The purpose of this study is to explore the processes of individuation and connection in mother-daughter relationships, and describe how these relationships may or may not be facilitated by the intervention of reflections and joint narratives. This study used social constructionism as the epistemological framework and involved in-depth interviews with three mother-daughter pairs. Hermeneutics was used to analyse the data. The participants' experiences were recounted through the researcher's lens in the form of themes that characterised their relationships as well as interactional patterns. Participant's experiences of the research process, and what the researcher believed were helpful and unhelpful behaviours in her interaction with each mother-daughter pair, were discussed. A comparative analysis was also undertaken between the common themes identified in the stories of the mother-daughter pairs and the literature. The information gained could assist women as well as professionals in understanding and respecting mother-daughter relationships in their specific contexts. / Psychology / M. A. (Psychology)

Maternal HIV-infection is considered to be a threat to the psychosocial development of AIDS-affected children. In South Africa, AIDS-affected children may be particularly vulnerable due to the unprecedented effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the breakdown of family and community resources in already disadvantaged communities. The aim of this study was to explore the contextualised experiences of two children living with mothers who have HIV by conducting two case studies. Mother-child dyads were recruited from local HIV/AIDS centres and informed consent was obtained. The mothers were in the minor symptomatic phase of HIV-infection and the children were uninfected and aged between 10 and 12 years. Through semi-structured interviewing, the mothers provided background and contextual information about the children. Play techniques were used in the child interviews to encourage the introduction and exploration of issues salient to the children. Play facilitated engagement around sensitive and potentially anxiety-provoking material. A key issue for the children was their concerns about the anticipated deaths of their mothers. The children held misconceptions about the transmission of HIV/ AIDS. They feared HIV/AIDS and expected that others would have negative perceptions of them. Family processes such as secrecy and avoidance around HIV/AIDS-related issues were understood to perpetuate the children's fears and false beliefs in a broader community context that stigmatised HIV/AIDS. It was argued that the mothers' shame over HIV-infection and their need to protect their relationship with their children compromised their ability to communicate openly with their children and to offer them meaningful emotional support. Limited parental involvement was identified as the key contextual process that engendered vulnerability in the children, as they were isolated within and beyond the family. Recommendations to address the processes that engendered vulnerability in the children are discussed.

This thesis argues for significant correlations in the politics of representation of Chinatown and mother-daughter relationships in two literary texts by Maxine Hong Kingston and Fae Myenne Ng. The two novels do not follow traditional representations of Chinatown and provide critical representations of Chinatown and mother-daughter relationships. First, Kingston's The Woman Warrior reveals how the heroine demystifies a powerful image of her mother and a mystic image of Chinatown in a process of establishing her autonomy. Second, Ng's Bone describes how the heroine tries to free her mother from a dismal image of Chinatown to live her own life outside Chinatown. The analyses of representation of Chinatown and mother-daughter relationships rely on close readings of the textual motifs through a psychoanalytic framework and cultural theories. / Graduation date: 2012

No description available.

O acolhimento institucional para crianças como medida de proteção é uma das previsões fundamentadas no Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente (ECA) como um direito a ser garantido à criança, quando for identificada uma situação que coloque sua vida em perigo/risco, ainda que essa situação possa advir do ambiente familiar. Após o acolhimento, a criança vivencia possibilidades de retorno à convivência com a família de origem, de acordo com a Lei Federal n 12.010/09. Diante desse panorama, esta pesquisa apresenta como objetivo geral identificar de que modo as crianças expressam o vínculo com a figura materna, levando em conta a mediação institucional. Como objetivos específicos, pretende-se compreender como o trabalho de mediação institucional contribui nas situações em que há possibilidade de reintegração da criança à família de origem e analisar a vivência da criança com seu cuidador ou profissional de referência à luz dos conceitos de transicionalidade e uso do objeto. Utilizaremos como referência teórica alguns conceitos de Winnicott, como espaço transicional, uso do objeto, ambiente facilitador, holding, assim como a teoria sobre a formação de vínculos de John Bowlby. Entrevistaremos esses profissionais ou cuidadores no intuito de compreender a contribuição da mediação institucional nas situações em que há possibilidade de retorno da criança ao ambiente familiar. A técnica projetiva do H-T-P (House-Tree-Person) foi escolhida por estimular na criança a projeção da experiência de conflitos vivenciados na relação com os outros no ambiente em que vive e, nesse sentido, pretendemos que ela expresse seus afetos, sobretudo em relação à figura materna. Pretende-se, ao fim deste estudo, poder contribuir com formas de intervenção clínica como proposta de mediação institucional para crianças acolhidas institucionalmente por medidas de proteção. / Institutional sheltering for children as a protection measure is one of the predictions based on the Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA) and is a right to be guaranteed to the child, when a life-threatening situation is identified, even though this Situation is coming from their homes and families. After the reception, the child experiences possibilities to return living with the family of origin, in accordance with Federal Law no. 12.010 / 09. Given this panorama, this research intends to identify how children express the bond with the maternal figure even when had passed by the institutional mediation. As specific objectives, it is tried the understanding of how the work of institutional mediation contributes in situations in which there is possibility of reintegration of the child into the original family and to analyze the child's experience with his / her caregiver or reference professional in the light of the concepts of transitionality and use of the object. We will use as theoretical reference some concepts of Winnicott, such as transitional space, object use, facilitator environment, holding, as well as John Bowlby's theory of bonding. We will interview these professionals or caregivers in order to understand the contribution of institutional mediation in situations where there is a possibility of the children return to their family. The projective technique of the HTP (House-Tree-Person) was chosen because it stimulates in the children the projection of the experience of conflicts lived in their relationship with others in the environment in which it lives and, in this sense, we intend that it expresses their affections, especially in Relation to the maternal figure. At the end of this study, we will contribute with forms of clinical intervention - as a proposal for institutional mediation - for children institutionally supported by protective measures.

This is a transdisciplinary study of how ‘popular cultures of survival’ regenerate and rehumanise township residents and communities whose social fabric and intergenerational bonds have been violently torn by endemic suffering. I focus specifically on township mothers’ and daughters’ lifeworlds with the aim of recentering these marginalised lives so that they can inform us about retheorising marginality and in this way enrich our limited academic discourses on the subjectivities of poor urban African women. Located in the interdisciplinary field of popular culture studies, the study draws on and synthesises theoretical insights from a number of disciplines such as sociology, political-science, anthropology, history, literary studies, womanist and feminist studies and indigenous studies, while using a variety of methods and sources such as interviews, reports, observation, newspapers, field notes, photo-albums, academic articles and embodied expressions to create a unique theory on the lived and embodied suffering and healing experiences of township women. I have called this situated conceptual framework that is theoretically aligned to African womanism and existential phenomenology, but principally fashioned out of township mothers and daughters ways of understanding the world and their place in it--Township mothers’ and daughters’ lived and embodied ‘cultures of survival’. And in order to surface their popular cultural survival strategies I have adopted an African womanist interpretative phenomenological methodological framework. This suggested conceptual and methodological framework has allowed me to creatively explore the dialectical tensions of the everyday township philosophies, aesthetics and moralities of ‘ukuphanta’, to hustle and ‘ukuhlonipha’, to respect, and show how they create the moral-existential ground for township mothers and daughters not only to continue to survive, but to reclaim lives of dignity and sensuality amidst repeated negation and historical hardships. / Sociology / D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology)

This is a transdisciplinary study of how ‘popular cultures of survival’ regenerate and rehumanise township residents and communities whose social fabric and intergenerational bonds have been violently torn by endemic suffering. I focus specifically on township mothers’ and daughters’ lifeworlds with the aim of recentering these marginalised lives so that they can inform us about retheorising marginality and in this way enrich our limited academic discourses on the subjectivities of poor urban African women. Located in the interdisciplinary field of popular culture studies, the study draws on and synthesises theoretical insights from a number of disciplines such as sociology, political-science, anthropology, history, literary studies, womanist and feminist studies and indigenous studies, while using a variety of methods and sources such as interviews, reports, observation, newspapers, field notes, photo-albums, academic articles and embodied expressions to create a unique theory on the lived and embodied suffering and healing experiences of township women. I have called this situated conceptual framework that is theoretically aligned to African womanism and existential phenomenology, but principally fashioned out of township mothers and daughters ways of understanding the world and their place in it--Township mothers’ and daughters’ lived and embodied ‘cultures of survival’. And in order to surface their popular cultural survival strategies I have adopted an African womanist interpretative phenomenological methodological framework. This suggested conceptual and methodological framework has allowed me to creatively explore the dialectical tensions of the everyday township philosophies, aesthetics and moralities of ‘ukuphanta’, to hustle and ‘ukuhlonipha’, to respect, and show how they create the moral-existential ground for township mothers and daughters not only to continue to survive, but to reclaim lives of dignity and sensuality amidst repeated negation and historical hardships. / Sociology / D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology)