This thesis explores the interweaving of colonial and post-colonial British and Jamaican Laws and the interpretive legalities of sexuality, compulsory heterosexuality, and queerness. The research project begins by exploring the ways in which the gendered colonial law produces black sexualities as excessive and in need of discipline while also noticing how Caribbean peoples negotiate and subvert these legalities. The work then turns to dancehall and its enmeshment with landscape (which reflects theatre-in-the round and African spiritual ceremonies), psycho scape (which retains African uses of marronage and pageantry as personhood), and musicscape (which deploys homophobia to demand heterosexuality), in order to tease out the complexities of Caribbean sexualities and queer practices. I couple these legal narratives and geographies with interviews and ethnographic data and draw attention to the ways in which queer men inhabit the dancehall. I argue that queer men participate in a dancehall culture—one that is perceived as heterosexual and homophobic—undetected because of the over-arching (cultural and aesthetic) queerness of the space coupled with the de facto heterosexuality afforded all who ‘brave’ dancehall’s homophobia. Queer dancehall participants report that inhabiting this space involves the tactical deployment of (often non-sexual) heterosexual signifiers as well as queering the dancehall aesthetic by moving from margin to centre. In so doing, I argue, queer dancehall queers transition from unvisible (never seen but always invoked) to invisible (blending into the queered space) while also moving across and through, as well as calling into question, North American gay culture, queer liberalism, and identity politics. / Thesis (Master, Gender Studies) -- Queen's University, 2014-01-30 13:32:15.082

This thesis examines the ideological nexus of nationalism and heritage under the social conditions of neoliberalism. The investigation aims to demonstrate how neoliberal economics stimulate the irrationalism manifest in nationalist idealisation of the past. The institutionalisation of national heritage was originally a rational function of the modern state, symbolic of its political and cultural authority. With neoliberal erosion of the productive economy and public institutions, heritage and nostalgia proliferate today in all areas of social life. It is argued that this represents a social pathology linked to the neoliberal state's inability to construct a future-orientated national project. These conditions enhance the appeal of irrational nationalist and regionalist ideologies idealising the past as a source of cultural purity. Unable to achieve social cohesion, the neoliberal state promotes multiculturalism, encouraging minorities to embrace essentialist identity politics that parallel the nativism of right-wing nationalists and regionalists. This phenomenon is contextualised within the general crisis of progressive modernisation in Western societies that has accompanied neoliberalisation and globalisation. A new theory of activist heritage is advanced to describe autonomous, politicised heritage that appropriates forms and practices from the state heritage sector. Using this concept, the politics of irrational nationalism and regionalism are explored through fieldwork, including participant observation, interviews and photography. The interaction of state and activist heritage is considered at the Wewelsburg 1933-1945 Memorial Museum in Germany wherein neofascists have re-signified Nazi material culture, reactivating it within contemporary political narratives. The activist heritage of Israeli Zionism, Irish Republicanism and Ulster Loyalism is analysed through studies of museums, heritage centres, archaeological sites, exhibitions, monuments and historical re-enactments. These illustrate how activist heritage represents a political strategy within irrational ideologies that interpret the past as the ethical model for the future. This work contends that irrational nationalism fundamentally challenges the Enlightenment's assertion of reason over faith, and culture over nature, by superimposing pre-modern ideas upon the structure of modernity. An ideological product of the Enlightenment, the nation state remains the only political unit within which a rational command of time and space is possible, and thus the only viable basis for progressive modernity.

Modernisierungstheoretischen Annahmen zufolge sind soziale Beziehungen in Gesellschaften der zweiten Moderne keine gegebenen Größen mehr, sondern Gegenstand von Aushandlungsprozessen, handlungsleitende gesellschaftliche Wissensvorräte erodieren und das bürgerliche Kernfamilienmodell sieht sich zunehmend soziokulturell legitimierten Alternativen gegenüber. Zahlreiche Wandlungstendenzen von Familie lassen sich ablesen, unter diesen die Zunahme von Fortsetzungsfamilien nach Trennung und Scheidung und im Zuge dessen die Aufweichung der monolokalen Haushaltsbindung von Familie. Diese Dynamiken werfen die Frage nach der Ausgestaltung der Herstellungsleistungen von Familie auf, die mit Doing und Displaying Family im Rahmen einer praxistheoretischen Wende innerhalb der Familiensoziologie bereits angeschnitten sind. Hier setzt das Forschungsinteresse der vorliegenden Arbeit an: (1) Bereits vorliegende empirische Erkenntnisse und theoretisch-konzeptuelle Überlegungen maßgeblicher Forschungsfelder werden zusammengeführt und diskutiert. (2) Aus praxeologisch-wissenssoziologischer Perspektive richtet die Empirie der vorliegenden Studie ihre Aufmerksamkeit auf die Rekonstruktion familialer Identitätspolitiken und der Herstellung von Gemeinschaft im sogenannten paritätischen Wechselmodell, in dem Kinder regelmäßig und zu gleichen Teilen an den Orten der getrenntlebenden Eltern wohnen. Mit den Befunden kann gezeigt werden, dass eine von Eltern und Kindern geteilte Differenzthese zentraler Ankerpunkt für die Identitätskonstruktionen der untersuchten Familien bildet. Zwei Familienkerne stehen sich nach der Relokalisierung eines Elternpaares im Zuge der Auflösung ihrer Zweierbeziehung als zwei Familienwirklichkeiten mit je unterschiedlichen Behauptungen sozialer Ordnung gegenüber. In diese müssen sich die Kinder aktiv einpassen bzw. regelmäßig durch die monolokalen Familienmitglieder re-integriert werden. Die Behauptung und Stabilisierung der lokalen Ordnungen wird über fünf Formen physischer und symbolischer Schließung als Teil familialer Identitätspolitiken abgesichert: (1) kommunikativ, (2) räumlich, (3) personell, (4) materiell und (5) habituell. Zwischen materieller und habitueller Schließung zu verorten, wurde das Olfaktorische als Medium der Vergemeinschaftung identifiziert. Das empirische Material eröffnet zudem einen Blick auf die Normalisierungsstrategien der untersuchten Eltern und Kinder im Umgang mit extern herangetragenen Markierungen von Andersartigkeit, Abweichungsvermutungen und der Normalisierungsmacht des bürgerlichen Kernfamilienmodells. Der Studie liegt ein qualitatives multi-method Design zugrunde. Der Materialkorpus speist sich aus problemzentriert-narrativen Interviews, Gruppendiskussionen, ego-zentrierten Netzwerkkarten sowie fotografischen Alltagsdokumentationen der aktiv multilokal lebenden Kinder aus insgesamt fünf Familienensembles. Die Materialien wurden auf Grundlage der dokumentarischen Methode der Text- und Bildinterpretation analysiert. / According to modernization theory social relationships in second modernity are no longer a given quantity but are subject to negotiation processes. Guiding social knowledge is eroding and the nuclear family model is increasingly confronted with sociocultural legitimate alternatives. There are numerous transformations of the family observable – among these increasing numbers of families after separation and divorce, and in consequence the dissolution of the monolocal household family in favour of multi-local family arrangements. These dynamics raise the question of Doing and Displaying Family practices, addressed within the framework of a practice turn within family sociology. Main aim of this paper is (1) to discuss existing empirical findings and theoretical/conceptual considerations of relevant research fields, and (2) by employing a praxeological approach, to focus on identity politics as a means to establish and stabilize family identity and belonging within shared residence arrangements where children regularly shuttle between their separated parent’s households. Data suggest that passive multi-locally living parents and their partners oscillate between referring to the other household on behalf of the active multi-locally living children to create a cross-spatial sense of commonness and belonging and at the same time applying territorialisation practices to promote a place-bound social order and family identity. This includes processes of communicative, spatial, personal, material, and habitual closure. Moreover, in a way between material and habitual closure, the olfactory was identified as a medium of identification and distinction. However, children face the challenge to merge both residential places and family nuclei into a coherent whole and simultaneously need to distinguish between different family sociotopes. Moreover, the empirical material provides insights into the normalization strategies of parents and children in dealing with externally applied difference markers, deviance attributions and the normalization power of the nuclear family model. The basis of the empirical research is a multiple methods comprising qualitative research design. Narrative interviews, group discussions and visual methods were employed. Data are analysed by means of the documentary method for text and picture interpretation within a qualitative reconstructive approach.

Då asylsökande åberopar sexuell läggning eller könsidentitet som asylskäl, är den egna berättelsen inte sällan den enda bevisning som finns att tillgå. Detta innebär att trovärdigheten i den asylsökandes framförande av sin berättelse tillmäts stor vikt. Tidigare forskning har funnit att trovärdighetsbedömningen i västerländska länders asylprövning påverkas av vilken handläggare som hanterar ärendet, och dennas stereotyper av sexuell läggning och könsidentitet. Förekomsten av stereotyper har härletts till kompetens- eller rutinbrist. Exempelvis har det anförts att asylprövande myndigheter och domstolar lider brist på normkritik och nyanserad kunskap i hbtq+-personers olika omständigheter och leverne. Denna studie erbjuder en annan hypotes, med utgångspunkt i etablerad politisk teori och samtida statsvetenskaplig forskning: Att ideologin romantisk liberalism präglar västerländska länders asylprövning. Det finns empiriskt stöd för att människor i västvärlden i allt större utsträckning värdesätter individuell frihet. Tidigare forskning har antagit att detta värdesättande leder till ökad tolerans och välkomnande av ökad mångfald. Ett sådant positivt förhållande ifrågasätts emellertid av flera statsvetare, däribland den svenska statsvetaren Gina Gustavsson. I en avhandling från 2014 presenterar Gustavsson en beskrivning av en romantisk gren inom liberalismen. Denna ideologi framhåller ett obevekligt, provokativt och kreativt uttryck för individens originalitet: både vad avser beskrivningar av vad människan är, och värderande utsagor om hur människan bör vara. En sådan syn, menar Gustavsson, är en förrädisk förståelse för frihet som kan urarta i intolerans, trots att den utges för det motsatta. Med ideologianalys prövas rätts- och myndighetsmaterial från ett urval västerländska länders asylprövning mot en idealtyp av den romantiska liberalismen. Resultatet är att den romantiska liberalismens frihetsideal i flera avseenden kommer till uttryck i urvalet västerländska länders asylprövning. Slutsatsen är att beslutsfattare och utredares upptagenhet av särskilda uttryck för den asylsökandes identitet, kan förstås som en manifestation av den romantiska liberalismens frihetsideal. Detta snarare än som uttryck främst för kompetens- och rutinbrist, såsom tidigare forskning konstaterat. Vidare förs en diskussion kring betydande spänningar mellan den romantiska liberalismen och mänskliga rättigheters universella anspråk. Detta särskilt avseende asylsökandes begränsade möjlighet eller avsikt att leva upp till romantiskt liberala frihetsideal. / As asylum seekers invoke sexual orientation or gender identity as a reason for asylum, their own story is often the only evidence available. This means that the credibility of asylum seeker's presentation of their story, often is given great importance. Previous research shows that credibility assessments in Western countries can differ depending on the sexual orientation and gender identity stereotypes of the case officer who is handling the case. The existence of stereotypes has been related to lack of skills or routine. For example, it is in previous research stated that asylum reviewing authorities and courts suffer from a lack of norm criticism and nuanced knowledge of lgbtq+-persons' different circumstances and living. This study offers another hypothesis, based on established political theory and contemporary political science research: That the ideology romantic liberalism characterizes the asylum procedure in Western countries. There is empirical support for the fact that people in the Western world increasingly value individual freedom. Previous research has assumed that such values leads to increased tolerance and a welcoming of diversity. However, such a positive relationship is questioned by the Swedish political scientist Gina Gustavsson. In Gustavssons’ dissertation from 2014, a description of a romantic branch of liberalism is presented, which elevates a relentless, creative and provocative expression of the individual's originality: both in terms of descriptions of what an individual is, and evaluative statements about what an individual should be. Such a view, Gustavsson says, is a treacherous understanding of freedom that can degenerate into intolerance, even though it is issued to stand for the contrary. With ideology analysis, judicial and governmental material from a sample of Western countries' asylum procedures is tested against an ideal type of romantic liberalism. The results of the analysis show that the ideal of freedom of romanticism, in several respects, can be found in the asylum procedure in a sample of Western countries. The conclusion is that decision makers and investigators' preoccupation with specific expressions of the identity of the asylum seeker can be understood as a manifestation of the freedom ideals in the romantic liberalism. This rather than a lack of skills and routine, as previous research has found. Furthermore, a discussion is held regarding that there is considerable tension between romantic liberalism and the universal claims of human rights. This particularly regarding the asylum seekers' limited ability or intention to live up to the freedom ideals of the romantic liberalism.

Modernisierungstheoretischen Annahmen zufolge sind soziale Beziehungen in Gesellschaften der zweiten Moderne keine gegebenen Größen mehr, sondern Gegenstand von Aushandlungsprozessen, handlungsleitende gesellschaftliche Wissensvorräte erodieren und das bürgerliche Kernfamilienmodell sieht sich zunehmend soziokulturell legitimierten Alternativen gegenüber. Zahlreiche Wandlungstendenzen von Familie lassen sich ablesen, unter diesen die Zunahme von Fortsetzungsfamilien nach Trennung und Scheidung und im Zuge dessen die Aufweichung der monolokalen Haushaltsbindung von Familie. Diese Dynamiken werfen die Frage nach der Ausgestaltung der Herstellungsleistungen von Familie auf, die mit Doing und Displaying Family im Rahmen einer praxistheoretischen Wende innerhalb der Familiensoziologie bereits angeschnitten sind. Hier setzt das Forschungsinteresse der vorliegenden Arbeit an: (1) Bereits vorliegende empirische Erkenntnisse und theoretisch-konzeptuelle Überlegungen maßgeblicher Forschungsfelder werden zusammengeführt und diskutiert. (2) Aus praxeologisch-wissenssoziologischer Perspektive richtet die Empirie der vorliegenden Studie ihre Aufmerksamkeit auf die Rekonstruktion familialer Identitätspolitiken und der Herstellung von Gemeinschaft im sogenannten paritätischen Wechselmodell, in dem Kinder regelmäßig und zu gleichen Teilen an den Orten der getrenntlebenden Eltern wohnen. Mit den Befunden kann gezeigt werden, dass eine von Eltern und Kindern geteilte Differenzthese zentraler Ankerpunkt für die Identitätskonstruktionen der untersuchten Familien bildet. Zwei Familienkerne stehen sich nach der Relokalisierung eines Elternpaares im Zuge der Auflösung ihrer Zweierbeziehung als zwei Familienwirklichkeiten mit je unterschiedlichen Behauptungen sozialer Ordnung gegenüber. In diese müssen sich die Kinder aktiv einpassen bzw. regelmäßig durch die monolokalen Familienmitglieder re-integriert werden. Die Behauptung und Stabilisierung der lokalen Ordnungen wird über fünf Formen physischer und symbolischer Schließung als Teil familialer Identitätspolitiken abgesichert: (1) kommunikativ, (2) räumlich, (3) personell, (4) materiell und (5) habituell. Zwischen materieller und habitueller Schließung zu verorten, wurde das Olfaktorische als Medium der Vergemeinschaftung identifiziert. Das empirische Material eröffnet zudem einen Blick auf die Normalisierungsstrategien der untersuchten Eltern und Kinder im Umgang mit extern herangetragenen Markierungen von Andersartigkeit, Abweichungsvermutungen und der Normalisierungsmacht des bürgerlichen Kernfamilienmodells. Der Studie liegt ein qualitatives multi-method Design zugrunde. Der Materialkorpus speist sich aus problemzentriert-narrativen Interviews, Gruppendiskussionen, ego-zentrierten Netzwerkkarten sowie fotografischen Alltagsdokumentationen der aktiv multilokal lebenden Kinder aus insgesamt fünf Familienensembles. Die Materialien wurden auf Grundlage der dokumentarischen Methode der Text- und Bildinterpretation analysiert. / According to modernization theory social relationships in second modernity are no longer a given quantity but are subject to negotiation processes. Guiding social knowledge is eroding and the nuclear family model is increasingly confronted with sociocultural legitimate alternatives. There are numerous transformations of the family observable – among these increasing numbers of families after separation and divorce, and in consequence the dissolution of the monolocal household family in favour of multi-local family arrangements. These dynamics raise the question of Doing and Displaying Family practices, addressed within the framework of a practice turn within family sociology. Main aim of this paper is (1) to discuss existing empirical findings and theoretical/conceptual considerations of relevant research fields, and (2) by employing a praxeological approach, to focus on identity politics as a means to establish and stabilize family identity and belonging within shared residence arrangements where children regularly shuttle between their separated parent’s households. Data suggest that passive multi-locally living parents and their partners oscillate between referring to the other household on behalf of the active multi-locally living children to create a cross-spatial sense of commonness and belonging and at the same time applying territorialisation practices to promote a place-bound social order and family identity. This includes processes of communicative, spatial, personal, material, and habitual closure. Moreover, in a way between material and habitual closure, the olfactory was identified as a medium of identification and distinction. However, children face the challenge to merge both residential places and family nuclei into a coherent whole and simultaneously need to distinguish between different family sociotopes. Moreover, the empirical material provides insights into the normalization strategies of parents and children in dealing with externally applied difference markers, deviance attributions and the normalization power of the nuclear family model. The basis of the empirical research is a multiple methods comprising qualitative research design. Narrative interviews, group discussions and visual methods were employed. Data are analysed by means of the documentary method for text and picture interpretation within a qualitative reconstructive approach.

Since the creation of modern-day Iraq by the British Empire in 1920, the country’s state territorial structuring has been an ever-evolving source of political instability and conflict. Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian groups have been locked in a near constant struggle over questions of self-rule, shared rule, and secession. Consequently, the territorial model of federalism has never been far from political discussions, negotiations, and territorial disputes. Federalism was finally officially adopted in 2005, giving a new definition to Iraq’s territorial model. But while federalism seemed a natural means of managing Iraq’s long-standing ethno-sectarian divisions and was democratically ratified in a process that included most ethnic and sectarian groups, the model has failed to materialize, and territorial structure remains a major point of contention between the groups. The overarching aim of this dissertation is to shed light on two key questions. First, how have the dynamics between the major ethnic and sectarian groups of Iraq shaped the evolution of the country’s territorial structure from 1920 up to and beyond the federal constitution in 2005? Second, what can the trajectory of this evolution teach us about why federalism was adopted but has failed to materialize? I shall argue that Iraq’s territorial structuring over the past century has been systematically influenced by at least one of four “I”s: the groups’ ideas concerning territorial structuring, their conceptualizations of group identities, their definitions of group interests, and the influence of foreign actors. Focussing on the Shiite Arabs, the Sunni Arabs, and the Kurds, I will examine how these four factors have interacted to shape the territorial organization of Iraq over four key time periods: (i) the foundation of Iraq in 1920 to Saddam Hussein’s rise to the presidency in 1979, (ii) Saddam’s rule from 1979 to 2003, (iii) Saddam’s deposition in 2003 to the adoption of the federal constitution in 2005, and (iv) the post-constitutional period from 2005 to the present. I thus hope to explain how evolving inter-group dynamics over the past century have impacted the development of Iraq’s territorial structure, arguing that this sheds light on both the reference to federalism in the 2005 constitution and its subsequent failure to materialize. This dissertation thus demonstrates the powerful ways in which Iraq’s territorial structuring has been shaped by past trends in ethno-sectarian dynamics, putting us in a better position to understand the complexities of the country’s current territorial politics.

The pillars on which this study is based (stands) could be compared with the observations of Ejiofor (1981: 4), who says the modern-and-African political models have not been sufficiently discovered, developed, and operated in African states. One thinks that the social and political behaviour of African people are in conflict with the present day political structures and institutions. Political and economic actors fail to harness the knowledge, attitudes, and responses with the indigenous values. Own to these reasons the present political dispensations in Africa are misconceived and ill-adapted to their reality. Hence, the call for detailed study of home-grown African values as a means to redress these imbalances has become inevitable. This study is based on Igbo cultural solidarity as a means to address and achieve rural development in Africa. Meanwhile, this study attempts to re-ignite and re-echo ‘people-based’ and understood ‘home-based’ models of achieving rural development as focused on Okigwe-Owerri-Orlu political divisions among the Igbo of South-eastern Nigeria. / Development Studies / M.A. (Development Studies)

My paper examines how American authors of the South Asian Diaspora (Indian-American or South Asian American) can be read 1) as simply American and 2) without regard to ethnicity. I develop this argument using American authors Jhumpa Lahiri, a first generation American of Bengali-Indian descent, and Bharati Mukherjee, an American of Bengali-Indian origin. I borrow from Deepika Bahri's materialist aesthetics in postcolonialism (in turn borrowed from members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory) and include theoretical insights from Rey Chow, Graham Huggan, and R. Radhakrishnan regarding multiculturalism, identity politics, and diaspora studies. Huggan and Radhakrishnan's insights are especially useful because their work deals with the South Asian diaspora, in England and the United States, respectively. After setting up a theoretical framework, I critique reviews and essays that privilege hyphenated, "Indian," or "South Asian" identity, and the resultant reading paradigm that fixes these authors into an ethnic minority category. I then trace aesthetic and thematic content of short stories from both Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and Mukherjee's The Middleman and Other Stories to demonstrate how these stories resist this ethno-cultural pigeonholing. My analysis exposes how ethnic and multicultural identity politics supplant aesthetic criticism and transform ethno-cultural identity into an aesthetic object, even if done as a celebration of hybridity or liminality as a putatively liberating space (hyphenated identity as embodying that space). Though my purpose is not to undermine the meaningful artwork and criticism instantiated in or about the "in-between" spaces of American culture, I demonstrate that an over-emphasis on ethnicity and culture (culture "other" than the majority culture in the U.S.) in fact stifles the opening of the American literary canon. Ethnicity and culture become ways of limiting the hermeneutics available to literary criticism because they become the only ways of reading, instead of one lens through which American literature is read.

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