Bachelor thesis | Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (BSc)
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This thesis contends with embedded forms of (post)colonialism found within contemporary immigration procedures faced by non-Western immigrants in Europe. While reflecting on how colonial...Show moreThis thesis contends with embedded forms of (post)colonialism found within contemporary immigration procedures faced by non-Western immigrants in Europe. While reflecting on how colonial hierarchies and Othering is sustained through certain immigration processes the concept of agency is considered. Ultimately, this thesis finds that it is within the structure of victimhood that non-Western immigrants and refugees are able to maneuver and negotiate significant degrees of agency.Show less
This research aims to unveil the agency of the artwork “la Zoyd’s pataVerse” by Yvonne le Grand. By applying Wild’s take on Gell’s Art Nexus, three phases of the social biography of Le Grand’s work...Show moreThis research aims to unveil the agency of the artwork “la Zoyd’s pataVerse” by Yvonne le Grand. By applying Wild’s take on Gell’s Art Nexus, three phases of the social biography of Le Grand’s work are placed into a system that connects with four agents that mostly revolve around the interactions between them. This research laid bare that the agency of the artwork came into being because of (a) the Index, being an online platform that invited Recipients to participate in the artwork; (b) the Artist, deciding to (not) use the input by Recipients in Zoyd’s life; (c) the Recipient, willing to and being able to interact with the Artwork; and (d) the Prototype, offering another dimension to the artwork as it refers to the fact that online and offline identities are both versions of the self that are not fully separate.Show less
After a brutal war, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) lost its significant territorial areas. How to deal with the organization’s members returning back to their home countries, has been...Show moreAfter a brutal war, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) lost its significant territorial areas. How to deal with the organization’s members returning back to their home countries, has been subject to heated debate. By focusing specifically on the role of the organization’s female members this paper explores the differences in the judicial approaches to the returning ISIS-women, through a case study analysis of Norway and Sweden. By discussing the differences in the expansion of national terror legislation, its implementation in relation to the women of ISIS, and the possible contributing factors to the different approaches, this paper answers the following research question: how do Norway and Sweden differ in their judicial approach to the Norwegian and Swedish women of ISIS returning back home between 2012-2022? Moreover, what are the main contributing factors leading to the differences in the approaches? The paper argues that Norway is more punitive towards returning women than Sweden. This is due to Norway’s legislation on terrorism participation, which allows for prosecution without classifying which actions count as participation. Furthermore, the paper argues that this differs from Sweden’s legislation on participation, which requires evidence of grave terrorist crimes committed in order to prosecute. This, the paper demonstrates, results in Sweden lacking the legal framework to prosecute its female nationals returning from ISIS. Lastly, the paper explores possible factors contributing to the different judicial approaches and highlights the Swedish legislative council, the effect of recent terrorist attacks, and loud critics as the most significant. Through the use of the case study, this paper contributes to knowledge on the implications domestic judicial differences can have in combatting transnational threats like terrorism.Show less
This thesis examines attitudes towards feminism and the New Woman movement in the 1890s and 1900s in relation to the representations of female criminal characters in the following works: Thomas...Show moreThis thesis examines attitudes towards feminism and the New Woman movement in the 1890s and 1900s in relation to the representations of female criminal characters in the following works: Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891); Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories; and Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907). The thesis argues that the texts all contain a paradox considering the agency of criminal women. On the one hand, Hardy, Doyle and Conrad depict the criminal woman as a symbol of choice and agency. On the other hand, the texts also cast doubt on the idea that agency is possible for anyone when the criminological (often deterministic) explanations for the crime are taken into account.Show less
Arab women are often portrayed as in need of saving from the conditions they live in. This narrative takes away the possibility of these women to be agents of change in their own lives. This thesis...Show moreArab women are often portrayed as in need of saving from the conditions they live in. This narrative takes away the possibility of these women to be agents of change in their own lives. This thesis aims to explore how Saudi women push back against societal norms in literary fiction. Specifically, it investigates how Saudi female fictional characters employ different forms of agency in physical and online public spaces compared to private and women-only spaces. The close reading of segments of two fictional literary works was used to showcase how female protagonists employ different understandings of agency. These examples were then linked to real-life examples to demonstrate that fiction is strongly rooted in reality. What became clear is that there is a multiplicity of ways for Saudi women to employ agency to resist and reshape the established order and practices, and different spaces within Saudi society offer different opportunities for employing agency. Moreover, there are different types of agency employed by different types of Saudi women. Thus, Saudi women can be agents of change within Saudi society and their own lives.Show less
Burgeoning Africa-China relations have sparked considerable debate over the past two decades. Many Western academics, politicians, and journalists now see growing Africa-China relations as a form...Show moreBurgeoning Africa-China relations have sparked considerable debate over the past two decades. Many Western academics, politicians, and journalists now see growing Africa-China relations as a form of Chinese neo-colonialism in Africa that is challenging Western efforts to help the continent develop. It is in this atmosphere of competition that the perspectives of Africans themselves have often been overlooked. This research paper attempts to shed light on these perspectives by analysing how elite political discourse in South Africa, Zambia and Angola perceives growing Africa-China relations, and how this discourse differs from common themes found in Western discourse. The paper combines a macro critical political discourse analysis of elite political discourse with a qualitative comparative analysis of these three case studies, within the timeframe January 2018 – January 2020. The research paper reveals that African political discourse often differs from, and indeed challenges, common themes found in Western discourse. In doing so, this research also contests the ‘universality’ of Western perceptions of both Africa and Africa-China relations. And finally, this research problematises the portrayal of non-Western actors in mainstream IR and highlights the need to listen to these voices from the periphery.Show less
Abstract: This thesis deals with the question of human subjecthood. What makes us Subjects? The innovations in computer science and artificial intelligence prompt a follow up question: When and how...Show moreAbstract: This thesis deals with the question of human subjecthood. What makes us Subjects? The innovations in computer science and artificial intelligence prompt a follow up question: When and how can an artificial intelligence or artificial life form be considered a Subject? In a comparison between man and machine this essay investigates different notions of Subjecthood. Introducing a narratological concept of subjecthood based on Bal’s narratology leads to the conclusion that the subject object division isn’t a binary opposition. Analysing Heidegger’s theory of agency as well as Freud and Lacan their narratives of development in psychoanalytical theory illustrate the importance of a split within the Subject, a split between what it needs and what it learns. The space between internal and external forces in an agent allow a Subject to come into being pointing out how the individual needs society in order to exist.Show less
This thesis presents a search for defining the agency of missionaries, their respective churches and religion’s role in the decolonisation of Rhodesia until 1979 with the ending of the Bush War and...Show moreThis thesis presents a search for defining the agency of missionaries, their respective churches and religion’s role in the decolonisation of Rhodesia until 1979 with the ending of the Bush War and the emergence of the newly created Republic of Zimbabwe. As such, it seeks to understand missionaries as more than just a happenstance of history but rather as active and integral to developments within the Rhodesian region and its vastly different processes of decolonisation. Furthermore, this thesis presents the history of decolonisation from the bottom up, attributing agency and importance to the ordinary people whose lives were affected by the global dynamics of the Cold War. What follows, therefore, details the discovery of missionaries as actors within Rhodesia and their far-reaching impact on the decolonisation processes at play.Show less
This thesis seeks to explore how street children in Cairo are governed. It takes a multi-level approach through examining the public level, aid organizations and the Egyptian government. The way...Show moreThis thesis seeks to explore how street children in Cairo are governed. It takes a multi-level approach through examining the public level, aid organizations and the Egyptian government. The way street children are perceived on these different levels influences policy approach. Street children are rejected by Egyptian society, and a negative stereotype about them dominates the public view. The choices that street children must make in their daily life accentuate these stereotypes. A recent paradigm shift in academia has led aid organizations from viewing street children as passive subjects of charity towards a more human rights-based approach. Despite this paradigm shift, the government has yet to adapt its policy and continues to treat street children as delinquents. This thesis calls for more research on the topic of street children, in order to map out the magnitude of the problem. Furthermore, I suggest that unless street children are perceived the same on all levels, no adequate solution will be found to the growing problem.Show less
In her book-length works "i is a long memoried woman" and “Picasso, I Want My Face Back,” the Guyanese-British poet Grace Nichols uses poetry to give a voice to a particular woman in history. The...Show moreIn her book-length works "i is a long memoried woman" and “Picasso, I Want My Face Back,” the Guyanese-British poet Grace Nichols uses poetry to give a voice to a particular woman in history. The lyrical subjects speaking in these works, an unnamed enslaved woman and the artist Dora Maar, respectively, bear witness to the past injustices they have endured. Through close reading, I show that both testimonial accounts address not only the historical violence suffered by these women but also the epistemic violence perpetrated by a modernist representation of them in writing and in painting. This epistemic violence presents them as non-agents, in crisis and as victims. I argue that at the heart of Nichols’ two testimonial projects lies an ethics of agency which not only seeks to make these particular women’s voices heard, but which also presents a mode of writing that demonstrates their agency as an inspiration for future women’s voices.Show less
Throughout the Egyptian January 25 Revolution in 2011, as part of the so-called Arab Spring, many incidents have put women, their bodies, and portrayals of female bodies at the heart of the...Show moreThroughout the Egyptian January 25 Revolution in 2011, as part of the so-called Arab Spring, many incidents have put women, their bodies, and portrayals of female bodies at the heart of the uprisings. As the political participation of women became challenged, suppressed, and even violently punished under the ruling of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, who came to power after the ousting of President Mubarak, the female body became a site of domination. Nevertheless, young women rose against the oppressive forces they faced, challenging the social and political standards by putting their bodies into the public sphere and transforming the female body into a means of revolutionary contention. Derived from the underlying question how the female body is a site of power interplay in times of political transition, the aim of this thesis is to examine how women have addressed the appropriation of their bodies and the reduction of their political voices to the female corporality in post- revolutionary Egypt. This thesis analyses the vastly differing cases of Samira Mohamed Ibrahim and Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, who use their bodies as a tactic of and topic for political dissent and struggle for agency. Illustrating the centrality of the female body throughout times of political transitions, the plural expressions of female agency and ‘bodily insurgency’ in post-revolutionary Egypt, these women express a counter-discourse to existing ideas about femininity and a woman’s corporality. As they denounce the practices of a patriarchal system that reduces their political voices to merely their sex, it is argued that the female body is more than a disciplined and ‘docile’ object, for it contains transformative and political potential – in different ways.Show less
Het handelsnetwerk van de Basay strekte zich uit over het noorden van Taiwan. Deze bevolkingsgroep had zich toegelegd op de nijverheid en verhandelde hun producten met zowel Taiwanese dorpen als...Show moreHet handelsnetwerk van de Basay strekte zich uit over het noorden van Taiwan. Deze bevolkingsgroep had zich toegelegd op de nijverheid en verhandelde hun producten met zowel Taiwanese dorpen als Chinese handelaren. De komst van de Spanjaarden en hun kolonie in 1626 verstoorde de activiteiten van de Basay enigszins, maar na enkele jaren ontstonden relatief stabiele banden met de nieuwkomers. Veel Basay bekeerden zich tot het Christendom en leerden Spaans. In 1642 veroverde de VOC de Spaanse kolonie, maar was al snel toegewezen op de Basay voor haar voorziening van voedsel. Daarnaast vervulden de Basay een tal van diensten voor de VOC, zoals het innen van belasting, begeleiden van expedities en het vervoeren van compagniepersoneel in de regio. Binnen deze rol als tussenpersoon hadden de Basay een hoge mate van autonomie. Basay, vertegenwoordigd door hun dorpshoofden, hadden een sterke onderhandelingspositie en konden hun eigen doelen bepalen en navolgen, in sommige gevallen zelfs ten koste van de VOC. Aan de andere kant waren de Basay geen homogene groep: dorpshoofden en tolken konden hun dorpsgenoten links laten liggen en zelfverrijking voorop stellen. Van hun kant zagen de dienaren van de VOC de Basay als diverse groep. Het waren mondige Spaanse christenen die slim hun kennis en connecties benuttigden.Show less
“Netwerken” winnen in de historische wetenschap steeds meer terrein als gangbaar onderzoeksobject om informatie uit te onttrekken over onderzochte tijdsperiodes. Iedere individu behoort tot een...Show more“Netwerken” winnen in de historische wetenschap steeds meer terrein als gangbaar onderzoeksobject om informatie uit te onttrekken over onderzochte tijdsperiodes. Iedere individu behoort tot een uiteenlopend aantal netwerken: zijn/haar familie; een religieuze groep; een politieke partij of click; enz., het aantal netwerken waartoe een persoon kan behoren is talrijk. Er zijn historici die de uitdaging van het globale netwerk aankunnen, en op basis van juist(informele) netwerken een inzicht over een bepaalde tijdsperiode kunnen verschaffen. Geïnspireerd op dergelijk onderzoek, is in dit onderzoek besloten te gaan kijken naar onderlinge verbindingen op een kleiner stukje grond: het eerste stukje Herengracht. In dit onderzoek zal blijken in hoeverre er tussen de bewoners alhier, naast hun verbondenheid in het geografische netwerk van grachten, ook sprake was van sociaaleconomische netwerkvorming.Show less