In an age of globalisation, conflicting identities and cultures continue to remain a source of seemingly intractable conflict. Educative interventions are meanwhile increasing in trend among academics, politicians and multilateral aid organisations. Each regard education as a long-term solution to contemporary social and security issues. Supporting literature on the relationship between education and identity suggests that formal education has a powerful influence on students’ outlook on life, their loyalties and their identities. This premise suggests that when questioned about global issues, Egyptian students who attend international schools within their own country of origin should show more signs of cosmopolitanism and global mindedness than their nationally educated peers. Yet, contrary findings to that of prevailing discourse suggest that education’s ability to shape values and loyalties is likely overemphasised when placed in the context of foreign curricula and international education. At times, students of international schools involved in this study showed more signs of nationalism than their nationally educated counterparts, and presented as equally traditional, conservative and ‘anti-West’ as their compatriots. The thesis thus argues that when education is placed within an international framework, its ability to socialise is significantly weakened, as it is faced with considerable firewalls that are yet to be adequately acknowledged in the discussion of post-national citizenship education. Using a combination of interpretative and critical research methods, rich and original qualitative data was gathered on attitudes and lifestyles of elite Egyptians enrolled at a variety of Egypt’s private international schools. Twenty-two international school educated Egyptian students, and a control group of 21 nationally educated Egyptian students of the same socio-economic background were invited to participate in specially tailored one-to-one interviews to measure their degree of cosmopolitan attitudes. Supplementary participant observations of Egyptian families actively involved in Egypt’s international education community were also conducted to consider the complementarity of the students’ home lives with their school lives. Focus groups were held with students of international schools to determine their views and attitudes towards global issues and other communities. All findings from this research were assessed alongside large-scale values surveys including the World Values Surveys and the Arab Youth Surveys. With the large sample size of pre-existing opinion polls, and the unique isolation of curriculum type as an independent variable in this study, it was possible to assess the transformative impact that an international education plays in the expression of values and beliefs of Egyptian students. The findings of this thesis have multidisciplinary value. For political science readers, the study offers a critical and epistemological analysis of concepts of cosmopolitanism, Westernisation, globalisation and global citizenship. For readers of the Middle East, it is a study into Egyptian youth today and their conflicting identities and loyalties. The Egyptian experience of private international schools and foreign investment is representative of a regional trend, and valuable to those wishing to consider competing narratives for identity in twenty-first century Middle East societies. Finally, it is a study that has an added value to educationists as it explores the role education plays on identity, and more specifically the role of international schools on globalisation and international mindedness. The growing trend of research and analysis that focuses on increased global connectedness and a culturally converging world makes this thesis an important and timely contribution. In an effort to extend the debate beyond the prevailing macro-analyses of change through globalisation, this thesis stresses the importance of looking at global interconnectivity at the micro-level, and particularly how young people navigate and negotiate their identity within the context of increasingly transnational spaces. Through this endeavour, it has reached a critical evaluation of our current understanding of a ‘post-national’ future, through the attitudes and opinions of some of today’s internationally educated generation.

Este trabalho busca analisar como a condição de emergência (de país de capacidades intermediárias) do Brasil no sistema internacional – em particular sua característica reformista ou revisionista da ordem – se coadunou com o projeto de política externa inaugurado em 2003 e motivou um reforço da inserção brasileira no Oriente Médio. Em suma, busca-se mapear as relações entre o Brasil e o Oriente Médio desde 2003 por meio do process-tracing e compreender como a política para a região se relaciona com a inserção internacional brasileira em uma perspectiva mais ampla e quais os seus condicionantes. Destarte, o trabalho pretende, por meio da consideração do caso específico do estreitamento das relações entre Brasil e Irã, Egito e Turquia, introduzir, para além dos determinantes domésticos, a dimensão sistêmica, frequentemente negligenciada nas investigações brasileiras, para analisar a política externa do Brasil. Para além da busca da internacionalização de suas empresas e do incremento comercial, a diplomacia do País iniciou um esforço de maior envolvimento em questões políticas de vulto internacional, amparada no tradicional princípio do universalismo. Logo, a política para o Oriente Médio apresenta importância fundamental no esforço de penetração do Brasil em áreas fora da sua área de influência tradicional. A concepção da “autonomia pela diversificação”, que motiva a aproximação com a região, deve ser compreendida no âmbito da busca brasileira de redistribuição e reconhecimento no sistema internacional. A ação externa brasileira dirigida ao Oriente Médio, em um contexto de entropia no sistema internacional, busca a revisão da ordem por meio do soft balancing, sobretudo via constituição de redes – inclusive de mediação. / This paper seeks to examine how Brazil's emerging country condition in the international system - in particular its reformist or revisionist character - conformed with the foreign policy project inaugurated in 2003 and led to a strengthening of the Brazilian projection in the Middle East. In short, we seek to map the relations between Brazil and the Middle East since 2003 through process-tracing and to understand how its policy for the region relates to Brazilian international integration in a broader perspective and what are its conditioning factors. Thus, the work aims, through the consideration of the specific cases of the rapprochement between Brazil and Iran, Egypt and Turkey, to introduce, in addition to domestic determinants, the systemic dimension, often overlooked in Brazilian research, to analyze Brazilian foreign policy. In addition to the pursuit of internationalization of its companies and to trade improvement interests, the country's diplomacy initiated a greater involvement in international efforts on major policy issues, based on the traditional principle of universalism. Therefore, the policy for the Middle East has fundamental importance in Brazil's efforts to penetrate areas outside of its traditional area of influence. The concept of "autonomy through diversification," which motivates the rapprochement to the region, must be understood within the Brazilian search for power redistribution and recognition in the international system. Brazil's foreign action towards the Middle East, in a context of entropy in the international system, seeks to reform the current order by means of soft balancing, especially via the development of networks, including mediation.

O sistema internacional vem, nas últimas duas décadas, sofrendo modificações em direção à multipolaridade. Países emergentes, como o Brasil, têm buscado maior projeção internacional, motivados por esse cenário em transformação e pela necessidade de promover mudanças no sentido de maior participação das decisões internacionais. Levando em consideração que a legitimidade é necessária à manutenção do poder internacional, pois os custos do uso exclusivo da coerção são muito altos, faz-se necessário o estudo da percepção dos atores internacionais, por ser base para a formação da legitimidade. Dessa forma, o objetivo do trabalho é explicar a percepção de um Estado sobre a atuação de outro. Tendo em vista a relevância da compreensão da projeção internacional brasileira nesse cenário de crescente multipolaridade, cabe analisar a percepção de outros Estados sobre a atuação do Brasil em novas áreas, como o Oriente Médio, e avaliar a atual estratégia brasileira de inserção internacional. Os países estudados são Arábia Saudita, Argélia, Bahrain, Marrocos, Qatar e Tunísia. Foram utilizados os conceitos de leitura da realidade internacional e de postura diante do sistema internacional para explicar os fatores que influenciam a percepção dos atores internacionais. / The international system has been undergoing changes towards multipolarity in the two last decades. Emerging countries, such as Brazil, have been seeking to increase their international projection, motivated by the transformation of this scenario and by the necessity of promoting changes in order to participate more of international decisions. Taking into account that legitimacy is required to the maintenance of international power, as the costs of using exclusively coercion are too high, it is necessary to study the perception of international actors, because it is the basis of legitimacy. In this sense, the objective of this dissertation is to explain the perception of one State about another. Given the relevance of understanding Brazilian international projection in this scenario of increasing multipolarity, it is worth analyzing the perception of other states about Brazilian action in new areas, such as the Middle East, and evaluating its current strategy of international insertion. The countries analyzed are Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Bahrain, Morocco, Qatar and Tunisia. The study uses the concepts of how states understand the international reality and how they stand before it in order to explain the factors that influence their international perception.

There is a legal separation in Jordan between Sharia' (Islamic) Law and Civil Law. Both types of law come together to create criminal law that has a negative effect on women's rights. Laws in Jordan are evolving in the right direction but are not going far enough to protect women from violence. This study explores the issues of violence against women in Jordan through a study the Jordanian legal system and the experience of women who suffer violence. The working of the Jordanian justice system is presented by analysing the responses of state and non-state institutions dealing with violence against women. Included in the research is an analysis of feminist concerns with the law and the position of women in society. My concern is with the way in which women's inferior position impacts on their experience of violence and their ability to obtain redress and access protection. The methods used to complete this study included qualitative data collections such as field observations, and semi-structured participant interviews. It also extended to archival work in which I studied official reports and public policies on VAW. My study attempts to explain the structure of gender relations and women's experiences of violence in the context of Jordanian society by using feminist theory. The empirical work conducted in Jordan considered the effectiveness of law in serving victims. Further analysis considers how the Jordanian socio-economic and legal environment influences women's decisions on whether to seek help. The research found that there is a need to introduce better-developed law accompanied by additional policy measures to affect an essential change in attitudes. This requires changing some laws and policy programmes to increase awareness of legal rights. Additionally, I will suggest that applying Islamic law to women's rights can also give women more freedom and provide them with additional opportunities to access protection. The research identified a need for coherence between Civil and Sharia' (Islamic) Law in developing civil and criminal remedies which would align Jordan's domestic law to its international obligations.

Denna studie utfördes med syfte att studera hur andra generationens invandrare i Sverige upplever representationen i västerländska TV-serier och huruvida deras verklighetsbild kring landet överstämde med det fiktiva. Studien analyseras utifrån ett postkolonialt perspektiv med teorier som inkluderar Orientalism, representation och stereotyper. Frågeställningen grundade sig i huruvida dessa intervjupersoner kände sig representerade och om bilden av kulturen och landet var rättvist gestaltad samt hur de upplevde serierna kontra verkligheten. Metoden som användes för att besvara frågeställningen var kvalitativa intervjuer där resultatet visade att intervjupersonernas verklighet upplevelser inte stämde överens med vad som visats i serierna då mycket utav det som framställt var enligt deras tolkningar konstruerade stereotyper. / This study was conducted with the purpose of studying how the second generation of immigrants in Sweden experience the representation in western television series and how their reality image of the country overlooked the fictive. The study is analyzed based on postcolonial perspectives and theories that include representation, orientalism and stereotypes. The aim was based on whether or not these interviewees felt represented and if the image of the culture and the country were fairly visualized and how they experienced the series vs reality. The method used to answer the question was qualitative interviews where the results showed that the actual experiences of the interviewees did not match with what was shown in the series. Based on their interpretations a big part of the series was constructed by stereotypes.

Talent Management (TM) is of growing interest within academia and in the strategic HRM literature in particular. Despite many attempts to study TM from different perspectives, it remains an ambiguous and elusive concept that is difficult to define and hence challenging to explore and address. Studies on TM are based within Western contexts and therefore it is questionable whether TM models and theories are transferable to other nations and contexts. This research examines the nature of TM in the Middle Eastern context of Oman, from the perspective of Institutional Theory. Through a qualitative, multiple case-study approach, data was collected from four banking and petroleum-sector organisations through semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that the different influences of institutional pressures (e.g. nationalisation, competition, organisational characteristics) have significantly shaped TM in these organisations. The findings show that TM effectiveness and sustainability depends upon a range of factors including: generational differences, employee expectations, the role of expatriates and national culture. Thus, TM and its approach has to be understood and framed within the context of institutions which interact with organisational characteristics; this shapes the way in which the organisations define their TM approach in order to seek legitimacy, business continuity and effectiveness.

Ce travail de recherche retrace la rivalité des puissances occidentales au Liban entre 1940 et 1958, qui découle d’un affaiblissement progressif de ses anciennes puissances colonisatrices, la France et la Grande-Bretagne. Nous essaierons de dérouler au cours de cette étude le nouvel ordre imposé au Moyen-Orient. Nous analyserons la manière dont les États-Unis ont cherché à supplanter les anciennes puissances coloniales.Pour la période suivante, de 1947 à 1958, qui voit au Moyen-Orient un bouleversement politique majeur avec la fin des Mandats, la création de l’État d’Israël et la montée du nationalisme arabe, nous nous pencherons sur l’apparition sur la scène moyen orientale d’une nouvelle superpuissance, l’Union soviétique. Nous détaillerons la position du Liban vis à vis des alliances, de la crise de Suez et de la cirse libanaise de 1958. Nous essaierons d’apprécier dans quelles mesures elles ont contribué à accélérer la chute des anciennes puissances colonisatrices supplantées par les deux nouvelles super puissances.Dans ce nouveau contexte, le Liban apparaîtra au cœur de ces événements, dépassé par les enjeux et tiraillé par l’opposition interne entre musulmans pro nassériens et chrétiens pro-occidentaux. Nous verrons notamment comment, pour contrer l’influence soviétique au Moyen-Orient après la crise du canal de Suez, Eisenhower remania sa politique dans la région profitant de la perte d'influence franco-britannique.Nous arriverons à la conclusion que ces dix années apparaissent comme déterminantes dans l’histoire de la rivalité américano-européenne au Moyen Orient et tout en dessinant un affaiblissement définitif des autres puissances occidentales, scellé par l’échec de Suez, elles déterminent pour la décennie à venir, jusqu’en 1967, les règles du jeu de cet Orient complexe… / This research, traces the rivalries, between the year 1940 and 1958, amid the Western powers within Lebanon, which is the result of the gradual weakening of their former colonial powers, France and Great Britain. Through this study, we will expose the new order imposed on the Middle East, and we will analyze how the United States sought to supplant the former colonial forces.Furthermore, during the years 1947 to 1958, the Middle East witnessed a major political upheaval with the end of the mandate, the establishment of the State of Israel, the rise of Arab nationalism and the rise of a new superpower in that region: the Soviet Union. Moreover, we will specifically detail the causes and consequences of the Suez Canal crisis and we will try to assess its extent on the accelerated collapse of the former colonial forces, superseded by their two new challengers. In the light of these events, Lebanon will appear overwhelmed by the challenges, and torn by the internal opposition between pro-Nasserite Muslims and pro-Western Christians. It will be shown in detail how, to counter the Soviet influence in the Middle East after the Suez crisis, Eisenhower reshuffled his policy in the area, taking advantage of the decreasing influence of France and Great Britain.Eventually, we come to the conclusion, that the decade spanning from 1947 to 1958 is decisive to the history of the US-European rivalry in the Middle East, where the weakening of all other Western powers is definitive, and where the rules of the game, in the extremely complex region, became determined for the following decade.

This study explores six English as a foreign language students in an English content-based course of critical thinking delivered via distance at the Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) in Iran. Framed within cultural-historical activity theory, the study seeks to shed light on the complex nature of students' course-related activities with a particular focus on contradictions that underlie any human activity. The construct of contradictions provides a theoretical lens to understand the complex web of relationships among a number of elements in the course taking activity situated in a cultural-historical setting beset with political controversies, technological challenges, and demands of the bilingual curriculum of the university. To capture the complex nature of contradictions, the study employed a naturalistic methodology and relied primarily on in-depth interviews with the participants, observations of their online behaviors, and the artifacts that student participants produced by the end of the semester. The findings indicate that most participants had multiple activity systems within the course environment, some of which were oriented towards academic and others non-academic objects. According to the data and theoretical interpretations, most participants had primary, secondary, and quaternary contradictions. Most primary contradictions had the nature of use and exchange value, which in practical terms indicates the orientation towards genuine learning or earning a grade. Primary and quaternary contradictions led to many secondary contradictions. Furthermore, it transpired that content-based instruction pushed the participants to engage actively in actions oriented towards improving English even for the participants who did not have the object of improving English. Among many other findings are detrimental consequences of contradictions that are traced back to the persecutions of BIHE students, faculty, and staff.

The central theory guiding my research is that interstate conflict, at least as covered in mass media, leaves residual cultural attitudes that can shape the political context in which elites formulate policy. Specifically, U.S. interventionism in the Middle East has given rise to fundamental hostilities, founded on misguided biases, that shape involvement in the region today. I focus on one step within that broader theory, to test it empirically: the hypothesis that anti-Muslim stereotypes, when activated, will shape an individual’s foreign-policy preferences. I begin by considering competing accounts that link 1) ethnocentrism or 2) targeted stereotypes with support for the use of military force in the Middle East. After careful review of the group-based and social-identity theories that undergird the two accounts, I synthesize them. My more-complete theory can be summarized as: Someone will exhibit an ethnocentric response toward an out-group when negative stereotypes about the group combine with an individual’s in-group identity to result in perceived threat. Applying the logic of that hypothesis to Muslims and American foreign policy, I argue that, for American whites, Muslims are uniquely situated to be perceived as realistic and symbolic cultural threats to their core national identity because they may differ in terms of ethnicity, culture, and religion. Mass media portray Muslims as violent and encourage Americans to evaluate them in terms of such cultural dissimilarity. On the other hand, Muslims present little identity threat to blacks, whose core in-group identity typically revolves around their status as a racial minority in the United States. Even blacks who identify with the nation will not view Islam as incompatible with their national identity because that identity is typically not predicated on looking, living, or believing a certain way. I develop these ideas into testable hypotheses and investigate how anti-Muslim attitudes shape opinion about important contemporary Middle East issues. Using survey and experimental data, I find compelling evidence linking anti-Muslim attitudes – among whites – to support for using military force (rather than diplomacy) against Iran and against Islamists. Those attitudes also predict opposition to accepting Syrian refugees. Finally, I turn from this narrative of negativity to argue that the anti-Muslim stereotypes many citizens bring to bear when forming judgments of Middle East policy can be shifted. I base this optimistic expectation on media framing theories, which suggest that issue frames can shift opinion when they emphasize strong and credible arguments. After constructing frames from debate statements during the 2016 Presidential Election, and an original frame that affirms counterstereotypes of Muslims, I expect and find evidence that strong frames emphasizing the obligations of American identity and factual counterstereotype-affirming information can shift those who oppose accepting refugees to more moderate positions. Broadly, my research offers a theoretically-grounded schematic for how stereotypes and identity construction operate together cognitively to shape public opinion. My methods offer leverage to those endeavoring to explain how these idea elements shape opinion in other issue domains. I also divulge important nuances about how specific actors (i.e., whites) propagate a cycle of anti-Muslim attitudes, warfare, and terrorism. I contribute to rivalry theory in international relations by explaining how cultural biases shape an enduring rivalry of the grandest scale: the perpetual U.S.-Middle East conflict. My framing research offers both academic and practical contributions by providing evidence on behalf of existing theory and by suggesting how media and political elites – by describing issues in unbiased ways – could knock off course the perpetual cycle of American interventionism, retaliatory terrorism, and resulting anti-Muslim stereotype generalizations.

This thesis is an exploration of hospitality, sharing and acclimation within a studio art practice as a means of fostering consideration of others. I employ a practice whereby I disrupt the typical gallery context, and through the production and dissemination of consumable items from the Middle East, I examine how resources can be used, valued, and shared to accommodate various and unspecified others and provide opportunities for crossing thresholds of guest and host relationships.