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
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
Bachelor thesis | Griekse en Latijnse taal en cultuur (BA)
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Pas recentelijk is er in onderzoek meer aandacht voor de rollen die de vrouwen in Lucanus' Bellum Civile spelen. Deze scriptie is er dan ook aan gewijd om de rollen van de belangrijkste vrouwen in...Show morePas recentelijk is er in onderzoek meer aandacht voor de rollen die de vrouwen in Lucanus' Bellum Civile spelen. Deze scriptie is er dan ook aan gewijd om de rollen van de belangrijkste vrouwen in het Bellum Civile (Julia, Marcia, Cornelia en Cleopatra) verder uit te diepen. Hierbij zal de vraag gesteld worden hoeveel agency Lucanus de vier vrouwen toekent: of en op welke manier hij ze in staat stelt invloed uit te oefenen op het verloop van de handeling en of ze dit onafhankelijk doen of door hun relatie met elkaar en de mannelijke personages in het epos. De mate van agency die de vrouwen in het werk vertonen, zal geëvalueerd worden door middel van close-reading van een reeks passages waarin ze een rol spelen. Daarbij zal een verband gelegd worden tussen de transformatie tot Furie die alle vier de vrouwen tot op zekere hoogte doormaken, en de ontwikkeling van hun agency binnen het epos.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
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
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
The United States played an important role in Central America throughout the first half of the 20th century. However, despite far-reaching similarities between the different Central American...Show moreThe United States played an important role in Central America throughout the first half of the 20th century. However, despite far-reaching similarities between the different Central American countries and the fact that the US did not differentiate between them in its foreign policy approach, significant differences in the political developments of the Central American republics occurred during this period. Using a comparative method to investigate two such cases, namely the nondemocratic administrations of Anastasio Somoza García in Nicaragua and Tiburcio Carías Andino in Honduras, this thesis demonstrates that the manner in which the individual Central American leaders used their agency to shape the relationship between their respective administration and the United States was the crucial factor determining the different outcomes in regime survival. This was for an important part due to the fact that both nondemocratic regimes studied relied on their military to stay in power, and the extent to which these militaries in turn relied on US support differed as a result of different leadership decisions. Based on such findings, this thesis argues for a revised explanation of US-Central American relations during the 20th century, away from the widespread but incorrect “Banana Republic” narrative which overlooks Central American agency.Show less
This BA thesis explores the nature of individual human agency in the second season of the television series The Wire. Drawing on Althusserian or Gramscian thought, involving the question of...Show moreThis BA thesis explores the nature of individual human agency in the second season of the television series The Wire. Drawing on Althusserian or Gramscian thought, involving the question of ideology and its limiting effects on human agency, I have argued that the nature of human agency in The Wire is problematic. The characters, especially in the second season, are bound by an ideological discourse. Chapter two has shown that the characters are involved in an ideological discourse of their own and that determines the extent of their individual agency. In addition, and in dialogue with the ideologies that bind the characters, there is the (creators of the) series’ own ideological response to this, both in terms of the plotting and on a more formal level (discussed in chapters three and four respectively).Show less
In this thesis I claim that libertarianism is a view that should once again be considered as a plausible possibility within the free will debate. Earlier versions of libertarianism needed...Show moreIn this thesis I claim that libertarianism is a view that should once again be considered as a plausible possibility within the free will debate. Earlier versions of libertarianism needed unscientific notions such as noumenal selves or non-occurrent causes and were therefore discarded due to our current knowledge of science. However, philosopher Robert Kane has developed an account of libertarianism that appears to make a libertarian notion of free will compatible with science. My first objective is to clarify this account of libertarianism. Many objections have been raised against Kane, but only a few philosophers have tried to constructively reject his account of libertarianism. In this thesis I explain two strong objections that have been raised against libertarianism by famous philosopher and compatibilist Daniel Dennett. However, I claim that these objections are not sufficient to reject libertarianism as a whole and I conclude that therefore more work has to be done to abandon libertarianism altogether.Show less
Bachelor thesis | Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (BSc)
closed access
Kayapo en Greenpeace zijn twee sociale bewegingen die met behulp van mediastrategieën proberen door te dringen tot de structures van nieuwsmedia. Deze twee casussen laten zien dat agency toe kan...Show moreKayapo en Greenpeace zijn twee sociale bewegingen die met behulp van mediastrategieën proberen door te dringen tot de structures van nieuwsmedia. Deze twee casussen laten zien dat agency toe kan nemen naarmate sociale bewegingen zich aanpassen aan bestaande structures van nieuwsmedia.Show less
