Images of rural activities become very popular in mosaic floor decoration in the Levant during the Late Antique period. I aim to explore different categories of iconography and discuss the images of people engaged in rural activities, such as pastoralism; hunting, fishing and activities connected with the vintage. I also aim to look at imagery that is often discussed in isolation without relation to other connected iconographic categories. The symbolic meaning of the representations of the zodiac found in synagogues, for example, is often discussed in detail without also looking at the rural calendars that appear in Christian contexts during the same period in the same region. I also want to explore the archaeological evidence for the activities that appear on the mosaic pavements. Studying both the archaeology and the iconography will, I hope, help us understand what the use of these particular categories of iconography in decorative schemes can tell us about the society that created them.

The earliest, but scarce, evidence of cuneiform signs being used syllabically to write Akkadian words and proper nouns is at Fara and Tell Abu Salabikh between 2600 BC and 2500 BC. Between around 2350 BC and 1800 BC, there is an increase in the development and use of signs with syllabic values across Mesopotamia and Syria, but these syllabic values (together called 'syllabaries') are still very local in nature with significant and observable differences in sign usage and values between sites. Starting around 1800 BC, reforms to the system begin to be enforced that standardise these signs and their values, which essentially ends any major variability in the script within specific periods. This provides us with a period of almost 600 years, spanning the second half of the third millennium and early second millennium BC, during which there is a wealth of textual data documenting the first full adaptation of the cuneiform script to syllabically write Semitic words and proper nouns. This thesis investigates the attestations and usage of syllabic values to write Semitic lexemes in the cuneiform text corpora from Ebla, Mari, Nabada, Tuttul, Adab, Eshnunna, Kish, Tutub, Assur, and Gasur - with a particular focus on the Syrian sites - during the second half of the third millennium BC and early second millennium BC in order to answer the following two research questions: 1. Did each third millennium site in Mesopotamia and Syria have its own unique syllabary? 2. What were the primary factors that influenced the differences between the syllabaries? This research uses a series of three interdependent techniques to determine and understand the use and distribution of syllabic values within the cuneiform writing system during the second half of the third millennium BC and early second millennium BC. The results suggest that during this period cuneiform syllabaries are variable, and that variation can further inform us about the regional, temporal, and dialectical contexts in which they existed. The addition of this research to the wider literature on the early adaptation of cuneiform will enhance the field's understanding of how cuneiform syllabic values began to develop and emerge across the ancient Near East, and demonstrates how scientific and computational methods of analysis can be applied to research questions in humanities subjects.

Since the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) victory and government in 2002, Turkey entered a new phase in its history and witnessed major changes in all social, economic, and political aspects. Turkish foreign policy went through huge transformations and the new AKP government was able to revolutionise Turkey’s international position. In particular, relations with Middle Eastern countries have tremendously improved and Turkish interests and role have been growing ever since. This thesis investigates the sources of change in Turkish foreign policy since 2002 towards the Middle East, focusing on the role of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) as a ruling party in particular on the changes it went through in the first ten years from 2002 to early 2012. The significant changes in Turkish foreign policy appeared under the AKP government became one of the most debated issues in this field and created a puzzle that many scholars attempted to explain. Therefore, the thesis engages in recent debates between the different scholars and analysts in the literature and argues that there is a need for a more inclusive approach that can recognize the complex and multilateral nature of the Turkish case. The aim is to assess and evaluate the plausibility of the available competing explanations in the literature in explaining such foreign policy outcomes. Therefore, the thesis borrows and builds on the works of Alexander George & Andrew Bennet (2005), and Derek Beach & Rasmus Pedersen (2013) by adopting the Process Tracing Methodology, which helps to facilitate a better critical analysis and systematic evaluation of the selected explanations. The results of this thesis demonstrate that single factor based explanations actually drive researchers away from achieving a comprehensive explanation and only help provide a partial picture. Therefore, the best way to go forward is by adopting a much more inclusive and multiple factors based approach recognising the important opportunity that foreign policy theories offer in looking at the Turkish case from different perspectives. The results of this thesis suggest that the best way for understanding Turkish foreign policy change is by recognizing the multiple roles of domestic and international economic, political,and ideational sources, as well as the role of policy makers, particularly that of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ahmet Davutoglu. The contribution of this thesis lies within its analysis bringing the wide range of explanations in the literature together, exploring and summarizing the vast number of data in a more simplified manner, and examining the value and plausibility of the competing explanation to try and arrive at the most comprehensive explanation, all under one piece of work. Therefore, this thesis establishes a useful foundation for researchers to adopt and take forward in future studies.

abstract: Belief affects behavior and rhetoric has the potential to bring about action. This paper is a critical content analysis of the ideology and rhetoric of key Islamist intellectuals and the Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, as stated on the website http://english.hizbuttahrir.org. The responses of specific Muslim Reformers are also analyzed. The central argument underlying this analysis centers on the notion that such Islamist ideology and its rhetorical delivery could be a significant trigger for the use of violence; interacting with, yet existing independently of, other factors that contribute to violent actions. In this case, a significant aspect of any solution to Islamist rhetoric would require that Muslim Reformers present a compelling counter-narrative to political Islam (Islamism), one that has an imperative to reduce the amount of violence in the region. Rhetoric alone cannot solve the many complicated issues in the region but we must begin somewhere and countering the explicit and implicit calls to violence of political Islamist organizations like Hizb ut-Tahrir seems a constructive step. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Communication Studies 2010

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.

No description available.

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.

abstract: One in six children in the developing world is engaged in Child labor. Child labor is considered an issue that violates children's rights in many countries and Iraq is no exception. In 2004, Iraq had 1,300,000 children between the ages of eight and sixteen years engaged in work (UNICEF.com, 2004). This study identifies the major causes of child labor in Iraq and investigates the consequences of this issue. In this thesis I draw on the comparison of former regimes in Iraq and Egypt and how those regimes were mistreating their citizens by making them live under poverty and oppression while they were receiving support from the U.S. Poverty is the major cause behind Iraqi children engaging in work. I used the data I collected in Iraq, in the city of Nasiriyah, of 28 working children to explain the relationship between poverty, students drop out of school, family attitude towards education and the child engagement in work. At the end of the thesis I offer a list of recommendations to try to address the problem of child labor in Iraq. The recommendations and regulations are for Iraqi government and the NGOs to take into consideration in trying to resolve and regulate the issue of child labor to rescue the children in Iraq from more exploitation in the future. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Social Justice and Human Rights 2011

abstract: This study is a feminist historiography of Al-Raida, a Lebanese feminist journal introduced in 1976 by the Institute for Women's Studies in the Arab World at the Lebanese American University. This study recovers foundations of modern Lebanese feminist discourses as they are articulated in the journal by employing Foucauldian CDA as a means to trace discourse strands, or conversations, which include Family Planning, development, politics and narratives of the Lebanese civil war. This study explores, by situating each discourse strand within dominant and local historical contexts, the shifting rhetorical function of the journal through various historical moments. Tracing the dominant discourse strands within the first decade of the journal, this study rhetorically analyzes the ways in which arguments are positioned, research studies are presented, and methodologies are employed to forge viable solutions to Middle Eastern women's issues. First, the study traces the conversation on Family Planning in Lebanon and its relevance to the economic and social situation during the late 70s. Second, the study presents the shift in the early 80s towards a discourse on development and explores how Al-Raida presents the issue of development, attempts to define it, and in doing so outlines some of the concerns at this time, including illiteracy, access to health care, access to paid employment, and women's access to developmental opportunities. Third, the study presents the discourse in the mid-80s on the civil war in Lebanon and highlights Al-Raida's rhetorical function by documenting trauma and war narratives through personal interviews, testimonies, and ethnographies. The shift in the methodologies of the research articles published in the first decade, from quantitative studies towards qualitative studies, indicates the journal is rhetorically situated within both the dominant international discourse and within the local context, exhibiting an ability to respond to the nuances in the local Lebanese women's movement while simultaneously maintaining international visibility. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2012