The study suggests that two domestic conditions are critical to foster opportunities for sustainable peace between formerly conflicting societies. The conditions are defined as social capital and political integration. These are explored in the context of Israeli and Palestinian societies following the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993 and through 1999, just one year prior to the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada. / Social capital refers to networks of association. Strong networks of relationship are important because they are positively associated with a community and/or society's ability to foster social cohesion, to problem-solve and cope with growing uncertainty such as that exemplifying the period of transition from conflict to peace. / Income inequality is inversely related to social capital. Communities and societies characterized by growing income inequality are typified by diminishing social capital, hence receding capacity to weather the impact of major societal change. / The term political integration refers to the relationship between a government and its citizens. In politically integrated societies citizens share a sense that government is concerned with their welfare and hence their loyalty is expressed through support of the government, its programs and policies. Growing political fragmentation, a lack of abidance, and the breakdown of relationships between civil society and government mark politically disintegrated societies. Political integration is particularly relevant in the aftermath of the signing of a peace agreement when domestic sectarian divides threaten to undermine the national entity that must maintain the delicate balance attained by formerly conflicting societies. / Social capital and political integration are the outcome of greater or lesser human rights: social and economic, civil and political. The persistence of inequality, social and economic, civil and political, wears down the relationships between members of a society and between citizens and their government. / Analysis of standard social and economic indicators in Palestinian and Israeli societies suggests that despite the promised peace dividend social and economic inequality persisted and in some instances worsened between 1993 and 1999. Analysis of civil and political conditions in both societies suggests that political disintegration as opposed to growing integration characterized the six-year period.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-95). / iv, 95 leaves, bound 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 266-287). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / vii, 287 leaves, bound 29 cm

Senator Al Gore Jr. was elected Vice-President of the United States on November 3, 1992. During many of his public speeches, Gore utilized a speaking style that differed radically from the style he used in other political campaigns of his life. This style, which will be called the "rhetoric of self-disclosure," can be characterized as consisting of a particular language style that is associated with the self-help movement that became popular in the United States during the 1980's. This language consists of phrases and terms such as "co-dependency," "dysfunction," "dysfunctional families," "denial," and others. In an attempt to understand the uses and effects of this rhetorical device, the theories of Edwin Black are used as a critical model. A combination of two theories, specifically the theories of secrecy and disclosure and the second persona, produced a unique critical methodology that generated insight into Gore as a speaker, and the applications of this unique rhetorical style. A literature survey provides information not only about Gore's political and personal history, but also about the growth and success of the self-help movement in the United States. Included in this review were a number of public addresses given by Gore in the 1992 campaign, his book Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, and discussions of the self-help movement and therapy groups. The critical evaluation of Gore's public address provides a number of conclusions. The rhetoric of self-disclosure is rhetorical strategy that has never been used in American Presidential politics and is a radical departure from other, more accepted forms of presidential rhetoric. Also, the use of this strategy gives insight into the character of Gore as a person, a speaker, and a national political leader. / Graduation date: 1994

Bibliography: leaves 308-316. / v, 346 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / This thesis seeks to understand the interrelation of knowledge, power and culture in the context of globalization. Crisis of Marxism has prompted intense reflection on the nature of modernity as a post-cultural phenomenon. This discourse highlights forms of domination and resistance neglected by Marxism and Liberalism. Intellectual developments in the West have acquired a halo of universality which makes it difficult for outsiders to recognise their limitations. The debate between modernists and postmodernists is a case in point. Post-colonial theorists appropriation of post-structuralism, thematic and methodological, raises questions about their own relationship to Western theory and whether their analyses neglect material aspects of globalization as well as problems specific to post-colonial societies. This thesis contends that it is unnecessary to absolutise the "culture vs. materialism" dichotomy. While it may be true that the cultural is "always already" political, critical theory must insist on foregrounding a more activist notion of political agency in a conjecture marked by global management of dissent, economic fundamentalism, media spectacles and cynical conflation of democracy with consumption. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Politics, 1998?

No description available.

Should the state undertake the task of promoting the good life? Perfectionism is the idea that the state should promote the good life. Many philosophers have answered in the negative to the above question, so they reject perfectionism. This thesis aims to develop a moderate version of perfectionism, and seeks to defend it against several influential anti-perfectionist arguments, in particular the argument from public reason liberalism. I begin by examining public reason liberalism. John Rawls, Gerald Gaus, Martha Nussbaum, and many other political philosophers endorse public reason liberalism. They believe that state coercion should be publicly justified, and that perfectionism cannot meet the requirements of public reason. I argue that public reason is the object of reasonable rejection, so it cannot be realised in actual politics through state intervention in a publicly justified way. In addition, I argue that respect for persons is not a reliable basis for public reason. Thus we have good reason to reject public reason liberalism. Then I develop a moderate version of perfectionism. I contend that the state should promote the good life through supporting a wide variety of perfectionist goods, and that it should do so by using moderate measures and by appealing to perfectionist judgements of a moderate kind. Some anti-perfectionists consider that perfectionism would be unnecessary when a fair distribution of resources is realised. Yet a fair distribution of resources is not foreseeable. I propose several kinds of moderate perfectionist policies that are of great importance for any neo-liberal society where the distribution of resources is far from fair, and these policies are ultimately important for the good life, not only for remedying unfairness. Contrary to the positions of many liberal philosophers including Ronald Dworkin and Jeremy Waldron, I argue that moderate perfectionism should not be rejected on grounds of paternalism and unfairness to different conceptions of the good.

This thesis seeks to add to the existing knowledge about the effects of the political sophistication of citizens on selective exposure in terms of the preference for like-minded media over attitudinal incongruent media. The traditional selective exposure majorly account for this phenomenon from a motivational perspective. Differing from previous studies, this thesis employs a cognitive approach to examine the level of political sophistication and selective exposure based on dual-process framework which grows out of heuristic and cognitive bias literature. This thesis first explicates the concept of political sophistication by proposing three dimensions, namely factual political knowledge, conceptual political knowledge, and the conceptual complexity of political thinking to indicate the construct of political sophistication. The cognitive nature of the three dimensions as well as their relationships with the extent of selective exposure, which is perceived as a form of confirmation bias, are discussed based on a tripartite model of dual-process theory. Two mediators, namely attitude extremity and perspective taking ability, are proposed and examined to see whether either or both of them play a role to mediate the influence of each dimension of political sophistication on the extent of selective exposure. The underlying mechanisms for the hypothesized model are expounded. The results suggest that the effect of the three dimensions on the extent of selective exposure are fully mediated by the two mediators, respectively. Different dimensions of political sophistication have different effects on attitude extremity and perspective taking ability, and these effects play a key role in the selection of like-minded media outlets. Both the conceptual complexity of political thinking and conceptual knowledge are positively correlated with the perspective taking ability; the same is not true for factual political knowledge. Moreover, both factual political knowledge and conceptual political knowledge are positively correlated with attitude extremity, while no significant correlation is observed between conceptual complexity and attitude extremity in the study sample. The effects of factual political knowledge and conceptual political knowledge on the extent of selective exposure are mediated by attitude extremity. The mediation effect of perspective taking ability on the relationship between conceptual complexity of political thinking and selective exposure, which can lessen the extent of selective exposure, is observed to be significant but weak when attitude extremity is included in the model. The implications of the different roles played by the three dimensions in the cognitive process, as well as contributions, practical significance and limitations are discussed on the basis of the abovementioned findings in conclusion part.

Amidst China's escalating pursuance of placing football in the centre of its soft power propagation, Hong Kong has remained entirely excluded from the accompanying policy strategies of the Mainland. Following the 1997 handover and with it the return to Chinese sovereignty, the former British colony has retained its independent memberships in global governing bodies, such as FIFA or the IOC, making sports the last cultural and political arena in which Hong Kong and China compete as two - de facto equal - national entities. While the status quo of this framework is not necessarily controversial, the popularity of football in both locales has created a new public platform for identity politics. At the same time, Hong Kong's marginalization of sports development has raised questions over the value and expediency of sport within the local policy regime. Formerly known as the "Football Kingdom of the Far East", interest and investment in domestic football have declined since the late 1980s, evoking a sense of crisis and nostalgia. However, as a cultural practice football has shown resilience throughout the years, leading to a reform process and on-going debates over public subsidies. Drawing upon the fields of cultural studies, sociology of sport, history, and cultural policy studies, this dissertation argues for the conceptualization of football as a cultural resource that is not just a mirror of socio-political constellations, but also a productive force in shaping leisure, consumption, and everyday life in the city. The overarching, and seemingly simple research question of this dissertation is therefore: how is sport - and in particular football - a culture in Hong Kong? And, how can a cultural understanding of sport contribute to the challenges of sports policies? As such, this project takes on a holistic approach to frame an understanding of local football culture through and between four different themes: history, policy, fandom, and national identity. Starting from early colonial times, the dissertation first aims to trace the cultural resonance of football in local society by using the intellectual discourse around cricket's Indianness as a so called inter-Asian reference to reflect on the particular context that enabled the rise of another sport in Hong Kong. Instead of nurturing a regional identity, local football was turned into a trans-national project of Chinese modernity. From there the research delves into a policy analysis to investigate the institutionalization, governance, and reformation of local football until now, and how it evolved as a Bourdieusian cultural field. Eventually, the research draws on its long-term ethnographic fieldwork to investigate the agency of fans and how local football has attracted subcultural practices with entrepreneurial traits that function as cultural resources. This culminates in the discussion of localist and nationalist sentiments based on the (auto-)ethnographic experience at the two 2015 World Cup games between Hong Kong and China in an attempt to contextualize the politicization of the spectacle within the cultural framework of local football. By proposing a cultural argument along notions of cultural resource, and cultural field, this dissertation argues for a culturalization of sport in cultural studies and policy-oriented discourses, and hence a conceptual move towards a cultural policy of sports.

Law Chun Wai, Justin. / "Architecture Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Master of Architecture Programme 2009-2010, design report." / "May 2010." / Subtitle on added t.p.: Free grounds for justice. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91).