Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Donald Mrozek / Both Presidents Johnson and Nixon used the ideology of military containment of Communism to justify U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. Until 1968, opponents of this intervention attacked the ideology of containment or its application to Vietnam. In 1968, opponents of the war switched tactics and began to focus instead on the President’s credibility. These arguments quickly became the dominant critique of the war through its end and were ultimately successful in ending it. The Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution were central to the change of opposition strategy in 1968. For Johnson, the Gulf of Tonkin incident had provided the political impetus to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which the administration used as an insurance policy against Congressional dissent. For Congressional dissenters in 1968, inconsistencies in Johnson’s version of the Gulf of Tonkin incident allowed them to undermine the Resolution as a weapon against Congress. For the American people, revelations about the administration’s dishonesty during the incident simply added to grave doubts that Americans already had about Johnson’s credibility; the American people lost confidence in Johnson, ending his Presidency. The dramatic success of this new strategy—attacking the administration’s credibility—encouraged other opponents to follow suit, permanently altering the framework of debate over the war. This change in opposition strategy in 1968 had a number of important consequences. First, this change in rhetoric ultimately ended the war. To sustain his credibility against relentless attack, President Nixon repeatedly withdrew troops to prove to the American people he was ending the war. Nixon ran out of troops to withdraw and had to accept an unfavorable peace. Second, after the war, this framework for debate of military interventions established—between advocates using the ideology of containment and opponents attacking the administration’s credibility—would reemerge nearly every time an administration contemplated military intervention through the end of the Cold War. Finally, because opponents of military intervention stopped challenging containment in 1968, the American public continued to accept the precepts of containment and the Cold War consensus survived until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

This PhD thesis concerns language and racism. The aim is to explore how racism is reproduced in interaction in public debates on immigration, integration and refugee policy. From a constructivist pragmatic perspective, language is considered as a practice that composes and makes sense of our social world and all the phenomena and individuals that we perceive in it. Racist discourses discriminate against and privilege people by categorising them according to notions of cultural, ethnical, racial, religious and national differences. The thesis has two main themes: 1) the linguistic reproduction of, and response to, racist discrimination and privileging in interaction, and 2) the role of language in various public arenas, and the norms and conditions for participation in these arenas. The thesis comprises five studies. Study I examines racist discourses and conditions for participation in an online newspaper comments section. Study II examines how the phrase “politically correct” is used and negotiated in the same comments section, and how its usage leads to the reproduction and normalisation of racism. Another comments section is the focus of Study III, in which discriminating and privileging categorisations of Muslims, Islam, Swedes and Sweden are analysed. Study IV examines an anti-racist forum on the social networking site Instagram. In the study, the reproduction of norms of whiteness is analysed, as well as power relations that are evoked, sustained and transformed in interaction. Finally, Study V is an analysis of linguistic, visual and material reproductions of political positions and racist discourses in a debate among party leaders on Swedish television. The thesis demonstrates how normalisation of racism is accomplished in interaction, and how reproduction of hierarchically structured difference and bigoted stereotypes are performed, and challenged, through language. The medium, combined with the user’s speech acts, set up the norms and conditions for participation, and for the discursive processes that reproduce the relations and structures of power.

The aim for this study is to compare Victoria Benedictsson’s position and views in the morality debate during the modern breakthough in the nordics. The works that I have choosen for this study is firstly Benedictsson’s book Money, published in 1885 and secondly the play Theories, written in 1887 and published in 1994. I will research whether or not Benedictsson’s position in the debate will change since there are only two years in between them. Money is published in the beginning of the morality debate and Theories at the end, wich will make the essence of the discussion.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

This study addresses issues concerning religion in the public sphere, brought about by the debates over the perceived resurgence of religion and the post-secular. The aim is to analyze the participation of religious actors in the public, using three newspaper debate pages as the empirical material. Building on theories by Casanova, especially his concept of public religions, as well as mediatization theory and Habermas' writings on religion in the public sphere, 639 opinion pieces signed by religious actors were analyzed. The mixed-methods content analysis was conducted in two steps: first a quantitative overview of the religious actors published, to what extent and on what issues. The second step consisted of three qualitative case studies based on the results of the first step: an argument analysis of the debate over same-sex marriage; an exploration of the specific position of the Church of Sweden and the idea of the national church as a public utility; and finally a discourse analysis of articles by Jewish and Muslim authors. These were analyzed on the basis of criteria for public religions developed from Casanova’s theory and from the media logic of debate articles. While the results show no clear increase in the number of religious actors during the period under scrutiny, one notices a clear presence of Muslim and Jewish actors, eventhough Christians of varying denominations dominate the material. There are also clear differences between the different religions: minority religion contributions are limited in terms of issues and scope, while Christian groups write about more varied issues. Muslims often relate to negative media discourse towards Islam, while Jewish signatories write on a limited number of themes closely related to the group itself. In many articles, one found a meta-debate over the place of religion in the public sphere even when specific issues were debated. The contribution of this dissertation is to critically discuss the concepts and assumptions underlying the debate over the place of religion in the public sphere. It stresses the importance of media perspectives as well as empirical studies for analyzing issues of authority, visibility, private/public and religion in late modern, mediated contexts. / The Impact of Religion - Challenges for Society, Law and Democracy

Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka hur en förändrad köttkonsumtion samt köttproduktion framställs i svensk media genom att analysera debattartiklar. Empiriskt material är insamlat från Mediearkivet Retriever i de största dags- kvällstidningarna i Sverige och Östergötland. Studien är gjord utifrån en kvalitativ textanalys där olika teman har identifierats och analyserats utifrån frågorna; Hur förhåller sig olika aktörer till en förändrad köttkonsumtion och köttproduktion? Hur ramas perspektiven in och hur kopplas de till varandra? Hur kan denna debatt förstås ur ett miljöperspektiv? Utifrån denna studie kunde en konsensus identifieras kring att köttkonsumtionen och köttproduktionen är en viktig fråga och att det behövs en förändring. Det råder dock oenigheter om hur detta problem ska adresseras. / The aim of this study is to investigate how the meat consumption and meat production is presented in Swedish media by analyzing debate articles. The empirical data is collected from Mediearkivet Retriever and limited to the biggest newspapers in Sweden and in Östergötland. The method used is qualitative text analysis and thematic analysis where the following questions were asked: How do different stakeholders view a change in meat consumption and meat production? How are the perspectives framed and how are they connected to each other? How can this debate be understood from an environmental perspective? From this study, a consensus is identified where meat consumption and meat production is an important question and that a change is necessary. There are, however, conflicts regarding how this issue should be addressed.

The Planet has entered a new epoch - the Anthropocene; where human activities, such as mining for and burning of fossil fuels, land-use change, and industrialization are actively disrupting the planet’s state. The rate at which climate change is occurring as a result of human activity is unprecedented in recent millennia and poses many threats through drastic changes in rain fall patterns, rising sea level, retreating glaciers, and an increase in extreme weather events. Mountain ranges and the plant and animal species that thrive in specific ‘life zones’ on the mountain slope are particularly vulnerable to the threats posed by climate change. As temperatures increase, these ‘life zones’ will essentially shift upwards - and flora and fauna either adapt to warmer conditions, or migrate to avoid extinction. This begs the questions, where will species retreat to when there is nowhere further up the mountain to migrate? Assisted migration has been proposed as a potential solution for species unable to adapt to climate change or unable to migrate, and involves the deliberate interference of humans in relocating species to habitats, outside their historic range, in hopes of preventing the species from going extinct. I examined key patterns within assisted migration research from peer-reviewed literature, to highlight the current state of assisted migration research and debate. My aim is to identify whether research favored certain species or geographic locations, to highlight the ethical dilemmas associated with engineering nature, and the potential assisted migration has for sustainable development in mountain ranges. I conducted a literature review and content analysis of 68 journal articles. The results suggest that assisted migration research is heavily debated from scientific, ethical, political and economic perspectives; with a largely theoretical debate and with limited transfer into field experiments. Furthermore, there is an element of bias in research focusing on plant species of economic value as opposed to other species. Moreover, many ethical dilemmas in assisted migration research exist, but no consensus as to whether assisted migration is ethically justifiable. Lastly, I suggest there could be potential for assisted migration for sustainable development in mountain ranges, however there is a need for inter/transdisciplinary research to collaborate in implementing assisted migration.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Cette étude vise à définir le débat comme un genre, qui se constituerait à la fin du quatorzième siècle dans le sillage des jugements de Guillaume de Machaut. Une approche chronologique du corpus met en valeur la manière dont le débat se détache dans l’ensemble composite de la littérature de dispute : il développe une structure qui lui est propre, fondée sur un dialogue conflictuel s’achevant par un appel au jugement du lecteur, qui laisse en suspens la question. Il s’inscrit dès lors dans des pratiques ludiques qui lui donnent sens, et qui parodient la dialectique et la rhétorique pour faire émerger une parole individuelle, en prise avec un public : dialogue à décrypter entre des êtres ambivalents, où l’auteur-narrateur se fait personnage et abdique son autorité, le genre appelle une diction, voire une mise en scène. Le débat entretient donc un rapport étroit avec l’évolution de la lyrique courtoise vers une forme de poésie morale, qui fait vaciller les catégories de pensée grâce au jeu du dialogue et à la possibilité de lectures multiples. Il met en avant une forme de savoir qui se constitue dans un rapport personnel du lecteur au texte, tout en conservant la musique de la parole vivante et la richesse dramatique du jeu. / The aim of this study is to establish a definition of the debate as a literary genre, that would establish itself as such at the end of the fourteenth century in the wake of the Jugements by Guillaume de Machaut. A chronological approach of the corpus shows how the debate can be identified in the midst of the different kinds of dispute literature : it develops its own structure, based on an antagonistic dialogue ending with a plea to the reader’s wisdom, which leaves the issue open. It comes within the scope of recreational practices that give it meaning, and that parody dialectic and rhetoric in order to let an individual voice be heard directly by an audience : this genre consists in a dialogue between ambiguous beings, which has to be decrypted, where the author-narrator is a character and relinquishes his authority ; it needs to be spoken, or even performed. The debate has to do with the evolution of courtly lyricism, which tends to become a poetry dealing mainly with ethics and upsetting traditional categories of thought through the use of dialogue and the possibility of multiple meanings. It privileges a form of knowledge which consists in a personal relationship of the reader with the text, while still retaining the music of oral speech and the dramatic intensity of play.

The aim of the thesis is to map and describe changes that have taken place in the field of political debates on the Czech Television (in the period from 1989 to the present). The work describes changes regarding the form and the content of programs and its debates. There also appears a critical assessment of that development (and of some prevailing trend) of the political issue programs (on Czech TV) in the thesis. Hypothesis relates to the assumpiton that a given period occured significant changes in the form and content of the broadcasted. Description of those changes is the main aim. The author proceeds in five steps. First, the introduction sets the theme in context, mentions a historical overview of political discussion programs broadcasted on Czech Television (from 1989 to the present) and consequently characterizes them. The first chapter will bring the presentation of the works from the field of political science and media- science, which will serve as a theoretical guide in analyzing the contents. The second chapter brings the key analysis of the programs using the theory and designed methodology. The third chapter evaluates the analysis, summarizes the empirically observed data and confirms or rejects the hypothesis. The thesis is closed by the fifth part, in which the author performes the final...