<p>This dissertation is a critical exploration of certain authoritative discursive traditions on the limits of Islam in 19th century North India. It investigates specific moments when prominent Indian Muslim scholars articulated and contested the boundaries of what should and should not count as Islam. This study does not provide a chronological history of Islam in colonial India or that of Indian Muslim reform. Rather, it examines minute conjunctures of native debates and polemics in which the question of what knowledges, beliefs, and practices should constitute Islam was authoritatively contested. Taking 19th century Indian Muslim identity as its object of inquiry, it interrogates how the limits of identity and difference, the normative and the heretical, were battled out in centrally visible ways. </p><p> The set of illustrations that form the focus of this dissertation come from an ongoing polemic that erupted among some members of the Muslim intellectual elite in colonial India. At the heart of this polemic was the question of how one should understand the relationship between divine sovereignty, prophetic authority, and the limits of normative practice in everyday life. The rival protagonists of this polemic responded to this question in dramatically contrasting ways. One the one hand was a group of scholars whose conception of tradition pivoted on establishing the exceptionality of divine sovereignty. In order to achieve this task, they articulated an imaginary of Prophet Muhammad that emphasized his humanity and his subservience to the sovereign divine. </p><p> They also assailed ritual practices and everyday habits that in their view undermined divine sovereignty or that elevated the Prophet in a way that shed doubts on his humanity. One of the chief architects of this reform project was the early 19th century Indian Muslim thinker, Shâh Muhammad Ismâ`îl (d.1831). His reformist agenda was carried forward in the latter half of the century by the pioneers of the Deoband School, an Islamic seminary cum ideological formation established in the North Indian town of Deoband in 1867. Another group of influential North Indian Muslim scholars sharply challenged this movement of reform. </p><p> They argued that divine sovereignty was inseparable from the authority of the Prophet as the most charismatic and authorial being. In their view, divine and prophetic exceptionality mutually reinforced each other. Moreover, undermining the distinguished status of the Prophet by projecting him as a mere human who also happened to be a recipient of divine revelation represented anathema. As a corollary, these scholars vigorously defended rituals and everyday practices that served as a means to honor the Prophet's memory and charisma. This counter reformist movement was spearheaded by the influential Indian Muslim thinker Ahmad Razâ Khân (d.1921). He was the founder of the Barelvî School, another ideological group that flourished in late 19th century North India.</p><p> This dissertation describes these rival narratives of tradition and reform in South Asian Islam by focusing on three pivotal questions of doctrinal disagreement: 1) the limits of prophetic intercession (shafâ`at), 2) the limits of heretical innovation (bid`a), and 3) the limits of the Prophet's knowledge of the unknown (`ilm al-ghayb). It argues that these intra-Muslim contestations were animated by competing political theologies each of which generated discrete and competing imaginaries of law and boundaries of ritual practice.</p> / Dissertation

In this thesis, I seek to understand the historical process by which Haiti has become a site of economic exploitation and labor coercion. I identify a remarkable continuity in the justification of economic oppression at three historical junctures: the reestablishment of plantation production under Toussaint Louverture in 1800, the agrarian development projects implemented by the American occupation 1918 and 1929, and the IMF agricultural liberalization measures implemented in between 1986/87 and 1993/94. I argue that a violent and chronically unstable juxtaposition between “civilized” elites and “uncivilized” masses creates and sustains a political system of brutal exploitation. A racialized logic lies at the heart of the civilization fantasy and maintains the economic, political and cultural configurations of peasant and proletariat oppression in Haiti.

This thesis is an anthropological and historical exploration of Singapore's emergence as a nation state and determines what it means to have a Singaporean national identity today. As a relatively new country, Singapore and its government has worked to carefully construct its national identity in the past fifty years after independence from the British in 1965. This thesis will show Singapore as a distinctive entity in the study of nationalism and nation building, especially in comparison to the decolonization efforts of other countries in the region and throughout the world in the twentieth century. It is a carefully constructed nation state, and its distinctiveness lies in the authoritarian government's neo-colonial policies, its economic success due to its capitalist system, semi-democratic political environment, and its multiethnic population.

This study seeks to understand the forces initiating and sustaining colonialism, specifically the German colonial expansion in Africa. The history of this colonialism, and the relations between Germany and Africa, is difficult to understand holistically, given its complex and contentious nature. In order to best comprehend the composite interactions within the expansion of German control over Africa, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theory of deterritorialization will provide the interpretative framework. This analysis begins by grappling with the notion of deterritorialization and then relates the theory to the social, cultural, economic and political manifestations of German colonial expansion. By taking a broad perspective upon the diverse articulations of power in Africa, the multiple elements of colonial control and resistance are manifest. In conclusion, this study finds difference, syncretism and negotiation between German and African to determine the history of German colonialism in Africa.

For many people across the world human rights are understood as a modern discourse of emancipated humanism. What is less understood is how human rights, in certain contexts, can be more useless than useful, more harmful than helpful. This thesis argues that human rights, in the context of Indigenous/Settler relations in Canada, are limited. Human rights in the context of Indigenous/Settler relations in Canada are often construed as a conflict between individual versus collective human rights. This binary framework distracts from the more important question of how rights operate in a colonial context and how they fail to address the material inequity and psychological dysfunction that stems from colonial domination and present day colonial processes. This thesis argues that in order to understand the symbiosis between rights and tragedy we must first look at the context in which human rights are being used and question the actual work they are doing, in this case, for Indigenous peoples living on reserve in Canada.

My main objective is to reveal and illustrate the patterns and processes underlying the practice of ecological restoration in post-colonial landscapes. To focus my analysis, I asked what these patterns are, and how they inhibit or enable the Iwor (Ainu Traditional Living Space) Restoration Project (IRP). The IRP is a state-funded project aimed at improving the well-being of Ainu in Hokkaido, Japan. I used interviews, participant observation and text analyses to elucidate the dynamics at work in and around the project. My findings suggest that colonial and technological practices inhibit good ecological restoration practices in IRP by disengaging people, or more subtly preventing them from engaging with it. Colonially, structural and discursive marginalization maintains economic deprivation through denying progressive conversations about community empowerment. This process also reinforces subjective power relationships of Wajin, the ethnic majority, dominance. Technologically, I observed signs of Borgmann’s (1984) “device paradigm” that are both institutionally (e.g. government agencies) and materially (e.g. infrastructure and tools) driving the IRP toward technological restoration and away from focal restoration. This was particularly apparent in such instances where means and ends were inverted, or the government agencies were inaccessible to the Ainu participants. These patterns in turn make IRP less appealing for Ainu and other local peoples. However, I also found that the room for creativity and attention to human-nature relationships in ecological restoration allow creation of the new space where Ainu can assert their values more strongly. This is the Kotan Iwor where the space embodies both Iwor and iwor, two representations of Wajin and Ainu views of the “Traditional Living Space” respectively. My findings on Kotan Iwor (the traditional settlement restoration site) suggest that there is a significant potential in the ecological restoration practices because of the practice’s inherent capacity to bring people and the landscape together in a creative context. With careful attention to colonial, technological, and other dynamics, good ecological restoration practices have the potential to restore and improve the well-being of indigenous and non-indigenous community members alike. / Graduate

Many scholars today are incorporating Indigenous perspectives into their work. Historians, however, are lagging behind through their heavy reliance on colonial archives to present the histories of Indigenous peoples. Most have ignored Indigenous peoples' own histories of colonialism. Using British Columbia as a case-study, this thesis argues for the inclusion and validation of a range of Indigenous historical expressions within the BC historical archive. Its larger goal is to encourage the deconstruction of professional historical practice and, at a broader level, encourage a more flexible definition of history. / Graduate

This paper discusses the means by which some British women created professional roles for themselves out of their philanthropic work in India between 1880 and 1900. I examine the development of these roles in the missionary and secular philanthropic communities and how these women used periodicals as a space to implicitly demonstrate their competence and explicitly argue for their status as educators and medical workers. Colonial India provided a particular context of imperial ideals and gendered realities: Indian women were believed to be particularly deprived of learning, medical care and ―civilisation‖ by custom and culture, and Englishwomen could call on the rhetoric of imperial duty to legitimise their care of these disadvantaged women. I argue that India provided the means for British women to demonstrate their capabilities and to involve themselves in the ongoing nineteenth-century project to incorporate women into previously masculine professional societies. / Graduate

In Canada, First Nations asserting authority over their lands are developing diverse strategies to overcome the state’s dogmatic insistence on jurisdictional sovereignty. This movement corresponds to the wider context of the challenges faced by indigenous people to use their own ways of knowing to resist or reformulate legal doctrines and political tenets based on colonial power. Interior Salish St’át’imc people identify themselves through a strong and ongoing social relationship with Satáqwa7, the Fraser River, and the “Valley of Plenty”— now known as the flooded Bridge River Valley – maintained through St’át’imc knowledge and cultural practice and demonstrated by talk of “the St’át’imc right to fish” and Tsuwalhkálh Ti Tmícwa (The Land is Ours). St’át’imc fishers are prepared to contest and resist any regulatory system that is understood to impact this right to fish while they advocate their own ways of sustainable fishing and water management. Based on ethnographic research in collaboration with St’át’imc people, this thesis explores some of these often successful contestations especially in the context of increasing territorial governance and by example of the rapidly transforming relationship between St’át’imc, BC Hydro and the Province of BC. Interior Salish St’át’imc people are currently navigating through a significant phase of increasing jurisdiction and authority and recognition of (unsettled) territorial property relationships. This very dynamic process is marked by strategic collaborations, compensation for ‘infringements’ on St’át’imc Title and Rights, and conservation efforts to protect their home. An important example is the changing relationship between St’át’imc people and BC Hydro – a relationship between two groups with radically different cultures and agendas: St’át’imc people in a struggle for self-determination, social justice and cultural survival and BC Hydro, a corporate culture, with the agenda to provide hydro-electric power to BC, maintain operation ‘certainty’ and to generate revenue. Exploring the different ways of relating to and acting on the land will allow for more holistic and shared cultural practices of co-governing land, working collectively, remembering history, co-existing in the present and sharing a common future according to the ethical ideals of reconciliation: accountability for wrongdoing, justice, sharing, respect, transcending of hegemonic silences and increased public knowledge. / Graduate

Over the past decade, the Ontario Ministry of Education has committed to increase relevant teaching material for Indigenous students. While seemingly significant, a mere “increase” in “Indigenous content” is not enough to combat the racist and colonial mentality inherent within the Ontario history curriculum. Canadian history is steeped with idealistic, imperialist discourses organized around keywords such as peacekeeping and multiculturalism, as well as progress, development, identity, and nation building. The latter serve to not only erase, but also to legitimize the atrocities of Canada’s colonial past. At the 2009 G20 meeting, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated, “Canada has no history of colonialism.” In keeping with scholars such as Smith and Alfred and Corntassel, I argue that not only does Canada have a history of colonialism, but the mainstream curriculum must be decolonized if Canada is to move towards an equal and just society. The theory guiding this research is decolonial theory. In addition, Fairclough’s conceptualization of Systematic Textual Analysis provides the methodological basis for this project. I analyse three textbooks approved by the Ontario Ministry of Education for the grade ten history curriculum, as well as supplementary curriculum documents. Considering two objectives, change and a colonial mentality, I find only modest change between 2000, 2006, and 2008 in Indigenous content in the curriculum. Further, a colonial mentality continued to be deeply entrenched within all three textbooks and the history curriculum itself. This research seeks to open up the questions and responsibilities pertaining to the wrongs of the past and contribute to the burgeoning field of decolonized knowledges and education. / Graduate