This essay will analyze a selection of characters from Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times. Characterizations will be analyzed by using a Marxist theoretical framework, e.g., characters’ relations to Marxist concepts such as class struggle, alienation, and stratification will be studied. The purpose of this essay is to use Marxist concepts in order to understand Dickens’ satire and critique of capitalism. This is done by applying a theory criticizing capitalism, namely Marxist theory, to some of the novel’s characters and analyzing these characters according to their relations to the main features of Marxist theory. A few characters are selected for analysis, to distinguish characteristics or traits that satirize society. Moreover, the essay will investigate whether the author alludes to Marxist concepts when satirizing contemporary society. The characters portrayed in the novel are all exposed to a society characterized by hardship, inequality, and class struggle. These concepts are all features of a society that Marxism critiques. Accordingly, the thesis is that Marxist concepts are implicit in the text and do play a role in Dickens’ satirizing of his contemporary, capitalist, industrialized society, despitenot being mentioned explicitly.

Through the life story narratives of Ethiopian women activists, this research explores the journey of Ethiopian women activists during three political and historical periods (1955–1974; 1974–1991; 1991–2015). Thus, the study proposes a new perspective on the forms of Ethiopian women’s activism and subsequently the different types of feminism emerging from their narratives. Through examination of how the activists reflect on, reconstruct and give meaning to their life stories, this research unravels that their activism is informed by feminist principles. It also exposes that it is shaped by a long history of resistance to patriarchy, which enabled women in traditional Ethiopia to negotiate a certain level of “autonomy and liberty”. Contrary to the general expectation, the research demonstrates that the process of modernization (read: westernization) came with its own structure based on western patriarchy, and reinforced local patriarchy. In this new, formalized patriarchy, the rights that women had negotiated through their resistance in earlier times were diminished. This study on women activists, categorized for the purpose of this research as pioneers, revolutionaries and negotiators, suggests that Ethiopian women activists have since adopted different forms of engagement that tend to improve the social, cultural, economic and political conditions of Ethiopian women. Consequently, I argue that, while Ethiopian women’s activism and feminism is firmly embedded in the history of resistance of previous generations of Ethiopian women, the form of activism varies according to the political and historical context in which the activists negotiate and adapt the way they act.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Systematic Theology and Theological Ethics)) -- University of the North, 2000 / Refer to document

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Föreliggande studie tillämpar diskursanalys i syfte att förstå var det råder samstämmighet eller konflikt kring huruvida Sverige ska sälja, spara eller annullera överskottet på utsläppsrätter inom EU:s och FN:s utsläppshandel. Genom kritisk diskursanalys har vi kategoriserat och kodat tio riksdagsdebatter mellan åren 2010 och 2014, i vilka en ekologisk diskurs och en ekonomisk diskurs kämpar om tolkningsföreträde. Bortsett från samstämmigheten att handel med utsläppsrätter – vilken kan ses som ekologisk modernisering – är ett viktigt verktyg för att minska klimatförändringar; råder öppen kamp kring hur ett överskott på utsläppsrätter ska hanteras. Kampen har delats in i sju kategorier baserat på huruvida: 1) ett beslut om annullering kan tas direkt eller om det krävs en utredning först, 2) en annullering är en symbolisk handling eller styrs av marknadens logik, 3) en försäljning leder till ökade utsläpp, 4) på vilket sätt överskottet ska fungera som förhandlingsstrategi under klimatmöten, 5) Sverige förlorar sitt klimatanseende vid en försäljning av överskott på utsläppsrätter, 6) utsläppshandeln i högre grad borde styras av politiker eller marknadsmekanismer, och slutligen 7) huruvida överskott på utsläppsrätter bör ses som ett lyxproblem. Eftersom det ännu inte finns en fixerad diskursiv entydighet angående hur överskott på utsläppsrätter ska hanteras, menar vi att ingen av diskurserna kan ses som helt hegemonisk. Den ekonomiska diskursen har dock patent på rationaliteten eftersom den, till skillnad från den ekologiska diskursen, har accepterat ekomodernismen. Om den ekonomiska diskursen blir hegemonisk är det sannolikt att ytterligare överskott på utsläppsrätter säljs.Nyckelord: klimatförändringar, EU-ETS, Kyotoprotokollet, ekologisk modernisering, diskursiv kamp. / The following study uses insights derived from discourse analysis to examine whether there is consensus or conflict regarding if Sweden should sell, save or invalidate the surplus of allowances within the emissions trading systems of the EU and the UN. Through critical discourse analysis, we have categorized and coded ten parliamentary debates between the year of 2010 and 2014, in which an ecological discourse and an economic discourse can be derived. Aside from the consistency that the emissions trading systems – which can be seen as ecological modernization - is an important tool to mitigate climate change; an open struggle can be seen regarding how a surplus of allowances should be governed. The struggle has been divided into seven categories based on whether: 1) a decision of invalidation can be taken directly or if an investigation is necessary, 2) an invalidation is a symbolic act or controlled by the logic of the market, 3) a sale directly leads to an increased amount of emissions, 4) in what way the surplus of allowances should serve as a negotiating strategy during international climate meetings, 5) Sweden’s climate profile will be lost in case of a sale, 6) the emissions trading systems to a higher rate should be controlled by politicians or mechanisms of the market, and finally 7) whether the surplus of allowances should be seen as a luxury problem. Since there is not yet a fixed unity regarding how surplus of allowances should be governed, we argue that none of the discourses can be seen as completely hegemonic. However, the economic discourse have positions on rationality due to that it, unlike the ecological discourse, has accepted the ecological modernisation. If the economic discourse becomes hegemonic it is likely that additional surplus of allowances will be sold.Key words: climate change, EU-ETS, the Kyoto Protocol, ecological modernisation, discursive struggle.

<p>Mathematics departments at Canadian universities accept yearly many international graduate students, who are aiming for the MSc and PhD degrees offered by those departments. This study seeks to understand the difficulties faced by some of those students at English-speaking Canadian universities. Its main aim is to determine why some international graduate students struggle with mathematics courses at a graduate level, even though their academic achievement in their home countries may have been high. In this study we want to know whether this problem is related to language barriers, to the time gap between the last acquired degree and the current one, to the educational systems to which students have been exposed in their countries of origin, or to other reasons. I interviewed twelve international graduate students fromMcMasterUniversityandUniversityofGuelphas well as three faculty members from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics atMcMasterUniversity. The students who participated come from different countries:Russia,Belarus,Slovakia,Pakistan,India,Bangladesh,Turkey,Iran,China, andSaudi Arabia. While some of those countries seem to have similar cultures and life styles, others are distinctly different. The interviews helped me to draw a deeper perspective about the problem by exploring the reasons that hamper some of those students from succeeding in their courses, and asking the participants to provide their suggestions to other students and faculty members on how to eliminate these obstacles. This study helps to improve the academic graduate programs of the department of mathematics by adjusting to students’ needs and enhancing their learning outcomes. It also suggests to international graduate students to discover and examine their weaknesses and prepare themselves academically to fulfill the requirements of their programs.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

The writings and the experience of independent African American editors in the first half of the twentieth century from 1901 to 1955 played an invaluable role in laying the ideological groundwork for the Black Freedom movement beginning with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The anti-imperialist writings of Pauline Hopkins who was literary editor of the Colored American Magazine from 1900 to 1904 celebrated revolutionary leaders, and adopted an independent course that refused partisan lines, which prompted her replacement as editor according to a letter she writes to William Monroe Trotter. The anti-imperialist writing of A. Philip Randolph as editor of The Messenger from 1917 to 1928, raised the role of labor organizing in the advancement of racial justice and helped to provide future organizers. These individuals founded the Southern Negro Youth Congress an analytical framework that would help organize thousands of Southern workers against the Jim Crow system into labor unions. Based on the letters he wrote to the American Fund For Public Service, Randolph raised funds by appealing to the values that he believed Fund chair Roger Baldwin also valued while protecting individual supporters of The Messenger from government surveillance. The anti-imperialist writing of Paul Robeson as chair of the editorial board of Freedom from 1950 to 1955 could not escape McCarthyist government surveillance which eventually caused its demise. However not before including an anti-fascist editorial ideology endorsing full equality for African Americans that inspired plays by Alice Childress and Lorraine Hansberry that imagined a world that defies the increasingly fascist rule of the American state. This thesis will argue that the Black Freedom Struggle that developed after the fifties owed a great deal to Hopkins, Randolph, and Robeson. The work that these three did as editors and writers laid a solid intellectual, ideological, and political foundation for the later and better known moment when African American would mobilize en masse to demand meaningful equality in the United States. / African American Studies