This research traces the development of public administration in Malawi from the pre-colonial period to the post-colonial period up to 2012, and finds that public administration in Malawi has spanned four epochs: the pre-colonial traditional African administration; the British Colonial Administration from 1891 to 1964; the post-colonial administration under the one party regime from 1964 to 1994; and the post-colonial administration under the multiparty democracy from 1994 to the present period, 2012. Of particular interest to the research are the major factors that have led to administrative change through this public administration spectrum, and how the changes have affected information and record keeping. The research seeks to establish the relationship that exists between administrative change and record keeping. The research finds that colonialism was a change factor which transformed the pre-colonial administrative set-up and its information keeping systems, and led to the establishment of the Western bureaucracy and record keeping systems modelled on those in Britain. The enactment of the Native Authority Ordinance in 1933 established Native Authorities, which comprised local chiefs and their councillors, as part of the local government. The establishment of the Native Authorities resulted in the establishment of record keeping systems that captured and maintained official records at local levels of government throughout the country. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland as one of the remarkable administrative developments during the colonial period promoted records management programmes and led to the establishment of the National Archives in Malawi. As part of the administrative change in preparation for the transfer of power, the Treasury’s Organisation and Methods Unit reviewed and instituted new record keeping systems for government departments. Before the transfer of power, the research finds that the Colonial Administration exported some categories of records to London and ordered the destruction of certain categories of records held by District Commissioners throughout the country. Furthermore, the research finds that soon after the transfer of power, the new administration disregarded record keeping by repealing the Records Management regulations from the Malawi Public Service Regulations. This has been detrimental to public sector record keeping. Additionally, the one party government imposed controls on access to public archives by frequently closing the Archives, imposing lengthy and difficult access procedures, limiting areas for research, and using the Archives for intelligence surveillance. This thesis finds that, towards the end of the one party regime, some sensitive records were destroyed by the outgoing regime. After the attainment of democracy, the research finds that public archives were made widely and easily accessible, and that the public archives asumed a new meaning for ordinary people who had suffered from widespread attrocities during the one party regime. A number of governance reforms that have been undertaken have on the one hand, resulted in the promotion of records management and on the other hand, relied heavily on good record keeping for their successful implementation. Additionally, the research finds that technological developments have shaped the way in which the public sector generates and manages records today. Last, but not least, the research finds that implementation of some of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank policy reforms, such as privatisation of public enterprises, downsising, and freeze in public service employment, have impacted both positively and negatively on record keeping in Malawi. Likewise, implementation of the New Public Management policy reforms, such as commercialisation of the Staff Development Institute of Malawi, and compulsory competitive bidding in the public service, have had both positive and negative effects on record keeping. The research concludes that the developments that have taken place during all the four administrative epochs have had an immense bearing on record keeping, and therefore a direct relationship exists between administrative change and record keeping. Administrative change is responsible for shaping record keeping over a period of time and as long as administrative change occurs, record keeping will keep on developing in response. Although this is the case, good record keeping plays an important role in facilitating effective implementation of public sector reforms that result from administrative change. Citing Malawi as a case study, this thesis concludes that administrative change and public sector reforms provide a better context for understanding the history and development of record keeping in a country, than any other context because administrative change and public sector reforms are necessitated by the interaction of socio-political, economic and technological factors.

The trend in development discourse is to explain underdevelopment in terms of bad governance which lack of rule of law brings about. Development in this sense is understood as economic growth while rule of law is limited to an institutional version which is market-oriented. In this thesis, development is examined from a people-centred perspective. Abject poverty, dysfunctional educational and health systems sitting side by side with reasonably sufficient oil wealth is the problematic premise which the thesis seeks to explain. While acknowledging that it could be explained from a range of disciplines and perspectives, this thesis offers a socio-legal explanation in terms of public corruption spurred by absence of rule of law in practice. Corruption is high in Nigeria though national law has criminalised it and the country has ratified international law frowning at it. Among its myriad upshots is depleting resources for development. It is a dependant variable; and this thesis links it to absence of rule of law in practice. But because the orthodox rule of law privileges the market, it is inappropriate in explaining corruption in the public realm. The thesis therefore departs from it and instead proposes a rule of law version which would ensure management of resources for human development. It constitutes the following elements: supremacy of the law; equality before the law, trusts over public funds; code of conduct for public officers; and restraint on executive powers. The thesis argues that the Constitutions in Nigeria have made adequate provisions for this version of rule of law. However, the provisions have either been suspended or substantially breached over the years. For a large part of its existence, Nigeria was under military rule which is antithetical to rule of law through its subordination of the constitution, sacking of the legislature, and muzzling of the judiciary. Despite the existence of the Constitution and democratic institutions during civilian regimes, the rule of law provisions remained largely unimplemented. In both regimes, the executive arm of government, unto which public funds are entrusted, enjoyed absolute powers. This situation, the thesis argues, explains the development-impeding corruption.

This thesis examines the healing strategies utilised by the inhabitants of Egypt during the Roman period (from the late first century BC to the fourth century AD) in order to investigate how Egyptian, Greek and Roman customs and traditions interacted within the province. It explores the symbiotic relationship between 'professional' and 'amateur' medical practice within Egypt, and examines the ways in which three particularly well-attested health problems - eye complaints, febrile conditions and the injuries inflicted by wild animals - were approached, evaluated and treated. By considering a range of literary, papyrological, archaeological, and anthropological sources, this thesis argues that healing strategies were developed in response to a variety of historical, cultural and social factors, and were intimately connected to the region's climate, geography and natural resources. This thesis, then, presents a fresh and nuanced approach to understanding healing strategies in Roman provincial culture, identifies diagnostic features of healing in material culture and offers an integrated reading of ancient medical literary and documentary papyri, and archaeological evidence. By encompassing the full spectrum of healing strategies available to the inhabitants of the province, and by incorporating elements of medical, surgical, magical and religious healing, it offers a comprehensive and wide-ranging perspective on healing in Roman Egypt, and investigates new approaches to the study of medicine in the Roman world.

It is widely agreed that the current industrial zones (IZs) in Egypt are not sustainable and face insurmountable environmental problems. This research is guided by an argument considering that the problem is in the founding process of the current IZs and, hence, future industrial development in Egypt is prone to the same destiny, if it is going to follow the current process, that lacks theorisation. This research, therefore, stemmed out of a concern to understand the process which gives shape to these IZs, and the factors which govern this process. This is the first crucial step, this research has contributed to, towards sustainability of the future industrial development. The importance of taking this step increased after the 25th of January Revolution that has put Egypt on the way towards democracy and progress after an authoritarian era of governing under which the country had been deteriorating. Out of this concern, the research theoretically investigated the current position of the Egyptian industry from industrial ecology (IE) and governance for sustainable development (SD) perspective. Further, a pilot study was conducted, making use of a preliminary conceptual framework for sustainable IZs which the research developed from literature on IE and governance for SD. While the investigation fell short of providing a full understanding of the process, it was found that Egypt has recently made some legal and institutional arrangements to incorporate sustainability. However, the debate on the seriousness and effectiveness of these arrangements had been quite contradictory. It was also found that the whole founding process of IZs is complex and controlled by the government, where the planning phase is the best to allow for participation of partners, as highly called for by the international debate on IE. The importance of the role of planning in guiding the implementation of IE in communities is also internationally highlighted. Therefore, the research set out to, through empirical investigation, understand realities of only the current planning process and its governing factors. To help do that, this research constructed an in-depth conceptual framework of the planning process through which IE could be normatively implemented. The framework guided the empirical qualitative study which depended on a multi-stage, multi-method approach with a case study design in its core. Three case studies, representing the Industrial Developer Program, the most recent program expected to influence the future industrial development and the most advanced case to adopt sympathetic approaches to IE and SD concepts, were chosen. Semi-structured interviews with involved key partners and experts, primary and secondary documentary data sources, and observations were utilised. The official and actual planning processes, synthesized in this research, are found to be unsustainable. Despite the partial involvement, doubted in its purposes, of industrial developers in the process, the IZs planning is conducted through a top down process that suffers from centrality and government monopoly of decision-making in most of the steps. This top down process has been strengthened by diminishing the role of regional level, that is supposed to connect the national level to the local one back and forth to empower the participatory planning approach. Regarding the factors influencing the current process, it is found that the authoritarian nature of the previous regime has deeply/negatively influenced the context, shaping the planning process. Authoritarianism has created a set of other factors that has flawed the context making it chaotic and disabling for the implementation of SD/IE. The research concludes by reflecting on the international debate on IE, presenting, thereafter, a new list of barriers to IE implementation.

No description available.

This thesis considers how creative writing contributes to social recovery and conflict transformation and uses Sierra Leone as a test case. In order to do this, existing theory in relation to the role of the writer and conflict in Africa is examined and a detailed social and literary context outlined. The civil war of 1991-2002 prompted a poetic outpouring amongst new and existing creative writers despite a chronic lack of readership. Interviews with poets based in the capital, Freetown, reveal strong social motivations to write combined with heightened feelings of agency experienced as writers. An examination of texts provides insights into the process of recovery amongst Sierra Leone’s writer-intellectuals. These combined investigations suggest that writing offers an important location for peaceful counter debate and for re-imagining and recreating the nation in the aftermath of war. Poetry texts and discussions amongst writers come to represent a significant discourse for peace. The very practice of writing in a severely impoverished environment offers a radical form of social engagement while writing in English serves as a unifying force. This thesis contributes a new sociological perspective on literature and conflict which may be transferable to other post-war and volatile settings.

Based on archival research in six countries, this thesis distils new documentary material into an analysis of the role of Sephardic cristãos novos in the formation of Creole society in Cabo Verde and Guiné (Caboverdean space). The role of pre-existing anti-Semitic stereotypes in otherization in the Atlantic world is examined; Sephardic involvement in Cabo Verde was accompanied by transference of subalternity in the Atlantic world from Sephardim to Africans, ensuring that the cristãos novos of Cabo Verde were, indeed, masters of difference. It is argued that the cristãos novos’ doubleness of identity facilitated their success in Cabo Verde, where protean cultural identities emerged. As a destination of (successful) escape for cristãos novos fleeing the Inquisition, Cabo Verde lacked effective control by the metropolis, and was a place where an autonomous Creole identity could develop in which malleable worldviews were key. The thesis highlights the pan-Atlantic nature of the cristão novo diaspora in the 17th century, where West Africa was of comparable importance to the American communities in Cartagena and Lima. The symbiotic relationship of hegemonies and rebellions against hegemonies is, finally, examined in this local and international framework which elucidates crucial aspects of the formation of Creole and modern identities.

This dissertation suggests that, while the book of Proverbs is sometimes difficult to interpret and its redaction history is clearly complex, it has much to say on the important area of leadership. To test this hypothesis, it applies four steps as its theoretical framework, and these later become part of the contributions of this study. First, its exploration of leadership in the Ancient Near East (ANE) shows that the ANE offers a good background to leadership in ancient Israel. Second, its survey of the scholarly debates on leadership in Proverbs reveals that the question of how Proverbs fosters leadership has been hugely neglected. The previous discussion has centred on the settings that produced the proverbs and the impact of ANE materials on Proverbs. Third, this enquiry maintains that poetics is an important tool for biblical exegesis and that it can help us to understand the possible meanings of the text. Its contribution lies with the use of exegetical analysis to demonstrate how Proverbs fosters aspects of leadership through the close analysis of poetic devices such as parallelisms, metaphors and imagery. The thesis conducts a detailed exploration of some verses that are judged to contain sayings that are relevant to the theme of leadership in Proverbs, demonstrating their complexity. It proposes a reading strategy of classifying the leadership texts in Proverbs into themes relating to the status, code of conduct, personality, skills and actions of leaders and the community’s response to leaders. Fourth, it critically summarises the results of my exegetical findings in Proverbs and their implications for the biblical scholars surveyed, as well as for contemporary leadership scholars. The thesis concludes with the application of my exegetical findings to one aspect of leadership in Proverbs to Christian leadership in Nigeria.

The coming of age genre is a popular and longstanding one within the Caribbean, particularly with reference to female writers. This thesis considers how women writers from across the Caribbean have reconceptualised and altered the coming of age genre to narrate their female hybrid Caribbean identities. I focus on a close textual analysis of four main novels - Julia Alvarez’s \(How\) \(the\) \(García\) \(Girls\) \(Lost\) \(Their\) \(Accents\), Michelle Cliff’s \(No\) \(Telephone\) \(to\) \(Heaven\), Edwidge Danticat’s \(Breath\), \(Eyes\), \(Memory\) and Cristina García’s \(Dreaming\) \(in\) \(Cuban\) - as well as considering several other secondary coming of age texts from across the Caribbean, all of which emerge from various distinct linguistic and cultural contexts. In doing so this work looks at the links between texts from across the region in order to discuss how the female genre differs from the masculine tradition, how it presents a gendered identity formation and how that process of becoming is marked by the hybrid identities of the authors and their protagonists.

This thesis is a study of a Christian movement among the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria from its origins in the Civil War Revival (1967-73) to the present. It argues that the success of the revival depended upon a balance between supply and demand. Colonial legacies, Western missionary endeavours, decolonisation, and civil war not only created new religious demands, they contributed to the formation of a missionary fellowship, able to exploit the disorder of Igbo society and the failure of existing religious options to fulfil traditional aspirations. The thesis shows that during its formative period the revival’s Pentecostal progeny also benefited from this missionary impulse, and the flexibility of Pentecostal spirituality, which enabled it to adapt to meet consumer demands. It examines the way the movement has evolved since the 1970s, and argues that the decline of its missionary impulse, combined with a paradigm shift from holiness to prosperity teaching, and a propensity to schism, have imposed limitations on its potential as an agent of transformation. Finally, it shows that during the 1990s, a further shift has occurred towards a theology of socio-political engagement, and examines the implications of this for the movement’s identity and influence in a pluralistic society.