Text in Afrikaans / Some of the limited research available on narrative reflecting team therapy was used in this study to develop a reflecting team therapy story. The reflecting team therapy story was developed using qualitative methodology in the form of an experimental text, which was strongly influenced by narrative discourse. The adopted methodology contributed to allowing the reflecting team therapy story as experienced by the client to speak very clearly to us. The following issues, inter alia, emerged: therapy is faster, clients are empowered, gender is important in therapy, the process is promoted by the multiplic ity of interactions and clients experience a scense of enpathy. The reflecting team therapy story can therefore serve as a working document which the reader can co-author. In the true spirit of narrative methology, I believe that every story contains an alternative story. There is no one true and final story. / Van die beperkte beskikbare navorsing oor reflekterende spanwerk is in hierdie studie gebruik om 'n reflekteringspanterapieverhaal daar te stel. Die reflekteringspanterapieverhaal is ontwikkel deur gebruik te maak van kwalitatiewe metodologie, in die vorm van 'n 'experimentele teks', wat sterk deur narratiewe diskoerse belnvloed is. Die veranderde metodologie het daartoe bygedra dat die verhaal van die reflekteringspanterapie soos ervaar deur die klient baie duidelik tot ons spreek. Die volgende sake het onder andere na vore getree: terapie is vinniger, kliente word bemagtig, geslag is van belang by terapie, die proses word bevorder as gevolg van die meervoudigheid van interaksie en kliente beleef 'n gevoel van empatie. Die reflekteringspanterapieverhaal kan dus dien as 'n werksdokument waaraan die leser as ko-redakteur deelneem. In die ware gees van narratiewe metodologie glo ek dat daar in elke verhaal 'n alternatiewe verhaal skuil. Daar is dus geen ware en finale verhaal nie. / Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology / M.Th. (Praktiese Teologie)

Inscrits dans le contexte actuel de mondialisation, le développement et la promotion remarqués des modes amiables de règlement des différends (MARD) témoignent d’une nouvelle appréhension de la production normative où le justiciable est placé au cœur du droit, l’entente se substitue à l’autorité, la discussion et le dialogue prévalent. Tandis que le temps économique ne semble plus cadrer avec le temps judiciaire dans ce contexte concurrentiel qui exige des réactions rapides, les MARD répondent à une demande concrète des entreprises. Placées au centre de ce processus vivant et complexe, les entreprises adaptent leur stratégie de gestion des conflits en faisant appel à des moyens qui servent le mieux leurs intérêts. La prévention des risques est une priorité, la gestion de l’aléa, un défi quotidien et l’adaptation au contexte évolutif à l’espace et au temps, la marque de l’efficience des instruments normatifs adoptés. Les MARD laissent ainsi entrevoir la résurgence de la question de la légitimité du droit et de la justice étatique. On a qualifié ce phénomène de justice douce mais s’agit-il d’une forme de justice fut-elle alternative ? La réponse à cette question dépend de la compréhension globale que nous avons de ce phénomène. Cette réflexion se propose ainsi de le définir bien plus que comme la seule mise en œuvre de modes consensuels de traitement des différends, mais, véritablement comme l’expression d’un ordre juridique en développement. Approuvé par ses principaux usagers, les MARD deviennent un outil efficace de justice équitable. La notion de justice est alors envisagée, non pas dans son sens organique, mais substantiel, la justice pouvant être aussi consensuelle. / As part of the current context of globalisation, the development and promotion of the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) clearly show a new approach in the production of norms, whereby the litigant is positioned at the very heart of the rule of law, and where mutual understanding replaces authority, and discussion and dialogue prevail. While economic time no longer correlates with judicial time in the competitive framework, which by its very nature demands rapid reactions, the ADR process meets concrete corporate needs. At the core of this active and complex process of globalisation, corporations adapt their conflict management strategies through ways which best serve their interests. Risk prevention is a priority, risk management a daily challenge and the adaptation to the evolving context, in space and time, the sign of efficiency of the normative tools used. Thus, ADR and its involvement in the globalisation process, raises anew the issue of the legitimacy of law and court justice. This phenomenon has been qualified as negotiated or consensual justice, but is it at its core a form of justice, even an alternative one? The answer to this question mainly depends on the overall understanding of the ADR phenomenon. That is why this thesis proposes to view it as more than just a simple implementation of a consensual dispute resolution tool as it is often depicted, but more genuinely as the expression of a developing legal order. Approved by its main users, the ADR process has become an instrument of fair and effective justice and has captured the concept of justice in its essence rather than in its structure.

This thesis examines how the Supreme Court of Canada, across legal contexts, has tended to conceptualize sexuality. It focuses primarily on areas of public law including sexual assault law, equality for sexual minorities, sexual harassment and obscenity and indecency laws. There were a number of trends revealed upon reviewing the jurisprudence in this area. First, the Court’s decisions across legal contexts reveal a tendency to conceptualize sexuality as innate, as a pre-social naturally occurring phenomenon and as an essential element of who we are as individuals. This is true whether one is speaking of the approach to gay and lesbian rights, the occurrence of sexual harassment, or the sexual abuse of children. However, there is an exception to this trend. The exception relates to the Court’s conceptual approach towards sexual violence against adults. The research revealed, likely as a result of feminist activism both in the legislative and judicial arenas, that there has been a shift in the way that the Court understands sexuality in the context of sexual violence. It is a shift away from understanding it as pre-social and naturally occurring towards understanding it as a product of society, as a function of social context. This change in the Court’s conceptual approach towards sexual violence has engendered a shift in the law’s moral focus as well – a shift away from a moral focus on specific sexual acts and sexual propriety and towards a moral focus on sexual actors and sexual integrity. The thesis weaves together the analytical observations about the jurisprudence just described with a theoretical argument that is both grounded in the case law and which draws upon a number of different theorists. The argument developed suggests that the Court, regardless of the legal issue involved, ought to conceptualize sexuality as socially constructed/ contextually contingent, that it ought to orient itself towards protecting sexual integrity, and that it ought to understand this sexual integrity as a common interest.

Text in German / Am Beginn der Menschheit steht das von Gott erschaffene Paar, in der Postmo­ derne ist es das aufgeklarte, autonome Individuum. Eine Diskrepanz zwischen ursprunglicher Schopfungsintention und der postmodernen Lebenswelt wird deutlich. Denn Mann und Frau wurden auf eine ganzheitliche Lebensgemein­ schaft hin erschaffen, die nicht nur den trinitarischen Gott widerspiegeln soli, sondem fur einen gelingenden Lebensvollzug urn die konstitutive Notwendigkeit der Gebundenheit des GeschOpfes an seinen Schopfer weiss. Das Bewusst­ sein, dass der Mensch nur in dieser existentiellen Verankerung zum wahren Mann- oder Frausein befahigt wird, ist in der aufgeklarten Postmoderne, primar durch deren zentrales Merkmal, der Absolutsetzung von Freiheit, abhanden ge­ kommen. Erschwerend kommt die Ablehnung der (ontologischen) Sundhaftig­ keit hinzu, was nicht nur das Heilsgeschehen per se obsolet werden lasst,son­ dern zugleich die Wiederherstellung der Beziehung zu Gott als Quelle allen Le­ bens a priori verunmoglicht. Damit verschliesst sich das postmoderne Indivi­ duum aber gleichzeitig die Meglichkeit zur Annaherung an die Schopfungs­ intention von Beziehung und Abhangigkeit der Geschlechter durch die in Jesus erlangte,endgultige Oberwindung der Sunde und deren Konsequenzen. Das Wissen urn die Intention Gottes mit Mann und Frau ist deshalb so entscheidend, weil vom Vorhandensein eines schopfungsbedingt angelegten anthropologischen Grundskriptes ausgegangen wird, welches die Beziehung und Abhangigkeit der Geschlechter entscheidend pragt.1 Das Geschlechterver­ haltnis ist also nicht beliebig und Folgen los veranderbar, resp. den sozio-kul­ turellen Vorgaben und Erwartungen anpassbar, eben weil dessen Kern unver­ anderbar ist. Dem steht jedoch das postmoderne Verstandnis gegenuber, wel­ ches die Geschlechteridentitat des evolvierten Primaten als reine sozio-kulturel­ le Konstruktion und damit als beliebig modellier- und veranderbar versteht. Ge­ nau in dieser Diskrepanz zwischen unaufhebbarem anthropologischem Grund­ skript einerseits und der vermeintlich ganzlichen Beliebigkeit des Geschlechter­ verhaltnisses andererseits liegt ein zentraler Grund fOr die Heute stark Problem belasteten Ehen. At the beginning of humanity we find man and woman as a couple created by God; in post-modern society, however, this place is taken by the enlightened individual. The discrepancy is evident. Man and woman were created for a lifelong marriage which was not only to reflect the triune creator but which was anchored in the dependence on the creator as a constitutive necessity for building a solid, successful and lifelong marriage. This awareness of the fundamental necessity of God as the creator of man has been lost in post-modern society. Instead we find the claim for absolute freedom, linked to the negation of the ontological sinfulness of man. It is obvious that such negation makes the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ by which sin is finally overcome superfluous, rending the re-establishement of the relationship between God and man impossible. But it is by this grounding in God the creator and redeemer alone that man and woman will unterstand marriage in its originally intended depth and fullness. The present study has resulted in discerning a fundamental, God-given anthropological script which defines both relation and dependence of man and woman; this implies that these fundamental elements cannot be deliberately transformed and/or adapted to various socio-cultural norms and expectations. However, the post-modern understanding of gender presents itself in clear opposition to this creational view. Nowadays, gender identity is seen solely as a socio-cultural structure and therefore subject to unlimited changes and modifications. In this study, one main reason for the instability of marriages in postmodern society has been discerned in the discrepancy between the permanent anthropological basic script and the apparent variability of the relation and dependence between man and woman. The negation of God the creator and redeemer proves to be of equal importance, as it is only through and in him that the basic script for marriage can be realized in its originally intended allembracing dimension. / Systematic Theology and Theological Ethics / D. Th. (Systematic Theology)

Nesta tese entende-se que a infância é uma construção cultural, social e histórica, sujeita a mudanças. Inscrita em uma matriz de inteligibilidade que vê a contemporaneidade marcada por condições peculiares, imbricadas e implicadas naquilo que tem sido amplamente conhecido como cultura pós-moderna, considerase que grandes transformações têm alterado a forma de estarmos no mundo. Supõese que as condições culturais contemporâneas produzem infâncias distintas da infância moderna − ingênua, dócil, dependente dos adultos − e modificam as formas das crianças viverem esse período tido como próprio delas. Vivemos um estado da cultura, com implicações contundentes da mídia e do consumo, que tem se configurado de forma diferente daquele da modernidade e produzido sujeitos distintos dos sujeitos modernos. Esta tese tem como um de seus objetivos dar visibilidade às crianças pobres que freqüentam algumas escolas no município de Porto Alegre nesse início do século XXI. Procura-se realizar uma das leituras possíveis de como os sujeitos infantis das escolas estudadas vivem a infância sob as condições culturais pós-modernas, e apontar a produtividade dessa cultura no delineamento de um determinado tipo de infância, que se opta por chamar de “infância pós-moderna”. Busca-se mostrar como as crianças pobres das escolas estudadas são produzidas, formatadas, fabricadas pela mídia e pelo consumo, configurando novos modos de ser criança e de viver a infância. Pretende-se também colocar sob tensão as imagens convencionais e modernas de infância com que muitos professores persistem trabalhando na contemporaneidade. Para isso, optou-se tanto por lançar mão de estudos de autores que tratam de descrever, interpretar e problematizar a condição cultural pós-moderna, como daqueles que realizam análises culturais sobre as infâncias. Para o estudo das condições culturais pós-modernas, foram também coletados, e considerados para compor o corpus de análise, artefatos que integram a cultura circulante da mídia e do consumo como reportagens, comunicações publicitárias, imagens de crianças, diferentes produtos direcionados à infância, etc. Para dar visibilidade às conexões entre as crianças das escolas estudadas e a cultura pós-moderna foi realizado um inventário de artefatos e práticas presentes nas escolas, registrou-se em fotos e em anotações no diário de campo situações, conversas com crianças e professoras, bem como foram coletados desenhos e textos produzidos em sala de aula. Tanto os materiais coletados nas escolas, como os coletados fora delas, ajudaram a compor e a expor um panorama das condições culturais pós-modernas, e contribuíram para o objetivo de mostrar uma infância pós-moderna que vai à escola. Ao visibilizar e analisar as formas como as crianças pobres das escolas estudadas vivem a infância e constituem-se como alunos, foi possível perceber umaconsonância com as configurações culturais do mundo contemporâneo. Visibilidade, efemeridade, ambivalência, fugacidade, descartabilidade, individualismo, superficialidade, instabilidade, fazem parte de suas vidas. Observou-se, nas escolas estudadas, um modo de ser criança que busca infatigavelmente a fruição e o prazer e, nessa busca, borra fronteiras de classe, gênero e geração. Um modo de ser criança que procura incansavelmente inscrever-se na cultura globalmente reconhecida e fazer parte de uma comunidade de consumidores de artefatos em voga na mídia do momento; que produz seu corpo de forma espetacular para que ele esteja em harmonia com o mundo das visibilidades; que se caracteriza por constantes e ininterruptos movimentos e mutações. São crianças que vão se tornando o que são, vivendo sob a condição pós-moderna. Tais crianças provocam desestabilização das pedagogias, causam inquietações, minam o pensamento binário, porque não é mais possível classificá-las, cartografálas, enquadrá-las nos lugares tradicionalmente designados para infantis e para escolares. São polivalentes, podendo ser de diferentes e distintas formas ao mesmo tempo e, no momento seguinte, já possuírem outras formas, antes mesmo que seja possível conhecê-las e apreendê-las. Crianças pós-modernas são um desafio para a educação escolarizada porque não permitem o estabelecimento de uma ordem e a elaboração de planos a longo prazo. / In this thesis, childhood has been understood as a cultural, social, and historical construction, subject to changes. Inscribed in an intelligibility matrix that sees contemporaneity marked by peculiar conditions that are intertwined and implied in something that has been widely known as post-modern culture, big transformations have altered the way we are in the world. It has been supposed that contemporary cultural conditions have both produced childhoods that are distinct from the modern childhood – naïve, docile, dependent on adults – and modified the ways children experience this period seen as theirs. We live in a state of culture, with incisive implications of media and consumption, which has shown a different configuration from that of modernity and produced subjects that are distinct from the modern subjects. One of the objectives of this thesis is to give visibility to poor children that have attended some schools in Porto Alegre in the beginning of the twentieth-first century. I have attempted both to undertake one of the possible readings of how infantile subjects from those schools have lived childhood under post-modern cultural conditions, and point out the productivity of this culture to delineate a certain type of childhood, which has been called “post-modern childhood”. I have shown how poor children from those schools have been produced, formatted, made by the media and consumption, thus forming new modes of being a child and living childhood. The thesis has also intended to tension conventional and modern images of childhood with which many teachers have persisted to work in contemporaneity. To do so, I have used studies produced by authors that have described, interpreted, and problematized the post-modern cultural condition, as well as authors that have culturally analyzed childhoods. For the study of post-modern cultural conditions, I have also collected and considered as corpus the artifacts that integrate the media and consumption culture, such as reports, advertising communications, pictures of children, different children-oriented products, etc. In order to give visibility to connections between children from the schools studied and the post-modern culture, I have made an inventory of artifacts and practices found in the schools; I have documented situations, conversations with children and teachers with photographs and notes in my field notebook; and I have collected drawings and texts produced in the classroom. Both materials collected in school and the ones collected outside have helped me to compose and expose an overview of post-modern cultural conditions, and have contributed towards the objective of showing a post-modern childhood that attends school. On visualizing and analyzing the ways poor children from the schools considered in this study have lived their childhood and constituted themselves as students, it is possible to perceive a consonance with cultural configurations of the contemporar world. Visibility, ephemerality, ambivalence, fugacity, disposability, individualism, superficiality, and instability are integral parts of their lives. I have observed in the schools a way of being a child that has indefatigably searched for fruition and pleasure and, in this search, has blurred the boundaries of class, gender, and generation. A way of being a child that has tirelessly searched to be inscribed in the globally acknowledged culture and belong to a community of consumers of artifacts currently in vogue in the media; that has produced their bodies in a spectacular way so that it is in harmony with the world of visibilities; that has been characterized by constant and ongoing moves and mutations. They are children that have become who they are, living under the post-modern conditions. Such children have provoked unstableness of pedagogies, caused uneasiness, undermined the binary thought, because it is no longer possible to classify them, chart them, frame them in places traditionally assigned to children and school students. They are polyvalent, and may show different and distinct forms at the same time, and in the next instant they can acquire other forms, even before it is possible to know them and apprehend them. Post-modern children have been a challenge to school education, since they do not allow for the establishment of an order and the elaboration of long-term planning.

Working in a township is a challenging but also rewarding way of living. In this dissertation the researcher, in collaboration with the co-searchers, explore ways to mentor one another as they learn how to deal with trauma, either by experiencing trauma directly or witnessing secondary trauma. This leads to new ways of being 'in the moment', coping with trauma, forming a community of care and learning to be in an aware and empowered position. The responsibility of practical theology and the commitment to pastoral care are explored in the context of theology, and spesifically feminist theology, contributing to 'do hope' in Mamelodi. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M.Th. (Pastoral Therapy)

The present work examines the crossroads of social transformation from the contextual standpoint of the "Second World" - a political and socioeconomic term descriptively pointing to the unique location of the Former Eastern-European Block countries - in between worlds. The work involves in a dialogue some of the major trends within the contemporary Eastern-European philosophical environment: dichotomized between Neo-Marxism and Neo-Freudianism on the one hand, and Postmodernism on the other. While examining the most significant elements between the dialectical paradigms for social change of the above theories (and their ethical foundations), the text strives towards a theological paradigmatic formulation for an authentic social transformation that draws its dialectical content and passion from the hopeful eschatological vision of Christ and the Kingdom as an embodiment of the Christian alternative for human emancipation and liberation. In light of this, the work attempts to establish the following thesis: the radical Christian praxis of the eschatological reality of the Kingdom in light of the Cross is the Church’s alternative to contemporary philosophies and initiatives for social transformation. This praxis affirms the revolutionary, history-shaping force which makes Christianity relevant to the problems of Modernity and Postmodernity through its self-identification with the Crucified God. It marks the moment of conception of an authentic, liberating, life giving, transforming hope as a source of humanization and redemption of social order. Christianity is concerned with the birth and formation of a new socio-political reality - the Kingdom of God, and its embodiment on earth (through the Holy Spirit) in a new ethnos: the Church, the Body of Christ, the communion of the saints. Therefore, it is the Church's calling and obligation to exemplify the reality of the Kingdom, being a living extension of the living Christ and thus, the incarnation of the eschatological future of the world and its hopeful horizon in the midst of the present. Recognizing the vital need for a relevant Christian response to the spiritual demands of the Post-modern human being and his/her desacralized, pluralistic socio­ political context, the work concludes with a conceptual outline offering a strategy for the Church in the Postmodern setting. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D.Th. (Theological Ethics)

A journey to healing is a story of women survivors of sexual abuse. Through narrative pastoral conversations a group or community of concern was formed that witnessed how these women managed to move by re-telling from problem-saturated dominant lifestories to rich alternative stories of survival. Post-modern practical theology formed the epistemological backdrop of this study with the focus on taking a prophetically, ethical and political stance. The group deconstructed patriarchal knowledge that has been dominant in constructing understanding of women. Deconstruction lead to the centralising of previously subjugated knowledge about themselves and made multiple identities and preferred realities possible. Feminist theology's liberating spirit contributed to this participator action research where women moved from being right to doing right. The monthly celebration teas hosted by the group were instrumental in the healing of other women who have experienced sexual violation. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M.Th. (Pastoral Therapy)

This research pursues the use of the Bible in counseling. The focus is to identify the different theological paradigms in which the Bible is used and the different ways that counsellors make use of the Bible in therapy. It also pursues the experiences that the clients had of such counsellors in the use of the Bible. Therapists and clients from different theological backgrounds partake in this study. An overview is given of the shift that is taking place from a modern to a postmodern approach about reality, truth, and knowledge and the effect there of on the use of the Bible in therapy. The aim of the research is to explore if an evangelical christian in a postmodern context can make use of the Bible as the inspired word of God. The implication of this can be profound for pastoral therapy. A narrative paradigm is adopted to dicuss the discourses that evolved from the research. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M.Th. (Pastoral Therapy)

The Dutch Reformed Church provided the theological justification for Apartheid since 1948 and contributed to discourses of racism and cultural hegemony. In this research narrative conversations were used to confront racism prevalent among many Dutch Reformed congregants. Social discourses, created through language, marginalised and oppressed people of Colour in South Africa. In this project, narrative conversations were used to deconstruct these oppressive racial discourses. Antjie Krog's book on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's work, Country of my skull, confronted the congregants with the painful and dehumanising effects of Apartheid. Externalising conversations assisted congregants to face their guilt and the unjust discourses trapping them. In addition, this deconstruction empowered the congregants to challenge racism and cultural hegemony by living more ethical lives. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology (Pastoral Therapy))