The thesis Abraham in the New Testament commences with the narrative of Abraham in the Book of Genesis, evaluates responses to that story in the Old Testament as well as in the extra-biblical literature, and then examines its use in the New Testament. Abraham is introduced as God's friend, a model of faith, and a forefather. The questions are raised as to who are entitled to think of themselves as heirs to Abraham's promises and what are the consequences for the Curch. Appendices provide a list of Bible verses wherein Abraham is mentioned or which make allusions to his story. Other attachments present key texts from the Old and New Testaments and their literal translations as source materials supporting the conclusions of the main text.

The Nigerian video film industry has emerged to become the first “popular” film industry in black Africa. Its means of production and consumption has redefined the parameters of African Cinema. The video films employ themes and images that captivate the audiences’ imagination and curiosity. Some of the most used themes in the Nigerian video films are those relating to the supernatural, magic and witchcraft. Whilst some scholars and filmmakers criticise the prevalence of themes of witchcraft, magic and the supernatural, it is these very themes that draw local audiences. This research project explores images and themes of witchcraft, magic and the supernatural in two genres of the video films; the evangelical or Christian genre, and the horror or voodoo genre, using the films End of the Wicked and Child of Promise as case studies of the two genres respectively.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T19:30:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ana Helena da Silva Delfino Duarte.pdf: 11630232 bytes, checksum: 415d9bf9ec37920471a6cc5e50ed7169 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-12-09 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The thesis "Ex-votos and Poiesis: symbolic representations of faith and art" attempts to analyze the votive images that are popular representations of the Catholic faith, and that are embodied in pictorial panels, sculptural objects, photographs and other everyday "mere things" objects, re-signified in ex-votos, and exposed in promise rooms. Through the iconography of these objects we tried to interpret their religious, artistic, semiotic, historical, anthropological and ethnographic meanings, considering the networks involved: requests, promises, pilgrimages, payments and various forms of thanking graces, and miracles achieved by divine intersection The sanctuary of Nossa Senhora Aparecida/SP have been chosen to host the research, focusing the ex-votes left in the sanctuary promises rooms; from that sacred space, which staged the empirical findings, we also investigated several other ex-votos left in promise rooms thorough Brazil and abroad. Some progress has been also made from the works of artists that allow the view of crossings, points of meeting and a dialogue between the current "institutionalized" art and the art of "miracles." Having these collections as the fulcrum of ex-votive faith, dialogues can be traced toward religion, and art and culture, noting the cultural circularity between the "popular and the scholar", the "lifestyles", and the religious social changes reflected in the ex-votes non-verbal imagery. Following the investigation of these objects, we tried to see them "inside and outside". We managed to consider and appease the vast majority of the questions that these iconic objects advocate. Thus, we find that almost anything, a priori, could be an ex-voto / A tese Ex-votos e Poiesis: representações simbólicas na fé e na arte procura analisar as imagens votivas que são representações da fé católica popular, materializadas em painéis pictóricos, objetos escultóricos, fotografias e demais objetos meras coisas do cotidiano, re-significados em ex-votos e expostos em salas de promessas. Por meio da iconografia desses objetos buscou-se interpretar os seus sentidos religiosos, artísticos, semióticos, históricos, antropológicos e etnográficos, considerando as redes que os envolvem: os pedidos, as promessas, as romarias, os pagamentos e as diversas formas de agradecimentos das graças e milagres alcançados pela interseção divina. Elegeu-se para sediar a pesquisa o Santuário de Nossa Senhora Aparecida-SP, sobremaneira os ex-votos depositados nas salas de promessas desse santuário e, a partir desse espaço sagrado, que serviu de palco empírico das averiguações, pesquisou-se também diversos outros ex-votos depositados em salas de promessas no Brasil e no Exterior. Percorreu-se também obras de alguns artistas plásticos cujos trabalhos permitem visualizar cruzamentos, pontos de encontros e diálogos entre a arte institucionalizada atual e a arte dos milagres . Tendo como fulcro essas coleções de fé ex-votivas, pode-se traçar diálogos com a religiosidade, a arte e a cultura, observando-se a circularidade cultural entre o popular e o erudito , os modos de vida, as mudanças sociais religiosas refletidas na imaginária não verbal dos ex-votos. Seguindo-se pelas investigações desses objetos, procurou-se vê-los por dentro e por fora . Conseguiu-se problematizar e apaziguar a grande maioria das indagações que esses objetos emblemáticos preconizam. Dessa maneira, percebe-se que quase tudo, a priori, poderá vir a ser um ex-voto

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / In South Africa, since 2000, an increase of awareness in community involvement has become apparent, owing to the response from people to the need to be more engaged in decisions pertaining to their community. This positive move echoes an increasing acknowledgement by those in authority that community participation is essential to the main demands of renewing democracy, expanding service provision and constructing robust communities. The development of innovative patterns of participation development means that local communities should be empowered to participate in decision making, whilst government establishments need to have the determination and ability to respond to various community needs. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) pandemic has placed an enormous responsibility on public health services, such as South African hospitals, which are already functioning with limited resources. This has shifted the load of nursing to family members and communities as public health services are often stretched beyond their limits. Several community or home-based care programmes and facilities have materialised in reply to this necessity. In the context of participation of communities, the duty of community involvement in health plays a vital role in the future of public health in South Africa. Accordingly, this research was conducted to explore the nature and extent of community participation within the HIV/AIDS context in the Dunoon suburb in the Western Cape. An empirical research design, which consisted of qualitative methods, was used in this exploratory study to investigate the nature and extent of home-based care as an alternative strategy to institutional care. The research population was comprised of community members at the Dunoon informal settlement, the home-based workers employed at Heavenly Promise NGO, as well as staff and management of the Caltex/Chevron Refinery, members of Project Management 4 Africa (PM4A) and representatives of the Department of Social Development (DSD), which together constitute the partnership that is dedicated to combating the spread of HIV/AIDS in Dunoon. In general, the research findings demonstrate that home-based caregivers displayed strong levels of participation right from the outset of the project. The findings also established that participation among the community members was a combination of passive, weak and non-participatory, whereas home-based carers displayed a level of active participation. Furthermore, home-based care staff played a key role in decision making, while carers essentially undertook the work in the community. Hence, home-based care and communities participating in health matters are considered to be substantial as home care focuses primarily on palliative care of the patient at home, with the support of the family and the immediate community. Consequently, it is hoped that this research will prove significant and will enhance the existing knowledge of the potential benefits of home-based care as an alternative strategy to institutional care.

This dissertation examines the relationship between community colleges and prisons as similar institutions that absorb and manage displaced workers, economic refugees, and dispossessed adult populations. Based on interviews with adult learners in two community college settings, I discuss how these two seemingly distinctive institutions work together to subvert individual and collective desires for self-determination through policies and pedagogies that institutionalize discouragement and emotional management. Specifically, I am concerned with what it means for working-class adults to participate in higher education in the context of precarity and incarceration-literally and figuratively. Drawing from the growing field of scholarship that underscores the consolidation of practices and interdependency between academia and incarceration (Chatterjee, Davis, 2003, 2005, Meiners, 2007, Sojoyner 2016), the contexts I have chosen for this project are two institutions where students gather each week to participate in the project of higher education. Carrying past and present traumas related to schooling, many participants viewed community college as the one remaining institution deigned to help them remake their lives. This study asks how participants made sense of their lives, choices, and sacrifices to participate in higher education and how these factors structure their expectations of what college might provide them. Utilizing critical race theory, this dissertation offers a theoretical framework pedagogy of repair, which I define as the interpretive structures and stories used by non-traditional students to make sense of their past and potential futures amidst the normative neoliberal structures of precarious labor, vulnerability, social abandonment and debt.

A dissertação de mestrado a ser apresentada tem como foco a experiência da devoção a Nossa Senhora Aparecida. Desta maneira, desde 2010, faço trabalho de campo em Aparecida do Norte, cidade do interior de São Paulo, junto aos devotos de vários lugares do país, acompanhando a forma como se relacionam com a Santa Aparecida, fazendo promessas, romarias. Assim, dividi minha dissertação em duas partes, que são, porém, interligadas. Na primeira parte, faço uma etnografia de uma romaria à pé (100km) de São José dos Campos (SP) até Aparecida, à qual acompanhei. A segunda parte trata da circulação de objetos e palavras de devoção, estes que possuem agência e transformam mundos e curam pessoas. Em Ensaio sobre a promessa tenho como autores clássicos norteadores Walter Benjamin, Victor Turner, Marcel Mauss. Tento entender a promessa muito além de uma forma direta da fórmula: dar, receber e retribuir. Ou seja, faço reflexões que me fazem pensar que entre estes verbos e ações transformadores, existem piscadelas, detalhes, mosaicos e muitas quinquilharias e inúmeras miudezas de coisas, sendo assim, foi preciso atentar para as fendas, os interstícios, os pontos crepusculares. Portanto, volto o olhar para a promessa enquanto circulação, movimento, passagem e espera. A promessa ou a graça não constituem um fim em si, o que mais me absorveu em campo foram os redemoinhos, os caminhos e os movimentos e toda a circulação de devotos, objetos, sacrifícios e palavras de fé. A circulação é o próprio motor da promessa, esta que só se estabelece na medida em que existem relações de intimidade entre Nossa Senhora Aparecida e seus devotos. Dessa forma, minha dissertação trata da experiência da devoção, da experiência do sensível, contando com muitas fotografias, músicas, contadores de histórias, amigos e estrada, pois a passagem e a estrada é o percurso mais longo, porém, mais certeiro para os que caminham com fé. E foi na estrada que eu comecei a vislumbrar que terríveis bons-espíritos me protegem, que eu quase nada não sei. Mas desconfio de muita coisa. Mas que fique claro, esta é uma etnografia, e que eu creio e não creio. Tem coisa e cousa... (Citações de João Guimarães Rosa, Grande Sertão Veredas, Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2001). / The research to be presented focuses on the experience of devotion to Nossa Senhora Aparecida. Thus, since 2010, I do fieldwork in Aparecida do Norte, a city in São Paulo, with devotees from many places in the country, watching how they make relation with Santa Aparecida, making promises, pilgrimages. So, I divided my research into two parts, which are, however, interrelated. In the first part: an ethnography of a pilgrimage on foot (100km) from São José dos Campos until Aparecida which I followed. The second part deals with the movement of objects and words of devotion that have agency and transform worlds and heal people. In \"Essay on the promise\", I have Walter Benjamin, Victor Turner, Marcel Mauss like the guiding classical authors. I try to understand the promise far beyond a direct way of the formula: give, receive and give back.\" It means that I do reflections which make me think that between these transformers verbs and actions, there are winks, details, mosaics and many trinkets and numerous offal of things, so it was need to look for cracks, interstices, twilight points. So, I return my gaze to the promise while circulation, movement, passing and waiting. The promise or grace do not consist in an end in itself, what most absorbed me in the field were swirls, paths and movements and all circulations of devotees, objects, words of faith and sacrifice. The movement is the engine of promise, which only is established the extent that there are intimate relationships between Nossa Senhora Aparecida and his devotees. Thus, my work is about the experience of devotion, sensitive experience, with many photographs, music, storytellers, friends and the road, because the road crossing and the route is longer but more accurate for those who walk with faith. And it was on the road I started to envision what \"terrible good-spirits protect me\", \"I do not know almost nothing. But I suspect a lot\". But, be warned, this is an ethnography, and I \"believe and do not believe. Has thing and thing...\" (João Guimarães Rosa, \"Grande Sertão: Veredas\", Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2001).

Through the 1930s, an American woman suffering a broken engagement had the opportunity to sue her erstwhile suitor for breach of promise to marry. Relying on cultural and legal materials, my dissertation uses this now-obsolete cause of action as a lens through which to examine both shifting norms of gender and class during the period from 1890 to 1940 and the means by which Americans expected legal mechanisms to simultaneously shape and respond to socio-cultural changes.

<p> <p> </p></p><p> </p><p>Did the mass media report in a different way about the real estate tax before the Swedish national election 2006 than they did after the election? If there were differences, what could be the cause?</p><p>This study aims to answer these questions by using a quantitative analysis of articles about the real estate tax published in the Dagens Nyheter (DN), the biggest morning daily.</p><p> </p><p>The summer before the election, the ‘Alliance’, (the non-socialist coalition, launched an election promise to abolish the real estate tax. Instead they planned to introduce a low community charge.The Alliance won the election and formed a government to implement their election promise.</p><p> </p><p>The analysis was made on all the published articles in DN that covered the real estate tax issue. In total there were 43 such articles. These where all published between the launch of the campaign promise until the electionday and a month before the proposal was launched 19/9 2007, until the proposal was implemented in 2008.</p><p> </p><p>The study results in three interesting conclusions. After the election, when the election promise was about to become political reality, DN reported more negatively about this specific issue. The genre of the articles varied heavily before and after the election. Before the election more news articles where published than after the election and the letters-to-the-editor about the real estate tax were published almost only before the election. This study also treats the intresting phenomenon that the Alliance, before the election, had the power to define their election promise but after the election they seem to have lost this power and instead the real estate tax question was defined by the media. The Alliance claimed that they would  ”abolish the real estate tax and introduce a low community charge” and DN used this definition in their newspaper. After the election, DN reported about the election as a new real estate tax, which is a very different thing.</p>

Customer demand fulfillment is the business process within a company that determines how the customer demand is fulfilled. A rush order is the last minute customer order after the production plan of a company has been concluded. For these rush orders, appropriate and reasonable response is imperative as it could put strain on customer relationship and services. A good and positive response could help the company to build and retain its market share in today’s highly competitive markets. A model aims at decreasing the product inventory cost is proposed in this paper. In this model, the prioritized fulfillment sequence of rush customer demands can be searched in terms of the product inventory cost. The paper focuses on two main issues: the available-to-promise (ATP) based fulfillment ability and the prioritized fulfillment of customer demands. For ATP based fulfillment, a dynamic bill-of-material (BOM) is proposed to handle the complicated issues of BOM, BOM explosion and production capacity. By means of dynamic BOM, material availability as well as production capacity can be taken into consideration simultaneously and efficiently. Two methods, mathematical optimization and heuristic algorithm, are constructed and elaborated on in the second issue. The proposed model allows companies to prioritize customer rush orders in terms of product inventory cost. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

The service sector’s constant growth is followed by an increasing competition among service companies. Followed by this, the process of internal branding has become essential within the service brand building process, i.e. aligning the service company’s brand promise with employees’ behavior. Hence, customer- facing employees within the service organization have become a valuable and competitive asset as they manage to deliver the brand promise. A literature review showed that understanding the brand promise and brand commitment are two essential drivers of internal branding. An implicit and positive relationship between those two issues was presented. Absence of empirical studies regarding this relationship was revealed. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between employees’ understanding of the brand and their brand commitment. The purpose motivated a hypothesis; employees understanding of the brand promise are positively associated with their brand commitment. The results are based on a quantitative survey conducted among customer- facing employees within the Swedish bank industry. The analysis is both founded in the discussion of the conceptual literature and the similar completed empirical study that was found within the research area. The findings of this research supported this thesis’ hypothesis. The relationship between bank customer- facing employees’ understanding of the brand promise and their brand commitment is shown to be positive and fairly strong. Almost two fifths of brand commitment can be explained by the understanding issue. However, it shows a need for further research in identifying more factors influencing employees’ commitment towards the brand.