Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Divinity School, June 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This thesis looks at a variety of stakeholders and how they inform the conversations around disasters and disaster sites. In particular it focuses on the way knowledge frameworks of different actors informs this dialogue and defines the nature of their response. The thesis argues that this has an implication for debates on democracy, governance and citizenship. The thesis looks at four sets of actors: individuals confronting and coping with the everydayness of disasters.; the states of Gujarat and Orissa in India which innovate in the face of disasters to either create a techno-managerial response and institute different methodologies or use the existing structures to embed themselves further and perpetuate the poverty and disaster industry; the Christian and secular humanitarian groups: the former make a transition from charity to rights discourse while intervening in disasters. The latter focus on building methodologies which institute certain norms of responding to disasters and catering to those it considers as more vulnerable when disaster strikes. The thesis finally turns its attention to the response of four Hindu groups who draw on civilizational categories to engage with issues of pain, suffering, healing. Each stakeholder, the thesis argues, in articulating its response to disasters, presents a 'counter model' or at least a complementary understanding of how to think and respond to disasters. This plurality of engagement by questioning the preconceived frameworks adds not just to the democratic imagination but also to the debates on what constitutes governance and citizenship. Methodologically, the thesis is an ethnographic exploration located in two sites in India: Gujarat and Orissa. It keeps storytelling, ethnography, analysis, policy documents together and tries to show that they become a weave in disaster studies.

This thesis argues that the debate over the relationship between Theory and political practice has reached a dead-end in IR. Most scholars taking part in this debate based their claims on meta-theoretical assumptions, which explains the inability to settle the debate. This logic not only discouraged empirical enquiries, but also undermined reflexivity. Instead, this thesis calls for the translation of these meta-theoretical assumptions into a methodology and into methods to produce empirical knowledge by which to explore the relationships between Theory and political practice on specific issues. To this end, the thesis investigates relationships between American IR academic discourse and senior officials discourse and their effects on US foreign policy towards Iran between 1998 and 2014. The thesis provides a typology to map and to assess the gaps in the debate over the relationship between Theory and political practice in IR. This typology is composed of four ideal-types: Theory to political practice, Theory vs. political practice, Theory as political practice and practice to political practice. The thesis also translates meta-theoretical assumptions drawn from Wittgenstein and Foucault into a methodology to generate empirical knowledge on specific relationships between Theory and political practice. This methodology enables to trace an evolving system of thoughts expressed in the Theory and political practice of the Iranian nuclear crisis and to expose what this system does to US society and foreign policy. Three elements compose this system: the certainty of democratic teleology, the certainty of uncertainty and the certainty of smart power. The thesis claims that IR knowledge production on Iran mostly acted as symbolic knowledge morphing uncertainties about Iran into certainties for US governmental power. Only then could senior officials produce a judgement against Iran and implement disciplinary measures in the form of sanctions, covert actions, and military threats.

In a society where the labour market is becoming increasingly knowledge intensive and more differentiated, education has assumed greater importance for the capitalist states integrative functions as for the competitiveness in the global economy. As a consequence, the educational system has become a key governing resource for the state to meet and manage different kinds of social changes and problems. Against this background the thesis raises the main question - “what kind of societal problems are the educational reforms studied here considered to be the solution of?” The aim of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of the changes of the formation of knowledge in Swedish upper secondary curriculum between the 1960s and 2010s. In what way attained these changes in view of knowledge legitimacy in relation to the socioeconomic context? And what do these changes mean in terms of the attribution of the positioning of upper secondary school pupils and teachers?   This thesis draws on a “classical” theoretical framework of curriculum theory (i.e. the frame-factor theory) this means that the analytical focus is directed at the relationship between the content of the curriculum and the social context. With theoretical and methodological inspiration from critical realism and critical discourse analysis (CDA) the thesis argue for an alternative way to theoretical and empirical examined this relationship. Three historical reform periods are used to explore the discursive changes in the formation of knowledge in the Swedish upper secondary education reforms.   The results show how changes in socioeconomic conditions, such as economic crisis, over time have acted as important triggers for governing mechanisms embedded in the control of the educational system. These changes and mechanisms, in turn, have resulted in some major discursive knowledge shifts between the reforms studied, from the 1960s combination of an economic-rational and an objective-subject knowledge discourse, through the deregulated goal-rational and socio-cultural oriented knowledge discourse of the 1990s towards the 2010s knowledge discourses that are characterized by an increased focus on learning outcomes and measurability. Against the background of these discursive shifts, the analysis also points to some underlying continuities in terms of a general “reform imperative”, based on a number of overarching values ​​such as efficiency and rationality. The result show how this imperative was embedded in all three educational reforms and has ruled the order of discourses about what was deemed to be legitimate curriculum knowledge, a professional teacher and a desirable pupil.

This thesis interrogates the relationship of archaeological models and indigenous understandings of origins in the East Kimberley region of Northern Australia and the Aru Islands of Eastern Indonesia. Archaeological models of prehistoric migration construct these places as part of the same landmass in the recent human period and at times of lower sea levels. Yet, the indigenous groups who currently inhabit these places assert and rely upon their localised understandings of autochthony and mythological creationism. The existence of these competing models has led me to examine the degree to which the practice of archaeology in these locations constructs human prehistory in a way that necessarily disempowers the indigenous cosmology there. Below I examine the construction and content of these different stories about the same place to show how it is that they are essentially competing, conflicting and contradictory claims to truth. I show how each of these asserted cosmological positions emerge from the various cultural systems that sponsor and perpetuate them and I pay special attention to the role of institutionally authorised experts within each of the cosmological positions described. I also seek to demonstrate the ways in which the distribution of expert knowledge plays a core role in a naturalised social order and the ongoing construction of cultural identity in their respective communities. I then interrogate the relationships that these differing forms of knowledge have with each other - paying close attention to the specifics of context in which they are evoked. I conclude that the examination of how these competing claims to truth are distributed in space reveals their influence in the ongoing construction of identity in their respective communities.

The aim of this thesis is to create a comprehensive view on questions of development and influence of media on society and related formation and processing of information. This thesis should also enable the reader easier understanding and orientation in this topic. For that reason the thesis is divided into four main parts. The first section describes what is information, and the relation among data, information and knowledge. The second part is devoted to development and influence of information and communication technologies. It describes ways which enabled and enable to deliver information to its recipient and also related changes brought by these technologies. In the next chapter there is desribed what influences our relations within the framework of single nations and how media help to their convergency and linking. And the last part of this thesis includes an analysis of possible use and misuse when affecting broad masses of people.