3,571 research outputs found

    Undoing borders, building the commons: the solidarity politics of the No Evictions Network in Glasgow

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    This thesis is about the spatial politics of migrant solidarities. Drawing on a scholaractivist approach, it engages with the struggles of the No Evictions Network in Glasgow. The Network emerged through the convergence of heterogeneous trajectories of activism and migrant advocacy in the city to challenge the eviction of over 300 asylum seekers by Serco, a multinational company that held a billionaire contract from the Home Office to accommodate asylum seekers in Glasgow and other areas across the UK. Bringing literature on Black Geographies to the analysis of the border regimes, the thesis positions migrant struggles in relation to black counter cartographies of struggle. Centring questions of race, it reframes current work on migration and solidarity through a nuanced engagement with black and feminist theories, making important interventions. On the one hand, engaging with the role that neoliberal companies like Serco develop within the political economies of the border and the production of migrants’ ‘premature death’ (Gilmore, 2007), the thesis addresses the Network’s politics as struggles against racial capitalism (Robinson, 1983). A focus on racial capitalism unpacks the articulations of racism, capitalism, or patriarchy underlying the struggles against borders, throwing light on the importance of building transversal alliances. The coming together of migrant collectives, housing struggles, and neighbours in the Network was an example of such alliances. Nevertheless, the political experiences of the Network illustrate how the crafting of solidarities and the negotiation of heterogeneous political cultures unfolds as a contentious process, crisscrossed by racialized, classed, and gendered borders (Featherstone, 2012). In this regard, special attention is drawn to the negotiation of power asymmetries and the tensions between strategies of ‘direct support’ and ‘political campaigning’ throughout the Network’s campaigns. The argument explores how migrant agencies performed powerful strategies of mutual support, collective empowerment, and healing, challenging racialized and gendered notions of the political and activist cultures. Building upon these experiences, the concept of ‘political reproduction’ underscores how social reproductive politics not only enable migrants’ survival across the deadly geographies of racial capitalism, but they are the means to build capacity of political struggle, linking to broader black and brown politics. Overall, the thesis explores how ‘undoing borders’ is an ongoing learning process that demands centring questions of antiracism and migrant agency when tackling the intertwining oppressions coming to the fore through place-based struggles (hooks, 2013; Mohanty, 2003)

    International Student Orientations: Indian Students at American Universities Around the Turn of the Twentieth Century

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    This dissertation examines the writings and experiences of five Indian international students in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By drawing attention to these students, I attend to the ways in which notions of freedom, progress, and inclusivity associated with American higher education, and liberalism more generally, are related to structures of racialized and colonial dispossession in India. I build these arguments by reading archival sources such as university administrative records, student publications, personal and official correspondence, as well as understudied aesthetic works, such as memoirs, travel narratives, essays, doctoral dissertations, and public lectures. These historical materials show us how Indian international students oriented themselves amidst the shifting power relations between British colonialism, Indian anticolonial nationalism, and American higher education. I explore how the American university became a site that both encouraged Indian international students’ anticolonial political work, while simultaneously managing and curtailing their sense of political possibility. I discuss how some Indian international students were drawn to the emancipatory tendencies of liberalism that they encountered on campus, but they never pushed their analysis to probe the ways in which racism and colonialism created the material conditions that guaranteed rights, liberties, and economic prosperity only for some sections of society. Conducting a historical analysis of the Indian international student therefore reveals the American university to be a paradoxical space. On the one hand, we find ample evidence that suggests that international students were welcomed into the campus community and supported in their educational and political endeavors by their alma mater. On the other hand, the international student’s experiences also reveal how racism operated both within and outside the university. Furthermore, the international student draws attention towards how the larger context of British colonialism in India pushed students to attend American universities, and correspondingly, how the American exceptionalist nationalist ideology functioning on campuses pulled Indian students into their orbit of influence

    The University of Montana: A History Through the Lens of Physical Culture, PE, Health, Athletics, and Recreation 1897-2019: The Evolution of a Department

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    https://scholarworks.umt.edu/burns/1000/thumbnail.jp

    The portrayal of Emperor Kôken/Shôtoku in historical sources and belletristic works, and the circumstances which played a part in it

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    This paper examines the portrayal of the last female ruler of Nara Japan, Emperor Kôken/Shôtoku, in different sources (chronicles, graphic images, novels, and modern historiography) and the social, political, cultural and religious factors which (could) have influenced the said narrative. Having been the last woman who ascended the Imperial throne of Japan and who had actually been able to exert real authority over the court, Emperor Kôken/Shôtoku could be considered a controversial figure in the history of the Imperial House of Japan and its rulers, and had thus become an object of either criticism of praise, with some authors even holding the opinion that her politics during her two reigns are the main reason why females were excluded from the order of succession of the Imperial House of Japan. Incorporating evidence from chronicles, graphic images, novels and modern historiography, this study demonstrated that the portrayal of Emperor Kôken/Shôtoku either in a good or in a bad light depended on a set of different factors. On the one hand there are always outer elements to consider such as the political situation, the cultural or religious influences in Japan at the time of the compilation of the particular source, as well as the author’s own opinion on the Imperial House of Japan and the role of the emperor in society. On the other hand inner factors such as the fact that Kôken/Shôtoku had been the first, and so far the last, female Crown Prince in the history of the Imperial House, her reascension to the throne after dethroning her successor, her political determination and cunning, which enabled her to compete with the male courtiers and even emerge victorious from their political struggles, or her unusual preference for the Buddhist monk Dôkyô during her second reign also played a major role in the way she had been perceived by the contemporary and later authors. As a result, there are as many sources which criticise her as there are such that praise her, which contributes to the creation of the full portrait of the woman and the ruler Kôken/Shôtoku

    The Entrenched Political Limitations of Australian Refugee Policy: A Case Study of the Australian Labor Party (2007-2013)

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    This thesis deconstructs Australia’s asylum and refugee policy trajectory under the Labor government between 2007 and 2013. For a short time after the 2007 election, in accordance with its promise to abolish the LNP’s Pacific Solution, Labor began to unwind certain policy structures of externalisation and deterrence that had been in place since the introduction of mandatory detention in 1992. By 2013 however, the ALP had declared that asylum seekers arriving by boat had no prospect of resettlement in Australia. This thesis analyses the political strategy of the ALP in rhetoric, policy choices and policy justifications to derive lessons from Labor’s mitigated challenge to the deterrence/externalisation paradigm. Critical Discourse Analysis is used to examine the political strategies of lead actors, particularly the ALP and the LNP, and to reconcile these strategies with policy outcomes such as irregular arrivals, detention figures, deaths at sea and compliance with obligations under international law. A central argument of this thesis is that Labor’s attempt to sustainably depart from the dominant externalisation paradigm was impaired, not by a lack of commitment to its stated program of reform, but rather by entrenched political limitations of the Australian context. These limitations include the LNP’s rigid partisanship and lack of policy compromise, the deep-rooted nature of mandatory detention, and the Australian public’s historical and continued support for controlled migration. A precise and detailed analysis of the impact of these limitations on Labor’s proposed reform fills a gap in academic knowledge about the political influences on policy action in Australian asylum and refugee policy. I contend that these limitations must be effectively engaged with in any attempt to reform the Australian asylum and refugee policy space

    Personality and US presidential choices: a study of the protracted Afghanistan war

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    The 20-year-long US war in Afghanistan, which started in 2001 and ended in 2021, resulted in significant civilian casualties, US military deaths and financial costs. This protracted war raised the question of why the war endured for so long despite such terrible costs. In order to answer this question, this thesis explores the causal relationship between the personalities and leadership styles of US presidents George Walker Bush and Barack Obama and their decision-making relating to US continuation of this war. Bush’s and Obama’s personalities and leadership styles are examined using Leadership Trait Analysis (LTA). Further personality-based expectations relating to the two presidents’ policy orientations and decision-making are developed based on their scores on the seven LTA traits. These expectations are examined in two case studies of five major occasions for decision and two subsequent policy changes relating to the Afghanistan war. The findings confirm that Bush’s and Obama’s personalities help understand and explain their continuation of the Afghanistan war. First, their war orientations are consistent with the expectations based on their distrust of others. Another trait, in-group bias, also helps explain their continuation of this war. Second, the different ways in which the two presidents managed their decision-making processes and shaped the policy outcomes are mainly consistent with the expectations based on their personalities. Third, leaders’ openness to divergent voices in decision-making is based more on their conceptual complexity and can be influenced by their task focus and inexperience in different ways. Findings from this thesis contribute to the existing scholarship on the post-9/11 US foreign policy in Afghanistan, especially US continuation of the US-Afghanistan war. Furthermore, this thesis makes two main theoretical contributions to LTA theory. First, it explores and identifies the causal relationship between leaders’ distrust of others and their continuation of the war. Second, it examines and identifies factors (leaders’ task focus and inexperience) that influence the effects of leaders’ conceptual complexity on their openness to divergent opinions in decision-making

    Data Rescue : defining a comprehensive workflow that includes the roles and responsibilities of the research library.

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    Thesis (PhD (Research))--University of Pretoria, 2023.This study, comprising a case study at a selected South African research institute, focused on the creation of a workflow model for data rescue indicating the roles and responsibilities of the research library. Additional outcomes of the study include a series of recommendations addressing the troublesome findings that revealed data at risk to be a prevalent reality at the selected institute, showing the presence of a multitude of factors putting data at risk, disclosing the profusion of data rescue obstacles faced by researchers, and uncovering that data rescue at the institute is rarely implemented. The study consists of four main parts: (i) a literature review, (ii) content analysis of literature resulting in the creation of a data rescue workflow model, (iii) empirical data collection methods , and (iv) the adaptation and revision of the initial data rescue model to present a recommended version of the model. A literature review was conducted and addressed data at risk and data rescue terminology, factors putting data at risk, the nature, diversity and prevalence of data rescue projects, and the rationale for data rescue. The second part of the study entailed the application of content analysis to selected documented data rescue workflows, guidelines and models. Findings of the analysis led to the identification of crucial components of data rescue and brought about the creation of an initial Data Rescue Workflow Model. As a first draft of the model, it was crucial that the model be reviewed by institutional research experts during the next main stage of the study. The section containing the study methodology culminates in the implementation of four different empirical data collection methods. Data collected via a web-based questionnaire distributed to a sample of research group leaders (RGLs), one-on-one virtual interviews with a sample of the aforementioned RGLs, feedback supplied by RGLs after reviewing the initial Data Rescue Workflow Model, and a focus group session held with institutional research library experts resulted in findings producing insight into the institute’s data at risk and the state of data rescue. Feedback supplied by RGLs after examining the initial Data Rescue Workflow Model produced a list of concerns linked to the model and contained suggestions for changes to the model. RGL feedback was at times unrelated to the model or to data and necessitated the implementation of a mini focus group session involving institutional research library experts. The mini focus group session comprised discussions around requirements for a data rescue workflow model. The consolidation of RGL feedback and feedback supplied by research library experts enabled the creation of a recommended Data Rescue Workflow Model, with the model also indicating the various roles and responsibilities of the research library. The contribution of this research lies primarily in the increase in theoretical knowledge regarding data at risk and data rescue, and culminates in the presentation of a recommended Data Rescue Workflow Model. The model not only portrays crucial data rescue activities and outputs, but also indicates the roles and responsibilities of a sector that can enhance and influence the prevalence and execution of data rescue projects. In addition, participation in data rescue and an understanding of the activities and steps portrayed via the model can contribute towards an increase in the skills base of the library and information services sector and enhance collaboration projects with relevant research sectors. It is also anticipated that the study recommendations and exposure to the model may influence the viewing and handling of data by researchers and accompanying research procedures.Information SciencePhD (Research)Unrestricte
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