Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Constitutive practices'

The idea of accounting as a constitutive means, making people think and act in particular ways, is well established in the social strand of accounting literature. In professional organisations, for example, accounting is claimed to be critical to processes of turning people into rational and responsible economic actors. However, this thesis refocuses the empirical attention away from the organisation and into the private sphere of people’s everyday financial lives. As this is a field partly inhabited by people who for various reasons are believed to have difficulty in making sense of financial accounts, a dilemma arises regarding how to influence people’s way of managing their own finances by means of accounting information. How this dilemma is assumed to be resolved in order to make accounting matter is the query of this thesis. Through a study of four cases, the thesis investigates the practices of public authorities, a television makeover show, and a pension insurance company – here referred to as accounting framers – whose task it is to construct accounting in such a way so as to make it come across as important, relevant and useful to various groups of the general public. By examining how people’s accounting interpretations are elaborated in order to make them responsive to financial accounts, the thesis contributes to problematising the constitutive role of accounting and the conditions believed to enable it to turn people into financially responsible actors.

This thesis is a critical theory based investigation into communicative and normative preconditions for peace. It is a theoretical inquiry into questions of argumentative truth, justice and authenticity and their relevance for conflict resolution and transformative peace-building. Following Habermas, it explores the formal argumentative requirements for peace and examines corresponding cognitive and societal/perceptual prerequisites for its intra- and interpersonal realisation. In this context, it identifies conceptual spaces of violence that impair peaceful interaction. It scrutinizes the communicative dynamics of transformative change and moral actor-hood from a critical theory perspective. It raises questions of communicative and moral learning, reasoning and structural change. It seeks to identify and explain formal-argumentative procedural correlations in the dialogical set-up of truth-seeking, norm-setting and norm-enforcing entities and argues for institutional complementarity and coherence. It calls for a conscious transition of normative and communicative barriers between conflict transformation efforts at community, national and international level and specifies theoretical alternatives to the present functionalist peace-building discourse in the form of a critical theory based model to conflict transformation. Some of these theoretical assumptions will be illustrated by the example of Rwanda.

This thesis explores sociologists' routine research activities, including observation, participant observation, interviewing, and transcription. It suggests that the constitutive activities of sociological research methods - writing field-notes, doing looking and categorising, and the endogenous structure of members' ordinary language transactions are suffused with culturally methodic, i.e. ordinary language activities. "Membership categories" are the ordinary organising practices of description that society-members - including sociologists - routinely use in assembling sense of settings. This thesis addresses the procedural bases of activities which are constituent features of the research: disguising identities of informants, reviewing literature, writing-up research outcomes, and compiling bibliographies. These activities are themselves loci of practical reasoning. Whilst these activities are assemblages of members' cultural methods, they have not been recognised as "research practices" by methodologically ironic sociology. The thesis presents a series of studies in Membership Categorisation Analysis. Using both sequential and membership categorisational aspects of Conversation Analysis, as well as textual analysis of published research, this thesis examines how members' cultural practices coincide with research practices. Data are derived from a period of participant observation in an organisation, video-recordings of the organisation's work; and interviews following the 1996 bombing in Manchester. A major, cumulative theme within this thesis is confidentiality - within an organisation, within a research project and within sociology itself. Features of confidentiality are explored through ethnographic observation, textual analysis and Membership Categorisation Analysis. Membership Categorisation Analysis brings seen-but-unnoticed features of confidentiality into relief. Central to the thesis are the works of Edward Rose, particularly his ethnographic inquiries of Skid Row, and Harvey Sacks, on the cultural logic shared by society-members. Rose and Sacks explicate the visibility and recognition of members' activities to other members, and research activities as linguistic activities.

In the current research of managerial practice diffusion, discussions on how to understand and manage diffusion changes have been made primarily by drawing on institutional, rhetorical and systems theories for the reason that each of them seems to suggest a “mechanism” for diffusion. For instance, institutional theory suggests that diffusion is a changing process during which an organisation will continuously adapt itself to the outside environment in order to keep itself survival. Based on a rhetorical perspective, for which rhetoric plays an important role in diffusion, the achievement of a practice's diffusion/adoption relies on a three-period rhetorical justification which follows a Pathos-Logos-Ethos sequence. In the domain of systems theories, if diffusion is taken as a social system's reproduction, communication thus has a unique position in constituting such a system through autopoiesis (self-creation). Through comparing the above diffusion “mechanisms” suggested by different theories, it is found that some understandings for diffusion are shared in common. For example, a practice has to be legitimised in order to be diffused; communications for diffusions involve a process of filtering and creating meanings. Moreover, through analysing these “mechanisms”, the advantages and inadequacies of each can be recognised. Based on the analysis, the most outstanding issue identified is that for understanding and managing diffusion changes, a constitutive ontology that enables explorations on both people and diffusion circumstances (i.e. an organisation and its environment) is required. In this thesis, such an ontology is believed to be a social-constructionist-based one. A social-constructionist perspective assumes that the concepts of object and subject are connected in a “duality” rather than a “dualism”, and according to which, a practice is constituted during its diffusion, or in other words, it is constituted in people's action of teaching and learning this practice. Furthermore, such a constitutive process is accomplished in people's diffusion communications, which simultaneously construct a circumstance that either enables or constrains a diffusion change. In the discussion of how a constitutive communication works for diffusion, “communication duality” is defined in the sense that communication is a diffusion tool for justifying a practice which can be structured in a rhetorical way; it also selects and processes meanings of a practice relying on people's existing knowledgeabilities as a sensemaking-sensegiving (SM-SG) process. Consequently, an incorporated practice diffusion model based on a social-constructionist perspective is built which aims to suggest how a diffusion change can be enacted as well as how it can be analysed in practical terms. In the light of social constructionism, for which a researcher's ontology and epistemology jointly build each other, this thesis applies a self-ethnography strategy which follows a “SISI” (Survey-Immerse-Share-Integrate) methodology to analyse a real case of practice diffusion. The author's personal insights from this study suggest how a practice diffusion can be improved, as well as how a diffusion model can be enriched. In addition, the author's self-reflections on this research present how a communication research for practice diffusion could “constitute” a practice, and hence to help or inhibit its diffusion.

Theories of cognition and theories of social practices and institutions have often each separately acknowledged the relevance of the other; but seldom have there been consistent and sustained attempts to synthesize these two areas within one explanatory framework. This is precisely what my dissertation aims to remedy. I propose that certain recent developments and themes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, when understood in the right way, can explain the emergence and dynamics of social practices and institutions. Likewise, the view I construct explains how social practices and institutions shape the character of cognition of their constituent agents. Moreover, I explain both cognitive and social agency under the single explanatory framework provided by Dynamic Systems Theory. Drawing upon the phenomenological tradition, "embodied, "extended", "embedded", "enactive", and "ecological" approaches to cognition, as well as the conceptual resources of Dynamic Systems Theory, I construct a theory of agency that sees cognitive and social agents as far-from-equilibrium, open, recursively self-maintenant dynamic systems. Depending on the specifics of concrete circumstances, such systems, which I call "Dynamic Embodied Agents" (or DEAs), may develop and possess emergent capacities for error-detection, flexible learning, normative behavior, representation, self-reflection, various modes of pattern-recognition, a temporal sense of self, and even moral responsibility. Some such systems are also sensitive to perceived social influences (practices and institutions); while reciprocally constituting and causally affecting them.

The behaviour of sands during loading has been studied in great detail. However, little work has been devoted to understanding the response of sands in unloading. Drained triaxial tests indicate that, contrary to the expected elastic behaviour, sand often exhibit contractive behaviour when unloaded. Undrained cyclic simple shear tests show that the increase in pore water pressure generated during the unloading cycle often exceeds that generated during loading. The tendency to contract upon unloading is important in engineering practice as an increase in pore water pressure during earthquake loading could result in liquefaction. This research contributes to filling the gap in our understanding of soil behaviour in unloading and subsequent reloading. The approach followed includes both theoretical investigation and numerical implementation of experimental observations of stress dilatancy in unload-reload loops. The theoretical investigation is done at the micromechanical level. The numerical approach is developed from observations from drained triaxial compression tests. The numerical implementation of yield in unloading uses NorSand — a hardening plasticity model based on the critical state theory, and extends upon previous understanding. The proposed model is calibrated to Erksak sand and then used to predict the load-unload-reload behaviour of Fraser River sand. The trends predicted from the theoretical and numerical approaches match the experimental observations closely. Shear strength is not highly affected by unload-reload loops. Conversely, volumetric changes as a result of unloading-reloading are dramatic. Volumetric strains in unloading depend on the last value of stress ratio (q/p’) in the previous loading. It appears that major changes in particles arrangement occur once peak stress ratio is exceeded. The developed unload-reload model requires three additional input parameters, which were correlated to the monotonic parameters, to represent hardening in unloading and reloading and the effect of induced fabric changes on stress dilatancy. The calibrated model gave accurate predictions for the results of triaxial tests with load-unload-reload cycles on Fraser River sand.

We the Peopleâ ¦The Citizen and the Constitution is a course of study that enhances the civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions that lead to responsible citizenship. The curriculum, published by the Center for Civic Education, is intended for students in grades 5, 8, and high school. Students prepare for a mock congressional hearing in which they testify in response to questions about the philosophy and application of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. This project includes a history of civic education, a matrix showing a comparison of civic participation theories, and an examination of certain practices in 102 high school classes that participate in the Centerâ s nation-wide competition, as well as comments from teachers who use the curriculum in other contexts. I compare classes that usually win their stateâ s competition and go on to the national meet, or â Championship programsâ to competitive classes that are historically less successful. Results of my comparison indicate that there are few important differences between the more successful groups and the less successful groups, and that those differences primarily center on the experience and academic strengths of the teacher. My interpretation of this outcome is that there is little to prevent any teacher from improving his/her skills to more effectively teach citizenship in this outstanding program.
Master of Arts

This thesis engages with the relationship between discourse and practice within the context of contemporary learning disability care. Three key points are made. Firstly, by reading contemporary learning disability policy through Foucault's work on biopower I argue that a discursive rationality that works by acting upon and alt~ring the actions of people with a learning disability is being produced. I critically analyse three mentalities (choice, inclusion and self-knowledge), that are key to this rationale, and show that they discursively operate by fixing normative assumptions about learning disability. This is because these mentalities are shown to deploy idealised assumptions about how normal individuals live producing a normative basis for learning disability care. By exposing the contingent nature of these discourses I challenge the danger that they become solidified or naturalised. Secondly, by drawing from interview testimony with practitioners I argue that the discursive constitution of these mentalities is enacted differently in different practices and exceeds the discursive rationality and normative assumptions that policy produces. By using the work of Mol I show that foregrounding practices exposes the situational differences that constitute how each of the mentalities emerges in practice. Applying the work of Deleuze I show that not subsuming performative difference into pre-determined narratives allows the potential for novelty to emerge. Thirdly, I apply the narrative of discourse and practice, staged in the context of contemporary learning disability support, to wider debates and show that this application can help destabilize prescriptions that govern not only those with a learning disability but also each and every one of us. I argue that there is always a performative tension between discourse and practice because discursive deployments simultaneously structure practical enactments but are always resisted and exceeded in these enactments. Crucially I show that this tension needs to be embraced and not ignored.

Section 23 of the Constitution provides that everyone has a right to fair labour practice. The constitutional right to fair labour practices includes the right not to be unfairly dismissed and is given effect to by section 185 of the LRA. The constitutional right not to be unfairly dismissed is given effect to by Chapter VIII of the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 (the LRA), which provides a remedy for an unfair dismissal. Schedule 8 of the LRA contains a “Code of Good Practice: Dismissal”, which the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (the CCMA) and the Labour Courts must take into account when determining the fairness of a dismissal. The LRA expressly recognises three grounds for termination of the employment contract namely; misconduct on the part of the employee, incapacity due to an employee’s poor work performance, ill health or injury and termination due an employer’s operational requirements. In terms of the LRA, a dismissal must be procedurally and substantively fair. The requirements for procedural and substantive fairness are contained in Schedule 8 of the Code of Good Practice: Dismissal. The provisions of section 185 of the LRA apply to all employers and employees in both the public and the private sectors, with the exception of members of the National Defence Force, the National Intelligence Agency, the South African Secret Service and the South African National Academy of Intelligence. Section 213 of the LRA defines an “employee” as any person, excluding an independent contractor, who works for another person or for the State and who receives, or is entitled to receive, any remuneration and any person who in any manner assists in carrying out or conducting the business of an employer. Section 200A of the LRA sets out the presumption as to who is an employee. This is a guideline to assist in determining who is an employee. The Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997 (the BCEA) sets minimum terms and conditions of employment including the notice of termination of employment. Under the common law an employment contract of employment can be terminated on either the expiration of the agreed period of employment or on completion of the specified task in cases of fixed-term contracts. Also, in terms of general contract principles an employment contract may be terminated by notice duly given by either party or by summary termination in the event of a material breach on the part of either party. The death of either party may terminate the employment contract. However, the death of an employer will not necessarily lead to the contract’s termination. An employment contract may also terminate by operation of law or effluxion of time namely retirement and coming into being of fixed-term contracts, by mutual agreement, employee resigning, due to insolvency of the employer and due to supervening impossibility of performance. In the circumstances indicated above, the termination of the contract of employment does not constitute dismissal. This means that the CCMA and the Labour Court do not have jurisdiction to determine should the employee allege that his or her dismissal was unfair. It has been argued that the instances where a termination of a contract of employment is terminated, but there is no dismissal should be scrutinised to avoid a situation where employees are deprived of protection afforded by the fundamental right not to be unfairly dismissed. There have been some instances where employment contracts contain clauses that provide for automatic termination of employment contracts. It has been held by the courts in various decisions that such clauses are against public policy and thus invalid. The Labour Court stated that a contractual device that renders the termination of a contract something other than a dismissal is exactly the exploitation the LRA prohibits. There are various court decisions providing guidelines of circumstances in which termination of employment may be regarded as not constituting dismissal. The main focus of the treatise is to discuss these instances and critically analyse the approach taken by forums like the CCMA, bargaining councils and the Labour Court in dealing with such instances.

Section 23 of the Constitution provides that everyone has a right to fair labour practice. The constitutional right to fair labour practices includes the right not to be unfairly dismissed and is given effect to by section 185 of the LRA. The constitutional right not to be unfairly dismissed is given effect to by Chapter VIII of the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 (the LRA), which provides a remedy for an unfair dismissal. Schedule 8 of the LRA contains a “Code of Good Practice: Dismissal”, which the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (the CCMA) and the Labour Courts must take into account when determining the fairness of a dismissal. The LRA expressly recognises three grounds for termination of the employment contract namely; misconduct on the part of the employee, incapacity due to an employee’s poor work performance, ill health or injury and termination due an employer’s operational requirements. In terms of the LRA, a dismissal must be procedurally and substantively fair. The requirements for procedural and substantive fairness are contained in Schedule 8 of the Code of Good Practice: Dismissal. The provisions of section 185 of the LRA apply to all employers and employees in both the public and the private sectors, with the exception of members of the National Defence Force, the National Intelligence Agency, the South African Secret Service and the South African National Academy of Intelligence. Section 213 of the LRA defines an “employee” as any person, excluding an independent contractor, who works for another person or for the State and who receives, or is entitled to receive, any remuneration and any person who in any manner assists in carrying out or conducting the business of an employer. Section 200A of the LRA sets out the presumption as to who is an employee. This is a guideline to assist in determining who is an employee The Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997 (the BCEA) sets minimum terms and conditions of employment including the notice of termination of employment. Under the common law an employment contract of employment can be terminated on either the expiration of the agreed period of employment or on completion of the specified task in cases of fixed-term contracts. Also, in terms of general contract principles an employment contract may be terminated by notice duly given by either party or by summary termination in the event of a material breach on the part of either party. The death of either party may terminate the employment contract. However, the death of an employer will not necessarily lead to the contract’s termination. An employment contract may also terminate by operation of law or effluxion of time namely retirement and coming into being of fixed-term contracts, by mutual agreement, employee resigning, due to insolvency of the employer and due to supervening impossibility of performance. In the circumstances indicated above, the termination of the contract of employment does not constitute dismissal. This means that the CCMA and the Labour Court do not have jurisdiction to determine should the employee allege that his or her dismissal was unfair. It has been argued that the instances where a termination of a contract of employment is terminated, but there is no dismissal should be scrutinised to avoid a situation where employees are deprived of protection afforded by the fundamental right not to be unfairly dismissed. There have been some instances where employment contracts contain clauses that provide for automatic termination of employment contracts. It has been held by the courts in various decisions that such clauses are against public policy and thus invalid. The Labour Court stated that a contractual device that renders the termination of a contract something other than a dismissal is exactly the exploitation the LRA prohibits There are various court decisions providing guidelines of circumstances in which termination of employment may be regarded as not constituting dismissal. The main focus of the treatise is to discuss these instances and critically analyse the approach taken by forums like the CCMA, bargaining councils and the Labour Court in dealing with such instances

As distributed systems grow in complexity, the interactions among individuals (agents, services) of such systems become increasingly more complex and therefore more difficult to constrain and monitor. We propose to view such systems as socio-technical systems, in which organisational and institutional concepts, such as norms, can be applied to improve not only control on the components but also their autonomy by the definition of soft rather than hard constraints. Norms can be described as rules that guide the behavior of individual agents pertaining to groups that abide to them, either by explicit or implicit support. The study of norms, and regulatory systems in general, in their many forms -e.g. social norms, conventions, laws, regulations- has been of interest since the beginning of philosophy, but has seen a lot of evolution during the 20th century due to the progress in the philosophy of language, especially concerning speech acts and deontic logic. Although there is a myriad of definitions and related terminologies about the concept of norm, and as such there are many perspectives on how to analyse their impact, a common denominator is that norms constrain the behaviour of groups of agents in a way that each individual agent can build, with a fair degree of confidence, expectations on how each of their counterparts will behave in the situations that the norms are meant to cover. For example, on a road each driver expects everybody else to drive on only one side of the road (right or left, depending on the country). Therefore, normative contexts, usually wrapped in the form of institutions, are effective mechanisms to ensure the stability of a complex system such as an organisation, a society, or even of electronic systems. The latter has been an object of interest in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and it has been seen as a paradigm of coordination among electronic agents either in multi-agent systems or in service-oriented architectures. In order to apply norms to electronic systems, research has come up with abstractions of normative systems. In some cases these abstractions are based on regimented systems with flexible definitions of the notion of norm, in order to include meanings of the concept with a coarse-grained level of logic formality such as conventions. Other approaches, on the other hand, propose the use of deontic logic for describing, from a more theoretical perspective, norm-governed interaction environments. In both cases, the purpose is to enable the monitoring and enforcement of norms on systems that include -although not limited to- electronic agents. In the present dissertation we will focus on the latter type, focusing on preserving the deontic aspect of norms. Monitoring in norm-governed systems requires making agents aware of: 1) what their normative context is, i.e. which obligations, permissions and prohibitions are applicable to each of them and how they are updated and triggered; and 2) what their current normative status is, i.e. which norms are active, and in what instances they are being fullfilled or violated, in order words, what their social -institutional- reality is. The current challenge is on designing systems that allow computational components to infer both the normative context and social reality in real-time, based on a theoretical formalism that makes such inferences sound and correct from a philosophical perspective. In the scope of multi-agent systems, many are the approaches proposed and implemented that full these requirements up to this date. However, the literature is still lacking a proposal that is suited to the current state-of-the-art in service-oriented architectures, more focused nowadays on automatically scalable, polyglot amalgams of lightweight services with extremely simple communication and coordination mechanisms- a trend that is being called “microservices”. This dissertation tackles this issue, by 1) studying what properties we can infer from distributed systems that allow us to treat them as part of a socio-technical system, and 2) analysing which mechanisms we can provide to distributed systems so that they can properly act as socio-technical systems. The main product of the thesis is therefore a collection of computational elements required for formally grounded and real-time e¬fficient understanding and monitoring of normative contexts, more specially: 1. An ontology of events to properly model the inputs from the external world and convert them into brute facts or institutional events; 2. A lightweight language for norms, suitable for its use in distributed systems; 3. An especially tailored formalism for the detection of social reality, based on and reducible to deontic logic with support for constitutive norms; 4. A reduction of such formalism to production rule systems; and 5. One or more implementations of this reduction, proven to e¬fficiently work on several scenarios. This document presents the related work, the rationale and the design/implementation of each one of these elements. By combining them, we are able to present novel, relevant work that enables the application of normative reasoning mechanisms in realworld systems in the form of a practical reasoner. Of special relevance is the fact that the work presented in this dissertation simplifies, while preserving formal soundness, theoretically complex forms of reasoning. Nonetheless, the use of production systems as the implementation-level materialisation of normative monitoring allows our work to be applied in any language and/or platform available, either in the form of rule engines, ECA rules or even if-then-else patterns. The work presented has been tested and successfully used in a wide range of domains and actual applications. The thesis also describes how our mechanisms have been applied to practical use cases based on their integration into distributed eldercare management and to commercial games.
Con el incremento en la complejidad de los sistemas distribuidos, las interacciones entre los individuos (agentes, servicios) de dichos sistemas se vuelven más y más complejas y, por ello, más difíciles de restringir y monitorizar. Proponemos ver a estos sistemas como sistemas socio-técnicos, en los que conceptos organizacionales e institucionales (como las normas) pueden aplicarse para mejorar no solo el control sobre los componentes sino también su autonomía mediante la definición de restricciones débiles (en vez de fuertes). Las Normas se pueden describir como reglas que guían el comportamiento de agentes individuales que pertenecen a grupos que las siguen, ya sea con un apoyo explícito o implícito. El estudio de las normas y de los sistemas regulatorios en general y en sus formas diversas -normas sociales, convenciones, leyes, reglamentos- ha sido de interés para los eruditos desde los inicios de la filosofía, pero ha sufrido una evolución mayor durante el siglo 20 debido a los avances en filosofía del lenguaje, en especial los relacionados con los actos del habla -speech acts en inglés- y formas deónticas de la lógica modal. Aunque hay una gran variedad de definiciones y terminología asociadas al concepto de norma, y por ello existen varios puntos de vista sobre como analizar su impacto, el denominador común es que las normas restringen el comportamiento de grupos de agentes de forma que cada agente individual puede construir, con un buen nivel de confianza, expectativas sobre cómo cada uno de los otros actores se comportará en las situaciones que las normas han de cubrir. Por ejemplo, en una carretera cada conductor espera que los demás conduzcan solo en un lado de la carretera (derecha o izquierda, dependiendo del país). Por lo tanto, los contextos normativos, normalmente envueltos en la forma de instituciones, constituyen mecanismos efectivos para asegurar la estabilidad de un sistema complejo como una organización, una sociedad o incluso un sistema electrónico. Lo último ha sido objeto de estudio en el campo de la Inteligencia Artificial, y se ha visto como paradigma de coordinación entre agentes electrónicos, tanto en sistemas multiagentes como en arquitecturas orientadas a servicios. Para aplicar normas en sistemas electrónicos, los investigadores han creado abstracciones de sistemas normativos. En algunos casos estas abstracciones se basan en sistemas regimentados con definiciones flexibles del concepto de norma para poder influir algunos significados del concepto con un menor nivel de granularidad formal como es el caso de las convenciones. Otras aproximaciones proponen el uso de lógica deóntica para describir, desde un punto de vista más teórico, entornos de interacción gobernados por normas. En ambos casos el propósito es el permitir la monitorización y la aplicación de las normas en sistemas que incluyen -aunque no están limitados a- agentes electrónicos. En el presente documento nos centraremos en el segundo tipo, teniendo cuidado en mantener el aspecto deóntico de las normas. La monitorización en sistemas gobernados por normas requiere el hacer a los agentes conscientes de: 1) cual es su contexto normativo, es decir, que obligaciones permisos y prohibiciones se aplican a cada uno de ellos y cómo se actualizan y activan; y 2) cual es su estado normativo actual, esto es, que normas están activas, y que instancias están siendo cumplidas o violadas, en definitiva, cual es su realidad social -o institucional-. En la actualidad el reto consiste en diseñar sistemas que permiten inferir a componentes computacionales tanto el contexto normativo como la realidad social en tiempo real, basándose en un formalismo teórico que haga que dichas inferencias sean correctas y bien fundamentadas desde el punto de vista filosófico. En el ámbito de los sistemas multiagente existen muchas aproximaciones propuestas e implementadas que cubren estos requisitos. Sin embargo, esta literatura aun carece de una propuesta que sea adecuada para la tecnología de las arquitecturas orientadas a servicios, que están más centradas en amalgamas políglotas y escalables de servicios ligeros con mecanismos de coordinación y comunicación extremadamente simples, una tendencia moderna que lleva el nombre de microservicios. Esta tesis aborda esta problemática 1) estudiando que propiedades podemos inferir de los sistemas distribuidos que nos permitan tratarlos como parte de un sistema sociotécnico, y 2) analizando que mecanismos podemos proporcionar a los sistemas distribuidos de forma que puedan actuar de forma correcta como sistemas socio-técnicos. El producto principal de la tesis es, por tanto, una colección de elementos computacionales requeridos para la monitorización e interpretación e_cientes en tiempo real y con clara base formal. En concreto: 1. Una ontología de eventos para modelar adecuadamente las entradas del mundo exterior y convertirlas en hechos básicos o en eventos institucionales; 2. Un lenguaje de normas ligero y sencillo, adecuado para su uso en arquitecturas orientadas a servicios; 3. Un formalismo especialmente adaptado para la detección de la realidad social, basado en y reducible a lógica deóntica con soporte para normas constitutivas; 4. Una reducción de ese formalismo a sistemas de reglas de producción; y 5. Una o más implementaciones de esta reducción, de las que se ha probado que funcionan eficientemente en distintos escenarios. Este documento presenta el estado del arte relacionado, la justificación y el diseño/implementación para cada uno de esos elementos. Al combinarlos, somos capaces de presentar trabajo novedoso y relevante que permite la aplicación de mecanismos de razonamiento normativo en sistemas del mundo real bajo la forma de un razonador práctico. De especial relevancia es el hecho de que el trabajo presentado en este documento simplifica formas complejas y teóricas de razonamiento preservando la correctitud formal. El uso de sistemas de reglas de producción como la materialización a nivel de implementación del monitoreo normativo permite que nuestro trabajo se pueda aplicar a cualquier lenguaje o plataforma disponible, ya sea en la forma de motores de reglas, reglas ECA o incluso patrones si-entonces. El trabajo presentado ha sido probado y usado con éxito en un amplio rango de dominios y aplicaciones prácticas. La tesis describe como nuestros mecanismos se han aplicado a casos prácticos de uso basados en su integración en la gestión distribuida de pacientes de edad avanzada o en el sector de los videojuegos comerciales.

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa guarantees the right of education to all citizens of the country. The Eastern Cape Department of Education went a step further by adopting a vision to ensure quality public education that will result in the positive transformation of all schools. Education is therefore a very important part of the life of any society and needs to be protected at all costs. It is therefore important that all obstacles in the way of providing quality public education be removed. It is no secret that the Eastern Cape Department of Education has had a number of battles with some of its social partners. These battles have negatively impacted on the education system. This Department also received the largest slice of the taxpayers’ money. It is time to take serious steps to halt the waste of time and resources. It is against this background that this study wanted to consider policies, procedures and practices that generated tension between the management and labour in the Eastern Cape Department of Education. It is my belief that if tension between the different social partners can be reduced, we would have gone a long way in achieving the vision of the Department of Education. The research methodology that was followed for this study comprised the following: • Literature was reviewed that dealt with labour relations and human resources. • A questionnaire was designed to collect information from the different participants. • The information in the questionnaire was incorporated into the main study where findings were identified and recommendations were formulated.

Although some research has focused on feminist practice in general, the external and internal dynamics of feminist practice still remains theoretically and empirically under-researched. This study addresses this void in feminist research and places a special focus on the relationship of feminist organisations with the state and within the broader context of the women's movement. This thesis explores the constitution and maintenance of feminist practices in one specific context in South Korea and Australia. Drawing on empirical and historical data derived from the case studies, two questions are explored in this study: What constitutes feminist practices in a feminist organisation? How can feminist practices be sustained?. Two feminist-run Sexual Assault Centres (SACs), one in Korea, one in Australia are studied and analysed, involving 32, in-depth interviews with activists of the two centres, non-participant and participant observation, and document analysis. First, this thesis provides a detailed account of feminist practice and organisational dynamics among feminist organisations, the feminist movement and the state. This thesis confirms that the practices of feminist organisations are seen as dynamic processes constituted by the context in which they are situated, the role of feminist activists and the nature and strength of the broader women's movement. This study, in particular, demonstrates that the relationship of the organisation with the state is a strong determinant in constructing feminist practices. Second, this thesis examines organisational practices at different phases such as the establishment, development and crisis phases. As both centres were experiencing crises, the study illuminates that the crisis in each centre has provided an opportunity for re-examination and reflection on their practices in shifting internal and external contexts. This study also suggests that continuous reflexive attention is necessary to maintain feminist practices. Moreover, the study demonstrates that the role of the activists in constructing and maintaining feminist practices is critical, in particular, in small organisations such as the ASAC and KSAC. This research, the first major study on feminist practices in Korea and Australia, makes a significant contribution to the study of feminist organisations, the state and, in general, feminist theory.

This thesis examines the processes of the formation and re-formation of folk cultures in north-eastern Scotland. Focusing on the area surrounding Aberdeen, I am interested in the historical and contemporary relationships between Highland and north-eastern versions of Scottishness. During the 1990's, a burgeoning north-eastern regional and cultural self-awareness, centred on the "Doric" dialect, was evidenced in the founding of the Elphinstone Research Institute at the University of Aberdeen, and in the founding of an annual Doric Festival. This institutionalisation has taken place in a situation in which Scottish national traditions have remained popular in the region and the Scottish nation has experienced a greater degree of political autonomy. The continued reproduction of both Scottishness and north-easternness is resultant of the ways in which culture and language have been mobilised, politicised and legitimised through the erection and operation of institutional frameworks. The role of expert and enthusiast knowledges in the propagation of cultural trends is analysed here through an exploration of the spectacularisation and banalisation of tradition. In particular, I unpack the tensions that claims for authenticity create with regard to the ballad and literary traditions of the north-east, and to the Highland Games and Gatherings of the same region. Exploring joint actions and knowledges, I demonstrate the efficacy of performative language and embodied practice in communicating, stabilising and normalising rhetorical ideas concerning Scottish cultures. As the contingent factors that give language and practice variable meanings become fixed through citation, the formation of dominant readings is enabled. The normalisation of spectacular events is crucial in the communication of authenticity and the establishment and recreation of national or regional identities. As perceived authenticity substitutes for objectivity in the popular imagination, everyday apprehensions of Scottishness and north- easternness are both made more durable and infused with a strong legitimacy by their very performance and naming.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is a practice-based investigation into the mutual coming into being of artist and artwork within the process of signification as described by Julia Kristeva. The investigation is done from an unstable subjective position and requires innovative research methodologies and a sustained close connection with the practice in order to accommodate the complexity inherent to the process. The exploration involves a closer look at the process of making of the work, the possible meaning embedded in the artworks and the impact on the maker of the work. The situated knowledge acquired through the praxis provides new insight supported by the theories of Julia Kristeva and others.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis is ’n praktykgebaseerde ondersoek na die wedersydse totstandkoming van kunstenaar en kunswerk binne die proses van signifikasie soos beskryf deur Julia Kristeva. Die ondersoek word gedoen vanuit ’n onstabiele subjektiewe posisie en vereis innoverende navorsingsmetodologieë en ’n volgehoue nóú verbintenis met die praktyk om voorsiening te maak vir die kompleksiteit inherent aan die proses. Die ontleding behels ’n verkenning van die werksproses, die moontlike betekenis verskuil binne die kunswerke en die impak op die maker van die werk. Die gesitueerde kennis wat uit die praxis voortspruit verskaf nuwe insigte, gesteun deur die teorieë van Julia Kristeva en ander.

The study collected information about training practices in local churches of the United Brethren in Christ. A mailed questionnaire was used to collect data from 230 churches nationwide. The instrument contained 22 questions, divided into three sections: (a) teacher involvement in religious education, (b) teacher training, and (c) demographic information. The return rate was 65.7% (151 surveys). Frequency counts and percentages were obtained. Data were summarized in table and narrative form. Cross-tabulations were completed between selected demographic variables and the provision for teacher training.Selected findings included: (a) among 15 possible religious education activities, at least two-thirds of the churches reported using teachers in five of them; (b) over half of the churches (51%) provided some form of training; (c) among those providing some form of training the scope was limited; (d) difficulty in scheduling and lack of fiscal resources were identified as the greatest obstacles to training; (e) training was more common in churches with larger attendance figures for worship and Sunday school.The following conclusions were formulated: (a) the extent to which teachers were used in religious education activities was affected by the scope of programs offered; (b) in the absence of a mandate for training, scheduling and scarce resources were negative factors; (c) even in churches conducting training, the activity was not a high priority; (d) reliance on consultants and conferences reflected the fact that churches did not conduct theirfor pastors to require training; and, (f) training occurred more often in larger churches where adequate resources and formal approaches to programming were common.Six recommendations were presented: (a) the denomination should develop and disseminate a position on teacher training; (b) pastors should be exposed to educational programs stressing the importance of training teachers; (c) the denomination should formulate and make available more programs and materials to support training; (d) the issue of effectiveness of training programs should be examined; (e) research on the selection, supervision, retention, and evaluation of teachers should be conducted.own training; (e) using volunteers made it more difficult
Department of Educational Leadership

This research project addresses the following: how topical talk operates in the organisation and management of MSE interactions; and how topical talk operates in the co-ordination of specific service requests and service provisions. It draws on a corpus of audio-recorded and transcribed interactions between general practitioners and persons seeking general medical services in suburban clinics in Brisbane, Australia. The corpus comprised a total of 67 medical service events (henceforth MSEs), audio-taped with the full informed consent of the participants. Many contemporary medical sociological accounts of the operation of topical talk in MSEs, typified by the work of Mishler (1981, 1984) and Waitzkin (1991), remain anchored to the 'professional dominance' thesis (Freidson 1970a; 1970b), arguing for the fundamental conflict between two perspectives - lay and professional. Topical talk has been formulated as one expression of this conflict in 'doctor-centred' communicative 'styles' (Byrne and Long 1976; Silverman 1987). Within such accounts, familiar interactional patterns in MSEs, including the content and structure of topics, have been theorised as instruments of power and control whereby the dominance of specialised medical knowledge and expertise are established and maintained. Mishler's (1984) characterisation of the conflict between a biomedically oriented 'voice of medicine' used by professional physicians (henceforth GPs) and a 'voice of the lifeworld' used by persons seeking medical services (henceforth Ps) is an expression of the 'professional dominance' thesis. The voices are characterised as attesting to a fundamental, theoretically problematic, asymmetry of power relations between GPs and Ps, thereby reinforcing the ideological status of professionals in general and the medical profession in particular. Further, recommendations regarding correctives to 'professional dominance' centre on advice GPs to attend to the primacy of Ps' talk on their experiences of illnesses rather than apparently 'ignoring' or transforming these topics into biomedical accounts of disease. This research project critiques this formulation of topical talk and the traditional theoretical and empirical bases on which it has drawn. This critique arises from the application of ethnomethodological approaches to the study of MSEs. Such approaches, as outlined in Chapters 2 and 3, are characterised by a number of conceptual and analytic premises: First, particular social structural features of social activities and the institutional contexts within which activities occur should not be assumed to be the primary criteria for judging the import and adequacy of situated action. Second, the parties to situated social events mutually constitute those events in the real world. Third, issues of agency are collaborative situated accomplishments such that the management of everyday social activities is accomplished by the people involved who show one another the rationalities of their actions as they assemble the familiar scenic features of those same institutional events (Garfinkel 1967; Sacks 1992a, 1992b). These assumptions have been applied in ethnomethodological analyses of social action, including the analysis of professional service encounters that have critiqued the 'professional dominance' thesis (Eglin and Wideman 1986; Sharrock 1979). The novelty of this study is the analysis of the operation of topic organisation as a phenomenon of order. This study also draws on recommendations within Ethnomethodology (Hester & Eglin 1997b; Watson 1997) that sequential and categorial organisations are mutually informative in the analysis of the rationality of situated social action. One of the particular contributions of this thesis is that it not only jointly applies both conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis but also extends this recommendation to the inclusion of topic analysis as was originally provided for by Sacks (1992a , 1992b) and Garfinkel and Sacks (1970). Within this study a model of analysis has been constructed that has enabled the analytical consideration of four dimensions of social organisation: local sequential, extended sequential, topical and categorial organisations. The theoretical and empirical concepts of ethnomethodogical analysis have thus been developed and extended within this project. The central findings of this study are that in institutional service events, the 'service topic' is both significant and consequential, and that persons constitute themselves as bona fide incumbents of the categories GP or P by attending to their actions as topically organised. The local adequacy of any particular interactional move (such as questioning-answering, greetings, the design of a topic proposal, etc) is shown to be referenced to the service topic. This study found no evidence of potential or actual "struggles" between the 'voice of the life-world and the voice of medicine'. Rather, this study finds routine recognition on the part of both Ps and GPs of the centrality of the service topic and, thereby, the service task, and no evidence of orientation to distinctive biographical contributions staged in competition with biomedically relevant service topics. It is found that Ps' biographical references were made in the context of an assembled service topic such that particular service tasks, however conventional, were constituted as both relevant and reasonable as medical goods and service for the specific service recipient and provider. At the most general level, it is concluded that the service topic operates as a phenomenon of order in MSEs where order, as defined by Garfinkel and Weider (1992: 202), refers to all of the rationalities evident in the generic features of institutional events and settings, that is, the situated logic and intelligibility as well as the procedures whereby they are constituted as recognisable social events. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the theorisation, policy-making, medical education, and practices of GPs and Ps within MSEs. Overall, the significance of this work for researchers into medical interactions is that the relevance of the service topic and its pervasive organisational consequences need to be considered analytically. A major outcome of this thesis is the establishment of a new order of interest within the study of institutional interactions. The project demonstrates the pervasive consequences of service topics and thus provides a step forward in the study of institutional service interactions and ways of theorising their rationality, a step that extends beyond social structural pre-theorisations of power and domination and also beyond interactional accounts of the primary relevance of turn taking structures.

A new constitution in South Africa necessitated a change in policing practices from an abusive, para-military style to a community-based structure. Such changes had its challenges, which were partially addressed through new policies that affected all police officials. White, male police officers in middle-management, who were once central in the police, were increasingly being sidelined. This research describes the experiences of three police officers in the Kwazulu-Natal midlands. It was conducted using a narrative approach, working within a social constructionist and a postfoundationalist paradigm. This meant that their stories were listened to within the wider context described through media reports. The discourses shaping their ideas were explored and compared to the experiences of police members of other races. Comments from other police officers were brought into the conversation alongside the insights of other disciplines and research done by others, including criminology, business, politics, social sciences and theology. The participants wrestled with how faith in God could assist them in dealing with the challenges they were faced with. This journey also contributes to a wider audience beyond our local context.
Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2008.
Practical Theology
unrestricted

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:40:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1023286 bytes, checksum: b1b88965d337348e042efcebbb1dc2d4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-12-12
Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES
This thesis aims to discuss, based on the analysis of several reports on the school institution published in different sites of the on-line media, how the object school is produced in current journalistic discourse. Grounded on theoretical presuppositions of the French school of Discourse Analysis and, especially, on the constructs of Michel Foucault, this research intends to highlight how certain truths about school are produced, disseminated and validated, which eventually regulate our ways of seeing and talking about this institution in present times. We believe that we can have access to truth games that are working in the school universe for the constitution of subjectivities through the news circulating in the media. The statements put into operation in the discourse of the news point to the emergence of new practices that materialize in this institutional environment in order to govern the subjects. To conduct an inventory of these new practices, we analyzed, particularly, news dealing with the object school in relation with other topics, such as violence, food and sex. These issues constitute a discursive network that refers to the challenges posed to school by contemporary culture. The news highlight the ways in which the educational institution has sought to reassert its function in the production of certain types of subjects, pointing, therefore, to the increased role of school as a standard setter in the society of control.
Esta tese objetiva, a partir da análise de diversas notícias publicadas sobre a instituição escolar em diferentes sites da mídia on-line, discutir como o objeto escola é produzido no discurso jornalístico na atualidade. Fundamentada nos pressupostos teóricos da Análise do Discurso de linha francesa e, sobretudo nas formulações de Michel Foucault, a pesquisa pretende evidenciar como são produzidas, disseminadas e validadas certas verdades sobre a escola que acabam por regular os nossos modos de ver e falar sobre essa instituição na contemporaneidade. Consideramos que através das notícias que circulam na mídia podemos ter acesso a jogos de verdade que estão funcionando no universo escolar para a constituição de subjetividades. Os enunciados postos em funcionamento nos discursos das notícias apontam para a emergência de novas práticas que se materializam nesse ambiente institucional, tendo em vista o governo dos sujeitos. Para realizar um inventário dessas novas práticas, analisamos, em particular, notícias que tratam do objeto escola em sua relação com outras temáticas, tais como violência, alimentação e sexo. Esses temas constituem uma rede discursiva que remete aos desafios impostos à escola pela cultura contemporânea. As notícias evidenciam os modos pelos quais a instituição escolar tem buscado reafirmar a sua função na produção de certos tipos de sujeitos, apontando, portanto, para a intensificação do papel da escola como espaço normalizador na sociedade de controle.

Magister Legum - LLM
The right to privacy is recognised as one of the most important individual rights. It is considered to be central to the protection of one's human dignity. It also forms the basis of any democratic society. Furthermore, it is linked to other basic rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and of association.1 The right to privacy is contained and recognised in almost every constitutional bill of rights and major international and regional conventions.2 It is also guaranteed expressly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,3 the European Convention on Human Rights,4 the American Convention on Human Rights5 and a number of countries' constitutions.6 The Convention on the Right to the Child recognises the right to privacy of the child.7

American Public Administration (PA) theory and practices have lacked adequately articulated or formalized normative foundations since the formal founding of the American State. Discussions regarding how PA theory derives from individual and collective critical reflection on practices (praxiology) and how that knowledge can inform future actions (praxis) virtually have been absent in all organizations. The recognition of the political legitimacy of PA has been lacking. The placing of a viable and critical social theory that posits conscious, responsible, and committed human practices within the context of the administration of the American Constitutional State, a politically narrow context, has been lacking as well. This dissertation establishes the works of social theorists Orion White, Jr., Michael Harmon, Robert Denhardt and Bayard Catron as the foundation for understanding how individuals do and can contribute to the collective administration of the complex state, including how they operate daily in organizations they join, critique and are capable of changing. These scholars understand the dynamics of human being and present discussions of human actions and practices that are capable of tackling the challenges associated with administering the American State. The work of John Rohr has established the other missing linksâ the constitutional legitimacy of PA and the clarification of constitutional values to which American administrative actions and knowledge must adhere. This dissertation asserts that it is the placing of human theory and action within the distinctly American theory and practices of the State that constitutes the solid normative foundations for American PA Praxis and Praxiology that constitutes a viable and formal founding of American Public Administration in word and deed.
Ph. D.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T14:32:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Viviani Anaya.pdf: 1052622 bytes, checksum: 08bc6c85c6a3e1cddfbdc4ca7391561e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-10-16
Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
This paper of research aims to examine the practice of teachers teaching classes in courses that Minister of Post-Graduate Lato Sensu and consideration of interpersonal relationships as a pedagogical competence in this practice, presenting itself as facilitator component of the learning process. Thus, elements that prioritize the exercise teacher and their specific features are not always considered when organizing the curriculum of courses of Post-Graduate Lato Sensu. For both, this research finding a link between the disciplines and how these subjects are taught, opportunity to decrease the distance between a training which prioritizes the technical competence and education as important in the development and performance of professional education. It also indicates that in this poll, to address the issues of interpersonal relationships education as a component of the mediation between the technical rationality and rational practice and its importance in the practice of teacher education, it is the importance of rationality practice composing the constitution curriculum the courses of Post-Graduate Lato Sensu, minimized front to demand technical training for teaching courses in the performance of Post-Graduate Lato Sensu. The methodological techniques adopted in this research are: questionnaire to trace the profile of the subjects studied - teachers teaching in courses that Minister of Post-Graduate Lato Sensu; questionnaire with open questions, with the aim of collecting data on the formation of curriculum of courses Post Graduate Lato Sensu and its interrelation with the teaching practice; focus group with the purpose of analyzing the consideration of Interpersonal Relations in the educational teaching practice. For the analysis of data collected, the Theory of Social Representations helped in developing the theoretical and practical reasoning
Este trabalho de pesquisa tem por objetivo analisar a prática docente de professores que ministram aulas em cursos de Pós-Graduação Lato Sensu e a consideração das relações interpessoais pedagógica como uma competência presente nesta prática, apresentando-se como componente facilitador do processo de aprendizagem. Desta forma, elementos que priorizam o exercício docente e suas especificidades, nem sempre são considerados ao se organizar o currículo dos cursos de Pós-Graduação Lato Sensu. Para tanto, esta investigação busca a articulação entre as disciplinas e a forma como essas disciplinas são ministradas, oportunizando a diminuição da distância entre uma formação que prioriza a competência técnica e a formação pedagógica, tão importante no desenvolvimento e atuação do profissional da educação. Vale apontar ainda que, nesta pesquisa, ao abordar as questões das relações interpessoais pedagógica como um dos elementos da mediação entre a racionalidade técnica e a racionalidade prática e sua importância na prática pedagógica do professor, defende-se, também, a importância da racionalidade prática na composição da constituição curricular dos cursos de Pós-Graduação Lato Sensu, minimizada frente à demanda técnica da formação docente para a atuação nos cursos de Pós-Graduação Lato Sensu. As técnicas metodológicas adotadas nesta investigação são: questionário para traçar o perfil dos sujeitos pesquisados professoras que ministram aulas em cursos de Pós-Graduação Lato Sensu; questionário com questões abertas, com a finalidade de coletar dados sobre a constituição curricular de cursos de Pós-Graduação Lato Sensu e sua inter-relação com a prática docente; grupo focal com o objetivo de analisar a consideração das Relações Interpessoais pedagógica na prática docente. Para a análise dos dados coletados, a Teoria das Representações Sociais auxiliou no desenvolvimento do raciocínio teórico-prático

The objectives the thesis are discuss and analyze the meanings and senses of school practices, which constitute the sayings of deaf students. They were used as theoretical and methodological supports: Discourse Analysis (Pêcheux, 2012), concepts of psychoanalysis Freudo Lacanian (Freud, 1921; Lacan, 2008; Teixeira, 2005 and others) and studies on sign language (Skliar, 1998; Sacks, 2000; Quadros and Karnopp, 2004). For the construction of the research corpus were two interviews with six deaf students, aged one twenty-six years, in the final years of elementary school (8 and 9 years) in a public school in the city of Uberlândia - MG . Interviews were conducted in Libras (Brazilian Sign Language), interpreted simultaneously in Portuguese (oral) and recorded audio and video. The information processed by the survey suggests that the constitution of the deaf in student results, first, the deaf\'s relationship with his deafness. Second, the need for access to a language so that communication can be developed and expanded. Research has shown that LIBRAS appears as a language that favors the development and communication of the deaf. Third research shows that school, to prioritize the Portuguese language (written and oral), to the detriment of a bilingual approach (LIBRAS- Portuguese), has lead the deaf student to live a situation of conflict, contradictions and exclusions within the school context, and to develop a kind of school interpreter dependence.
Os objetivos do trabalho versam sobre discutir e analisar a proposta do Ensino Fundamental no que tange ao significado e sentidos dessas práticas escolares, constitutivas dos dizeres de seis alunos surdos, participantes da pesquisa. Foram utilizados como suportes teóricos e metodológicos: Análise do Discurso de abordagem francesa (Pêcheux, 2012), alguns conceitos advindos da Psicanálise Freudo lacaniana (Freud, 1921; Lacan, 2008; Teixeira, 2005 e outros) e estudos sobre a língua de sinais (Skliar, 1998; Sacks, 2000; e Quadros e Karnopp, 2004). Para a construção do corpus da pesquisa foram realizadas duas entrevistas, com cada um dos participantes, seis jovens surdos de faixa etária entre 13(treze) e 26(vinte e seis) anos, alunos matriculados, regularmente, em duas turmas, das séries finais do Ensino Fundamental (8º e 9º anos), de uma escola da rede pública da cidade de Uberlândia MG. As entrevistas foram realizadas em LIBRAS (Língua Brasileira de Sinais), levando em conta que todos os alunos participantes possuíam proficiência em LIBRAS. As entrevistas foram interpretadas, simultaneamente, em português (oral) e registradas em áudio e vídeo. As informações tratadas pela pesquisa sugerem que a constituição das pessoas com surdez em alunos, resulta, em primeiro lugar, da relação do surdo com a sua surdez. Em segundo lugar, da necessidade de acesso a uma língua para que a comunicação possa ser estabelecida, desenvolvida e ampliada. A pesquisa demonstrou/confirmou que LIBRAS comparece como uma língua que favorece o desenvolvimento e a comunicação dos surdos. Em terceiro lugar a pesquisa evidencia que a escola, ao priorizar a Língua Portuguesa (escrita e oral), em detrimento de uma abordagem bilíngue (LIBRAS- Língua Portuguesa), acaba por levar o aluno surdo a viver uma situação de conflitos, contradições e exclusões dentro do contexto escolar, bem como a desenvolver uma espécie de dependência do interprete escolar.
Doutor em Educação

Acte unique européen, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, Lisbonne, élargissements… les grandes révisions des traités de l’Union européenne se sont succédé à un rythme soutenu en vingt-cinq ans. Si cette série est nécessaire dans un processus évolutif d’intégration, elle montre également la difficulté de réformer l’Union. L’objet de cette étude est de déterminer le degré de rigidité des traités de l’Union européenne, en recherchant les causes, les obstacles et les conséquences juridiques de cette (in)adaptabilité des traités. La rigidité trouve sa source dans le processus de constitutionnalisation des traités qui a renforcé leur protection formelle et matérielle par l’émergence de limites au pouvoir de révision. La rigidité des traités est par ailleurs accentuée par celle de la procédure de révision ordinaire qui est fondée sur deux notions qui peuvent sembler antinomiques : le respect de la souveraineté des États membres, par la pluralité des mécanismes nationaux de ratification, et la volonté de démocratisation, par l’émergence de mécanismes européens de légitimation. Pour faciliter l’adaptabilité des traités, les États membres ont institué des procédures simplifiées, complémentaires et dérogatoires à la procédure de droit commun. Leur insuffisante distinction par rapport à la procédure de révision ordinaire les rend inefficaces, si bien que l’on assiste à une remise en cause de la rigidité des traités par le développement d’une révision implicite de leurs dispositions et d’une coopération entre les États membres à l’intensité différenciée voire hors du cadre institutionnel de l’Union. La recherche de moyens efficaces d’assouplissement de la rigidité des traités est donc nécessaire afin de conserver à la fois leur rang dans l’ordre juridique et l’unité du processus d’intégration européenne dans le cadre de l’Union européenne
Single European Act, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, Lisbon, enlargements… Over a 25-year period, the major revisions of the European Union treaties followed one another at an intensive pace. If that series is necessary for a progressive process of integration, it also illustrates the challenge of reforming the Union. The purpose of this study is to determine the level of rigidity of the European Union Treaties by searching the legal causes, obstacles and consequences of the (in)adaptability of the treaties. Rigidity originates from the constitutionalisation process of the treaties, which consolidated their formal and substantial protection through the emergence of limits to the revision power. The rigidity of the treaties is further increased by that of the ordinary revision procedure, which is based on two notions that may appear antinomic: the respect of the Member States sovereignty (through the plurality of the national mechanisms of ratification), and the willingness of democratisation (through the emergence of European mechanisms of legitimacy). In order to facilitate the adaptability of the treaties, the Member States established simplified procedures, which complement and derogate to the general procedure. As they do not significantly differ from the ordinary revision procedure, they are not efficient; a reconsideration of the rigidity of the treaties can then be observed through the development of an implicit revision of their provisions as well as a cooperation between Member States, the intensity of which is differentiated, and which may grow beside the Union’s institutional framework. Therefore, the pursuit of efficient ways to relax the rigidity of the treaties is necessary to maintain both their position within the legal order and the unity of the European integration process within the framework of the European Union

This dissertation aims to investigate about the Teacher Training and Educational Practices of the APAE of Aracaju from 1968 to 1988. The time frame is justified by the date of foundation and by the promulgation of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil of 1988, the seventh Constitution of the country. It investigated as the process of formation of the teachers that entered the association in a period of ignorance of the Special Education in the capital of Sergipe happened. Due to the scarcity of literature and academic work, as evidenced through the State of the Art and laws that ensure the right of people with disabilities in environments common to all. It was a bibliographical and documentary research, with an approach in Cultural History, of exploratory character and focus in the analysis of qualitative content. The methodological pathway was carried out through exploratory visits, observations, document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 14 informants, with 09 teachers, 01 Social Worker, 01 Occupational Therapist, 01 Nursing Technician, 01 Volunteer and 01 Agricultural Technician. Through the Content Analysis based on Bardin (2011), the research evidenced that the formations were essential for the development of the association against the ignorance of Special Education by the informants and that the educative practices, at first they were given by intuition, but with the theoretical foundation acquired in the courses and the exchanges of experiences among colleagues, social blindness was giving way to the “blossoming of daisies” that made "History" within the History of the Aracaju‟s APAE.
Esta dissertação tem como objetivo investigar acerca da Formação dos Professores e as Práticas Educativas da Associação de Pais e Amigos dos Excepcionais (APAE) de Aracaju nos anos de 1968 a 1988. O marco temporal justifica-se pela data da fundação e pela promulgação da Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil em 1988, sétima Constituição do país. Pesquisou-se como se deu a processo de formação dos professores que adentravam a associação em um período de desconhecimento da Educação Especial na capital sergipana, em virtude da escassez da literatura e de trabalhos acadêmicos, como constatado através do Estado da Arte e de leis que assegurassem o direito das pessoas com deficiência em ambientes comuns a todos. Trata-se de uma pesquisa de cunho bibliográfico e documental, com abordagem na História Cultural, de caráter exploratório e enfoque na análise de conteúdo qualitativa. O caminho metodológico percorrido foi realizado por meio de visitas exploratórias, observações, análise de documentos e entrevistas semiestruturadas com 14 informantes, sendo 9 professores, 1 Assistente Social, 1 Terapeuta Ocupacional, 1 Técnico em Enfermagem, 1 Voluntário e 1 Técnico Agrícola. Mediante Análise de Conteúdo operacionada com base em Bardin (2011), a pesquisa evidenciou que as formações foram essenciais para o caminhar da associação frente ao desconhecimento da Educação Especial por parte dos informantes e que as práticas educativas, à princípio, se deram por intuição, mas, com o embasamento teórico adquirido nos cursos e as trocas de experiências entre os colegas, a cegueira social foi dando lugar ao “florescer de margaridas” que fizeram “História” dentro da História da APAE aracajuana.
São Cristóvão, SE

Dans un pays où le pouvoir se conquiert et ne se conserve que par la force, la fonction du président de la République est en République démocratique du Congo, celle d'un élu du peuple sans l'être réellement; de facto il exerce le pouvoir d'un monarque absolu. Depuis son accession à l'indépendance en juin 1960, la République démocratique du Congo a fait le choix de l'élection comme seul et unique moyen de dévolution du pouvoir politique, notamment de la fonction présidentielle; celle-ci n'a jamais connu d'alternance démocratique. A partir du coup d’État militaire du Lieutenant Général Mobutu, destituant en novembre 1965 Joseph Kasa­vubu, alors démocratiquement élu en juin 1960 par les deux Chambres du Parlement, le recours à la force s'est imposé dans les faits comme l'unique moyen par excellence d'accès au pouvoir. C'est dans cette optique, que s'explique la conquête du pouvoir de Laurent Désiré Kabila par les armes en mai 1997, et son remplacement par son fils, le Général major Joseph Kabila, qui à l'instar d'un prince, a hérité la présidence de la République en janvier 2001, alors que le Congo est une République théoriquement démocratique ! Devenue comme un grand village et une grande chefferie moderne, organisée autour d'un homme, ayant le monopole de l'autorité et revendiquant la grâce et la sacralité du pouvoir (chef) des chefferies traditionnelles, qu'il combine régulièrement avec les habitus patrimonialistes et monarchistes hérités du roi Léopold II, la République démocratique du Congo paraît être un Etat de droit que dans les textes. Le président congolais n'est autre qu'un monarque à la tête d'une République, il a personnalisé l’État, concentré tous les pouvoirs étatiques et exerce sa fonction sans admettre ou tolérer aucun contre-pouvoir
In a country where power is conquered and maintained only by force, the office of President of the Republic is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, that of an elected representative of the people without really being one; de facto he exercises the power of an absolute monarch. Since its independence in June 1960, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has chosen elections as the only means of devolving political power, particularly for the presidential office, which has never experimented democratic political change The use of force has become technically the ultimate means of accessing power since the military coup d'état in November 1965 by Lieutenant General Mobutu which finally deposed Joseph Kasa-Vubu who had been democratically elected in June 1960 by the two houses of Parliament. Laurent Désiré Kabila 's conquest relying on weapons power in May 1997 can then be explained. Then Major General Joseph Ka bila took over from his father. He inherited the presidency of the Republic of the Congo like a prince would do in January 2001, though Congo being a democratic republic! The Democratic Republic of Congo has become a great village and a great modern chiefdom, organized around a man, having the monopoly of authority and claiming the grace and sacredness of power (chief) of the traditional chiefdoms, which he regularly combines with the patrimonialist and monarchist habitus inherited from King Leopold Il, but it seems to be a State of law only in the texts. The Congolese president is none other than a monarch at the head of a Republic, he has personalized the state, concentrated ail state powers and exercised the presidential function without admitting or tolerating any counter-power

Submitted by PATRICIA HELENA MILANI null (patriciah.milani@gmail.com) on 2017-01-13T22:09:53Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_Patrícia_Final.pdf: 5890753 bytes, checksum: 4fc6a070cf109e1149421337cb22d0ed (MD5)
Approved for entry into archive by LUIZA DE MENEZES ROMANETTO (luizamenezes@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2017-01-17T13:48:44Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 milani_ph_dr_prud.pdf: 5890753 bytes, checksum: 4fc6a070cf109e1149421337cb22d0ed (MD5)
Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-17T13:48:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 milani_ph_dr_prud.pdf: 5890753 bytes, checksum: 4fc6a070cf109e1149421337cb22d0ed (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-07
Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)
La production de la différenciation socio-spatiale est analysée, en tenant compte de leurs dimensions objectives et subjectives, à partir de la comparaison entre deux villes de taille moyenne avec de différents niveaux de complexités, Catanduva et São José do Rio Preto. Le quotidien, tandis qu’une unité de l'espace et de temps est notre dimension de l’analyse, en ayant les pratiques spatiales des sujets sociaux étudiés, alors que le plan analytique, qui nous a permis d'identifier la façon dont le processus de fragmentation socio-spatiale s’exprime dans la production de l'espace urbain, surtout à partir des espaces vécus, donnant du sens et de la signification à des pratiques, qui entourent des relations contradictoires entre l'intérieur et à l'extérieur, avant et après, le changement et la permanence, l'espace et le temps. Sur la base de la réalisation de 22 entretiens et des observations sur le terrain, la recherche a révélé que, dans le discours d'une recherche de sécurité, les personnes interrogées, des habitants des espaces résidentiels fermés de classe moyenne et de l'élite, valorisent et produisent des stratégies de distinction socio-spaciale, auxquelles l'espace est dimension stratégique qui ne se limite pas au cadre d’habiter. Telle recherche modifie les façons de comme ces sujets sociaux connaissent l’urbain et ce qui lui est inhérente, étant la ville de plus en plus vécue et représentée dans les fragments. Cette tendance à la séparation, présente dans les deux villes étudiées, étend également aux pratiques de consommation, ce qui démontre de manière plus significative à São José do Rio Preto, une ville où il y a une plus grande présence de espaces fermés, d’ habitation et de consommation, largement valorisés par les segments de la classe moyenne et de l’élite. À Catanduva, il reste encore des pratiques de consommation «traditionnelles», dans le centre-ville traditionnel. Cependant, quand nous opérons à partir du processus de mise à l'échelle commune, en tenant compte les pratiques des consommations des interviewés de Catanduva qui fréquentent certains centres commerciaux de Sao Jose do Rio Preto, on vérifie que la production de la différenciation socio-spatiale est efficace, mais il exige une transposition de l'échelle intra-urbaine à être considérée dans le contexte des villes non métropolitaines. Nous concluons qu'il ne traite pas de mesurer dans quelle ville le processus se produit avec plus ou moins d'intensité, mais d'identifier les logiques qui guident les processus d'urbanisation dans la période contemporaine.
A produção da diferenciação socioespacial é analisada levando em conta suas dimensões objetivas e subjetivas, a partir da comparação entre duas cidades médias com diferentes níveis de complexidades, Catanduva e São José do Rio Preto-SP. O cotidiano, enquanto unidade de espaço e tempo, é nossa dimensão de análise, tendo as práticas espaciais dos sujeitos sociais pesquisados, enquanto plano analítico, o que nos permitiu identificar como o processo de fragmentação socioespacial se expressa na produção do espaço urbano, sobretudo a partir dos espaços vividos, conferindo sentidos e significados às práticas, que envolvem relações contraditórias entre dentro e fora, antes e depois, mudança e permanência, espaço e tempo. Com base na realização de 22 entrevistas e em observações de campo, a pesquisa revelou que, sob o discurso da busca por segurança, os sujeitos pesquisados, moradores de espaços residenciais fechados de classe média e elite, valorizam e produzem estratégias de distinção socioespacial, nas quais o espaço é dimensão estratégica que não se limita ao âmbito do morar. Tal busca modifica as maneiras como esses sujeitos sociais vivenciam o urbano e aquilo que lhe é inerente, sendo a cidade cada vez mais vivida e representada em fragmentos. Essa tendência à separação, presente nas duas cidades pesquisadas, estende-se também para as práticas de consumo, evidenciando-se de maneira mais significativa em São José do Rio Preto, cidade na qual há maior presença de espaços fechados de moradia e consumo, amplamente valorizados. Em Catanduva, ainda há permanências das práticas tradicionais de consumo, no centro principal da cidade. Porém, quando operamos a partir do processo de articulação escalar, levando em conta as práticas de consumo dos entrevistados de Catanduva que frequentam certos shopping centers de São José do Rio Preto, verifica-se que a produção da diferenciação socioespacial se efetiva, mas exige uma transposição da escala intraurbana para ser apreendido no contexto de cidades não metropolitanas, sobretudo cidades médias nos limiares. Concluímos, assim, que não se trata de medir em que cidade a diferenciação ocorre com maior ou menor intensidade, mas de identificar as lógicas que guiam os processos de urbanização no período contemporâneo.
The production of socio-spatial differentiation is analyzed in this paper considering its objective and subjective dimensions, through the comparison of two midsize cities with different complexity levels, Catanduva and São José do Rio Preto. The daily life, understood as a space-time unity, is our analysis dimension, and the spatial practices of the researched subjects are our analytical plan, which allowed us to identify how the social and spatial fragmentation process is expressed in the production of the urban space. This occurs mainly in relation to the lived spaces, which attributes meaning and significance to the practices that involve contradictory relations between the inside and the outside, the before and the after, the transformation and the continuity, space and time. We conduct our research through 22 interviews and field observations, which revealed that the researched subjects – middle class and elite residents of gate communities -, under the speech of search for security, value and produce strategies of social and spatial distinction, in which the space is a strategic dimension that is not restricted to the scope of inhabiting. This quest modifies the ways these social subjects experience the urbane, with all the things that are connected to it, and in this manner the city is progressively lived and represented in fragments. This tendency to separation, observed in the two researched cities, also reaches the purchasing practices, despite being more significant in São José do Rio Preto, because there are more gated spaces of residence and purchase in this city. In Catanduva, there still are traditional practices of purchasing in the center of the city. However, when we operate in the scale articulation process, considering the purchasing practices of the interviewed subjects that live in Catanduva but attend the shopping centers of São José do Rio Preto, we observe the existence of the differentiation process as well. The difference is that this process requires a transposition of the intra-urban scale in order to be apprehended in the context of non-metropolitan cities, mainly in the case of threshold midsize cities. Our conclusion is that we should not consider the size of the city in order to analyze the process, but to identify the logics that drive the urbanization processes in the contemporary period.

National and international crises in the early 21st Century, whether natural, technological or man-made, emphasize the need for highly reliable organizations (HROs) to conduct emergency response in a relatively error-free way. Urban search and rescue units provide a pivotal intermittent role in these high-risk environments. Traditional HRO research focuses on a concept known as "collective mind" -- heedful interactions of responders that accomplish reliability. Rather than focusing on collective mind, this study uses a practice-based communication approach to examine the material interplay of bodies, objects, and sites using ethnography and grounded theory. In-depth interviews, participant observations, and organizational documents were coded and contrasted to find patterns in material interplay. More specifically, this study examines how these material features interact to orchestrate reliable practices through ecological coherence, a bonding of multiple forces to construct meaning and improvisation. The study has implication for HRO theory through focusing on the role of the body rather than emphasizing cognitive judgment in collective action. Collective body shifts the discussion of mindful processes to embodied practices and offers insights into the ways responders enact safety and perform responses in dynamic, high-risk environments.

Ce mémoire propose de décrire et comprendre les pratiques communicationnelles menant à la prise de décision consensuelle d’une collaboration interorganisationnelle (CI) spécifique, la Table québécoise de la sécurité routière (TQSR). Nous adoptons la perspective de la communication constitutive des organisations (CCO) développée par « l’École de Montréal » pour appréhender les dimensions constitutives de ces pratiques de communication et de ce mode privilégié de décision en CI. Après un aperçu de la littérature disponible en matière de CI et concernant la notion de consensus, nous proposons de nous concentrer sur les pratiques communicationnelles du consensus en adoptant la perspective du consensus par absence d’opposition d’Urfalino (2014). L’analyse de conversation et les principes d’une approche rhétorique sont ensuite mobilisés pour rendre compte des pratiques de communication qui permettent l’accomplissement du consensus lors d’une séance plénière du troisième cycle de travail de la TQSR, spécifiquement consacrée à la rédaction de son rapport final. Nous verrons que 1) les pratiques communicationnelles mobilisées facilitent l’arrêt de la décision et que 2) celles-ci sont constitutives du consensus qui favorise l’unité du collectif de collaboration.
This thesis aims at describing and understanding the communication practices that sustain the consensual decision-making of an interorganizational collaboration (CI) collective, the “Table québécoise de la sécurité routière” (TQSR). We adopt a communication constitutive of organization (CCO) approach, as developed by the “Montréal School,” to understand the constitutive dimensions of these practices. After an overview of the available literature on CI and consensus decision-making, we propose to adopt the perspective of “consensus by non-opposition” developed by Urfalino (2014) to focus on the communicative practices that sustain this decision-making process. Conversation analysis and principles of a rhetorical approach are combined to analyze a plenary session from the TQSR third cycle of work, specifically aimed at drafting the collective’s final report. This analysis allows us to identify and discuss 1) the communication practices used to facilitate the consensus decision-making process and 2) the constitutive effects of consensus as it upholds the collective of collaboration’s unity.

碩士
高雄醫學院
行為科學研究所
85
The contemporary mass media spray myths of beauty and health widely such as: "Thin is beautiful, thin is healthy", and " effective weight reduction". Many women are seduced to pursuit this ideal stand-ard figure in a swarm.Although female bodies appeared in the media are derealized images, they none-theless form the mode of contemporary beauty. The present study analyzed the ways that how women maganizes shaping the mode of female body, and daily pract-ice of weight-reducing women, adopting a feminist''''''''s view, on the basis of Turner and Frank''''''''s theoies,and guided by the central concept of Foucault''''''''s view on power/ knoeledge. The discourses of the constitutions of beautiful, healty, and weight-reducing women scattered in the realms of thiness, clthing, excise, diet, and medicine industries etc., revealed the intricate operations of power and knowledge. All of the discourses of the body industry have the same inner logic, regarding the body as a symptomatic complex; and the y all advocate body control by means of technological and pro-fessional discourses, to correct, improve, and even control the body. Theses discourses of the body industry may also borrow and conbine other discourses, for example:the environmental protection, moral, nutritional, and consumptional ones. The discussions of praactice in everyday life of weight-reducing women were organized into six topics:1) Developmental changes of the body; 2) The standard body shape; 3) Display of the body image; 4) The body surevillance; and 5) Magic figure, 6)The vicious circle of weight reducion. This type of daily practice was also the realms of power and knowledge, and women evaluated themselves by the same way. The automy and management of Women''''''''s bodies were transfered to the insti- tutions, experts, or others in the body industry.However,female practice was not only merely a form of oppression, it also offered possibities of resistance. This paper declares the possibilities of an alternative thinking, that female issues are no longer dualistic , and female practice should not be taken asa matter for granted. It just like postmodernism exphasizes politics of differ-ence, diversity and plurality should also be tolerated. Hopefully. women could have choice of their own.

This dissertation is based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with seminarian women in Iran in the summer of 2008, and from 2010 to 2011. I ask, after having unprecedented access to the howzeh elmiyeh (seminaries) after the revolution, what have been some of the consequences for the howzevi? And, how do women in the howzeh elmiyeh see themselves? Through grounded method of analysis, I have found that in their pursuit of what constitutes `a good life', the howzevi of this study were actively attempting to transform themselves and the howzeh setting, their social relationships, and the greater Iranian society at large by exploring resources available to them within a set of constraints. These limitations were often not only self-imposed but also intensified with increased access to particular networks. In the following chapters I argue for an alternative way of looking at, and talking about, the howzevi who are now positioned in institutions that have emerged at the core of the ongoing struggles to shape a particular Iran. The term howzeh elmiyeh (seminaries) may be defined as Islamic theological institutions of higher religious learning where a personal teacher-student transmission of knowledge, oral and written, of Islamic Jurisprudence and other ancilliary Islamic sciences would take place. As you may know, in Muslim populated countries like Pakistan, the howzeh is also known as a madrasa. Unlike devotees of Catholic seminaries, however, students of the howzeh elmiyeh neither observe celibacy nor are physically secluded from the rest of society. Rather, they are, and have been, an integral part of the urban landscape in Syria, Egypt, Iran and Iraq from the ninth century A.D. (Berkey 2003; Bulliet 1972; Chamberlain 1994). The howzevi of this study were between the ages of eighteen to sixty years-old, and were at different stages of their education. Some were unmarried and in the early stages of their education. Some were married with children and completing doctoral research, while others were simultaneously teaching seminary classes, working on women's Islamic rights, and partaking in the Dars- e Kharij class (the highest level in the seminary) with Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, the Supreme Leader. Belonging to the ultra- religious conservative population in Iran, their history of mobility was limited inside the home before the 1979 revolution. Absent in the anthropological literature of women in the Middle East and women in contemporary Islamic higher education, the institutionalization of the howzeh elmiyeh (seminaries) for women in Iran was a project that had been in the works before the revolution. Its formalization emerged publicly only in 1984 through the combined efforts of groups of revolutionary Islamist women in petitioning Ayatollah Khomeini for the establishment of Jami'at Al-Zahra in Qom. By Islamicizing public space, the revolution also enabled these women to move into the public sphere. Since then, the howzeh elmiyeh for women has been an ongoing statewide project through the active participation of women who credit the 1979 revolution for widespread access to this form of education. This opening amounts to a yearly average of 65,000 women attend the women's howzeh all over Iran, excluding graduates since about 1984. Annually, the howzeh elmiyeh turns away ten percent of applicants (Sakurai 2011) because the infrastructure cannot yet accomodate the demand for women's enrollment. This support for the howzevi remains unparalleled throughout the history of Shi'i Islamic scholarship in the Shi'i Islamic world. After the 1979 revolution, the access which the women of the intellectual clerical elite had to Islamic education for women was extended to "all women"; all women, who, at least, were willing to observe the social constraints of the howzevi lifestyle, regardless of the socioeconomic group they belonged to, and/or the fact that they did not come from an intellectual Shi'i scholarly family. This served a purpose, however. The revolutionary state appropriated the concept of the howzeh elmiyeh for women (Adelkhah 2000) in order to produce a specific type of revolutionary woman. Notwithstanding, as the revolutionary state created a new public space for Islam (Adelkhah 2000), it also provided new leadership opportunities for women (Afary 2009; Najmabadi 2008; Sedghi 2007). Women students were able to embark on a fully-funded path towards potentially becoming, among other Islamic scholarly aspirations, a mujtahideh, a woman who may derive religious rulings for herself, a process called ijtihad, and who are also able to engage in discussions about Islamic laws and its applicability in Iranian society. This research is in conversation with how women in the Middle East are neither passive nor homogenous (Abu-Lughod 1993; Holmes-Eber 2003; Mahmood 2005; Osanloo 2009; Torab 2007), as well as within the discourse on society and the women's movement in Iran (Adelkhah 2000; Afary 2009; Afshar 1998; Bahramitash 2008; Kamalkhani 1998; Kian-Thiébaut 2002; Kunkler & Fazaeli 2012; Mahdavi 2007; Mir- Hosseini 1999; Moghissi 1994; Najmabadi 2008; Osanloo 2009; Paidar 1995; Poya 1999; Sakurai 2011, 2012; Sedghi 2007; Torab 2007; Varzi 2006).

abstract: This study situated a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) softball league within the logic of homonormativity and queer futurity and explored how community and identity were constituted, practiced, negotiated, and problematized. The project endeavored to address the questions: What is the meaning and significance of community for the League participants? To what extent and how does participation in the League affect gender and sexual identity discourse and practice? And, in the context of the League, how are dominant ideologies and power structures reinforced, disrupted, and produced? A critical ethnography was undertaken to render lives, relations, structures, and alternative possibilities visible. Data was collected through participant observation, interviews, open-ended questionnaires, and archival document analysis. A three stage process was employed for data transformation including description, analysis, and interpretation. LGBT identified sports clubs, formed as a result of identity politics, are understood to be potential sites of transformation and/or assimilation. Although the League was imbued with the discourses of inclusion and acceptance, the valorizing of competition and normalization led to the creation of hierarchies and a politics of exclusion. The League as an identity-based community was defined by what it was not, by what it lacked, by its constitutive outside. It is possible to learn a great deal about community by looking at what and who is left out and the conspicuous absence of transgender and bisexual participants in the League highlights a form of closure, a limit to the transformative potential of the League.
Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Recreation and Tourism Studies 2015

碩士
國立臺灣大學
外國語文學系研究所
86
Starting from the consitution of individuals in the capitalist society fromfou r respective perspective, use/exchange value, commodification, consumption,and proprietorship, I gain a footing for further investigation into the construct ion of women under the consipracy between patriarchal culture and capitalist s ystem.When capitalist society presupposes that human worth lies in its exchang evalue, which objectifies everyone and reifies social relations, women are fur ther objectified and thus alienated from themselves in the male order.Men's do minance has been perpetuated under the long-term presumption thatwomen are bio logically and so essentially different. Women either settle downwith their in evitably inferior feminine fate or have hard time struggling withit or they ta ke the initiative to create their space for maneuvering. InTHE EDIBLE WOMAN, Margarate Atwood gives a vivid illustration as woman'sissue by the three femal e characters' respective action and reaction towardthe presupposed feminine fa te, which is dealt with as gender politics,substantiated by food images recurr ent in Atwood's fictions. Symbolically,Marian presents herself edible in fron t of Peter, who indeed ventures on todevour her subjectivity gradually. Yet M arian eventually declines to beconsumed by Peter, and reemerges as a virile co nsumer. Nevertheless, thepredator-prey cycle implied which characterizes this consumer society maygrow malignant and destructive when such a pattern is ren ewed among peoplerepeatedly.

This dissertation purports to ascertain whether the Constitution of South Africa provides protection for taxpayers against specific practices and procedures utilised by SARS in order to collect taxes. The collection of taxes is imperative in ensuring that economical and socioeconomical objectives of the government are met. SARS is therefore awarded specific powers to achieve this. On the other side are taxpayers who are awarded constitutionally enshrined rights. Said rights may only be limited if the limitation is reasonable and just. Tension between SARS’ task and the taxpayers’ rights exist. This dissertation endeavours to find a balance where SARS can effectively collect tax whilst the taxpayers’ rights are not unreasonably and unjustly limited. The Constitution affords taxpayers the right to just administrative action. The right entails, amongst others, that when a dispute arises both parties sides must be heard. The right to just administrative action also includes legitimate expectations. A practice has transpired where SARS denies being bound by its own rulings and notes. A legitimate expectation is, nevertheless, created that SARS will act in accordance with its rulings and notes. The doctrine of legitimate expectations will provide assistance to the taxpayer in this situation. SARS further has the power to appoint a taxpayer’s agent. This procedure does not provide for the taxpayer to state his case before such an appointment is made. This prima facie violates a person’s right to just administrative action. When compared to the civil procedure of garnishee orders valuable differences transpired which will assist in elevating the tension between the taxpayer’s rights and SARS’ duty. A further right afforded, is the right of access to the court. The statement procedure and the “pay now, argue later” rule appear to be in conflict with said right. The statement procedure, which empowers SARS to file a statement at court to be made a judgment, exceeds the normal recourse available for ordinary litigants, namely the default judgment procedure. This procedure has, however, survived constitutional scrutiny. The “pay now, argue later” rule entails that a taxpayer must first pay the assessed amount before questioning the amount. This procedure is a departure from the general rule utilised in civil proceedings. It was held that this procedure is constitutional. This is, however, questioned due to the fact that at the time this rule is invoked the court’s jurisdiction is excluded. Furthermore, a taxpayer can rely on his right to property. If SARS unreasonably delays a refund due to the taxpayer this will violate said right. The situation relating to money owed in civil matters and the judgment of Sage Life Ltd indicates that a taxpayer will be entitled to interest and accordingly the violation will not be unreasonable or unjust. Moreover a taxpayer is afforded the right to privacy. Tension may arise when SARS obtains a warrant to search and seize the taxpayer’s property. This procedure is similar to the procedure of obtaining a warrant in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act. Declaring this procedure unconstitutional is implausible. Other countries faced with the tension between their revenue service collecting tax and their taxpayers’ rights, are utilising certain measures to reduce this tension. Amongst other a service charter, to provide legal certainty, instituting complaints forums, to deal with poor service, and providing brochures, to educate the taxpayers is identified. The predominant measure is, however, the office of the ombudsman. The Constitution, together with other measures, does provide adequate protection for a taxpayer against SARS. Accordingly, the tension between SARS’ duty and the taxpayers’ rights is balanced with the assistance of the Constitution. Copyright
Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2012.
Mercantile Law
unrestricted

碩士
逢甲大學
財經法律研究所
101
The Labor Union Act, Act for Settlement of Labor-Management Disputes and Collective Agreement Act are commonly known as the “Three Labor Laws” in Taiwan. Amount which, the article 35, paragraph 1, subparagraph 1, 3, and 4 of Labor Union Act were meant to protect employees from employer’s disparate treatment of unfair labor practice. The main discussions of disparate treatment including the following issues: the definition of the employer, employee, who represents the employer to exercise managerial authority, the collective labor action of employee to form the labor union and join the union-related activity, the employment action of employer, the anti-union animus. Paragraph 1 of article 39 and article 51 of the Act for Settlement of Labor-Management Disputes states that the employee may apply to the Tribunal of Unfair Labor Practice (Council of Labor Affairs, Executive Yuan) to seek for a decision on any dispute arising from disparate treatment of unfair labor practice. Since the effective day of Three Labor Laws May 1, 2011, to now, the Tribunal of Unfair Labor Practice has already made many decisions on disparate treatment. This paper plans to study on the Tribunal’s decisions concerning disparate treatment by examining the related concept, especially the issues on the criteria of anti-animus and the measurement of the mixed-motives. The purpose of this study is to provide future reference to the Tribunal when deciding illegal disparate treatment in unfair labor treatment, hoping to reduce the occurrence of collective labor disputes and reaching to a harmonious labor relation between employee and employer.

Thesis title in English Constitutio Criminalis Josephina and its influence on the decision-making practice of the Court of Appeal: Sexual offences in the years 1687-1727 Abstract This paper captures the development of the juridical practice of the Prague Court of Appeal between years 1687-1727 and examines the influence of the Constitutio Criminalis Josephina of 1707/8 on this practice. The research is focused on punishing of the sexual offenses, ie adultery, bigamy, fornication, incest, rape and sodomy. The primary sources for the research are law codes, especially Koldín's Code Práva městská Království českého (1579) and "Josephina"; besides them others are used: the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (1532), the Constitutio Criminalis Ferdinandea (1656) and Brikcí's Práva městská (1536). The practice of the appellate court itself has been examined on the basis of the books of sentences that contain the judgments of that court. Firstly, the relevant legislation of the period was described for each of the offenses and then the judicial practice was examined. The applied methodology can be qualified as quantitative-qualitative comparative analysis which makes possible recognizing the changes that occurred with the implementation of "Josephina". The main findings of the thesis suggest that "Josephina" was an...

Painting from a photographic source had become a structure for me and I became intrigued as to how I interpreted it as an experience. By engaging in a hermeneutic-phenomenological study, I distinguished the spaces between the source and the product, and I revealed the meaning that is made from this process. By deconstructing and reevaluating my habitual way of creating a painting, I was able to understand the reasons why I use a photograph as reference in the studio. Since I take the photograph with the intention of painting it, I realized that the photograph not only informs my painting process, but the painting informs my photographic process as well. The two media are dependent on one another: the photograph is created for the painting; the painting is created in relation to it. They are different, yet similar, and there is a dialectical relationship between the two of them. My thesis question was: What is the dialogue between the painting and the photograph and how will exhibiting the two together emphasize the dialectical relationship that is present in my artistic process?

Student Number : 8908713V - M Ed project report - School of Education - Faculty of Humanities
This research report focuses on educators’ current attitudes, skills and knowledge in relation to democracy in South African education today. The research report also considers what needs to be done to make democracy a reality that informs education as opposed to simply adhering to policy and legislation that speaks of fine ideals but may well have limited impact on the lives of the majority of South Africa’s citizens. I contend that one of the main barriers between democratic theory and practice is ambiguity and the resulting uncertainty and insecurity. I believe that many South Africans, many world citizens in fact, struggle to articulate what democracy actually means. If this grey area is to be addressed and ambiguity defused then educators need to be clear about what it is they are trying to educate learners for. This can only be realised when educators have internalised ‘lived democracy’ and, as a result, feel both an ownership and commitment to democracy as a lived practice.

Au cours de la dernière décennie, les changements observés sur le marché amènent les organisations à améliorer leurs conditions de travail afin d’être en mesure d’attirer et de retenir des travailleurs performants. Les PRH n’y font pas exception. En effet, les PRH présentent des attentes bien précises et développent un contrat psychologique qui leur est propre. Cette recherche porte sur l’intention de quitter des PRH. Plus précisément, elle vise à identifier à travers la théorie du contrat psychologique, les conditions d’emploi et d’exercice de la profession qui, lorsqu’elles ne sont pas respectées, influencent positivement l’intention de quitter des PRH. Il ressort de nos analyses statistiques que la violation du contrat psychologique, notamment des conditions d’emploi et des conditions d’exercice de la profession, influence positivement l’intention de quitter des PRH. Nos analyses nous ont permis d’identifier les différentes conditions d’emploi et d’exercice de la profession qui ont une influence sur l’intention de quitter des PRH. En ce qui concerne les conditions d’emploi, il s’agit de celles reliées au développement de carrière, à l’atmosphère au travail et au contenu de l’emploi. Du côté des conditions d’exercice de la profession, il s’agit du rôle d’agent de changement et de partenaires d’affaires qui ont une influence positive, tandis que le rôle d’expert fonctionnel influence négativement les intentions de quitter des PRH. Nos analyses mettent en évidence l’importance du respect des conditions d’emploi comparativement à celles associées aux conditions d’exercice de la profession. En effet, on constate que les trois conditions d’emploi qui ont une influence positive sur les intentions de quitter des PRH peuvent, sans contredit, être associées au développement professionnel, une valeur importante chez les PRH.
During the last decade, many changes have been observed in the labor markets which have lead organizations to review their work conditions. By improving the work environment, organizations have been able to attract and retain good workers. Human resource professionals (HRP) are not an exception. Indeed, HRP have specific expectations, they also develop their own psychological contract. This research attempts to understand the intent to quit of a HRP. Specifically, this research seeks to identify the conditions of employment and of professional practice through the theory of psychological contracts. When these conditions are not met, they positively influence the intent to quit of a HRP. According to our statistical analyses, psychological contract breach of the conditions of employment and of the conditions of professional practice positively influences the intent to quit of a HRP. More specifically, the conditions of employment which influence the intent to quit of a HRP are related to career development, social atmosphere and job content. Moreover, the role of a change agent and a strategic partner are the conditions of professional practice that influence negatively the intent to quit of a HRP. However, the role of an administrative expert influences positively the intent to quit of a HRP. Finally, our analysis highlights the importance of respecting the conditions of employment compared to those associated to the conditions of professional practice. Indeed, we find that the breach of three conditions of employment that have a positive influence on the intent to quit of a PRH can be associated to career development, which is a value that is more and more important for a PRH in current times.

At the 2007 General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church a compromise resolution was accepted regarding homosexual members. This resolution, inter alia, requires of gay ministers to remain celibate as a prerequisite to be legitimated. This research is a qualitative inquiry to evaluate the impact which this resolution has on the lives of gay ministers and gay candidate ministers. Narrative and postfoundational perspectives were obtained by interviewing six gay ministers and/or candidate ministers as coresearchers, and also by engaging in dialogue with inter-disciplinary experts from Sociology, Psychology and Law. This research traced the history of the Resolution, while the patriarchal and heteronormative discourses underlying the formulation were discussed. These discourses still sustain the Resolution. Interwoven in the Resolution are contradictions and double standards based on prejudice, leading to discrimination against gay ministers and gay candidate ministers. A literature study on prejudice and discrimination revealed many of the negative impacts these have on people on the margins of society. A literature review on gay marriages suggested that gay unions and gay marriages were known from pre-modern times. With the changing of the socio-political climates since pre-modern times till today, attitudes towards gay unions/marriages seemed to havethat the Bible does not categorically say anything about committed, monogamous gay unions or gay marriages. The focus of this research was to determine the impacts of the Resolution on gay ministers and gay candidate ministers. From their stories certain themes revealing the impacts were co-constructed by the co-researchers and the researcher. According to a negotiated meaning-making process a fragile and incomplete understanding of the gay ministers’ and gay candidate ministers’ immense suffering due to their experience of rejection and humiliation by the DRC was formulated. This reiterated the Shame of being gay. In terms of the discrimination levelled against gay ministers, it could, according to the Constitution of South Africa, be regarded as fair. This research suggested that the fairness of the discrimination should be revisited. changed. A study of the biblical texts led to the tentative and incomplete understanding
Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2015.
gm2015
Practical Theology
PhD
Unrestricted

Native nation building is a phenomenon largely neglected by mainstream political science. There are empirical and theoretical gaps in the study of political structures of Native nations. The empirical focus of this dissertation is on the rebuilding process of the White Earth Nation located in northwestern Minnesota. The objective is to investigate the long-term process of White Earth governance in order to get insights into the background of the present state of the White Earth institutional stalemate. I trace external and internal factors that influenced the formation, preservation, and transformation of the White Earth government established as part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe under the Indian Reorganization Act provisions in 1936. To understand this process, it is necessary to include the historical context of the White Earth constitutionalism from 1913 to the present. I analyze some hitherto unknown archival materials using a flexible theoretical framework which I designed specifically for the purpose of studying the White Earth nation-building process. This case-specific framework eclectically uses a combination of theoretical approaches of Native American studies, genealogy, Vincent Pouliot's practice tracing, and new institutionalism. My findings suggest that the White Earth...

Diploma thesis "The Head of State in the constitutional system of the Czech Republic: de iure and de facto" discourses both provisions, which integrate the institution of the president of the republic in constitution, and the virtual implementation of this uppermost authority in the state. At the beginning, the thesis deals with the historical dimension of the issue. It speaks of the general development and history of the office in Czech lands. Hereupon a depiction of the theoretical extent of this office follows. A large verge is devoted to the placement and the powers of the president in the constitution. The pragmatic part of the thesis consists of two case studies. The first one deals with the presidency of Václav Havel. The second one deals with the execution of the office by Václav Klaus. An extra attention is paid to the analysis of the accordance between the theoretical and pragmatic pursuance of the office of president of the Czech Republic.