The past 20 years have seen a growing interest amongst researchers into indirect forms of aggression and bullying. The evidence suggests that covert forms of aggression are largely used by adolescent girls as a means of inflicting harm on another and that the effects of such interactions can be detrimental to the individual's psychological and emotional well-being. This study aims to explore the social experiences of four adolescent girls, with particular reference to indirect aggression practices that they may have encountered. Data was collected in the form of unstructured interviews, which were conducted with each participant separately. Prominent themes were then identified and explored by the researcher. This was done from a systemic epistemological stance within the post-modern paradigm. A qualitative methodological design was followed allowing for the personal experiences and meaning attributions of each participant to come to the fore. The study's results were presented in the form of descriptive text with particular reference to the systemic processes that came to the fore. Overall, the study explicated the unique experiences of four adolescent girls with indirect aggression and how these experiences are interwoven with systemic processes that take place in social groups. / Psychology / M. A. (Clinical Psychology)

This study proposes a beyond modernist conceptual model for businesses' social engagement to address social development through public relations. This model is based on the premises that social thinking shifted towards beyond modernist thinking, that the same shift is evident in social development and that businesses' social engagement to address social development through public relations should be aligned with this shift in social thinking and in social development. The social shift towards beyond modernist thinking means that it is assumed that people are interdependent on one another for their future survival on earth, and that people and nature are, in the same way, interdependent. Accepting interdependency implies acceptance of 'multiplicity' and 'reciprocity'. This leads society to increasingly expect that businesses should be socially engaged. In developing countries this implies social development. This shift in society towards beyond modernist thinking is echoed in social development discourse: through an an equal-status relationship between benefactor and beneficiary beyond modernist social development enables members of a developing community to develop themselves. These shifts in social thinking and in the field of social development, has not matured to the same extent in the practice and theory of businesses' social engagement to address social development through public relations. The conceptual model proposed in this study addresses this concern. The proposed conceptual model formalises this shift in thinking on a theoretical/conceptual level, which indicates an ecological business-society relationship where the business regards itself as being part of society, where public relations should have a social orientation and where the businesses' social engagement through public relations should be directed towards the improvement of society. Based on this model, guidelines towards the practice of businesses' social engagement to address social development through public relations are deduced / Communication Science / D.Litt. et Phil. (Communication Science)

The dissertation for my PhD is a composite novel called We Are Everyone You Know. The novel is set in a small town that is neither rural nor suburban, which, like the characters, defies classification. The cast rotates. Main characters become supporting characters in subsequent chapters and vice versa. I employ this strategy so the reader is able to see each character as an individual, that even those who seem to be in the background are living complex lives. The novel explores such themes as poverty, gentrification, the loss of innocence caused by a corrupt world, and the inability of people to realize their identities when the promises of youth turn out to be lies. Each chapter or story is told from either a different point of view or in a different style or genre. While the novel as a whole is grounded around a family and group of friends in a small town, the pieces of the story range in form from simple realism, to modernism, to post-modernism, to surrealism, to meta-fiction. I experiment with genres ranging from crime drama, to disaster survival, to sports comedy, to kung-fu epic, and more. Interspersed between the genre pieces are realist stories of a new lost generation—thirty-somethings who are stuck in permanent adolescence, who work at soul-crushing jobs, and who find neither the shining future that was promised to them in their youth nor the comfortable mediocrity of their parents’ lives. For this project I have been particularly inspired by the works of Louise Erdrich, James Joyce, and Jennifer Egan.

O presente trabalho se propõe a traçar um retrato da linguagem estética e instrumental do compositor e violonista Sérgio Assad (1952). Tal investigação será feita através da contextualização de sua produção através de um relato bibliográfico, da análise de umas de suas obras mais representativas, Aquarelle, escrita para violão solo com um comentário sobre o restante da sua produção. Visto que o compositor pesquisado ainda se encontra em atividade e possui uma vasta produção de música de câmara e como arranjador, este trabalho se propõe a delimitar o escopo à suas composições originais para violão solo. / This work has the objective of researching the instrumental and aesthetic language of guitarist composer Sérgio Assad (1952). Such investigation will be conducted through a biographical portrait of the composer, an analysis of one of his most important works, Aquarelle, for solo guitar and a commentary about his works for the instrument. Knowing that the composer is still active and has a large body of chamber music and arrangements, this work will focus on his production of original compositions for solo guitar.

Esta tese propõe o estudo dos temas da memória, do nacional e do universal em dois romances brasileiros contemporâneos, O Sol se põe em São Paulo (2007), de Bernardo Carvalho e Diário da queda (2011), de Michel Laub. Estes romances abordam a memória de imigrantes pela narração subjetiva de seus descendentes brasileiros, o que suscita uma discussão em torno de narrativas transculturais. O pós-modernismo é entendido como tendência cultural contraditória, caracterizada pela presença do passado na retomada de estilos e textos da tradição literária em narrativas paródicas. O narrador pós-moderno encerra o paradoxo da exigência de narração, a despeito da deterioração da experiência observada desde a modernidade. A persistência de um realismo formal ou social contribui para a composição de narrativas onde convivem tendências conflitantes, sintetizadas nos conceitos de realismo afetivo e realismo traumático, conforme Schøllhammer (2012; 2013). A ambientação dos dois romances, seus temas e influências, sugerem uma produção de projeção universal, contrabalançada pela permanência do nacional do ponto de vista material, que se constitui pela representação de aspectos relacionados ao subdesenvolvimento brasileiro. Este contexto particular demanda a concepção de um pós-modernismo e de uma pós-modernidade a partir das condições peculiares existentes nas sociedades latino-americanas, cuja coexistência entre atraso e progresso influencia sua produção literária e afeta sua legitimação no interior de um sistema literário mundial. / This dissertation aims to study the themes of memory, nationality and universality in two contemporary brazilian novels, O Sol se põe em São Paulo (2007), by Bernardo Carvalho, and Diário da queda (2011), by Michel Laub. These novels approach the memory of immigrants through the subjective narration of Brazilian descendants, what brings the discussion around transcultural narratives. The post-modernism is understood as a contradictory cultural tendency characterized by the presence of the past, made of the recovery of aesthetics and texts of literary tradition inside parodic narratives. The post-modern narrator enclosures the paradox of the necessity of narrative, even after the deterioration of experience in modernity. The remains of a formal or social realism contributes to the composition of narratives where conflicting tendencies defined in terms of affective realism and traumatic realism coexist, according to Schøllhammer (2012; 2013). Ambiance, themes and influences acknowledged in these two novels suggest a production oriented to a universalist approach, in contrast with the permanence of aspects of nationality, perceived through its material representation related to the brazilian underdevelopment. This particular context demands the conception of a post-modernism and a post-modernity that contemplates the peculiarities of Latin American societies, whose coexistence between backwardness and advancement may affect literary production as well as its legitimation inside a world literary system.

O presente trabalho se propõe a traçar um retrato da linguagem estética e instrumental do compositor e violonista Sérgio Assad (1952). Tal investigação será feita através da contextualização de sua produção através de um relato bibliográfico, da análise de umas de suas obras mais representativas, Aquarelle, escrita para violão solo com um comentário sobre o restante da sua produção. Visto que o compositor pesquisado ainda se encontra em atividade e possui uma vasta produção de música de câmara e como arranjador, este trabalho se propõe a delimitar o escopo à suas composições originais para violão solo. / This work has the objective of researching the instrumental and aesthetic language of guitarist composer Sérgio Assad (1952). Such investigation will be conducted through a biographical portrait of the composer, an analysis of one of his most important works, Aquarelle, for solo guitar and a commentary about his works for the instrument. Knowing that the composer is still active and has a large body of chamber music and arrangements, this work will focus on his production of original compositions for solo guitar.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:48:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Vitor Augusto Andrade Albiero.pdf: 857839 bytes, checksum: c0e25238fa968155fb8e8ec30b5b6310 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-02-24 / Francis Schaeffer is considered by many one of the greatest Christians of the 20th century. Upset by the divorce between nature and grace provoked by the preeminence of irrationality contained in contemporary thought, the author encounters the decline and lack of hope that imprint the modern man regarding the concept of objective and universal truth. In defiance of this very declaration, Francis Schaeffer tries to rescue the balance that should involve the elements in the relation faith and reason without, however, inclining towards rationalisms nor even, on the other hand, toward a religious existentialism. Verifying the crisis and dilemma in which the modern man finds himself in philosophy, arts, general culture and theology, engendered by the respective abandonment of universal concepts and by the adoption of a post-modern perspective of a fragmented reality, Francis Schaeffer proposes a confrontation of this crisis from an epistemic source found only in the Sacred Scriptures. Herewith, the objective of this research is to demonstrate that the author tries to compose his proposed solution exclusively aligned with the Biblical Christianity, keeping in mind the influence that he received from the presupposition and principles of the reformed thought. Thus, one tries to identify how Francis Schaeffer applies the reformed view regarding the unified field of knowledge in his diagnosis and proposal for confronting the paradigm crisis, to the point of claiming the inexistence of the epistemological crisis for the reformers, as well as for the biblical. Nonetheless, in order to solve the actual epistemological crisis in which the modern man finds himself, the author highlights the vital and imperious importance regarding the epistemic response emerging from the reformed concept of Biblical Revelation, which ends up, wherefore, offering an answer equally metaphysical and moral, also necessary for dissolving the paradigm crisis. / Francis Schaeffer é considerados por muitos um dos maiores cristãos do século XX. Contrariado com o divórcio entre a natureza e a graça , provocado pela preeminência da irracionalidade que envolve o pensamento contemporâneo, o autor se depara com o declínio e a desesperança que marcam o homem moderno quanto ao conceito de verdade objetiva e universal. Em oposição a esta constatação própria, Francis Schaeffer busca resgatar o equilíbrio que deve envolver os elementos da relação fé e razão sem, contudo, inclinar-se para o racionalismo ou, por outro lado, polarizar-se para o existencialismo religioso. Ao constatar a crise e dilema em que o homem moderno se encontra nas áreas da filosofia, artes, cultura geral, e teologia, gerados pelo abandono do conceito de universais e pela adoção da perspectiva pós-moderna da realidade fragmentada, Francis Schaeffer propõe o enfrentamento desta crise a partir da fonte epistêmica encontrada somente nas Escrituras Sagradas. Deste modo, é objetivo desta pesquisa demonstrar que o autor compõe sua proposta de solução exclusivamente pautada no Cristianismo Bíblico tendo em vista a influência que recebeu dos pressupostos e princípios do pensamento reformado. Assim, busca-se identificar como Francis Schaeffer aplica a visão reformada acerca do campo unificado do conhecimento em seu diagnóstico e proposta de enfrentamento da crise de paradigmas, a ponto de afirmar a inexistência da crise epistemológica para os reformadores, bem como para os cristãos bíblicos. Todavia, a fim de solucionar a atual tensão epistemológica em que o homem moderno se encontra, o autor ressalta a importância imprescindível e imperiosa quanto à resposta epistêmica partir do conceito reformado de Revelação Bíblica, o que acaba, por conseguinte, fornecendo igualmente a resposta metafísica e moral, também necessárias para o esvanecendo da crise de paradigmas.

This is a thesis presented on the position of the distance education student at a distance education university in the present era. Traditionally, the distance education student has been a sort of Cinderella: marginalised, being constructed as some form of lesser version of the on campus one. A largely invisible part of the higher education system in Australia since 1911, the distance education student has really only come to be foregrounded in university education discourses from 1983 onwards. It was not until then that the distance education student emerged from ‘hidden pools’ identified by Karmel (1975), and since then the construction of this student has undergone a number of modifications, mapped in this thesis. At the same time university education itself has undergone a series of modifications, not least of which has been its taking on mercantilist overtones as investments made by students in their own careers and professional development. The modifications, also mapped in this thesis, have progressed to the stage where the construction of the old distance education student is now one of a flexible learner in a mercantilist system of university education. The notion of distance education and the distance education student has undergone significant shifts, redefinitions and constructions, which are tracked in this thesis. My research has focussed on a number of pertinent questions, based on a study of Deakin University and its practice since its establishment. The thesis draws on a number of works which have been informed by those of Foucault, and I have framed my research questions accordingly. I have asked why and how Deakin University came into being as a distance education provider at tertiary level. What were the conditions of its establishment and progression in relation to the political events, economic practices and communication technology in use over time? To consider such questions, I needed to analyse the changes that I had seen occurring in the context of wider restructurings in university education. These had occurred in the context of government forging a closer interconnectedness between education and national economic aims and objectives at the same time as it demanded greater productivity in the face of commercial and industrial sector pushes for applied knowledge. Poststructuralist philosophical developments offer tools to explore not only questions of power, but the practical outcomes of questions of power, and how the complicity of individuals is established. This thesis explores ways in which such considerations helped to shape the changing constructions of the distance education student from a marginalised, disadvantaged and under-represented participant in higher education to a privileged, well catered for and advantaged learner. These same considerations are used to explore ways in which they have helped to shape university distance education courses from a perceived second-rate form of higher education to a prototype that better captures the essential elements of learning for what has been styled in a postmodern world as the Information Age. Overlaid on these considerations is a changing view of the economics of such provision of higher education. It is anticipated that this thesis will contribute to developing new understandings of the construction of subjectivities in relation to the distance education university student specifically, and to the university student generally, in the postmodern world. The implications of this examination are not inconsiderable for students and academics in a self-styled Information Society.

In Toni Morrison’s Jazz and Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter, extreme opposition is prevalent as the authors describe the makeup of each character, as well as the setting and plot in these novels. What are they accomplishing by portraying such opposition? By using Jacque Derrida’s deconstructive theory and Julia Kristeva’s definition of abjection as theoretical guides to navigate these novels, examples of how both authors use extreme opposition in each element of their works are cited and explored. Through this process, the realization that opposing extremes can harmoniously lie side by side and have as many similarities as differences is discovered. By the conclusion, the unifying quality that love plays in both novels, as well as the authors’ intents to change their readers traditional concept of love, is evident.

The road to becoming an artist is paved with much confusion as we try to mold our brains into understanding abstract concepts and ideas. I became fascinated with how people perceive art, in particular, southern males that have no previous knowledge of art history or desire to learn. I contemplated long and hard about this and asked myself the question, “What if they did want to understand art?” The only difference between my brethren and I is this desire to pursue this seemingly foreign world. By creating an imaginary world and culture based on my own southern upbringing I have created a series of figurative paintings exploring various contemporary art themes in an effort to clarify my own understanding of the two worlds I am closest to and how they may or may not be related.