje laviruojantis tarp praeities kultūros dvasinių įsitikinimų ir šiuolaikinės visuomenės informacijos bei žinių. / The mythical man - in a modern society, reflecting the culture of the old world-perception. Man exists between the level of consciousness of the past culture and spiritual beliefs of modern society of information and knowledge.

This thesis examines the conflicted relationships between the construction of a national culture and identity located in landscape painting and the continuing presence of Native art and identity in Canada in the 1920s. It contends that the first was predicated on the assumed disappearance of the second. The first of five case studies examines and questions the validation of the Group of Seven at the imperial centre: the British Empire Exhibitions held at Wembley in 1924 and 1925, from which Native presence was excluded. The critical responses, collected and republished in Canada, are analyzed to show the unspoken influences of British landscape traditions, the means by which Group paintings were used to re-territorialize the nation, and to destabilize the myth of an essential Canadian national consciousness. The first confrontation between Canadian native and Native art occurred when a small group of Northwest Coast carvings was included within a related exhibition in Paris in 1927. The French critical responses validated the Native pieces but withheld recognition of the Group's works as national and modern. The reviews were collected but suppressed. The third study examines the work of the American artist Langdon Kihn. He was employed by the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways to work with the folklorist/ethnologist Marius Barbeau in producing images of the Stoney in Alberta and Gitksan in British Columbia. His ambiguous works supported claims to Native presence and cultural continuity, which ran contrary to repressive government policies, but were critically disciplined to ensure a message of discontinuity. The fourth investigates a program to restore the poles of the Gitksan, while changing their meaning to one signifying cultural decrepitude. Gitksan resistance testified to their agency, cultural continuity and identity. The fifth examines a program fostered by Barbeau to turn the Gitksan and their poles into the subjects of Canadian painting as "background" for the emerging nation's identity. This confrontation, which included Jackson, Carr and others, foregrounded all the problems. The exhibition which resulted in 1927 unsuccessfully attempted to join Canadian native and Native art and effect closure on the "narration of the nation".

This thesis examines the conflicted relationships between the construction of a national culture and identity located in landscape painting and the continuing presence of Native art and identity in Canada in the 1920s. It contends that the first was predicated on the assumed disappearance of the second. The first of five case studies examines and questions the validation of the Group of Seven at the imperial centre: the British Empire Exhibitions held at Wembley in 1924 and 1925, from which Native presence was excluded. The critical responses, collected and republished in Canada, are analyzed to show the unspoken influences of British landscape traditions, the means by which Group paintings were used to re-territorialize the nation, and to destabilize the myth of an essential Canadian national consciousness. The first confrontation between Canadian native and Native art occurred when a small group of Northwest Coast carvings was included within a related exhibition in Paris in 1927. The French critical responses validated the Native pieces but withheld recognition of the Group's works as national and modern. The reviews were collected but suppressed. The third study examines the work of the American artist Langdon Kihn. He was employed by the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways to work with the folklorist/ethnologist Marius Barbeau in producing images of the Stoney in Alberta and Gitksan in British Columbia. His ambiguous works supported claims to Native presence and cultural continuity, which ran contrary to repressive government policies, but were critically disciplined to ensure a message of discontinuity. The fourth investigates a program to restore the poles of the Gitksan, while changing their meaning to one signifying cultural decrepitude. Gitksan resistance testified to their agency, cultural continuity and identity. The fifth examines a program fostered by Barbeau to turn the Gitksan and their poles into the subjects of Canadian painting as "background" for the emerging nation's identity. This confrontation, which included Jackson, Carr and others, foregrounded all the problems. The exhibition which resulted in 1927 unsuccessfully attempted to join Canadian native and Native art and effect closure on the "narration of the nation". / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

Since their inception, the actual use of nuclear weapons in conflict is extremely limited. There have been only two documented occurrences which were committed exclusively by the United States. By contrast, however, state posturing with nuclear weapons occurs with regularity transcending historical situations, national wealth, military power, or even the actual possession of nuclear weapons. Rationalist arguments that depict nuclear posturing as a means of deterrence appear insufficient given its tendency to unbalance perceptions of equilibrium, and the public nature in which it occurs. Instead, I examine nuclear posturing by the United States during the Cold War as a form of political ritual providing for three distinctive, but complementary functions. First, posturing was a means to create coherence between foreign nuclear policy and domestic civil defense by manipulating symbols of fear. Second, posturing allowed the state to present itself in its new role as a shamanic authority over a new and powerful realm. Finally, posturing allowed for a normalization of the contradictory roles assumed by the state as it upheld its commission to defend the citizenry by means that would most probably destroy them all.