Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / Within the discourse of community development, the expression 'capacity development' stands out. Its common usage has somehow rendered it almost insignificant given the fact that those who use it tend to think of it in ways that hardly can be considered as having singular meaning. To be precise, there is no consensus as to its meanings; yet, it has not stopped its usage. The implication is that capacity development as a concept remains complex and has the tendency to erect difficulty in the attempt to operationalize it and apply it in evaluating development initiatives. However, this study presents an operational definition of capacity development in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria; levels of capacity development as well as dimensions used to evaluate on-going development projects/ policies in the region. The research method used to gather data was mixed. Quantitative method was more convenient due to the topography of the study area. However, qualitative method was introduced and utilized to guarantee the validity, authenticity and reliability of data collected. Mapping and an observation of government agencies/ organizations involved in capacity development in the study area (the Niger Delta region, by extension); questionnaires that spoke of practices supportive of capacity development in the region as well as resources available to Southern Ijaw LGA for capacity development; focused group discussions and in depth interviews that drew attention to factors affecting capacity development at all levels; individual, institutional and societal etc. these tools were means that efficiently helped in assessing the extent to which capacity development has been operationalized in post conflict Niger delta.

Thesis (M MSc (Clinical Psychology))--University of Limpopo,2010. / The phenomenon of trauma from violent crime is deeply rooted within the South African community (Human Rights Watch, 2008). Various studies has researched the resulting post-traumatic stress reaction (PTSR) of the trauma victim, with far-reaching implications for an understanding of the emotional, cognitive, physiological, and social level of functioning of the victim (Edwards, 2005). Punctuating from the general systems theory, however, it is clear that the trauma victim does not function in isolation, but forms part of certain circular patterns of interaction within a family system. Change in one part of this system will induce change in the system as a whole (Becvar & Becvar, 2006). The aim of this research project was to move away from exclusively focusing on the trauma victim and to investigate the effects, if any, on the whole family system if one of its members experienced a PTSR. Data was collected from qualitative interviews with a family member of each trauma victim, someone who had not directly experienced the traumatic incident. The data was transcribed verbatim and analysed, in accordance with qualitative methodology by three independent, systemically trained clinicians. The findings indicate that there is a significant effect on the whole family system, and that all the members of this system experience some form of PTSR as a secondary traumatic experience. The ability of the system to cope effectively with this environmental demand is based largely on the effectiveness of its patterns of communication. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the phenomenon of trauma, trauma prevention and intervention strategies.

A post-conflict society tends to get locked in a history war. As the practice of history in its broad sense is a moral craft, representations of guilt and victimhood prevail in social memory. The representations are often bolstered by mythical references, wherefore deconstruction of myths is expected from history education for the purposes of post-conflict reconciliation. This article deals with the post-conflict uses of history in Finland, South Africa and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The three cases constitute examples of a class war, a race conflict and an ethno-religious armed clash. The memory politics and history curricula differ between the cases. Their comparison indicates, how far an imposition of one ´truth´, a dialogue of two ´truths´ and segregation of different memory communities are feasible strategies of post-conflict history education. The article suggests that history lessons can be an asset instead of a liability in the pursuit of reconciliation.

This dissertation means to examine Faulkner¡¦s Depression-Era fiction as a post-traumatic syndrome pervasive in the Southern psyche. I read Faulkner from a cultural triangulation of race, class, and gender in Yoknapatawpha. These triangular coordinates often close in on somewhere on the far horizon, in their relations with the Civil War and its aftermath. That is the way history insinuates herself into Faulkner¡¦s art. Opening with a chapter on The Sound and the Fury, I contend that the novel sets an eschatological scene for my investigation of its relation with the bulk of Faulkner¡¦s writing throughout the ¡¦30s. The Compsons¡¦ apocalyptic ¡§now,¡¨ 1929, is thoroughly checked for its temporal entanglement with the Confederate memories. How Faulkner¡¦s Great Depression contemporaneity laments over the Lost Cause gives us a topological context where the Confederate vestiges pop out at every corner. In Chapter two, I will slash vertically into white ideology for another visage of the white South¡¦s trauma¡Xa class-aware orchestration of monologues in the apocalyptical ¡§now.¡¨ Who lies dying is a self-consuming question among the Bundrens. This is where Faulkner comes closest to the socio-economic issue in the 30s. In the analysis of As I Lay Dying, I will engage with Diaspora theories of cultural displacement, along with a Marxist elucidation of ¡§structure of feeling¡¨ to fully denote the submerged living standards of the poor whites in the Depression Era. As for the third chapter, I will engage with the places in which the white Southern subjectivity itches¡Xrace and racism, and the dominant Yankee influence embodied by the Carpetbagger offspring Joanna Burden¡¦s unsuccessful taming of an ¡§interpellated¡¨ mulatto, Joe Christmas. The Diasporic depths in Faulkner¡¦s oeuvre carries on with all the cultural and identitarian others coming into the South to challenge the white supremacist in Light in August. Joe Christmas¡¦s wandering is not so much a victimization of racism, as he is a chameleon in identity relations inserted in a fanatical, politicized South¡Xa praxis around which different identities cite their own traumas. Moving from a vicarious way to retell the stories in a time of loss and upheaval, the fourth chapter touches the per se of the South¡¦s historical trauma, the defeat in the Civil War and its aftermath. I investigate two variants in the South¡¦s collective reproduction of this traumatic origin: Absalom, Absalom! with its gothic chronotope that runs parallel with the progressive modernity, i.e., the milieu of Quentin¡¦s apocalypse now; The Unvanquished with a deconstructive lens to look at the southern cavalier fatherhood, namely, Bayard Sartoris¡¦ rejection to avenge his father in its ¡§An Odor of Verbena.¡¨ The former rejects Anderson¡¦s ¡§homogeneous empty time¡¨ and the latter bids farewells to the Cavalier past by an overdose of romanticism and then an abrupt reversal at the apogee of the romantic vision. Concentrating on a self-therapeutic outlook on Faulkner and his South, I trace a symbolic economy of ¡§working through¡¨ in which Faulkner rehearses the Southern history by multiple overexposures of its trauma. It is also a project to tie Faulkner¡¦s own identity formation to a process of victimization in relation to these memories: his southern diasporic self in the 30s against the capitalistic centers of an intellectual New York and a commercial Hollywood. Faulkner embeds a humiliation in either vision. He is an epitome of the South¡¦s memories of loss and its concomitant pain.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes special report study entitled: Accessibility in Tsimshatsui/Hunghom District. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-57).

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-85).

Diss. Univ. Bern, 1982.

Thesis (M.Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes special report study entitled : Accessibility in Tsimshatsui/Hunghom District. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

This thesis explores the ability of poetry to articulate political critique in Post-Apartheid South Africa. The aim of the project is to evaluate the extent to which poetry provides criticism of a contemporary political climate marked by government corruption, rising social inequality and widespread immiseration. I argue that both ‘poetry’ and ‘post-Apartheid’ are developing and contested concepts that acquire meaning in concrete circumstances and continue to take on fresh resonance in South Africa today. I contend that poetry does not passively reflect historical circumstances nor docilely take its place in a post-Apartheid political climate. Instead, it actively engages with the milieu within which it finds itself and contributes in a meaningful way to our understanding of what the post-Apartheid era actually means. My study focuses on six poets who represent the innovative and politically charged character of post-Apartheid poetry. The writers I choose to examine are Ari Sitas, Seitlhamo Motsapi, Lesego Rampolokeng, Mxolisi Nyezwa, Vonani Bila, and Angifi Dladla. All of these poets lived through Apartheid and were young, or of middle age, at the dawn of liberation. Eager and able citizens willing to build a new democracy, these artists have been bitterly disappointed by the African National Congress’s abandonment of South Africa’s black majority. The poets in question have set about bearing witness to unrelenting social ills through drawing upon the dynamism of poetry in order to rejuvenate public language, dialogue and debate. Confronted with the over-simplification of information in an epoch of late-capitalism, the poets in this thesis seek to revitalise language, through innovative use of form, in order to fashion new perceptions of the world in which they live. All of the writers in this thesis have been involved in politics or activism and make a point of incorporating these real world experiences into their work. Thus, Sitas invokes worker chants from his time spent in Durban’s labour movement and Dladla remains fascinated by the Gauteng prisons where he has taught creative writing. The poetry I examine is moulded by the active public life of its writers and in turn seeks to participate in a wider world. In this line of thought, many of these poets have started their own literary journals and publishing initiatives, often with strong ties to social justice movements and grass-roots communities. Here, one can mention Nyezwa’s development of the English/isiXhosa multicultural arts journal Kotaz in the Eastern Cape and Bila’s Timbila publishing in the Limpopo province. Through autonomous methods of poetic production and distribution, poets are able to create spaces in which non-commercial and potentially revolutionary art can be heard. My doctorate spotlights the artistic and political victories of a pioneering group of poets, who are little known both locally and abroad. My research underscores the politically critical qualities of poetic form and thus has resonance beyond a narrowly South African context. Indeed, I believe my PhD can contribute in a valuable way to debates pertaining to the social relevance of poetry in the world today.