Matching Items (225)
Description
Islamist groups in Somalia define themselves by their opposition. From the pre-Islamist movement of Mohammed Hassan in the nineteenth century to al-Itihaad al-Islaami in the twentieth to al-Shabaab in the twenty-first, Islamism exists as a form of resistance against the dominant power of the era. Furthermore these Islamist groups have all been influenced by the type of state in which they exist, be it colonial, independent, or failed. This work seeks to examine the relationship between the uniquely Somali form of Islamism and the state. Through use of historical records, modern media, and existing scholarship this dissertation will chart the development of Islamism in Somalia from the colonial period to the present and explore the relationship Somali Islamism has with various forms of state.
ContributorsFurlow, Richard Bennett (Author) / Gallab, Abdullahi (Thesis advisor) / Talebi, Shahla (Committee member) / Ali, Souad (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
ABSTRACT In this thesis, I probe into the ways in which the much-debated word Jihad lends itself to multifarious meanings within the Mourid Sufi Order and examine the foundations of the principles of peace and non-violence that informed the relationships between Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, the founder of Mouridism (1853 ca - 1927) and the French colonial state from 1883 to 1927. As a matter of fact, unlike some Senegalese Muslim leaders who had waged a violent Jihad during the colonial conquest and expansion, Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba promoted peaceful forms of Jihad which partook of his reform and revival movement in the Senegalese society. Yet, it is worth pointing out that the Mourid leader's ethics of peace and philosophy of non-violence as methods of struggle (the etymological sense of the word Jihad) during colonial times have been largely unexplored within academia. The contours of these new forms of resistance were grounded on a peaceful and non-violent approach which, according to Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, was the only way to reach his spiritual, educational and social goals. This thesis proffers a counter-example to religious violence often associated with and perpetrated in the name of Islam. I argue in this thesis that a close investigation into Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba's epistemology of Jihad evidences that the term Jihad has spiritual, educational, social, cultural and economic functions which naturally contrast with its one-sided and violent connotation spotlighted over the last two decades. In conducting research for this work, I used a transdisciplinary approach that can allow me to address the complex issues of Jihad, peace and non-violence in a more comprehensive way. Accordingly, I have used a methodology that crosses the boundaries of several disciplines (historical, anthropological, sociological and literary).
ContributorsSeye, Cheikh (Author) / Haines, Charles (Thesis advisor) / Gallab, Abdullahi (Committee member) / Talebi, Shahla (Committee member) / Saikia, Yasmin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This study is based on a submission of anthropological, historical, and literary approaches. The ethnographic study of the Shi'a holy shrines between November 2011 and January 2012 is based on my visit to Iraq. The study lasted almost ten weeks, to include the two events under discussion: `Ashurā and Al-Arb`ain, in Karbala of that year. This thesis argues that the mourning rituals of `Ashurā and the Forty Day Visitation Zyarat Al-Arb`ain contribute to the social or individual life of Iraqi Shi'a. They also make significant contributions through creating a symbolic language to communicate for the community, as well as communicating with their essential symbolic structure. Second, the Forty Day Visitation Zyarat Al-Arb`ain is one of the most significant collective mourning rituals, one that expresses unity and solidarity of the Iraqi Shi'a community, and helps them to represent their collective power, and maintain their collective existence. This study uses two of Victor Turner's tripartite models. For `Ashurā the rite of passage rituals is used, which consists of the separation, margin, and re-aggregation phase. Through this process of entering and leaving time and social structure, it helps in changing the social status of the participants. The other model used for Al-Arb`ain is pilgrimage as a social process, which includes three levels of communitas: existential, normative, and ideological communitas. The Shi'a in Iraq are holding a position similar to Turner's notion of communitas since they are living within a society that is Muslim and yet even though they are a larger population of the society, they still become marginalized by the Sunni population socially, economically, and politically. Social relations and links play a significant role for Shi'a in `Ashurā and Al-Arb`ain as a reflection between their social status as an undefined communitas and the general structure of Iraqi society.
ContributorsHamdan, Faraj Hattab (Author) / Talebi, Shahla (Thesis advisor) / Ali, Souad T. (Thesis advisor) / Gallab, Abdullahi (Committee member) / Gereboff, Joel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
International Relations has traditionally focused on conflict and war, but the effects of violence including dead bodies and memorialization practices have largely been considered beyond the purview of the field. This project seeks to explore the relationship between practices of statecraft at multiple levels and decisions surrounding memorialization. Exploring the role of bodies and bones and the politics of display at memorial sites, as well as the construction of space, I explore how practices of statecraft often rely on an exclusionary logic which renders certain lives politically qualified and others beyond the realm of qualified politics. I draw on the Derridean notion of hauntology to explore how the line between life and death itself is a political construction which sustains particular performances of statecraft. Utilizing ethnographic field work and discourse analysis, I trace the relationship between a logic of haunting and statecraft at sites of memory in three cases. Rwandan genocide memorialization is often centered on bodies and bones, displayed as evidence of the genocide. Yet, this display invokes the specter of genocide in order to legitimate specific policymaking. Memorialization of undocumented immigrants who die crossing the US-Mexico border offers an opportunity to explore practices that grieve ungrievable lives, and how memorialization can posit a resistance to the bordering mechanisms of statecraft. 9/11 memorialization offers an interesting case because of the way in which bodies were vanished and spaces reconfigured. Using the question of vanishing as a frame, this final case explores how statecraft is dependent on vanishing: the making absent of something so as to render something else present. Several main conclusions and implications are drawn from the cases. First, labeling certain lives as politically unqualified can sustain certain conceptualizations of the state. Second, paying attention to the way statecraft is a haunted performance, being haunted by the things we perhaps ethically should be haunted by, can re-conceptualize the way International Relations thinks about concepts such as security, citizenship, and power. Finally, memorialization, while seemingly innocuous, is really a space for political contestation that can, if done in certain ways, really implicate the high politics of security conventional wisdom.
ContributorsAuchter, Jessica (Author) / Doty, Roxanne L (Thesis advisor) / Ashley, Richard K. (Committee member) / Talebi, Shahla (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Guantánamo: The Amen Temple of Empire connects the fetishization of the trauma of nine/eleven with the co-constitution of subjects at Guantánamo—that of the contained Muslim terrorist prisoner silhouetted against the ideal nationalistic military body—circulated as ‘afterimages’ that carry ideological narratives about U.S. Empire. These narratives in turn religiously and racially charge the new normative practices of the security state and its historically haunted symbolic order. As individuals with complex subjectivities, the prisoners and guards are, of course, not reducible to the standardizing imprimatur of the state or its narratives. Despite the circulation of these ‘afterimages’ as fixed currency, the prisoners and guards produce their own metanarratives, through their para-ethnographic accounts of containment and of self. From within the panopticon of the prison, they seek sight lines, and gaze back at the state. This dissertation is thus a meditation on US militarism, violence, torture, race, and carceral practices, revealed thematically through metaphors of hungry ghosts, nature, journey and death, liminality, time, space, community, and salvage. Based on a multi-sited, empirical and imaginary ethnography, as well as textual and discourse analysis, I draw on the writing and testimony of prisoners, and military and intelligence personnel, whom I consider insightful para-ethnographers of the haunting valence of this fetishized historical event.
ContributorsColeman, Diana (Diana Murtaugh) (Author) / Talebi, Shahla (Thesis advisor) / Matustik, Martin (Committee member) / Fessenden, Tracy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This study estimates the capitalization effect of golf courses in Maricopa County using the hedonic pricing method. It draws upon a dataset of 574,989 residential transactions from 2000 to 2006 to examine how the aesthetic, non-golf benefits of golf courses capitalize across a gradient of proximity measures. The measures for amenity value extend beyond home adjacency and include considerations for homes within a range of discrete walkability buffers of golf courses. The models also distinguish between public and private golf courses as a proxy for the level of golf course access perceived by non-golfers. Unobserved spatial characteristics of the neighborhoods around golf courses are controlled for by increasing the extent of spatial fixed effects from city, to census tract, and finally to 2000 meter golf course ‘neighborhoods.’ The estimation results support two primary conclusions. First, golf course proximity is found to be highly valued for adjacent homes and homes up to 50 meters way from a course, still evident but minimal between 50 and 150 meters, and insignificant at all other distance ranges. Second, private golf courses do not command a higher proximity premia compared to public courses with the exception of homes within 25 to 50 meters of a course, indicating that the non-golf benefits of courses capitalize similarly, regardless of course type. The results of this study motivate further investigation into golf course features that signal access or add value to homes in the range of capitalization, particularly for near-adjacent homes between 50 and 150 meters thought previously not to capitalize.
ContributorsJoiner, Emily (Author) / Abbott, Joshua (Thesis director) / Smith, Kerry (Committee member) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
This paper will focus on the changes in China's OFDI while also explaining its growth. However, another primary focus will be comparing the relationships between China, Hong Kong, and Africa. This paper will show the correlating changes between the three regions and explain the distribution of China's investments. One argument is that Hong Kong may play a large role in facilitating Chinese investment into Africa, which if not disaggregated, could lead to inaccurate numbers of China's FDI into Africa. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of China's relationship with Hong Kong and Africa. In 2012, Garth Shelton argued that Hong Kong was an important gateway in South Africa's trade with China. Since then, many others have made similar claims in support of Hong Kong's bigger role. However, due to the difficulty of finding specific data for each region, these analyses are incomplete and fail to clearly substantiate their theory. I will try to find a correlation by gathering my own data, tables, and through different interviews.
ContributorsSon, James (Author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Iheduru, Okechukwu (Committee member) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Pandora is a play exploring our relationship with gendered technology through the lens of artificial intelligence. Can women be subjective under patriarchy? Do robots who look like women have subjectivity? Hoping to create a better version of ourselves, The Engineer must navigate the loss of her creation, and Pandora must navigate their new world. The original premiere run was March 27-28, 2018, original cast: Caitlin Andelora, Rikki Tremblay, and Michael Tristano Jr.
ContributorsToye, Abigail Elizabeth (Author) / Linde, Jennifer (Thesis director) / Abele, Kelsey (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Sagebrush Coffee is a small business in Chandler, Arizona that purchases green beans, roasts them in small batches for quality, and ships fresh, gourmet roasted coffee beans across the nation. Deciding which coffee beans to buy and roast is one of the most crucial business decisions Sagebrush and other gourmet coffee roasters face. Further complicating this decision is the fact that coffee is a crop, and like all crops, has a specific growing season and the exact same product cannot usually be ordered from year to year, even if it proves to be successful. The goal of this research is to use data analytics and visualization to help Sagebrush make better purchasing decisions by identifying consumer purchasing trends and providing a recommendation for their portfolio mix. In the end, I found that Latin American coffees are popular with both returning and first-time customers, but a specific country of origin does not appear to be associated with the top coffee producing countries. Additionally, December is a critical month for Sagebrush and Sagebrush should make sure to target the states with the most sales: California, Pennsylvania, and New York. Arizona has growth potential as it is not one of the top three locations, despite the presence of a physical store. Also included in the following report is a portfolio recommendation suggesting how many of each product based on region, processing type, and roast level to carry in inventory.
ContributorsBlue, Jessica Morgan (Author) / Kellso, James (Thesis director) / Davila, Eddie (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Morrison School of Agribusiness (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
This thesis takes the form of a market research report with the goal of analyzing the implications of the United Kingdom (UK) leaving the European Union (EU) (known as “Brexit”) on London’s office commercial real estate market. The ultimate goal of this report is to make a prediction, firmly grounded in quantitative and qualitative research conducted over the past several months, as to the direction of London’s commercial real estate market going forward (post-Brexit). Within the commercial real estate sector, this paper narrows its focus to the office segment of the London market.
Understanding the political landscape is crucial to formulating a reasonable prediction as to the future of the London market. Aside from research reports and articles, our main insights into the political direction of Brexit come from our recordings from meetings in March of 2017 with two high-ranking members of Parliament and one member of the House of Lords—all of whom are members of the Tory Party (the meetings being held under the condition of anonymity). The below analysis will be followed by a discussion of the economics of Brexit, primarily focusing on the economic risks and uncertainties which have emerged after the vote, and which currently exist today. Such risks include the UK losing its financial passporting rights, weakening GDP and currency value, the potential for a reduction in foreign direct investment (FDI), and the potential loss of the service sector in the city of London due to not being able to access the European Single Market.
The report will shift focus to analyzing three competing viewpoints of the direction of the London market based on recordings from interviews of stakeholders in the London real estate market. One being an executive of one of the largest REITs in the UK, another being the Global Head of Real Estate at a top asset management firm, and another being a director at a large property consulting firm. The report includes these differing “sub-theses” in order to try to make sense of the vast market uncertainties post-Brexit as well as to contrast their viewpoints with where the market is currently and with the report’s investment recommendation.
The remainder of the report will consist of the methods used for analyzing market trends including how the data was modeled in order to make the investment recommendation. The report will analyze real estate and market metrics pre-Brexit, immediately after the vote, post-Brexit, and will conclude with future projections encapsulating the investment recommendation.
Understanding the political landscape is crucial to formulating a reasonable prediction as to the future of the London market. Aside from research reports and articles, our main insights into the political direction of Brexit come from our recordings from meetings in March of 2017 with two high-ranking members of Parliament and one member of the House of Lords—all of whom are members of the Tory Party (the meetings being held under the condition of anonymity). The below analysis will be followed by a discussion of the economics of Brexit, primarily focusing on the economic risks and uncertainties which have emerged after the vote, and which currently exist today. Such risks include the UK losing its financial passporting rights, weakening GDP and currency value, the potential for a reduction in foreign direct investment (FDI), and the potential loss of the service sector in the city of London due to not being able to access the European Single Market.
The report will shift focus to analyzing three competing viewpoints of the direction of the London market based on recordings from interviews of stakeholders in the London real estate market. One being an executive of one of the largest REITs in the UK, another being the Global Head of Real Estate at a top asset management firm, and another being a director at a large property consulting firm. The report includes these differing “sub-theses” in order to try to make sense of the vast market uncertainties post-Brexit as well as to contrast their viewpoints with where the market is currently and with the report’s investment recommendation.
The remainder of the report will consist of the methods used for analyzing market trends including how the data was modeled in order to make the investment recommendation. The report will analyze real estate and market metrics pre-Brexit, immediately after the vote, post-Brexit, and will conclude with future projections encapsulating the investment recommendation.
ContributorsHorn, Jonathan (Co-author) / Sidi, Adam (Co-author) / Bonadurer, Werner (Thesis director) / McDaniel, Cara (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12