Suchergebnisse

This thesis focuses on pro-kurdish activism in Turkey during 2005–2009. It is based on a large number of interviews conducted with activists within the Diyarbakır area. The form of activism that this study seeks to describe is civil and political activism conducted within the legal framework ofTurkey's judicial system and international law.The purpose of this thesis is to examine what kind of resistance strategies are used by pro-Kurdish political activists in Turkey, focusing on how these strategies are reflected in the language used by the respondents. The main question posed in the thesis is: What resistance strategies are used within the pro-Kurdish movement in Turkey? Two additional questions were also posed in order to make it possible to answer the main question. The first of these is: What external conditions influence pro-Kurdish mobilization in Turkey during the study's time frame? In order to answer this question a theoretical framework is used that includes theories about ethnopolitical mobilization and political opportunity structures. The second question is: What resistance strategies are reflected in the language used by the pro-Kurdish activists?An important resistance strategy used by the pro-Kurdish activists is to adapt the language used in public communication to the legal and political environment in which they find themselves. They make linguistic choices in order to convey political messages while minimizing the legal consequences of doing so. The resistance strategies reflected in the interviews with the activists also include efforts to build organizations and cooperations at different levels, ranging from the international to the local level. Resistance strategies also include choices regarding what medium and language to use in promoting pro-Kurdish politics.

Political commitments in our time are often described as characterized by political de-collectivization & increasing individualism. In the article this polarity between individualism & collectivism is addressed. Empirically, it is based on a survey which 1066 global justice movement activists participated in. Among these, activism has both strong individual & collective orientations. Personal commitment & individual political action is emphasized at the same time as the activism aims at reforming institutions & is carried out in collective contexts, involving traditional political actors as parties & trade unions. Furthermore, this is done despite a low degree of trust in political institutions & traditional political actors, especially among activists who participated in the events during the EU summit meeting in Gothenburg 2001. Tables, Diagrams, References. Adapted from the source document.

Against a background of urban aestheticization, the following study addresses questions of urban formation and change. The aim of the thesis is to investigate how an activist urban configuration, in this case the so-called "Free Town of Christiania" in Copenhagen, may affect a more general urban planning and design discourse, as well as the aesthetic assumptions behind contemporary spatial practice. The working hypothesis of the study is that an actualization of expressive urban activist practices will lead to a different conception of spatial development and change than the one presently dominating the field of urban planning. It is also anticipated that the conceptual prerequisites for urban planning and design may be altered through a radical interrogation of aestheticization processes, as they have appeared through a controversial and in many respects illegitimate 'taking of place.' The objective of the thesis has therfore not been the assessment of the specific urban formation as an ideal solution to urban life. Instead the study should be seen as a problematizing interrogation through a concrete example of the complex relation between expressive aesthetic action, spatial reproduction, and the representational power of form. The study is undertaken in the conviction that urban formation is an intermediary and composite practice that cannot be understood in isolation from social, linguistic, material, and political realities of expressive actions. Methodologically, this means that the present work is articulated within the paradigm of performativity, theorizing urban locality production from three different perspectives: the formlessness of the subject, the formlessness of space and the formlessness of power, all of which constitute a tactical dissassembly of the privileged notion of urban form. As such, the thesis aims at introducing a more elaborate and critically resonant aesthetic discussion into urban discourse, actualizing the creative potential of re-conceptualizing urban planning and design as intermediary as-if spaces of social and political interaction.

We live in a moment of hardening of nationalist discourses against immigration and racial minorities. In this conservative climate, Canada prevails as a benchmark for multicultural integration. However, there are voices within the nation that question this image of harmony. The case of the Black Vancouver community has not yet been studied in depth in this regard. This article of reflection aims to contribute to the debate on the relations of the nation-state and subaltern groups, and how they manifest themselves in the multicultural city. Vancouver has been chosen as a paradigmatic space because of its transcultural character built on indigenous lands. The object of study was the literature of Wayde Compton author and black activist of the city. Stemming from theories of the socio-spatial dialectic of Edward Soja and Leonie Sandercock, this article analyses the connection between the city, its representation in literature and its effects on social relationships. The work of Compton and its parallelism with the geo-history of Vancouver and subaltern ethnic communities were analysed. The result reaches a reading of Vancouver as a (post)colonial city and space of subaltern multiculturalism, regarding the official Canadian model, and colonialism that has made invisible to the Black Vancouver and the indigenous communities.

"This study focuses on two Swedish politicians, Nils Flyg and Sven Olov Lindholm. During the interwar era, they were both leaders of various Swedish political parties; in the case of Flyg the Swedish Communist Party, and later on the Socialist Party; in the case of Lindholm the National Socialist Worker's Party (later renamed Swedish Socialist Unity). Both men were, in other words, influential politicians located at the outer edges of the ideological landscape.
During the span of their lifetimes, however, Flyg as well as Lindholm made remarkable ideological transitions. From the end of the thirties and onwards, the former communist leader Flyg successively embraced German Nazism. Lindholm on the other hand stepped down from his leadership after the war, and became a left-wing political activist who did not hesitate to identify himself as a communist. Superficially, this is strikingly symmetric: The communist leader becomes a Nazi, and the Nazi leader becomes a communist.
The aim of the study is to analyze the ideological links and tensions between Nazism and communism using these parallel biographies as a point of entrance. Inspired by political theorist Michael Freeden and his conceptual approach, and using a variety of sources, two core clusters of political concepts are identified and compared. It is shown that there are great similarities between Flyg and Lindholm when it comes to the role of anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism and the aspiration to idealize the Soviet Union or Germany as model states for workers. There are also, however, a number of differences, especially when it comes to views on modernity and materialism. In the final chapter, Flyg and Lindholm are compared to other European renegades. Here, the ambition is to identify common traits in the conversions. It is argued that the ideological antagonisms, the anti-positions, are crucial to this kind of generic renegadism."

At the centre of this study lies one of the critical questions faced by (late-)modern society, namely that of taking care of the long-lived radioactive waste from nuclear power production. The problems of nuclear waste management are pictured as embracing a complex web of essential issues for society today, in terms of both its capacities and its shortcomings – so called core issues. The principal aim of the thesis is to examine the nuclear waste discourse in Malå, Västerbotten, from a critical discourse analytical perspective, through applying the approach developed by Michel Foucault in The Order of Discourse. During the 1990s, the municipality of Malå played a prominent role as a candidate site for the geological disposal of Sweden's spent nuclear fuel. A five-year process culminated in a local referendum on whether detailed site investigations should be permitted within the community. Following the result no further investigations have been undertaken. The discourse analysis is carried out through a study of opinion formation in the municipality during the period October 1992 to October 1997. Two main types of empirical material have been collected: interviews with opinion leaders (politicians, activists, journalists, information professionals, etc.) and contemporaneous mass media content (the local newspaper and regional television news). In the empirical analysis, a review is made of the workings of the external and internal control mechanisms within the discourse; that is to say, how they serve to set limits on the content and form of the sense-making process concerning nuclear waste management. Important themes in the opinion forming process in Malå include information and expertise, opposition and legitimacy, the centre/periphery relationship and the themes of mistrust, partitioning and rejection. Among other themes identified as being marginalised or absent, one example is the Samish citizens' views on the nuclear question. Four actors play a prominent role as authors of the discourse, namely the nuclear industry, the experts, Greenpeace and the mass media. The voices of resistance groups are also significant. Representatives from authorities and civil servants were most likely to take the commentary role in the discourse, along with journalists. In the concluding analysis of the nuclear waste discourse in Malå, two main types of desire for truth, which form the discourse's main order, are identified. The stronger concerns the will to know, which places the expert with a scientific background as the principal truth-teller. The other is 'ordinary' people's desire, which influences the content and form of the opinion formation. It is also concluded that the mass media institutions play a significant role in this context, not least as mediators. Reflections on contemporary 'core issues' to which the analysis bears witness, such as the crisis of democracy, are also included. In addition, the implications of applying the Foucaultian research programme to a study of the nuclear question have been considered.