This thesis investigates the impact of US military imperialism on the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, centering on local perceptions and experiences. Employing qualitative thematic analysis and...Show moreThis thesis investigates the impact of US military imperialism on the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, centering on local perceptions and experiences. Employing qualitative thematic analysis and comparative case studies, this research contends how colonial legacies shape discourse and resistance. The findings indicate that economic dependencies and social hierarchies perpetuate US dominance, while local media and resistance movements protest this influence. This study advocates for a decolonial approach to US policy and emphasizes the need for context-specific analyses and interdisciplinary research. Fundamentally, this thesis contributes to the comprehension of the persistent impact of colonialism on discourse creation and narratives around autonomy.Show less
On the 8th of December 2018 the Ephesos Museum reopened its exhibition spaces of the permanent collection in the Viennese Hofburg after being closed for a year. This research aims to compare this...Show moreOn the 8th of December 2018 the Ephesos Museum reopened its exhibition spaces of the permanent collection in the Viennese Hofburg after being closed for a year. This research aims to compare this new exhibition with the original exhibition of the museum four decades ago and investigate the influence archaeological research, political intentions, and national identity had on the composition of the collection, the opening, and display of the museum in 1978 as well as the reopened exhibition in 2018.Show less
Since 1990s new tango trends have developed in Buenos Aires, remarkably after the crisis in 2001. Meanwhile, due to neoliberalism, polarisation is increasing in the Argentinean society with...Show moreSince 1990s new tango trends have developed in Buenos Aires, remarkably after the crisis in 2001. Meanwhile, due to neoliberalism, polarisation is increasing in the Argentinean society with individualistic traits. In need for a stronger sense of collectivism, local communities in the capital city are gathering people together in local bars making music. One of these music styles is worldwide-known and tourist-exploited tango genre. This thesis will analyse the narratives created by a contemporary tango band, Amores Tangos, to understand the process and significance of these music trends in Buenos Aires.Show less
This thesis aims to research the heightened presence of Hindu narratives on Indian television channels and how these Hindu narratives both emerge from and produce the rise of Hindu nationalist...Show moreThis thesis aims to research the heightened presence of Hindu narratives on Indian television channels and how these Hindu narratives both emerge from and produce the rise of Hindu nationalist sentiments. This question is answered by analysing the Hindu narratives in multiple sets of material across websites and news portals on the Hindu televangelist channel Aastha TV and the entertainment channel Star Plus India. My analysis is based on Roland Barthes' Mythologies from 1972, which I use to distinguish three separate concepts -consumption, culture, and politics- which I argue, contribute to these televised Hindu narratives. Both Aastha TV and Star Plus India spread Hindu narratives by normalising a standardised form of Hinduism in daily life: this religious interpretation of the Indian identity creates a foundation for Hindu nationalism. Both channels also focus on the middle class as their target audience, which is both financially capable of buying products from these channels and politically significant in their support for Hindu nationalism. While the emphasis on religious and moral practice of Aastha TV allows for the explicit promotion of Hindu nationalism, the focus of Star Plus India on leisure and entertainment creates a space for the implicit presence of Hinduism in daily life. Star Plus India provides the groundwork for Hindu nationalism through its implicit emphasis on Hinduism as a foundation for Indian norms and values in “soaps”. Aastha TV explicitly promotes Hindu nationalism through its nationalist rhetoric and its focus on Hindu traditions through its use of Hinduism as moral and religious guidelines. Thus, Hindu narratives are present on Indian television channels in different forms. These narratives provide a foothold for Hindu nationalism to connect itself to leisure activities such as watching television and domestic values, and thus increase its visibility and authority over Hindu daily lives.Show less
Since the end of the Cold War, international statebuilding – creating and strengthening government institutions – has been regularly promoted by international organisations and western states in...Show moreSince the end of the Cold War, international statebuilding – creating and strengthening government institutions – has been regularly promoted by international organisations and western states in order to end, resolve and prevent violent civil conflict in non-western countries. This thesis critically reflects on how statebuilding policymakers understand and represent the problem of violent civil conflict which they seek to tackle. It offers an original exploration of statebuilders’ narratives about the relationship between violent civil conflict and states, their formation, strengthening and weakening. Three arguments are made. Firstly, statebuilders represent violent civil conflict as a process which destroys states and is incapable of generating legitimate forms of governance. Secondly, this is a major divergence from a body of academic literature on domestic state formation which suggests that conflict can, and may even be necessary, to produce states. By drawing out the major divergences between these two bodies of literature, the thesis attempts to make sense of statebuilders’ narratives about conflict and their political consequences for policy. I argue, thirdly, that statebuilders’ representations of conflict are in fact vital for legitimising the norm and practice of international statebuilding.Show less
How do newspapers write about stories that are truly terrifying? Like the murder of children. This is the underlying thought that drives this thesis. An interest in the phenomena of child murder...Show moreHow do newspapers write about stories that are truly terrifying? Like the murder of children. This is the underlying thought that drives this thesis. An interest in the phenomena of child murder coverage in the press was sparked when Ximena Pieterse, a 15-year-old girl from The Netherlands got brutally robbed of her life in 2012. The headlines were full of powerful emotive language, the offender described as a “person without a conscience”. A question arose: had newspapers always written about child murder cases in this way? This thesis examines Dutch newspaper coverage of seven child murder cases over four decades; 1930s, 1960s, 1990s and 2010s. Employing a quantitative content analysis on a sample of just under 600 individual newspaper articles to answer the research question: what types of narratives are used by Dutch newspapers when reporting on child murder cases (1930-2010)? This study found that Dutch newspaper coverage of child murders was relatively similar in the 1930s, 1960s and 1990s. The vast majority (more than 70%) of articles written in these decades were composed of institutional narratives, this means that they focused mainly on the police investigation and subsequent trial. In the 2010s this changed. The percentage of articles with a societal narrative soared from 14% in the 1990s to 38% in the 2010s. Societal narratives focus on the response of the local community to the crimes, and concerns about the greater impact on society. While the percentage of articles with a personal narrative also increased from 9% to 19% in the respective decades. Articles with personal narratives focus on aspects such as the impact of the crime on the victim’s family, creating stories loaded with emotions.Show less
Research master thesis | Asian Studies (research) (MA)
closed access
Hong Kong, a former British colony and now Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, has a long standing tradition of well networked political protest. Particularly the pro...Show moreHong Kong, a former British colony and now Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, has a long standing tradition of well networked political protest. Particularly the pro-democracy movement had gathered wide ranging public support in the years following the 1997 handover. In recent years this movement and the spectrum of the political opposition split and diversified. This thesis argues that the responsibilities and the question of leadership in the activist network of Hong Kong are contested and that existing hierarchies complicate protest action. This became particularly visible during the 2014 'Umbrella Movement'. Based on this example this thesis takes on the question whether contemporary pluralist networks can overcome power hierarchies. Through an analysis of original interviews with activists from the 'Umbrella Movement' the contesting narratives of leadership in the movement are explored and mapped. This helps to understand how the activists position others and themselves within a broader network, and shows how existing hierarchies affect the image of leadership in the network. The analysis also highlights other factors that influence the activists' understanding of power. Eventually it is shown that a number of leaders existed in the movement, which processes were perceived as complication for equal participation opportunities for all activists, and that hierarchies were neither absent nor static.Show less
Research master thesis | Asian Studies (research) (MA)
open access
The Chinese city of Shenzhen in Guangdong province is often seen as the success story of China’s reform policies that were initiated by Hua Guofeng in the late 1970s, and popularised by Deng...Show moreThe Chinese city of Shenzhen in Guangdong province is often seen as the success story of China’s reform policies that were initiated by Hua Guofeng in the late 1970s, and popularised by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. Shenzhen – China’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) – is also representative of the ideal of a new, modernized, and economically strong China. The communist ideals of the Maoist era have long been pushed aside to make way for newer ideologies such as ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’, or more recently, Xi Jinping’s ‘Chinese Dream’. These shifts in ideology have had a significant influence on the identity that the Chinese state wishes to convey to its citizens and beyond. This paper examines how national and regional identities and their subsequent narratives interact or conflict in the permanent exhibition of Shenzhen museum. Furthermore, I will look at how similar exhibition practices (Shenzhen Museum and the National Museum of China) are used to convey a different message. Shenzhen Museum plays an important part in communicating the city’s identity and its position in China as a model city both to the local population and beyond. Shenzhen illustrates that the way we perceive nationalism has to change in an ever-globalising world, where large cities within a nation can play as large a role in defining the nation as the country at large.Show less
