This thesis investigates the impact of France on conflict and stability in the South Pacific from 1985-2006, with a primary focus on France's two largest regional dependencies: New Caledonia and French Polynesia. It is demonstrated that France had a largely destabilising influence prior to 1988, due to its controversial nuclear testing programme in French Polynesia, its repression of the independence movement in New Caledonia, and its failure to act on the pronounced social and economic imbalances between the local indigenous populations and the settler communities. However, France has played a more positive stabilising role since 1988, by factoring local and indigenous concerns into peace agreements in New Caledonia, disestablishing the French Polynesian nuclear testing programme in 1996, and allowing for greater integration of its dependencies into the region by granting increased autonomy to the territorial governments. Nonetheless, France's determination to retain sovereignty of its South Pacific dependencies continues to pose a latent threat to stability. The negotiated peace achieved in New Caledonia through the Noumea Accord's deferred referendum on self-determination contrasts starkly with current political instability in French Polynesia, where the power struggle between Independentist and Loyalist parties has again brought into question the impartiality of the French State. While not a theoretical study, the developed hierarchy of variables helps explain France's reluctance to grant sovereignty to its dependencies, and emphasises the importance of 'emotional interest' in the French approach. It is concluded that France's trend towards playing an increasingly stabilising role in its dependencies will be sustained only through an enduring commitment to rebalance territorial inequalities, tolerate pro-independence sentiment, and mediate impartially in local political disputes. Under these circumstances, the stability provided by France and its dependencies in the region would be preferable to the resource and funding vacuums that would be generated by a French withdrawal.

There is a tendency within both literature and practice to conceive of colonialism and decolonization as state-centric structures or events. Such an approach to colonialism and decolonization, however, ignores or overshadows the integral roles played by non-indigenous, non-state actors within both colonial and de-colonial processes. This thesis identifies and explores specifically how non-indigenous Canadian citizens, as settler denizens, contribute to colonialism within the country. Through the exploration of settlement stories (both those provided and those silenced), it is argued that, non-indigenous Canadians can come to understand the roles they play within ongoing process of colonialism within Canada today. It is only after these settler actors have identified and explored these roles and recognized their responsibilities to act in de-colonial ways that decolonization can begin. This thesis is, therefore, concerned with identifying and exploring the first step in the process towards decolonization – identifying the settler denizen within settler colonialism. / Graduate / 0334 / 0615 / deanne.am.leblanc@gmail.com

This study aims to examine critiques of social injustices expressed through the medium of literature by Native peoples of Canada and Japanese Canadians. My objectives are to explore literary representations of their struggles and examine how these representations and the struggles intersect. My study uses the following: “Coyote and the Enemy Aliens” by Thomas King, My Name is Seepeetza by Shirley Sterling, Obasan by Joy Kogawa, The Kappa Child by Hiromi Goto, Burning Vision by Marie Clements, and “The Uranium Leaking from Port Radium and Rayrock Mines is Killing Us” by Richard Van Camp. The findings reveal Canada’s nation state still rooted in a White settler constructed society, and a legacy of imperialism in the form of globalization that destroys Native peoples’ lands. My thesis concludes with the im/possibilities of reconciliation, also considering my own role as a person of colour, a temporary settler from Japan.

Bangladeshi Bengali migration to Canada is a response to globalization processes, and a strategy to face the post-independent social, political and economic insecurities in the homeland. Canadian immigration policy and the Multicultural Act that were adjusted to meet labour demands in local job markets encouraged the building of a new and growing Bangladeshi Bengali immigrant community in Canada. The general objective of this research is to explore how Bangladeshi immigrants’ national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, and class identities that were shaped within historical and political contexts in Bangladesh are negotiated in new immigrant and multicultural contexts in Toronto. By looking at various identity negotiation processes, this research aims to critically examine globalization theories in social science, and multicultural policies in Canada. More specifically, the objective is to determine whether transnational migration to Canada as a global process creates homogeneity, disjuncture, hybridity, or inequality in Bangladeshi immigrants’ lives in Toronto, and how Bangladeshi Bengalis as an ethnic and cultural group relocate their identity within Canadian multiculturalism. In order to address these objectives and issues, one year of in-depth anthropological research was conducted among the Bangladeshi immigrants in Toronto between 2007 and 2008. The core research location was the Danforth and Victoria Park area, but in order to address class diversity, respondents from Dufferin and Bloor Streets, Regent Park, and Mississauga areas were incorporated. Applying snowball and purposive sampling techniques, and identifying key informants, 75 Bangladeshi immigrant families were selected from three religious groups – Muslim, Hindu, and Christian. In-depth personal interviews, case studies and focus group discussions were conducted among these Bangladeshi immigrants. This research underscores that, on one hand, Bangladeshi Bengali immigrants negotiate and re-define their “proper” ethnic, cultural, nationalist, and religious identities by imagining, memorizing, simulating, and celebrating local traditions. On the other hand, immigrants define “authentic” identity by creating “separations” and “differences” based on colonial and nationalist histories. Religious differences, the ideology of “majority and minority”, and social classes play major roles in shaping identity. This study finds that multicultural diasporic immigrant space is neither a disjointed, nor an in-between space, nor a place where ethnic cultures are only “consumed”, but it is a battleground to resist and challenge religious and gender inequalities in a globalized location. Bangladeshi Bengali identity is both fixed and contextually variable; identity is shaped in response to political contexts of both global and local.

Indigenous planning continues to emerge globally, with increasing emphasis being placed on Indigenous autonomy and planning practices. By discussing an urban example of Indigenous planning – specifically the values and characteristics of the Neeginan project or vision for the North Main area of Downtown Winnipeg – this thesis aims to shed some light on urban Indigenous planning, as well as how it may differ from, and overlap with, other forms of planning and other types of spaces and built environments within the city. In doing so, it offers not only an assessment of Indigenous planning as it has been undertaken in a particular urban context. It also offers an assessment of how planning in general can continue to decolonize its practices as it learns to better support and relate to Indigenous priorities and planning approaches.

The fairy figure has had a long association with Ireland in popular cultural discourse. While often the source of children's fairy tales, their history in Ireland is far from kitsch. Their enduring association with the Irish has been one of adaptation in the face of colonialism and is linked to the land itself as well as Irish identity. The Gaelic Revival and emerging field of archaeology in the nineteenth century pulled from a strong tradition of myth and storytelling to craft a narrative of authentic Irishness that could resist the English culturally and spiritually. This paper explores the relationship between nationalism, landscape, and mythology that created a space that the fairy survived in as a product of colonial resistance and identity.

<p>This project focuses on the visual culture that emerged from Japan's relationship with Manchuria during the Manchukuo period (1932-1945). It was during this time that Japanese official and popular interest in the region reached its peak. Fueling the Japanese attraction and investment in this region were numerous romanticized images of Manchuria's bounty and space, issued to bolster enthusiasm for Japanese occupation and development of the region. I examine the Japanese visual production of a utopian Manchuria during the 1930s and early 1940s through a variety of interrelated media and spatial constructions: graphic magazines, photography, exhibition spaces, and urban planning. Through this analysis, I address how Japanese political, military, and economic state institutions cultivated the image of Manchukuo as an ideal, multiethnic state and a "paradise" (rakudo) for settlement in order to generate domestic support and to legitimize occupation on the world stage. As there were many different colonial offices with different goals, there was no homogenous vision of the Manchurian ideal. In fact, tensions often emerged between offices as each attempted to garner support for its own respective mission on the continent. I examine these tensions and critique the strategic intersection of propaganda campaigns, artistic goals and personal fantasies of a distant, exotic frontier. In the process, this project explores how the idea of Manchuria became a panacea for a variety of economic and social problems plaguing Japan at both a national and individual level.</p> / Dissertation

<p>After the First World War, Germany lost its overseas territories, becoming Europe's first post-colonial nation. After 1919, and especially between 1933 and 1945, however, German colonialists advocated for the return of these colonies and for their central importance to Germany. This dissertation tells the paradoxical story of these colonialists' construction of a German national character driven by overseas imperialism despite the absence of a colonial reality to support this identity. In contrast to views of colonialism as marginal in Germany after the First World War or the colonialist organizations as completely subsumed under the Nazi regime, this dissertation uncovers both the colonialist organizations' continuing public presence and their assertive promotion of their overseas goals in the Third Reich. It also reveals the space available for debates over the contours of national identity in the public sphere of the Third Reich.</p><p>Using organizational records of colonialist groups and Nazi propaganda offices, the colonialist press and other publications, photography, graphics, films, and public opinion reports, this dissertation examines the vibrant two-million-strong colonial revisionist movement that flourished in the Third Reich. German colonialists, straddling between anachronistic fantasy and the National Socialist world-view, reintegrated overseas imperialism into Nazi Germany and thereby reinterpreted the meaning of Germanness. They proclaimed a new vision of German national identity that drew on the imagined glories of the past but also held out the promise of a revitalized future for Germany through Africa. They did so however in conflict with the Nazi regime's expansionist goals in Eastern Europe. Colonialists, however, elided disagreements in favor of projecting a public image that emphasized the deep interconnectedness of overseas colonialism and Nazi goals. Through their public agitation and cultural products, colonialists affirmed the continuing relevance of overseas colonialism to Germans in the Third Reich.</p> / Dissertation

Historians have often discussed the process of Zionist settlement in Ottoman and mandate Palestine as if it occurred in isolation from, and without impact on, the indigenous Palestinian Arab population. Revisionist scholars, including Gershon Shafir and Gabriel Piterberg, have challenged this portrayal. They argue that the presence of the Palestinian Arabs on the land, as well as their participation in the labour market, had a fundamental influence on the development of divergent Zionist settlement strategies. This thesis complements and supports this argument through analysis of the participation of two influential Zionists, Alexander Aaronsohn and Norman Bentwich, in a series of legal actions known as the “Zeita Lands Case”. The case itself, which took place under the British mandate between 1923 and 1931, is discussed in detail. The lives and background of Bentwich and Aaronsohn are examined in order to contextualize their participation in the case. / Graduate

This thesis examines the 1Malaysia campaign, an initiative by the Malaysian state that seeks to address ethnic and religious divisions and economic inequality in the country to for continued political stability and economic growth. This campaign seeks to promote unity among the nation’s diverse population. The thesis uses the concept of political technologies to analyze the 1Malaysia campaign and show how it draws on, but also differs from other similar strategies in the nation’s history. I will analyze the ways that the state in colonial and post-colonial Malaysia created political tools to manage diverse ethnic and religious groups. This thesis addresses a shift in state policy that may offer insights into the strategies pursued by other postcolonial governments that have diverse ethnic and religious groups. I argue that the political technologies prior to the 1Malaysia campaign had created and maintained ethnic and religious divisions in Malaysia, particularly leading to the implementation of affirmative action policies that benefitted only specific ethnic and religious groups. I contend that the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) party views ethnic and religious divisions as a problem and hindrance to economic growth and modernization. It is also trying to define what it is to be Malaysian by creating and fostering its definition of unity and tolerance to be practiced by its citizens. Lastly this work will also examine opposing views of unity and multiculturalism from emerging film movements and public demonstration in Malaysia. This will highlight that the ruling government is facing opposing views to creating solidarity and further highlighting that this nation is going through a period of transition in defining multiculturalism. / Graduate