In an era of dawning anthropogenic climate change, people of atoll nations face grievous threats to their future. Rising sea levels, warming oceans, and changing weather patterns conspire with economic isolation, rapidly growing populations, and the loss of traditional livelihoods to perpetuate conditions of dependence and wardship which threaten the very existence of their island homes. This project examines an atoll nation of the equatorial Pacific, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, where the outward appearance of pristine tropical paradise belies a tragic history of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile testing at the hands of the US military. While the islands have been consistently framed in rhetoric which stresses vulnerability, smallness and unsustainability, this project contests the limited scope of the regimes of power in Oceania by considering how the independent, grassroots actions of local groups of islanders have achieved surprising and dramatic results in defiance of the policies and planners at the top. In developing a design proposal for the contemporary condition, this thesis examines the persistent ways in which the islands and people are framed by outsiders. This project engages with the social, political and natural history of the atolls: common tropes are challenged by the actions and agency of a people who have dealt with imperialist outsiders in sophisticated and conscious ways. It explores the traditional cultural practices which enabled the ancestors of the Marshallese people to flourish, and suggests that it is at the level of actions by ordinary people that the most fertile potentials lie, and are in fact already being played out. What forms of urbanism might be appropriate in this environment? How can islanders effectively manage their landscape and engage with the natural processes - as their ancestors once did to a remarkable degree? By pairing traditional techniques with modern technologies, a proposal is synthesized which could empower the contemporary Marshallese to transform their landscape and develop sustainable livelihoods in this extreme and dynamic environmental condition: to build a future which offers the best aspects of both traditional and contemporary ways of life.

<p>This dissertation argues that the literary, intellectual, and cultural borders of Victorian Britain extended as far as Australia and New Zealand, and that the tradition of nation-based literary criticism inherited from the Victorians has blinded Victorian Studies to that possibility. Building upon the nineteenth century concept of "Greater Britain," a term invoking the expansion of the British nation through settler colonization, I demonstrate that literary forms did not simply diffuse from the core to the periphery of the empire, but instead were able to circulate within the space of Greater Britain. That process of circulation shaped Victorian literature and culture, as local colonial circumstances led writers to modify literary forms and knowledge formations; those modifications were then able to be further disseminated through the empire by way of the networks that constituted Greater Britain.</p><p>My argument focuses on the novel, because its formal allegiance to the imagined national community made it a valuable testing ground for the multi-centered nation that was being formed by settlement. I specifically locate the Victorian novel in the context of Britain's relations with the colonies of Australia and New Zealand, which were unique in that their transition from initial settlement to independent nations occurred almost entirely during the Victorian period. The chapters of <italic>Unsettled Nation</italic> focus on realism, romance and political economy's interest in settlement; the bildungsroman and theories of discipline developed in the penal colonies; the theorization of imperial spatiality in utopian and invasion fiction; and the legacy of the Waverley novel in the portrayal of colonization in temporal terms. Each chapter presents a specific example of how knowledge formations and literary forms were modified as a result of their circulation through the archipelagic nation space of Greater Britain.</p><p>Working at the intersection between Victorian Studies and Australian and New Zealand literary criticism, I seek to recover and reconsider the geographical mobility of nineteenth century Britons and their literature. Thus, more than merely trying to cast light on a dimension of imperialism largely ignored by critics of Victorian literature, I use the specific example of Australasia to make the broader claim that the very idea of Victorian Britain can and must be profitably expanded to include its settler colonies.</p> / Dissertation

In thesis, I intended to sociologically examine the perceptions and practices of the state and different Islamist groups about the religious education in Egypt from the 1970s onwards. I define the religious education as a religious course to which several hours a week are devoted in the curriculum of mass education, and which teaches moral instructions based on the Qur&#039 / an, and basic information about Islamic culture and history. Since the 1970s, the rise of Islamism in Egypt has created strife between the ruling elites and dissident Islamist groups to capture the religious discourse and control the religious socialization in the mass education. This strife has resulted in the emergence of alternative Islamic educational areas (private Islamic schools and Al-Azhar schools). In this context, I used hermeneutic method to analyze the religious educational discourses and institutions of these two main agents &ndash / ruling elites and Islamist groups. The Mubarak regime in Egypt seeks to institutionalize a particular state discourse in religious education in accordance with its own interests. However, the important thing is the reactions of different Islamist (moderate and radical) groups to this state discourse and institutionalization / because, today, these reactions of opponent Islamist groups generates unintended consequences which are subversive to the legitimacy of the regime.

Many English teachers posed the problem that their Arab students were able to construct grammatically correct sentences, but were frequently unable to form them into paragraphs or cohesive texts. In my attest to investigate this problem, I started from the assumption that differing patterns of cohesion in English and Arabic probably account for many difficulties Arab students have in writing English. Sane attempts to look at this, based on a contrastive approach, have already been carried out. For my part, I felt the time had came to look at the systems of Arabic in their own terms, which has not yet been done. For this I followed two avenues of study: Functional Sentence Perspective as developed in the Prague School and Halliday and Hasan's work on textual cohesion. For my purpose I selected four lengthy Arabic texts belonging to different text-types which I first analysed from the Functional Sentence Perspective point of view. For this, I followed Dane's (1974) study of thematic progressions, in order to find out what theme-rheme patterns the different Arabic text-types use. In the next step, I investigated the cohesive ties used in written Arabic Halliday and Hasan's model of textual cohesion (1976). I also compared my texts in order to discover if there is a difference in textual cohesion between text-types in Arabic. My analysis of textual cohesion and text development suggests that: 1. Arabic descriptive texts tend to reiterate the same there in successive sentences. 2. Arabic instructive texts favour the use of the linear thematization of rhemes. 3. Arabic makes inter-clausal relationships explicit. 4. Repetition and parallelism are favoured cohesive devices in all text-types. The thesis consists of an introduction followed by a chapter reviewing various approaches to discourse analysis, a chapter on the text-typological approach which has governed my selection of texts; followed by an account of my methodological approach and my analysis.

This thesis begins by showing the important part that the text plays in disambiguating the temporal interpretaions of the verb forms in Modern Standard Arabic. Proceeding from this point, it shows how, in translation, depending solely on the morphologically-based temporal interpretations of the verb forms or the semantic classifications of the situations represented by the clauses is misleading and cripples the cohesion and coherence of the target text (Chapter One). In order to show the need for this work, the views on the subject of determining the temporal interpretation of the verb-form held by traditional Arab grammarians, Arabists and modern Arab linguists are critically reviewed (Chapter Two). In the body of the thesis (Chapter Three) a method of dealing with this problem is proposed, based on an examination of the text viewed as a whole, not as a combination of decontextualized clauses or forms. Also in this part of the thesis (Chapter Three) a description of the texts analyzed is provided in order to show the authenticity of our data. The approach suggested in chapter three is then given a realistic test by applying it to a fairly large corpus of short news reports produced by and for native speakers of Arabic (Chapter Four). The motivation for this research is the felt need for translators of Arabic and English texts to be made aware of this problem in order to improve the quality of the work they are involved in. The approach that is proposed should also be of benefit to those interested in studying and teaching translation as a process (Chapter Five).

This mixed design research doctorate seeks to explore the rationale for a selected sample of English schools that are introducing Mandarin Chinese as a new language, specifically, investigating the teaching goals and teaching methods that were applied. It also focuses on pupils’ views based on their personal learning experiences. This research starts with an overview of the research into the teaching and learning of Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language, globally, which was then narrowed down to the context of introducing Mandarin Chinese into the educational curriculum in England within the context of the relevant teaching approaches. The methodological approach of the research combined quantitative and qualitative methods. Interviews were conducted with two Head Teachers and five Heads of foreign language departments in order to investigate the rationale for a sample of schools deciding to introduce Mandarin Chinese and the current situation of teaching. Interviews with five Teachers of Mandarin Chinese were carried out to gather data in order to investigate teachers’ experiences in teaching Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language abroad. Additionally, data was collected through classroom observations, in total 59 lessons were observed to gather in-depth data to investigate teaching methods and teachers’ interaction with pupils during day-to-day practice. Data was also collected through a questionnaire survey sent to 84 pupils who participated in Mandarin Chinese language classes from a sample of five schools, which represented pupils’ views about the teaching and learning of Mandarin Chinese. Qualitative and quantitative data analyses revealed a range of factors that may contribute to the promotion of Mandarin Chinese in schools in England, for example, the impact on the global context; the schools’ needs and pupils’ professional development requirements. There are two teaching goals identified in this research: GCSE Chinese examinations and Asset Languages test. Teachers employed different teaching methods to meet various requirements for different teaching aims. The findings revealed several problems and challenges existing in current teaching and learning, such as school funding; teachers’ professional training; a shortage of suitable instructional materials; administrative infrastructures; and progression and continuity amongst others. Pupils’ feedback regarding their learning experiences showed that pupils had a positive attitude towards learning Mandarin Chinese; however, their motivation was affected by their teachers’ teaching methods and attitudes towards teaching Mandarin Chinese. This is not a not a comparative study, however, through different data gathered from GCSE and non-GCSE classes, the author commented on the differences in teachers and pupils’ experiences and opinions about teaching and learning Mandarin Chinese, as well as exploring their perceptions and reactions by investigating their experience of participating in and reflecting on this research.

The years 1978 and 1979 were critical in shaping mainland China's foreign policy towards Cambodia during the 1980s up until the international peace treaty of 1991. For China, this involved utilizing Cambodian forces to halt the spread of Vietnamese hegemony in Southeast Asia while countering an increased Soviet presence on its southern periphery. Unfortunately, China's policy of supporting both Prince Sihanouk politically and the Khmer Rouge militarily was instrumental in reestablishing the Khmer Rouge as the most powerful faction in Cambodia's uncertain future. Therefore, the Khmer Rouge became something of a Chinese enigma, nurtured by Beijing to fight the Vietnamese but completely free from PRC control or responsibility.

This dissertation explores the ways contemporary environmental politics in India combine older Leftist agendas with important new critiques of the role of science and technology in societal development. The primary case study is Bhopal, where micro-level issues of health care, vocational rehabilitation and housing are addressed alongside macro-level issues of international law, technology transfer and trade liberalization. The Bhopal material is situated within broader patterns of opposition through comparison with the resistance strategies of other victimized areas. Theoretically, this dissertation is an analysis of the rhetorical strategies used by Indian environmental activists in their attempts to respond to and shape contemporary politics. Each section is both an example of a specific rhetorical strategy and an analysis of the kind of information which can be carried through the specified writing form. Threaded throughout the dissertation is an accounting of how questions about writing occur not only when confronted with the task of scholarly representation but also throughout the work of political activism, particularly when it is working within an emerging discourse such as that of environmentalism. Also emphasized is the connection between rhetorics, the contexts in which they are produced and their effects on social change.

When the people of a given society contemplate the outside world, they do so with inherited but constantly changing values, assumptions, preoccupations, and aspirations. Who they are, one might say, largely determines what they perceive. For a variety of reasons, the Chinese have long had a fascination with the United States--a country which has not only been an active participant in Chinese affairs for well over a century, but which has also served as an idea and an example. Naturally, China's direct and indirect experiences with America, together with the vast cultural and political differences that still separate the two countries, have shaped Chinese perceptions. In China's search for a new political, social and economic order, America, as both a world power and as a concept, has played a major role. This dissertation examines the way images of America were transmitted to China in the twentieth century, and how these images were debated and represented (or misrepresented) by three main social groups of Chinese--the Chinese state, Chinese intellectuals, and the Chinese masses. Although America has unquestionably played a part in shaping modern China, the Chinese, for various reasons and in different ways, have constructed their own distinctive "America."

An ethnography of representation combining the following elements: (a) The American Baptist Mission to the Karen people of Burma; (b) The emergence of Karen nationalism as a consequence of the former, demonstrating the centrality of the phenomenon of "writing," introduced by the missionaries, in this process; (c) The colonial milieux in Burma, as evoked by the diverse documentary voices of American Baptists, British colonialists, and Karen Christians; (d) Ethnic politics, from the Karen rebellion after Burma's independence through the current democratic challenge posed by a coalition of Burma's largest ethnic groups, including Burman; (e) The fieldwork process; research and writing; ethnography; exoticism and primitivism; and the construction of this text itself. An ethnography of the Karen National Union, a predominantly Christian insurgent army in Burma, is constructed. Through an assemblage of texts, some of which have been translated into English for this project, the origins, construction, and articulation of organized Karen nationalism and cultural representation is depicted. The role of writing, print-technology, and the circulation of texts is demonstrated to be central to the foregoing processes in the Karen case. An anthropology of religion and an ethnography of the politics of ethnicity explicates the transitions from conversion to ethnic nationalism to ethnic separatism to democratic opposition. An evocative pastiche of discourses both reflects and contends with the impossibility of objective representation, with regard to both the subject and the process of research, which are thematically analogous: They both begin and end in religion and politics--Christianity and revolution. Diverse discursive styles and voices display the contested nature of knowledge while simultaneously participating in the experiment of re-construction. An academic, analytical style, for example, contributes to an understanding of the dynamics of the emergence of ethnic nationalism and notions of identity among Karen Christians in Burma, while the inclusion of Karen stories provides the reader with meaningful complementary ethnographic grounding. These juxtapositions simulate and stimulate the always inherent tension between daily life and retrospection; between action and reconstruction; between experience and representation; between living and writing.