The present work examines the debate about the permissibility of conversion in the Parsi community of India. It explores the historical development of the debate with a focus on the main groups and their ideologies. It shows that both of the sides of the debate aimed to formulate their convictions in a Westernized language for a greater social prestige, while in both cases largely preserving the traditional endogamic rules in practice.

The diploma thesis tries to define the problematic of the fantastic and magic in Central European literature. It captures a selection of works published between the second half of the 20th century until today in which unrealistic elements are markedly presented (such as imaginary space, function of dreams, blending of natural and unnatural as well as myths) and time has a specific function. The main focus is on authors such as Daniela Hodrová, Daniel Kehlmann, Saša Stanišić, Olga Tokarczuk and Jáchym Topol. The aim of this work is to find out whether it is possible to understand Central European literature in categories such as magical realism or the fantastic, or whether Central Europe is so saturated with Western rationalism that all attempts to find magic fail.

This volume is a study based on archival sources concerning a firm based in Leipzig which acquired land in German East Africa (near the coast of what is today Tanzania) in 1907 for the purpose of growing cotton. When the cotton crop was destroyed by leaf curl, the firm turned to sisal as an alternative crop. / Dieser Band ist eine auf Archivquellen basierende Studie bezüglich einer Firma aus Leipzig, die 1907 Land in Ostafrika (nah an der Küste, im heutigen Tansania) erlangte, um Baumwolle zu pflanzen. Als die Baumwoll-Ernte durch die Kräuselkrankheit zerstört wurde, wandte sich die Firma dem Sisal als alternative Nutzpflanze zu.

This volume contains a transcription of notebooks kept by Isidore Pélofy, a member of the Society of African Missions, during his long residence in Agoué, a small town on the coast of what is today the Republic of Bénin, close to the border with Togo. Pélofy's notes, apparently written in the 1930s and 1940s upon the basis of oral information, church records and published accounts, cover mainly the period between the founding of Agoué in 1821 and the introduction of French colonial rule in the 1880s, although some information from the colonial period is also included. This critical edition is particularly valuable as a source on African families originating from Brazil, Cuba and Sierra Leone.

This diploma thesis deals with the issue of interpreting in Namibia both during its existence as a German colony and its post-colonial era. In 1884 the territory of present-day Namibia became a colony called German South West Africa. Among the problems encountered by the colonizers were the linguistic and cultural differences that made communication between the Germans and the locals complicated and, at times, even impossible. Due to their ambivalent role, interpreters were treated with a lot of mistrust and the clients suspected them of twisting the intended information in favour of one of the parties. Although the Colonial Administration emphasised language training for both negotiating parties, at the end, this approach turned out to be too ambitious, and it proved necessary to use interpreting services, especially in the areas of law, religion and diplomacy. This paper explores the role, status, working conditions and competences of interpreters in these areas. Many of the findings are partly intertwined with modern interpretation theory and practice, making it possible to apply some of the crucial theoretic claims on Namibia's colonial era. The work also creates a broader context encompassing translation issues as well as the development of interpreting services after the collapse of the...

The post-colonial period in many African countries was, and still is, marked by political breakdown, authoritarianism and war. African state institutions saw fragmentation, breakdown and in some cases, failure. For many Africanist scholars "state weakness" is a main cause for political violence. State weakness results from pre-colonial and colonial legacies which created authoritarian structures, supported the rise of autocratic political leaders and entrenched dysfunctional state practices. Dysfunctional state practices manifest themselves during civil wars when governments and national armies exploit and rape their civilian population, failing to provide security from rebel violence. This paper argues that dysfunctional state practices during civil war are enabled by a history of gender discourses and beliefs. In the wars of the Democratic Republic of Congo and in the Sierra Leonean war, when army soldiers abused and raped civilians, they were enabled by gendered hierarchies, norms and beliefs, which they employed to legitimize and normalize their actions.

In this essay the use of othering in the novels Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah is compared. The comparative reading is carried out through the lens of a postcolonial framework comprising thoughts and ideas of, among others Edward Said and Ania Loomba. The analysis of this essay shows that while the othering in Heart of Darkness is based on an ideologically motivated conception of European superiority resulting in racism, the othering in Paradise is based on the status levels in the precolonial East Africa, where in the end economic wealth, culture and religion decided everyone’s position within the system.

In 1697 Massachusetts settler Hannah Duston was taken captive by a group of Abenaki Indians. Duston and her companions escaped captivity by using a tomahawk to kill ten of her captors. Within her captivity narrative, Duston inhabits the role of captor rather than captive, providing a literary framework for reading and understanding the process of Indian Removal in the nineteenth century. Like white captives in the early colonial period, Native Americans in the nineteenth century faced pressure to assimilate, forced marches through unfamiliar territory, and acts of shocking violence like the Wounded Knee Massacre. During this time period, the United States government and army as well as white settlers took on the role of captors, keeping Indian tribes in captivity with these tactics. Understanding the period of Indian Removal as a type of captivity narrative increases our understanding of the shocking violence that accompanied the Indian Removal Policy. As a literary genre, captivity narratives created a national narrative of violence between white settlers and Indian tribes. The struggle for domination in the genre thus became the central struggle of the United States as white Americans embraced and advanced the fight against Native Americans for land and cultural supremacy in North America.

This study is about Joseph Samuel Frithiof Stephens (1841–1934) and how he as a Scandinavian contractor acquired an economic fortune in the colonial India. The fortune was used for the acquisition of the mill property Huseby Bruk in Småland and also contributed to the Stephens family's strategy of advancing in the then Danish bourgeois class establishment. The study aims to present an individual actor's opportunities to achieve financial success through access to non-financial capital forms. Social capital in the form of important social relations and cultural capital in the form of information, skills, etc., can be used for transformation into economic capital. The identification and analysis of the personal networks that occurred in Joseph's career determines the importance of family networks and professional networks for access to the various alternative forms of capital. Joseph's career in British India in the 1850s and 60s was surrounded by the colonial power context linked to global capitalist progression and characterized by civilization ambitions, technological transfer and dominance. The aftermath of the Revolt 1857–1858 opened the playing field for wealth-seeking risk-takers from Europe. The power structures previously maintained by the East India Company were gradually replaced by the British central power apparatus. The new power relations established a new administration and altered social institutions in the emerging crown colony. The Indian railways became a significant element in the colonial intervention and consisted of trunk lines that crossed the subcontinent. The used source material in the form of private letters, diaries, business correspondence and more, constitutes the research basis for the studies, and are included in the India-related material stored in the Huseby Archives at Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden. The results of the study show that network contacts and access to alternative forms of capital became crucial success factors for Joseph Stephen's career and wealth accumulation. The networks were linked to both the private and traditional spheres as well as to the professional and rational spheres and sometimes seemed cross-border. The study has further demonstrated the structures, colonial thought patterns and hierarchies that the individual actor was actively related to, and that affected the often-strained everyday life of the contractor.

This thesis aims to conduct an in-depth study of the activism surrounding the #DeleteFacebook hashtag by applying Critical Discourse Analysis. By theorizing framing, digital colonialism, power relations, and antagonism, this thesis examines the qualitative analysis of 1.987 Tweets posted on Twitter between 20 February and 4 March 2021. This study identifies the key thematic content of these Tweets and then conducts an in-depth critical analysis. These questions will be addressed in the research: “What are the principle discourse typologies and their intertextual interpretation of hashtag activism #DeleteFacebook?”, “What were the key themes that emerged during the #DeleteFacebook hashtag movement?” and “How can we interpret the online engagement with #DeleteFacebook as hashtag activism?”. This thesis presents an analysis of #DeleteFacebook related Tweets through coding and then reveals an intertextual analysis of it, including the social context. Also, this study provides a thorough review of the related literature concerning the costs of connection, social movements, hashtag activism, and collective identity. Finally, it concludes with a discussion reflecting on the role of digital colonialism and the power of Facebook.