This thesis explores the relationship between development representations and diaspora audiences. It brings together literature on representations, with concepts of audience, diaspora and identity to provide an in-depth study of how and with what effects, visual representations of development in NGO fundraising campaigning that depict Africa, impact on Nigerian diaspora audiences. This study challenges the tendency in much of development literature in this field to homogenise British audiences of NGO communication. This has imagined audiences as some form of monocultural Western-situated community, coextensive with the 'general' British public. It further assumes audiences read, interpret and are impacted by NGO representations in very similar ways. This assumption precludes critical engagement with the complexities and particularities of audiences and is unable to reflect the multiple and differentiated ways in which audiences think, feel and behave in response to development representations. By using focus group discussions with UK Nigerian diaspora audiences, one-to-one interviews and online-ethnography as the methodological tool, and postcolonialism as an analytical framing, this thesis reveals the complex and contested ways that individual diaspora subjectivities, positionalities and life experiences are implicated in their construal of development representations and the perspicuity of their impact. One of the key findings of this study is that development representations impact African diaspora audiences in diverse and complicated ways, that both reproduce and contradict negative and, stereotypical 'ways of seeing' and knowing Africa. Furthermore, it highlights how diaspora ethno-racial/cultural identities affect, and are implicated in, the reading and interpretation of development representations of Africa. Indeed, diaspora audiences affirm and challenge their connections or, lack thereof, with their country of origin through these representations. Moreover, the study shows how NGO development representations provide symbolic spaces from which diaspora audiences can articulate their identities as well as, forge relationships among themselves and with their wider communities. This study builds on Stuart Hall's ([1973]1980) Encoding/Decoding theorisation on audiences, by demonstrating that Nigerian diaspora audiences of development representations are sophisticated, varied and paradoxical in how they interpret and decipher media representations. Indeed, their socio-cultural positioning, personal histories and lived-experiences inform and shape how they discursively construct perceptions and knowledge of their place of origin through representations. Furthermore, it contributes to postcolonial theorisations of hybridity in diaspora identities, by showing that Nigerians strategically adopt new and preferential ethnosymbolic identities, in response to representations. These re-configurations of the Diaspora 'Self' are neither stable or consistent but are nonetheless utilised by Nigerians to subvert development representations and harmful public perceptions and stereotypes about Africans that they shape.

The phenomenon of social work combined with traveling have become known for “voluntourism” and is a common way to travel today. This study investigates the external communication of the commercial volunteer abroad organizations that are offering projects that take place in the African continent. The study focuses on how the volunteer and the recipient of the social work is portrayed in the external communication. The study was conducted by using a critical discourse analysis inspired by Fairclough on four of Swedish commercial volunteer abroad organizations websites. By combining postcolonial perspective with othering as the theoretical framework, the results show that the western volunteer is centralized in the communication, while the recipients of the social work is portrayed homogeneously and objectified.

This dissertation brings together the history of law in postcolonial Nigeria with the history of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), analyzing how wartime violence shaped crime and the ethics surrounding it. Using legal records from the Republic of Biafra’s courts, I examine how the secessionist state was governed, and how armed robbery and other criminal activities became means of survival there in the context of the fighting. These cases reveal how Biafrans and their government negotiated what kinds of survival tactics, many of them “criminal,” were permissible or ethical in the context of the war and the humanitarian crisis attending it. Biafra’s courts also became a space where individuals could assert themselves as moral actors in the face of political ataxia and enormous humanitarian strain. The war shaped Nigeria’s postcolonial experience profoundly. As in many conflicts, acts of violence and deception became ordinary – in some cases honorable – when surviving and winning the war trumped all other considerations. When the fighting ended in January 1970, the practices that Biafrans had used to endure the war did not end with it. In the years that followed, fraud and armed violence would become major features of life in reunified Nigeria. Biafra had declared independence in the name of preserving law and order, but the result of the war was to create conditions in which forms of illegality that would later become endemic – forgery, armed robbery, and the body of fraudulent activities known as “419” – could take root. For this reason, the Biafra War is an important episode in both the history of Nigeria after independence, and for the larger study of the dialectics of law and disorder in contemporary Africa.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this research explores Zimbabwean literary and other cultural texts within the broader context of the construction of identities and the politics of inclusion and exclusion in nationalist and oppositional discourses. It also analyzes two texts by major non-Zimbabwean African writers to examine the thematic links between Zimbabwean and other African writing. Through combining historical, anthropological and political approaches with postcolonial, postmodern and feminist critical theories, the thesis explores the ways in which African writing and performance represent alternative histories to official versions of the nation. It further investigates questions of gender and their significance in nationalist discourses and shows how writing on war, trauma and healing informs and develops readers’ understanding of the relationship of the past to the present. Considered together as a coherent body of work, the published items submitted in this thesis explore how Zimbabwean and other African writers, through re-visioning history and writing from oppositional or marginal positions, intervene in political debates and suggest new transformative ways of constructing and negotiating identities in postcolonial societies.

A dissertação tem como objetivo principal investigar a relação do pós-colonialismo com o contexto brasileiro, instanciada pelas referências à teoria de tradução de Haroldo de Campos por parte de teóricos dos Estudos da Tradução. Se, por um lado, o reconhecimento internacional da teoria de tradução de Campos é mais que merecido, por outro, considerá-lo pós-colonial reduz a dimensão e complexidade de seu pensamento, que permeia toda a sua produção intelectual e criativa como poeta, crítico e tradutor. A pesquisa apresenta duas linhas de investigação: a teoria pós-colonial, nos seus aspectos históricos e teóricos e o trabalho e pensamento do tradutor Haroldo de Campos. Apesar de aparentemente paralelas elas convergem para a comprovação, ou não, da seguinte hipótese: a prática tradutória de Haroldo de Campos apresenta uma preocupação mais de cunho artístico que político. / The main purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the relation of Postcolonialism with the Brazilian context, motivated by the references to Haroldo de Camposs translation theory by Translation Studies theoreticians. On the one hand, if the international recognition of Campos\'s translation theory is deserved, on the other, to consider him \"postcolonial\" narrows the dimension of Campos\'s reflections, which pervade all his production as poet, critic, translator and theoretician, and cannot be considered separately. The research will follow two parallel lines of investigation: post-colonial translation theory, its historical and theoretical aspects, and Haroldo de Camposs translation theory, which will converge towards the hypothesis: Camposs translation theory advocated new aesthetic information, rather than a political message.

While development cooperation largely consists of policy advice, the suggestions and inputs on development that policymakers in the Global South receive from donors and other international actors, little research exists on what makes policy advice useful to these policymakers. The aim of this study was to find out why policymakers in the Global South find some advice useful and some not. This was done through a field study in Kenya, using interviews with 23 policymakers and advisors. The analytical framework that was applied to the material reconciled the SCL model of analysing policy advice in terms of its content, with a critical postcolonial perspective which regarded the delivery of advice. The study showed that  the usefulness of policy advice for Kenyan policymakers is as dependent on the delivery of the advice as it is on its content, unlike what has been implied previously by Western research on think tanks. The study also concluded that not only is it possible to merge the two theoretical perspectives of policy advice and postcolonial theory, despite the difference in abstraction levels, applying a postcolonial perspective can be crucial in order to examine the full scope of what makes policy advice useful to policymakers in the Global South.

Orientador: Maria Clara Bonetti Paro / Banca: Alda Maria Quadros do Couto / Banca: Márcio Roberto do Prado / Banca: Karin Volobuef / Banca: Ana Luiza Silva Camarani / Resumo: Esta tese, com base nos pensamentos de Franz Fanon, Homi Bhabha e Albert Memmi, faz uma leitura pós-colonial da obra do escritor brasileiro Gastão Cruls (1888-1959), examinando-a pelo viés de sua crítica à colonização e à neocolonização do Brasil e situando seu autor ao lado de Euclides da Cunha de Os sertões, como um dos mais importantes - se não o mais importante entre os de sua época - reveladores da realidade nacional, principalmente do Nordeste e do Norte do Brasil. Paralelamente, esta tese realiza uma leitura decadentista de alguns contos crulsianos e os examina em paralelo à obra de outros decadentistas, como Augusto dos Anjos, Alain Fournier e Oscar Wilde. O objetivo dessa leitura é, sobretudo, ressaltar, na obra de Gastão Cruls, sua produção decadentista de alto nível, ainda pouco estudada, como é a maioria de seus textos. Dessa forma, ao entrelaçar na análise da obra crulsiana a perspectiva pós-colonialista, para revelar o posicionamento crítico do autor em face de uma realidade histórica e de uma realidade social emergente, e a perspectiva decadentista, para explorar sua obra como uma manifestação estética singular que reage aos paradigmas da poética adotados pela sociedade burguesa, esta tese revela Gastão Cruls como um autor crítico, que nos dá uma faceta pouco explorada do período Modernista da Literatura Brasileira. / Abstract: Based on FF's, HB's and AM's thought, this dissertation offers a postcolonial reading of the work of the Brazilian writer Gastão Cruls (1888-1959) and examines his texts in the light of his critical stance against the colonization and neocolonization of Brazil. It also places Cruls, together with Euclides da Cunha, as one of the most important writers - and maybe the most important in his time - who revealed our national reality, especially of the north and northeast regions of the country. This dissertation also examines some of Cruls's short stories with the lenses of the Decadent movement and compares them to the work of other writers, such as Augusto dos Anjos, Alain Fournier and Oscar Wilde. It stresses the importance of Cruls's decadent texts and claims that they have not received the attention they deserve, as is also the case for most of his texts. Therefore, by intertwining a postcolonial perspective, that reveals Cruls's critical view of the historical and emerging social reality of his country, with a decadent perspective, that elicits his singular literary response to the aesthetic paradigms of the Brazilian burgeois society of his time, this dissertation presents Gastão Cruls as a critical author that represents an almost unexplored aspect of the Brazilian Modernist period. / Doutor

The purpose of writing this essay has been to find out what shape yoga has been given in Stockholm, as social processes have left their mark. With a mixed method we've performed a qualitative research to figure out how people reason regarding the subject and how the discourse forms by the active community. We have interviewed people who either teach yoga or performs yoga on a daily basis. We have also analyzed webpages belonging to yoga studios which are active in Stockholm. The central theories have been Durkheim’s theory about the holy and profane, also his theory about the ritual which has been reworked by Collins who added the theory about the symbol. McLeod’s theory about postcolonialism and Said’s theories about orientalism, exotification and the positioned superiority, has together with Askegaard and Eckhardt’s theory about the shapes of yoga also been important in this thesis. We have discovered that yoga has been shaped into two forms; a holiness which the yoga performers finds within themselves and the second form: a product of consumption which modifies to fit the market. / Syftet med att skriva denna uppsats är att ta reda på vad yoga har fått för form i Stockholm allteftersom sociala processer satt sin prägel. Vi har med blandad kvalitativ metod utfört en undersökning för att ta reda på hur centrala aktörer själva resonerar samt hur diskursen formas av aktörer. Vi har utfört intervjuer med personer som är aktiva som yogalärare alternativt utövar yoga på daglig basis. Vi har även utfört analyser av hemsidor tillhörande yogastudios som är verksamma i Stockholm. De teorier som varit centrala i arbetet är Durkheims teori om det heliga och det profana, samt hans teori om ritualen vilken utarbetats av Collins som även adderat teorin om symboler. Ytterligare teorier som varit centrala är McLeods beskrivning av den postkoloniala värld vi lever i, tillsammans med Saids teori om orientalism, exotifiering och den västerländska positionerade överlägsenheten. Slutligen har vi använt Askegaard och Eckhardts teorier om yogans skepnader. Vår studie resulterade i att vi identifierat två former yoga fått i Stockholm, ena formen är yoga som helighet utövare upplever inom sig och den andra formen är yoga som konsumtionsprodukt med exotiska inslag vilken anpassar sig efter marknaden.

The British Indian Army, formed from the old presidency armies of the East India Company in 1895, was one of the pillars upon which Britain’s world empire rested. While much has been written on the colonial and global campaigns fought by the Indian Army as a tool of imperial power, comparatively little has been written about the transition of the army from British to Indian control after the end of the Second World War. While independence meant the transition of the force from imperial rule to that of civilian oversight by India’s new national leadership, the Dominion of India inherited thousands of former colonial soldiers, including two generations of British and Indian officers indoctrinated in military and cultural practices developed in the United Kingdom, in colonial India and across the British Empire. The goal of this paper is to examine the legacy of the British Empire on the narrative, ethos, culture, tactics and strategies employed by the Indian Army after 1945, when the army began to transition from British to Indian rule, up to 1973 when the government of India reinstituted the imperial rank of Field Marshal. While other former imperial officers would continue to serve in the army up to the end of the 20th century, the first thirty years after independence were a formative period in the history of the Indian Army, that saw it fight four major wars and see the final departure of white British officers from its ranks. While it became during this time a truly national army, the years after independence were one in which its legacy as an arm of imperial power was debated, and eventually transformed into a key component of military identity in the post-colonial era.

This thesis examines Norma Cantú's Canícula and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake from the framework of transnationalism characterized by migration, transculturation, and hybridity. With the application of postcolonial theories, related to identity and space, it identifies the space between different cultural and national borders, as liminal space in which the immigrant characters diverge and intersect, ultimately constituting a form of hybrid and transnational identities. While most immigrant writers still explore the themes of complexities of lifestyles, cultural dislocation, and the conflicts of assimilation, and portray their characters as torn between respecting their family traditions and an Americanized way of life, my reading of these two immigrant writers goes beyond this conventional wisdom about the alienated postcolonial subject. Through a comparative analysis of the major themes in Canícula and The Namesake that center on issues of cultural and national border crossing, this thesis contends that Cantú and Lahiri attempt to construct transnational identities for immigrants, while locating and stabilizing them in the United States. Given the nature of the mobility of people and their cultures across nations, both writers deterritorialize the definite national and cultural identities suggesting that individuals cannot confine themselves within the narrow concept of national and cultural boundaries in this globalized world. A comparison between the transnational identity of the 1950s in Canícula and that of the 1970s through the twenty-first century in The Namesake demonstrates that identities are becoming more transnational and global due to the development of technologies, transportation, and global connections between people. In this regard, this thesis attempts to offer a re-vision of the contemporary United States not as a static and insular territory but a participant in transnational relations.