Given the history of colonization and commodification in Hawai`i, it is no surprise that non-traditional performances are met with critical reception. However, in this thesis, I hope to destabilize the popular binary juxtaposition of authentic Hawaiian art and (mis)appropriated tourist kitsch. I argue that hula has been Orientalized and wrongly associated with religion not only by colonizers and the tourist industry, but also by those whose response to colonization is a call for purity and authenticity in the practice of Hawaiian culture. I am specifically referring to people who romanticize and mythologize hula and Hawai`i prior to European contact. Therefore, I am interested in presenting a retheorization of hula that (1) recognizes hula as a recycled tradition, (2) acknowledges the unique history of the indigenous people of Hawai`i, (3) does not limit participation to certain bodies, and (4) acknowledges, without over-emphasizing or de-emphasizing, the role of religion in the history of hula.

The purpose of this study is to use a qualitative approach to highlight the western involvement in Thai orphanages and, on basis of Western moral development workers and volunteers, enlighten how Western colonial heritage can be recreated in the humanitarian economic aid. The study is based on the recent tsunami disaster in 2004 which led to a huge voluntary effort by Western volunteers and organizations who wanted to rebuild the country. Now, seven years after the disaster, the country has recovered well and thanks to a strong turism, and industrial growth, the country has now reached the position of a middle income country with regional power. The study presents a selection of previous ressearch in the area from different critical perspectives. It is a field study based on qualitative interviews with six informants that highlights the individual engagment in humanitarian assistance. Theories based on Post-colonialism and globalization have been used in order to analyze and reach the result of this study.

Caryl Phillips’s novel Crossing the River deals with European colonialism and the consequences of it. Crossing the River is a novel which embraces characters from colonized cultures as well as characters from colonizing cultures. Following a timeline that begins in 1752 and ends in 1963, the novel shows slavery in progress as well as what transpires in the aftermath of slavery        In this essay I will argue that Caryl Phillips demonstrates the complexity of colonialism and slavery in his novel Crossing the River; he approaches the two concepts from different perspectives and shows us that colonialism and slavery are complicated concepts. Caryl Phillips uses narrative to demonstrate the negative sides of colonialism and slavery, to show that the negative aspects of the two concepts can affect not only the colonized people but also the colonizing people.        Colonialism, in its traditional sense, is present in some of the novel’s episodes but slavery, in different forms, appears in all episodes. Nevertheless, all episodes in Crossing the River have a common origin; which Phillips reminds us about by using the relationship between plot and story. Diversity is an important theme in the novel. From a narrative perspective, Crossing the River has a diversity of narrators who tell their stories as well as other persons’ stories. There are female narrators as well as male ones; some narrators are known while other narrators are unknown. The ways the episodes are told are diversified. Some of the episodes follow a chronological line (“The Pagan Coast” and “Crossing the River”) while other episodes jump back and forth in time (“West” and “Somewhere in England”). The forms of narration are diversified, not only between the individual episodes but also within some of the episodes. Crossing the River plays with diversity in several layers. The structure of the novel is as diversified as the number of narrators, a diversity of ways of dealing with the main themes results in a diversity of fates for Phillips’s characters. Caryl Phillips combines structure with content to demonstrate that colonialism and slavery are problematic concepts: the negative consequences of the two concepts can, in different ways and in different degrees, affect colonized people as well as those responsible for colonialism.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross represents both an insightful interpretation and a scathing critique of Kenyan politics and society during the period of neo-colonialism. The present thesis aims to explore, with the help of Marxist ideology and criticism, the relevance of the issues of class struggle, elitism and social collectivism in the novel. At the same time, this study will attempt to define Devil on the Cross as a "national allegory" depicting situations that are common to almost all post-colonial societies, and in particular, how the novel's ideological and political commitment is an important feature as it reflects Ngugi’s effort to draw attention to how Kenya and Africa as a whole suffered from imperialism, neo-colonialism, and a corrupt and greedy capitalist society.

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The standards of beauty always change in every generation in Taiwan, but there is only one standard still has strong impact on people, that is:¡¨ having white complexion¡¨. People say: ¡§A white complexion is powerful enough to hide seven faults.¡¨ The reason of ¡§whitening¡¨ is important because of the different powers which compete with each other to decide the meaning behind the discourse of ¡§whitening¡¨. The concept of ¡§Whitening¡¨ is from the promotion of beauty industry. What¡¦s more, this concept also made a strong impact through the media on people who live in Taiwan. Thus, to understand how the media delivery the ¡§whitening¡¨ concept is very important, especially through the most important media--- Internet in this generation. The main purpose of this research is to find out the process of developing the discourse of ¡§whitening¡¨ within the on-line Beauty Salon community and the context behind the discourse in Taiwan. Another purpose is to seek out the minority discourse which seldom appear within the mass media and also provide the ability of reflectivity thinking. The main structure of this research base on the critical concept of ¡§Knowledge/ Power¡¨ from the post-modern scholars: Gramsci, Foucault and the post-colonialism scholar---Said to discuss how the ¡§whitening¡¨ discourse is developed by the ¡§center¡¨(ex. doctor, expert and business ) and ¡§margin¡¨(ex.net pal)within the on-line beauty community. This research choose qualitative research method to do the context analysis in the most popular on-line community which is also the biggest BBS in Taiwan---¡§PTT ¡¨ and choose ¡§Beauty Salon¡¨ community within PTT as the research field. The results show that the ¡§Whitening ¡¨ discourse is a knowledge system within ¡§Beauty Salon¡¨ community and developed by the hierarchy relationship form doctors, skin-care experts, cosmetic businesses and cosmetic sales. What¡¦s more, the role of ¡§black skin¡¨ is ¡§the other¡¨ and has the inferiority within this knowledge system of whitening discourse. And the voice of supporting black skin also disappeared within Beauty Salon community. To compare with Beauty Salon community, there was another temporary skin-care on-line discussion bard founded by YAHOO in March 2008. And it has less limit and more open to express their opinions. This research found that there is the voice of supporting black skin appearing within this field and also using the strategy of different mimicry to ¡§write back¡¨ the discourse developed by majority. This research found that if there are only few powers to develop the discourse, the discourse will become one-dimension and hardly to see the different other opinion against the mainstream or the ¡§center¡¨ opinion. This also tells us that the limit of structure from the oligopoly powers in the Internet will expropriate people¡¦s chance and freedom to choose and contact the different voices, and this situation is worthy to reflect.

Jamaica is rich in contradictions. Life, like the landscape, is made up of great highs and lows, a wealth of beauty paralleled by intense desperation. This report explores these contradictions through an examination of the image of Jamaica packaged and presented to the world as a consumable tourism product. In 2012 as Jamaica prepares to celebrate 50 years of (in)dependence, the small nation finds itself battling (neo)colonialism, dependence, dispossession. Tourism is Jamaica’s main source of revenue and the industry is a major employer. The island’s role as a premier tourist destination is thus inseparable from Jamaicans’ daily lives. The current marketing slogan says to tourists ‘Once you go, you know”, I argue that this assertion is representative of the form tourism takes in Jamaica. By literally and figuratively granting understanding and ownership of the island and its resources to foreigners, the construction of Jamaica’s tourism product systematically commodifies Jamaica, its people, and culture. I seek to interrogate the role of tourism in Jamaica’s continued exploitation and to question the presence of secrecy, colonial nostalgia and national lies in how Jamaicans self identify and in how we are portrayed. / text

Rectificatory justice for colonialism has been, in recent years, included in the discussion of global justice. The idea is that former colonial powers acknowledge, apologise and make reparations for the harms caused during colonialism. However, there are some objections to rectificatory justice for colonialism. This paper examines one of the main objections, the counterfactual argument. This objection has been found to have some plausibility due to the difficulty in estimating the effect of past injustice on present conditions, as well as the claim that African countries did indeed benefit from colonialism. However, due to the exploitative nature of colonialism, it is reasonable to argue for rectificatory justice based solely on the harm caused, without having to conceptualise a world without the occurrence of colonialism. The aim of this paper is to claim that the harms of colonialism are partly to blame for the current global inequality and that rectificatory justice will go a long way in decreasing this inequality.

A narrative of denial and ignorance of colonial history is pervasive in Canadian school curriculum. Generations of Canadians children learn about history without adequate understanding of Indigenous peoples and of the negative impact of colonialism. Drawing on Indigenous and critical race theories, this research study applied a critical discourse analysis to explore how historical narratives are (re)circulated in school history curriculum. Using the Ontario Grade 7 history curriculum and two history textbooks, the information that is currently being presented to Grade 7 students in Ontario history classes was analyzed. The study found that themes of denial, ignorance, Euro-centrism, racialized sexism and White settler colonial hegemony are pervasive in the history curriculum and textbooks, while information regarding distinct Indigenous peoples and their nations, their histories, and their contributions to Canadian history, are largely absent. These findings highlight implications for curriculum reform and the need for anti- racist, decolonizing pedagogical and curricular approaches. / Graduate / hclausin@uvic.ca

The thesis examines the cultural and political significance of the formal and stylistic strategies in the work of Jonathan Swift; particularly the early prose satire A Tale of a Tub. Given his Irish origins and the largely colonial basis of England's relationship with Ireland, Swift's aesthetic strategies are shown to offer a mode of aesthetic resistance to, and interrogation of, English colonialism. In a rapidly modernising, secularising England national identity and social cohesion were being increasingly galvanised through an aesthetic ideology that emphasised the function of the aesthetic as that which can present a model of integration and shared values. Swift, drawing upon his experience of an Ireland socially fragmented by colonialism, emphasises the simultaneous, if contradictory, function of the aesthetic as the domain of the subjective imagination. An extreme wit, feared by Locke as that which will cause the individual subject to forget his or her social responsibilities, itself fragments society by encouraging the individual to inhabit an interiorised world of irrational associations. Swift, ostensibly satirising such behaviour in the Tale in the name of an English nationalism, actually allows the logic of such an extreme wit to dominate. Thus, he utilises what Vivian Mercier has shown to be the modes of traditional Irish literature, while simultaneously engaging with the (colonising, commercialising) ramifications of England's emergence into modernity. In the first, introductory chapter I explain, with reference to Swift's early life and work and to the critical work that already exists on Swift, why this thesis is a necessary addition to such a body of criticism. Chapter Two constitutes a closer examination of the Tale, the strategies of which are illuminated by a comparison with other works from the Anglo-Irish tradition: Burke, Swift's eighteenth-century Dublin biographers, the political economy of Sir Francis Brewster. Chapter Three turns to Swift's attempts to conform to English social and cultural modes in the first half of his career, particularly in The Examiner of 1710-11. The thesis returns to the idea of Swift as an Irish literary subverter in Chapter Four, this time by looking at the way the Tale and its companionpiece The Battle of the Books employ a form of 'extreme' allegory described by Walter Benjamin as essentially baroque in origin, and so able to adopt a critical position towards the early enlightenment principles of Swift's mentor and patron, Sir William Temple. Given that the category of the modem aesthetic emerges conceptually as a product of the enlightenment, Chapter Five examines Swift's work in the context of subsequent European enlightenment thinkers Kant and Herder, showing how Swift can be said to mediate their respective positions. The thesis concludes by arguing for Swift as, ultimately, a champion of reason; and goes on to point towards how Swift's aesthetic critique has resonances for our own contemporary situation: namely, how his early satirising of modem astrology is an early recognition of the unreason inherent in mass culture.