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The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze stories that don’t often get told or heard. Traditionally, nonreligious people have had to keep their lack of belief to themselves out of fear of persecution. In the literature review of this dissertation, I summarize previous scholarship about leaving religion. In an effort to learn about autobiographies written by nonreligious women, I utilize storytelling as a theoretical framework, located within the rhetorical uses of personal narratives, and ask: What are the types of challenges, experiences, and topics that nonreligious women include in their stories?; How do these autobiographies invite readers to understand personal accounts of religious departure?; and How do these autobiographies invite social change and consciousness raising? To answer these questions, I applied thematic narrative analysis, from a rhetorical perspective, as a way to discover the commonalities amongst the stories, as well as the unique characteristics that each story possesses. While each woman had a unique story, there were five common themes that emerged among the memoirs: family, intellectual, relational, sociocultural, and professional. Inspired by the language of the “women’s sphere,” I labeled each of the themes as a realm in the “sphere of life” with hope that the sphere of life can help explain how religion influences a person’s life. I discovered that, even though some of the women lost some relationships with family and friends, all of the women mentioned that they are happier now that they are being true to themselves. The authors also mentioned that it is important to be at peace with who they are since this is likely their one and only life. With that in mind, it is important to have choice and authenticity in one’s life. Finally, this study demonstrated the power of storytelling and how autobiographies can invite social and attitudinal change.

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This study seeks to understand how horror urban legends undergo changes over time and the possible reasons for their alterations. Past researchers have yet to analyze the shifts that have occurred within the retellings of these dark tales, and through this analysis, light will be shed onto what truly affects the media's storytelling behavior. Building upon meme theory, this study will use narrative and historical context analyses to uncover the objectives, narrative elements and temporal environments surrounding 10 replications of three horror urban legend memes over the past century. This research will uncover how these memes have mutated over time and inform the world as to how context plays a role. A total of 30 horror urban legend artifacts (10 per meme) were analyzed using qualitative research methods in order to uncover the similarities and differences that appeared in the replications of each of the memes. Also, the contemporary thoughts, attitudes and values of the various time periods in which each of the retellings existed were analyzed to understand how historical events and movements may have led to a change in the story. The findings revealed that social movements played a large role in the alteration of horror urban legend memes, particularly in regards to the second wave of Feminism. Additionally, the findings showed that memes that heavily portrayed racism were altered in more recent decades to include leading actors and characters of various ethnic backgrounds. Because of these findings, this research aligns with and expands upon the work completed by Joel Best and Gerald Horiuchi (1985). / Master of Arts / This study looks at how three icon horror urban legends have changed over the past century. Specifically, this study analyzes "Bloody Mary," "Sleepy Hollow" and the "Wendigo" in order to track the changes each tale has gone through, in addition to uncovering what might influence their change. Researchers have yet to understand this occurrence, and this study will serve as a way to answer why the media would be interested in revisiting and reviving older stories. Remakes of movies and TV shows are found in abundance within society, so this research will help assign a reason as to why ancient tales are dug back up from the grave. Using meme theory, this study examines how a story is able to be retold, remade and eventually changed by analyzing 10 remakes per urban legend, with each remake coming from a different decade between the 1920s and the 2010s. The findings reveal that history plays a role in the remaking and altering of previous tales, mainly due to the older versions of horror urban legends no longer being relevant or culturally appropriate. Occasionally, the older adaptation of a story will have material or revolve around a subject matter that is no longer acceptable within a more modern society, such as women being shown only as a damsel in distress. Because of this, in order for the story to not be forgotten, it must be remade and altered to align with where the world is today.

Why does counterinsurgency emerge during periods of warfighting failure and in crisis situations? How is it conceptualized and legitimized? As the second counterinsurgency era for the United States military ends, how such a method of warfare arises, grips the military, policy makers, and think tanks provides a tableau for examining how we conceptualize the strategy process and account for geostrategic change. This dissertation takes these puzzles as it object of inquiry and builds on the discursive-argumentative geopolitical reasoning and transactional social construction literatures to explore the ways in which the counterinsurgency narrative captures and stabilizes the policy boundaries of action. It conceptualizes strategy making as a function of defining the problem as one that policy can engage, as the meaning applied to an issue delimits the strategic options available. Once the problem is defined, narratives compete within the national security bureaucracy to overcome the political and strategic fragmentation to produce consensus. A narrative framework is applied to study counterinsurgency strategy during the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghan wars. This framework examines the symbolic power and positioning of COIN advocates, hegemonic analogies and commonplaces used to legitimize COIN, and the romanticized language and imagery associated with COIN doctrine. These elements define the "who, what, where, and why" of the courses of action. Together these discursive resources serve as the building blocks for the counterinsurgency narrative and enable it to capture the geostrategic debate space. This narrative further defines how COIN is conceptualized in particular geostrategic contexts and how it is to be executed. The study concludes that by empirically tracing the ways in which the actors, analogies, and narratives are produced and deployed into war strategy debates the reasons for COIN's emergence in crisis periods can be determined. This allows for a thicker analysis of wartime and crisis decision making and a broader view of the ways in which strategy and policy are actually produced within the national security bureaucracy. In conceptualizing military strategy and policy in this way, we are better able to understand how dramatic changes in strategy occur and map the dynamics which enable that change to occur. / Ph. D.

This study focuses on exploring the relationship between domestic workers and the children they help to raise from the child’s perspective, using attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988) and psychoanalytic theory (referring specifically to Klein (1952) and Fairbairn (1952/2006) as some theoretical bases). Also, the concepts of the social unconscious (Weinberg, 2007) and social ghosts (Gergen, 2000) are used to provide a link to the relationship having social implications and functions in the South African context. All theories were used in an anti-essentialistic, reflexive and heuristic way, without reification or objectification of the various terms and concepts within the theories. Also, the paradigmatic point of departure for this research is postmodernism (Apignanesi, Sadar, Curry&Garrat, 2003), focusing on the contextual and socially constructed view of knowledge production. From this point of departure, the methodology is qualitative and the research design autoethnographic (Bochner, 1997; Ellis 1998; 2000; Muncey, 2005; Holman Jones, 2005). My own story is presented where I have used various data sources such as my own memories, a letter (Babbie&Mouton, 2008), and photographs which were analysed according to the principles of visual narrative analysis found in Riessman (2008) primarily. Further data was collected through the use of two radio talk shows, where participants were invited to share their stories with regard to being raised by a domestic worker. This data was analysed using thematic narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008), in which the narratives (kept as whole as possible) were analysed, each case in turn, using themes from the narratives themselves and deductive psychoanalytic themes. Some of the themes elicited were possession (where charges felt in possession of their domestic worker), absence (in relation to the child’s biological mother experienced both by domestic workers biological children and the domestic workers charges), loss (especially in relation to a caregiver), the male caregiver (a paternal figure to his charges), the politicisation of the relationship (the relationship between domestic worker and charge as product of a political system), reconciliation and action (a call for empathy and change), and an intertwining of cultures (where black and white, male and female, rich and poor exist inextricably linked with one another as a product of segregation). I have also maintained a consistent critical and reflexive stance throughout. In conclusion I have presented the contribution of this work to social science and society. Similarly, some limitations of this study are presented, as well as directions for further research. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Psychology / unrestricted