The significance of strategic autonomy, a notion that concerns the European Union’s (EU) global role and its ability to act autonomously, has increased, largely due to Russia’s war against Ukraine....Show moreThe significance of strategic autonomy, a notion that concerns the European Union’s (EU) global role and its ability to act autonomously, has increased, largely due to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Because of its allusion to the EU’s global role, strategic autonomy also pertains to its power, prompting this paper to explore the notion of strategic autonomy with regard to the EU’s power. However, due to its sui generis nature, characterising the EU’s power is notoriously challenging. Firstly, Galtung’s (1973) distinction between power-over-others and power-over-oneself is employed to demonstrate that strategic autonomy primarily concerns the latter, in contrast to Helwig (2022) who implicitly argues that it involves the former. Secondly, this thesis argues that strategic autonomy is an effort to achieve actorness, a notion that establishes criteria for an actor’s ability to act, in turn facilitating the projection of power. Third, in regard to its power-over-others, the concept indicates an objective by the EU to increase its hard power, or punitive power in Galtung’s (1973) terms. Through the pursuit of power-over-itself and actorness, strategic autonomy represents a clear direction in terms of the EU’s global role, namely the quest of escaping its enigmatic character and becoming a ‘normal’ international actor.Show less
This paper examines the intrinsic relationship between the Western model of nature conservation and the forced removal of pastoralists, the Maasai, in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The...Show moreThis paper examines the intrinsic relationship between the Western model of nature conservation and the forced removal of pastoralists, the Maasai, in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The historical background contextualises the origins of so-called fortress conservation in the colonial period and the establishment of protected areas. The research takes a political ecology approach to establish a connection between nature conservation activities of international actors, national policymaking in conservation areas and the impact on the Maasai’s livelihood. The case of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area illustrates the enhancement of securitised nature conservation concerning biodiversity protection of ecosystems. However, this approach excludes indigenous peoples from the discourse of ecosystem protection and is inherently neo-colonial. For a better understanding, it argues for the equal inclusion of indigenous peoples in nature conservation efforts.Show less
Dit onderzoek focust op de vergelijkingen die werden gemaakt tussen de Tweede Wereldoorlog en de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog. In het bijzonder staan vergelijkingen in de media en...Show moreDit onderzoek focust op de vergelijkingen die werden gemaakt tussen de Tweede Wereldoorlog en de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog. In het bijzonder staan vergelijkingen in de media en egodocumenten van Nederlandse soldaten centraal.Show less
How does the notion of the common good in Machiavelli's Prince and Discourses compare to the common good of classical political philosophy? It would seem that Machiavelli, as the harbinger of...Show moreHow does the notion of the common good in Machiavelli's Prince and Discourses compare to the common good of classical political philosophy? It would seem that Machiavelli, as the harbinger of modernity and amoral political 'machiavellianism', can leave no room for the common good in his thought. However, a close examination of The Prince and the Discourses on Livy will reveal that the common good is allotted an ambiguous place in Machiavelli's thinking. The author concludes that, whereas Machiavelli's Prince is a truly amoral work devoid of consideration for the common good, the Discourses on Livy show a unique mixture between 'machiavellian' themes and classical ideas about liberty, the mixed regime, and statesmanship in the common interest.Show less
Code switching can be defined as the use of more than one language, or ‘code’, by someone engaged in speech or text. It is a practise employed by multilinguals in both oral and written...Show moreCode switching can be defined as the use of more than one language, or ‘code’, by someone engaged in speech or text. It is a practise employed by multilinguals in both oral and written conversations. Different multilinguals will have different switching patterns. These patterns can vary depending on the speaker’s language proficiency, community norms, the typology of their languages, and the cultural or political relations these languages might have with one another, among many other reasons. Code switching between Spanish and English and Spanish and French has been the subject of various studies. Although trilingual research is rare (e.g. Parafita Couto et al., 2023; Valdés Kroff et al., 2023), there has also been some research on the connection between Spanish, French and English, but most of this work is based in the French-speaking provinces of Canada (e.g. COLEM, 2023; Pato, 2019, 2022). This paper aims to study the code-switching patterns among a set of trilingual siblings living in Geneva who have Colombian heritage and attend a British school in the city. The participants recorded themselves for up to 30 minutes having casual conversations following a prompt in three separate occasions. The switches were identified alongside general information about the corpus, such as how many languages were present in each clause, the clauses’ matrix language, the general use of each language in the corpus, among others. This paper focuses on intraclausal switching. We followed Deuchar et al. (2007)’s methodology which categorises each intraclausal switch into insertion, alteration, or congruent lexicalisation according to the code switching pattern it most aligned with following Muysken’s typology of bilingual speech patterns (2000).Because English, Spanish and French are typologically similar, combined with the fact our participants are fluent in all three languages, and due to the culturally open context of Geneva, we expected alternation to be the dominant switch pattern in the recorded conversations. Having said this, since the participants go to a British school where their education is mainly in English, and because the Colombian community in Geneva is not as big as other bilingual communities around the world, a dominant insertional pattern was also a possibility. The corpus was composed of mainly unilingual clauses with 7.8% of the first recording being bilingual clauses, 19.6% of the second recording, and 8.95% of the third. Only three clauses in the entire corpus were trilingual out of 1215. Once we had analysed the entirety of the conversations, the dominant pattern was indeed overwhelmingly insertion with 77.55% of the switches in the corpus presenting this pattern. Congruent lexicalisation was present in 11.56% of the switches and alternation in the other 10.88%. Although these results do not necessarily align with our expectations of codeswitching in Switzerland, we believe our participants’ specific background, namely the fact that language separation is encouraged in the different spheres of their lives, could explain the prevalence of insertion over alternation in our case study. We hope our research will contribute to bigger corpus studies of trilingual codeswitching patterns in different communities.Show less
We live in a post-truth era. Truth is no longer relevant in matters of political deliberation and objective facts are subordinated to emotive appeals and spurious opinions. This is crippling the...Show moreWe live in a post-truth era. Truth is no longer relevant in matters of political deliberation and objective facts are subordinated to emotive appeals and spurious opinions. This is crippling the political legitimacy of western liberal democracies, as these rely strongly on Enlightenment ideals of rationality, science and truth-based solutionism. At least, that is the common view. This thesis builds on a radically different conception of post-truth politics, one that sees it as an attack on the current knowledge game of established elites. It argues that post-truth politics is epistemically different from lies and bullshit. Fundamentally, it is a strategy that attacks the epistemic authoritarianism pervading our liberal democracies. This strategy wishes to uncover the game-like nature of truth in politics that is intimately linked to power and authority. Consequently, it seeks to level the playing field of the truth game. By doing so, I ultimately argue for the claim that this conception of post-truth politics is in line within the framework of political legitimacy as expounded by Rawls and Habermas.Show less
This study explores the role of the qipao in shaping the representation and perception of Chinese women’s modern cultural identity during the early twentieth century. In a period of societal...Show moreThis study explores the role of the qipao in shaping the representation and perception of Chinese women’s modern cultural identity during the early twentieth century. In a period of societal instability, Chinese women sought a modern identity that harmonized with their cultural values. Utilizing visual research and literature analysis, the research underscores the qipao’s significance as both a tool and a symbol in popular visual culture forming women’s identities. Emphasizing the socio-historical context, the study highlights the qipao’s role as a bridge between tradition and modernization in Shanghai’s cosmopolitan environment. Through magazines, calendar posters, and cinema, the qipao emerges as a dynamic cultural dress, influencing representations and perceptions of the modern woman’s cultural identity.Show less
Kaput is about escaping hegemonical structures. Yet, I claim that these structures perpetuate themselves through escape, the harder we run the more rigid these structures get. So the question...Show moreKaput is about escaping hegemonical structures. Yet, I claim that these structures perpetuate themselves through escape, the harder we run the more rigid these structures get. So the question becomes, what can we do to get rid of these structures without resorting to fleeing from them?Show less
Books are deeply intertwined with the societies that produce them. Besides the unmistakable benefits leisure reading can give to individuals, such as literacy, creativity, imagination, knowledge...Show moreBooks are deeply intertwined with the societies that produce them. Besides the unmistakable benefits leisure reading can give to individuals, such as literacy, creativity, imagination, knowledge and empathy, this free time activity has an impact on a higher level too. The written word enables connections between individuals and communities in ways that were unimaginable before the Print Revolution. Books can encompass the values of a nation, they can communicate and reinforce them. These aspects are especially important in the case of a small nation with a distinct language, as a strong need of cultural preservation is present. The main focus of this thesis is the two-way connection between a country’s reading culture and its social, political and economic realms. It is based on the argument that participants of the reading landscape not only affect the readers with their actions, but have an indirect impact on the wider cultural system through the reading landscape. The means to support this argument is an analysis of the literary landscape of Hungary, based on a self-constructed model, the Reading Promotion Impact Matrix. The two dimensions of this model are the nation’s core values that are supported and reflected by the reading promotion efforts; and the areas that can impact and can be impacted by these reading promotion activities. The thesis also highlights the interactivity and interconnectedness of the participants of a country’s literary landscape.Show less
In de nasleep van de ballingschap van Elizabeth Stuart en haar familie, die vanwege de Dertigjarige oorlog naar de Republiek waren gevlucht, groeide Elizabeth uit tot spilfiguur in de strategieën...Show moreIn de nasleep van de ballingschap van Elizabeth Stuart en haar familie, die vanwege de Dertigjarige oorlog naar de Republiek waren gevlucht, groeide Elizabeth uit tot spilfiguur in de strategieën ter restauratie van de machtspositie van de Palts-dynastie. Het correspondentienetwerk dat zij vanuit Den Haag onderhield, fungeerde als een krachtig instrument waarmee zij bondgenoten wierf, financiële steun vergaarde en discussies voerde over militaire operaties. Na het overlijden van haar echtgenoot, Frederik V van de Palts, in 1632, kwam de toekomst van de dynastie in handen van Elizabeth. Zij stond voor de uitdaging van het overnemen van het leiderschap en werd het familiehoofd, een positie die zij behield zelfs nadat haar oudste zoon, Karel Lodewijk, de volwassenheid bereikte. Gedurende vele jaren was Elizabeth het brein achter het beleid en de strategieën van de dynastie, en fungeerde als bewaarder van de dynastieke continuïteit. Elizabeth hanteerde verschillende strategieën om het dynastieke herstel te bewerkstelligen, waarbij haar kinderen een cruciale rol speelden. Niet alle leden van de familie deelden echter dezelfde mate van toewijding aan Elizabeths streven naar samenwerking ten behoeve van het herstel. Dit resulteerde in verdeeldheid binnen de familie, die de stabiliteit ondermijnde en zelfs tot schandalen leidde, terwijl reputatie en status juist van groot belang waren voor het vormgeven van een dynastie. Dit onderzoek tracht te beantwoorden hoe Elizabeth Stuart de machtspositie van de Palts-dynastie heeft geprobeerd te herstellen tijdens haar ballingschap vanaf 1621 en welke invloed de familiedynamiek heeft gehad op de uitkomst van deze inspanningen.Show less
