OAI Archive: SEALS Digital commons

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100 entries most recently downloaded from the archive "SEALS Digital commons"

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  1. Ontological commitment and mathematics : inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University.H. J. Schutte - unknown
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  2. Psychology in the second person : inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University.Dreyer Kruger - unknown
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  3. No longer in their proper place : anthropology in search of its subject-matter : inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University.C. J. De Wet - unknown
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  4. Investigating organisational factors that impact on engagement of knowledge workers in the banking sector of Botswana.Matlala Nono Mahlanza - unknown
    There is extensive literature on employee engagement; its antecedents; linkages to positive business outcomes; and its positive impact on retention. Top performing organisations have even found that aligning the engagement strategies to the business goals drive performance outcomes. There is no universal definition of employee engagement and drivers, therefore, a general approach without due cognisance of worker demographics may result in the application of inappropriate engagement strategies. In this study, the focus is on knowledge workers within the banking sector of (...)
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  5. The ‘obesity epidemic’ : an analysis of representations of obesity in mainstream South African newspapers post-1997.Chantelle Therese Malan - unknown
    This study of 449 newspaper articles from South Africa from 1997 provides an analysis of the representations of obesity evinced in the corpus. The research argues that obesity is overwhelmingly framed as being diseased and that there are four main refrains within this frame, namely, statistics on obesity, the naturalisation of negative assumptions about fat, the social dysfunction of fat and the use of crisis metaphors to describe fatness. This framing lends itself to representations of obesity which are raced, gendered (...)
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  6. Conditions enabling or constraining the exercise of agency among new academics in higher education, conducive to the social inclusion of students.Kasturi Behari-Leak - unknown
    This study, which is part of a National Research Foundation project on Social Inclusion in Higher Education, focuses on the exercise of agency among new academics, conducive to the social inclusion of students. Transitioning from varied entry points into higher education, new academics face numerous challenges as they embed themselves in disciplinary and institutional contexts. Given the complexity and contested nature of the current higher education landscape, new academics are especially vulnerable. Using Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as meta-theoretical framing and (...)
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  7. An analysis of the certificate of the theory of accounting knowledge and knower structures : a case study of professional knowledge.Thandeka Fortunate Mkhize - unknown
    This research project explores issues around the poor throughput and high dropout rate in the Certificate of the Theory of Accounting by focusing on Accounting knowledge as an object of study. The CTA was identified as a serious block in the steps that one needs to go through on the journey to becoming a Chartered Accountant. Having a clear understanding of Accounting knowledge can lead to finding ways that can make the subject more accessible to students from diverse backgrounds. This (...)
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  8. Being for others : critical reflections on the stranger, the estranged and the self in participatory art.Samantha Fawn Munro - unknown
    By referring to established concepts and theories which contemplate our experiences in relation to others and space, this thesis examines the interactions and responses of an audience during various participatory artworks. I draw upon Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and Elizabeth Grosz’ Architecture From The Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space in order to understand our interactions with other people, our interactions inside an environment, and the objects and ceremonies we use during these interactions. I align these experiences with (...)
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  9. Control and vulnerability : reflections on the nature of human agency and personhood.Sharli Anne Paphitis - unknown
    Following the writings of philosophers such as Harry Frankfurt, Gary Watson, and Alfred Mele, in this thesis I defend some central claims of the self-control view of human agency. However, I not only defend, but also supplement this view in the following two ways. First, drawing on work by Mary Midgley and Sigmund Freud I advance the claim that self-control requires the experience of internal conflict between an agent’s motivations and intentions. Second, drawing on insights from Simone de Beauvoir and (...)
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  10. A logos of difference : the Kantian roots of Derrida's deconstructive thinking.Andrea Margaret Hurst - unknown
    This study concerns a contemporary articulation of the age-old limit/possibility contest in Western metaphysics. Traditional `either/or' logic advises that scepticism is a necessary consequence of the assailability of truth; hence the concerted effort in the history of philosophy to preserve the possibility of truth against any flicker of uncertainty. Here, it is argued that contemporary thinking sees the possibility of `absolute' truth lose its ground. However, a concomitant shift to a `logos of difference' averts the consequence of scepticism. Thus, the (...)
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  11. Tracking spoor of the wild woman archetype during a university merger.Anja Maria Bodisch - unknown
    Universities in South Africa are currently undergoing mergers. Intended for commercial gain, mergers rarely accommodate the psychological milieu of staff. Similarly, the majority of studies conducted with respect to university mergers adopt a quantitative approach. This study adopts a qualitative approach and locates the researcher within the epicentre of the research, using a case study, with the researcher as unit of analysis. The lack of merger studies that focus on the experiences of minority groups, including women, prompted me, as researcher, (...)
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  12. Philosophy of science & history: PHL 323.T. J. G. Prof Louw - unknown
  13. Africa‘s Heritage No. 2: Bantu religious beliefs.Hugh Tracey - unknown
    2nd programme in the ‘Africa‘s Heritage Series, about Bantu religious beliefs, broadcast by the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
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  14. Describing behaviour : a philosophical analysis.I. A. Bunting - unknown
    Questions revolving around the possibility and justifiability of reductive analyses of the concept 'not', lie at the heart of many of the problems in the philosophical interpretation of not-descriptions. In this thesis, I wish to show, by discussing various problems in the logic of not-descriptions, that, and why, reductive analyses must be unsatisfactory. Chapter 1, p. 1.
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  15. Remarks on formalized arithmetic and subsystems thereof.C. Brink - unknown
    In a famous paper of 1931, Gödel proved that any formalization of elementary Arithmetic is incomplete, in the sense that it contains statements which are neither provable nor disprovable. Some two years before this, Presburger proved that a mutilated system of Arithmetic, employing only addition but not multiplication, is complete. This essay is partly an exposition of a system such as Presburger's, and partly an attempt to gain insight into the source of the incompleteness of Arithmetic, by linking Presburger's result (...)
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  16. A study of the educational thought of Rudolf Steiner.Richard John Scawen Blunt - unknown
  17. Involuntary consent.Dylan Brian Futter - unknown
    In this dissertation I take exception with a widely held philosophical doctrine, according to which agents are only blameworthy for the bad actions they have chosen to bring about. My argument strategy is to present cases in which agents are blamed for involuntary actions that are not in any way connected to their culpable and voluntary choices. These failures correspond, I suggest, to occasions of culpable ignorance where agents have been negligent or careless. More specifically, I claim that violations of (...)
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  18. "From the inside" : how to attribute emotions to others.Velislava Atanasova Mitova - unknown
    I argue that a specific version of Theory theory is necessary and sufficient for attributions and predictions of others' emotions. Theory theory is the view that we attribute and predict others' mental states on the basis of a body of generalisations about mental states, their situational input, and behavioural output. Theory's antagonist, Simulation theory, is the view that we ascribe mental states to others by simulating - or running ' off-line ' - their doxastic, emotional, and contextual situations. My argument (...)
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  19. Journeys of the learning soul : Plato to Descartes.Wayne Hugo - unknown
    This thesis aims to build up a picture of what it has meant for us within the western canon to educate a human being through the depths and heights of existence. It uses narrative accounts of educational journeys from ancient, medieval and early modern sources to develop an integral picture of the spectrum of education along with the techniques and fore-structures needed to guide a student through the various stages and encounters. Key metaphors, journeys and relationships - Diotirna's ladder of (...)
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  20. Externalism, self-knowledge and explanation.Richard Flockemann - unknown
    In recent years, much attention has been given to the question of whether content externalism is compatible with an account of self-knowledge maintaining that we have an epistemically privileged access to the content of our propositional mental states. Philosophers who maintain the two are incompatible have put forward two majors types of challenge, which I call - following Martin Davies - the Achievement and Consequence Problems, which aim to demonstrate that self-knowledge cannot be reconciled with externalism. These challenges have spawned (...)
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  21. Towards a post-sacrificial theory of identity formation.Natalie Menezes - unknown
    In this thesis I shall outline various modernist authors' arguments that collectivities and subjectivities employ sacrificial violence to establish and assert their identity where identity is inescapably understood in terms of the sovereignty of the collective or the post-Oedipal autonomy of the individual. To this end, violence has been posited as a historical and conceptual inevitability and is set as the default-state of human nature and politics. In recent times, protesting voices have begun to rigorously contest the notion of violence (...)
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  22. Morality and authority in existential praxis.Leonhard Praeg - unknown
    In this study I am concerned with understanding how the emergence of participatory or, broadly understood, existential approaches to education has shifted the nature of the student/lecturer relationship. Historically, the difference was represented through the in loco parentis trope which contains implicit understandings as to the nature of the lecturer's authority and the ethical parameters of the relationship. With the emergence of more participatory approaches this relationship and its constitutive elements have to be re-imagined. In the first chapter I place (...)
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  23. Food, philosophy and love.Nevenka Ristic - unknown
    This thesis is a metaphilosophical investigation into how food can be handled philosophically. The first chapter considers the question of whether food can be the subject matter of philosophy, and concludes that there are three possible ways: Foodist Philosophy, Philosophy of Food, and Philosophy and Food. This thesis focuses on the category Foodist Philosophy. The second chapter develops an account of foodist philosophy: it is a style of philosophy that assumes that our food and eating practices are fundamental aspects of (...)
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  24. Teacher educators' interpretation and practice of learner-centred pedagogy : a case study.Kamwi John Nyambe - unknown
    The objective of this study was to understand how teacher educators in a Namibian college of education interpret and practice the learner-centred pedagogy underpinning the Basic Education Teachers Diploma program. In order to achieve this objective, a case study approach was adopted, qualitative-interpretive in orientation and drawing upon interviews, naturalistic non-participant observation and document analysis. Bernstein's theory of pedagogy - in particular his notion ofrecontextualization - offered ideas and concepts that were used to generate and analyse data. The data indicated (...)
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  25. Indigenous knowledges : a genealogy of representations and applications in developing contexts of environmental education and development in southern Africa.Soul Shava - unknown
    This study was developed around concerns about how indigenous knowledges have been represented and applied in environment and development education. The first phase of the study is a genealogical analysis after Michel Foucault. This probes representations and applications of plant-based indigenous knowledge in selected anthropological, botanical and environmental education texts in southern Africa. The emerging insights were deepened using a Social Realism vantage point after Margaret Archer to shed light on agential issues in environmental education and development contexts. Here her (...)
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  26. “Beautiful powerful you” : an analysis of the subject positions offered to women readers of Destiny magazine.Juliana Jangara - unknown
    Women's magazines are popular cultural forms which offer readers representations intended to advise women on how to work towards and achieve idealised femininities. They perform such a function within the wider socio-historical context of gender relations. In a country such as South Africa, where patriarchal gender relations have historically been structured to favour men over women and masculinity over femininity, the representation of femininity in contemporary women's magazines may serve to reinforce or challenge these existent unequal gender relations. Informed by (...)
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  27. Scientific theories : a philosophical analysis.Alan Kenneth Schwerin - unknown
    In this essay I have considered some of the philosophical problems involved in attempting to settle the question, What are scientific theories about? And in order to expose these problems, I have dealt with two influential responses to this question of the referents of scientific theories - namely, logical empiricism and realism.
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  28. Personal autonomy: philosophy and literature.Samantha Wynne Vice - unknown
    Gerald Dworkin's influential account of Personal Autonomy offers the following two conditions for autonomy: Authenticity - the condition that one identify with one's beliefs, desires and values after a process of critical reflection, and Procedural Independence - the identification in must not be "influenced in ways which make the process of identification in some way alien to the individual" . I argue in this thesis that there are cases which fulfil both of Dworkin's conditions, yet are clearly not cases of (...)
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  29. Reconciling Western and African philosophy : rationality, culture and communitarianism.Xolisa Vitsha - unknown
    This thesis attempts to reconcile Western and African philosophy with specific reference to the issues of rationality, culture and communitarianism. It also discusses the post-Enlightenment, Western philosophical concept of liberal "atomism" and the primacy of the individual and the emergence of a communitarian critique in response. This thesis intends exploring how Western notions of individuality and the communitarian response can be reconciled with contemporary African philosophy and African communitarian thought in particular. To do this, it is necessary to explore the (...)
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  30. Filling the gap : Nietzsche's account of authenticity as a supplementary ideal.Michaela Christie Baker - unknown
    This thesis examines the ideal of authenticity: why we might want or need such an ideal, what such an ideal would look like, and what mechanisms we would need to ensure the successful operation of such an ideal. The thesis has three main parts. The fIrst part of the thesis aims at motivating the need to look to authenticity as a supplementary ideal to normative moraI theory. I do this by drawing a distinction between ethics and morality and arguing that (...)
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  31. A transdisciplinary explanatory critique of environmental education.Leigh Price - unknown
    This study originates out of my experience as an environmental educator working within business and industry in Zimbabwe and South Africa. It is motivated by my observation that, despite much environmental rhetoric and training, environmental education in industry rarely leads to significant advances towards environmental protection. I assume that the problem of the mismatch between rhetoric and action involves both semiotic and non-semiotic components and therefore, after a thorough exploration of my methodological options, I adopt a qualitative transdisciplinary textual analysis (...)
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  32. Changing words and worlds? : a phenomenological study of the acquisition of an academic literacy.Carol Irene Thomson - unknown
    This study is contextualised within the field of post-graduate, continuing teacher education, and the vibrant and demanding policy context that has characterised higher education in post-apartheid South Africa. Situated within a module specifically designed to address what is commonly understood to be the academic literacy development needs of students in the Bachelor of Education Honours programme at the former University of Natal, it aims to unveil the lived experiences of students taking this module. The module, Reading and Writing Academic Texts (...)
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  33. That-has-been a discussion on the body cast as that which fixes a subject in time, in relation to notions surrounding the photograph.Christine Fae Maree - unknown
    Much like a photograph, a casts creates a replica of its referent, thereby immobilising the subject in time. While the subject continues in time and hence ages and inevitably dies the replica does not. With this basic notion of fixing a subject, I have built an argument to contextualise my sculptures, which are made using casts of elderly people. In this discussion I have looked at my works through the ideas of different theorists. The main theorist I have cited is (...)
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  34. Challenging retributivist intuitions.Jonathan Hawkes - unknown
    Can punishment, a practice which involves the deliberate infliction of suffering, be justified? Retributivists and consequentialists argue that punishment can be justified, whereas abolitionists argue that it cannot. Retributivists argue that punishment is justified because wrongdoers deserve it, whereas punishment is justified for consequentialists because it is beneficial for society. A popular form of abolitionism is restorative justice, which is the view that all those affected by crime should be reconciled. In this thesis I argue that retributivist justifications for punishment (...)
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  35. Collective forgiving.Kelly Hamilton - unknown
    Forgiveness is traditionally understood as a personal change of heart, in which an individual victim of a wrongdoing overcomes her resentment towards the perpetrator of that wrongdoing. Peter Strawson famously argued that resentment is a personal participant retributive reactive attitude, and the overcoming of such an attitude through forgiveness is itself a personal reactive attitude – in other words, forgiveness is an affective response to a wrongdoing by an individual victim, that is devoid of a retributive element. Because reactive attitudes (...)
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  36. Correction, addition and deletion memory and its function in creating "visual narratives" in photographic art.Xanthe Amanda Geyer - unknown
    With this dissertation I propose to investigate critical theories dealing with memory and its role in photography. The function of memory is a well discussed and analysed topic within the ambit of historical research. Drawing from theoretical texts by critical theorists, namely, Roland Barthes, Annette Kuhn and Marianne Hirsch, I will critically address the function of memory in the understanding of photography; particularly how photographs have the ability to construct our identity in terms of history and narrative. I will study (...)
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  37. Control and authenticity: reflections on personal autonomy.Sharli Anne Paphitis - unknown
    Currently the most influential accounts of personal autonomy, at least in the Englishspeaking world, focus on providing conditions under which agents can be said to exercise self-control. Two distinct accounts of personal autonomy have emerged in this tradition: firstly, hierarchical models grounded in the work of Harry Frankfurt; and secondly, systems division models most famously articulated by Gary Watson. In this thesis I show the inadequacies of both of these models by exploring the problematic views of the self and self-control (...)
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  38. "Tell me how you read and I will tell you who you are": children's literature and moral development.Megan Van der Nest - unknown
    It is a common intuition that we can learn something of moral importance from literature, and one of the ways in which we teach our children about morality is through stories. In selecting books for children to read a primary concern is often the effect that the moral content of the story will have on the morality of the child reader. In this thesis I argue in order to take advantage of the contribution that literature can make to moral development, (...)
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  39. Take my word for it: a new approach to the problem of sincerity in the epistemology of testimony.Therese Dewhurst - unknown
    The epistemological problem of sincerity in testimony is often approached in the following way: We, as a matter of fact, accept utterances as sincere. We do so in the face of knowledge that people lie and deceive,and yet we still count these beliefs as good beliefs. Therefore there must be some reason or argument that we can cite in order to justify our acceptance of the sincerity of the speaker. In this thesis I will argue, contra this, that there is (...)
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  40. Hippocampus: seahorse; brain-structure; spatial map; concept.Beth Diane Armstrong - unknown
    Through an exploration of both sculptural and thought processes undertaken in making my Masters exhibition, ‘Hippocampus’, I unpack some possibilities, instabilities, and limitations inherent in representation and visual perception. This thesis explores the Hippocampus as image and concept . Looking at Gilles Deleuze’s writings on representation, I will expand on the notion of the map as being that which does not define and fix a structure or meaning, but rather is open, extendable and experimental. I explore the becoming, rather than (...)
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  41. "The secret rapport between photography and philosophy" considering the South African photographic apparatus through Veleko, Rose, Goldblatt, Ractliffe and Mofokeng.Michelle Fiona Mountain - unknown
    This thesis is an attempt at understanding South African photography through the lens of Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, Tracy Rose, David Goldblatt, Jo Ractliffe and Santu Mofokeng. Through the works discussed this thesis intends to unpack photography as a complex medium similar to that of language and text, as well as attempt to understand how exploring South African experiences and spaces through the lens of photography shapes and mediates them. Furthermore it also attempts to understand how these experiences and spaces conversely (...)
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  42. South African International Relations and the China-Africa relationship : a critical reflection.Timothy Charles Walker - unknown
    South African International Relations is a prominent source of China-Africa research and analysis, producing reports, journal articles and books that seek to illuminate the emerging relationship between China and Africa. It plays an important role in the framing of the relationship, as well as how it is perceived outside of the discipline. However, critical concerns have been raised about the context within which South African IR operates. It is therefore important that IR research, including its assumptions, dominant concepts, professed values (...)
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  43. International relations and change: a Kuhnian interpretation.Jacobus Schoeman - unknown
    Using notions of change developed by Thomas Kuhn, the thesis argues that the rise of globalisation and the end of the Cold War presented the Westphalian or state-centric paradigm of international relations with a Kuhnian paradigm “crisis”. As a result, both the theory and the practice of international relations are in the midst of a “paradigm shift”. Emerging from this shift is “Access World” and “Denial World” – a particular global configuration of the practice of international relations. Kuhn’s idea of (...)
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  44. Arguments for other minds.Dolina Sylvia Dowling - unknown
    If I am aware of my own mental states by introspection How can I know that other people have minds? and How can I know what their mental states are? These are two of the questions with which I will be concerned in this dissertation. I discuss five different attempts to deal with them. The claim that we can know that other people have minds by an argument from analogy. I show a number of serious flaws in Russell's and other (...)
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  45. Lecturer and student perceptions of an academic writing task.Amanda Olivier - unknown
    This research considers the perceptions of an academic writing task held by a lecturer and first year students in the Philosophy department at the University of Zululand. The research takes as its starting point the following premises: that language is inextricably linked to learning; that each academic discipline has a particular discourse which students have to acquire in order to participate as accepted members of the academic community; that learning proceeds most effectively when teaching starts with what is known and (...)
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  46. Equality, Resources and Primary Goods: Ronald Dworkin and John Rawls on the Currency of Egalitarianism.Simon James Peter May - 1996 - Dissertation, Rhodes University
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  47. Human rights: an investigation into the importance of second generation rights.Kristina Anne Bentley - unknown
    This study examines the notion of universal human rights in the context of the importance of social and economic rights for the agency and dignity of human beings. It argues that the recognition of basic rights to what is necessary for physical well-being is essential to any adequate theory of human rights, and that rights of the civil and political variety depend on the recognition of social and economic rights if they are to be exercised. Therefore the secondary status which (...)
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  48. Understanding the image in art therapy: a phenomenological-hermeneutic investigation.Blanche Daw Douglas - unknown
    Part One of the research seeks to establish a context wherein certain assumptions pertaining to the interpretative dimensions of understanding the image in art therapy can be considered and reviewed. Notions about the image, meaning and reality are discussed both in terms of how they relate to current art therapy practice, and how they may be alternatively thought about, both from the perspective of ancient Hellenic Greek thought, and more contemporary thought, particularly that of phenomenological and philosophical-hermeneutics. Part Two of (...)
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  49. Making sense of ʺessenceʺ : a critical examination of the adequacy of the modern philosophical conception of ʺessenceʺ.Allison Ross - 2000 - Dissertation, Rhodes University
    The idea that some sub-set of the properties of an object captures what it is to be that thing i.e. that it has an essence which is there to be discovered and about which we can be mistaken - is a commonsense assumption that we use all the time. However, philosophers of this century have regarded the realism about essence with skepticism, arguing that we impose essences on things by the way we define our concepts as opposed to discovering them. (...)
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  50. An investigation into how marketers cope with an environment of high complexity and turbulence, with special reference to the South African environment.Roger Bruce Mason - unknown
    This study investigated relationships between marketing success, the level of external environmental complexity and turbulence, and marketing mix tactics. The literature suggested that more successful companies in simple and stable environments use stabilising marketing tactics, while more successful companies in complex and turbulent environments use destabilising tactics, regardless of industry habits, management preferences or market sector. A marketing mix model for the different environments was developed using a chaos and complexity theory perspective. The study was exploratory, using a qualitative, case (...)
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  51. An investigation of the evolution and current status of the core theoretical disciplines in the training of primary school teachers at selected English-medium training institutions in South Africa.Sally-Ann Robertson - unknown
    This investigation examines developments which have taken place in the theoretical component of pre-service courses for primary teachers. Revised conceptions of the purpose and scope of primary education, and the attendant demand for better qualified primary teachers to implement such education, resulted in a considerable increase in the theoretical component of primary teacher preparation courses . Better theoretical understanding of the educative task was perceived to be essential to the production of more effective primary teachers. The emergence of various schemes (...)
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  52. Dennett's compatibilism considered.Julian Gatenby Puttergill - unknown
    My basic concern in this thesis is to examine the details behind Dennett's attempt to reconcile the notions of mechanism and responsibility. In the main this involves an examination of how he tries to secure a compatibilism between mechanistic and intentional explanations by developing a systematised conception of intentional explanation. I begin by briefly discussing the various notions needed for understanding what is at stake in the area and where the orthodoxy on the matter lies. As such the first three (...)
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  53. Liberal aristocracy & the limits of democracy.Christopher Wareham - unknown
    I define and defend a non-democratic authority with the power to annul the decisions of democratic branches of government when such decisions infringe upon citizens’ basic rights and liberties. I refer to this non-democratic authority as Liberal Aristocracy. The argument for Liberal Aristocracy has two parts: the first part demonstrates that Liberal Aristocracy will arrive at decisions that further the moral end of sustaining citizens’ rights; the second part holds that Liberal Aristocracy is a moral means to this end. First, (...)
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  54. A metabletic study of the male/female process in psychology.Keith Stanley Edward Michael O'Brien - unknown
    The motivation to explore the subject matter of this thesis arises from two interlinked processes: the experience of the power and pervasiveness of a "basic split" experienced in therapy in the unity of the individual, the tendency in the unitary discipline psychology for theorists to adopt views which are polar opposites. In trying to understand these phenomena one has to explore the basic paradox of being which has fascinated thinkers and mystics down through the ages, the paradox of the One (...)
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  55. The integration of academic skills/support programmes into university department structures: a case study in the sociology of education.Michael Drewett - unknown
    This research focuses on the extent to which the Rhodes University Academic Skills Programme , now known as the Academic Development Programme, is able to act as an agent of progressive change within Rhodes University. In so doing it concentrates on the potential of the strategy of integrated academic development for dealing with the academic needs of university students within the context of South Africa as a society in transition. The candidate considers the inability of structuralist educational theory to account (...)
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  56. Excavating the 'critique' : an investigation into disjunctions between the espoused and the practiced within a Fine Art studio practice curriculum.Dina Zoe Belluigi - unknown
    This report presents the findings of a case study excavating the event of the ‘Critique’ , the formative assessment method within a Fine Art Studio Practice curriculum. Arguments informed by critical postmodernism, education theories and contemporary art criticism are utilised to construct a dialectic of higher education, contemporary art and fine art studio practice. An emphasis is placed on the importance of agency, expressed through intentionality and critical thinking, with a recognition of the relationship between ‘the self’ and ‘the other’. (...)
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  57. Optimistic science: The effectiveness of economic methodology in achieving objectivity.Ryan Holl - unknown
    This thesis examines the extent to which optimism has a bearing on objectivity in scientific inquiry. It is not, however, a psychological level examination into objectivity. Rather, the discussion focuses on collective attitudes, whether in the form of science or a more general public opinion. In essence, sources of optimism at the fundamental level of scientific inquiry are articulated with a careful attempt to differentiate between attitudes about the subject and the object of study. The antithetical thread of optimism versus (...)
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  58. Integrating Information and Communications Technology into teaching and learning: The case of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in one Higher Education Institution.Billey Addams - unknown
    This study explores the integration of Information and Communication Technologies into teaching and learning within one Higher Education institution. The main question driving the study was: How is ICT integrated in the teaching and learning of mathematics, science and technology education in a Bachelor of Education programme? This is a case study of lecturers and students in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education. It makes use of questionnaires, interviews, field notes and document analyses to collect data. MSTE lecturers and students were (...)
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  59. Achieving a realistic utopia: Rawls, realization, and the task of political philosophy.Rosa Elizabeth Terlazzo - unknown
    In this thesis I argue that the tradition of political philosophy which follows in John Rawls's footsteps is obligated to concern itself not only with the realizability, but also with the realization, of justice. Although Rawls himself expresses a commitment only to the former of these, I argue that the roles which he assigns to political philosophy require him to take on the further commitment to realization. This is because these roles are meant to influence not only political philosophers, but (...)
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  60. A Foucauldian critique of neo-liberalsim.Tawanda Sachikonye - unknown
    This study attempts to make a contribution to the critique of contemporary capitalism. This has been conceptualised through a Foucauldian critique of neo-liberalism, that is, Foucault’s concepts of power and governmentality have been used to criticise neo-liberalism. The study argues that neo-liberalism is a hegemonic and oppressive politico-economic social system. This has occurred in two ways; firstly, neo-liberalism came to dominate the global economy and, secondly, neo-liberalism has become the dominant politico-economic discourse. An attempt is made to expose the discourses (...)
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  61. A critical investigation of the interpretation and implementation of the Parzival main lesson within the context of the Waldorf curriculum.Elizabeth Swanepoel - unknown
    The Steiner/Waldorf school movement is currently one of the fastest growing independent school movements internationally. In several countries it seems to have developed into the most popular form of alternative education. South Africa has 17 Waldorf schools and one full-time teacher training facility. This study investigated the interpretation and implementation of the Parzival main lesson within the wider context of the Waldorf curriculum. The main lesson system is an essential constituent of the Waldorf curriculum. Most academic subjects in a Waldorf (...)
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  62. Reason and eros.W. D. Chalmers - unknown
    Forword: This study is not intended as a work of research into any existing body of philosopny. It is, rather, an independent inquiry into the origins and the objective of philosophical activity. In this it assumes the somewhat enigmatic r8le of a philosophy of philosophy.
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  63. The critical implications of Ubuntu for contemporary management theory.Tamsanqa Munyaradzi Mashasha - unknown
    Since the dissolution of apartheid, corporate governance in South Africa has evolved from being a soft mainly ethical issue to a hard knowledge-based technological issue, recognised as pivotal to the success and revitalisation of the country’s capital markets and, ultimately, the prospects of the corporate economy. These high stakes have produced a succession of measures aimed at transforming corporate governance in the economy. As such, South Africa’s corporate managers are consistently faced with the seemingly unassailable obstacle of discerning and implementing (...)
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  64. Habitual transience : orientation and disorientation within non-places.Simone Heymans - unknown
    This mini-thesis is a supporting document to the exhibition titled via: a phenomenological site-specific series of intermedia interventions and installations at the 1820 Settlers National Monument in Grahamstown. This mini-thesis examines ways in which one negotiates the movement of the self and interactions with others within the non-place. Non-places are ‘habitually transient’ spaces for passage, communication and consumption, often viewed from highways, vehicles, hotels, petrol stations, airports and supermarkets. Characteristic of these generic and somewhat homogenous spaces is the paradox of (...)
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  65. A critical analysis of the practical man principle in Commissioner for Inland Revenue v Lever Brothers and Unilever Ltd.David Paul Grenville - unknown
    This research studies the practical person principle as it was introduced in the case of Commissioner for Inland Revenue v Lever Brothers and Unilever Ltd 1946 AD 441. In its time the Lever Brothers case was a seminal judgment in South Africa’s tax jurisprudence and the practical person principle was a decisive criterion for the determination of source of income. The primary goal of this research was a critical analysis the practical man principle. This involved an analysis of the extent (...)
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  66. Empathy in the time of ecological apartheid : a social sculpture practice-led inquiry into developing pedagogies for ecological citizenship.Dylan McGarry - unknown
    Considering the ecological crisis and the increased disconnection between human beings and nature, this study attempts to find the social and aesthetic educational response needed for developing ecological citizenship for the 21st century. In this transdisciplinary study I articulate what at first seems a clumsy attempt to enable the capacities of the embodied ecological citizen, and which later emerges as an alchemical ‘social sculpture’ approach to learning that expands the range of capacities available to the citizen and the citizen’s immediate (...)
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  67. Prolegomena to ubuntu and any other future South African philosophy.Aidan Vivian Prinsloo - unknown
    In this thesis I consider ubuntu as a metonym for the particularly African features of South African philosophy. Given that Mbembe critiques African philosophy in general as having failed because it has been subsumed under two unreflective political movements in African thought, I consider whether or not the concept of ubuntu escapes his critique. After developing criteria for measuring the success of any philosophical concept, I conclude that ubuntu is unsuccessful. I then identify the political constraints placed on ubuntu that (...)
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  68. Apollo, Dionysus, dialectical reason and critical cinema.Adrian Konik - unknown
    The contemporary era is dominated by an Apollonian visual language, i.e. the visual language of mainstream cinema and the mass media, and this study concerns the role that critical cinema, as Dionysian subverter, plays under such conditions. I argue that critical cinema should not be viewed as something completely ‘new’ but rather as a new, or at least the latest, manifestation of an older subversive ‘Dionysian’ voice that has made its presence felt since the dawn of the hegemony of an (...)
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  69. My other-my self post-Cartesian ontological possibilities in the fiction of J.M. Coetzee.Damazio Laston Mfune - unknown
    The central argument of my study is that, among other matters, in his works, J.M. Coetzee could be said to demonstrate that the known Self is an embodied being and is not autonomous. With regard to the latter contention, Coetzee intimates that any two Subjects are implicated in each other’s subjectivities in a reciprocal process that involves what Derek Attridge has called “irruptions of otherness” into the Subject’s subjectivity. These irruptions, which happen during the encounter, lead to a double loss (...)
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  70. The role of memory, museums and memorials in reconciling the past : the Apartheid Museum and Red Location Museum as case studies.Elizabeth Sippel - unknown
    When South Africa became a democracy, many of its cultural institutions were tainted by the stigma of having been tools for the production and propagation of apartheid ideology. This thesis examines two key facets of post-apartheid museums and memorials. Firstly, how they have repositioned themselves as institutions of cultural and social standing. Secondly, their role as tools of nation building, social change, and creators of national collective memory within the new democratic South Africa. Through an analysis of cultural memory theory (...)
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  71. Investigating the dual influences of theory and practice on the design and implementation of a learning programme.Susan Iona Jackelman - unknown
    It is widely recognized that educational research and theory should be motivated by the desire to continually improve the practice of teaching. However, bridging the divide between theoretical research outcomes and the practical constraints of classroom-based teaching has proved somewhat challenging. The involvement of teachers as the 'bridge-builders' between theory and practice could provide an effective mechanism for achieving this integration. The purpose of this study is thus to investigate whether the involvement of teachers in developing and implementing a theory-based (...)
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  72. A critical realist exploration of the implementation of a new curriculum in Swaziland.Liphie Pereira - unknown
    This study offers an in-depth exploration of the conditions from which the implementation of a curriculum called the International General Certificate of Secondary Education , later localised into Swaziland General Certificate of Secondary Education , emerged and the constraining and enabling conditions for the implementation of the new I/SGCSE curriculum. It derives its theoretical foundation from Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism and Margaret Archer’s concept of analytical separability. The study therefore offers explanations about the curriculum change and its implementation that are (...)
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  73. Smashing the crystal ball: post-structural insights associated with contemporary anarchism and the revision of blueprint utopianism.Tarryn Linda Alexander - unknown
    This thesis is an exploration of the images which define revolution's meaning. It suggests a possible shifting of emphasis from the scientific imaginary which centres on identifying the correct way to totalising revolution, towards a post-structuralist-anarchistic imaginary which privileges prefigurative radicalisations of social relations in the here and now. It looks specifically at how the field of post-structuralism intertwines with historically anarchist concepts to generate an horizon of social change animated by experimental and open-ended transformations. While the thesis offers positive (...)
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  74. Force of habit the mystical foundations of the narcotic.Simon Peter Howell - unknown
    This thesis aims to investigate and deconstruct the relationship between the narcotic, its narrative, and western modernity. To reveal the relationship, this thesis argues that it is possible to understand the philosophical, political, cultural and ethical dimensions of western modernity through the ulterior lens of the narcotic. As such, this thesis investigates western modernity's relationship to cocaine as a specific narcotic, and the concept of the narcotic with all its attendant connotations of addictions, illegitimacy, transgression, illegality, and so on. Accordingly, (...)
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  75. Foucault, historicism and political philosophy.Christopher John Allsobrook - unknown
    This thesis defends an ontological and epistemological account of Michel Foucault's post-structuralist philosophy, to argue that political philosophy needs to take into account the historical and political contingency of subjectivity and discourse. I show that by addressing the historical and political contingency of knowledge, Foucault's work overcomes the flaw of foundational epistemology in political philosophy, which treats true discourse as universal and disinterested. In doing so I hope to have to refuted the mainly positivistic and humanist schools of thought that (...)
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  76. Exploring the possibility of an Ubuntu-based political philosophy.Katherine Elizabeth Furman - unknown
    It is typically said that there are two questions that political philosophy seeks to address: ‘who gets what?’ and ‘who decides on who gets what?’ South Africa, along with much of the rest of the world, has answered the second question badly and currently ranks as one of the world’s most unequal societies. Counter-intuitively, South Africa maintains a social-political order that produces this inequality along with great enthusiasm for ubuntu, an African ethic that at a minimum requires that we treat (...)
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  77. Creating a new declaration of rights : a critical reconstruction of earth jurisprudence's global legislative framework.Georges Alexandre Lenferna - 2012 - Dissertation, Rhodes University
    This thesis aims to critique the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth and its underlying moral justification in order to provide a stronger and improved version of both. In Chapter 1 I explore what sort of moral justification is necessary to establish the Universal Declaration on firm grounds and explore its relation to environmental ethics and rights discourse. I argue that a non-anthropocentric perspective is necessary to justify the Universal Declaration’s rights. In Chapter 2 I explore the underlying (...)
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  78. Afro-communitarianism and the nature of reconciliation.Rianna Oelofsen - unknown
    In this dissertation I sketch a conception of personhood as understood from within an Afrocommunitarian worldview, and argue that this understanding of personhood has implications for understanding the concept of reconciliation. Understanding ‘being human’ as a collective, communal enterprise has implications for how responsibility, justice, forgiveness and humanization are conceptualized. In line with this understanding of reconciliation and its cognate concepts, I argue that the humanization of self and other is required for addressing the ‘inferiority’ and concurrent ‘superiority’ racial complexes (...)
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