Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Human beings – history'

xvii, 382 p. : ill. (some col.), maps. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
The debate concerning the role of natural versus anthropogenic burning in shaping the prehistoric vegetation patterns of the Willamette Valley of Oregon and Washington remains highly contentious. To address this, pollen and high-resolution charcoal records obtained from lake sediments were analyzed to reconstruct the Holocene fire and vegetation history, in order to assess the relative influence of climate variability and anthropogenic activity on those histories. Two sites provided information on the last 11,000 years. At one site at the northern margin of the Willamette Valley, shifts in fire activity and vegetation compared closely with millennial- and centennial-time scale variations in climate, and there was no evidence that anthropogenic burning affected the natural fire-climate linkages prior to Euro-American arrival. In contrast, the fire and vegetation history at a site in the central Willamette Valley showed relatively little vegetation change in response to both millennial- and centennial-scale climate variability, but fire activity varied widely in both frequency and severity. A comparison of this paleoecological reconstruction with archaeological evidence suggests that anthropogenic burning near the site may have influenced middle- to late-Holocene fire regimes. The fire history of the last 1200 years was compared at five sites along a north-south transect through the Willamette Valley. Forested upland sites showed stronger fire-climate linkages and little human influence, whereas lowland sites located in former prairie and savanna showed temporal patterns in fire activity that suggest a significant human impact. A decline in fire activity at several sites in the last 600 years was attributed to the effects of a cooling climate as well as the decline of Native American populations. The impacts of Euro-American settlement on the records include dramatic shifts in vegetation assemblages and large fire events associated with land clearance. The results of this research contribute to our understanding of long-term vegetation dynamics and the role of fire, both natural- and human-ignited, in shaping ecosystems, as well as provide an historical context for evaluating recent shifts in plant communities in the Willamette Valley.
Advisers: Cathy Whitlock, Patrick J. Bartlein

The question this essay sets out to answer is what role God plays in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, in the book “Of a Christian Common-wealth”, in relationship to humans as moral beings. The question is relevant as the religious aspects of Hobbes’s thinking cannot be ignored, although Hobbes most likely had rather secular and sceptical philosophical views. In order to answer the research question Leviathan’s “Of a Christian Common-wealth” will be compared and contrasted with two contextual works: the canonical theological document of the Anglican Church, the Thirty-Nine Articles (1571), and Presbyterian-Anglican document the Westminster Confession (1648). Also, recent scholarly works on Hobbes and more general reference works will be employed and discussed. Hobbes’s views provide a seemingly unsolvable paradox. On the one hand, God is either portrayed, or becomes by consequence of his sceptical and secular state thinking, a distant God in relationship to moral humans in “Of a Christian Common-wealth”. Also, the freedom humans seem to have in making their own moral decisions, whether based on natural and divine, or positive laws, appears to obscure God’s almightiness. On the other hand, when placing Hobbes in context, Hobbes appears to have espoused Calvinist views, with beliefs in predestination and that God is the cause of everything. Rather paradoxically it not unlikely that Hobbes espoused both the views that appear to obscure the role of God, and his more Calvinistic views.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Antioch University New England, 2008.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed November 11, 2009). "A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Environmental Studies at Antioch University New England (2008)."--from the title page. Advisor: Mitchell Thomashow. Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-296).

This thesis presents a history of the landscape of Nqabara, an administrative area in a rural and coastal area of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. In the process of investigating landscape history, the inquiry engages with a range of data sources from diverging discursive contexts, including data from ethnographic fieldwork, from the consultation of archival documents and historical reports as well as from comparative historic and ethnographic research, necessitating a critical consideration of the epistemological contexts of data production and the dialogue between researcher and data. Furthermore, in its aim to move beyond historical description towards explanation, the study interrogates the dualist ontological conceptualisations of nature and culture, society and ecology, object and meaning upon which are built three dominant conceptual frameworks concerned with human-environment relationships: social-ecological systems theory, transdisciplinary landscape studies and political ecology. Drawing primarily upon the works of James Gibson, Anthony Giddens and Tim Ingold, an ontological foundation is developed to guide the enquiry and move towards an alternative understanding of the relationship of people’s livelihoods with respect to the landscape in which it is lived, which I call here the praxisembodiment perspective. This ontology takes the situated patterns of action of a situated agent-in-its-environment as its point of departure and proceeds to develop a framework explaining how relations among the patterns of action of different agents-in-their-environment, emerge in structures that simultaneously enable and constrain future action. The foundation is thereby provided for a monist understanding of how landscape and social structure emerge simultaneously from the complex intersection of patterns of actions and interactions of agents in their environment. This framework calls for an understanding of time, space and scale, not as independent variables influencing process and action, but as emergent properties arising from the patterns of actions of situated agents. Finally the alternative ontology is applied to the history of landscape and livelihoods of people of Nqabara. It is concluded that an appropriate understanding and explanation of the critical transformations in the landscape as well as in social institutions, should be sought through analysis of the complex ways in which patterns of action of multiple spatial and temporal rhythms and between multiple agents in an environment, intersect and resonate.

While it is now well established that many Europeans were delighted with the landscapes they encountered in colonial Australia, the pioneer narrative that portrays colonists as threatened and alienated by a harsh environment and constantly engaged in battles with the land is still powerful in both scholarly and popular writing. This thesis challenges this dominant narrative and demonstrates that in a remarkably short period of time some colonists developed strong connections with, and even affection for, their 'new' place in Western Australia. Using archival materials for twenty-one colonists who settled in five regions across southern Western Australia from the 1830s to the early 1900s, here this complex process of belonging is unravelled and several key questions are posed: what lenses did the colonists utilise to view the land? How did they use and manage the land? How were issues of class, domesticity and gender roles negotiated in their 'new' environment? What connections did they make with the land? And ultimately, to what extent did they feel a sense of belonging in the Colony? I argue that although utilitarian approaches to the land are evident, this was not the only way colonists viewed the land; for example, they often used the picturesque to express delight and charm. Gender roles and ideas of class were modified as men, as well as women, worked in the home and planted flower gardens, and both men and women carried out tasks that in their households in England and Ireland, would have been done by servants. Thus, the demarcation of activities that were traditionally for men, women and servants became less distinct and amplified their connection to place. Boundaries between the colonists' domestic space and the wider environments also became more permeable as women ventured beyond their houses and gardens to explore and journey through the landscapes. The selected colonists had romantic ideas of nature and wilderness, that in the British middle and upper-middle class were associated with being removed from the land, but in colonial Western Australia many of them were intimately engaged with it. Through their interactions with the land and connections they made with their social networks, most of these colonists developed an attachment for their 'new' place and called it home; they belonged there.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Antioch University New England, 2008.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed March 26, 2010). "A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Environmental Studies at Antioch University New England (2008)."--from the title page. Advisor: Alesia Maltz, Ph.D. Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-308).

This thesis is an ethnography of how places like mountain pastures (jailoos), hydro-electric dams and holy sites (mazars) matter in striving for a good life. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in the Toktogul valley of Kyrgyzstan, this study contributes to theoretical questions in the anthropology of post-socialism, time, space, work and enjoyment. I use the term ‘moral geography’ to emphasize a spatial imaginary that is centred on ideas of ‘the good life’, both ethical and happy. This perspective captures an understanding of jailoos which connects food, health, wealth and beauty. In comparing attitudes towards a Soviet and post-Soviet dam, I reveal changes in the nature of the state, property and collective labour. People in Toktogul hold agentive places like mazars and non-personalized places like dams and jailoos apart, implying not one overarching philosophy of nature, but a world in which types of places have different gradations of object-ness and personhood. I show how people use forms of commemoration as a means of establishing connections between people, claims on land and aspirations of ‘becoming cultured’. I demonstrate how people draw on repertoires of epic or Soviet heroism and mobility in conceiving their life story and agency in shaping events. Different times and places such as ‘eternal’ jailoos and Soviet dams are often collapsed as people derive personal authority from connections to them. Analysing accounts of collectivization and privatization I argue that the Soviet period is often treated as a ‘second tradition’ used to judge the present. People also strive for ‘the good life’ through working practices that are closely linked to the Soviet experience, and yet differ from Marxist definitions of labour. The pervasively high value of work is fed from different, formally conflicting sources of moral authority such as Socialism, Islam and neo-liberal ideals of ‘entrepreneurship’. I discuss how parties, poetry and song bring together jakshylyk (goodness) as enjoyment and virtue. I show how song and poetry act as moral guides, how arman yearning is purposely enjoyed in Kyrgyz music and how it relates to nostalgia and nature imagery. The concept of ‘moral geography’ allows me to investigate how people strive for well-being, an investigation that is just as important as focusing on problem-solving and avoiding pain. It also allows an analysis of place and time that holds material interactions, moral ideals, economic and political dimensions in mind.

Seven linker histone H1 variants are present in human somatic cells with distinct prevalence across cell types. Using variant-specific antibodies to H1 and hemagglutinin-tagged recombinant H1 variants expressed in breast cancer cells, their genomic distribution was assessed. Specifically, ChIP-Seq data was obtained for two replication-dependent (H1.2 and H1.4) and replication-independent H1 variants (H1.0 and H1X) together with core histone H3. Briefly, we have previously reported that H1.2 is the H1 variant that better correlates with gene repression. It was found enriched at GC-poor, gene-poor and intergenic chromosomal domains in addition to lamin-associated domains (LADs). We further explored linker histone H1 variant distribution and strikingly, we found that distribution of replication-independent H1 variants (H1.0 and H1X) is distinct. H1.0 was found enriched at nucleolar features such as nucleolus-associated domains (NADs), nucleolus organizer regions (NORs) encoding for the 45S rDNA, specifically at non-transcribed spacers and also in 5S rDNA. Specific repetitive sequences such as SINE-VNTR-Alu (SVA) retrotransposons and telomeric and ACRO1 satellites showed also a specific enrichment of H1.0. On the other hand, H1X has been associated to actively transcribed chromatin indicated by a colocalization with RNAPII-enriched regions and an enrichment towards the 3’ end of active genes. In addition, constitutive exons, included alternatively spliced exons and retained introns are enriched in H1X. Further, specific non-coding RNA (miRNA and snoRNA), mainly found at introns showed a H1X enrichment. Our results point to a potential role of H1X in elongation, splicing or non-coding RNA regulation, which might be prompting gene transcription without changes in core histone post-translational modifications. Furthermore, depletion of multiple H1 variants (H1.2 and H1.4) triggers an interferon response due to an aberrant transcription of repetitive elements in breast cancer cells. Transcription of repetitive elements was observed by an increase in their RNA levels (RT-qPCR), increase in cytoplasmic dsRNA (immunofluorescence) and transcription of intergenic regions (RNA-Seq). Variants H1.2 and H1.4 seem to be critical in the observed phenotype but rescue experiments showed redundant functions for H1 variants. The molecular mechanism that leads to transcription of repetitive elements upon multiH1 KD, as happens for DE genes upon single or multiple H1 variants KD, is still unsolved. We were able to show an increase in nucleosome accessibility genome-wide (ATAC-Seq) that did not fully correlate with the observed transcriptional changes in multiple H1 depleted cells. Surprisingly, post-translational modifications of core histone remained unchanged as happens for single H1X depletion. Specific molecular mechanisms, involved in transcriptional modulation, that might be regulated by a particular H1 variant (or H1 variant combinations) are appealing possibilities. Among them, establishment, maintenance or organization of nuclear domains (lamin-, nucleolus- or topologically associated domains), chromosome structures (centromeres) or localised heterochromatin regions (transposons). Beyond promoters where histone H1 content clearly correlate with repression, other transcription-related processes might be regulated by specific H1 variants. Processes influenced by RNAPII (elongation or splicing) and other regulatory elements (non-coding RNAs or enhancers) need to be certainly explored in a histone H1 variant(s) depletion context. Upon single and multiple H1 variants depletion, H1.0 is induced in a regulated manner that may depend in histone acetylation, assessed by ChIP-qPCR at promoter regions and by treatments with histone deacetylase inhibitor (TSA). Further experiments are needed to elucidate relocation of histone replication-independent H1 variants, mainly H1.0 upon changing H1 stoichiometry and during differentiation, reprogramming and cancer.
xisten siete variantes de histona H1 presentes en células somáticas humanas con una prevalencia diferente según el tipo celular. Usando anticuerpos específicos contra las variantes de H1 y variantes de H1 recombinantes etiquetadas con hemaglutinina, evaluamos su distribución genómica en células de cáncer de mama. Concretamente, obtuvimos datos de ChIP-Seq de dos variantes de H1 dependientes de replicación (H1.2 y H1.4) y las dos variantes independientes de replicación (H1.0 y H1X). Anteriormente, observamos que H1.2 es la variante que mejor correlaciona con la represión génica y se encuentra enriquecida en dominios cromosómicos pobre en GC, pobres en genes e intergénicos, además de en los dominios asociados a lamin. Después exploramos con más profundidad la distribución de las variantes de H1 independientes de replicación. H1.0 se encontraba enriquecida en regiones asociadas al nucléolo como los dominios asociados al nucléolo, las regiones organizadoras del nucléolo que codifican para el ARN ribosomal 45S, específicamente en las regiones espaciadoras no transcritas y, también, en el 5S DNA ribosomal. Elementos repetitivos como los retrotransposones SINE-SVA-Alu y los satélites teloméricos y ACRO1 también mostraron un enriquecimiento específico de H1.0. Por otro lado, encontramos H1X asociada a cromatina activa transcripcionalmente, demostrado por una colocalización con regiones asociadas a RNAPII y un enriquecimiento hacia el extremo 3’ de genes activos. Además, todas las regiones codificantes que se incluyen en el transcrito final (exones constitutivos, exones incluidos alternativamente e intrones retenidos) mostraron un enriquecimiento en H1X. Algunas especies de ARN no codificante (miRNA y snoRNA), que se encuentran principalmente en intrones, estaban enriquecidas en H1X. Nuestros resultados apuntan a que H1X puede tener un papel en la regulación de la elongación, splicing o el ARN no codificante, que podría estar induciendo la transcripción de genes sin cambios en las modificaciones post-traduccionales de histonas. La depleción de varias variantes de H1 (H1.2 y H1.4) desencadena una respuesta de interferón debido a una transcripción aberrante de elementos repetitivos en cáncer de mama. La transcripción de elementos repetitivos se observó por un aumento de sus niveles de ARN, un aumento de los ARN de doble cadena en el citoplasma y por la transcripción de regiones intergénicas. El mecanismo molecular que conduce a su transcripción, tal como sucede con los genes desregulados en células deplecionadas de una sola variante, aún no está resuelto. Mostramos un aumento global en la accesibilidad a la cromatina que no correlaciona completamente con los cambios transcripcionales observados al deplecionar múltiples variantes de H1. Sorprendentemente, las modificaciones post-traduccionales de las histonas se mantienen intactas.

Concentrating on the time frame between the establishment of India's Constituent Assembly in 1946, and the passing of the Dowry Prevention Act in 1961, this thesis attempts to write an alternative history of India's transition to Independence, by applying the tools of feminist historiography to this crucial period of citizenship making, as a way of offering new perspectives on the nature, meaning and boundaries of citizenship in post-colonial India. It focuses on a cohort of nationalists and feminists who were leading members of two prominent women's organisations, the All India Women's Conference (AIWC) and the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW), documenting and analysing the voices and positions of this cohort in some of the key debates around nation building in Nehruvian India. It also traces and analyses the range of activities and struggles engaged in by these two women's organisations - as articulations and expressions of citizenship in practice. The intention in so doing is to address three key questions or areas of exploration. Firstly to analyse and document how gender relations and contemporary understandings of gender difference, both acted upon and were shaped by the emerging identity of the Indian as postcolonial citizen, and how this dynamic interaction was situated within a broader matrix of struggles and competing identities including those of minority rights. Secondly to analyse how the framework of postcolonial Indian citizenship has both created new possibilities for empowerment, but simultaneously set new limitations on how the Indian women's movement was able to imagine itself as a political constituency and the feminist agenda it was able to articulate and pursue. Thirdly to explore how applying a feminist historiography to the story of the construction of postcolonial Indian citizenship calls for the ability to think about the meaning and possibilities of citizenship in new and different ways, to challenge the very conceptual frameworks that define the term.

Our lives would not be what they are today without animals. From the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, animals provide tangible evidence of their importance every day. But more than that, animals have shaped who we are and what we believe. Often in ways we don't see. That's what inspired me to write Being Human. This work began as an examination of how humans have altered animals to better match our imaginations and ideals, and too, the way these animals have irrecoverably altered how we live and look at the world. Consider, for example, that before they became physically useful to us in providing meat or skills or companionship, animals were central figures in our stories, mythologies, and religions. All the while, of course, these animals remained both ignorant and at the mercy of whatever we imagined--or needed--them to be. And what does all of this say about us? What can we learn about ourselves from looking at animals, and more specifically, looking at the way we treat them? In a society where animal flesh comes to us freshly packed and cleanly saran-wrapped, and pets are treated as members of our families, we tend to look at animals as one thing or another. A farm pig is not a companion animal, any more than a cat is a meal-in-waiting. At least not in our culture. We generally see what's convenient or desirable and when things get messy or complicated, we tend to look away. In so doing, we miss the opportunity to clearly see who we really are, what we're capable of, and what, if anything, we might want to change as a result. I chose four specific animals that show us different sides of ourselves. These beings are both familiar and strange, part of our everyday lives but often only found on the periphery. Each animal symbolizes one of four categories: food, pest, worker and pet. And each connects to a human need: pigs with consumption, pigeons with communication, horses with control and cats with companionship. They are arranged in this order to reflect the deepening complexity of their respective human needs--from the simplest, the need to eat, to the most complex, the need for companionship. (Arguably, control can be considered the most complex, however I chose companionship as the culminating need because it inherently involves all of the other three.) I hope if I accomplish only one thing, it is this: after reading, you see these animals--and your relationship to them--a little bit differently than before.

ABSTRACT THE GROWING DESERT: NIHILISM AND METAPHYSICS IN HEIDEGGER&rsquo
S THOUGHT Duman, Musa Ph. D., Department of Philosophy Supervisor : Prof. Dr. Ahmet inam March 2009, 209 pages In this study, we explore Heidegger&rsquo
s understanding of nihilism as the essential dimension of metaphysics, of metaphysical experience of Being, and in the following, we address his responses to it. Heidegger takes nihilism as rooted in the metaphysical way of thinking, hence metaphysics and nihilism standing in a primordial identity. Such metaphysical way of thinking as a framework in which Being is experinced and articulated, explicitly or implicitly in all areas of Western culture, from art to science, gives us the deep history or movement of Western tradition. Heidegger considers such movement to be presenting an ever growing threat, indeed as something to be consummated in the eeriest possibility of world history, that is, total destruction of human essence as an openness for the disclosure of Being. He points out to this underlying phenomenon with various designations: forgetfullnesss of Being, abandonment of Being, darkening of the world, Gestell and devestation are some of them. In this tradition, Being, from Plato and Aristotle onwards, becomes nothing at all, that is, excluded from any thoughtful consideration, reduced to a mere abstraction. Anything nihilistic, if fully delved into, would prove to conceal at its heart an alienation to the true sense of Being. Therefore, we need to develop a way of thinking outside the dominion of metaphysics, which should not only discover No-thing as the concealment dimension of Being, thus be deeply open to our finitude, but also learn to respond thoughtfully and thankfully to the gift of Being in, through and towards which we ex-sist as human beings. Vis-a-vis the futural potentials of nihilism in this long end of Western history, the futural character of Heidegger&rsquo
s thinking, his search for a new way of thinking that would incipate the other beginning, harbours a strange Tension that is characteristic of his whole philosophy.

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The first clinical research with healthy volunteers in Brazil had occurred in a tumultuated climate. In 1989 the process of institutionalization of the Unit of Clinical Pharmacology next to the Department of Pharmacology of the College of Medical Sciences on the State University of Campinas had beginning. Four years later, had started to appear public accusations on the use of healthy volunteers, called human guinea-pigs, in the clinical tests with medicines, and on the issue to remunerate them for the participation. The discussion arrived at the Justice and at the ethics councils of the area, involving the researcher and professor Gilbert De Nucci, and establishing criticizers and defenders of the initiative. In the trace of this controversy, appears the Resolution 196/96, which established the legal requirements for the accomplishment of clinical research in the country, based on the four pillars of the Bioethics: autonomy, non maleficence, beneficence and justice. The Brazilian norm incorporated what would come to become the more critical point in the discussion about the motivation of the healthy volunteers to participate of clinical research, when foresaw that they can be repaid by the financial expenses that come to have, but never remunerated. The international experience, however, openly adopts and discusses the remuneration criteria. Throughout this research and, in parallel to the demonstration of how the Bioethics has constituted itself on an important scientific field of reflection, had appeared relative questions to the link between science, language, speech, representation and power. In this context, we adopt the works of the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) as our theoretical referential
As primeiras pesquisas clínicas com voluntários sadios no Brasil ocorreram em clima tumultuado . Em 1989 teve início o processo de institucionalização da Unidade de Farmacologia Clínica junto ao Departamento de Farmacologia da Faculdade de Ciências Médicas da Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Quatro anos depois, começaram a surgir denúncias públicas sobre a utilização de voluntários sadios, denominados cobaias humanas, nos testes clínicos com medicamentos, e sobre a prática de remunerá-los pela participação. A celeuma chegou à Justiça e aos conselhos de ética da área, envolvendo o pesquisador e professor Gilberto De Nucci, e estabelecendo críticos e defensores da iniciativa. No rastro dessa polêmica, surge a Resolução 196/96, que estabeleceu os requisitos legais para a realização de pesquisas clínicas no País, com base nos quatro pilares da Bioética: autonomia, não maleficência, beneficência e justiça. A norma brasileira incorporou o que viria a tornar-se o ponto nevrálgico no debate sobre a motivação dos voluntários sadios para participar de pesquisas de medicamentos, quando previu que eles somente podem ser ressarcidos pelas despesas que venham a ter, jamais remunerados. A experiência internacional, porém, adota e debate abertamente os critérios de remuneração. Ao longo deste trabalho de pesquisa e, em paralelo à demonstração de como a Bioética se constituiu em campo científico de reflexão por excelência, surgiram questões relativas ao vínculo entre ciência, linguagem, discurso, representação e poder. Neste contexto, optamos pelas obras do filósofo francês Michel Foucault (1926-1984) como referencial teórico para a nossa abordagem

Les deux conflits mondiaux qui ouvrent le XXe siècle métamorphosent radicalement le monde contemporain, entraînant des révolutions majeures au niveau social, politique, artistique, philosophique. Un courant de renouveau humaniste à la recherche de nouvelles valeurs pour l’homme voit le jour ; parmi les multiples propositions, celle de l’œuvre et de la pensée de l’écrivain français Jean Bruller, dit Vercors. Faisant de l’homme le cœur de son projet intellectuel et artistique, Vercors se questionne sur l’existence de l’espèce humaine, sa nature et sa place dans le monde, sur la définition d’homme et le spécifiquement humain. La présente thèse s’attache à explorer les différentes formes théoriques, éthiques et esthétiques que prend cette pensée dans la production de l’auteur, dans le but d’analyser les particularités qui la relient ou la différencient des propositions qui lui sont contemporaines. Le corpus proposé est construit autour d’un dialogue théorie-fiction, qui prend également en compte les dessins de jeunesse de l’artiste. La mise en relation étroite entre la vie, l’œuvre, la pensée et le contexte socio-historique permettra de reconstruire et d’appréhender le projet de l’auteur, ainsi que de définir la place concrète du texte littéraire dans la réflexion vercorienne. Ce dispositif d’interrelations profitera aussi des approches pluridisciplinaires que l’écrivain convoque dans son œuvre (histoire, philosophie, anthropologie, biologie et psychologie). Le tout nous servira de paradigme pour explorer les variations existantes dans sa fiction, espace où la pensée de l’homme de Vercors trouve sa réalisation la plus aboutie
The two world conflicts that opened the 20th century radically transformed the contemporary world, giving rise to major social, political, artistic and philosophical revolutions. A trend of humanist revival in search of new values for Humankind was born. Among the many formulations was that of the work and thought of the French writer Jean Bruller, also known as Vercors. Having designated Human being at the centre of his intellectual, artistic (notably literary) project, Vercors questioned himself about the existence of the human species, its nature, its place in the world, the definition of human being, based on what is specific in being human. This doctoral dissertation investigates the different theoretical, ethical and aesthetic forms that this idea of human being takes in the author’s productions, in order to analyze the distinctive features that link and differentiate it from alternative contemporary humanist thinking. The proposed corpus is built around theory-fiction dialogue, which also takes into account the artist’s first drawings. Closely linking life, work, thought and sociohistorical context makes it possible to reconstruct and comprehend the author’s project, as well as to define the concrete role of the literary text in the vercorian reflection. This system of interrelations also benefits from the multidisciplinary approaches that the writer brings to his work (history, philosophy, anthropology, biology and psychology). The thesis, as a whole, serves as a paradigm to explore the different variations existing in his fiction, where Vercors’ thought on Humankind is most compellingly developed

Weather and climate are truly arresting in Australia's far north. They set the 'Top End' - the northernmost parts of the Northern Territory - apart; not only from 'temperate' Australia, but also from other tropical locales. Weather and climate are integral to the experience of the place. Authoritative histories of the Northern Territory, with justification, routinely discuss its weather and climate. They indicate the ineluctable physical parameters that bound human activity in this region and which also set the stage for the dramas of human history played out there. In this study weather and climate are the drama. They are the characters, and they are the plot. Elements of the great aerial ocean in which the 'Top End' is immersed - rain, wind and heat - are studied on a variety of time scales. Events are examined: their intensity, duration, chronology and patterns in time. Just as nature and culture are inextricably entwined, so these elements cannot intelligibly be amputated from human experience. To paraphrase US environmental historian William Cronen, this is a study of stories about stories about weather and climate. The third dimension of this history is its interrogation of the cultural biases and philosophical assumptions both underlying and revealed by these stories about weather and climate. However, this work focuses on one constellation of encounters and responses: those of the colonial invaders. The ideas and (mis)understandings of this group have determined how weather and climate have been seen since colonial times. Now, in the Anthropocene, as the effects of anthropogenic climate change unfold, this understanding is pivotal in dealing with this looming problem. This study is a history of a plausible, coherent misunderstanding. It is also a history of the northernmost region of the Northern Territory, a history refracted through a different prism to those of its worthy predecessors. Here the subject is the colonial encounter with tropical skies, science in colonial and northern Australia and experience-based efforts to grasp something so foreign to people from temperate environs. It reveals how western ideas of time have distorted understandings of weather and climate. It demonstrates the poor fit of received ideas of seasonality and climate to historical experience. Reflecting on important contingencies of this place between 1800 and 1942, this history situates human experience in the Northern Territory firmly in the global currents of both environmental history and intellectual history.

This study examines educational reform in Japan since 2006, when the first Abe administration added objectives to increase “love for the country” and “respect for tradition and culture” into Japan’s central edict on education. The Japanese education system has since been internationally criticized by academics and journalists as furthering a neonationalist revisionist history movement, but the initiative to remove ‘masochistic views’ of history from education is only one aspect of the reforms. This thesis argues that Prime Minister Abe’s educational reforms attempt to meet related demands coming from both the global and domestic environments. In fact, a close examination of Japanese educational reforms since the 2006 Basic Act reveals a strategic response to the new technologies and changing security environment of the Information Age, as well as an effort to make students think of themselves as members of a national community. This research contributes to understanding how Japanese educational policies are being affected by the changing global environment, and the ways in which efforts to meet different global and domestic demands can be negotiated with each other.
Graduate

South African estuaries have high biodiversity value and provide many benefits to society, including food, real estate, a place for recreation and economic enterprise. However, they are facing growing human pressures such as urban encroachment, development in river catchments and interference in hydrological cycles. This dissertation provides an exploratory study of the environmental history of the Mgeni River Estuary, KwaZulu-Natal in an attempt to improve the understanding of the forces that drive environmental change. Through the application of the techniques and methodologies of environmental history, it explores the dynamics, characteristics and impacts of human interaction with the Mgeni River Estuary over time. It focuses on the emergence of a capitalist! industrial society in the twentieth century as this period has been characterised by the most significant environmental alteration and degradation. With the aid of the techniques and methodologies employed, the study highlights a complexity of natural and human events that have altered the estuary over time. Comparative analysis of aerial photographs between 1937 and 1996 reveals that physical changes to the estuary were linked to prevalent social and economic activities. The study describes cultural beliefs, modes of resource use and the political economy as significant and interwoven factors that facilitate environmentally intrusive activities. The study has provided insights into the complexity of factors that influence the rate and extent of change of an estuarine system. It concludes that to improve the understanding of the causes of environmental change, it is necessary to look further than the physical impacts on the environment to the attitudes and beliefs that underlie them. While the solutions to the problems facing the Mgeni River Estuary are not easily at hand, such analysis should assist policy makers and managers in finding a way to initiate more sustainable estuarine development in the future.
Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
My grandfather was in a fix. He wasn’t black, like his father, but he wasn’t quite white either, like his mother. He was marrying a woman who also wasn’t-black-but-wasn’t­quite-white. The problem was that his mother was worried that her future daughter-in-law’s father was a bit too ‘dark, Oriental looking’, whilst her mother was worried because his father was half-black ‘negro’. It really was a case of pot calling kettle black. And she was already three months pregnant, so everyone was worried about whether ‘the throwback thing’ would mean that they would have a black, ‘negro’ baby. My grandparents had managed to modify their ‘brown’ bodies so they could ‘pass’ as ‘white’, but could they also somehow also modify their potentially ‘non-white’ offspring? What might the materially affective mechanisms be, that have the power to ‘fix’ bodies, so as that a brown body can become white? Franken-rat, in a different time and place, was a rat in a laboratory who had a human ear growing on its back. Its body was hideous, a monstrous blend of ratty-human flesh. Franken-rat lived and died in a laboratory, in the service of science and humanity. But how does its body, and the discourses surrounding it, materialise certain understandings about our bodies and their relationships to ‘others’ and to the world? How might our bodies understand that relationship? If my understanding of my relationship to ‘others’ is based upon a liberal humanist construct that separates ‘self’ from ‘other’ and such fleshy intertwinings as monstrous, then can I ‘become posthuman’ and affectively create that relationship as a generous and welcoming of ‘otherness’? Can posthumanism ‘overcome’ the abjection and horror of liberal humanist ideas of monstrosity? This thesis is a fictocritical exploration of bodies and their dynamic discursive and material relations with the world. If the world is a site continually in flux, how might bodies modify or be modified in order to continually belong to it? And how might we sift through the facts, the stories and the affects of family narratives, institutional spaces, historical documents, philosophical ideas, and cultural texts, discourses and practices, in order to find spaces of integrity in connection and becoming, and affective, corporeal knowledges to take into the future?

Utilising reconstructed sunspot data, a statistically significant correlation between sunspot forcing and both palaeo and modern sea-level change was found. Evidence suggests that Indo-Pacific highstands occur over decadal to centennial timescales. The cause of these sea-level highstands (or maximum sea-level height prior to sea-level fall) is still under debate. Previous observational studies suggested that the underlying mechanisms of ENSO are responsive to solar forcing variations over decades to centuries. Here it is shown that sunspot forcing and low-frequency ENSO results in highstands across the Indo-Pacific. Operating at interannual timescales, El Nino relates to sea-level fall in the west Pacific and positive IOD relates to sea-level fall in the east Indian Ocean, while La Nina and negative IOD have the opposite effect. A statistically significant correlation between modern sunspot and both El Nino/posIOD and La Nina/negIOD has been identified. The latter may suggest a low-frequency correlation between sunspot increase and sea-level rise in addition to the correlation between sunspot decrease and sea-level fall. Thus, parameters used in current models may need to be adjusted to include the effects of solar forcing on sea-level change for past and future quantification. Decadal to centennial sea-level change has been shown to occur at a meter-scale level. Predicted global warming and an increase in sunspot forcing may have critical future implications for low-lying coastal and island communities across the Indo-Pacific, including high-density locations such as Sydney, Darwin, and Broome. This new empirical theory that suggests a pattern of sea-level change may act as a guide to understanding prehistoric movements across the Pacific and elsewhere. Decreased solar forcing and sea-level fall over decades to centuries is associated with widespread aridity, diminished reef fishing and island abandonment in the mid to west equatorial Pacific. During this time weakened southeast Tradewinds may have facilitated seafaring networks, and both eastward and higher latitude maritime migrations. The timing of these statistically correlated environmental occurrences is co-incident with Pacific migrations including the Lapita migration, and both pulses of the Polynesian expansion. These results suggest that long-term environmental change was an important contributing factor on the timing and motivation for prehistoric Pacific maritime migration. Further these findings suggest that the hotly debated AD1300 event was not an isolated incident but rather one of a number of sustained environmental conditions that occurred over the Holocene in response to decreased solar forcing.

This thesis is comprised of two parts: a Studio Research component with accompanying Exegesis (66%), and a Dissertation (33%). The Dissertation provides the historical theoretical component that informs the Studio Research and Exegesis, entitled The Dingo in the Colonial Imagination.This body of work investigates the tensions between humans and animals that share boundaries. It focuses on the terse relations between humans, dingoes and wild dogs in southeastern Australia. Ideological and practical themes emerged through the studio-based and theoretical research, which spans a range of disciplines including art, science, culture and history. At its core is how humans and undomesticated animals share arbitrary boundaries and suffer the transgression of these boundaries. Primary field research informed the studio and theoretical aspects of the project. It involved consultation with individuals and agencies affected by dingoes and wild dogs in interface zones where private and government managed lands intersect. The 30,000 word dissertation traces colonial visual representations of the Australian native dog during the century that spans early European settlement to Federation. It follows perceptions of the dingo as it is imagined and encountered by European settlers. The dingo's guise ranges from scientific curiosity, object of desire, symbol of wilderness, metaphor for a dying race and as an enemy that threatens the social and economic fabric of the colonial project. The studio work amplifies the influence of these colonial perceptions on contemporary attitudes to dingoes. It follows a trajectory of the disappearing dingo in its representational form, to its implied remnant presence within the farmers' psyche. Early studio work explored a range of materials and practices, encompassing sculptural and drawing strategies, and took its cue from a macabre ritual of animal shaming in remote regional Australia, the so-called 'dog trees', that display the carcasses of one or multiple dingoes and wild dogs. The studio work has culminated in a large-scale sculptural installation, designed to pare back the visual language to its essential elements. This work incorporates the dissolution of the dingo form, which becomes absorbed into the personal objects embedded into the farmers' private territory. The poetic objects that form the final sculptural work presented for examination, Lines of desire, become metaphors for the dingo's capacity to survive and unsettle the rural subconscious.

Invasive alien plants in South Africa have become one of the major environmental problems affecting millions of hectares of productive and conservation land. Acacia mearnsii, black wattle, is a key invader species along the eastern escarpment. The major rivers of the country rise on this escarpment and the water catchments have been severely affected by black wattle invasion that has reduced water flow and increased soil erosion. The government introduced the Working For Water (WFW) programme in 1995 in order to address the problem of invasive alien plants in the country while, at the same time, creating job opportunities. This study researches the implementation of WFW projects in the small mountain village of Hogsback in the Amatola Mountains since their inception in 1996/97. The main research question posed by this study is: "What factors support or threaten sustainable environmental management through the Working For Water Programme in the Hogsback area?" It gives a history of the environmental changes since 1800 as a result of human disturbance. The social history of the area is described from the viewpoint of the social and cultural disturbances that led to the present day community conflict. The interface between the environmental and social history is then discussed. Semi-structured interviews were held with twenty eight members of the Hogsback community to solicit their views and perceptions of the WFW projects and the role of civil society and government in sustainable environmental management of invasive alien vegetation. Environmental and development plans undertaken for the Hogsback area were analysed. The results were then discussed in terms of the national and regional goals of WFW. The findings indicated that most of the goals of WFW have not met with great success in Hogsback. A number of limiting factors were identified, the primary one being community conflict, both within and without WFW. As the community struggles to address the aspirations of the landless and economically deprived black population while, at the same time, addressing the fears of the white population, the rapid rate of societal, governance and legislative change since the election of the democratic government in 1994 contributed to an environment of uncertainty. Within WFW, there are management problems that have limited the success achieved in clearing invasive alien species in the catchment. The lack of long-term strategic plans, sufficient accurate data and hands-on management are shortcomings in the local projects. The likely long-term effects of large scale clearing in this disturbed environment, without proper rehabilitation, are serious concerns.
Thesis (M.Env.Dev.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
This thesis focuses on the history of human impact on North Manitou Island, Michigan, the management of natural and cultural resources on the island by Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and the often conflicting beliefs and attitudes about wilderness and cultural resources that influenced (and continue to influence) management of the island by Sleeping Bear’s administrators.

碩士
臺南藝術學院
博物館學研究所
93
Following the view point of Aldo Leopold, the purpose of the thesis is mainly concerned with the importance of natural history museum in interpreting the relationship between nature and human being. The core discussions in this essay are concentrated on analysis the historical development of natural history museum to find out if the exhibition in it has coped with the ethics of land as Leopold advocated. My thesis emphasis upon human’s diversified and interactive relationship with objects that they have collected from nature. In other words, I have to carefully explore the different responses of exhibition functions in a natural history museum whenever its natural environment has changed. Then, I will examine the functions if there are some possibilities to fulfill Leopold’s ethics of land in a natural history museum now a day. The case of the front-end evaluation for “the Planning of Exhibition in the Biodiversity of Northern Taiwan”, which I participated during September to December 2005, under the request of Taiwan Forestry Research Institute（林業實驗所）, will be a tool for me to look for this answer. It was through the exhibition plan to realize if there is a chance for this ethics, and if it can influence visitor to increase their knowledge and attitude to the nature, and if it can produce the possible changes of their daily behavior in their lives. Of course, this case study will focus on observing and communicating of contextual topics on biodiversity in the exhibition planning of this future natural history museum. This front-end evaluation will be a chance for our museum to rethinking of the relationship between nature and human being.

NOTE FROM THE LIBRARY: PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR AT indisunflower@yahoo.com OR CONSULT THE LIBRARY FOR THE FULL TEXT OF THIS THESIS.... This thesis investigates the trajectory traced from Sarah Baartman, a Khoisan woman exploited in Europe during the nineteenth century, to a contemporary writing workshop with circumcised, immigrant West African women in Harlem New York by way of a selection of African women's memoirs. The selected African women's texts used in this work create a new testimony of speech, fragmenting a historically dominant Euro-American gaze on African women's bodies. The excerpts form a discursive space for reclaiming self and as well as a defiant challenge to Western porno-erotic voyeurism. The central premise of this thesis is that while investigating Eurocentric (a)historical narratives of Baartman, one finds an implicitly racist and sexist development of European language employed not solely with Baartman, but contemporaneously upon the bodies of Black women of Africa and its Diaspora, focusing predominantly on the "anomaly of their hypersexual" genitals. This particular language applied to the bodies of Black women extends into the discourse of Western feminist movements against African female circumcision in the 21st century. Nawal el Saadawi, Egyptian writer and activist and Aman, a Somali exile, write autobiographical texts which implode a western "silent/uninformed circumcised African woman" stereotype. It is through their documented life stories that these African women claim their bodies and articulate nationalist and cultural solidarity. This work shows that Western perceptions of Female Circumcision and African women will be juxtaposed with African women's perceptions of themselves. Ultimately, with the Nitiandika Writers Workshop in Harlem New York, the politicized outcome of the women who not only write their memoirs but claim a vibrant sexual (not mutilated or deficient) identity in partnership with their husbands, ask why Westerners are more interested in their genitals than how they are able to provide food, shelter and education for the their families, as immigrants to New York. The works of Saadawi, Aman and the Nitandika writers disrupt and ultimately destroy this trajectory of dehumanization through a direct movement from an assumed silence (about their bodies, their circumcisions and their status as women in Africa) to a directed, historically and culturally grounded "alter" speech of celebration and liberation.
English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil.(English)

Through an analysis of History Geography and Social Science subject matter in the elementary level curriculum in Chile, this thesis highlights the role of official education in constructing a notion of human being that gravitates toward Whiteness. The law of education and the curriculum are analyzed to examine the way in which official curriculum operates as a mechanism for oppression, exclusion, and marginalization. It is argued that through the curriculum, a national ideology that incorporates a hegemonic notion of ideal human being and citizen is promoted. Using an anti-colonial, anti-racist discursive framework, and techniques from Critical Discourse Analysis, this work locates Chilean official education and curriculum as the culmination of colonial and racist notion of human and citizenship values supported by the neoliberal state. The researcher advocates for equity and justice in the education system that acknowledges Chile as a multicultural country where different ways of knowing coexist.

The thesis deals with a relationship between humans and animals. In particular, it focuses on a trend of inclusion and exclusion of animals to/from society. Main research questions are designed to answer a question how the dynamics of this trend looks. A dynamic of moral status of animals, legal status of animals, symbolic status of animals and a status of another living being is examined on the European society from antiquity to the present. This time period is divided into 7 parts. The thesis explores not only the dynamics of the statuses, but also their interaction. The symbolic establishment of human - animal boundaries in the European history is considered as well. The thesis reflects essential turning points and tendencies which had the influence on the trend of inclusion and exclusion of animals to/from society. Reader should get the basic knowledge about the development of human - animal relationship through the history.

The thesis is divided into six chapters. In the first part, man and time were interested i philosophy. In the second part, we dealt with human being and human existence. In the third chapter we deal with context of time and history and their importance for man and human society. The fourth chapter tries to capture the meaning of human existence and follows another chapter that tries to find out possible causes that can lead to a loss of meaning of life. The last part, devoted to free time a leisure education, aimed to show the possibilities and limits of a free time educator in helping to meaningfully live.