Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 227-240).

Apartheid South Africa was variously imprisoned, exiled, and engaged in the task of homecoming. This troika permeated society as reality, symbol and creative capital; as a political reality each of the experiences distilled the diverse human possibilities and potentials of apartheid. This is a study of the linked political encounters of detention/imprisonment, exile and homecoming, as well as the more general dynamics of oppression and resistance and the culture of violence, through the life story genre. Within the dynamics of struggle the focus of the thesis is on the transformative nature of resistance, in particular auto/biographical counter-discourses, as a means through which opponents of apartheid retained/regained agency and power. The main aim of the thesis is to articulate and apply a theory of life story praxis in the context of political contestation. The theory has five main components. Firstly, the life story in such contexts is marked by the imperative for narratives to be provisional, partial, tactical, to be managed in accordance with an evolving political purpose. The second component relates to the violent collaboration of state and opponent in identity construction and interpretation. This argument facilitates, as the third theoretical premise, a broad definition of texts that either are auto/biographical or impact upon the context and process of narration. Fourthly, lives are told many times over, identities are repeatedly un/remade, within an arena that is dense with prior versions and/or a discursive void. Finally, I argue that the ownership and meaning of life story narratives are provisional and contested while retaining a dominant narrative and political truth. In the main body of the thesis this theory is applied to the life stories of incarceration, exile, and homecoming.

Previous research in the academic literature established the existence of a culture of violence in Colombia. This article focuses on the perpetuation of this culture of violence according to the framework of Waldmann (2007) after the signature of the Colombian Peace Agreement in 2016, and the influence of this phenomena on the persecution of human rights defenders. Colombia remains one of the most dangerous places for human rights defenders, as they are facing multifaceted risks due to the socially anchored culture of enmity and the stigmatisation of political contestation. Given the multifaceted challenges and actors related to violence in this country, the multilevel framework of Steenkamp (2005) will allow to understand the impact of state and nonstate actors. This research will be conducted according to a process-tracing study of Colombian media and policies relating to the strategies of both types of actors. This innovative method will enable to understand the effects of a culture of violence directly from the point of view of both victims and perpetrators. The purpose of this method is to promote the understanding and knowledge of the actors involved rather than international perception of the phenomena. The aim of the research is to understand the causal mechanisms at stake in a...

Hundreds of journalists took to the streets in different parts of Guatemala to protest attacks against their colleagues and infringements on their freedom of expression in the country, during the second week of March in 2015. The larger protests were held in Guatemala City and in Mazatenango, Suchitepéquez, where earlier that week at slightly past noon three reporters were gunned down at a park in front of a municipality building; one survived the attack. Three days later a cameraman was shot dead by men on motorcycles, in front of the television station he worked for in Chicacao, Suchitepéquez. This is the perpetual cycle of violence that has been inculcated into the daily lives of the people in the country - it's a cultural construct that's oozed into the depths of society and sadly into the profession of journalism. This thesis is a study that investigates how Guatemalan journalists live and work in the country under a constant threat of violence, fighting for their space as a respected profession in a society that could benefit from a functioning media system. The in-depth interviews with reporters in the country will allow for a first-hand interpretation to support the research already conducted in the literature review. The study is a furthered analysis of literature and interviews to better understand why the state of journalism in Guatemala is complex, and why it is imperative for journalists to continue fighting for their space.

My PhD is a study of the politically charged literary and visual works that have emerged in response to escalating violence in contemporary Mexico. Providing close, comparative readings of fictional, theoretical and documentary works by critically-acclaimed authors Jorge Volpi, Cristina Rivera Garza, Mario Bellatin and Juan Pablo Villalobos, and award-winning filmmakers Carlos Reygadas, Amat Escalante and Natalia Almada, my chapters examine explicit and oblique cultural engagements with topics such as the political assassinations of the 1990s, the dispossession brought on by the neoliberal restructuring of the economy, and the violence prompted by the so-called ‘War on Drugs’. The cultural texts I examine share a concern with visualising and deconstructing the close relationship between death and power that marks the contemporary political terrain. I contend that narrative has become a critical site of cultural contestation, and discuss the ways in which experiments with the assemblage and frustration of narrative intertwine with issues related to visuality, embodiment and the nonhuman. Through my discussion of these themes, I trace out the ways in which cultural texts frequently employ narrative strategies that are rooted in dispersal, displacement and loss when engaging with destructive power. These strategies, I argue, pose urgent questions about the interrelation of violence and aesthetics, speak to critical shifts in the relationship between culture and the nation-state, and are marshalled to launch tentative appeals to forms of politics and ethics that work through spaces of shared dispossession. My thesis offers an innovative framework through which to theorise these cultural processes by reframing the notion of ‘excess’, a foundational concept in scholarship on death and power that has seen a resurgence in contemporary political philosophy. In dialogue with authors such as Georges Bataille, Achille Mbembe, Adriana Cavarero, Roberto Esposito, Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière, and with close reference to the ‘necropolitical’ theory and cultural texts authored in Mexico, I posit excess as an analytical term that can encompass both reflexive critiques of spectacular violence and latent forms of resistance to this violence that proceed through loss and displacement.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 270-278). Also available via the World Wide Web.

This PhD thesis compared incidents of violence in two Malaysian hospitals and two English hospitals. Using a model of workplace violence, the aims of the thesis were to explore and compare six constructs: extrinsic, intrinsic, triggers, experiences, moderators, and consequences of workplace violence as perceived by Malaysian and English hospital staff. This study used data on experiences of violence gathered in 2005 for incidences in hospitals that occurred up to one year before the survey. The 2004 data from the Incident Report database (IRD) of the English hospitals was also used. Two instruments were developed for this thesis. First was the General Violence Victimization Questionnaire (GVQ), an instrument to identify the types, prevalence, nature, consequences, post-incident support, and reporting trends of violence in hospitals. The second instrument was the Violence Victimization Semi-structured Interview (VicQ) which explored factors leading to the violent incident, the violent incident itself, and psycho-social issues relating to the violent incident. Both instruments were translated into the Malay language for use in Malaysia. 227 people participated in the quantitative survey: 162 people from the Malaysian Government Hospitals (MGH) and 115 people from the National Health Service (NHS). A total of 25 people volunteered to be interviewed as part of the qualitative aspect of the study: 15 from the MGH and 10 from the NHS. Six categories of violence were compared: verbal, nonverbal, threat, physical, sexual, and psychologically-based. A total of 4118 violent incidents (1402 in MGH and 2716 in NHS) were reported. The most common type of violence was psychologically-based violence in the MGH and verbal violence in the NHS. Both samples perceived that the major source of workplace violence was from patients and involved one male perpetrator. There were differences between the two samples indicative of cultural differences. Of those interviewed, the Malaysian participants perceived that offenders were intrinsically motivated to offend. The English participants perceived that offenders had either intrinsic or extrinsic motivation for perpetuating violence. Differences were noted for substance abuse and customer relations as triggers of organisational violence. Comparisons of moderators were different for the two country samples. Comparisons of consequences were not significantly different. Comparisons across several demographic variables (gender, age, and occupational groupings) were not significant between the two country samples with regards to workplace violence victimisation. However, a comparison of length of service was found to be significant. The final path model differed from the original model of workplace violence. Additional findings include a difference between the established definition and participants‘ definition of workplace violence, a lack of anti-violence policies in Malaysian hospitals, under reporting, and unforeseen direct and direct relationships among the six constructs.

For the casual observer, the term "Iranian feminist" is often considered to be an oxymoron. However, what seems to be an ironic juxtaposition actually holds a great length of truth: for over a century now, Iranian women have been marching, screaming, and fighting for equal gender rights--all the while embracing feminist ideals. In fact, "feminity" is a political symbol that has been influencing Iranian politics for over 150 years. From the very beginning of modern Iranian history, women have always played a pivotal role within Iranian history, constantly connecting the personal to the political. This research aims to explore this phenomenon as an independent movement and as one comparable to American feminism. Three main topics are explored: theocratic restrictions, culture, and globalization. There are three methods of research that I have utilized as resources for this study: previous studies, statistical data, and interviews. The purpose of this study is to understand why and how feminism is increasing within the anti-feminist regime of the IRI. This study holds both theoretical and political significance and is designed to predict the future status of Iranian feminism through examining the conditions of the past and present.

L’Afrique subsaharienne se présente, involontairement, comme une région en proie à une succession de crises, de conflits, de guerres civiles. Ces externalités négatives de l’instabilité socio-politique s’appréhendent, souvent, par le truchement du rite jaculatoire causal. D’où, les vocables « ethnies », « identité » – lorsqu’il n’est pas question de sous-développement, ou de l’injection du déficit démocratique –, auprès des commentateurs, sont, de façon cursive, convoqués pour expliquer le désordre perçu. Ainsi, les événements de 1994 au Rwanda sont ramenés à un conflit – « ethnique » – Hutu/Tutsi; négligeant par voie de conséquence l’acuité de la complexité de la réalité, ou à défaut, celle de la convergence de variables. Et pourtant, en descendant dans cette profondeur cognitive, tout observateur constaterait que l’instabilité socio-politique en Afrique subsaharienne reste une construction dans le temps et dans l’espace, optimisée par l’impénitent désir de pouvoir des acteurs politiques. Les structures historiques, loin d’être de véritables déterminants, participent à la construction sociale de la réalité porteuse d’idées, de règles et de pratiques représentationnelles qui érigent la nécessaire grammaire du bouleversement social. Nos présents travaux, non seulement, viennent examiner les causes habituellement avancées, mais s’opposent également aux arguments culturalistes mobilisés pour l’explication ou la compréhension de l’instabilité socio-politique en Afrique subsaharienne. C’est pourquoi, nous retenons que la justesse scientifique afférente à la compréhension du mouvement mécanistique socio-politique en Afrique subsaharienne est fonction du mode de connaissance de la réalité perçue. Par conséquent, nous estimons que l’instabilité socio-politique en Afrique subsaharienne, est un processus dynamique évolutif qui, nonobstant le désordre structurel, tend vers une stationnarité relative, puis absolue avant l’avènement de la stabilité. / Subsaharan Africa presents itself, involuntarily, like an area in the grip of a succession of crises, conflicts, civil wars. These negative externalities of sociopolitical instability are apprehended, often, by the means of the causal ritual. That's why, the terms "ethnic group", "identity" - when it isn't question of underdevelopment, or the injection of democratic deficit - near the commentators, in a cursory mention, are convened to explain the perceived disorder. Thus, the events of 1994 in Rwanda are brought back to a "ethnic" conflict Hutu/Tutsi; negleging consequently the acuity of the complexity of reality or failing this, that of the convergence of variables. And yet, while going down in this cognitive depth, any observer would note that sociopolitical instability in subsaharan Africa remains a construction in time and space, optimized by the unrepentant desire of power of the political actors. The historical structures, far from being true determinants, take part in the social construction of reality carrying ideas, rules, and practices representational which set up the necessary grammar of the social upheaval. Our present work, not only comes to examine the usually advanced causes, but is also opposed to the culturalist arguments mobilized for the explanation or the comprehension of sociopolitical instability in subsaharan Africa. This is why, we retain that the scientific accuracy related with the comprehension of sociopolitical mechanisitc movement in subsaharan Africa is function of the mode of knowledge of perceived reality. Consequently, we estimate that sociopolitical instability in subsaharan Africa, is an evolutionary dynamic process which, notwhithstanding, the strutural disorder, strives for a relative stationnarity, then absolute before the advent of stability.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:16:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Aslan Rodrigues do Nascimento Bogado.pdf: 1835890 bytes, checksum: a01c5d271422ebd9a3fe0230f7147e88 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-09-15 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The main purpose of this study is to analyze and discuss how crime TV News programs reproduce a naturalized and one-dimensional perspective of violence. This occurs through an organizational scheme that allows crime TV News programs, such as Brasil Urgente, to instill into the social ideal a false feeling of generalized insecurity, since they intensely exploit the details of heinous crimes that take place in the city of São Paulo and other states of Brazil. In this sense, these programs create the image of evil and social enemy, which is usually attributed to the poor, the black and the outskirts residents (the most precarious part of the working class), who are subject to a hidden process of genocide and mass incarceration. We investigated the process of the evolution of the means of comunication and approached their contradictions, especially their ideological participation in social control. We analyzed Brasil Urgente program in an attempt to demystify some features that put crime TV News programs in a state of ideological mechanisms that lead individuals to conform to them and legitimate the policialization and judicialization of life / O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar o modo como os telejornais policialescos reproduzem uma perspectiva naturalizada e unidimensional da violência. Esta transmissão se dá através de um esquema organizacional que permite a programas, como o Brasil Urgente, incutir no ideário social uma falsa sensação de insegurança generalizada, pois, exploram intensamente os detalhes de crimes hediondos que acontecem na cidade de São Paulo e em outros Estados do Brasil. Neste sentido, estes programas criam a imagem do mal e do inimigo social que geralmente é atribuída aos pobres, negros e moradores da periferia (a parcela mais precarizada da classe trabalhadora) que estão submetidos a um processo velado de genocídio e encarceramento em massa. Investigamos o processo de evolução dos meios de comunicação e abordamos as suas contradições, principalmente a sua participação ideológica no controle da massa. Analisamos o programa Brasil Urgente na tentativa de desmistificar algumas caraterísticas que colocam os telejornais policialescos numa condição de mecanismos ideológicos que conformam os indivíduos e legitimam a policialização e judicialização da vida