The original purpose or motive of the sacrifice, rooted in ceremonious or religious acts, was as a gift to a centralized power that ensured a common good or prosperity. In modern capitalist society, sacrifice is about “a willingness to sacrifice short-term gains for long-term gains” (Keenan 2005: 11) of freedom and fortune. What is concealed in this propaganda is that true freedom and prosperity is mostly restricted to a few exceedingly privileged and powerful individuals – and every year, these ‘short-term’ sacrifices include the millions of lives of the disciplined and altruistic workers that the system supposedly admires. Within this context, in recent years a growing recognition of the social and economic harms that corporations are capable of causing, specifically against workers and members of the public, led to the development of laws in several countries aimed at corporate manslaughter and corporate criminal liability. However, despite these legal advancements, the law continues to fail at protecting the victims of corporate harm and wrongdoing, and to adequately hold corporations and their actors accountable for their crimes. This research asks the following question: what role does corporate manslaughter law play in the reproduction of sacrifice and, in the process, violence and capitalist hegemony? This is done by interrogating the introduction and enforcement of corporate manslaughter law in the United Kingdom and the struggle for corporate criminal accountability from the socio-historical perspective of advanced neoliberal capitalism. Employing a theoretical lens that draws together literatures on sacrifice, law, and violence, this research shows that the law (re)produces particular understandings of sacrifice and violence that benefit the powerful, therein normalizing death and dying at work as the natural and largely unavoidable costs of modern employment relations. The research concludes that, to better address the systemic violence faced by workers, we must consider a restructuring of the legal enterprise and the ‘common sense’ understandings of sacrifice, violence, and harm that accompany it.

Defendemos nesta dissertação que formas radicais de controle de si pela superação do sofrimento físico e das necessidades corporais são respostas subjetivas à configuração do modo de vida social contemporâneo. Modo de vida cujo núcleo está no que autores marxistas chamam de alienação e de fetichismo da mercadoria. Procuraremos examinar o fenômeno que em psiquiatria ganhou o nome de anorexia nervosa ou anorexia mental como uma dessas respostas que, ao mesmo tempo em que renega esse modo de vida, acaba por reafirmar algumas de suas premissas centrais. / We intend to defend that radical forms of self-control by overcoming physical suffering and bodily needs are subjective responses to the contemporary form of life. Form of life which core lies in what Marxist authors call alienation and commodity fetishism. We will seek to examine the phenomena in psychiatry called \"anorexia nervosa\" or \"anorexia mental\" as one of those responses that, at the same time denies this form of life, and, on the other hand, reaffirms some of its central assumptions.

Este trabalho parte de uma interrogação acerca do significante “sacrifício” num contexto clínico e avança, através de diferentes autores do campo da psicanálise e da antropologia, em direção ao estabelecimento de aproximações e distanciamentos entre o sacrifício ritual e o sacrifício que se revela sob a forma da “renúncia”. Sustentando que as “ações sacrificiais dessacralizadas” são análogas àquelas que se realizam por meio dos rituais, o autor propõe que tanto nos rituais sacrificiais quanto na forma dessacralizada da renúncia o sacrifício pode ser interpretado a partir da posição do sujeito em relação à falta interente à estrutura simbólica. / This research starts from a interrogation about the term “sacrifice” in a clinical context and progresses through different authors from the field of psychoanalysis and anthropology towards the establishment of similarities and differences between the sacrifice ritual and sacrifice that reveals itself as the "renunciation" form. Arguing that the "sacrificial actions desacralized" are analogous to those that take place through the rituals, the author proposes that the sacrificial rituals as well as the renunciation form can be interpreted from the position of the subject in relation to the lack interente to the symbolic structure.

Orientador: Oswaldo Giacoia Junior / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-22T23:29:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Abreu_MarilandeMartins_D.pdf: 1489133 bytes, checksum: c9b101ce75676fc46985b9e5aeccb698 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: O presente estudo se propõe a delinear uma análise da realidade social a partir do conceito de sacrifício ritual, um fato social total à medida que apreende instâncias da vida política, religiosa, econômica e cultural. Para isso, os métodos tomados da Antropologia das Formas Expressivas e alguns conceitos da Teoria Psicanalítica, permitem problematizar e acompanhar legendas de narrativas míticas e rituais da Grécia Antiga através do simbolismo ritual que permite apreender a justaposição entre homem, deus e o animal, esse jogo se institui em correspondência e dependência da simbolização do feminino. O simbolismo ritual desvenda alguns elos entre laços sociais interdições sexuais, agressividade e sexualidade, permite ainda, interpretar o sacrifício ritual como imagem especular da ordem social. Estes temas remetem ao incesto e ao parricídio, fenômenos sociais implicados no sacrifício ritual e no jogo de justaposição entre homem, deus e o animal. Portanto, a partir de Totem e Tabu, de Sigmund Freud; A Violência e o Sagrado, de René Girard; e Homo-Necans - ritos sacrificiais e mitos da Grécia Antiga, de Walter Burkert, pretende-se interpretar algumas legendas míticas e rituais do politeísmo grego para evidenciar analogias e semelhanças entre sistemas sacrificiais de práticas religiosas de modernos e totêmicos, ou ainda, de monoteístas e politeístas. Essas imagens míticas e rituais repetem cenas de ordem e desordem associados à ação sacrificial, aproximam castração e ordem simbólico-ritual fálica, mito do Complexo de Édipo e pai da horda primitiva, tabu totêmico e tabu obsessivo, matriarcado e patriarcado. Jesus Cristo, Dionísio, Apolo e Hefesto se situam no jogo de justaposição entre homem, deus e o animal, associam-se ao campo masculino e ao patriarcado; do mesmo modo, divindades femininas como Maria, Deméter, Hera, Atena e Afrodite constituem imagens superpostas da mulher como mãe, virgem e amante, figuras situadas no campo feminino. O simbolismo ritual permite, assim, interpretar o advento do matriarcado em relação de dependência e polarização com o patriarcado, ambos repetem compulsivamente o jogo de superposições entre homem, deus e o animal que institui simbolismo ritual e transmite tradição cultural / Resumé: Cette étude se propose d'esquisser une analyse de la réalité sociale à partir du concept de sacrifice rituel, un fait social total dans la mesure où il comprend les instances de la vie politique, religieuse, économique et culturelle. Pour cela, les méthodes empruntées à l'anthropologie des formes expressives, et quelques concepts de la théorie psychanalytique permettent de problématiser et de suivre les légendes mythiques et rituelles de la Grèce antique à travers le symbolisme rituel, qui permet de comprendre la juxtaposition entre homme, dieu, et animal, qui s'institue en correspondance et en dépendance de la symbolisation du féminin. Le symbolisme rituel révèle quelque chaînons entre liens sociaux, interdictions sexuelles, agressivité et sexualité, et permet aussi d'interpréter le sacrifice rituel comme image spéculaire de l'ordre social. Ces thèmes renvoient à l'inceste et au parricide, phénomènes sociaux impliqués dans le sacrifice rituel et dans le jeu de juxtaposition entre homme, dieu, et animal. Donc, à partir de Totem et Tabou, de Sigmund Freud, de La violence et le sacré, de René Girard, et de Homo necans - rites sacrificiels et mythes de la Grèce antique, de Walter Burkert, on a l'intention d'interpréter quelques légendes mythiques et rituelles du polythéisme grec, ceci afin de mettre en évidence les analogies et les ressemblances entre les systèmes sacrificiels des pratiques religieuses modernes et totémiques, ou encore, monothéistes et polythéistes. Ces images mythiques et rituelles répètent les scènes d?ordre et de désordre associées à l'acte sacrificiel, rapprochent castration et ordre symbolico-phallique, mythe du complexe d'oedipe et du père de la horde primitive, tabou totémique et tabou obsessionnel, matriarcat et patriarcat. Jésus Christ, Dionysos, Apollon et Héphaïstos, se situent dans le jeu de juxtaposition entre homme, dieu, et animal, et sont associés au champ masculin et au patriarcat, et de la même façon, des divinités féminines comme Marie, Déméter, Héra, Athéna, et Aphrodite constituent des images superposées de la femme avec la mère, la vierge et l'amante, figures situées dans le champ féminin. Le symbolisme rituel permet ainsi d?interpréter l?avènement du matriarcat en relation de dépendance et de polarisation avec le patriarcat, l'un comme l'autre répétant compulsivement le jeu de superposition entre homme, dieu et animal qui institue le symbolisme rituel et transmet la tradition culturelle / Abstract: This study proposes to outline an analysis of social reality from the concept of ritual sacrifice, a total social fact that measuresand apprehends of political life, religious, economic and cultural life. For this reason, the methods taken from Anthropology of expressive forms and some concepts in psychoanalytic theory, allow problematize and accompany captions of mythic narratives and rituals of Ancient Greece through the ritual symbolism, which enables to seize the juxtaposition between man, God and the animal, which is establishing in correspondence and dependence of symbolization of the female. The ritual symbolism uncovers some links between social ties sexual prohibitions, aggression and sexuality, also allows, interpret the sacrifice ritual as specular image of the social order. These issues relate to the incest and the "parricidio", social phenomena involved in ritual sacrifice and in the game of juxtaposition between man, God and the animal. Therefore, from Totem and Taboo, Sigmund Freud; The violence and the sacred, of René Girard; and Homo-Necans - sacrificial rites and myths of Ancient Greece, of Walter Bürkert works, we want to interpret some mythical legends and rituals of the Greek polytheism to highlight similarities and parallels between sacrificial systems of religious practices of modern and "totemicos", or even, monotheistic and polytheist. These mythic images and rituals are repeated scenes of order and disorder associated with the sacrificial action, approach castration and order symbolic-ones, myth of Edipus Complex and father of the primitive horde, "totenico"taboo and obsessive taboo, matriarchy and the patriarchy. Jesus Christ, Dionysus, Apollo and Hefesto are situated in the game of juxtaposition between man, God and the animal, are associated with the male field and to the patriarchy; similarly, female deities as Mary, Demeter, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite are overlapping images of woman as mother, virgin and lover, figures situated in the countryside female. The ritual symbolism used to interpret the advent of matriarachy in relation of dependence and polarization with the patriarchy, both repeat compulsively the game of superpositions between man, God and the animal establishing ritual symbolism and transmits cultural tradition / Doutorado / Ciencias Sociais / Doutora em Ciências Sociais

Abstract A high level of customer perceived value is the key to customer loyalty and to the profitability of customers and companies. It is not enough to meet the customer's needs in order to win customer loyalty. Instead the aim for companies should be to try to delight customers. Customers are delighted when they feel that the product or service not only fulfils their needs and expectations, but also gives them unexpected additional value. Value has been studied widely and there are several different models and theories to describe customer perceived value. In the main, they tend to be too general or insufficient or they do not provide a useful guide for management practices. Therefore the aim of this thesis is to generate a theory for consumer perceived value which could be useful for managements trying to develop superior value so as to improve their customer loyalty. Pre-purchase consumer value was examined applying Grounded Theory methodology and by synthesizing the existing research results. The resulting theory from this synthesis consists of three main stages namely, gaining, sacrifice and purchase factors. The gaining stage has three sub elements: substance, reputation and interaction. All these sub-elements have the same four subcategories: emotional, social, functional and economical elements. What is novel about this research is its treatment of customer perceived value firstly, from the perspectives of the companies – based on three functionally different factors: substance, reputation and interaction – and secondly from the perspective of the customers based on the identified subjective outcomes (i.e. emotional, social, functional and economic factors). Based on this approach companies can develop products based on a better understanding of consumer perceived value.

Please read the abstract in the thesis. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2013 / New Testament Studies / unrestricted

My thesis journey was initially motivated by an interest in the individual’s search for God, the self and the other (neighbour, men/women and enemy) as represented in the play texts. This call for a personal relationship with the ‘other’ highlights the individual’s feelings of unease and strangeness at a time when, one might argue, the majority belittles the role of religion, in support of scientific discoveries and human rights. Here, the French philosopher René Girard - whose anthropological and scientific interest in violence, religion and human culture has shaped my research - argues that the progress of humankind would not have become a reality without what he terms sacrifice. Here, I should confirm that the main influence on the early steps of finding my research topic were Peter Shaffer, Slavoj Žižek, Julia Kristeva and Mikhail Bakhtin rather than Rene Girard. This thesis explores several interconnected relationships, the most important of which is between humour and violence or forms of ‘sacrifice’ in the plays of six British playwrights – Peter Barnes and Peter Shaffer, Howard Barker and Sarah Kane as well as Caryl Churchill and David Rudkin. It is this strange relationship which leads me later on to uncover and explore the representations of the stranger, the victim/iser and the foreigner in their works. The return of the stranger – the dead, the ashes of victims of extreme violence, the ghosts, the prisoners and the children - is inseparable from the search for individuality in a world ruled by the gods of war, money and dark humour. My research findings are viewed in the light of two narratives: the first is to do with the upper world and the second is to do with the lower as defined by Bakhtin’s idea of the carnival and the culture of folk humour in the Middle Ages. The upper is serious, official, exclusive and authoritative whereas the second is festive, comic, mythical and popular. It is hard to describe the relationship between these narratives as simply oppositional (some say iconoclastic) because they are coexistent and rely on one another. At this point, the different professional and ideological positions of the playwrights are important aspects in arriving at an understanding of the ways they collapse the borders between humour and terror, the banquet and the battle, carnivals and trials, the parade and economic exploitation, clownery and politics. Though these playwrights are not preachers or reformers, they challenge our easy laughter and our role as we witness the risen from the dead, those in the flames or in the future signalling to us to halt our participation and face responsibility for the victims.

In this thesis I shall outline various modernist authors' arguments that collectivities (such as ethnic groups, nations, states and cultures) 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 (from post-feminist, post-colonial, post-modern and the emerging human rights discourses) have begun to rigorously contest the notion of violence as the default-state. As a result, the legitimacy of sacrifice as the primary modus to an autonomous selfhood has been radically problematised. I believe that a comprehensive understanding of the nature of this crisis of identity formation , and the possibility of transcending it, is to be found in the paradigmatic shift away from Newtonian thought toward a post-Newtonian worldview. In seeking to challenge the assumption of violence-as-default, I shall translate the comprehensive sacrificial nature of collective identity and subjectivity into a complexity-based model that allowed me to make three crucial conceptual moves toward a comprehensive understanding of post-sacrificial identities that occupy an important place in a post-Newtonian world. First, it will allow me to challenge the assumptions that supported the Hobbesian myth of autonomy/sovereignty sacrificially achieved by charting the ontological shift that compels us to understand "entities" (be it a cell, an individual or a state) not in terms of autonomy but interdependence. Secondly, it provides the conceptual tools needed to understand the systemic nature of sacrificial violence by reading subjectivity violence and collectivity violence in terms of their organic self-similarity. This will equip me to comprehensively explore a postsacrificial epistemology valid for both collective identities and subjectivity. Thirdly, I propose a model of post-sacrificial identities that are created and sustained at the edge of chaos through the dynamic interplay of order and disorder that reconciles creative and destructive forces in a generative unity. I believe that this post-Newtonian reading will clear the conceptual space needed to suggest there might yet be hope for a future that does not embrace violence as default-state.

This doctoral thesis contains three essays on the macroeconomic impact of inflation targeting: (1) Inflation-targeting regime, as a framework for monetary policy conduct, has been adopted by central banks in thirty countries. Some of these countries enjoy high incomes while others have middle incomes. In contrast to the development-based classification –often applied in the literature, thus ignoring income disparity– this study employs income-based classification in constructing the data sample. The objective is to investigate, using a panel of middle-income countries, whether inflation targeting is a good remedy for high inflation. In addition to the commonly used covariates in the literature, this study also includes in its covariate matrix the worldwide governance indicators as proxy for institutional quality. The findings exhibit a significant reduction of inflation and its volatility among the inflation-targeting adopters compared to the non-adopting middle-income countries. The results are robust to the exclusion of high inflation episodes, and to using the alternative measures of inflation. The results are also robust to the post-estimation sensitivity tests recommended for such empirical analysis. (2) Many economists acknowledge the paramount role that foreign investment plays in fostering economic development and growth via integrating economies around the globe. Studies have shown that foreign investment, particularly foreign direct investment (FDI) is attracted to countries that exhibit good governance, low uncertainty and a high degree of macroeconomic stability. The literature also argues that monetary policy under inflation targeting (IT) mitigates uncertainty, enhances governance and brings macroeconomic stability to the adopting countries. Hence, it would seem that the IT-adoption should enable the adopting countries attract the largest FDI inflows. To verify this conjecture, this study performs a comparison between the IT-adopting countries and the non-adopters in attracting FDI. Using a panel of OECD and middle-income countries, the empirical findings exhibit an interesting but contradicting pattern: when it comes to the OECD countries, the results show that the IT-adopters do better than the non-adopters in attracting the FDI inflows. For the middle-income countries, however, the IT-adoption appears to have the opposite effect: a significant reduction in the FDI inflows is witnessed among the IT-adopters compared to their counterparts. The results are robust to the post-estimation sensitivity tests. (3) Inflation targeting, as a monetary-policy framework, is said to promote economic efficiency and growth. Yet, when evaluating the macroeconomic performance of inflation-targeting regimes, the existing literature only emphasizes the dynamics of inflation and the costs associated with taming inflation. There is hardly any assessment of the claim of efficiency and growth. To fill this gap, and to measure the causal impact of inflation-targeting adoption on economic efficiency, we compare the dynamics of output growth and long-term unemployment between countries that have adopted inflation targeting and the non-adopting countries. Our findings seem to refute the efficiency claim, and paint a bleak picture of inflation targeting: when compared to the countries that did not adopt inflation targeting, there is a significant reduction in the average growth rate among the inflation-targeting adopters by over ½ percentage point. Additionally, long-term unemployment significantly rises among the inflation-targeting countries by almost 2 percentage points as compared to the non-adopters. These results are robust to both the exclusion of the outlier observations and to the sensitivity tests recommended for such analysis.

The question addressed by this study would be to ask where there is any semantic overlap in the way in which on the one hand child sacrifices functioned in the OT and on the other hand how muti rituals function in contemporary South Africa. Do these different rituals function similarly, or not? In answering this question, this study will first provide a literature overview of how muti murders are described in academic literature and show the complexities of trying to understand African religion and culture. This is achieved by looking at the concept of muti rituals, its meaning, targeted victims (who are usually women and children) and development in history, from sacrifice in war times to sacrifice for material gain. In this section works from cultural anthropology are used to help form a clearer picture of what muti rituals are and how they function within society. The study then moves to how the practice of child sacrifice is portrayed in texts such as Genesis 22:1-19 (the binding of Isaac) and Judges 11:29-40 (Jephthah’s vow). Although many scholars chose to separate the sacrifices of Genesis 22 and Judges 11, this study will show that they should be read together since they share the common theme of burnt-offering. In the comparison it will become clear that both Abraham and Jephthah are fathers of an only child; their child is the single most precious thing they possess. Moreover, both accounts are of an etiological nature. The fact that both narratives are in the canon should be seen as an indication of the important contribution that they make to the theme of sacrifice. In a more general chapter, the concepts of sacrifice and offering are outlined and are both acknowledged as a form of worship. This is followed by an overview of the different types of sacrifices as outlined in the Levitical literature and their different occurrences, focusing on the burnt-offering. Rituals are therefore understood as a communicating and clarifying social reality and establishing it. These patterns are understood with the use of a Mesopotamian inscription about “The death of Gilgamesh” which shows that warfare and killing were necessary to maintain and establish order, prosperity and peace. A comparison between muti rituals and child sacrifice yields more differences than similarities. One of the major similarities is that a blessing is bestowed on the offerer, be it success in business, victory in war or the acquisition of land. The motif of sacrificing one for the greater good seems to be at play. The main difference between muti rituals and child sacrifice is that in muti rituals, the sacrifice is dedicated to ancestors while in child sacrifice they are dedicated to Yahweh. In muti rituals, the victim does not need to be related to the offerer but in both these texts; the victim is the only child, a special possession of the father. / Dissertation (MTh)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / NRF-Freestanding / Old Testament Studies / MTh / Unrestricted