This master thesis explores and compares through two case studies the characteristics of public spaces in post-war housing areas in terms of appearance and uses in two different countries: France and Sweden. Through observations, interviews and readings, it aims at understanding to which extent public spaces can take part in the creation of social interactions and influence the general perception about such areas, and their importance in such processes. Public spaces play a great role in the democratization, the development and the identity formation of a society and of a place, but in post-war housing areas, criticisms raised about the deadness of these spaces which struggle in fulfilling these important roles. Still, Mermoz (Lyon, France) and Husby (Stockholm, Sweden), the two case studies considered in this paper, showed a different reality. If their structure and organization is still quite characteristic of post-war housing areas, public spaces in these neighborhoods are not the ´empty´, ´blank´ spaces often described in theories, and people meet and interact. Still, it shows some limits in terms of meeting quality, accessibility and attractiveness. Moreover, these areas suffer from really bad reputation due to strong negative connotations attached with ´suburbs´ in these two countries. Public spaces could help in changing this ´image´ by bringing openness, changing aesthetic and creating different kinds of relations between people – by reducing the dominance of groups of young men and the drugs traffic that often characterize public spaces in these areas for instance. Still, changing an image of an area and creating different social interactions is a much more complex process that has to take into account several factors including public spaces, buildings, employment rates, education etc.

While public opinion and previous research on the emergence of the first comprehensive animal welfare law in Sweden in 1944 has regarded it as a natural development of the animal welfare debates around the turn of the century, new research on the subject has problematized this view, instead pointing out the law of 1944 as a discursive break, in which the “animal welfare regime” emerged out of the previous “anti-cruelty regime”. This study focuses on the period of time after this break, from 1944 to 1973, examining this relatively unexplored part of Swedish animal welfare history by turning to the parliamentary debates of the time and looking at which practices were problematized and on which grounds, as well as how the line was drawn between acceptable animal use and unacceptable animal (ab)use. In doing so the study aims to explore the consequences of the aforementioned break in Swedish political discourse. The main argument of the study is that while the debates might seem to be about animal welfare, the main issue was in fact often not animals but humans, and differing conceptions of who was truly a “friend of the animals”, as opposed to a primitive, uncultured, brute. Human animal use as such was thus never questioned, instead the focus lay on specific practices such as recreational hunting and factory farming. In trying to draw a line between these practices, the members of parliament critical of the current state of affairs employed arguments which, inadvertently, could be interpreted as an attack on human animal use as such. In doing so, they activated the discursive mechanisms of control of the animal welfare regime, one of which the study identifies as a reversal of the logic of equivalence used by the reformist members of parliament before 1944.

Ethnic nationalism produces conflicts through constructing identities that include certain groups and exclude or marginalize others. This process often continues in post-war periods and hinders inter-ethnic reconciliation. Political actors proceed with constructing ethno-national identities and (re-)writing national narratives in the realm of remembering. This thesis seeks to understand how memorial sites are used for nation-building processes in post-war contexts, based on the municipality of Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. This single instrumental case study analyzes two memorial sites through fieldwork, newspaper articles, and archival records. The theoretical framework builds on concepts from nationalism studies, memory studies, as well as cultural and political geography. The analysis demonstrates that the studied memorial sites are used as follows: 1) to depict the nation's objects of identification for demarcating the national Self from the Other; 2) to promote myths of victimization for unifying the group and justifying atrocities; 3) to silence narratives and memories that contradict or challenge those of the own group; and 4) to mark territory as an integral part of the spatial narrative in which public places are transformed into “owned” places. All four practices are closely interrelated and give the memorial sites meaning and authority to convey the Bosnian-Serbian nation-building project.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / After a war of nearly two decades in the Acholi sub-region of northern Uganda many families and communities were physically, socially, economically and psychologically devastated. A myriad of other concomitant effects of the war such as distorted gender relations in households and undue exposure of vulnerable children to the menace of hazardous child labour manifest in the communities today. A plethora of non-government organisations has worked in the Acholi subregion trying to transform the communities after the war, but these challenges remain thus compromising social justice and the well-being of children.

This essay revolves arounds aspects of post-war Swedish student housing construction. The relationship between policy and practice is at the center. The main purpose of the thesis is to analyze ideas and main policies in two official state investigations focusing on student housing construction: SOU 1961:35 and SOU 1970:43. The method for reviewing these investigations is called WPR-analysis, where the focus is on investigating how student housing construction is conceptualized as a societal problem to deal with. Ideas and policies in the investigations are then compared with some built environments that were constructed during the time period when the investigations were conducted. Three conclusions are formulated in the essay. The first conclusion is that policy ideas in SOU 1961:35 revolve around questions of appropriatieness and rationality, two key concepts in contemporary housing policy discourse in Sweden. The second conclusion is that there are parallels between the two investigations analyzed, but that SOU 1970:43 more strongly articulates an idea of a universal housing ideal where everyone's right to housing is the primary ambition. The third and final conclusion is that a movement from a more selectively oriented housing policy to a universal counterpart can also said to be illustrated by the examples of student housing environments that are examined.

Since the classical work of Samuel Huntington tilted the Third Wave of Democratisation, the question of how a country becomes a democracy and why others do not have been of interest to social scientists, notably political scientists. With more than three decades since the publication of this seminal work, empirical research has focused on several regions in the world and have provided various explanation for why some countries transition to democracy and why other fail. Along these lines, this thesis attempt to study the future of democracy by focusing on an intriguing case (e.g., Iraq), a country known to have a diverse ethnic and sectarian composition, conflict-ridden but also vital to the global war against terrorism. Thus, the thesis is guided by the question, "How have foreign state actors and domestic factors affected the democratic process in Iraq, 2014-2023?" The thesis uses qualitative research methods such as process tracing and semi-structured interviews to answer this question.

This thesis proposes a new perspective and critical reflection on two contemporary Latin American novels, Insensatez (2004) by Honduran-Salvadorean author Horacio Castellanos Moya and La dimensión desconocida (2016) by Chilean author Nona Fernández. Situating each novel within its respective historical context of political transition following years of violent national conflict, the politics of memory and the concomitant concern for human rights directly informs the argument. The theoretical framework which directs the analysis of each work centers on the intertextual relationship between the narrative and the novel's foundational document. In Insensatez, the intertext of interest is the official report of the Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI) titled Guatemala: Nunca Más (1998) and in La dimensión desconocida the intertext is the interview with the former Chilean intelligence agent, Andrés Valenzuela, published in the magazine Cauce (1985). This thesis first reveals how Castellanos Moya utilizes various literary strategies in combination with the libreta as a narrative element to question the privileged position of testimonio in the memory works that have proliferated in postwar Central America. This thesis also demonstrates how Nona Fernández constructs a complex intertextual dialogue with the testimony of the victimizer Valenzuela to interrogate the ethical binaries that have sustained Chilean literary production on historical memory since the dictatorship. The combined analyses of these two novels enable new perceptions of how contemporary Latin American fictions can creatively employ intertextuality as a narrative tool to problematize the cultural and literary representation of a traumatic past. / Master of Arts / This thesis proposes new critical perspectives on two contemporary Latin American novels, Insensatez (2004) by Honduran-Salvadorean author Horacio Castellanos Moya and La dimensión desconocida (2016) by Chilean author Nona Fernández. Situating each novel within its respective historical context of political transition following years of violent national conflict, the analysis centers on the textual relationship between the narrative and the novel's foundational document. In Insensatez, the document of interest is the official report of the Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI) titled Guatemala: Nunca Más (1998) and in La dimensión desconocida the essential document is the interview with the former Chilean intelligence agent, Andrés Valenzuela, published in the magazine Cauce (1985). This thesis first reveals how Castellanos Moya utilizes various literary strategies in combination with the libreta as a narrative element to question the favored position of testimonio in the memory works that have proliferated in postwar Central America. This thesis then demonstrates how Nona Fernández constructs a complex dialogue with the confession of the victimizer Valenzuela to challenge the ethical oppositions that have sustained Chilean literary production on historical memory since the dictatorship. The combined analyses of these two novels enable new perceptions of how contemporary Latin American fictions can creatively use textual relationships as a tool to interrogate the cultural and literary representation of a traumatic past.

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