<p> Over the past decade, the government of Laos has granted extensive tracts of land to plantation, mining, and hydropower investors across the country, constituting five percent of the national territory. Such projects have transformed rural livelihoods and environments, particularly via the dispossession of the lands, fields, and forests that Lao peasants rely upon for daily subsistence and cash income. While large-scale land acquisitions, or land grabs, across the Global South have been countered by social protest and movements in many countries, organized and vocal social mobilization is largely absent in Laos due to authoritarian state repression of dissident activity perceived to be anti-government. Lao peasants, however, have increasingly crafted politically creative methods of resistance that have enabled some communities and households to maintain access to land that had been allocated to investors. In this dissertation, I examine how effective resistance materializes within the Lao political landscape, by resisting with the state, shaping how industrial tree plantations are governed and their geographies of agrarian-environmental transformation. </p><p> The overarching argument of the dissertation is that in authoritarian contexts, like Laos, peasants are able to maintain access to land by taking advantage of political relations among state, corporate, and community actors that provide politically feasible means of refusal. Peasants find ways to resist that tread a middle path, that do not challenge state hegemonic power nor engage in under-the-radar acts of everyday resistance. Instead, they exploit and refashion established lines and relations of power among communities, state agencies, and plantation managers. They resist within the bounds of state power. Political relations between resource companies and the state vary, affecting how state sovereignty is mobilized to dispossess peasants of their land. Communities targeted by companies with weak relations with the state are afforded greater opportunities to contest such projects as they are not developed with the heavy coercion afforded to companies with better state relations. Communities that have powerful political connections with the state are also in a better position to resist. They are able to more effectively lodge their claims with the state when they have the political links to do so, particularly ethnic and kinship ties developed during the Second Indochina War. Communities more effectively resist the acquisition of lands that are afforded greater value by the state, particularly lowland paddy rice fields and state conservation areas. Finally, internal community relations, particularly democratic decision-making and solidarity, shape how effectively they mobilize against unjust land dispossession. </p><p> These arguments draw upon 20 months of in-country, ethnographic fieldwork during which I studied the operations of two plantation companies in 10 villages of Phin and Xepon districts, eastern Savannakhet province, southern Laos. One company is a state-owned Vietnamese rubber enterprise while the other is a private Chinese paper and pulp company planting eucalyptus and acacia trees. The bulk of the data comes from semi-structured one-on-one and focus group interviews with government officials at all administrative levels, civil society organizations, plantation company managers, village leaders, village households, and village women. The study is also deeply informed by participant observation &ndash; particularly with Lao government officials, civil society organizations, and rural communities &ndash; and by participatory mapping exercises and collected investment project documents. </p><p> The dissertation makes novel contributions to the discipline of geography. First, I demonstrate the importance of contested political ethnography, a methodological approach through which immersion in uncomfortable and oppositional political situations provides insights that would otherwise go unnoticed. Second, I contribute to understandings of how nature-society transformations occur in under-studied, authoritarian political contexts where neoliberal reforms are integrated with a heavy-handed role of the state in the economy. Third, I theorize how resistance can materialize and be effective in such contexts, despite its heavy repression. Fourth, I contribute to understandings of how dispossession actually occurs in practice and is governed by varying political relationships, leading to geographically variegated agrarian-environmental transformations.</p>

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) suffered a crushing defeat to the Kuomintang (KMT) in the 2008 presidential elections in Taiwan that left them passive, disorganized, and without a clear future in the Taiwanese government. The pro-independence DPP had successfully maintained executive power for two terms, winning the 2000 and 2004 elections while increasingly promoting a spirit of Taiwanese nationalism. However, President Chen Shui-bian’s administration soon proved to be disastrous with his corruption scandals and failed policies that were evident of the party’s lack of political experience. After eight years under Ma Ying-jeou, the DPP, with its limited resources, managed to revive itself to win a complete transfer of power with Tsai Ing-wen’s victory in 2016. The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation for the domestic events that allowed for the DPP’s return. Three major categories include: the collapse of the KMT government, the changing society and rise of a new era, and the restructuring of the DPP’s platform and campaigning practices. These areas will be examined through key events, which provide crucial insight into how these external factors became favorable conditions for the opposition party. The findings from this case study of Taiwanese domestic politics can be instrumental in further understanding cross-Strait relations.

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<p> Millennia ago, a vital trade route connected the thriving civilizations of ancient Greece, Persia, and China. Through the ancient Silk Road, China was able to influence societies far beyond its national borders. And now, in the twenty-first century, it seeks to do the same. This paper will attempt to develop a new paradigm that more fully explains the rationale and objectives of the One Belt One Road initiative. It argues that nation-building is the most comprehensive way to understand the Chinese government's intentions with OBOR. The following chapters will also demonstrate how OBOR fits into the CCP's larger ethno-nationalist "China Dream" campaign, which crafts a narrative of a unified and rejuvenated China predicated on a single identity.</p>

<p> During the European Enlightenment, the notion of an &ldquo;economic self&rdquo; (<i>homo economicus</i>)&mdash;an individual, autonomous, benefit-maximizing, rational decision-maker&mdash;was born. This understanding of the human as rational actor lies at the core of free market capitalism today. In the 1990s, stakeholder management theorists, in seeking new metaphors to understand firm&ndash;stakeholder behavior, turned to other social sciences such as feminist theory with its conceptualization of the relational self. In this study, I argue that a detailed and nuanced understanding of the concept of <i>interconnectedness</i> as presented in Vedic and early Buddhist traditions can, like feminist theory, be applied to the revisioning of the self as <i>relational, interdependent </i> and <i>co-creative.</i> These insights as afforded through the lens of Indian philosophies can contribute to the advancement of stakeholder theory and management by providing a substantiated platform for discussion of the <i>interconnected stakeholder self</i>&mdash;a dynamic, collaborative participant in the stakeholder ecosystem. An advancement of stakeholder theory that incorporates both feminist and non-Western epistemologies can enhance understanding of the purpose and success of business as &ldquo;conscious&rdquo; and linked to the optimization of <i>sustainable collective value.</i></p>

<p> This dissertation presents the details of a study that explored the experiences of <i>roninsei</i>&mdash;Japanese students who are preparing to re-attempt the university entrance examination. Though an influential population later in life, its defining educational experience has rarely been researched. The questions this study sought to answer were akin to &lsquo;what themes characterize the <i>roninsei</i> experience,&rsquo; &lsquo;how is that experience understood as having changed those who undergo it,&rsquo; and &lsquo;how do intervening time and space affect the way former <i> roninsei</i> understand their experiences.&rsquo; </p><p> To address these questions, the study employed a mixture of methods and sources, triangulating its findings with a combination of literature review findings, phenomenological interviews with former <i>roninsei</i>, and thematically-focused content analysis of social networking service-sourced data composed by current <i>roninsei</i>. It employed a hermeneutic approach to all the data it collected. </p><p> The study found that the <i>roninsei</i> experience produces several maturational outcomes and that, while it is characterized by hardship, it comes to be highly valued by those who have undergone it. </p><p> This study contributes to the understanding of this under-researched, yet consequential population. Its findings implicate both strengths and weaknesses of the current system and, in so doing, have the capacity to influence how the current wave of educational reforms is understood and implemented.</p><p>

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People from Taiwan have been internationally marginalised and unrecognised for a long time, particularly by the cultural hegemony from the Western cultures and colonialism from Japanese imperialism and Chinese authoritarianism. These historical influences generate a hybrid culture in the Taiwanese society. Through the migratory experience of the Taiwanese people in Britain, their hybrid-cultural identity is caught between even unstable in between the host society and their homeland. As Stuart Hall states that identities, particularly in late modern times, are ‘multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions’ (Hall, 1996:04). It is intriguing to explore what is the identity of Taiwanese people in the UK, especially in the migratory situation. This practice-based research project, which combines a production of a documentary feature and a series of seven short documentaries made over the research period, and a written thesis. The research explores and examines the intricacies of the experience of a small group of Taiwanese migrants. living in the UK. It investigates Taiwanese identity in Britain using collaborative documentary filmmaking techniques as its central research methodology.

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