In this study, it is aimed to relate architecture with the changing definitions of territory. In this context, the research will focus on the issue of in-between, where the boundaries between public and private domains are blurred in the modern world. The Dutch Embassy in Berlin designed by OMA / Rem Koolhaas is built upon a creative redefinition of blurring boundaries between &amp / #8216 / public&amp / #8217 / and &amp / #8216 / private&amp / #8217 / . Given the fact that the Embassy is a diplomatic structure for which the safety factor is one of the most important design criteria, how Koolhaas interprets the idea of openness, of transparency, modernity which are meant to symbolize the Netherlands, will be studied in this research.

Abstract In order to cut down the management expense, the government must initiatively reduce the contact hours with people. Owing to the declination of people¡¦s daily time available and the decrease of expecting counter services, it is demanded that the services provided by the government be more timesaving and convenient. People's accepting degree on network and computerized government, an invisible customer services, is therefore elevated. In response to Territory Bureau's computerization exercise, the Ministry of Interior has founded a group, "management and research group for Territory Bureau's computer network", to work on the program since 1980. The prevalence of mobile communication and the application of in-time internet network these years have led to establishment of Territory Bureau's computerized system and led to transformation of the Bureau's exercise from manpower to computer network service. It is already a trend to deal work via Internet. It is urgent that government promotes computerization to the Bureau of Territory to make it more flexible and agile in order to provide people with more integral, convenient and versatile services. This study, from the users' viewpoint, explores the factors that influence the implement of Territory Bureau's computer network. The purpose is to understand the factors that influence the users and to provide further information for future expansion of the Bureau's program. Since the Territory Bureau's computer-network system is an innovative technology, the study of people's attitude and acceptation toward such technology is innovative as well. "Technology acceptance model" is the theoretical background in this study that explains users' behavioral intention in adopting the Territory Bureau's network information. By applying the theory of "diffusion of innovation", the influences of "relative advantage", "compatibility" and "complexity" for using the above system is investigated and discussed. Statistical questionnaires' survey is adopted in this study. The results show that the more "positive attitude" people have, the more "behavioral intention" they have in utilizing Territory Bureau's Internet information. The following factors are found to affect people's "positive attitude": more "relative advantage", "compatibility" and "complexity" people know about; more "perceived usefulness" and "perceived ease of use" people realize toward Territory Bureau's internet informatio

Early studies about territory defense of territorial male butterflies were focused on factors that may affect the outcome of contest. But rapid detection was so critical for territorial defense. The detection ability was correlated to visual system. Studies had focused on visual system such as the structure of eye optics and electrophysiology. However, it still existed one question about how do the owner detect intruder in the field. Some factors may affect the probability of detecting intruders from an owner, such as the distance, the size of the intruder, and background contrast. To determine what factor might affect detection ability of territorial male butterfly Hypolimnas bolina, two different sized butterfly models and four different luminance models were used to determine: 1. The reaction rate of the owner with differrent distances; 2. Test the detection ability at different relative position between intruders and owner (acute zone). 3. To test the visual angle hypothesis; 4. Test the luminance contrast effect. The results showed that the response rate decreased with distance but increased with model size. The owner had greater detection ability when the model was presented in the front rather than it on the side. Finally, the response rate was increased with model¡¦s low luminance. Besides, if the model was darker than its background, the owner¡¦s detection ability was greater. Previous studies indicated that a complex background may let the owner spend more time in detection. However, it was quite different with Hypolimnas bolina. In fact, the owner could quickly detect the model when the model was in a complex background, even there was without luminance contrast between the model and background.

Decentralisation and federalism are often said to mitigate conflict by better meeting the preferences of a heterogeneous population and demands for limited autonomy. But it is argued in this thesis that this perspective does not sufficiently address the ways in which conflict-ridden relations entangle processes across different scales ‒ local, regional as well as national. The aim of this thesis is to explain how it is that while decentralisation may contribute to national stability, it may simultaneously generate local conflict. This problem is analysed through a conflict in Kaduna State in north-central Nigeria where there have been outbreaks of violence between Hausa-Fulani Muslims and Christians of different ethnicities since the 1980s. Christian ethnic groups claim to be excluded from state benefits, while Muslim groups claim that Christians have undue influence over the state bureaucracy. The conflict feeds off ethnic and religious mobilisation. Expanded local political space further fuelled the conflict following the decentralisation that came with the shift from military to civilian rule in 1999. Decentralisation in Nigeria implies that the authorities should be associated with the majority ethnicity or religion in a specific territory. A localisation of politics accordingly raises the stakes in identity-based conflicts, especially as control of local institutions is necessary for inclusion in wider political processes. In Kaduna, this has led to demands for separating the state on a religious and ethnic basis. Actors make use of “scalar politics” to conform to or challenge boundaries set by the state. Social relations are associated with different boundaries.  Accordingly, decentralisation triggers conflicts on an identity basis, involving contestation over the hierarchy of scales. While national struggles between ethnic and religious groups may be subdued, conflicts play out locally as decentralisation in Nigeria makes religion and ethnicity a powerful tool for political mobilisation. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript.</p>

This dissertation investigates how the agents and organs of the Seleucid Empire explored, bounded, and endowed with meaning its imperial territory. I argue that king and court responded to the enormous opportunities and challenges of such a landscape with a range of ideological constructions and practical interventions, from border diplomacy to colonialism, ethnographic writing to royal parade. The first half concentrates on the kingdom's "pioneering phase" during the reigns of Seleucus I and Antiochus I. It examines the closing of the empire's eastern frontier in India and Central Asia and the role of court ethnographers in naturalizing the shape of this landscape. I then shift to the western periphery and investigate the founder-king's failed attempt to conquer Macedonia and the consequent relocation of homeland associations to northern Syria. In the second half of the dissertation the focus falls on the mature kingdom in the later third and second centuries BCE and on its declining agony. I look at the modes in which the bounded imperial landscape was articulated and ordered - the itinerant court and the ways it forged a sovereign terrain around the king's body, and the colonial foundations and their evolving importance within the kingdom. It is argued that the spatial practices and ideology that brought the empire into existence also generated the fault-lines along which it fell apart. In terms of method, the dissertation engages with spatial theory and cultural geography, and full use is made of archaeological material and textual evidence, literary and epigraphic, Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Jewish, and Persian. / The Classics

My dissertation proposes a comprehensive study of the politics of representing the Amazonian territory in literature and culture. Using the context of the Amazonian rubber boom (1879-1912) and its aftermaths in Peru and Brazil, my research evaluates how the Amazon Basin became the focus of political and sentimental debates, triggering discussions to rethink national identity, ethnicity, sovereignty, and modernity at the turn of the twentieth century. Traditionally portrayed as an exotic, primeval land, geographically isolated, and with endless natural resources waiting exploitation by a higher civilizing order, its presence continually frustrated colonizers and investigators who failed to reduce it to a set of manageable meanings. Despite the many books written about the region since its encounter in the sixteenth century to nowadays, the Amazon resists demands to be modern and construed by an imported Western rational. Like the Pampa in Argentina and the Backlands in Brazil, Brazil and Peru's Amazon is a tropical body that calls institutional authority into question. / Romance Languages and Literatures

Changes to commemorative signage in Port Orford, Oregon, United States, during 1998 and 1999 represent an emerging public acknowledgement of the removal by force of most of the indigenous peoples of Southwestern Oregon in the 1850s. A wide range of participants, including local area residents and nonresident members of Native American First Nations, negotiated changes to signage within a context of controversy. Hegemonic social memory institutionalized as local history and publicly displayed as text on a historical marker was challenged by an alternate version of the event commemorated: a conflict between Athapaskans and Euro- Americans in 1851 at the site now know as "Battle Rock." The alternate version is supported by oral tradition which is marginalized as a source of knowledge about the past while the official history has been privileged by repetitious inscription and incorporated commemorative ritual. Discussion includes the selectivity of public history and the creation of public memory through commemorative activity in which official and vernacular interests compete. A parallel is drawn between the remembrance and acknowledgement of events once suppressed and the remembrance and acknowledgement of marginalized indigenous American First Nations "forgotten" by the United States federal government. The Confederated Tribes of the Lower Rogue, building support for legislative acknowledgement of their tribal status, contributed positively to the production of signage text, an activity which enhanced both their visibility and the visibility and remembrance of their Athapaskan forebears.

In this study we research sacral spaces of Lithuanian villages, from pagan places of worship to sacral spaces of nowadays confessions. The work is done according to chosen methods of analysis. Main target of this study is to research sacral structures settled in the turn of history, their composition units, epitomize compositional links and interconnection elements. Object boundaries, analyzed in the work, are defined physically, as appreciable bodies. The concept “space”, in different theories is interpreted as infinite entity or environment, which needs structure to exist. Particular confession’s sacral space harmony is influenced by symbolism, which shows up as a long-lasting tradition. The object, analyzed as constituent part of urbanism structures, existed from its early times, and created compositional models with public spaces of villages with other typology. Traditionally perceptible sacral objects stimulate images and symbolic expressions witch shows up as a long-term tradition.

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