Comment transformer la structure des relations internationales ? La structure des relations internationales se définit par l’absence de détenteur de la force légitime condamnant les nations à vivre dans un état semi-anarchique composé par le cycle de la guerre et de la paix.Pour résoudre ce problème, problème de la guerre et de la paix parmi les nations, nous convoquerons le modèle de la cosmopolitique, ancêtre de la sécurité collective, union des États et idéal d’une paix perpétuelle légitime et légale. En raison des failles de la cosmopolitique kantienne, et après une étude des grandes théories du cosmopolitisme contemporain – soit la démocratie cosmopolitique, le cosmopolitisme libéral et le cosmopolitisme républicain – nous tâcherons de défendre un projet d’union fédérale cosmopolitique formée par une Assemblée mondiale et une Cour de justice afin d’étendre la légalité, la publicité et la civilité – les trois principes de l’espace public – aux relations internationales. Comment faire émerger, dans le respect de la pluralité des nations, de la liberté des peuples, un espace public mondial grâce à une union cosmopolitique afin de matérialiser l’idéal de la paix perpétuelle ?Mots clés : cosmopolitisme, cosmopolitique, nationalisme, nation, État, État-nation, souveraineté, citoyenneté, espace public, légalité, publicité, civilité, mondialisation, modèle westphalien, sécurité collective, ONU, justice globale, société civile, fédéralisme, guerre et paix / How can the structure of international relations be transformed? The structure of international relations is defined by the absence of legitimate force and centralized executive power, which constrains nations to live in a semi-anarchical state characterized by a cycle of war and peace.To confront this problem – the problem of war and peace among nations – we will resort to the cosmopolitical model, the forerunner of collective security. Cosmopolitical is a union of States, the purpose of which is a legitimate and legal perpetual peace. Because of a number of flaws in kantian cosmopolitanism, and after a review of the main, contemporary theories in cosmopolitanism – cosmopolitan democracy, liberal cosmopolitanism and republican cosmopolitanism – we will defend a project of a federal, cosmopolitan union based on a worldwide Assembly and a Court of justice. Our goal is to adapt legality, publicity and civility – the three main principles of a public space – to international relations.How can we create – thanks to a cosmopolitan union – a worldwide public space, respectful of the liberty and plurality of people and nations, in order to make the project of perpetual peace happen?Key words : cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitical, nationalism, nation, state, nation-state, sovereignity, citizenship, public space, publicity, civility, globalization, westphalian model, collective security, United-Nations, global justice, federalism, war, peace

This paper attempts to answer the question of why the war in Syria has been particularly long and violent. To do this, it draws upon the explanatory value of Benjamin Miller’s theory of regional war and peace (2007). The main claim here is that state weakness, a mismatch be- tween state boundaries and national identities, and great power competition in the area can explain why the war has been particularly long and violent. The study concludes that the fol- lowing major factors and their interacting effects have had a major role in protracting and ex- acerbating the war: weak Syrian nationalism; extreme Islamism; weakness of the Syrian state; competition between the West and Russia; and to a lesser extent, Kurdish presence and acts of relative disengagement by the United States.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was one of the great blunders in American foreign policy. This thesis examines Neoconservative thought and policy, and its effect on the nation and state building effort in Iraq. It provides an analysis of the Iraqi Constitution and uses the faults of the Constitution to paint a picture of the larger instabilities and difficulties in Iraq today.

This dissertation examines the discourses of race, nation and ethnicity in late Qing and early republican China, focusing primarily on representations of the Han. It argues that the competing and changing representations of the Han in this period formed an integral part of the process of modern Chinese nation building. The empirical basis of the dissertation consists of three layers: intellectuals discourses, school textbooks and dictionaries. These layers constituted interconnected layers of discourses that were involved in the broader process of Chinese nation-building. The dissertation demonstrates that intellectuals discourses played a central role in constructing new notions of Chinese identity and the role of the Han, and thereby also in producing different templates or for Chinese nation-building during the late Qing and early republican period. After the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1911, these modern perceptions of Chinese national identity were endorsed by the ruling elites and were gradually disseminated and popularised further by means of school textbooks and dictionaries. Taken together, the examination of discourses on the Han in these three types of sources therefore offers an account of how early Chinese nationalist ideas were produced among the elites and then disseminated among the broader population.

Cette thèse a pour objet l'exploration de l'imaginaire post-colonial dans quatre fictions de laforêt vierge. Elle se propose de dégager les fondements coloniaux des images véhiculées parles oeuvres de trois auteurs hispanophones : Canaima, La vorágine, Sangama, et un lusophone : Inferno verde. La théorie de l'imaginaire de Gilbert Durand et celle de la décolonialité (Dussel, Mignolo,Castro-Gómez, Quijano) sont les outils scientifiques utilisés dans cette démonstration. Lacombinaison des deux approches permet de faire apparaître la nature coloniale de l'imaginaire national qui informe les récits de la forêt. Après voir étudié le symbolisme des fictions et celui des Chroniques de la Conquête, ce travail aborde l'analyse de l'imaginaire dans les sociétés coloniales, puis dans les entités nationales en formation. Il se clôt sur l'étude du mythe de la Race qui dynamise l'imaginaire des fictions et celui de la société. Les divers discours, scientifiques, historiques, littéraires, anthropologiques, etc, apparaissent finalement comme autant de moments d'une même formation discursive : le Grand Récit National.

This study analyzes female friendship in four novels written by black diasporic women and examines the impact of race, class and gender on women’s relationships. The novels emphasize how women face the challenges of patriarchal institutions and other attempts to subjugate then through polygamy, neo-colonialism, constraints of tradition, caste prejudice, political instability and the Biafra war. This dissertation uses characterization and plot analysis to explore the different stories and messages the novels portray. As findings this study foregrounds the healing powers of female bonding, which allows women to overcome prejudice and survive, to enjoy female empowerment, and to extend female friendship into female solidarity that participates in nation building. However, another conclusion focuses on the power of patriarchy which constitutes a threat to female bonding and usually causes women’s estrangement.

This dissertation examines the ways in which socio-cultural, economic and religious ideologies shape discourses on women’s rights, higher education and empowerment in Ghana. The study starts from the premise that female identity in Ghana is constructed through discourses of reproduction that produce and reproduce unequal gender relations that negatively impact women’s higher socio-economic and educational attainments. Consequently, discourses of women’s rights and empowerment are inextricably linked to normative reproductive labour expectations. Using a postcolonial feminist theoretical framework, I argue that women’s rights and empowerment issues must be located within particular historical, local and global socio-cultural and political discourses in postcolonial societies. Subsequently, this study situates women’s rights concerns within the larger framework of global systemic inequalities that reinforce the local socio-cultural, political and economic disadvantages of women in Ghana. I interviewed women’s rights activists, conducted focus group discussions with male and mostly female participants during an intensive six-month field study. In line with postcolonial feminist epistemologies, I consider participants as knowledgeable subjects in the production of knowledge about their lived realities, by centering their voices and experiences in my analyses. The experiences of research participants (heterogeneous as they are) provide excellent insights into transnational feminisms, gendered postcolonial landscapes, and global cultural patriarchal hegemonies. These experiences also illustrate how global discourses of rights provide leverage to simultaneously challenge and politicize colonial discourses of race and gender in the global south. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2013-02-08 16:23:06.155

Wastewater sludge is considered a valuable source of nutrients and energy. Freeze/thaw treatment is an efficient dewatering method for wastewater sludge management in First Nation communities located in cold climate conditions. Natural freeze/thaw is a simple, practical and low cost method, which can effectively dewater sludge. The objective of this research is to evaluate dewatering, nutrient recovery and organics separation of wastewater sludge originating from different wastewater treatment processes using freeze/thaw processing. The results of experiments showed the effectiveness of this method in sludge dewaterability and solubilisation of organics and nutrients. The sludge solid content increased by approximately 10-fold after treatment. It was effective in solubilisation of about 15.2%, 33.5% and 21.5% of total nitrogen, total phosphorus and total chemical oxygen demand to soluble one, respectively for the non-BNR sludge. However, anaerobic digestion of the solid cake post freeze/thaw treatment did not show enhanced methane yield compared with fresh sludge. / February 2017

<p>Survival of a Perverse Nation traces the ways in which contemporary Armenian anxieties are congealing into the figure of the “homosexual.” As in other post-Soviet republics, homosexuality has increasingly become defined as the crisis of the times, and is understood by many as a destructive force linked to European encroachment. In Armenia, a growing right-wing nationalist movement since 2012 has been targeting LGBT and feminist activists. I suggest that this movement has arisen out of Armenia’s concerns regarding proper social and biological reproduction in the face of high rates of emigration of especially men in search of work. Many in the country blame this emigration on a post-Soviet oligarchy, with close ties to the government. This oligarchy, having quickly and massively privatized and liquidated industry and land during the war over the region of Nagorno-Karabagh (1990-1994) with Azerbaijan, created widespread un(der)employment. A national narrative attributing the nation’s survival of the 1915 Genocide and dispersion of its populations to strong morality preserved by institutions such as the Church and the family has now, in the post-Soviet era, ruptured into one of moral “perversion.” This dissertation is based on 15 months of ethnographic research, during which I participated in the work of two local non-governmental organizations: Public Information and Need for Knowledge, an LGBT rights organization and Women’s Resource Center, a feminist organization. I also conducted interviews with 150 households across Yerevan, the capital city, and did in-depth interviews with other activists, right-wing nationalists and journalists. Through psychoanalytic frameworks, as well as studies of kinship, I show how sovereignty – the longed for dream for Armenians over the last century – is felt to have failed because of the moral corruption of the illegitimate figures that fill Armenian seats of authority. I, thus, examine the ways in which a missing father of the household is discursively linked to the lack of strong leadership by a corrupt government, producing a prevalent feeling of moral disintegration that nationalists displace onto the “homosexual.”</p> / Dissertation

This project seeks to explore the subject of nation and nationalism in the context of rhetoric and the philosophy of communication. By exploring ancient tropes of nation through rhetorical figures such as Isocrates in Ancient Greece and Cicero in the Roman Republic; through Kant, the Enlightenment and modernity; and, through postmodern interpretations, I attempt to reconceptualize the nation as a communicative construct while pointing to what may lie ahead for the future. By applying Anderson's (2006) concept of "imagined communities" as an interpretative framework, the nation appears to be a more fluid, contingent space for communication that is grounded in ancient and Enlightenment ideals, but is perhaps reconfiguring in the face of postmodern complexity as advanced by scholars such as Appadurai (1996) and Smith (1979, 1983, 1995, 1998, 2008, 2010). The transition from antiquity and modernity to postmodernity is characterized by what I call a theory of "dialogic nationalism," which has roots in Martin Buber's understanding of dialogue (1988, 1996, 2002) and his writings on nationalism (2005). Dialogic nationalism may serve as an alternative hermeneutic for the nation within the postmodern moment. The experience of international students in the United States and the complex issue of immigration around the world are also explored as practical applications for dialogic nationalism. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Communication and Rhetorical Studies / PhD; / Dissertation;