Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Arlington, 2006.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, May, 2008. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-162). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-162). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Adelaide, 1998.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:23:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-09-26Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:29:43Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 santos_ma_me_arafcl.pdf: 529010 bytes, checksum: c944fc22f7723560e89a1d134f212ae2 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O presente trabalho consiste num estudo sobre as origens e os motivos da valorização atribuída atualmente ao acúmulo de saberes enquanto aquisição de informações de maneira rápida e superficial. Esta valorização vem sendo afirmada como condição necessária ao desenvolvimento do processo de formação, e as teses da sociedade do conhecimento têm sido sua maior expressão. Este discurso que se dissemina amplamente em meio à sociedade capitalista atual – aqui compreendida como sociedade administrada –, que possui o neoliberalismo como sua política econômica, tem sido muito bem recebido e ao mesmo tempo reproduzido amplamente pelas pessoas em práticas cotidianas e intelectuais. Diante desta constatação, abordamos os meios pelos quais o acúmulo de saberes se constitui em uma exigência e, ao mesmo tempo, em uma imposição social, influenciando negativamente a construção da experiência formativa dos indivíduos. Analisamos os dispositivos que se encontram instalados na sociedade como instrumentos para a formação, mas que, na realidade, negam a possibilidade de desenvolvimento da experiência formativa. Apresentamos ainda as possíveis contradições que podem conduzir à superação desta problemática permitindo atingir o contexto de uma formação em que o desenvolvimento da experiência constitua o cerne de um movimento de emancipação. Para os estudos procedemos, primeiramente, à análise do discurso neoliberal acerca da educação, situando neste a valorização do acúmulo de saberes e a defesa da qualidade da educação. Em seqüência, recorremos aos estudos dos filósofos Theodor W. Adorno e Max Horkheimer procurando investigar em que medida a valorização do acúmulo de saberes na sociedade administrada contribui para o fortalecimento da... / This paper consists of a study about the origins and the purposes of the great importance that, nowadays, is ascribed to knowledge accumulation understood as a fast and superficially information acquisition. This importance has been considered as a necessary condition to the development of the formation process, and the theses of the knowledge society have been the most noticeable expression of such importance. This discourse that is largely spread through the current capitalist society - here understood as administered society –, whose economic policy is the neoliberalism, has been well accepted and widely reproduced by the people in their intellectual and everyday practices. Faced with this observation, we aim to approach the ways through which the knowledge accumulation consists of a requirement and, at the same time, of a social imposition, negatively affecting the construction of the individuals formative experience. We analyze devices that are set up in the society as instruments for formation, but that, in reality, deny the possibility of a formative experience development. We even present the possible contradictions that may lead to the overcoming of this problematic and letting reach the situation of a formation in which the experience development may be the heart of an emancipation movement. For our studies, we first proceed to the analysis of the neoliberal discourse concerning the education, placing at it the great importance of the knowledge accumulation and the defense of the quality of education. Then, we turn to the researches of the philosophers Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, aiming to investigate how the knowledge accumulation inside the administered society contributes to the strengthening of the semi-formation and to the negation of the main condition of social emancipation that is the formative experience

This study explores the impact of an overnight camp experience for impoverished South African youth. I worked as a Youth Development Worker with the Ukulapha Community Outreach Project for six months in 2016. My research looks at one non-formal education (NFE) program in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa through the lenses of critical theory and critical pedagogy. Emancipatory learning, social justice, and empowerment were the particular themes that framed my research. I used a qualitative design including an autoethnographic element to conduct my research. The study included six in-person semi-structured interviews with camp participants, one year after the conclusion of the camp. Additionally, four students provided participant journals where they wrote about their experience at the camp. I wove into the study my own participation, observations, journaling, and a blog. Findings show that the camp provided diverse skills development for personal empowerment, a new possibility to learn with and through nature, leadership development, and important intergenerational learning. Issues of gender were also highly prevalent, however. The five recommendations for future research that come from the study include the need for a more in depth follow up study with the same and more participants, involvement of a South African researcher who can conduct interviews in isi-Zulu, a longer camp, and outreach to different aged youth and youth from other South African provinces. / Graduate

Despite looming ecological disaster, a persistent state of insufficient action seems commonplace amongst most organizations. This thesis critically explores how this impasse is constituted by discursive struggles surrounding the global ecological crisis. These struggles are situated within the context of global environmental governance – a power arena that has, over the past 25 years, become a defining battleground regarding environmental sustainability. Here, discourses of the ecological crisis are constituted by political contests amongst, most notably, multinational corporations, civil society organizations, and (trans)national policy actors. This thesis draws mainly from post-structural discourse theory, coupled with critical perspectives on organizations and the natural environment, to explore both the discursive practices that fix meanings surrounding the global ecological crisis, and the power effects thereof. The primary source of data is text – this study is explicitly interested in how discourses of the global ecological crisis evolve as the natural environment is (mis)represented in organizational disclosures. Despite recognition by management and organization scholars that the natural environment is indeed constructed, a functional separation between business and nature persists, the relationship of which is mostly examined from a firm-centric perspective. However, sustainability issues such as climate change transcend the confines of firm activity and operate across spatial and temporal dimensions. Hence, there is an urgent need to reconsider the business-nature dualism. To do so, this study adopts a multi-level, multi-method approach that permits a necessary degree of analytical and theoretical flexibility. The four individual articles that encompass this work, whilst drawing from different theoretical approaches, along with focusing on different levels of analysis, are underpinned by the contentious intersection between discourse, organizations and the natural environment. The first article concerns ‘macro talk’ and, operating on the field level, explores how a dominant understanding of business’ role in sustainable development is constituted during the UN Earth Summits in 1992, 2002, and 2012. The second article regards ‘corporate talk’ and, this time on an organizational level, examines how tensions between economic growth and environmental protection are avoided by the European oil and gas supermajors—BP, Shell and Total—through the practice of mythmaking. The third article takes a longitudinal approach and, also concerning ‘corporate talk’, examines how BP rearticulated a hegemonic discourse of fossil fuels, which, when enacted, reproduces corporate inaction on climate change. Finally, the fourth article emphasizes ‘resistance talk’, focusing on how climate activists, as part of the global fossil fuel divestment movement, engage in certain micro-level practices as they attempt to stigmatize the fossil fuel industry. In all, the findings from these articles suggest that organizations both represent nature as something to be conquered, dominated, and valued economically and as a pristine wilderness to be preserved for the enjoyment of future generations. In pursuing these two extremes concurrently, organizations self-perpetuate a social-symbolic deadlock that hinders finding sustainable ways for human systems to coexist with natural systems. This thesis contributes mainly to literature on organizations and the natural environment by illustrating how certain practices, mechanisms, and processes continuously redefine the business-nature relationship by facilitating a discursive struggle across multiple spatial and temporal dimensions. In doing so, there are implications both for policy and business organizations, which are discussed in the concluding chapter of this work.

This thesis seeks to bridge the gap between theory and lived experiences of women and the state in terms of social relations and policies. In order to accomplish this, a qualitative approach was taken in order to apply a theoretical foundation to lived experiences of events that occurred in the Czech Republic. A critical feminist lens was applied to primary sources such as constitutional documents and World Bank reports in order to unearth the impact of state-dictated policy upon the lives and choices of women. As a hypothesis-producing thesis these primary and secondary documents were read in a way that let a narrative of parallels between the Socialist regime of the late twentieth century and the neoliberal government of the early twenty-first century arise. This main comparison reflects upon the state-centered power of both eras and its influence upon the tensions between women's roles as mothers, labourers, and citizens. With the guiding questions of how and why gender matters, a critical feminist approach was taken in the research process and has informed the results. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Although there has been an outpouring of scholarship on the “rhetorical body” in the last two decades, nearly all analyzes and critiques discourses about the body. Very little work in contemporary rhetorical studies addresses the ways in which rhetoric affects and alters the central nervous system, and thereby exerts influence at a level of subjective experience prior to cognitive and linguistic apprehension. Recent neuroscientific research into affect, identity, and decision-making echoes many of the claims made by ancient rhetoricians: namely, that rhetorical activity is corporeally transformative, and that the material transformations wrought by rhetoric have profound implications for subjects’ capacity to engage in critical thought and agential judgment. This study demonstrates that emotional political rhetoric is physiologically addictive, that the brain and body can make decisions independently of the will of the thinking subject, and that symbolic violence can physically reconfigure the neural networks that make critical cognition possible. As public culture and discourse becomes increasingly imagistic, non-rational, and emotionally charged, critics must develop theoretical resources capable of recognizing and responding to new varieties of constitutive phenomena. Neuroscience can supplement traditional rhetorical criticism by offering insight into the physiological processes by which destructive ideas become self-sustaining, and it can help critics devise more sophisticated rhetorical approaches to the task of promoting social healing. To advance this conversation, this dissertation outlines a critical neurorhetorical theory that is attuned to the Sophistic and Burkean rhetorical tradition, informed by contemporary neuroscience, and responsive to the unique cultural and social conditions of the 21st century.