Contemporary transnational terrorism destabilizes governments, threatens social and economic development while jeopardizing peace and stability. The 9/11 terrorist attacks and the War on Terror led...Show moreContemporary transnational terrorism destabilizes governments, threatens social and economic development while jeopardizing peace and stability. The 9/11 terrorist attacks and the War on Terror led to the implementation of counterterrorism strategies that feature hard and soft power politics. Simultaneously the global order changed with the rise of new great powers. Why do counterterrorism strategies from great power and non-great power states differ? Little has been done to explain the underlying variation. This comparative study shows that the theory of Nye (2004) can help to address the uncertainties in terms of future great power behaviour in the field of counterterrorism. Moreover, future research on this topic must examine the validity of this conclusion in relation to other cases than the US and the Netherlands.Show less
The aim of this thesis is to investigate how contemporary documentary is appropriating certain strategies that are traditionally only used in art, to question the difficulties of giving an accurate...Show moreThe aim of this thesis is to investigate how contemporary documentary is appropriating certain strategies that are traditionally only used in art, to question the difficulties of giving an accurate documentation of the world. A world that is never transparent or simple, conflicts and situations that are never black or white. For this I will look at the photographs by documentary photographer/artist Richard Mosse, as an example for the wider phenomenon in contemporary documentary, and investigate what strategies he uses to address the problems of documenting atrocities in Eastern Congo and narrating its complicated story to the viewers. I will investigate how the boundary between documentary and art in these strategies (and because of these strategies) is shifting, what the implications are and what effect this has on the viewers. For this thesis I will examine three main strategies Richard Mosse uses in his photographs: first, the use of a certain pre-determined concept and the negation of the decisive moment, as was long (at least until the 1980s) the characteristic of documentary photography and photojournalism. Second, the aesthetization of the documentary photograph and its increasing relationship to art and, third, the presentation of the work in both an installation form as well as the placement of these projects within a cultural and art institutional environment.Show less
