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Through this paper, we examine the redesign process that the building of Nikolaj Church has gone through from the 1960ies, to how it appears today, as Nikolaj Kunsthal. The traces and layers have visible signs of a random design process through time. Nowadays the art centre aims for a coherent atmosphere and sense of place in an upcoming design process. Our analysis of textual data gathered from relevant documents and interviews with key stakeholders, relies on the development of a sociotechnical perspective. This perspective allows us to recognise the various agencies and networks in connection to the design process that emerge from the technical and social aspects, which are analysed. The findings emphasize the building as an actant and a network, that plays a crucial part in the design process.

In this project, we discuss the phenomenon of UAV warfare. By conducting a discourse analysis of two speeches, one conducted by then counterterrorism advisor John Brennan and one by President Barack Obama, we investigate how UAV use is justified. We briefly discuss the historical background and contemporary public opinion in order to contextualize the discourse presented in the two speeches. The discourse analysis is structured in three analytical categories: how are representations of identity are articulated, how the speakers make claims about the future and finally the specific nature of the justifications of UAV use. Finally, we discuss how our empirical findings relate to the discussion of the changing nature of warfare, as well as we present a brief critique of a position in the current UAV debate. Our main argument in this discussion is that UAVs should be discussed within the social, discursive practice they are used, and not regarded merely as technological objects distinct from the context they exist in.

The French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, inspired by Nietzsche, has questioned the unity of the notion of truth by meditating upon the relationship between language and reality. Foucault has formulated the methods of archaeology and genealogy in order to show how any claim of truth has its rooting in the interpretation of reality according to specific episteme. Contrary to Foucault’s reflections, the understanding of truth as being ‘out there’ and obtainable by appropriate, i.e. scientific methods, is the bearing element within the development discourse. This tendency is exemplified by the increase in the number of truth commissions worldwide. This thesis focuses on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and its Final Report. The TRC’s discourse and methods are analysed in terms of archaeology and genealogy by taking outset in the Report. The analyses are carried out with the aim of putting Foucault’s tools into practice and offering another narrative of the Report, which describes how the objects, main concepts etc. of the TRC have emerged, as well as how these regimes of truth have been put into practice by various techniques, thus constituting the regimes of practice. The overall narrative that appears is that the TRC’s concepts and methods arose as the result of a complicated system of relations and rules that render these concepts arbitrary. Further, the effects of its practices constitute the TRC as a technique of power that aims at disciplining its subjects according to the new moral code, based on human rights, so that the new power relations in South Africa (SA) could be legitimised and maintained. The overall aim of the analyses is to put Foucault’s approaches into perspective and illustrate their strengths and weaknesses. To support this pursuit, various authors are brought in who discuss archaeology and genealogy from different angles. The topics discussed in relation to archaeology are: Problems related to Foucault’s definition of discourse, the relationship between discourse and the social level, the dispersion of the subject, and archaeology as an elitist approach. The issues discussed in relation to genealogy can be summed up as: Foucault’s normativity, the subject, power as strategy, and resistance. The final discussion, i.e. problematisation of Foucault’s regimes of truth and regimes of practices, takes outset in these topics combined with the author’s personal experiences regarding the use of Foucault’s methods and is combined with personal reflections on the consequences of the Foucaultian point of view.

Summary The Future About the Past is an examination and discussion of non-traditional ways of engaging with a difficult past. In this case the past in question is South Africa’s and its difficult memories of racism. Specifically it is an analysis of the 2009 science-fiction film District 9, directed by the South African Neill Blomkamp. In the project the idea of depicting history on film is discussed, especially inspired by the thoughts of the historian Robert A. Rosenstone. He argues that film can be depictions of the past – and therefore history in its own right and should not be judged on the same scale as written history. From that starting point, I go on to discuss historiography in a South African context and include thoughts on depictions of South Africa on film and cinematographic examples as such. I attempt to analyse District 9 from a historical point of view, especially focusing on what role the film can play in engaging with a difficult past and what it may say about the white, Afrikaans speaking minority’s view of their past. I conclude that the film has its merits as a way of depicting history, but has an underlying problematic view of history that includes racist stereotypification. The analysis leads to a discussion of the possibility of using film when engaging with a painful past. In this case I use examples from the discussion of depictions of Holocaust and argue that alternative films, for example science fiction, have the possibility of engaging with a difficult past in a better way than mainstream cinema and possibly written history.

Zakat is the third pillar in the five basic tenets of Islam. It is where worship converges with socio-economic affairs of society in the Islamic paradigm. An Islamic obligation, the Prophet Muhammad implemented Zakat in a broad framework, which included the fiscal support of the poor and needy, enabling them to enhance their livelihoods and thereby eradicating poverty. As modern Muslim states, such as Pakistan, are increasingly relating issues of their heritage and faith to questions of self-identification and development, this study explores the concept of Zakat and discerns the role of the state in the early Islamic period in the pursuit of grasping the essence of the context in which the institution was originally established, to thereby conduct an appraisal of the system of Zakat in Pakistan. The identity of Pakistan comes into sharp focus, as the normativeness of Zakat requires an understanding as to the relevance of the Islamic faith to public policies of country.

The goal of this thesis is to analyze in what way the Little Ice Age, a colder climatic period between around 1300-1850, affected the development of the modern Danish state. This is though too large a scope for a single thesis and the wars between 1550-1750 have been chosen as an area of focus. These wars changed the geopolitical position of Denmark in the Nordic area, from a strong nation to a minor player. The worst outcome came, as Denmark lost all processions east of the Sound Strait to its rival Sweden in 1658, of which Bornholm was the only land area to return. These wars correlate to the Maunder Minimum, a period from 1645-1715, which was the coldest part of the Little Ice Age. In order to understand if there is a causation following this correlation, the main focus of the thesis will be the structural integrity of the Danish economy in pre-war and wartime periods. Two different economic spheres will be analyzed, the first being the Sound Toll income and the second the agricultural output. The Sound Toll do not seem to have a strong correlation to the cooling climate, and it does not seem that the colder winters decreased the income from the Toll. However, the agricultural output does seem to have a moderate correlation to the harsher winters of the Maunder Minimum, with a lower total output, thereby decreasing the ability of the State to increase taxation during wartime. It is also possible that the harsher winters increased the susceptibility of the society to epidemics. This master’s thesis argues that there is a possible connection between the changing climate and warfare, especially in the period before 1660. After the change in government, from an aristocratic monarchy to an absolutist monarchy in 1660, the following wars were more manageable for the State, possibly due to better harvests.

Drawing on relevant theories, this thesis analyzes the role of ethnic (Eriksen 1991), racial (Hall 1996b), national (Anderson 2006; Bhabha 1990; Eriksen 1994) and religious (de Vries 2008) identity constructions in contemporary narratives on Zanzibar’s recent past. This analysis is based on traces of narratives found in qualitative interviews (Brinkmann & Kvale) with eight Zanzibari men interpreting their islands’ history. For centuries Zanzibar’s history has been marked by foreign domination, colonization and slave trade. When the country in 1963 achieved its independence, it had experienced a period of national awakening that fostered debates resulting in a political divide in which ethnic and racial identification became linked to political stance. One month after independence the newly inaugurated first democratically elected government was violently overthrown in what is known as the revolution of 1964. The revolutionaries accused the government of securing the prolonged rule of the Arabic sultan and thus in their opinion the oppression of an African majority, denying them their birthright to the islands. Shortly after the revolution the revolutionary government united Zanzibar with Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanzania (Glassman 2000; 2011; Loimeier 2006a; 2011; 2012; Sheriff 1994; 2001). This thesis investigates memories articulated in official and counter narratives about these events. It then analyzes how contested memories construct identities and argues how these cause divisions in contemporary Zanzibar.

This project sets out to investigate the role of security in the Chinese Western Development Plan (WDP) and its application in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, along with the consequences of this for the Uyghur community. The analysis of this project begins by unraveling the historical role of security and the central components in the Sino-Xinjiang relation. Combined, these form the context from which the WDP was formulated and implemented in Xinjiang. Through an analysis of the rhetoric of the WDP we establish that the role of security accords with that of a non-traditional security agenda, as opposed to the previously dominant traditional-military security agenda in Sino-Xinjiang relations. However, this change in the role of security remains rhetoric, as the traditional-military security agenda that re-emerges with the formation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Global War on Terror not only co-exists with but gains prominence over the non-traditional security agenda of the WDP. As a consequence, the Uyghur population of Xinjiang continues to be sidelined by the Chinese government, despite the promise of the WDP.

The motivation for this project was based on the newly founded movement DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025) and their manifesto. The movement’s ideas and visions are based on the critique of the European Union’s handling of the economic, refugee and migration crisis’, that has been debated throughout Europe in recent years. With their manifesto, DiEM25 has formulated an idealistic alternative vision for the future Europe. This assignment seeks to find answers to what kind of alternative this is. More specifically; which kind of cosmopolitanism is expressed in the manifesto, and which European concept historical traditions this cosmopolitanism builds upon. The analysis conducted in this project will be a comparative concept historian analysis of the cosmopolitan vision formulated in the DiEM25 Manifesto. The assignment concludes that the manifesto entails a potential utopian cosmopolitan vision of re-democratising Europe, and more specifically the EU in our present modern and globalised world. Furthermore, it concludes that the the cosmopolitanism in the DiEM25 Manifesto builds on a long tradition of cosmopolitan ideas, leading back to Immanuel Kant initial ideas of cosmopolitanism, through post world war and the thoughts of Ulrich Beck up until the 21st century and the notion of New Cosmopolitanism.

This paper revolves around the development of an LSTM multiclass classifier, constructed using Keras as framework and CRISP-DM as project process, with the purpose of classifying natural language into varying degrees of toxicity. The model takes a starting point in an existing toxic comment classification challenge from Kaggle.com, and makes a first iteration, engineered towards the requirements in the challenge. In this first iteration, several measures are taken to avoid common pitfalls of neural networks. The model is then held up against principles of freedom of speech including The Harm Principle and The Offence Principle by John Stuart Mill and Joel Feinberg respectively. After evaluating upon the models performance in the light of these principles, a second iteration is constructed with some design changes. For reasons i.a. related to the dataset, this operation is less successful. The paper concludes that it is possible to make a good multiclassification tool for shallow NLP problem, but gets less efficient in later iterations as we try to apply it to more concrete purposes.