This dissertation examines the history of land inequality. Historians have long assumed that unequal distribution of land in Zimbabwe was a consequence of colonial rule. I show that unequal distribution of land long predated colonialism, and that the interaction between pre-existing and new forms of inequality fundamentally shaped the colonial experience. I begin with basic perspectives from environmental and agrarian history, I emphasize that access to land has determined whether Africans will be able to obtain subsistence, but that productive land is always a relatively scarce resource. I look very closely at the differences in soil productivity within particular landscapes, micro-environments and even individual tracts. Such differences in soil quality and the resulting scarcity of the most productive lands, I argue, provoked competition for land long before shortages caused by colonial land policies. I situate this competition within the intimate social settings of households, kinships and, after the imposition of British rule in 1890, farms and mission stations. In them, I find political and social dynamics which, together with colonial rule, created inequality among Africans and contributed to unequal access to land. They include gender, kinship, status and generation. Through an analysis of stories of precolonial migration and settlement, I examine claims to political and ritual control over territory made by chiefs, spirit mediums and `first-comers'. Colonial land alienation deepened this competition, while the contingencies of colonial administration often forced officials to relate to European settlers in ways that opened opportunities for Africans to contest their subordinated access to land.

Kenkoku University (Nation-Building University, abbreviated as Kendai) was the university founded in 1938 by the Kwantung Army, the Japanese army of occupation of the northeastern provinces of China commonly designated Manchuria. Sheared off from China by the Kwantung Army in March 1932 and declared an independent country, Manchukuo existed as a client state of Japan on the margins of the international order, recognized by a handful of nations. Kendai was the only institution of higher learning administered directly by the Manchukuo's governing authority, the State Council, which was dominated by Japanese officers. Kendai recruited male students of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Mongolian, and Russian backgrounds, and aimed to nurture a generation of leaders who would actualize the Pan-Asianist goal of "harmony among various peoples residing in Manchukuo," one of the founding principles of Manchukuo. Wartime relations between Japanese and non-Japanese are often framed in terms of binary narratives of resistance to or collaboration with Japanese imperialism. Assuming that national consciousness had firmly taken root in people's minds, most historians simply dismiss Japan's wartime discourse of Pan-Asianism as just another empty rationale for the domination of subject peoples by an imperial power, akin to the Anglo-American ‘white man's burden.’ Recent scholarship, however, has complicated the picture by identifying multiple and competing articulations of Pan-Asianism, while re-examining its effects on policy making and its reception by subject populations. My dissertation extends this effort by investigating actual practices of Pan-Asianism as experienced by Japanese and Asian students enrolled at a unique institution whose ideal was Asian unity on the basis of equality. Taking Kendai as a case study and uncovering the interactions that shaped relations below the level of the state, I attempt to demonstrate that the idealistic and egalitarian version of Pan-Asianism exercised considerable appeal even late into World War II.

The Twenty-First Century has seen increasing support for far-right authoritarian policies across Europe, particularly in France. This paper identifies and explains the connection between the rising power of France’s far-right, populist party and the pervasive sentiments of Islamophobia through an examination of major theories, anxiety-producing events, and reactionary legal actions in France pertaining to the oppression of Muslims. It begins with an analysis of France’s colonial history and its lasting implications concerning the legitimacy of anti-Muslim rhetoric. Next, the paper analyzes the usage of terrorism as a framed threat by far-right politicians to promote authoritarian agendas. It then examines France’s unwillingness and inability to integrate Muslim immigrants into French society, predicated off of major threat perceptions associated with Muslims and Islam. Finally, the paper offers an understanding of how the greatest threat to France is not the electoral success of the Front National, but the historical implications concerning the increasingly normalized nature of policies supported by the FN.

This thesis explores how domestic factions and authoritarian regimes in Japan and Korea in the period from the 1850s to 1970s appropriated the concept of “modernity” to gain normative superiority over their competitors. The appropriating entity revised the concept of modernity to suit its own worldview. Across the case studies, the propaganda of modernity created a hierarchy that privileged those who are “more modern,” encouraged martial masculinity, and attached itself to existing domestic norms, such as ethno- nationalism. Under authoritarian regimes, modernity helped justify the mobilization of capital, manpower, and other critical resources in the name of nation-building or defense. Many factions and demagogues may have initially used the concept of modernity for domestic gains, but using this narrative later devolved into foreign conquests and imperialist expansion, for otherwise, their call for modernization would have become an empty promise in the eyes of the masses. This paper examines five cases along these dimensions, namely the rise of reformist samurais in feudal-era Japan, the failure of Joseon Korea’s ruling regime to adopt modernity in a timely manner, Imperial Japan’s colonial practices in Korea and Manchuria, the ideological divergences among factions in Colonial Korea, and a South Korean dictator’s attempts to gain legitimacy following a coup d’etat. Each case follows how domestic factions or individuals were motivated by an inferiority complex and how they produced their own version of modernity that favored their ascendance.

Inuit constructions of gender in the pre-colonial period were centered around a gendered division of subsistence tasks. It is through this division of labor which gender roles, gendered socialization and spousal roles were formed. However, during the colonial period Inuit subsistence and the role it plays in Inuit society was rapidly and drastically changed. By analyzing the work of three different Arctic ethnographers documenting Inuit subsistence in different time periods and national contexts, this thesis will analyze how political, economic and environmental change in the Arctic has altered Inuit subsistence practices from European contact through the contemporary era. By analyzing how subsistence has changed overtime, this paper will assess the contemporary Inuit food system and the current crisis of food insecurity in Inuit communities. This analysis will be used to understand the social impacts of an evolving Inuit food system and how the emerging mixed wage and subsistence economy has constructed a new gendered division of labor in which Inuit women act as the primary providers of financial capital while men maintain access to natural resources through traditional subsistence pursuits.

No description available.

In October, 2007, two hundred American educators traveled to Japan for three weeks as guests of the Japanese government under the Japanese Fulbright Memorial Fund (JFMF) Teacher Abroad program. The purpose of the trip was to increase understanding between the people of Japan and the United States; to enrich American and Japanese curricula with international perspectives; to encourage appreciation for the people, culture, and educational system of Japan; and to expand professional development opportunities for educators. Broadly speaking, these are the goals of global education. The question this qualitative case study examined is whether teachers who participate in isolated, short-term international professional development programs (such as JFMF) become more competent global educators or if the experience remains an isolated incident, referred to during a single, obligatory lesson presented to students each year. Questions pursued were how teachers incorporate such experiences into their curricula; how an isolated, short-term experience can contribute to the development of a global educator; and how teachers' perceptions of themselves and their responsibilities change as a result of cross-cultural experience. This study examined eight K-12 teachers as they experienced Japan and then returned to implement self-designed follow-on plans in their classrooms. Data was gathered through application materials, observations, interviews, and follow-on plans and revealed three categories: Anticipation details why the teachers applied for the JFMF program and what they expected to gain from the experience; Direct Impact examines the effect the experience had on teachers' curricula, students, and selves; and Deep Impact portrays the multiple realities experienced by the teachers through an anti-colonialist lens. In sum, a short international sojourn can positively effect teachers' perceptions of themselves and their responsibilities as educators. Beyond the obvious effects on these teachers, their curricula, and students, the experience underscored the need for more Americans to engage in international experiences. While being privy to the voices and perspectives of other nations and cultures can help us in our global social, political, and economic dealings, the greatest benefit from a program such as this is that it helps us gain a more accurate picture of ourselves, as individuals and as a nation.

This thesis is both an empirical history of white women in Queensland colonialism and a theoretical history of colonialism and imperialism in the late nineteenth century. It is a feminist history which seeks to fill the gap in our understanding of white women and 'race' in the contact zone in Queensland in the nineteenth century. At this level the thesis restores historical agency to women and reveals women's history as a powerful alternative to traditional colonial histories. It also positions this Queensland history within a global discourse of critical imperial histories that has emerged over the past decade, seeking to understand how British imperialism and Queensland colonialism shaped and informed each other in a two way process. The central themes of the thesis are 'race' and gender. I examine the ways in which white women deploy imperial ideologies of 'race' in the contact zone to position themselves as white women. 'Race' and gender are explored through the ways in which white women negotiated, in their writing, their relationships with Indigenous people and Pacific Islanders on the frontier and in the contact zone. The white women whose texts are examined in this thesis engaged with 'race' difference in their autobiographical accounts and these accounts, on many levels, allow us to rethink colonial history. I argue that colonialism is paradoxical and that white women experienced this colonial paradox in their daily lives and negotiated it in their writing. The white women whose writing is studied here were decent people with good intentions. They were simultaneously humanitarians (to differing degrees) and colonists. They were dependant for their livelihoods upon a violent colonisation and yet they were sympathetic to the Aboriginal people they interacted with. Often they were silenced in their opinions on the violence they witnessed. Writing was a means of navigating these contradictions. White women were in a relatively powerless position in the contact zone and there was little they could do to mitigate the violence that they saw. The tensions that resulted from living in the colonial paradox on frontiers and in the contact zone, of being a colonists and humanitarians, and of living in an uncontrollable existential situation is expressed in the writing of these women. This history offers us a more holistic understanding of the complexity of colonialism in Australia.

Master of Letters (with Merit) / The objective of this paper is to examine the self-portrait paintings of Frida Kahlo and to explore the way in which they articulate a ‘self’ and ‘identity’ through creating an innovative feminine vocabulary. The aim of this creative research is to explore the way in which Frida Kahlo represented her sexual subjectivity in the body of self-portraits she produced in her short life time. The self-portraits, some of which were produced in a state of severe physical disability and chronic illness, were also created in the shadow of her famous partner- socialist Mexican muralist/ revolutionary Diego Rivera. An examination of the significant body of self-portrait paintings produced by Frida Kahlo, informed by her personal letters, poems, and photographs, broadens the conventional definitions of subjective self beyond the generic patterns of autobiographical narrative, characteristic of an inherently masculine Western ‘self’. In Kahlo’s self-portraits the representation of the urban Mexican proletarian woman-child draws stylistically from the domain of European self-portraiture, early studio photographic portraiture, and the biographical Mexican Catholic retablo art, with its indebtedness to the ancient Aztec Indian symbology of self.

Since Papua became part of Indonesia in 1963, hundreds of thousands of people have migrated there from other parts of the nation. By 2000, over a third of the province??s residents were non-indigenous people, with the great majority of these immigrants living in the more developed urban areas along the coast. This mass movement has transformed the territory??s society, altering the social, cultural and economic position and opportunities of the indigenous inhabitants. This thesis uses statistical data from Indonesian government publications to describe the development of these changes to the province??s population from 1963 to the early part of the 21st century. While it is acknowledged that the military presence and actions in the territory have played a crucial role in creating distrust of the Indonesian government among the indigenous people, this material supports the thesis that the mass movement of people to the region has developed an identification among the indigenous peoples of the territory of being part of a single Papuan community, a Papuan nationalism. This migration has also limited the educational and employment opportunities of indigenous people, creating hostility towards the newcomers among indigenous people and resulting in an alienation from the Indonesian nation. It will be argued that the patterns of settlement, employment and perceptions of ethnic difference between indigenous and migrant groups reflect a form of internal colonialism that has resulted from this immigration. While independence is a popular aspiration among indigenous Papuans, an evaluation of the national political situation suggests that this event is unlikely in the foreseeable future. If Papuans are to be incorporated fully into the nation of Indonesia, an understanding of the impact of migration on the province??s people is vital. This material also suggests that while there have been negative consequences of the Indonesian rule of the territory, claims that the indigenous population has suffered from genocide perpetrated by Indonesian forces are not supported by the statistical data.