Focusing primarily on a number of small Heathen communities known as ‘kindreds’ and their ‘kith’ near Ottawa, Toronto and Montréal in Canada, this thesis approaches Heathenry as a potential means of ‘everyday’ self- and world-making. It examines the ways in which the ‘virtuous’ words and deeds of my interlocutors helped them to actively effect certain formations of self and world, and attempts to capture the significance of Heathenry as a practical process of formative interpersonal engagement and self-fashioning. Paying special attention to the ‘playful’ character of this process, it explores Heathenry as an aesthetic and ethical project of self-making – a project that produces and underpins particular kinds of ‘excellence’ and ‘authentic’ subjects. Emphasizing the creative poiesis entailed in this project, my thesis explores the ways in which Heathenry enables people to locate and orient themselves within a shared field of potentiality as subjects and agents questing for a ‘virtuous self’. I argue that both the end and means of this quest entails a reorientation in people’s aesthetic sensibility and personal ethical quality. The thesis concludes by illustrating how this highly personalized yet shared process of self formation facilitates people’s continuing journey to become increasingly ‘worthy’ Heathen subjects; that is, selves realized through their own virtuous acts of narrative objectification and those of others. As skillful and skillfully fashioned subjects, I suggest that my informants became able to experience their own potential virtuous development as a development of the ‘cosmos’ itself – a development, that is, of the very realms their quests embodied and manifested, and throughout which their virtuous selves came to be projected.

This study explored the interface between the abuses inherent in the sacred nature of the Akan (a Ghanaian ethnic group) Chief and international human rights laws. It argued that the sacred basis of Akan Chieftaincy, which empowers and legitimizes Akan Chiefs, also leads to them imposing restrictions on the rights of their subjects. The study examined the implications of these restrictions in the light of a rapidly modernizing, thoroughly globalizing, and a religiously pluralistic Ghana where the influence of western originated belief in individual rights is growing. The study also explored why, in spite of the many existing Constitutional and legal provisions in Ghana, breaches of religious freedom still occur. It shed considerable light on how agents of the modern state and the Chiefs, connive to sometimes suppress the rights of individuals. The study identified the implications of this development for policymaking in Ghanaian communities where modernity and tradition co-exist.

After the Meiji Restoration of 1862, Western philosophy was imported and infused into Japanese culture and its intellectual climate. By the early 20th Century, Kyoto School philosophers and romantic authors sought to reaffirm Japanese culture, believed jeopardised by the hastened development of Western capitalist modernity. This movement became politically charged, and is not without fascist allegations. After the Second World War modernism again became a primary intellectual concern, as modernists and Asianists alike attempted to struggle with the idea of fascism in Japan. Works of Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) and Watsuji Tetsuro (1889-1960), and the prewar contexts within which they were written, will be compared to the postwar thinkers Maruyama Masao (1914-1996) and Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977). The purpose of this thesis is to examine how Japanese thinkers before and after the Second World War understood and responded to the global process of modernity, and how it relates to such political movements as liberalism and fascism.

Esta dissertação inicia-se com uma pesquisa sobre o conceito de modernidade, e suas denominações: Modernidade/Pós-modernidade; a seguir, recorremos à Arte Moderna, para depois adentrarmos a Estética literária no projeto da modernidade, foco da pesquisa e, para tanto, apresentamos valores literários de alguns escritores-críticos modernos. Assim, expostas as idéias em diálogo na modernidade, procedemos a formatação de um paradigma a que chamamos de paradigma Projeto da Modernidade. Discorremos sobre a crítica literária atual, e as autoras pesquisadas: a portuguesa Alice Vieira e a brasileira Lygia Bojunga Nunes. Selecionamos e realizamos um estudo paradigmático analíticocrítico em duas obras literárias para crianças e jovens, a saber: Flor de Mel de Alice Vieira e Corda bamba de Lygia Bojunga Nunes. Fizemos uma aproximação do paradigma PM formatado para este estudo ao final de cada análise, assim como uma aproximação entre Flor de Mel e Corda bamba. Dessa forma, pudemos constatar o quanto a qualidade estética do texto narrativo; desconsiderando se a obra pode ser endereçada ao receptor adulto ou criança, ou seja, se é chamada de literatura para crianças e jovens, ou não; comprova a estética literária da modernidade a que nos propusemos investigar neste estudo. / This thesis starts by researching the concept of Modernity and its denominations. Modernity/Post-modernity; then, we approach Modern Art, and, later, we enter the literary esthetics in the project of Modernity, which is the focus of the research and, for that purpose, we present literary values of some modern critic-writers. So, once the ideas in Modernity dialog have been exposed, we proceed to the formatting of a paradigm which we call Project of Modernity Paradigm. We go about the current literary criticism, and the researched writers: Portuguese Alice Vieira and Brazilian Lygia Bojunga Nunes. We selected and performed an analytical-critical paradigm study in two literary works for children and youngsters, namely: Flor de Mel, by Alice Vieira and Corda bamba, by Lygia Bojunga Nunes. We did an approximation of the PM paradigm, for this study, in the end of each analysis, as well as an approximation between Flor de Mel and Corda bamba, so that we could find how much the esthetic quality of the narrative text, disregarding whether the work can be addressed to the adult or children receptors, in other words, if the literature mentioned is for children and youngsters, or not, does evidence the literary esthetics of Modernity which we proposed to investigate in this study.

This project addresses the problem of monovalent interpretations of habit’s role in a creative means of living within the literature. Analyses tend to opt for an either/or logic, in which the majority of research conducted reflects a detrimental, constraining role for habit as regards creativity while responses to this dominant position still operate under a singularly-positive understanding of habit. Introducing a multivalent conception of habit is a component within the broader purpose of challenging dominant conceptions of political improvement or “progress” (acknowledging how historically- and contemporarily-loaded such a term remains), while leaving open the much-needed potential for change. The research demonstrates the dangerous, immobilizing interaction between individual habit formation and the modern, linear teleological focus on political prediction and destination. Concurrently, it points to the benefits to creativity habit can provide when individual habituation is immersed in a different sense of political engagement. This bipartite argument is made through a Bergsonian method, built up from the intuitive primacy of flow and becoming and their decomposition into apparently stable forms and relations. Inspiration is drawn not only from the works of Bergson, but also Deleuze, Heidegger, and successors. By examining the multiple lines internal to habit, the research prescribes the importance of a balanced approach to the direction of political effort between a sense of improvement which advances to livable destinations and a sense which departs from unlivable locations. This is not a balance of the middle way, but of the constant passage between polar extremes (a both/and logic of habit) and individual negotiation amongst free and constrained political actions. By opening up the complexities of habit, subsequent work can interrogate further social and political elements which enable the persistence of teleological ideology and develop new political mechanisms to promote meaningfully diverse engagement and openness to the radically unpredictable. / Graduate

This dissertation provides a comparative study of letters and digital media as infrastructures of modern Chinese romance. It examines young Chinese lovers’ experiences with digital media in comparison with their forebears’ experiences with love letters in order to understand how the increased ease of communication shapes Chinese romantic relating. Based on historical documents and in-depth interviews, this dissertation argues that the Internet and mobile technology augment Chinese lovers’ capacities to contact each other over distance, to express emotions that are restrained by conventions, and to create private alcoves in public places. These augmented capacities alter various boundaries in and around romantic relationship and intensify Chinese lovers’ negotiation between individuality and relationship, between disclosure and concealment, and between the public and private realms of life. Specifically, young Chinese lovers are better able to maintain a continual sense of togetherness but have more difficulty protecting personal boundaries and being alone. They find it easier to articulate feelings that are untoward in face-to-face speech, but they also find it harder to prove the sincerity of love in text and to avoid confrontation in impulsive message exchange. They have more access to a private space, albeit virtual, and more chances to publicize their romantic lives, but by doing so they also contribute to diminished sociality in offline public spaces and have to rely on the kindness of strangers for privacy more than ever before. For young Chinese lovers, digital media promise the freedoms that are regulated and controlled by social institutions in their offline worlds, but seeking these freedoms via digital media poses chges to their relationships with themselves, with each other, and with the larger social and public worlds they live in. These chges for romantic relating, as this dissertation argues, manifest the problems of the physical and the material while digital media facilitate spiritual contact over distance. The boundaries of personal accessibility are rooted in the limitation of human attention and ultimately in human mortality; the problem of sincerity in verbalized love lies in the difficulty of invoking deeds as the culturally preferred signifier of love; private nooks in public spaces are problematic both because bodily presence in physical locales entails expectations of sociality and because information storage in virtual venues requires a material apparatus that is beyond the control of individuals. As digital media reduce physical distance as the obstacle to lovers’ spiritual contact, they also intensify the tension between the spiritual and the physical aspects of communication and relationships. Overall, this dissertation provides a tripartite approach to the study of mediation and sociality based on three dimensions of communication: contact, content, and context. It emphasizes the importance of examining the ways in which communication media enable individuals to connect with each other, to express themselves, and to privatize or publicize their relationships. This approach provides a holistic understanding of how media shape modern sociality and how that mediation contributes to the shift of social boundaries and changes in social etiquette. In addition, this study enriches the current understanding of emerging media, particularly personal communication technologies (PCTs), as a social-technological combination, and proposes the study of the combination in plural and contradictory forms. Methodologically, it suggests the significance of studying both the symbolic and material aspects of mediated communication and of examining various modes, modalities, and genres of mediated communication as the locale where the material channels of media and the symbolic meanings of interaction intersect.

A la suite de l'Incarnation du Fils de Dieu, l'Église, analogie du Corps mystique du Christ, est enracinée dans une géographie historique transitoire. C'est la foi professée par l'Eglise catholique romaine. Sa mission ne peut donc se restreindre aux réalités spirituelles entendues comme immatérielles. Si l'État a vocation première à assumer les réalités temporelles selon le plan divin, cela ne signifie pas que l'Église doive renoncer à sa part de responsabilité éthique et politique. Au service de la vocation ultime de l'être humain, c'est "l'homme considéré dans son unité et sa totalité" (Gaudium et Spes 3) que l'Eglise catholique aussi doit conduire au salut.La canonicité de l'engagement ecclésial dans les réalités temporelles affronte le pouvoir politique et sa tendance hégémonique à imposer une doctrine soit étatiste ou régalienne, soit séparatiste et parfois discriminatoire.Quels sont les arguments juridiques dont cette Église dispose pour justifier, devant son interlocuteur politique, d'une légitimité de prise de parole dans des domaines de la res publica qui relèvent premièrement de l'État et de ses structures ? Dans cette tâche, elle ne peut se présenter ni comme une institution associative, ni comme un simple lobby. Les XIXe et XXe siècles ont été le lieu d'un travail doctrinal et d'une expression magistérielle très riche en ce domaine. En rappelant son fondement divin dont la forme juridique prend celle d'une Société parfaite théologique, l'Église a affirmé un statut de société religieuse, la distinguant d'une puissance séculière de machine de prise de pouvoir, et définissant le proprium d'une parole d'éthique internationale. L'organisation canonique de la souveraineté vient, non d'une concession de la sphère profane, mais d'une volonté divine. L'Eglise se disant Société parfaite, ou encore société externe devant l'organisation internationale, ces notions sont nécessairement théologiques. / Following the Incarnation of the son of God, the Church, analogy of mystical Body of Christ, is rooted in a transitional historical geography. This is the faith professed by the Roman Catholic Church. Its mission can not therefore be limited to spiritual realities understood as immaterial. If State has primary vocation to assume temporal realities according to the divine plan, that does not mean that the Church should give up its share of ethical and political responsability. Serving the ultimate vocation of human being it's "man seen in its unity and totality" (Gaudium et Spes 3) that the Church must also lead to salvation.Canonicity of the ecclesial commitment in temporal realities confronts political power and its hegemonic tendency to impose a doctrine either statist or regal, either separatist and sometimes discriminatory.What are legal arguments which the Church has to justify, before his political interlocutor, legitimacy of speaking in areas of "res publica" that fall firstly to the state and its structures ? In this task, it can occur either as an associative institution nor a simple lobby. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were the scene of a doctrinal work and a magisterial speech rich in this area. Recalling its divine foundation which takes the legal form of a Theological perfect Society, the Church has affirmed the status of a religious society, distinguishing it from a secular machine to gain power and defining the proprium of an international ethics. The canonical organization of sovereignty is not a concession to the secular sphere, but a divine will. The Church is called perfect company or external company to the international organization, these concepts are necessarily theological.

This thesis examines the relationship between Korean film and modernity by conducting a survey of the representation of cars, trains, and the city throughout (South) Korean film history. There have been several remarkable changes in these representations over time: the train, first the awe-inspiring symbol of Korean technological advancement in the 1890s, becomes the brutal symbol of Japanese oppression just a few decades later. The city in Korean film is politically and socially charged for most of the 20th century, a place where innocent people are morally corrupted or physically assaulted. But by the 21st century, trains and cars are now toys for action characters to manipulate, and the city is now a neutral backdrop for pure entertainment in blockbuster films such as Train to Busan (Yeon Sang-ho, 2016), Ashfall (Lee Hae-jun and Kim Byung-seo, 2019), and Peninsula (Yeon Sang-ho, 2020). There are several reasons for this, one of which I propose as the inherently procapitalist and pro-modernity nature of the blockbuster film.

Dans cette étude, nous allons établir une comparaison diachronique de la ville de Tegucigalpa, capitale du honduras et les transformations urbaines qui se mènent à bien à partir de deux moments politiques et historiques : la réforme libérale du xixème siècle et la période néo-libérale de la fin du xxème siècle. pour cela, nous allons nous appuyer sur deux axes principaux : la reconstitution de discours des administrations libérales et néo-libérales, de manière que cela nous permette d'établir les similitudes entre les deux discours aussi bien que les différences. le deuxième axe sera constitué par l'analyse des résultats matériels de tous les deux discours dans le paysage urbain. comment vivent les habitants de la ville ces deux politiques de modernisation ? l'aspiration à la modernité de la part des autorités, traduite en politique urbaine, est-elle souhaitée ou subie par les tegucigalpais ? répondre à ces questions constituera notre problématique de recherche, autour de laquelle on articulera les facteurs politiques, sociaux, économiques et urbains qui conditionnent la modernisation de tegucigalpa. / In this study, we will establish a diachronic comparison of the city of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, and the urban transformations that took place in two political and historical moments: the liberal reform of the Nineteenth century and the neo-liberal period of the end of the Twentieth century. For that, we will rely on two main axes: the reconstitution of discourses of the liberal and neo-liberal administrations, so that it allows us to establish the similarities between the two speeches as well as the differences. The second axis will be the analysis of the material results of both speeches in the urban landscape. How do the inhabitants Tegucigalpa live these two modernization policies? Is the ideal of modernity on behalf of the authorities, desired or suffered by its inhabitants? Answering these questions will constitute our research problem, around which we will articulate the political, social, economic and urban factors that condition the modernization of Tegucigalpa.

This study critically engages with the current security debate on the conceptual understanding of the Islamic State (IS). The study critically evaluates the dominant Western view within the debate that conceptualises IS as an ‘Islamic’ terrorist organisation and a product of the ‘backwardness’ of Islam. By conducting a critical review of the literature on IS, the author argues that such a conceptualisation of IS is rooted in a racist, orientalist and Islamophobic Western epistemological narrative which seeks to create a ‘natural’ link between terrorism and Islam. Through a conceptual discussion on terrorism and a critical assessment of the Eurocentric nature of security studies theories, both traditional and critical, the study shows how hegemonic Western epistemologies are able to conveniently ignore the European roots of terrorism in the foundation of Western modernity. The result of this is that hegemonic Western epistemologies are able to appropriate the concept of security as an exclusive domain of Western states and their societies. This whilst carving out the non-European world, particularly Islamic societies, as the exclusive sources of potential terrorist threats. The study therefore advances the decolonial theoretical concept of global coloniality as a means of reframing the debate and shifting the point of enunciation from dominant Western views of IS to a more critical Global South decolonial perspective. As such, the study places emphasis on the European origins of terrorism as a constitutive element of the foundation of Western modernity, whilst addressing the cognitive confinement of security studies theories. In this light the study concludes by asserting that the Islamic State is a creation of the constitutive violent logic of Western modernity/coloniality, which has terrorism as its foundational core. / Mini Dissertation (MSS)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / National Research Foundation (NRF) / Political Sciences / MSS / Unrestricted