Magister Legum - LLM / Global climate change is a serious, severe, and potentially irreversible problem. If no actions are taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures and sea levels will rise, wreaking havoc on earth, particularly in developing countries. The Stockholm Declaration of 1972 facilitated the first international consensus concerning the application of CBDR to international environmental problems. This was in reaction to the developing countries refusal to adhere to the same standards as the developed countries as they perceived this as a burden to their economic growth, which is unjust due to the developed countries historical culpability.

My dissertation examines the presence of the “North of England” in medieval texts, a presence that complicates the recent work of critics who focus upon an emergent nationalism in the Middle Ages. Far removed from the ideological center of the realm in London and derided as a backwards frontier, the North nevertheless maintains a distinctly generative intimacy within the larger realm as the seat of English history—the home of the monk Bede, the “Father of English History”—and as a frontline of defense against Scottish invasion. This often convoluted dynamic of intimacy, I assert, is played out in those literary conversations in which the South derides the North and vice versa—in, for example, the curt admonition of one shepherd that the sheep-stealer Mak in the Wakefield Master’s Second Shepherd’s Play stop speaking in a southern tongue: that he “take out his southern tooth and insert a turd.” The North functioned as a contested geography, a literary character, and a spectral presence in the negotiation of a national identity in both canonical and non-canonical texts including Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, William of Malmesbury’s Latin histories, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and the Robin Hood ballads of the late Middle Ages. We see this contest, further, in the medieval universities wherein students segregated by their “nacion,” northern or southern, engaged in bloody clashes that, while local, nevertheless resonated at the national level. I argue that the outlying North actually operates as a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for the processes of imagining nation; that regionalism is both contained within and constitutive of its apparent opposite, nationalism. My longue durée historicist approach to texts concerned with the North—either through narrative setting, character, author or textual provenance—ultimately uncovers the emerging dialectic of region and nation within the medieval North-South divide and reveals how England’s nationalist impulse found its greatest expression when it was threatened from within by the uncanny figure of the North. / text

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This thesis reviews trends and developments concerning national information policy both internationally and nationally and inform the understanding of the situation in South Africa. Three research questions are investigated in this study, namely: (a) what are the main trends relevant to national information policy development worldwide, based on relevant literature, (b) what are the main trends and developments in other countries, and (c) what are the implications of the current global and national developments regarding national information policy for South Africa, based on the findings of the study? The methodology for this study involved a qualitative textual analysis, addressing these three research questions, and the selection of theoretical frameworks to define the scope of the research. The study discussed the main aspects of concern regarding the following information-related issues: access to information; access to government information; literacy levels; computer literacy levels; levels of education and skills; information society development; the North-South Divide (including the digital divide); information content and industrial competitiveness; other issues such as e-commerce; telecommunication issues; copyright issues; industrial property rights; freedom of speech; censorship; information ownership; library services and archives; the value of information and the flow of information in the public domain in South Africa. The multiplicity of issues reviewed demonstrated the complexity regarding access to information and related issues in the country. The study concludes with a situational analysis of developments relevant to national information policy for South Africa. The findings indicate that the South African government needs to take into account the unevenness of past developments and the challenges created by the emergent global information policy regime. The Government needs to develop a national information policy to address and balance two realities, namely: (a) the technocratic and capitalist values of globalisation pushing global information policy development from outside the country, and (b) national economic, social and cultural developmental needs inside the country. Both these realities are relevant and need to be addressed in a national information policy, as the Government needs to take into account the unevenness of past developments and the challenges created by the emergent global information policy regime. / Information Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)

This thesis reviews trends and developments concerning national information policy both internationally and nationally and inform the understanding of the situation in South Africa. Three research questions are investigated in this study, namely: (a) what are the main trends relevant to national information policy development worldwide, based on relevant literature, (b) what are the main trends and developments in other countries, and (c) what are the implications of the current global and national developments regarding national information policy for South Africa, based on the findings of the study? The methodology for this study involved a qualitative textual analysis, addressing these three research questions, and the selection of theoretical frameworks to define the scope of the research. The study discussed the main aspects of concern regarding the following information-related issues: access to information; access to government information; literacy levels; computer literacy levels; levels of education and skills; information society development; the North-South Divide (including the digital divide); information content and industrial competitiveness; other issues such as e-commerce; telecommunication issues; copyright issues; industrial property rights; freedom of speech; censorship; information ownership; library services and archives; the value of information and the flow of information in the public domain in South Africa. The multiplicity of issues reviewed demonstrated the complexity regarding access to information and related issues in the country. The study concludes with a situational analysis of developments relevant to national information policy for South Africa. The findings indicate that the South African government needs to take into account the unevenness of past developments and the challenges created by the emergent global information policy regime. The Government needs to develop a national information policy to address and balance two realities, namely: (a) the technocratic and capitalist values of globalisation pushing global information policy development from outside the country, and (b) national economic, social and cultural developmental needs inside the country. Both these realities are relevant and need to be addressed in a national information policy, as the Government needs to take into account the unevenness of past developments and the challenges created by the emergent global information policy regime. / Information Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)