This thesis interrogates the website BlueServo.net through a neoliberal framework with a focus on surveillance theory. BlueServo is a site that registers users as "Virtual Deputies" and allows them to file reports with U.S. Border Patrol on activity observed through camera feeds trained on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Employing textual analysis of the site and its attendant Facebook page, four thematic categories emerge for analysis: Labor, Entertainment, State, and Social Sorting. This thesis concludes with a discussion of the site in relation to reality TV and video game culture and the future of increasingly sophisticated and widely accessible digital surveillance as applied to social minorities.

Many scholars who have studied nations and nationalism have observed that nationalist movements draw upon mythologised narratives of figures from their nations' pasts to build a sense of national identity and to articulate their vision. Drawing upon the ethno-symbolic approach to nations and nationalism, this thesis seeks to identify the major hero myths, as one form of mythologised narrative, drawn upon by the Provisional IRA during the period of conflict in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1998. In so doing it examines the origins and development of those myths across the history of Ireland, and of the republican strand of Irish nationalism since the turn of the twentieth century. It identifies the pivotal role of the early twentieth century republican, Patrick Pearse, as republicanism's political archaeologist par excellence, and examines the enduring influence of three factors on the form that such myths took: Celtic culture, Roman Catholicism, and socialism. The thesis further situates the narrative chain of the hero myths within the broader context of the Provisional IRA's wider mythological system, and interrogates the purposes that these myths fulfilled for the movement. In so doing, it reveals that not only did the hero myths, as symbolic resources of the Irish nation, fulfil purposes related to the nation itself, but that the strategy employed in pursuit of the national objectives, insurgency, also imposed its own requirements on those purposes. This has profound implications for orthodox understandings of the role of “blood sacrifice” within the ideology and world-view of the Provisional Republican Movement, as this thesis argues that the role of that concept has been misinterpreted to this point. On the theoretical level, this thesis amends and refines the conception of myth within the ethno-symbolic approach to nations and nationalism, bringing it into line with the work of scholars who have studied the theory of myth. Furthermore, it has considered how the means of pursuing the national objective helped to shape the concept of the nation and ideas of national identity.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:32:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-03-18Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:03:51Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 jesus_cgn_dr_assis_parcial.pdf: 72742 bytes, checksum: 615bcf5018f8ecaa6066385c6d483bff (MD5) Bitstreams deleted on 2015-02-09T17:15:03Z: jesus_cgn_dr_assis_parcial.pdf,Bitstream added on 2015-02-09T17:15:40Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000649923.pdf: 4860627 bytes, checksum: 2cf2b7387e859434937acabd2f39f1d5 (MD5) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Gil Blas surgiu na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, em 13 de fevereiro de 1919 e circulou até 6 de maio de 1923. A publicação foi porta voz do governo Epitácio Pessoa (1919-1923) e esteio de concepções nacionalistas da década de 1920, fato que a torna fonte relevante para se entender o panorama político e cultural do Brasil daquele momento. Deve-se destacar que, em mais de quatro anos de existência, o periódico teve várias fases, nas quais abraçou propostas nacionalistas diversas, imprimiu caráter dinâmico aos seus objetivos, seções, artigos e mesmo materialidade. O propósito da pesquisa foi o de demarcar tais mudanças, distinguir os projetos defendidos nas suas páginas, além de explicar que tais alterações estavam em consonância com o envolvimento político e doutrinário da revista. / Gil Blas appeared in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in 13 of February of 1919, having circulated up to 6 of May of 1923. Such publication if constituted in door voice of the Epitácio Pessoa Government (1919-1923) and support of nationalistic conceptions of the decade of 1920, fact that became it an excellent source to understand the panorama cultural politician and of Brazil of this moment. It must be detached that, in more than four years of publication, the periodic one had some phases that if had articulated with diverse nationalistic proposals, what it gave a dynamic character to its objectives, sections, articles and materiality. The intention of this research was to demarcate such changes, as well as the nature of the proposals that had appeared in the interior of the periodic one, showing that such alterations were in accord with the initiatives doctrinal politics of the magazine.

This thesis examines the influences on Irish identity articulation within Melbourne and Chicago during the nineteenth century. Bringing together ethnicity and religious devotion, this thesis argues that the foundational identities encouraged by religious orders within parish schools and societies were fundamental to the shape of nationalist politics that emerged in each city. While the imperial and republican contexts of Melbourne and Chicago presented specific opportunities and restrictions on Irish cultural and political identity articulation, the ethnic pluralism of the Catholic Church in each city influenced the networks established between Irish migrants across class, occupation, and gender. In turn, the Catholic parish structures of each city altered how Irish identity was articulated at a local and global level. While focusing on Irish Catholic identity, this thesis also examines the establishment of secular and ethnic Irish institutions utilised by middle-class culture brokers within Melbourne and Chicago to promote a civic Irish identity. It explores the ways that Irish migrants interpreted British imperial and American values to encourage diasporic Irish identities shaped by Irish and local contexts. Using comparison, this work identifies similarities between two cities previously dismissed as divergent and transnational links between Ireland, Australia and Chicago. Examining these societies over a fifty-year period allows for the interrogation of identity influencers over numerous generations, addressing the evolving shape of two cities and the Irish communities therein.

No description available.

Vi har analyserat Forum för levande historias material brott mot mänskligheten under kommunistiska regimer genom en hermeneutisk textanalys. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om materialet förmedlar historiemedvetande. Resultatet visar att materialet inte förmedlar det som krävs för att historiemedvetandet ska stimuleras. De historiska händelserna sätts inte tillräckligt väl in i sitt sammanhang och det råder otydlighet beträffande vad som orsakade utvecklingen. Materialet redovisar inte tillräckligt många förklaringsperspektiv. Avslutningsvis diskuteras resultatet mot tidigare forskning och vad denna typ av historieskrivning kan få för pedagogiska konsekvenser.

This thesis demonstrates the powerful relationship between ethnicity, culture, nation and state in the Basque Country and the Former Yugoslavia. In placing Basque and Yugoslav sub-state nationalism in comparative relief this study argues that political state or autonomy seeking behavior on the basis of an ethnically defined or imagined community continues to have powerful contemporary salience. Furthermore when situated within the literature on nationalism, these two cases suggest that the theoretical literature needs to be reworked beyond the positions of Anthony Smith and Ernest Gellner. The endurance of cultural claims to a political state suggests that the connection between ethnicity and the nation is stronger then many contemporary observers have suggested. It is argued that the cultural, political and territorial rights of sub-state nations are likely to remain highly divisive sites of historical, cultural and political contestation. As a force, nationalism is by no means relegated to the past by cosmopolitanism or a ‘post-national’ shift as a number of high profile commentators in the contemporary social sciences have argued. Rather, it remains an active and powerful idea that will continue to shape the sociopolitical landscape of human societies into the twenty-first century as it has the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation considers the place of religious argument in the public sphere. While deliberation about religion’s place in the formal public sphere within the United States has often been seen as taking place in a two-dimensional space, with Christian nationalism and pure secularism representing the opposite deliberative positions, I argue that in reality, rhetorical engagements over the place of religion often are contested by arguments hewing to Christian Nationalism on one side, but a kind of civic religious pluralism on the other. This dissertation explores the tensions that exist within public discourse in the United States between Christian nationalism and larger secular society. Rather than seeing secularism as a counterweight to Christian nationalism, I argue that instead a civic religious pluralism that allows for religious thought to enter the domain of public deliberation is present in arguments about religion’s role in the democratic process. I also argue that this problem is extended into the three-dimensional space through an added tension between religious citizens who wish to remain isolated from secular culture and the state which must maintain some sense of cultural participation among all of its citizens. Through rhetorical analyses of three cases, I develop a more nuanced perspective on this deliberative space and contend at the end that the civic religious pluralism I find in two of my cases represents a more effective response to nationalist rhetoric than a pure secularist opposition.

Scotland is one of the four nations that make up the plurinational UK. It is as of yet the only one of these nations to have a referendum on its independence. Using Critical Discourse Analysis of 20 newspaper articles at different times in the referendum campaign, I have seen how Scottish national identity has been constructed. The study reveals that far from constructing a national identity based on culture, symbols or historic myth, the Scots base their identity largely on a differing approach to economic policy than the English.

No description available.