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The purpose of this study is to use a qualitative approach to highlight the western involvement in Thai orphanages and, on basis of Western moral development workers and volunteers, enlighten how Western colonial heritage can be recreated in the humanitarian economic aid. The study is based on the recent tsunami disaster in 2004 which led to a huge voluntary effort by Western volunteers and organizations who wanted to rebuild the country. Now, seven years after the disaster, the country has recovered well and thanks to a strong turism, and industrial growth, the country has now reached the position of a middle income country with regional power. The study presents a selection of previous ressearch in the area from different critical perspectives. It is a field study based on qualitative interviews with six informants that highlights the individual engagment in humanitarian assistance. Theories based on Post-colonialism and globalization have been used in order to analyze and reach the result of this study.

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The standards of beauty always change in every generation in Taiwan, but there is only one standard still has strong impact on people, that is:¡¨ having white complexion¡¨. People say: ¡§A white complexion is powerful enough to hide seven faults.¡¨ The reason of ¡§whitening¡¨ is important because of the different powers which compete with each other to decide the meaning behind the discourse of ¡§whitening¡¨. The concept of ¡§Whitening¡¨ is from the promotion of beauty industry. What¡¦s more, this concept also made a strong impact through the media on people who live in Taiwan. Thus, to understand how the media delivery the ¡§whitening¡¨ concept is very important, especially through the most important media--- Internet in this generation. The main purpose of this research is to find out the process of developing the discourse of ¡§whitening¡¨ within the on-line Beauty Salon community and the context behind the discourse in Taiwan. Another purpose is to seek out the minority discourse which seldom appear within the mass media and also provide the ability of reflectivity thinking. The main structure of this research base on the critical concept of ¡§Knowledge/ Power¡¨ from the post-modern scholars: Gramsci, Foucault and the post-colonialism scholar---Said to discuss how the ¡§whitening¡¨ discourse is developed by the ¡§center¡¨(ex. doctor, expert and business ) and ¡§margin¡¨(ex.net pal)within the on-line beauty community. This research choose qualitative research method to do the context analysis in the most popular on-line community which is also the biggest BBS in Taiwan---¡§PTT ¡¨ and choose ¡§Beauty Salon¡¨ community within PTT as the research field. The results show that the ¡§Whitening ¡¨ discourse is a knowledge system within ¡§Beauty Salon¡¨ community and developed by the hierarchy relationship form doctors, skin-care experts, cosmetic businesses and cosmetic sales. What¡¦s more, the role of ¡§black skin¡¨ is ¡§the other¡¨ and has the inferiority within this knowledge system of whitening discourse. And the voice of supporting black skin also disappeared within Beauty Salon community. To compare with Beauty Salon community, there was another temporary skin-care on-line discussion bard founded by YAHOO in March 2008. And it has less limit and more open to express their opinions. This research found that there is the voice of supporting black skin appearing within this field and also using the strategy of different mimicry to ¡§write back¡¨ the discourse developed by majority. This research found that if there are only few powers to develop the discourse, the discourse will become one-dimension and hardly to see the different other opinion against the mainstream or the ¡§center¡¨ opinion. This also tells us that the limit of structure from the oligopoly powers in the Internet will expropriate people¡¦s chance and freedom to choose and contact the different voices, and this situation is worthy to reflect.

This thesis examines the relationship between utopianism and nationalism in New Zealand literature between 1817 and 1973. My research utilises the definition of both the utopia and the nation as “imagined” or “imaginary” communities (to use Benedict Anderson and Phillip Wegner’s terms), in demonstrating how they function as interdependent concepts in colonial New Zealand literature. Specifically, my research focuses on how a dominant discourse of Pākehā nationalism is influenced by the desires of colonial settlement. There is an identifiable tradition in which New Zealand is imagined as a utopian space with an ambivalence towards modernity. The settler nation is defined subjectively by different authors, retaining, however, a tradition of excluding groups which are not compatible with the authors’ utopian projections. This exclusion may be based on race, gender, class, political views or other categorisations. I view this tradition as a dialectic of changing desires and utopian visions, based on changing historical contexts, but always engaged with the central attempt to speculate the possibilities that New Zealand holds as a utopia for Anglocentric settlement. The thesis is divided into four chapters, each based on the comparison of two texts from a certain period. The first chapter compares two texts of early nineteenth century British settlement, J.L. Nicholas’ Narrative of Voyage to New Zealand (1817) and E.J. Wakefield’s Adventure in New Zealand (1845). The second chapter examines Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) and Julius Vogel’s Anno Domini 2000 (1889). The third chapter focuses on Robin Hyde’s Wednesday’s Children (1936) and John Mulgan’s Man Alone (1939). My final chapter argues that the end of this mode of writing is signalled by Smith’s Dream (1971 rev. 1973) by C.K. Stead and Intensive Care (1970) by Janet Frame, which demonstrate a changing approach to the tradition. After this point, other postcolonial voices emerge and the attempted homogeneity of settler utopianism is disrupted.

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Abstract Within the globalization of business, international and cross-cultural management has acquired a greater meaning also among management and organization scholars. Consequently, the debate about the conceptualization and meaning of cultural differences has arisen. This thesis sees culture and cultural identity as inductive and discursive. This means that the traditional understanding of cultures and related identities as being rather fixed is questioned. Cultural identity, culture and otherness are in this thesis looked through the lens offered by post-colonial theory. As the thesis investigates a Finnish organization operating in Estonia, the adaptation of post-colonial theory is believed to offer interesting insights to the identity construction inside the organization in question. Even though colonialization has never been actual, the relationship between the two countries displays the features of a colonial relationship. During its history, Finland has been taken a role as the “big brother” of Estonia and it has been argued that Estonia has been going through cultural “Finlandisation”. Today, however, the situation may have changed and therefore it is interesting to take a look at whether the post-colonial relations have had an effect on the identity construction and perception building between Estonians and Finns in an organizational context. As the findings indicate, cultural identity of the Estonian employees is constructed in three discourses and in the same way the Finnish managers are constructing their ideas of the Estonians in various discourses. By treating cultural identity as fixed and objective, it would not be possible to reveal its diversity. In addition, when investigating Estonian identity construction and the construction of otherness by Finnish managers, utilization of post-colonial theory reveals that Estonians do not construct their identities based on the post-colonial array, whereas for Finnish managers it has a greater role. Furthermore, the power construction in the organization is also not a fixed, one-way process, but rather a mutual process affected by multiple identity constructions.

Since the 1940s, many works of Catalan literature have taken place in Cuba. While anthologies mention the genre, there has been as of yet no thorough examination of the importance of this trend. Starting with the long history of the relationship between Catalonia and Cuba, this dissertation employs a transatlantic approach to understanding the significance of the island to Catalan literature and identity. The Catalan protagonists, through their contact with Cuba, undergo change that is accompanied by a redefinition of both personal and national identity. The thesis is structured by various journeys from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. In Por el cielo y mandamp;aacute;s allandamp;aacute; (2000), Carme Riera tells the story of a voyage which takes place in the late colonial period and in the early days of the Cuban fight for independence. Chapters from Gent del meu exili: inoblidables (1975) by Teresa Pamies and Records vells, histandamp;ograve;ries noves (1941) by Josep Maria Poblet personify the voices of Catalan Republican exile in Cuba. Habanera (1999) by Angeles Dalmau focuses on the overseas experience of a modern-day tourist. The methodology of this dissertation draws on literary geography, the study and interpretation of writers representations of physical space, and focuses particularly on the role that Cuba plays in redefining the protagonists of the works examined. Theories of historical memory and feminism, as well as concepts related to postcolonialism and cultural geography also contribute to the conclusion that the physical and cultural space of Cuba reshapes the identity of the fictional Catalans who encounter it.

Volunteer tourism is a popular way for young Westerners to discover the world and at the same take on the role as an international aid worker. For a short time they get an opportunity to improve the life conditions of people in development countries and get to know a new culture. The discourse of “making a difference” is dominating the marketing and promotion of the volunteer trips, yet little research is to be found about what the volunteers contribute with and what “help”, provided by them consist of. The main purpose of this study was to explore eventual post-colonial legacies or structures in the practice of volunteer tourism by exploring how help, in the actual context is described and defined by the volunteer tourists themselves. The thesis is based on a field study, conducted during two months in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Data was collected through 14 semi-structured interviews with volunteer tourists and observations at the volunteer sites. The data was further analysed by using terms and perspectives from post-colonial theory. The analysis show that the help from the volunteer tourists principally were supposed to compensate for deficiencies in the host community and that it was directed towards individual advancement for the kids that the volunteers encountered in the projects. Tendencies that the help-actions sometimes were based on assumptions, rather than facts about the conditions in the host community were also identified. Furthermore that the actions taken on by the volunteers sometimes implied simplified notions on ways to achieve development.

The aim of this bachelor thesis was to examine how Saudi Arabia is portrayed in Swedish press. This includes the largest newspapers from the major cities of Sweden as well as the larger newspapers from the less populated areas. Since a significant amount of news in these newspapers, especially those from the less populated areas, are provided from news agencies these were included in the study as well.  The questions examined were: which portrayals of Saudi Arabia is used in the Swedish press and how frequently are they recurring? Does the historic relationship between Europe and Islam effect contemporary portrayals of Saudi Arabia in Swedish press and, in that case, how? Do differences in portrayals occur depending on the relationship between Sweden and Saudi Arabia in the news context? To approach this we conducted a quantitative framing analysis. Three frames were first identified in a qualitative study. How frequently these frames were used was then analyzed with a quantitative approach. The news articles examined were published during two news events. In 2012 information regarding the military cooperation between Sweden and Saudi Arabia surfaced causing criticism towards the Swedish regime. In 2015 the Swedish regime decided to cancel said military cooperation. The study showed that the historic relationship between Europe and Islam does indeed effect the portrayal of Saudi Arabia in Swedish press today. Attributes commonly associated with post colonialism and orientalism such as Muslims as barbaric and highly conservative was found. The study also found portrayals of Saudi Arabia as increasingly powerful and that this, due to the aforementioned attributes, was highly problematic. The “power frame”, as we chose to call it, was the most commonly used frame in both news events. The “barbaric frame” and the “conservative frame” was more commonly used in a news context were Sweden and Saudi Arabia stood in a diplomatic conflict.