Discoursing stability: the conception of minorities in the human domain under Turkish sovereignty

The concept of human security has become a broad one over the last decades, covering aspects ranging from military threats to terrorism, energy and food security, issues concerning migration and minorities and emergencies associated with them. This presentation brings into discussion the conceptualisation of the political identity of the human domain vis-à-vis ethnic identities in Turkey. It suggests the ways in which public political discourse inspired by and encoded in the letter and spirit of the constitution can actually act as major sources of instability at regional level. The presentation aims therefore at illustrating with the Turkish case an important category of potential threats to regional and continental stability originating not in aggressive foreign policies but in the appearance of domestic tranquillity

Educating Through Democracy: A Critical Analysis of Classroom Discourse

In this dissertation, the researcher examined teachers’ and students’ discourses through a social constructionist framing of democratic education to understand how they disrupted or maintained traditional schooling discourses. Data were generated during four consecutive days of video and audio recording of teachers’ and students’ discourses. Other data sources included open-ended interviews; observations; field notes; methodological journal; analytic memos; and the school’s website. Two cycles of coding were employed to identify the teachers’ and students’ discursive enactments. The researcher then utilized a process of micro-ethnographic Interactional Sociolinguistic Transcription as well as Gee’s (2014) processes of micro-ethnographic and macro-ethnographic critical discourse analyses to understand how the teachers’ and students’ discourses disrupted or maintained traditional schooling discourses. Findings demonstrate that teachers and students enacted discourses that disrupted and maintained traditional schooling discourses, sometimes simultaneously. Additionally, findings indicate that it is necessary to employ a social constructionist framing when studying democratic education in order to understand how democracy is nurtured within discourse. KEYWORDS: democratic education, social constructionism, critical discourse analysis, discourse, democrac

Constructing an imagined path to peace during conflict: a critical discourse analysis of human rights education in Gaza, Palestine

Human Rights Education (HRE) for Palestinian refugees in Gaza Strip is integrated in a context where history, culture and collective memory are priorities in the local discourses of right-hood and justice. Palestinian learners are citizens of a non-recognized imagined community, existing through the processes of collective remembering, and the local discourses on rights. This study examines UNRWA’s special HRE curriculum for Palestinian refugees in Gaza Strip. I analyse UNRWA’s HRE policy and a sample of secondary level textbooks. This results in forming my original contribution to the field of human rights and HRE in a context of conflict. That is giving voice to a “collective” counter-hegemonic response to UNRWA’s model of HRE, which marginalizes the local discourse of right-hood. Collective, not in the sense of generalization, but in recognition of Palestinians’ legal and political status, which is a major obstacle for human rights and HRE in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For this, I use qualitative document analysis and a dialectical-relational approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the materials in relation to the wider geo-political and socio-cultural context. The research outcomes reveal that UNRWA promotes a discourse of Human Rights, Conflict Resolution and Tolerance (HRCRT) through a model of HRE which promotes a standardized culture of human rights. The study suggests that, at the level of conflict resolution, UNRWA’s discourse of HRCRT overlooks vital political and legal issues that hinder HRE in Gaza Strip. The curriculum is highly de-politicized and knowledge-based that it prescribes a de-contextualized curriculum, which represents the world as it “ought to be” rather than what “it is”. Therefore, the study argues that the way forward for HRE resides in directly addressing the complex components of the conflict and acknowledging the importance of the local discourses and collective memory for HRE for Palestinian

The Discursive Construction Of Child Sexual Abuse

Currently in the English speaking world adult/child sex and knowledge about it has become firmly located within a taken-for-granted 'child sexual abuse' discourse. My argument in this thesis is that despite being commonly portrayed as a singularity, the discursive arena of adult/child sex is a site of controversy and conflict, invested with meanings that differ over time and place. Child sexual abuse cannot thus be thought of as something that exists outside of the situated knowledge through which its taken-for-granted nature is brought into being and maintained. A stated aim of this thesis is, therefore, to explore some of the complex, heterogeneous and nuanced ways in which adult/child sex is put into discourse as child sexual abuse. The analytics of Beryl Curt and Michel Foucault were applied to Q Methodology, participant observation and a range of ethnographically informed methodologies. The Q Methodological study revealed five explanatory accounts. These were explicated as a Mainstream Professional Account; Boy-Love; A Liberal Account of Child Sexual Abuse; Sexual Abuse as Paraphilia and a Feminist lnformed Account. The Q study also revealed three standpoints on child sexual abuse: Feminist/Child Protectionist; Social Constructionist/Children's Rights; and Childhood Sexuality. Three alternative viewpoints on the social policies that should be adopted in this area were also identified in this study. These were explicated as Libertarian; Control and Protect and Liberal Humanism . Also examined were the performative aspects of the phenomenon of child sexual abuse through an interrogation of the subject position that are available (to survivors of sexual abuse, convicted child sex offenders and those who advocate adult/child sexual contact), to be adopted, resisted or reformed. The thesis ends with a review of the main findings of my research in terms of theory. practice and research in the area of child sexual abuse. It also examines methodological issues and reflects upon my own experiences of conducting this work

Rhetoric and Rupture: A Theory of the Event

Rhetoric and Rupture: A Theory of the Event This thesis engages the problematic of agency and interiority in rhetorical studies by proposing a theory of evental rhetoric. The event is a rupture in the continuities of the symbolic, revealing the distance between the forces of symbolization and their phantasmagorical effects. This theory is built upon the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Lacan, engaging questions of truth, being, and the relationship of the subject to herself and the world. The rhetorics of legal practice, particularly the per curiam opinions of the United States Supreme Court, I argue, provide the institutional and epistemological formations necessary to transcend the bonds of situated rhetoric and become truly evental. I turn to the Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v. United States as an example of such an evental rhetoric. These rhetorics clear the way for the introduction of the new, and found a conversation in which democracy can begin

The European Union, state of exception and state transformation - Romania, Turkey and ethnic minority politics

The dissertation argues that the modern national sovereignty is the political expression of modern subjectivity and it dominates as such the contemporary discourse of human life, ethnic minorities included, in world politics. The analytical mechanism is grounded in social constructivist theorisations of discourse analysis. It evaluates whether and to what extent the enlargement of the European Union (EU) and its accession conditionality affect the discursive mechanisms of the national, sovereign subjectivity and its relations with national minorities. The cases studied here have been chosen because of the two states being inscribed in the recent past (Romania) and currently (Turkey) in the enlargement process. The dissertation builds methodologically on Agamben’s understanding of sovereignty as state of exception, interpreted here originally qua exception from the temporality of human life and therefore apt to author political time. In national form, this is understood as the production of the national time of politics, with a double ontological consequence: it constitutes the political nation, while concomitantly and inherently excluding non-national human life from political possibilities. The method of research develops this methodological perspective to analyse national sovereignty, drawing also on Heidegger, as factualisation of two purely theoretical constructs: the nation and the principle of sovereignty

Ethics of Conflict-Sensitive Journalism & Boko Haram

This paper discusses some ethical concepts and issues as they relate to conflict-sensitive journalism. These concepts are legitimization, objectivity and fairness, among others. The salient issues are in respect of the search for a globally acceptable ethical system. They include thevarieties of journalism practice that exist, the future of the reporter, the dynamic nature of his or her job and the fact that reporters constitute only one group out of many stakeholders whose interests are crucial to the survival of this brand of journalism and the media industry as a whole. Thenon-recognition of these stakeholders is identified as a major impediment in the way of the search for the appropriate ethical universals. Using Boko Haram insurgency as the archetype conflict, the paper identifies these stakeholders and their interests and asserts that the harmonization of theseinterests with those of the journalist is necessary for the creation of a suitable ethical system that can significantly guide the conflict-sensitive reporter.Keywords: Conflict, conflict-sensitive journalism, ethics, insurgents, Boko Haram terrorism, media, media stakeholders, ethical concepts