Thèse doctorat : Department of English : Uppsala : 1993.

In South Africa the left-wing is currently in an ascendant mode. Yet it is not an unproblematic ascendancy. For one thing, because Marxism has been interwoven with so much of the South African struggle, the South African Left are now unable to disentangle themselves from the contemporary 'collapse of the Marxist dream'. And this translates into a South African socio-political issue because as the Left accumulates influence and power in South Africa so the problems and limitations of historical materialism acquire a wider social significance. This thesis will argue that a key problem with the historical materialist paradigm has been its limitations when dealing with communication and the media. However, there have been historical materialists (usually those who consciously stepped outside 'mainstream Marxist' discourse) who made considerable advances in attempting to develop historical materialism's capacity for dealing with communication, the media and the subjective. This thesis will examine some of the work which has attempted to 'reconstruct' historical materialism away from a narrow materialism. The aim will be to give some direction to the development of a New Left approach to communication. Such a reconstruction is seen as a precondition if the Left-wing is to find a formula for dealing with Information Age relations of production. A New Left communicology able to deal with the 'superstructuralism' of the Information Age offers a specific perspective on how to construct a development strategy for South Africa. This will be discussed, and the thesis will attempt to tie together the notions of communication, development and democracy. The relationship between communication and democracy will be especially important for the New Left approach that will be favoured in this thesis. So an important theme in the thesis will be the question of developing a left-hegemony based upon a democratic-pluralism. This will entail examining the role that media and an institutionalised social-dialogue can play in building a left-wing democracy. The extent to which the left-wing media in South Africa have contributed to a democratic dialogue is discussed. This will then be extended into a discussion of how media can contribute to the reconstruction, development and democratization of a leftist post-apartheid South Africa. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1991.

The dissertation explores how quality-judgments on works of art are created within the contemporary art world. The research starts with the examination of modernist art theories supported by the museum, and continues with the exploration of the impact of the art market on quality-judgments. Although the art market had already distorted the idea of quality, further contradictions and difficulties have risen within judgment-making after the 1960s due to the dematerialisation of the work of art. Art criticism should have been able to deal with this complexity, but it is demonstrated that art criticism is a subjective field and even if there is a universal theory on quality, it often fails when applied to the particular work of art. Throughout the dissertation it is demonstrated that although ‘good art’ is a subjective, power- and discourse-dependent concept, all art professionals seek something that is an inherent quality of the artwork. However, regardless of the existence of such inherent value, judgments on quality are constructed by and subjected to power-struggle. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Art History)

BARROSO, Maria Cleide da Silva. O ideário construtivista e a formação do pedagogo: uma análise na perspectiva da crítica marxista. 2009. 151f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Educação) - Universidade Federal do Ceará, Faculdade de Educação, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação Brasileira, Fortaleza-CE, 2009. / Submitted by Maria Josineide Góis (josineide@ufc.br) on 2012-07-30T15:09:03Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2009_Dis_MCSBarroso.pdf: 723459 bytes, checksum: 99a92689f1410a139f1e8a70311dfab6 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Josineide Góis(josineide@ufc.br) on 2012-08-01T14:59:33Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2009_Dis_MCSBarroso.pdf: 723459 bytes, checksum: 99a92689f1410a139f1e8a70311dfab6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-08-01T14:59:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2009_Dis_MCSBarroso.pdf: 723459 bytes, checksum: 99a92689f1410a139f1e8a70311dfab6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / In the beginning of the years 1990 of the XXth Century, we watched a strong speech, in the national and international scopes, about the necessity of public education improvement. This way, the decade which precedes the century changing had been instituted as the “Education Decade”; place in which congresses, forums and meetings have happened. These events have resulted in declarations, recommendations, aims and plans of actions established by the international organisms, mainly by the World Bank. According to this situation, the constructivism emerges as dominant Pedagogy, to be assumed by the orientating guidelines of the teaching formation process, demanding, by this time, an educational proposal – the constructivist – that could understand the intelligence as an adaptative process, essential condition for the capital’s (re)production process. In face of this context, our research assumes as objective to analyze, by the Marxist criticism, the relation that exists between the constructivist ideary and the main guidelines of the politics of educators formation, specifically the teachers’ one, investigating the determinations which are imposed to the teaching praxis. In this direction, based on the marxian perspective, we search the discovering and the critic appropriation of the elements that show us the real meaning of constructivism in the teachers formation course, analyzing the relations between constructivism and contemporary teaching formation, particularly, of the teachers formation course. According to this theoretical perspective, we developed a theoretical-bibliographical and documental investigation about the teachers formation directed, particularly, to the Pedagogy Courses, in the face of the current educational paradigms, hanging the constructivism and the reach of this perspective in the teachers’ formation process. Towards this, we took care, first of all, about making a theoretical revision of the labor centrality, emphasizing its relation with the other social complexes, specially the education. Having done this study, we analyzed the piagetian basis of constructivism, retaking, moreover, an analysis of the theoretical presupposed of constructivism in Piaget, basing ourselves in authors who guide themselves by the marxian perspective. Concerning to the particularity of the teachers formation and its relation with the constructivist ideary, we initially sketched a brief retrospective of the Pedagogy Course, advancing, thorough this way, to the analysis of the DCNs - National Curricular Guidelines for the Pedagogy Course (2006) and its theoretical-practical entwining with the constructivist ideary. For the ending, we emphasize the great power of seduction practiced by the constructivist ideary and the consequences of this adhesion in the sphere of the teachers’ formation, particularly, and of the teaching practice, in general, deepening, this way, the alienating character of the politics of teaching formation, in face of the fact that this theoretical model has emerged as a strongly current practice in the education. / No inicio dos anos 1990 do século XX, presenciamos um forte discurso no âmbito nacional e internacional da necessidade de melhoria da educação pública, sendo, a formação de professores, um dos eixos norteadores dessa perspectiva. Desse modo, a década que antecede a virada do século fora instituída como a ‘Década da Educação’, espaço de acontecimentos de congressos, fóruns e encontros sobre educação que resultaram em declarações, recomendações, metas e planos de ações estabelecidas pelos organismos internacionais, sobretudo o Banco Mundial. Nesse quadro, o construtivismo desponta como pedagogia dominante, a ser assumida pelas diretrizes orientadoras do processo de formação docente, exigindo, por esse turno, uma proposta educacional – a construtivista – que compreendesse a inteligência como um processo adaptativo, condição absolutamente indispensável para o processo de (re)produção do capital. Diante desse contexto, nossa pesquisa assume como objetivo analisar, à luz da crítica marxista, a relação existente entre o ideário construtivista e as principais diretrizes das políticas de formação do educador, especificamente, a do pedagogo, investigando as determinações impostas à práxis docente. Nessa direção, com base na perspectiva marxiana, buscamos o desvelamento e a apropriação crítica dos elementos que nos apontam o real significado do construtivismo no curso de formação de professores, analisando as relações entre construtivismo e a formação docente contemporânea, particularmente, do curso de formação do pedagogo. Consoante com este referencial teórico, desenvolvemos uma investigação de cunho teórico-bibliográfico e documental sobre a formação de professores encaminhada, particularmente, aos Cursos de Pedagogia, frente aos paradigmas atuais da educação, enfocando o construtivismo e o alcance deste referencial no processo de formação do Pedagogo. Para tanto, cuidamos primeiramente de realizar uma revisão teórica acerca da centralidade do trabalho, enfocando a relação deste com os outros complexos sociais, especialmente, a educação. De posse desse estudo passamos a analisar as bases piagetianas do construtivismo, retomando, ademais, uma análise dos pressupostos teóricos do construtivismo em Piaget, apoiados em teóricos afinados com a perspectiva marxiana. No que se refere à particularidade da formação do pedagogo e a sua relação com o ideário construtivista, tratamos inicialmente de esboçar uma breve retrospectiva da história do curso de pedagogia, avançando, por essa via, para análise das DCNs-Diretrizes Curriculares para o Curso de Pedagogia (2006) e seu entrelaçamento teórico-prático com o ideário construtivista. Por fim, destacamos o profundo poder de sedução exercido pelo ideário construtivista e as conseqüências dessa adesão no campo da formação do pedagogo, em particular, e da prática docente, em geral, aprofundando, desse modo, o caráter alienador das políticas de formação de professores, já que esse modelo teórico tem despontado como um forte modismo na educação.

Critical Realism, the Capabilities Approach, and Marxism, all have underdeveloped theoretical problems. For Critical Realism, the ceteris paribus clause, which is used to asses an ideological critique, does not properly specify what other things warrant the dismissal or acceptance of said critique. For the Capabilities Approach, a proper ontology or metaphysics is missing, and the claim that the Capabilities Approach can be metaphysically neutral is false. Finally, Marxism is good at describing the more onerous aspects of capitalism (e.g., alienation, exploitation, crisis), but it does not provide normative force for seeing these descriptions as bad. I argue that these three schools of thought, when connected through the ontology of Critical Realism, can be rendered mutually inclusive, and each theory can help address the lacuna in its respective counterpart. Critical Realism gives to Marxism and the Capabilities Approach ontological justification, and the Capabilities Approach gives to Critical Realism and Marxism normative force. And finally, Marxism gives to the Capabilities Approach a more radical, but consistent twist that furthers the goal of realizing our shared human powers.

For those who have the courage to doubt, it can be said that the Bible which is highly regarded in Africa is not only an innocent book but also a guilty one because of the many social, political and religious evils that have bedevilled Africa from time to time and which it has condoned and has been used to sanction. Using postcolonial biblical criticism, and as a way of demonstrating that the entire Bible is another text of the empire, this thesis argues that imperial ideology promoted in Luke's socio-economic parables has contributed to another social evil i.e. the gap between the rich and the poor in Kenya. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

This thesis aims to open up the realm of what counts as political in the context of the Marikana strikes and subsequent massacre. It does primarily by taking into account the social, political and cultural context of Mpondo workers on the mines. Many narrow Marxist and liberal frameworks have circumscribed the conception of the ‘modern’ and the ‘political’ so much so that political organisation which falls outside of this conceptualisation is often regarded as ‘backward’ or ‘archaic’. It will provide an examination of the history, culture and custom of men, who have, for almost a hundred years migrated back and forth between South African mines and Mpondoland. This not only reveals differing modes of organising and engaging in political action, but also that the praxis of democracy takes many forms, some of which are different and opposed to what counts as democratic in Western liberal democracy. By considering what I argue, following some of the insights from the Subaltern Studies collective in India, to be a subaltern sphere of politics and history, it is possible to better understand the way workers organised and acted. The thesis also argues that most labour and nationalist historiography has been silent on the political contributions of women because of how Marxist/liberal analysis frames struggles through disciplined notions of work and resistance. Rather than objectifying workers as representatives of a homogenous and universal class of people devoid of context, the thesis has linked ‘the worker’ to the community from which s/he comes and community specific struggles, which are supported and sustained, often, by the parallel struggles of women in the community.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study utilizes an ideological rhetorical analysis, applying Marxist and Feminist lenses, to artifacts from Kiwanis International, a prominent global service organization. These artifacts are: "The Permanent Objects of Kiwanis," guiding principles that were codified in 1924; "The Man Who Was God": a brief story about transforming from Kiwanis member to "Kiwanian," published in 1935 and 1985, respectively; and the 2012 "Join the Club" Membership Brochure. The rhetoric of discursive materials is one of the most salient representations of group ideology. In turn, ideology, particularly when it reflects and perpetuates social hegemony, has a normalizing effect on itself. Ideology shapes identity; identity shapes strategies to set process norms that create social cohesion. Norms of social cohesion become culture; culture reinforces ideology. When these components mirror social hegemony and replicate hegemonic power, they create institutions, like service organizations; these institutions then legitimate and normalize positions of social privilege. Ultimately, ideology and social hegemony reveal themselves through organizational and member practices and organizationally-produced discursive material. The purpose of this study is to analyze the historical, socio-political, and socio-cultural roots of Kiwanis International in order to draw logical conclusions about the organization's ideology for the purposes of understanding how that ideology contributes to, justifies, and perpetuates an unconscious, neo-colonial view of philanthropy. Kiwanis International, on an organizational (macro) level and at the club/member (micro) level, is structured around positions of racial, ethnic, socio-economic, linguistic, gender, and religious privilege, and so mimics the hegemonic power centers and dominant ideologies of society at large. In turn, the products and practices of the organization reflect these positions of privilege and inhibits the organization's ability to attract traditionally excluded, disenfranchised, or under-represented groups. Understanding that it is a contentious and futile to simply point where power relations exist and assert themselves, this study emphasizes where "othering" occurs in hopes of mitigating relations of domination and oppression between Kiwanis members and perspective members, and of moving forward the interests of those who have not traditionally been counted among Kiwanis' members but whose presence could save the organization.