Magíster en Ciencias Sociales mención Sociología de la Modernización / La presente investigación se basó en estudiar y comprender cómo trabajan el sí mismo los jóvenes usuarios de Facebook en sus presentaciones cotidianas mediante las proposiciones teóricas de Erving Goffman (1959), quien inaugurando la perspectiva microsociológica de la acción, adopta las metáforas teatratales para el entendimiento de las interacciones sociales como aquellas actuaciones que despliegan los sujetos para producir una determinada visión de sí mismos que dote de certeza y verosimilitud su presentación. La metodología utilizada fue la articulación entre etnografía virtual y entrevistas en profundidad, con el fin de contraponer la producción de información y a su vez, contribuir a un módulo integrado que concilie diferentes perspectivas epistemológicas para mejorar las miradas anteriores sobre el objeto de estudio. Se concluye que la presentación de sí mismo en Facebook guarda similitudes con la presentación en la “vida real”, en la que del mismo modo se desempeñan actuaciones que responden a prácticas ritualizadas vinculadas a los valores circunscritos de la sociedad. No obstante, en el entorno online hay mayor grado de control de las impresiones frente a los demás, aunque el trabajo de sí mismo se torna complejo debido a los límites entre lo qué es público y qué es privado / The present research was based on studying and understanding how the young users work on Facebook their daily presentations through the theoretical propositions of Erving Goffman (1959), who inaugurating the microsociological perspective of the action, adopts theatrical metaphors for the understanding of social interactions as those actions that the subjects display to produce a certain vision of themselves that gives certainty and verisimilitude their presentation. The methodology used was an articulation between virtual ethnography and in-depth interviews, in order to contrast the production of information and also contribute to an integrated module that reconciles different epistemological perspectives to improve the previous views on the object of study. It is concluded that the presentation of itself in Facebook keeps similarities with the presentation in the "real life", in which also perform actions that respond to ritualized practices linked to the circumscribed values of society. However, in the online environment there is a greater degree of control of the impressions in front of the others, although the work of itself becomes complex due to the limits between what is public and what is private

The submitted doctoral thesis is an analysis of five novels and one prosaic fragment of the German writer Wolfgang Koeppen (1906-1996). Its first part concentrates on Koeppen`s literary depiction of the phenomena of modernity and of the modern consciousness. In the second part I follow the existential dimension of Koeppen`s novels and I try to put them into the context of the existentialist discourse, which influenced the genesis and the establishment of the so called existentialist literature. Koeppen`s novels share with the texts of existential philosophers and writers the topic of the problems of human existence and of the situation of man in the historic reality of the modern times. This doctoral thesis places Koeppen`s novels, as novels belonging to the literary modernism, into the thematic context of the reflexion of modernity. It is based on the foundation that Koeppen`s novels depict the phenomena of the rationalistic modernity and of the modern consciousness with a critical intention. As follows, it deals with the selected themes of Koeppen`s novels such as the lack of meaning, the loss of utopia and the crisis of the individual in the modern era. In the context of modernity, also the melancholy of Koeppen`s protagonists is being interpreted which has, apart from other things, a connection...

During the past two decades, neoliberal economic policies have been enacted in many peripheral regions of the world. Neoliberalism promotes free trade, deregulation, privatization, and welfare reduction; however, it does not call for state rescission of social control and legal coercion. Global capitalism has asserted itself as the dominant force in modernity. It transcends the nation-state system. For example, the United States was the primary hegemon throughout much of the 20th century. Yet since the appearance of global capitalism, transnational corporations now dominate the world-economy. Wealth is heavily concentrated in the hands of an elite capitalist class. The resultant income inequality, coupled with increased state surveillance and formal control, increases structural violence throughout the periphery. The purpose of this article is to examine the structural inequalities in the Americas, while presenting possible solutions to the neoliberal crisis from a social justice perspective.

Sex tourism is one of the world's most controversial industries. While it generates tremendous revenue to the sex tourism destinations, the industry has been condemned as the two main reasons trafficking of women and children exist. Despite this, little research has examined the motivation of sex tourists. The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of the sex tourism phenomenon and, more specifically, motivation of tourists. This study is exploratory and qualitative in nature. Two key propositions are addressed (1) The person's level of perceived modernity relates to the perceived level of personal needs; and (2) The person's level of perceived personal needs relates to the person's desire of travel for sexual participation. A mixture of qualitative methods was utilized. The data was collected using semi-structured personal interviews with thirty-three male sex tourists who traveled to Pattaya, Thailand in 2005. The transcribed data was constantly compared and the interviews revealed four substantial themes with eight subsequent categories. It was discovered that sex tourists were pushed by two main motivational drives: physical and psychological needs which came together as personal needs. Physical needs consisted of "physical problems" and "unmet sexual needs." The psychological problems included "hedonistic drive" and "modernity." The physical gains (tangible attributes) and psychological gains (sense of belonging, freedom and excitement, and power reestablishment) attracted sex tourists to the sex tourism destinations. Therefore, modernity, one of three constructs in this study, was also supported as an important factor which indirectly affected the motivation of the sex tourists. The last chapter presents the study contribution, implementation, and suggestions for future research. For knowledge contribution to the academic field, this present study reinforces the reliability of Iso-Ahola's (1982) escaping-seeking motivation model. It provides both academic and tourism practitioners a better idea of what sex tourist motivational factors are. The knowledge of sex tourist motivation can assist tourism practitioners at the sex tourism destinations to improve positioning their destinations in the world tourism market. For the tourism academics, this study offers an exploratory ground for future research to build on both qualitatively and quantitatively in order to form a more rigorous sex tourist motivation model. / Ph. D.

It is commonly held that Augustine’s Confessions provides an early source for the modern “turn to the self.” But as many critics of modernity note, along with this accentuated sense of self has come a decreased sensitivity to the value and significance of the other. Perhaps the thinker credited (or blamed) for being the source of the modern notion of the self can also be a source for the postmodern retrieval of the other. This dissertation examines the understandings of the self presented in Augustine’s Confessions and Sartre’s Being and Nothingness to highlight and challenge structures latent in standard modern conceptions of the self derived from these very works. Despite their many similarities, these models differ fundamentally due to the fact that one arises from within an ideology of radical autonomy and freedom while the other arises from within an ideology of radical heteronomy and givenness. Sartre rejects givenness and leaves us with a system which asserts that the human self “is a useless passion,” and “Hell is other people;” Augustine assumes givenness and presents a model in which a fully-integrated self is possible only in becoming inseparably bound to the other. By examining how their contrasting ideologies contribute to constituting the stark difference in their conclusions about the similar selves they detail, I explore how structures of a religiously constituted self can preserve the possibility for communion in human relationships that are precluded by a worldview based on an atomistic and autonomous self as exemplified by Sartre. Closely examining the ways in which the self is experienced, expressed, and actualized in these two works, I highlight the fact that their opposing modes of engaging alterity are in fact entailed by their respective religious and modernist orientations. In exploring the role of religion in holding open possibilities for integration and communion between self and other, this work contributes to the contemporary conversation about the “turn to religion” as being a potentially productive response to the failure of modern and even postmodern notions of self to secure a basis for meaningful human experience.

Based in the rapidly changing economic and cultural rooms of 1930s and 1940s Sweden, this study consults beauty advertising to find how advertiser’s endeavours to reconcile industrial mass consumption with individuality looked in the weekly press and how depictions of femininity changed throughout the interwar period and into the early-post war era. Advertisements found in woman’s weekly magazine Husmodern were studied through a methodology combining theories on narrative and performance, finding that individuality in advertising 1930–1950 was largely achieved in the latter part of the period through an increasingly personal style of advertising, using tropes of friendship and community to inspire consumption in contrast to the anonymity of the earlier period. Likewise, the rooms in which femininity was depicted changed from more anonymous “girl meets world”-tropes to more personal narratives such as “Ester secures Yngves devotion”. The 1930s advertisements portrayed the social scene more than the late 1940s, in which femininity was partial to the privacy provided by the bathroom. However, there was a similarly increased sense of anonymity taking place alongside the narrative of privacy, in which women also became less involved and more like blank canvases for advertisers to paint femininity upon. In conclusion, these two strong trends emerge in the 1940s, contrasting the more varied and anonymous trends of the 1930s. In conclusion, I argue that portrayals of femininity in advertising contributed to reproducing new, commercially created gender roles and ideals based in consumption as means of emancipation.

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This thesis proposes that the nuclear age offered high modernity and technological nationalism a central position in the making of modern Canada. The nuclear age influenced modern Canada’s social, economic, and political history and it did so by telling Canadians they were, essentially, a modern people governed by a modern state. From the 1940s to the end of the 1970s, Canada’s development of the nuclear industry reflected the pursuit of science and technology to create modern forms of energy production. Canadians were urged to see in nuclear power a way of remaining competitive in a changing global order. It offered them new industries at many stages of the nuclear cycle. The post-war era reflected a changing direction in the country’s central ideological direction – one defined since the 1840s by liberalism and a subordinate role in the British Empire. The creation of the Canadian nuclear cycle signified a transition to a new stage in which Canada, now imagined by some to be a nation, actively sought out modern forms of social and economic progress. Nuclear energy systems came to fruition at a moment when Canada was establishing new directions as a sovereign state vying for greater global political and economic influence on the global stage. This thesis argues that this pattern was no mere coincidence: this technological nationalism was the logical outcome of deep-seated tendencies. Yet, many citizens remained skeptical of the nuclear age’s possibilities. Although the federal government had established its nuclear cycle to develop the peaceful uses of atomic energy, its birth in the shadows of the Second World War and the Manhattan Project also provoked a widespread sense of discomfort. The dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 solidified fears of nuclear energy long before the AECL built its first reactor on the shores of Lake Huron. Canadians en masse rejected the country’s participation in the development of nuclear weapons and, as Lester Pearson learned to his cost in 1963, were adamant that Canada should remain a nuclear-weapons-free nation. Successive governments in the 1950s and 1960s faced public backlash regarding Canada’s complicity in the stockpiling of nuclear arms, the production of uranium for American weapons, and its involvement in weapons tests. Born out of the peace movements and ecological movements of the 1960s, anti-nuclear groups emerged in the 1970s to oppose the nuclear industry. These groups shared members, ideas, and momentum, and the chasm between anti-war and environmental activism was progressively bridged as the 1970s proceeded. Both the anti-nuclear and anti-bomb activists were essential to challenging the path and direction of the Canadian nuclear system and its role in creating political and environmental uncertainty. Such fears remained a constant social reminder throughout the post-war era of the mutually assured destruction associated with atomic energy and the Cold War arms race. Indeed, Canada’s peaceful nuclear program did not always seem so peaceable, as activists in both camps argued more and more empathetically. Canada’s nationalistic pursuit of a nuclear modernity also entailed the quest of a narrow form of utopianism – one in which a future-oriented Canada provided greater social and economic freedoms under the aegis of liberal democracy. At the community level, nuclear energy symbolized the changing senses and sensibilities of living through modernity – the perception that the core structures of society were giving way to new social realities and that the relations of time and space were shifting. While nuclear energy symbolized the social and economic benefits of the cultural revolution of the nuclear age, it also aroused the concerns and fears about modernity. The conflicts between the pro- and anti-nuclear movements of the 1970s and 1980s were in many respects an extension of debates over high modernity and techno-nationalism. / Thesis / Candidate in Philosophy / This thesis explores the history of Canada’s nuclear age between 1942 and 1979 and examines how both Canadians and the state perceived the development of the country’s nuclear industry. It examines how Canada gained entrance into the nuclear club – joining the ranks of the Manhattan Project – its post-war developments in nuclear power, and the ways in which nuclear energy bolstered a form of nationalism predicated on technological prowess. The need to develop Canada’s nuclear industry reflected the larger social, political, and economic changes occurring in the post-war era. In many ways, the history of Canada’s nuclear age is the history of how societies act and react to modernity – the radical transformation of perceptions of space and time. This thesis examines that process of change and its influence on Canadians’ responses to the modern world around them.

The shift from the paradigm ofthe Enlightenment (modernity) to post-modernity will have a significant impact on the concept and practice of stewardship in the church and in the theological seminary. This thesis project examines fund-raising under the emerging paradigm and offers proposals for the raising of funds for McMaster Divinity College. It does so by looking at current and potential donor sources in addition to examining and suggesting methodologies to assist in underwriting the visions and purposes ofthe College. As a background, the study presents a brief analysis ofthe philosophical and theological roots of McMaster Divinity College. This is done by considering a number of the influences common to most theological schools founded in conjunction with North American universities in the 19th century. The influences peculiar to McMaster are considered as well. The thesis project also examines several points of conflict that have arisen periodically between the College and its long-time sponsor, the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, in order to understand better the relationships between the two institutions. This is accomplished by consideration of their legal relationship and the circumstances leading to a denomonational schism in 1927, the Sunday school "curriculum controversy" of 1964-65, and, more recently, the so-called Bishop Robinson controversy of the mid-1980s. The meaning of stewardship has changed both in its theological concept and its usage in society. It continues to change. Several theologians and biblical scholars ofthe post-modern era are returning to a more biblically informed understanding ofstewardship with its much greater emphasis on accountability and responsibility, not only for the use of personal resources such as money and property, but for all the resources that God has entrusted to his people. The theological school likely will continue to be the primary training institution for Christians who desire more formal theological education but the churches likely will wish to see those teaching in and administering the Divinity College model the qualities ofthe Christian steward. That probability will be a major factor for recruitment and financial support. / Thesis / Doctor of Ministry (DMin)