Whereas there are various initiatives to standardize the storage, processing and use of electronic patient information in the South African health sector, the sector is fragmented through the adoption of various approaches on national, provincial and district levels. Divergent IT systems are used in the public and private health sectors (“Recommendations of the Committee on …” 2003). Furthermore, general practitioners in some parts of the country still use paper as a primary means of documentation and storage. Nonetheless, the use of computerized systems is increasing, even in the most remote rural areas. This leads to the exposure of patient information to various threats that are perpetuated through the use of information technology. Irrespective of the level of technology adoption by practitioners in private healthcare practice, the security and privacy of patient information remains of critical importance. The disclosure of patient information whether intentional or not, can have dire consequences for a patient. In general, the requirements pertaining to the privacy of patient information are controlled and enforced through the adoption of legislation by the governing body of a country. Compared with developed nations, South Africa has limited legislation to help enforce privacy in the health sector. Conversely, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have some of the most advanced legislative frameworks when it comes to the privacy of patient information. In this dissertation, the Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and South African health sectors and the legislation they have in place to ensure the privacy of health information, will be investigated. Additionally, codes of practice and guidelines on privacy of patient information for GPs, in the afore-mentioned countries, will be investigated to form an idea as to what is needed in creating and formulating a new code of practice for the South African GP, as well as a pragmatic tool (checklist) to check adherence to privacy requirements.

The succession on the dunes of the Mlalazi Nature Reserve represents a classical example of primary succession. The reproductive strategies of eight key species were compared to determine some of the mechanisms affecting the community dynamics, at the population level, in the early stages of succession. There is a temporal separation in the flowering and fruiting phenologies. Passerina rigida, Stipagrostis zeyheri and Imperata cylindrica produced small seeds with a low fruit/seed mass ratio within a short cycle. The seeds are suitable for wind-dispersal. The animal-dispersed species; Eugenia capensis, Mimusops caffra and Scaevola plumieri, produced large fleshy seeds with a high fruit/seed mass ratio within cycles of six months and more. Chrysanthemoides monilifera, also an animal-dispersed species, produced a large quantity of small fleshy seeds throughout the year. The fern, Microsorium scolopendrium produced spores throughout the year. The staggered fruiting and flowering phenology ensures a year-round availability of fruit in the dunefield. The key species formed less than half of the species composition of the soil seed bank. The size and range of the soil seed bank differed between the species. P. rigida and S. plumieri formed a high proportion of the seeds in the soil with a wide distribution along the successional gradient. The other species had low soil seed densities with short distribution ranges, or were not present. P. rigida and S. plumieri are easily dispersed species, whereas the other species may have a more restricted and clumped distribution due to the effect of foragers. A high density of P. rigida and E. capensis seeds were found under the parent trees. Only seeds of P. rigida and S. zeyheri were found in the soil in the open. Seeds of P. rigida, S. zeyheri, E. capensis and M. caffra were found under the canopies of P. rigida, E. capensis and M. caffra. No seeds of C. monilifera and I. cylindrica were found in the soil, possibly due to predation. The period of the study (September 1991 to November 1992) was in a dry or drought cycle with only 56.8% of the mean annual rainfall falling. Seed germination and seedling survival of all the species were affected by these dry, warm climatic conditions. The species had seedling densities of less than 4 seeds/m². The environmental conditions along the successional gradient also had an effect on seed germination and seedling survival. Environmental factors of soil pH, light intensity and surface soil temperatures were higher in the open than under canopy. Soil pH and the understorey cover decreased as the light intensity decreased from under the canopy of P. rigida to M. caffra . Litter cover and plant height increased. E. capensis had measurements intermediate to the two species, but had higher surface soil temperatures and plant height than P. rigida. Seedlings of P. rigida in the open and under the canopy of the parent plants had died by the end of the monitoring period. 50% of the seedlings of S. zeyheri under the canopy of P. rigida and M. caffra died. The mortality rate of the seedlings of E. capensis was lower under M. caffra than under the parent plants. I. cylindrica may be propagated vegetatively. However, the mortality of the propagules was greater under the canopy of E. capensis than under P. rigida. M. caffra only germinated under the canopy of E. capensis with a 100% mortality of the seedlings. M. scolopendrium only produced propagules through vegetative propagation under the canopy of E. capensis and M. caffra. The mortality of the young ferns was less than 50% and less under M. caffra than under E. capensis. No seedlings of C. monilifera or S. plumieri were found. The seed distribution range, seed germination requirements and the effect of the environmental conditions on the germination of the seeds and seedling establishment of the species appear to important factors of the reproductive strategies regulating the size of the species populations along the successional gradient.

This thesis analyses the evolution of the city of Salvador in the novels of Brazilian writer Jorge Amado in order to identify different conceptualisations and perceptions of the city. For more than half a century, Amado was the best-selling Brazilian author, both in his own country and abroad. His work may be divided loosely into urban and rural novels. The majority of his urban novels focused on Salvador, the capital of Bahia state. Over a 60-year period, Amado portrayed Salvador in different forms: the city started out as a fragmented space in his first novel and was depicted as a potentially syncretic place in his last one. Several studies have analysed Amado’s works from a myriad of perspectives: gender, race, carnivalesque motifs and political history are the most prominent themes in these analyses. However, these studies tend to ignore or downplay the importance of Salvador itself: its transformation across multiple narratives and how the city’s characteristics greatly influence these narratives. The city was the original capital of Brazil, it has one of the largest black populations in the country and a very characteristic syncretic culture that draws on Afro-Brazilian practices. Amado is the best-known chronicler of Salvador. The objective of this dissertation is to assert the importance of Salvador in the writer’s work and in a general discussion of how urban spaces may be conceived and occupied. The evolution of this fictional Salvador takes place over eight novels that represent four different periods of Amado’s work: O País do Carnaval and Suor, the two earliest works; Jubiabá and Capitães da Areia, the socialist realist novels from the late 1930s; A Morte e a Morte de Quincas Berro Dágua and Os Pastores da Noite, two picaresque works from the early 1960s; and finally Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos and Tenda dos Milagres, the novels about hybridity from the late 1960s. The analysis of these novels reveals a process which moves towards the creation of an ideal city. To unveil this urban model, this thesis examines Amado’s construct through several city binaries: order versus disorder, upper-class districts versus lower-class areas, as well as racial and cultural binaries. Such an investigation will demand the use of both literary and social theory, including Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival, concepts of heterotopia as laid out by Michel Foucault and Edward Soja, Richard Sennett’s examination of homogeneous and heterogeneous spaces, and Roberto Da Matta’s analysis of Brazilian society. The starting point for this investigation is Henri Lefèbvre’s concepts of spatial notions (lived and conceived spaces). In the process, this study places Amado’s Salvador in the context of other Brazilian and world cities at the time and probes the ideologies that underlie different perspectives of urban space.

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L’évolution manifeste du traitement politique du phénomène migratoire laisse apparaître qu’immigration et intégration seront des enjeux majeurs dans la future politique mondiale. En effet, l’immigration contemporaine diffère par bien des aspects de celles constatées lors des siècles antérieurs, du fait qu’elle soit de plus en plus visible, "dramatique" et "dysfonctionnelle". Le caractère imprévisible et incontrôlable du phénomène bouleverse aujourd’hui les schèmes traditionnels de l’état westphalien, et nourrit des peurs au sein des sociétés occidentales pouvant être ainsi source de déstabilisation. On assiste alors à un basculement du traitement politique de l’enjeu migratoire dans le champ sécuritaire. Ole Wæver nous aide à comprendre ce processus à travers son concept de « sécuritisation », grâce auquel il explique l’existence actuelle d’un processus discursif conduisant un fait social, comme l’immigration, à devenir un enjeu de « sécurité sociétale ». Cependant, cette vision, trop linguistique, nous apparaît insuffisante pour comprendre la mise en pratique d’une telle construction. Ainsi, les outils sociologiques proposés par Pierre Bourdieu, et notamment ses travaux effectués sur le langage et le pouvoir symbolique, nous aident à ne plus considérer la sécuritisation comme un processus purement discursif, mais potentiellement législatif.Une étude à la fois comparative et qualitative des législations sur la naturalisation en Allemagne, aux États-Unis et en France, permet alors d’ouvrir la discussion sur le rôle des lois de naturalisation comme pratique sécuritaire dans le processus de sécuritisation de l’immigration. / The evident evolution of political treatment of migration reveals that immigration and integration are becoming major issues in the future world politics. Indeed, contemporary immigration differs in many aspects from those witnessed during previous centuries, because it became more visible, "dramatic" and "dysfunctional". Today, the unpredictable and uncontrollable characteristic of this phenomenon deeply affect the traditional patterns of the Westphalian state and feeds fears in Western societies that can act as destabilization sources. We are then witnessing a shift in the political treatment of the migratory issue within the field of security. Ole Wæver helps us to understand this process through his concept of "securitization", by which he explains the current existence of a discursive process leading to a social fact, such as immigration, to become an issue of "societal security". However, his vision seems too narrow to be a relevant analytical tool in its own right. Thus, the contribution of some sociological tools provided by Bourdieu helps us in considering the "securitization" as a process not anymore being only discursive, but also potentially legislative. The use of a study both comparative and qualitative of naturalization’s legislations in France, the United States and Germany, allows thus to open a discussion on the role of naturalization as a security practice in the "securitization" of immigration.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-85). / HIV and AIDS are still affecting many people in Brazil, South Africa and across the world, even though much has been done to mitigate against its further spread. Often Brazil and South Africa are compared to each other because of their economic position in the world and also because of their similar political histories. This research compares the Brazilian and the South African HIV and AIDS National Strategic prevention policies and it also aims to find out why the HIV and AIDS prevalence rates took significantly different patterns in the respective countries. The study includes a policy comparison and qualitative in-depth interviews with 14 organisation directors whose main focus is HIV prevention in Brazil and South Africa. The mains findings revealed that one of the main reasons for the different prevalence rate in both countries was because the civil society in Brazil played a major role in pressurizing the government to respond to the pandemic, while in South African the civil society did not play a major role. The Brazilian government thus started responding to HIV at least 9 years before the South African government did. Also, the Brazilian National HIV and AIDS prevention policy has an action plan for each goal, while the South African Policy does not have action plans for their goals. The Brazilian policy is also decentralized to municipal level, while the South African policy is decentralized only to Provincial level. Another finding was that in Brazil the NGO sector was directly involved in formulating the policy while in South Africa the NGO sector was not. In Brazil the respondents had a good knowledge and understanding of the policy, while in South Africa the respondents did not have a good knowledge of the policy. In Brazil NGOs have formed partnerships between themselves in order to deliver better services and to make their voices stronger when pressurising the government. Respondents in Brazil also knew what other organisations were doing. In South Africa organisations did not know what other organisations were doing and the NGOs did not have strong partnerships between themselves.

The effect that different electoral systems have on political participation is a widely discussed and researched topic in social sciences. However, this thesis has examined the relationship between western countries' ballot structures and electoral systems and satisfaction with democracy. By using statistical tools such as SPSS, this thesis has conducted a comparative quantitative analysis that aimed to investigate if ballot structures and electoral systems affect western citizens' satisfaction with democracy. The result is presented with the help of graphical tools, such as tables and diagrams to make it easier for the reader to understand the result. The result concluded that Western countries which have implemented a proportional electoral system do have higher levels of satisfaction with democracy among their citizens, compared to western countries that have implemented majoritarian electoral systems. Further, this thesis has concluded that ballot structures do not affect western citizens' satisfaction with democracy in any significant way.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・論文博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 乙第12939号 / 論人博第41号 / 新制||人||177(附属図書館) / 27||論人博||41(吉田南総合図書館) / 32149 / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科環境相関研究専攻 / (主査)教授 丸橋 良雄, 教授 前川 玲子, 教授 水野 眞理, 教授 廣野 由美子, 教授 松田 英男 / 学位規則第4条第2項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DGAM

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