Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Subject borders'

This dissertation sets out to explore the animal presence in the novels of contemporary French writer Michel Houellebecq. Focusing on this often overlooked aspect in the growing number of publications dedicated to Houellebecq’s literary production, this study argues that the presence of animals is central to understanding how his novels are structured around borders between not only animals and humans but also between humans themselves. By pitting animals against humans the novels simultaneously show how these borders are created within the narratives only to be repeatedly broken down and/or transgressed. Whereas in previous research a posthumanvision in Houellebecq’s works has been largely attributed to the theme of a technological surpassing of the human, this study advances the idea that animals constitute an inherent part of Houellebecq’s questioning of an anthropocentric worldview. The first chapter of the thesis, which lays the foundation for the study, explores how descriptions structure two major ways in which animals are present: either as a backdrop setting where the characters, while trying to maintain the border between themselves and animals, are transformed into observers of animals in their natural habitat, or as metaphors used to describe appearances and seemingly unwanted personality traits of some of the characters. The second chapter expands on the idea of a frontier between animals and humans but contrary to the previous chapter it studies the porosity of these borders by showing how humans and animals are depicted and narrated in similar ways. Drawing on the theories of Giorgio Agamben, Dominique Lestel and Tristan Garcia the study concludes by proposing to read Houellebecq’s novels both as a form of life stories relating a common history between animals and humans and as an attempt to highlight the untenable project of maintaining an anthropocentric worldview.

Beyond the binary borders of sex-A LITTERATURE STUDY ABOUT TRANSGENDER THEORY AND ITS POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTION TO A SOCIAL WORK CONTEXT.GERGANA TOSEVAKARIN SELINA thesis in Social work studies (15 credits) at Malmö University, Hälsa och Samhälle 2012.The discussion about sex and gender is always prominent in a social work context. Our purpose and questions are hence based on the discussion on transgender theory and the way of thinking about the non-binary, and how it relates to the nearby theories. The method of the essay consists of a semi systematic literature overview with the focus on discussing transgender theory in relation to other theories and perspectives, such as modernism, post modernism, feminism and queer theory. We answer the following questions:1.Is it possible to go beyond or exceed the binary of sex and if so, how do we see it in the material we examined?2.In what way are the existing theories of sex / gender in the binary?3.Can one featuring a female embodied subject be of assistance to transgender people's search for an embodied subject?We consider it possible to move beyond the binary by using “fuzzy logic”(Nagoshi & Brzuzy 2010, Tauchert 2002) which is a way of staying in the binary but expanding the term and work in the grey areas instead. Furthermore do we believe a female embodied subject can be of great importance to the transgender people because that is the other half of the issue of equality.

The absence of a public dialogue, either about or between Assia Djebar and Hélène Cixous is mystifying, because they move in academic/literary/intellectual/biographical circles that overlap. Reading for the textual dialogue between Cixous's and Djebar's writing reveals the development of a narrative and writing position, referred to here as the 'border- subject', the roots of which stem from the authors' biographies. Reading Djebar's and Cixous's oeuvre, against the background of Franchise Lionnet's and Gloria Anzaldua's theoretical landscape, simultaneously enlarges the critical optic as well as the scope of each individual writer's oeuvre. What characterises the fictional border subject in Les Impatients and Dedans is a willingness to transgress boundaries. The fictional border subject negotiates with three different spatial dynamics: the separation from the other, spatial metaphors, and history's invasion of domestic space. In the subsequent 'Le Rire de la méduse' and Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement, Djebar and Cixous write as border subjects in order to craft liberating strategies intended to redress the mis-representation or absence of women's body. As a consequence of the preceding texts, L'Amour, la fantasia and Les Rêveries de la femme sauvage contain the authors' semi-autobiographical questioning of the border subject in relation to origin, language, belonging and home: this enables a re-animation of the Algerian past, both individual and collective. Lastly, in Le Blanc de I'Algérie and Le Jour où je n'étais pas là the border subject is put aside: although absent, the narrating 'je' remains connected with events and bears witness. This dimension of testimony represents an exciting development in the authors' oeuvre and their political commitment. What emerges from a comparative reading is the authors' transformation of the border subject into an engagement with the Algerian present. Solidarity amongst Algerian born writers can transform literature into an indestructible repository for the dream of a multi- lingual, multi-cultural Algeria.

The thesis project Engaged Encounters has been a multi-part investigation into art criticism. Its main components are one of practice and one of theory: a fiction text – Transatlantic Journeys – which I am publishing as a small book in an edition of 200 and exhibiting at Konstfack´s Spring Show, and the present reflective essay. In the essay, I identify the central elements of the current «crisis of art criticism» and ask what impact experimental writing modes can have on the practice and its alleged crisis. I give an account of fields of contemporary writing where the text is acting with or through, rather than being about, art. I find that a common view is that the crisis, real as it might be, can serve as a possibility to re-envision art writing. The fiction text, a two-part short story, is a critical response to my one month internship at Henie Onstad Art Centre. A character is extracted from a chosen artwork of the then current exhibition and "cast" in the narrative opposite the history of the art institution. In the fiction as well as in the essay, I treat the «engaged encounter», the face to face meeting with the other. This is the aspect of art criticism I at present find to be most pertinent: criticism as an encounter between work and viewer, a reciprocal addressing analogous to the risky business of face-to-face human relations. The Norwegian word henvendelsen (approximately approach, address) is the key term used to denote this relation. The insights of the linguist Benveniste and the philosopher Levinas are important references.
WIRE, Critical Writing and Curatorial Practice

As a result of the 9/11 terror attacks, a new and far-reaching form of security governance has emerged within the United States under the heading of 'homeland security'. While this mode of security has brought with it a range of domestic counter-terrorism efforts, such as new methods of preparedness in the event of attacks on American cities, as well as mechanisms to seize and cut off terrorist assets, it has also predominantly been oriented towards the development of a new legal, institutional and technological regime responsible for the management and risk assessment of individual identity and the identities of foreign nationals passing through U.S. borders. Although this mode of security provides new powers as well as more flexible and collaborative methods for U.S. customs, law enforcement and intelligence to address the threat of terrorism, it has also created political controversy. This controversy has rested upon the perception that homeland security methods embody an unchecked extension of executive power negatively impacting the rights and liberties of the individuals that these very security techniques were established to protect. In order to interrogate this controversy and analyse how this new form of security performs within an extended field of sovereign power, this thesis takes into account the laws, policies and technologies – biometric, datamining, database – that shape this new form of security at the border. This new form of security arguably not only embodies a mobilisation and empowerment of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies which understand terrorism as catastrophic and generational, but it can fundamentally be seen as creating a new infrastructure that allows U.S. security institutions to become more 'informationally' aware of the identities of individuals entering and exiting the country. How U.S. security institutions access such identity information, along with how this data is used, is what constitutes the new social and political reality at the border.

Cette thèse aborde la question de la (re)frontiérisation en Turquie face aux problématique liés à la gouvernance des « indésirables ». Par qui et pour qui est-elle faite, et avec quels effets ? Le positionnement particulier de la Turquie comme étant ni entièrement européenne, ni entièrement non-européenne, a alimenté la problématisation du paysage migratoire en Turquie. Ce positionnement ambivalent est d’une part dû à un regard orientaliste qui encadre la manière dont sont perçus la Turquie et les migrants qui y résident, et d’autre part à cette démarche de séduction et de mise en conformité émenant de l’UE et de sa stratégie d’externalisation. En prenant le cas de la Turquie, nous soutenons que nous devons comprendre la gouvernance de la mobilité comme une affaire de pouvoir diffus, dont sont particulièrement investies les organisations intergouvernementales, mais aussi les organisations que l’on pourrait appeler bordercrats périphériques. Nous proposons les concepts de bordercracies, clans bordercratic transnationaux et objets frontierisés pour comprendre l’autorité épistémique, les connectivités et l’agentivité comprisent dans ce pouvoir diffus. Nous affirmons que les clans bordercratic transnationaux dépendent de rationalités gestionnaire, sécuritaire, humanitaire, et orientaliste, imbriquées dans la gouvernance de mobilité, qui génère une logique de filtrage basé sur la sélection des désirables/indésirables. Nous conclurons que les fonctions performatives des clans bordercratic transnationaux incluent, lorsqu’elles intègrent la Turquie dans le cercle à suivre et excluent, lorqu’elles constituent et maintiennent les « indésirables » loin de l’Occident
This doctoral thesis seeks to explore how bordering is performed in Turkey with respect to the governance of the ‘undesirables’, by whom, for whom, and with what effects. This enquiry argues that Turkey’s migration and refugee landscape has been problematised through its particular positionality as neither completely European nor completely non-European. This ambivalent positionality is partly due to the permeation of orientalist ways of seeing Turkey and the migrants and refugees who inhabit this landscape, and partly an effect of the courtship/compliance externalisation strategy of the EU. In taking the Turkey case, I argue that mobility governance has to be understood as a matter of diffuse power that is particularly vested in IGOs, but also in organisations that might be called peripheral bordercrats. I advance the notion of bordercracies, transnational bordercratic tribes and bordered objects to make sense of the workings, epistemic authority, connectivities and the agentic forces of this diffused power. I argue that bordercratic tribes rely on intermingling managerial, security, humanitarian and orientalist rationalities of mobility governance, which generate a filtering logic based on selections of desirable/undesirable. I conclude that the performative functions of transnational bordercratic tribes include as they bring Turkey into an in-group and exclude as they constitute and contain ‘undesirables’ away from the West

Uppsatsen belyser fysikundervisning ur ett kulturperspektiv. En multivariatanalys –

principalkomponentsanalys – har genomförts för att kartlägga fysikundervisningskulturer på

tidigare respektive senare år inom grundskolan. Syftet är att undersöka vilka likheter och

skillnader som finns mellan olika fysikundervisningskulturer för att – med hjälp av tidigare

forsking och litteratur – se vilka möjligheter och problem som kan uppstå för elever och lärare

i och med dessa fysikundervisningskulturer. Vi har utgått från begreppet border-crossing för

att behandla de kulturövergångar som kan uppstå när elever byter lärare och vilka

konsekvenser detta får för elever och lärare.

Undersökningen har funnit, beskrivit och jämfört fyra fysikundervisningskulturer:

’Praktikerna’, ’Ämnesinriktade’, ’Anpassarna’ och ’Återkopplarna’. Dessa

fysikundervisningskulturer beror inte på kön, ålder, ämnesbehörighet eller erfarenhet. Det

finns dock ett samband mellan vilka årskurser lärarna undervisar på men detta samband gäller

endast ’Anpassarna’ och ’Praktikerna’. Undersökningen har funnit att ’Ämnesinriktade’ och

’Anpassarna’ har inslag av tidigare beskriven vetenskapskultur. Undersökningen fann att

’Återkopplarna’ är en blandning av de andra tre funna fysikundervisningskulturerna. Eftersom

det uppstår kulturövergångar mellan dessa fysikundervisningskulturer skapar detta problem i

form av att elever och lärare inte känner igen varandras kulturer. Dessa kulturövergångar är

beskrivna ur både elev- och lärarperspektiv i undersökningen.

This essay surveys physics science education in the light of cultures. A multivariate analysis –

principal component analysis – has been used to map out the different cultures in middle

school and high school. The main purpose of this essay is to examine differences and

similarities between the different physics educational cultures found in the survey. Through

examining literature and prior research, it is also the purpose to examine what possibilities

and problems these physics educational cultures might impose on students and teachers.

Border-crossing has been a central concept in explaining how possible cultural bordercrossings

might affect the teachers and pupils.

The survey has found four different kinds of physics educational cultures which are:

‘Praktikerna’, ‘Ämnesinriktade’, ‘Anpassarna’ and ‘Återkopplarna’. These physics

educational cultures are not dependent of sex, age, appropriate teacher education or

experience. However there is a connection between which grades the teacher educates but

only for the physics educational cultures ‘Anpassarna’ and ‘Praktikerna’. The survey also

discovered that the physics educational cultures ‘Ämnesinriktade’ and ‘Anpassarna’ has to

some degree a connection to earlier examined science-cultures. ‘Återkopplarna’ seems to be a

mixture of the other three described physics educational cultures. Since cultural bordercrossings

do occur between the described educational cultures, the problems associated with

border-crossings also exist. The problems which are associated with border-crossings are: that

pupils and teachers don’t recognize each other’s physics educational cultures. These bordercrossings

are described in light of both the teachers’ points of view and the pupils’ points of

view.

This essay explores and examines disgust in five literary figures and books based on scent, bodyfluids and abjection. Together with Julia Kristeva's Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection and Sara Ahmed's "The Performativity of Disgust" in The Cultural Politics of Emotion, I analyze these books, and my position as a researchsubject. The questions I ask are: What does disgust mean? How do the subject's boundaries shift when things penetrate the body? How are scents, body fluids and disgust expressed in relation to power and the female body? And what does it mean that I stick my reading experiences on the texts I read?   The analysis begins in Mare Kandre's novel Aliide, Aliide and how gaze, power and girlhood are made, as well as how abjection takes place in the intake of milk and larvae. Body in body and body against body are analyzed based on Aliide's disgust in the novel. I discuss how something growing inside is experienced as disgusting and frightening and connect it to the pregnant body and the fetus as abjection. In the second chapter of the analyze, it is Parfymen: berättelsen om en mördare by Patrick Süskind that focuses on the scent of the female body that Grenouille, the main character tries to extract and master. The gaze on the female body and the extraction of fragrance is in focus here and in Nekrofilen by Gabrielle Wittkop, Lucien's desire for the dead body is examined. The body fluids, such as the vomit that the bodies excrete can be read as limits to life and death. In the third and final analysis section, I read these books with affect. I reconnect to my introduction where Ulf Lundell's poems made me feel disgusted. I use Ahmed's concept of performativity to discuss how cannibalism - reading - eating body fluids are connected, and how writing about disgust, is a form om vomiting. I examine my own writing subject and what an affective reading does to literary studies and the research position. In conclusion, I discuss how the universal and the subjective making of disgust effect research.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 314-323). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Mot bakgrund av min egen uppväxt, olika händelser under uppväxten och det jag upplevt under mina perioder i skolans värld så har jag fått ett intresse för religionsämnet, hur det faktiskt förhåller sig i dagens skola och hur det kanske borde vara.

För att få denna undersökning till stånd har jag intervjuat 10 mellanstadielärare på tre olika skolor i en och samma kommun. Intervjuerna, som spelats in på band, har tagit cirka 30 minuter var. Dessa har jag sedan försökt sammanställa och jämföra med varandra för att finna svar på orsakerna till religionsämnets problematik i dagens skola. Intervjuerna är både ordagrant återgivna och i vissa fall sammanställda, för att underlätta för läsaren. Efter svaren på varje intervjufråga följer ett diskussionsavsnitt där jag redogör för mina egna reflektioner, vilka i regel är koncentrerade på just problematiken i ämnet och därför ganska pessimistiska. Nämnas bör att trots detta finns det även mycket positivt i undersökningen, som man kan glädjas åt.

Genom denna undersökning har jag fått bekräftat det jag sen tidigare anat att religionsämnet har en tendens att ”försvinna” till fördel för ”viktigare” ämnen. Ämnet upplevs i regel som ett svårt ämne att undervisa i och osäkerheten inför ämnet är stor. Ytterst få lärare arbetar idag metodiskt och målmedvetet med livsfrågor utan hastar över temat som ett nödvändigt ont. När det gäller det didaktiska så verkar det som om många lärare är osäkra på hur livsfrågorna ska kopplas antingen till de olika religionerna eller behandlas enskilt. Flera av lärarna har dåligt samvete över att man inte ger ämnet mer utrymme. Svårigheterna är många när det gäller religionsämnet. Problemen, de olika orsakerna till dessa och vad man då kan göra för att rätta till problemen redogör jag för i själva uppsatsen.

Efter alla intervjusvaren har jag även skrivit en kort avslutande sammanfattning över slutsatserna jag kommit fram till av det material jag har haft till förfogande.

Examensarbete på Grundskollärarprogrammet 1-7 ht 1998. Uppsatsförfattaren skrev senare en uppföljning till denna uppsats i form av en B-uppsats i Religionsvetenskap, som återfinns här: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-5542

Projektet behandlar det sublima i relation till arkitektur; både som händelse, diskurs och institution. Genom ett event som dynamisk förskjuter arkitekturens parametrar och sätter dessa i kontinuerlig förändring i relation subjekt-tid och objekt-rum. Ett gränsöverskridande erfarande av arkitektur.
The project deals with the sublime in relation to architecture; both as event, discourse and institution. Through an event that dynamically shifts architectural parameters and position these in continuous change in relation to subject-time and object-space. A cross-border experience of architecture.

This essay attempts to listen to meaning in the borderland, and asks in between which faculties and senses, through which we see and/or listen to the world, do we seek sense? My writing is located on this border, or more precisely on the erased border that I call an interspace or an interval, the place where we look for sense in the relation between language, philosophy, politics, and music. I have done this through the reading of three contemporary philosophers: Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Angela Davis. Derrida and Nancy have provided me with a theoretical and philosophical background for my approach to Davis’s philosophic and political claims. My analysis sets out from Derrida’s différance and what it reveals in the sign system of language. This is continued through a discussion of Nancy’s question: Is philosophy capable of listening, in all senses of the word? Is the philosopher not someone who always hears? In my reading, this connection is established through the blue notes. Davis, finally, provides me with a support for my claim that we, in the political significance of blues, in the traces of meaning that it contains, might be able to listen to Derrida’s différance. Keywords: Listening, meaning, différance, blues, sonority, blue notes, in between, border, subject, Jacques Derrida, Angela Y Davis, Jean-Luc Nancy.
Denna uppsats syftar till att försöka lyssna till meningen i gränslandet – mellan vilka relationer i våra förmågor och sinnen, av att se och/eller lyssna till världen, söker vi mening? Jag vill skriva om den gränsen, eller mer kanske den utsuddade gränsen i platsen jag kallar mellansfär och mellanrum, som den plats där vi söker mening i relationen mellan språk, filosofi, politik och musik. När vi idag söker mening och talar om varat, om individen och subjektivitet, kan det vara så att vi inte längre kan göra det genom fasta tecken, system och former? Istället för att stanna kvar i ett tillstånd av upprepande och separerande som landar i uteslutande och förtryck, i värdeskalor och normer, istället för att endast höra klassiska notsystem, eller förstå språkliga regler hos fasta teckensystem; kan det vara så att vi idag får vända oss till lyssnandet och mellansfären i de blå tonernas différance för att förstå olika individer och subjektivitet i relation till världen? Genom att göra en analys av Derridas term différance i hans text med samma namn: ”Différance” ur boken Margins of philosophy, ska jag försöka närma mig Nancys bok Listening samt läsa hans text genom tanken på différance i Nancys teori och förståelse om lyssnandet.  För att undersöka hur lyssnande och musik kan få ett praktiskt uttryck, av de teoretiska meningarna vi söker i différance, vill jag använda musikgenrerna blues och jazz och de blå toner som bluesen förhåller sig i och mellan. Min teori är att bluesen kan ge en plats (av flera) för var skillnader möts mellan text, värld och musik; platsen där différance kan lyssnas till, synliggöras och hörs. I den teorin vänder jag mig till Angela Davis bok Blues Legacies and Black Feminism som stöd för bluesens utveckling. Det jag ämnar närma mig hos Davis är just bluesens meningssökande och plats i samhället

The modern state system has a specific answer to the question of where and how political action can occur: in the state and through citizenship. State sovereignty underpins the basic discourse of who belongs and who speaks in political communities, which is said to have important implications for those without claim to citizenship, namely the refugee. Giorgio Agamben‘s Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life is an important discussion of how the logic of sovereignty produces the refugee in the contemporary international state system. However, I will argue in this paper that this narrative, like many others, eclipses moments of refugee agency and reproduces the refugee in apolitical terms by binging a particular conception of the political to bear. This paper critically engages with the writings of Immanuel Kant and Giorgio Agamben to explore how this discourse of political community (state) and political identity (citizenship) has emerged historically and is continually reinforced. I argue that these narratives fail to see the politicality of so called spaces of abjection which are continually reshaping and reforming perceived understandings of the political.

This thesis evaluates the art involved in the process of constructing borders. I review the governmental processes involved with Canadian border policies as they facilitate the welcomed and the rejected. I ask: how do citizenship and immigration policies operate to maintain and reproduce borders, separating Canadian citizens inside the state from ‘foreigners’ outside. This thesis considers borders not only as repressive instruments for exclusion but also in a productive sense as they create citizens, national identities and populations. The thesis focuses on one central assemblage of border technologies: immigrant medical examinations. By reviewing citizenship and immigration policies, laws and practices since confederation, as well as contemporary legislation, policies and interview data, this thesis argues that these examinations are founded on principles of exclusion. While current policy directions suggest using these medical examinations for inclusive practices, I argue that such inclusive practices still reify the exclusive expectations of the state for citizens to be healthy and productive in the present and in the future.

At the turn of the twentieth century, apples served as a catalyst for far-reaching social and environmental change in the North American West. As people debated the future of North American society as a rural or urban civilization, rural advocates found their answer in horticulture. Steadfast in their conviction that urban environments were corrupt, immoral, and disordered, people on both sides of the international boundary engaged in a boisterous promotional campaign that culminated with the creation of an orcharding landscape that spanned British Columbia, Washington State, and Oregon. Consequently, countless communities found new purpose or came into existence organized around the cultivation of apples and other assorted fruits. Fully aware of negative stereotypes that depicted farming as backwards and unfulfilling, horticulturists argued that fruit farming would lead to the creation of a modern countryside. Guided by scientific agriculture, refined and intelligent settlers would transform rural life by uniting in partnership with “Dame Nature,” leading to bountiful harvests as nature was finished to its “intended end.” As a result, the orcharding landscape would organize an alternative modernity that stood in juxtaposition to the urban-industrial axis of development. Despite their location in different political projects, fruit farmers on either side of the International Boundary bore striking affinities that were affirmed and reinforced through publications, associations, exhibitions, and educational initiatives, underlining the significance of the border as a vantage to appreciate divisions as well as continuities. While the creation of a modern countryside was sustained by high hopes, growers did not anticipate that nature’s bounty would in many instances stand as a curse rather than a blessing. Through two world wars, growers wrestled with the changing contours of rural life, particularly as it related to rural growth. While orcharding endured, its original conception as the nucleus of a progressive and middle class rural society did not.

For the past three centuries, historians have speculated and argued over the dating, patronage and provenance of the Bayeux Tapestry. Researchers have pondered the Latin inscriptions; reflected on the techniques of production and the use of narrative devices; mined the Tapestry for information on a number of subjects, including architectural styles, costumes, modes of navigation, nascent heraldry, and weaponry; and focused on areas of special interest, especially on scenes such as the so-called "Aelfgyva episode." Additionally, the Tapestry has been described as an epic and/or a panegyric; it has even been compared to a chanson de geste, a Shakespearian play, a film, and a cartoon; it has been "deconstructed," and finally turned into a "hypertext" accessible via the internet. Yet, in spite of many promises, the borders of the Bayeux Tapestry remain largely unexplored to date. This apparent neglect may be due to the difficulty one encounters when attempting to retrieve the symbolism and the meanings of the pictographs, which, even at the time of production, may have been multiple and may have depended on the cultural level, social awareness and political leanings of the beholders. The purpose of this dissertation is to acquaint the reader with a novel approach to the reading of the Bayeux Tapestry, based on the premise that the border pictographs are charged with symbolic meaning; that their meaning(s) inflect(s), reflect(s) and even alter(s) the images in the center field; and that this synergic interplay helps in the discovery, and stimulates the generation of a new understanding and integrated interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry. For my research to be comprehensive and in order to uncover and decode some of the latent symbolic meanings, it was fundamental to take into account the social, cultural and political history of eleventh-century Northwestern Europe, and to acquire an appreciable knowledge of the lives of the important individuals illustrated in the Bayeux Tapestry. It was also necessary to be aware that, since the shaping of minds and the rewriting of history was already practiced in the eleventh century, the possibility existed that the Bayeux Tapestry was more than objective history recorded on cloth, but was someone's -- perhaps the patron's -- interpretation of historical events. Thus, this dissertation takes the reader on a journey inside and outside the frame to achieve an integrated reading of the Bayeux Tapestry and its borders.

This thesis is on the transformation of Turco-Georgian relations since the early 1990s. In recent years, these relations have been taken to a next level in light of the trans-national cooperation that resulted in the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. With a narrow focus on the Turco-Georgian border, this study attempts to understand the trajectory of the improving relations between the two countries through a reconceptualised understanding of the border. By emphasising both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of borders, this thesis tries to steer away from the zero-sum approaches and understand the nature of Turco-Georgian as a complex multiplicity.

This thesis takes the position that it is not clear that the aspirations and assumptions expressed by theories of international relations predicated on the narrative about the emergence of mature sovereign nation states acting within a system of such states offers a particularly helpful guide to political practices concerning boundaries and borders that are identified on the ground. This is especially the case if we pay attention to the specific practices of bordering in Cyprus. Through a reading of various sites of limitation and excess of Cypriot sovereignty – in relation to the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, the modern system involving Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, the United Nations and the European Union, ongoing complexities such as British Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs) and the ethnically mixed village of Pyla/Pile – this thesis investigates the consequences and considers the implications, both theoretical and actual, that arise in Cyprus.

This thesis explores the changing approach of the Chosŏn state to subjects with foreign lineages in the period between the Imjin War (1592-98) and the early nineteenth century. Chosŏn Korea underwent considerable upheaval during the Imjin War and the wars of the Ming-Qing transition. Many Jurchen subjects of the Chosŏn court were forced from their homes in the Tumen Valley into the banner armies of the rising Qing state, with only a remnant persisting in Chosŏn. Additionally, large numbers of Ming Chinese entered Chosŏn either with the Ming army or as refugees from war in Liaodong. Initially, the Chosŏn state responded to its Jurchen and Ming Chinese subjects primarily through pragmatic concern about the loyalty of these subjects to the Chosŏn and the burden they imposed on the agricultural economy. As a result, the Chosŏn court welcomed and even defended the Jurchen as established Chosŏn subjects but was cautious of the more alien Ming deserters and refugees. Ming migrant status did not improve during the remainder of the seventeenth century. Ming Chinese lineages were considered, along with Jurchen and Japanese, within the same invidious submitting foreigner tax category. During the same period fraudulent Ming migrants became a focus for sedition among non-elites. The eighteenth century rise of Ming Loyalist ritualism transformed the response of the Chosŏn court to such foreign lineages as Ming migrant lineages were encouraged to participate in court-sponsored Ming loyalist rituals. Along with this ritual participation Ming migrant status was transformed from that of submitting foreigners to that of imperial subjects, while Jurchen and Japanese lineages disappeared. At the same time, hagiographic biographies were written of the original Ming Chinese refugees which praised them for coming to Chosŏn because of Neo-Confucian loyalty to the Ming. The Chosŏn state responded to foreign lineages according to changing circumstances. Neo-Confucian ritualism only played a role in response to Ming lineages in the eighteenth century when earlier concerns about disloyalty and social disruption had largely passed.

This thesis examines the specific stigma and discrimination associated with being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. The research asked how people with this diagnosis see the diagnosis itself influencing their relationships with care providers, and more specifically, how they perceived a change in their relationship with formal mental heath support systems after the diagnosis was made. Open-ended interviews were conducted with six women who had been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. The methodological framework used incorporated elements of critical and feminist theory and microanalysis techniques were used in the data analysis. The participants described examples of discrimination they faced in attempting to access mental health services that they identified as being connected with the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. The misuses of the diagnosis and participants’ acts of resistance against discrimination were also major themes that emerged in the data.