The presence of human destitution, impoverishment and degradation in the midst of plenty has puzzled social thinkers for millennia. One of the oldest and grandest of theories: the theory of ideology attempts to provide an answer to the puzzle of domination in society. Michael Rosen, in his book On Voluntary Servitude (1996), argues that the solution provided by the theory of ideology is problematic. Furthermore, on the basis of his critique, Rosen argues that we should abandon the theory of ideology and consider alternatives to it. Even though many contemporary academics have turned away from the theory of ideology, because they view it as an imprisoning meta-theory, this study explores the possibility of there being a meta-theory that could help us to make sense of the world. Through an examination of Rosen's critique this thesis shows that Rosen is too quick in his dismissal of the theory of ideology because he fails to consider that a revised functionalist theory of ideology can be expanded to account for the mechanism(s) that ensure that, over time, the society in question acquires ideological consciousness to further its welfare. This thesis shows that Rosen is correct in his criticism of the theory of ideology's explanation of domination because the content, history and social effects of ideological consciousness cannot be fully explained in terms of their role in promoting or stabilising relations of domination. In light of Rosen's criticism the thesis shows that if one provides both an explanation of the psychological motivations of individuals and of the nature of the oppressive society in which they find themselves then what I call an integrated theory of ideology can be developed. In order to illustrate the importance of an integrated theory of ideology the study moves away from high-level theoretical abstraction to concrete social analyses, focusing on the work of Frantz Fanon and Steve Biko and their explanations of domination. The reason this study focuses on their work is because in their role as social scientists, Fanon and Biko provided a powerful critique of colonial, post-colonial and neo-colonial society. It will be argued that Fanon and Biko were able to provide a lasting critique of colonial reality because they offered their critique within the framework of such an integrated theory. Consequently, this study argues that, as Fanon and Biko's work illustrate, an integrated theory of ideology qua critical theory ought not to be abandoned because it is crucial for understanding and resisting forms of oppression that exist in the world today.

The role of natural resources in African conflicts has been subject to extensive scholarly analysis. However, much of this analysis has taken a narrow economic reductionist bias. As such, it is imperative that the dominant assumptions and accepted concepts and theories about the role of natural resources in African conflicts be re-examined. The aim of this thesis is to offer a revaluation of the role of coltan during the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Second War (1998-2003) through a critical engagement with the resource wars literature. The purpose is to offer a re-reading of the role of coltan in the DRC Second War and the broader regional and global economic context in which this conflict took place. It rejects the commonly cited assumption that the presence of coltan in the DRC means it is an initiator of conflict. Rather, this thesis argues that the central role of coltan in the DRC Second War was as an aggravator of conflict in that its exploitation was used by different parties to fund their military and political ambitions. This thesis also argues that the DRC’s weak state structures and pivotal role within the Great Lakes region, as well as the international trade of coltan and the nature of the DRC coltan mining industry are all key factors in understanding coltan exploitation in the country’s Eastern Region during the Second War.

M.A. (English) / Victorian studies is a field much-studied and, during the century that has passed since the end of Queen Victoria‘s reign, literary criticism on the subject has been extensive. In the main, however, criticism has tended to focus on the protagonists of Victorian novels, whether to argue that their journeys are immoral, or represent a warning against immorality, or to examine their behaviour and so arrive at conclusions regarding identity. Through a close reading of Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Robert Louis Stevenson‘s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Bram Stoker‘s Dracula (1897), and by focussing on the reactions and responses of Victorian society (as the texts represent it) to the novel‘s transgressive characters rather than on those characters themselves (as has been the trend) this dissertation moves away from readings of duality and moral judgment and towards a greater understanding of the intricacies of late-Victorian society itself. In addition, and through this process, this dissertation interrogates the bifurcated and contradictory nature of the Victorian moral structure and destabilizes the binary oppositions of character judgment that were so fundamental in its creation. Furthermore, through a discussion of the historical context of the text‘s chosen for this study, this dissertation challenges the formulation and authenticity of Victorian morality by considering the manner in which power informed the behaviour and decisions of middle-class Victorians at the turn of the century. To this end, I will consider how the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, especially those pertaining to power and morality, are invaluable in problematizing the binary system of categorization that so dominated the late-Victorian cultural space. Finally, I argue that the texts I have elected to study represent a climate of unrest and dissatisfaction with the Victorian moral climate at the fin de siècle (or turn of the century) and that they are instrumental in our understanding of that moral climate and the subsequent changes to it.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T18:12:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Jair Gomes de Santana.pdf: 890868 bytes, checksum: 6e9887f99f7f49ef23fdfe441b9fbf16 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-03-23 / This work aimed to understand the social problems involving Catholicism and Protestantism, during the 1860s and 1880s, in Recife. We ve observed all the speeches presented in newspapers by that time,specially in Jornal do Recife and O Cathólico. This study considered the social, economical, political and cultural events in Brazil and in around the world, in the second half of the 19 th century. These changes made the religious practice become weak in Brazil, forcing it to change its model to the ultramontane. The attempt to make the popular Catholicism become an ultramontane model didn t succeed and most people were taken to the Protestant universe. In Pernambuco (1842) a Negro Protestantism rose because of a Protestant group called Divino Mestre . That movement had a negro as their leader, and he taught his followers how to read also rejected the Catholic tradition. All the local Protestantism feared him. The government was afraid of a rebellion similar to the Malês in Bahia or another like the one in Haiti. The missionary Protestantism didn t threaten the local economy and the social bases, so it was welcomed by the masons and liberals. However, the Protestant missionary s activity developed among, half-blood people and Negroes. All the incidents involving faith, which were studied here, were in the media, in newspapers. Protestants used the polemic presented by newspapers as strategies to occupy institutional spaces to which they didn t have access before. This way, they got the support of those who were against the Church and took advantage of the situation provided by the Religious matter in the Empire / O objetivo desta dissertação foi compreender os embates sociais entre católicos e protestantes nas décadas de 1860 e 1880, no Recife. Analisamos os discursos produzidos nos jornais da época, O Jornal do Recife e O Cathólico. Este estudo levou em consideração os acontecimentos sócio-econômicos, políticos e culturais do Brasil e do mundo na segunda metade do século XIX. Essas mudanças colocaram em cheque a prática religiosa da Igreja no Brasil, obrigando-a a transitar para um outro modelo: o ultramontano. A tentativa de enquadrar o catolicismo popular (uma seita católica) ao modelo ultramontano, não foi bem sucedida e levou uma parte dessas pessoas para o universo protestante. Em Pernambuco (1842), surgiu um protestantismo negro através do movimento do Divino Mestre , uma seita protestante. Esse movimento liderado por um negro, que alfabetizava os seus seguidores, e rejeitava as tradições católicas, trouxe pavor à elite política da província. O governo temia uma revolta semelhante aos malês da Bahia ou uma revolução como a do Haiti. O protestantismo missionário não ameaçava as bases econômico-sociais da província, por isso foi bem recebido, pelos maçons e pelos liberais. Mas a atividade missionária protestante se desenvolveu entre mestiços, mulatos e negros. Os embates da fé estudados aqui ocorreram na mídia, através dos jornais. Os protestantes aproveitaram as polêmicas nos jornais, como estratégia para ocupar espaços institucionais aos quais não tinham acesso. Dessa forma, conseguiram o apoio daqueles que se opunham a Igreja, aproveitando o clima proporcionado pela questão religiosa no Império

Exploration of the familial power women possess is growing as sociologists and anthropologists recognize the legitimacy of power internal to the family. The focus of this research was to uncover the forms of power German-Russian women held as they operated in the private sphere of the family. Attention also focused on the transference of women's power, and the family power dynamics unique to farm families. Members of three generations of one German-Russian farm family were interviewed. The results indicated German-Russian women operated from bases of power derived from their roles as farm wives who contributed to family sustenance, and as caretakers and kinkeepers, maintaining family cohesion. While male power is largely public and formal, women's reliance on the bonds of familial relationships across generations lend them greater power in that realm.

魏英杰. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-196) / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Wei Yingjie.

This thesis examines the viability of the concept of political liberalism. Since its emergence, the idea of a purely political liberalism has been the subject of a voluminous amount of discourse and debate. The concept of political liberalism has been presented as both a solution to the problems of justice and political stability troubling liberal democracies and an exemplar of all that is wrong with contemporary political philosophy; it has, quite literally, altered the landscape and the vernacular of contemporary political theory. Herein it is argued that, despite the significant amount of literature that has been devoted to the analysis of the idea of a purely political liberalism, the idea itself has yet to be subjected to the type of critique that is required if one is to assess its viability effectively. Though there have been a number of contemporary political theorists who have developed conceptions of political liberalism which they believe differ in important ways from those of their doctrinal colleagues, detailed analyses of the concept of political liberalism have and remain focussed almost exclusively on a single formulation: namely, Rawlsian political liberalism. This singular focus has precluded the completion of a comprehensive assessment of the viability of the concept (as opposed to a single conception) of political liberalism as represented both by Rawlsian and non-Rawlsian models. This thesis confronts this problem by expanding the scope of investigation to include a fulsome examination of other prominent paradigmatic conceptions of political liberalism namely, those developed by Charles Larmore and Judith Shklar and in so doing provides a more inclusive and, subsequently, thorough critique than has previously been offered. Adopting such an approach reveals that, despite protestations to the contrary, the prominent paradigmatic conceptions of political liberalism are sufficiently similar in all important respects to enable their conflation for the purpose of analysis; and when subjected to a thorough analysis, the idea of a purely political liberalism proves itself to be untenable. / Political Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Politics)

Disempowered Women? A Feminist Response to female Characters in Malory, Tennyson and Bradley takes an in-depth look at Elayne, Gwenyvere and Morgan of the Arthurian legend. The characters are examined within their contemporary context and from our modem perspective as portrayed in Malory, Tennyson, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Patriarchy, closely connected with the Christian doctrines, is singled out as the main means of propagating women's disempowerment. The inquiry considers different ways in which fictional texts have contributed to creating false perceptions amongst our contemporary audience, about the reality of women's lives in the Middle Ages. It further examines the validity of the assumption that literary women are not real, but mere representations of male ideals about women's role and place in society. Issues of gender equality are raised and the author concludes that the literature studied assigns definite, gender-specific roles to men and women. The work also debates the perceived misogyny of the male authors: is it a conscious act or a reflection of their contemporary society's concerns? / English Studies / M. A. (English)

This study explores the triple imbrications of race, power and gender in the selected novels of Bessie Head. A critical analysis of Maru (1971) and A Question of' Power (1974) is undertaken with a view to identifying the subordinating and the marginalising tropes that result in silencing of female subjectivities in Head's protagonists. Linked to a critical reading of the novels, this study examines the role of cultural and psychological forces in maintaining patriarchal hegemony, which is based upon hierarchy and domination of women rather than equality. Furthennore, this dissertation suggests that Head's depiction of narrow ethnic and racial bigotry serves a broader etiological purpose of accounting for "the state of thingsff within the South African context. Thus this study oscillates between the abstract constructs and the concrete social experiences within which Bessie Head's literary imagination subsists. In this study, particular attention is paid, in addition to critiques of individual texts, to some of Head's biographical elements with a view on the one hand, to highlighting the moments, events and issues which are reflected as " contexts of her-story" and on the other, to amplifying how Head's formative experiences contribute to her critique of the exploitative racially structured narratives. By using Foucault's theories within the social constructionist model, this dissertation aims to demonstrate the insidious intersections between racism and sexism and how these constructs are implicated in the conception and construction of power. Specifically, this study argues that due to their arbitrary applications, racial and sexual difference be viewed as dynamic and contested, rather than fixed. A synthesis is reached which accords literarure a role within the framework of socio-cultural practice in general. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

Selves and Others: The Politics of Difference in the Writings of Ursula Kroeber Le Guin has two founding premises. One is that Le Guin's writing addresses the political issues of the late twentieth century in a number of ways, even although speculative fiction is not generally considered a political genre. Questions of self and O/other, which shape political (that is, powerinflected) responses to difference, infuse Le Guin's writing. My thesis sets out to investigate the mechanisms of representation by which these concerns are realized. My chapters reflect aspects of the relationship between self and O/other as I perceive it in Le Guin's work. Thus my first chapter deals with the representations of imperialism and colonialism in five novels, three of which were written near the beginning of her literary career. My second chapter considers Le Guin's best-known novels, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and The Dispossessed (1974), in the context of the alienation from American society recorded by thinkers in the 1960s. In my third chapter, the emphasis shifts to intrapsychic questions and splits, as I explore themes of sexuality and identity in Le Guin's novels for and about adolescents. I move to more public matters in my fourth and fifth chapters, which deal, respectively, with the politicized interface between public and private histories and with disempowerment. In my final chapter, I explore the representation of difference and politics in Le Guin's intricate but critically neglected poetry. My second founding premise is that traditional modes of literary criticism, which aim to arrive at comprehensive and final interpretations, are not appropriate for Le Guin's mode of writing, which consistently refuses to locate meaning definitely. My thesis seeks and explores aporias in the meaning-making process; it is concerned with asking productive questions, rather than with final answers. I have, consequently, adopted a sceptical approach to the process of interpretation, preferring to foreground the provisional and partial status of all interpretations. I have found that postmodern and poststructuralist literary theory, which focuses on textual gaps and discontinuities, has served me better than more traditional ways of reading / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)