The colonial formation and imagination of the Canadian nation and its citizenry has historically been rooted in processes of racial inclusion and exclusion. This thesis considers the ways in which the historical exclusionary process of citizenship manifests within today’s “War on Terror” through the language of national security. The analysis focuses on the discourses of two former Conservative bills: Bill C-24 – Strengthening the Canadian Citizenship Act and Bill C-51 – Anti-terrorism Act. Mobilized through a critical race perspective, my thesis documents first, the narratives that are told, and second, the discursive strategies that are used, to construct those deserving and undeserving of inclusion. My findings demonstrate that the ideal nation and its ideal citizens, who are deserving of inclusion within the nation, are fundamentally constructed in Whiteness. Meanwhile, the threatening ‘Other’, who is to be excluded and expelled from the nation, is imagined as a racialized Muslim, Arab and brown terrorist in the “War on Terror”. By examining their respective parliamentary debates, my research reveals how the political discourses utilized in both bills uphold the racial exclusionary mechanisms of citizenship. As such, my research speaks to the evolving relationship between citizenship, national security, surveillance, and securitization by demonstrating how citizenship is used as a tool within the broader security regime of the state to fight the “War on Terror”.

This thesis examines the discursive construction of Russian national identity through the 2008 war in Georgia with a focus on how this process was influenced by the Russian leadership’s desire to gain the support of both the domestic and international audiences for its actions outside its borders. These actions involved forceful military intervention, the recognition of the independence of the two Georgian break-away republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and the decision to place Russian military troops in the two republics during the aftermath of war. The study critically examines the official Russian discourse, with a focus on particular visions of national identity that this discourse utilized. The study demonstrates how the official discourse in the context of the 2008 war contributed to the construction of Russian national identity and thereby seeks to highlight the performative power of language. By placing considerable focus on the internal dimension of the Russian leadership’s conduct in the international arena, i.e. the consolidation of the national community in the event of war, the thesis contributes to an oft overlooked element of Russian foreign policy initiatives. Consequently, it seeks to challenge the tendency to explain Russian actions with regard to the war as a natural result of a neo-imperialistic identity – a tendency that fails to take into account how national identity can be constructed in its more immediate context. By making use of Rogers Brubaker's concept of nationalism as an event, the study discusses the increased force of nationalism during war and demonstrates how this was clearly the case during the 2008 war in Georgia. The analysis concentrates on three main identity visions within the official Russian discourse. Firstly, it examines how contemporary Russia was constructed as a great power, partly as a response to the claims that it was an imperialist state. Secondly, it discusses the role of certain historical concepts, i.e. the Cold War and the Soviet Union, within the discourse and elaborates upon the act of politicising history. Thirdly, the study analyses the Russian leadership’s protection narrative that emphasised the responsibility to protect Russian citizens and compatriots in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is demonstrated how these different identity visions were intertwined, resulting in a rather contradictory official discourse that speaks to many different audiences simultaneously, while foregrounding the first of the above-mentioned identity visions, namely of Russia as a great power.

The Republic of Ghana is the legacy of the colonial amalgam of multiple, and previously distinct, ethnic homelands. The Trans-Volta Togoland became the Volta Region of Ghana following a Plebiscite in 1956. The dominant ethnic group in this region; the Ewe, has long maintained a claim of neglect of the Volta Region and the marginalization of its people in this postcolonial state. Protests in the street and at media houses ensued against the State. This qualitative case study explores the undercurrents of this conflict in the context of the Ewe group’s identity and their experiences of neglect and marginalization in the postcolonial state. The main objective of the study was to understand why the Ewe group has not revolted despite the perceptions of deprivation. This study focused on the Ewe group in the Volta Region of Ghana a as sub-colonial construct that has managed its perceptions of deprivation without revolting against the host State.

The study examines the thought of Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962), an influential Japanese nationalist thinker best known as a founder of the discipline of Japanese folklore (minzokugaku). The purpose of the study is to bring into light an unredeemed potential of his intellectual and political project as a critique of the way in which modern politics and knowledge systematically suppresses global diversity. The study reads his texts against the backdrop of the modern understanding of space and time and its political and moral implications and traces the historical evolution of his thought that culminates in the establishment of minzokugaku. My reading of Yanagita’s texts draws on three interpretive hypotheses. First, his thought can be interpreted as a critical engagement with John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of history, as he turns Mill’s defense of diversity against Mill’s justification of enlightened despotism in non-Western societies. Second, to counter Mill’s individualistic notion of progressive agency, he turns to a Marxian notion of anthropological space, in which a laboring class makes history by continuously transforming nature, and rehabilitates the common people (jōmin) as progressive agents. Third, in addition to the common people, Yanagita integrates wandering people as a countervailing force to the innate parochialism and conservatism of agrarian civilization. To excavate the unrecorded history of ordinary farmers and wandering people and promote the formation of national consciousness, his minzokugaku adopts travel as an alternative method for knowledge production and political education. In light of this interpretation, the aim of Yanagita’s intellectual and political project can be understood as defense and critique of the Enlightenment tradition. Intellectually, he attempts to navigate between spurious universalism and reactionary particularism by revaluing diversity as a necessary condition for universal knowledge and human progress. Politically, his minzokugaku aims at nation-building/globalization from below by tracing back the history of a migratory process cutting across the existing boundaries. His project is opposed to nation-building from above that aims to integrate the world population into international society at the expense of global diversity.

The writer Virgilio Rodríguez Macal, through his essays, narratives, and journalistic chronicles, actively participated in the great debates about the fate of the Guatemalan nation during and after the socialist governments of the Revolution (1944-1954). This thesis delves into a neglected oeuvre the study of which sheds light on an original perspective about a national period with continental repercussions. I study his regionalist novels Carazamba (1953), Jinayá (1956) and Guayacán (1962) within the framework of Guatemala and Latin America’s intellectual, literary and socio-political history. This approach, in combination with a close textual analysis, allows me to show that Rodríguez Macal, with a firm footing in the Latin American lettered tradition of political commitment to the construction of the nation, propounds narrative worlds that amount to national integration programs centered around the northern region of the country. I demonstrate that Rodríguez Macal adopts a regionalist aesthetic to postulate a Guatemalan autochthonous essence based on the discourse of narrators who act as discerners of that same essence based on a scientific knowledge derived from disciplines such as anthropology, historiography and sociology. Lastly, I reveal that this literary project is the expression of an independent intellectual trajectory preoccupied with proposing alternative projects for the modernization and territorialization of the nation.

Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva hur kurdiska kvinnor rekonstruerar könsroller, normer och värderingar i spänningsfältet mellan den kurdiska kulturen och det svenska samhället utifrån en hedersdiskurs. Utifrån syftet har studien diskursanalys som metod och teori med stora, och stundtals nationella, diskurser i fokus. Empirin i studien består av tidigare forskning och sex semistrukturerade intervjuer med kurdiska kvinnor. Kvinnorna i studien deltar fritt oberoende av varandra och de har blivit tillfrågade om de vill delta via bekanta eller på kurdiska forum i sociala medier. Resultatet uppnås genom en kategorisering av den insamlade empirin där fyra olika teman har skapats; Att tillhöra kollektivet, kvinnans möjliga identiteter, våldskapitalet i den kurdiska kulturen och för nationen. Studiens teori och metod består av en diskursanalys inspirerade av Foucault med begreppen identitet, subjektsposition och makt i fokus liksom Bourdieus teori om symboliskt kapital. Inledningen av studien belyser Kurdistans bakgrund och ett perspektiv på det kurdiska samhällets uppbyggnad. Det teoretiska perspektivet är kontextberoende och består av en hedersdiskurs som förekommer på nationell nivå liksom på kollektiv nivå i det kurdiska samhället. Den internationella forskningen kretsar kring patriarkala samhällen med könsroller, våldsnormer och hederskultur i fokus. Den nationella forskningen belyser intersektionella perspektiv utifrån makt, klass och i viss mån etnicitet. Resultatet visar att kvinnan är ett objekt, att våldet är norm och att nationsbyggandet är viktiga principer inom den kurdiska kulturen. Studien problematiserar till viss del även Islams påverkan på den kurdiska kulturen liksom betydelsen av avsaknaden av ett eget moderland för kurder. I studiens slutdiskussion konstateras att Sverige och svenskarna till stor del saknar kulturkompetens vilket skulle kunna vara ett viktigt verktyg för ett framtida samhällsbyggande då flera olika kulturer ska förenas och vävas in i en och samma samhällsgemenskap. Det konstateras också att det behövs mer kunskap kring kulturella skillnader avseende normer och värderingar vilket rimligtvis behöver forskas mer kring för att svenska myndigheter ska kunna förstå hur ett framtida arbete mot hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck ska bedrivas liksom hur verksamheter som främjar jämställdhet ska organisera sitt arbete. / The purpose of this study is to describe how Kurdish women reconstruct gender roles, norms and values in the field between the Kurdish culture and the Swedish society from an honour discourse view. With this purpose the study use discourse-analysis as method and theory with large and occasionally national discourses in focus. Empirical data in this study derives from earlier research and from six semi-structured interviews with Kurdish women. The women of this study participate freely independent of each-other and has been asked if they want to attend via acquaintances or at Kurdish forums in social media. Results are achieved by categorisation of the collected empirical data into four designed themes; to belong to the collective, possible identities for women, violence capital in the Kurdish culture and for the nation. The study´s theory and method consists of a discourse analysis inspired by Foucault with the concepts of identity, subject position and power in focus as well as Bourdieu´s theory of symbolic capital. The introduction of the study elucidates the background of Kurdistan and a perspective on the structure of the Kurdish society. The theoretical perspective is context-dependent and consist of an honour-discourse that exists on a national level as well as on the communal level in the Kurdish society. International research shed light on patriarchal societies with focus on with gender-roles; violence norms and honour-culture. The national research accent intersectional perspectives regarding power, class and to some extent ethnicity. Results show that women are objects, violence is a norm and building of a nation are important principles within the Kurdish culture. The study also problematizes to some extent the influence of Islam on Kurdish culture and that the absence of their own country is of importance. In the concluding discussion it is observed that Sweden and the Swedes substantially lack cultural-competence which could be an important tool for society-development in the future when several different cultures need to be joined together in the same social community. It is also concluded that more knowledge about cultural differences in regards to norms and values is necessary which reasonably should be more studied as Swedish authorities needs to understand how future work against honour-related violence and oppression should be conducted as well as how activities that promotes equality should be organised.

In this thesis, the issue of language policies and nation-building as seen by a constructivist perspective are studied, the studied case being the Post-Maidan Ukraine. It is argued that the ruling elites of Ukrainian society are persuading the members of minority-language populations to re-categorize themselves according to the blueprint of national and linguistic identities that the elites are presenting. The thesis studies the responsiveness of the populations of Kyiv, Dnipro, Uzhhorod and Odesa to the identity-building efforts. To assess the success rates of the endeavour, the method of linguistic landscape analysis and a survey among students of Czech in Ukraine are employed. In the linguistic landscape analysis, the behaviours of issuers of official, commercial and informal messages appearing in the studied cities are observed. Looking at the language composition of these signs, the overall responsiveness of the populations towards the official language policies, and, by extension, towards the nation-building efforts overall, are assumed. The survey then provides supporting evidence by asking the respondents questions about their attitudes towards the language legislation and stance on the issue of language use in the country. It is observed that in informal contexts, the messages often revert...

This project analyzes the relationship between military occupations and power vacuums. Specifically, it seeks to understand why some military occupations result in power vacuums while others do not. Pundits and policymakers have written extensively about the possibilities that the end of US occupations might yield dangerous power vacuums. These vacuums would create regional turmoil by inviting hostile actors and causing state failure. Based on these assumptions, many commentators caution against the withdrawal of forces. But what exactly is fearful about a power vacuum remains unclear. The concept of a power vacuum lacks defined parameters and scope, and why military occupations might lead to power vacuums is unknown. Much of the current analysis derives from familiar and recent cases of occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. David Edelstein has the most comprehensive work on military occupations, but his work does not directly address the outcome of power vacuums. This project uses a mix multimethod research design to examine which factors cause power vacuums to emerge following occupations. It uses a comprehensive dataset of occupations since 1943. It will begin with a medium-n QCA and then proceed with case studies. The ultimate goal is to identify the conditions likely to lead to power vacuums and develop policy recommendations about how to avoid them. This project theorizes that a high level of economic destruction inflicted by the occupying military is a necessary condition for the absence of a power vacuum in the occupied territory. Shortened, this project calls this theory total destruction equals total buy-in. High levels of economic destruction inflicted by the occupier pacify the occupied population, while simultaneously delegitimizing the occupied state's previous regime. High economic destruction, which is defined as the decline of a state's per-capita GDP and overall population, is not the sole factor in preventing a power vacuum. Combinations of other conditions help influence the advent or absence of a power vacuum, but economic destruction inflicted by the occupier is the only condition that must be present in order to prevent a power vacuum. / Doctor of Philosophy / This project examines how, when, and why power vacuums emerge at the end of military occupations. Power vacuums evoke fear from pundits and policymakers, as hostile actors can exploit power vacuums to sow instability. Yet there remains no clear definition of what constitutes a power vacuums or substantive research on their etiology and impact. Policy discussions typically look to recent US experience in Iraq and Afghanistan to evaluate how the end of military engagement and occupation can create power vacuums. Thus risk of a power vacuum is often cited as justification to prolong military operations. To rectify this, this project will complete a replication and extension using David Edelstein's seminal dataset on military occupations. The dataset includes well-known cases such as the Allied occupations of Western Germany and Japan and lesser-known occupations like the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. Using a combination of within-case process tracing and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), the project seeks to elucidate what combination of conditions generate power vacuums following military occupations. The theory this project argues is that a high level of economic destruction inflicted by the occupying military is a necessary condition for the absence of a power vacuum in the occupied territory. The crux of this theory is that occupiers that engage in protracted conflict, inflicting widespread damage on a state before occupying it, are more likely to prevent a power vacuum from occurring. This widespread damage creates "breathing space" for the occupier to establish indigenous security forces (ISF) and a friendly government without having to worry about nationalist resistance from the occupied population.

The South African educational system has undergone many changes since 1994. The integration of previously segregated education departments has made it possible for different cultures to be in the same classroom. However, it is the researcher's view that the vast majority of learners in multicultural secondary schools do not exit the system with the skills and attitudes needed to contribute positively to nation-building. This is borne out by the fact that many learners continue to prefer the company and assistance of their own cultural groups for work in class and out of class. Incidents of racial conflict, religious intolerance and cultural discrimination are reported among learners from time to time. The researcher believes that the basis for creating a new society, that is free of fear and discrimination, lies in the imparting and assimilation of nation-building values at multicultural secondary schools. A qualitative method of research was employed as it lent itself to naturalistic inquiry, detailed thick description, inquiry of depth and direct quotations to capture people's personal perspectives and experiences. An extensive literature study of nation-building, nation-building values and multicultural education was conducted. The empirical study was conducted at a local multicultural secondary school. Research techniques such as observation, interviews, completion of an open-ended questionnaire and discussions were used. The researcher was able to ascertain the values that underpin nation-building; the factors that militate against the promotion of nation-building values and strategies that can be used to promote these values at multicultural secondary schools. He has made significant proposals to the Department of Education, which should be carefully considered. Ultimately, the promotion and assimilation of nation-building values at multicultural secondary schools should lead to a progressive and peaceful nation. / Educational Studies / (D.Ed.(Psychology of Education))

The intent of the author is to establish a methodology for future forcible interventions in the affairs of failed, failing or rogue and terrorist sponsoring states in order to stabilize and democratize these nations in accordance with stated United States' goals. The argument follows closely current and developing United States military doctrine on stabilization, reconstruction and counterinsurgency operations. Further the author reviews several past interventions from 1844 to the present. Conducting a survey of colonial, imperialist as well as pre and post World War II, Cold War, post Cold War and post September 11th interventions to determine the techniques and procedures that proved most successful, the author proposes a program of intervention and reconstruction called Progressive Reconstruction that incorporates many of the successful activities of these past and present doctrines. The cornerstone of the methodology is the combination of rapid decisive combat and stabilization operations leading into a series of governmental transitions from foreign direct and indirect to indigenous independent rule.