This work attempts to examine the relevance of the conceptual opposition between modernity and postmodernity on the basis of a typological analysis of the modes of subjectivity and intersubjectivity which are implicated in the integration and the reproduction of a given form of society. We first show that traditional societies rest on concrete and particular modes of personal identity and of mutual recognition, which are integrated together within a common culture, whereas modern societies rest on an abstraction and universalization of forms societally legitimized of subjective identity and of intersubjective recognition. These we propose to designate by the concept of individualism. After presenting the main stages in the construction of modern individualism, we attempt to illuminate some of the implications, but also some of the aporias, that the modern conception of subjectivity and intersubjectivity presents. In the final part of this work, we seek to establish the validity of the notion of postmodernity to define contemporary society. We try to show that the universalist type of individualism, which characterizes modern society and provides its identity, gradually gives way to a "singularist" type of individualism. This latter form of individualism attests to a crisis of personal identity and is associated with the progressive dissolution of any collective identity, that is, of any a a priori intersubjectivity.

No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1982.

This thesis comprises six chapters. Chapter one consists of the statement of the research problem. It covers the outlin of the dissertation and the background of and motivation for the research. It also includes the research problem and the theoretical framework. The last section of the introduction will be the limitations and the assessment of the main resources used in this study. The aim of chapter two is to give the background information of the people of Madagascar in general, and the Merina in particular. It gives a general understanding of their world. It includes a brief description of the island and its population, the location of the Merina and their origin, also their traditional beliefs and religion, the attempts of the early Catholic missionaries to evangelise the Island and Radama's contract with Great Britain. Chapter three deals with the first encounters between the Bible and Merina Christians around the capital of Antananarivo. It highlights the arrival of the first LMS missionaries and their mission in and around the city of Antananarivo, the presence of the Bible in the highlands and the use of it as a text book in schools. From that moment the Merina population sensed that the Bible had power; as a result their interest to get copies of it grew throughout the capital and the surrounding villages. Chapter four provides information about the uncertainty of Christianity in Madagascar. It was uncertain because of the death of Radama, friend of the missionaries, and the accession of Ranavalona I, an anti-Christian queen, to the throne as his successor. It continues with the dusk: a period of confirming the church, then the queen's edicts against the converts. It ends up with the edition of the Bible, translated into the Malagasy language. The focus of chapter five is the sustaining power of the Bible during persecutions. First of all it considers the causes of the persecutions, then the role of the Bible in the Malagasy language in the hands of Christians. After that it speaks of the use of the Bible by the indigenous Christians and the power they gained from it during times of persecution. It also speaks about the edict of the queen to collect all the Bibles and burn them, and how the Christians managed to save some and hide them. Then it concentrates on the three waves of martyrdom, in 1837-1842, 1849 and 1857. Lastly it highlights the courage of these martyrs until death with the Bible in their hands and the contribution of the Bible to the growth of Christianity in Imerina during the persecution. Chapter six will be the conclusion of the thesis. It underlines three aspects of the Bible and its encounters with the martyr church. It considers, in the first aspect, the effects of the translation of the Bible into the Malagasy language. The second aspect deals with the interaction of the Bible with the Malagasy culture and context; and the last is about the power of the Bible itself. The very last paragraph will try to prompt a further research on the Bible and its impact in Madagascar after Ranavalona's death. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.

This dissertation looks at the role cities and towns played in the incorporation of Natal into the capitalist world-system. It looks at which urban network came into existence and how this interacted with the development of the economy. It also looks at the cities themselves and how these were the locus of important class and racial struggles. The period that was researched is the second half of the nineteenth century, more concretely from 1837, the year that the voortrekkers crossed the Drakensberg into Natal, to 1899, the year that the Boer War started. The main economic activity in Natal for most of this period was the transit trade. This was also at least partly by default, as commercial settler agriculture was not very successful. This resulted in a pattern of settlement that was characterised by two primate cities, Durban and Pietermaritzburg, and very little urban development in most of the countryside. The pattern of settlement also followed the main trade route. The nature of railway development entrenched this pattern by not fostering agricultural development as the railways were mainly built to serve the trade. The dominance of the commercial elites led to policies that were rather beneficial for the merchants than for the settler farmers, the labour and 'native' policy and the railway development illustrate this. By the end of this period things however started to change, the settler elite became more influential and the pattern of settlement started changing. The urban history of colonial Natal also shows that things do not just turn out as they are planned by governments, elites or 'capital'. The ideal of the white city turned out to be impossible to achieve and also providing a large docile, dependent and cheap black labour force was not a straightforward task. The cities offered Africans and Indians plenty of opportunities to eke out an independent existence in or on the fringes of town, which put them in a strong bargaining position. This led the administration to use a wide range of techniques of social engineering, which in the twentieth century evolved into almost complete urban segregation. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2006.

No description available.

The writing of the French architectural theorist and critic Cesar Daly (1811-1894), editor of the influential Parisian journal, the Revue generale de l'architecture et des travaux publics, may be considered to be representative of the ambivalence of the supposed 19th century dialectic between scientism and metaphysical idealism. For Daly the physical and representational needs of society expressed in architecture were always and forever inextricably linked by the universal and permanent pattern of History. Although it was his fundamental thesis that the human sensibility was more important than any other consideration in the creation of architecture, his theory is paradigmatic of the contemporary ideology which attempted to define and systemise the expressive role of architecture according to rational scientific principles, and resulted in the concept of architecture as a prescriptive and predictive process. / Given the separation of architectural form and content, presence and meaning, and the consequent challenge to the possibility of shared experience initiated in the Enlightenment which is still an inherent part of our contemporary architectural thought, it is crucial to re-examine the architectural theory of the 19th century as the origin of the modern condition. This thesis is a critical examination of Daly's collections of polemical articles from the Revue as artifacts of architectural knowledge, through an analysis of their form and content in relation to other significant 19th century architectural texts.

No description available.

No description available.

Anthropological classics such as E. H. Man's On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands (1883) and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown's The Andaman Islanders (1922) are generally regarded as products of an emergent nineteenth century social science. These anthropological classics were accepted by contemporaries as authoritative statements in their authors' fields of competence, and the ethnographic 'pictures' of the aborigines they presented were accepted as accurate descriptions of indigenous life. The following thesis argues for an alternative approach to the history of the production of anthropological knowledge. It begins by exploring the gradual codification of observational practices in the nineteenth century British anthropology. The codification of ethnographic observation is examined in the case of anthropological manuals published between 1840 and 1892, and their methodological impact on the possibilities of data collection are discussed. Ethnographic observation is then approached from the point of view of media use, and the relationship between drawing and photography is discussed in relation to nineteenth century physical and cultural anthropology. The codification of ethnographic observation and the anthropological use of various representational media are the problematic for an intensive exploration of the production of anthropological knowledge in the Andaman Islands. The approach adopted focuses on unacknowledged strategies and marginalized knowledge which were nevertheless directly implicated in the production of ethnographic texts. Following this approach, the discipline of Anthropology comes to seem less an isolated intellectual activity, and more a residue of broad social, cultural, and political processes. Drawing on this perspective, the works of Man and Radcliffe-Brown on the Andaman Islanders are treated as the culmination of a history of representation that is built on and incorporates administrative strategies, representational media and s

Previous studies of the life and thought of Edmund Bishop (1846-1917), an English liturgiologist and convert to Catholicism, have underplayed the change in his attitude from positive to negative with respect to the institutional Catholic Church. This crucial shift in thinking occurred during 1899-1901, and is clearly reflected in his own writings. From then on, he differentiated between the institution that was the Catholic Church and Catholicism as a religion. Although he remained faithful to the latter, his diaries and letters preserve an intentional record of his severe criticism of the Catholic hierarchy. Bishop's views represent those of a layman and of an informed observer at a time when the Catholic Church was confronting the Modernist challenge.