Orchid growing is a hobby that includes not only acquiring and caring for orchids, but also learning about the diverse care requirements of various orchids, attending meetings of orchid groups, having one’s orchids evaluated by American Orchid Society judges or being a judge, or even creating hybrids. In this way, orchid hobbyists compose a distinctive subculture (Hansen 2000). Yet the activity of orchid growing also forms a nexus between the non-human and the human, two categories that are often constructed as an opposing binary. This thesis focuses on how orchid growing represents both the embedded, institutionalized characteristic of the binary between the non-human and the human and how this binary is actively deconstructed; that is, orchid growers often reinforce this binary through positioning their orchids as a part of “nature” and also blur it by participating in the activity of orchid growing. Through observations of monthly meetings of two local orchid groups and affiliated events and walking tours of individual participants’ orchid growing spaces and semi-structured interviews with them, I show how orchid growing represents such a “hybrid” form of nature (Whatmore 2002). Specifically, the ways in which orchid growers appreciate the novelty of their orchids, care for them, and establish authenticity in orchid growing demonstrates the nuanced ways orchid growing forms a relationship with “nature.”

Despite intensified and concerted efforts to realise sustainable development. Western industrialised countries have in recent years experienced several mass protests against institutions perceived variously to have the potential to govern the global economy in environmentally sustainable or unsustainable ways. This thesis examines how different actors in the news media attempt to legitimate and de-legitimate neoliberal approaches to economic governance on grounds that these approaches are or are not environmentally sustainable. By using a critical discourse analysis perspective to analyse texts produced by actors with competing political commitments (neo-liberal and left-liberal), it discusses how primarily profit-driven generic conventions can govern what can and cannot be said in debates on sustainability. The thesis suggests that the effectiveness of (cultural) politics aimed at legitimating and de-legitimating neo-liberal approaches can be understood in teens of the relationship between an instrumental rationality geared at maximising the effectiveness of existing institutional systems and a communicative rationality geared at achieving understanding.

Based on the upcoming 2010 World Expo of Shanghai. According to 'moving out' policy of Shanghai government, a large percentage of residents from Shanghai's old downtown area are being moved out to a district on the outskirts of the municipality. In the context of moving out policy and shifting community space of 'Longtang' residents, my research explores how water can be used to forge a new typology for the Xinji residential area in developing Shanghai. The new typology of residential area is defined by a new type of community space. Water, edge and corridor are examined as three main concepts to create this kind of new community space, where residents can be provided with diverse spatial experience and various spatial effects through spatial transformations in and between private and public and diverse programs in a residential area. 'Longtang' is one of the key precedents I am looking at for the purpose of studying water edge conditions and corridor conditions, and to deduce a way to best design hybrid community in the Xinji residential area, which is selected as my research site. It is identified as one of the peripheral node for the moving out policy by Shanghai government? My research, therefore, tries to explore a new typology of Xinji residential area, which can provide both existing residents and 'Longtang' residents with diverse water based community space in the residential area and its context.

Intercultural theatre is a highly contested form of theatre. Critical discussions over its position as a revitalizing force or a colonial instrument have raged on for almost thirty years. An investigation into two theatre directors who have often been in the spotlight concerning these critical discussions, French theatre director, Ariane Mnouchkine, and Japanese cult icon, Shji Terayama, will illuminate the possibility of moving beyond such oppositions. Both have employed Asian theatre techniques and aesthetics, specifically Japanese, to produce highly theatrical performance events which actively engage their spectators. However, their methods vary from elegant integration to confrontational provocation. An extensive exploration into both artists prolific theatre, and the established theories concerning the process of creating intercultural theatre postulated by a range of theorists including, Patrice Pavis, Rustom Bharucha, Jacqueline Lo and Helen Gilbert, will reveal a fresh look at interculturalism where cross-cultural theatre exists on a continuum.

The photographic work of contemporary Moroccan artist, Lalla Essaydi, embodies a new artistic hybridity that reflects her nomadic, globalized background. With this work, the artist employs visual symbolism and uses multiple forms of artistic media as a means to analyze her multicultural background. Throughout her series, which spans 2004-present, Essaydi uses both literal and metaphorical representations of space and self as a means to examine the multifacetedness of her national identity and the many gazes that define that identity. She uses artistic production as a means of mediating the collective experiences of her identity in order to negotiate and construct a revised image of self.

Jeffrey Eugenides‟ Middlesex can be ascribed to many genres, one of which is the novel of immigration. Mikhail Bakhtin has suggested that each genre, indeed any literary motif, can be defined by its own chronotope, literally “time space,” “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature.” The essay discusses the chronotope of immigration in Middlesex, and looks at how four specific intersections of time and space, embodied by the four houses inhabited by the Stephanides family, contribute to the unfolding of this particular immigration saga. The four houses can thus be seen to represent the key elements of this novel‟s instance of a chronotope of immigration, which brings up concepts such as assimilation, hybridity and “third space.” The essay also examines the relations of central characters to time, space and each other; the upstairs/downstairs and inside/outside dichotomies within each house providing interesting keys to inter-gender and inter-generational alienation within this chronotope of immigration.

<p>As a multinational state with a population that spoke eleven different languages, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was considered an anachronism during the age of heightened nationalism leading up to the First World War. This situation has made the search for a single Austro-Hungarian identity so difficult that many historians have declared it impossible. Yet the Dual Monarchy possessed one potentially unifying cultural aspect that has long been critically neglected: the extensive repertoire of marches and patriotic music performed by the military bands of the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Army. This Militärmusik actively blended idioms representing the various nationalist musics from around the empire in an attempt to reflect and even celebrate its multinational makeup. Much in the same way that the Army took in recruits from all over the empire, its diverse Militärkapellmeister - many of whom were nationalists themselves - absorbed the local music of their garrison towns and incorporated it into their patriotic compositions. Though it flew in the face of the rampant ethnonationalism of the time, this Austro-Hungarian Militärmusik was an enormous popular success; Eduard Hanslick and Gustav Mahler were drawn to it, Joseph Roth and Stephan Zweig lionized it, and in 1914, hundreds of thousands of young men from every nation of the empire marched headlong to their ultimate deaths on the Eastern Front with the music of an Austro-Hungarian march in their ears. This dissertation explores how military instrumental music reflected a special kind of multinational Austro-Hungarian state identity between 1867 and 1914. In the first part of my dissertation, I examine the complex political backdrop of the era and discuss the role and demographic makeup of the k.u.k. Armee. I then go on to profile the military musicians themselves, describe the idiomatic instrumentation of the military ensembles, and analyze significant surviving works from this repertoire by Julius Fucik and Carl Michel Ziehrer. The results of this study show how Austro-Hungarian Militärmusik synthesized conceptions of nationalism and cosmopolitanism to create a unique musical identity that, to paraphrase Kaiser Franz Joseph, brought together the best elements of each nation for the benefit of all.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis attempts to read Rebecca Walker's memoir Black White and Jewish as an investigation into the problematic of the social construct of race. It begins with an elaboration on the society's phobia about racial amalgamation owing to its potentiality to alter color boundaries, which are maintained through the manipulation of power. Born in a society where racial purity is highly postulated, Walker encounters an identity crisis that renders her double alienated and marginalized. What follows, thereby, is an examination of the identity formation of Walker as a mixed black and white individual, as well as a discussion of how racial hybridity may challenge essentialist racialization. With its fluidity and ambiguity, Walker's mixed race identity turns out to contest and further destabilize the immutability, stability, and homogeneity of essentializing racial categories. By cherishing the boundary-crossing capability a multiracial possesses, Walker could liberate herself from the shackles of the trauma of racism.

Against the background of The Buddha of Suburbia and The Black Album, this study explores the ways Hanif Kureishi problematizes the notion of identity. The present study aims to lay bare how Kureishi moves the previously fixed categories into a slippery ground in his fiction and, in the process, how he challenges the fundamental givens of identity politics against the background of Homi Bhabha&rsquo / s key concepts: hybridity, mimicry, ambivalence, agency, liminality and the third space. It will also make references to the category of nation as narration in relation to Thatcherite politics and identity as a performative act/process. Bhabha&rsquo / s theories will also help highlight how Kureishi&rsquo / s characters create their liminal spaces and how they perform their identity within these spaces. Looking at both novels, it is concluded that the nature of identity is fluid since it is configured according to many variables such as religious practice, political activism, arts and sexual discourse which are not stable, either. Kureishi&rsquo / s novels fictionalize that identity can never be reified by the essentialist pre-givens of the traditional ideologies. In a multicultural world, rather than assimilation, it is important to grasp the unstable nature of identity in order to respect cultural differences. Thus, in a world where the dominant voices do not/cannot suppress the marginal ones, identity, national or individual, will keep on transforming itself.

This thesis examines the everyday resistance, and its interaction with cultural hybridity, of the Saami population in the administrative unit of Torne lappmark during the period 1639–1732. To do this, the thesis uses theoretical concept of everday resistance as it has been described by JamesC. Scott and the theories of cultural hybridity as they have been described by Peter Burke. Primary source material used in this thesis consists of the court records from Torne lappmark, specifically from the courts at Jukkasjärvi and Enontekis.The results of this thesis present a picture of the everyday resistance in early modern Torne lappmark. The states control was most prominent at the annual markets and court proceedings. The everyday resistance of the Saamis became more subtle when the supervision by the Swedish state became more significant, for example by cutting off pieces from the reindeer hides that they sold or taxed with. Further away from the courts the Saamis could use more drastic options, for example fleeing to Norway. The Swedish state did not want to implement hard punishments on the Saamis because the mining operations in the lappmarks were dependent on Saamis and reindeers to carry ore, wood and food in order to keep the mines operational. This is used by the Saamis as an argument against material domination. The insults and rumours concerning state officials that can be found in the source material often concern abuse of power. The lack of control outside the yearly court proceedings also led to harassments of state and church officials.The Swedish state had political reasons to present the Saamis as chris- tian subjects while trying to exterminate the Saami religion. The Saamis therefore learned a sufficient amount of christianity to make interaction with the state easier and to use as a tool in court proceedings to avoid punishment. This normalised and legitimised the states use of power. The fact that Saamis carried christian ideas and could reproduce them when they needed also led to a cultural hybridisation. They also adapted these ideas in accordance to their own worldview. Some Saamis also hybridised the two religions in different religious practises.The use of these theoretical models offers a new perspective on the interaction between the Swedish state and the Saamis. It also gives a new perspective on the power relationships in Torne lappmark during the early modern period. Keywords: Saami history, everyday resistance, cultural hybridity, 17th century, 18th century