Master thesis "The Crisis of French concept of laïcité" ponders the current status of laïcité in the atmosphere of contemporary France. General feeling in French society is characterized by a negative attitude of ethnic Frenchmen towards the growing presence of Islam which is accentuated by growing Muslim's demands in economic and social fields. Main goal of this thesis is to prove that the contemporary state of the concept of laïcité can be perceived as a crisis which comes through the differences between perceptions of principles based on laïcité. This notion will be proved on the basis of the theory of social constructionism complemented by the two-way-protection theory which deals with relations between state and churches. The hypothesis anticipates that Muslims, Catholics, Non- believers and even the State are using principles of laïcité depending on actual situation and impact of different actors and in order to ensure their own interests. Thereby they create the concept laïcité as a social construct. The main field in which the thesis proves this hypothesis is the French school system which is crucial for forming and maintaining the Republic and its values. The hypothesis is argued by several concrete examples such as several legislative measures adopted by the French state, for instance the...

Unemployed young people as a target population in public policy Abstract Due to recent economic crisis young people up to age of 25 became one of the most endangered groups on the labour market. Disadvantaged position of young people is caused largely by inadequate structure of their qualification, lack of work experiences and work skills or unreal perception of work conditions. According to their position on labour market experts also emphasize negative effects of long-term unemployment on youth including not creating of work habits, loss of motivation to find a job and growing passivity. Unemployed young people became an important target group of public policy. The thesis works with the theory of social construction of target populations to explain policy process towards unemployed youth. It identifies existing social constructions of unemployed young people from perspective of key actors of unemployment policy. It also tries to explain how these constructions affect unemployment policy towards young people and what other factors have influence on its shape.

Tremendously popular in American society, the breast cancer movement functions through a rhetoric of risk to persuade women to monitor their breasts and thus medicalize their bodies. The vast majority of breast cancer literature available is specifically aimed at women with breast cancer, while the research here examines the way the breast cancer literature actually includes women without breast cancer in its audience, expecting these women to see breast cancer as an eventual experience. The rhetoric of risk focuses on lifestyle choices, the body, genes, and the environment in order to encourage women to engage in body projects to prevent breast cancer. The attention to risk factors without reliable facts produces fear of the body. Prevention of breast cancer, really impossible, becomes synonymous with early detection, thus displacing responsibility for the disease from society to the individual. Through the rhetoric of risk, the breast cancer movement promotes the ideology of femininity by manipulating women to become complicit subjects in their subordination. Furthermore, the directives, as yet unproven, to prevent breast cancer are the same directives to attain the white heterosexist ideal of beauty. The woman is thus reinscribed into the traditional feminine role of caretaker (of her body) and femininity is not only preserved but produced despite a disease that physically threatens a woman's most visible marker of her femininity, the breast. / Master of Arts

This study focuses on how gambling disorder is a part of the investigation at the social office. Gambling disorder is a part of Socialtjänstlagen. This new law came into effect 1/1-2018. The purpose of this study is to examine how the economic aid, in the social office, works with gambling disorder. The study was made from a qualitative approach and was conducted through semi-structured interviews, the results of which were consequently analyzed by using a theory about social constructionism and social construction. The results indicated that there were some problems in how to ask questions about gaming disorder when meeting with the clients. The study also showed that the investigation are suppose to include the child perspective, but not to which extend this investigation should be made. This study shows the importance of knowledge and understanding in how to help clients with a gambling disorder. The study also shows that social workers might not have enough qualification to investigate gambling disorder among their clients.

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This study is focused on the relationship between mothers and their daughters, and the ways in which this relationship serves as a critical site from which black women (specifically from rural Venda area in Northern South Africa) construct their identities. Within the broad framework of qualitative research, this investigation employs a hybrid theoretical model rooted in black feminist epistemology incorporating standpoint feminism, feminist social constructionism, and intersectionality theory. The study draws on 18 interviews with mothers and daughters aged between 35-55 and 18-25 respectively. Using thematic narrative analysis, various themes, i.e. perceptions of femininity, intersectional nodes of femininity, and tensions between normative and counter normative constructions of femininity are explored to showcase shifts and changes in gendered narratives of femininity. The research finds that the multiple and varied ways in which identity is constructed is a complex relational process mediated by various social factors such as class, gender and location; and are consistent with the traditional conception of women as respectful, resilient, „silent‟, and nurturing. Furthermore, findings showed that most mothers played an active role in enforcing patriarchal ideologies of femininity, whereas most daughters actively challenged traditional conceptions of femininity to construct an empowered sense of femininity drawing from their mother‟s own lived experiences. The study further illustrates that the critical triangle of the self, motherhood and social location is a messy one that demands complex and dynamic understanding. This highlighted the need to use socio-cultural and socio-economic frameworks to investigate the multi-layered, complex process of femininity construction for women in rural areas, and how mothers and daughters in interaction with each other can become agents of social change in relation to gender relations. / Dissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development / Sociology / MSocSci / Unrestricted

Masters of Art / The rapid increase in urbanisation and tourism in the Cape Peninsula has increased the rate of human-wildlife interaction. The Cape Peninsula is unique in terms of placing urban areas next to protected natural areas with no physical barriers, thus allowing animals, especially baboons, to travel between the two areas, occasionally leading to conflict between humans and wildlife. Visitors to popular tourist sites may also actively participate in feeding baboons or through negligence by leaving food items in the open. As a result, changing the habits of the baboons as human food and food waste are seen as the preferred option in terms of dietary habits. The main aim of this study was to investigate the perceptions and social construction of visitors in the Cape Peninsula towards baboons at tourist sites. Social constructionist theory was used as the theoretical framework for the study, which looks at the way people perceive nature and wildlife, which is unique to each person. The study uses an exploratory sequential mixed methods design, with a qualitative section that includes three semi-structured interviews, followed by a quantitative section consisting of a questionnaire survey, with 201 questionnaires being completed. The survey was conducted at key tourist sites around the Cape Peninsula that are well known for baboon sightings, including Bordjiesrif Picnic Site, Buffels Bay viewpoint, Cape of Good Hope/Cape Point and Dias Beach. The study used discourse analyses and the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to analyse the data, which allowed for ideas to be labelled and linked to opinions in the literature, and patterns identified during the data collection. Visitors viewed tourism spaces as anthropocentric areas, and thus perceived baboon-visitor interactions through conditional acceptance. Visitor perceptions and social construction of baboon-visitor interactions may be positive when conditional acceptance is adhered to, and negative when conditional acceptance is broken. Recommendations for further research includes more research on non-consumptive tourism activities and its impact on human-wildlife interactions, with a need for more literature on the influence of education on people’s attitudes towards wildlife, and finally, more research that focuses on the changing behavioural ecology of baboons, due to an increase in tourism/visitation.

Sexual violence has been a highly prevalent problem on university campuses in the United States for decades. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 banned sex-based discrimination in schools, which was, years later, understood to include sexual violence. As with any law, decades of the building of social meaning around the law's scope and meaning ensued. Sociologists generally argue that organizations do the bare minimum to meet social meanings of “compliance” with law, and prioritize social appearances over meeting the goal of the law. Here I test that assertion in looking at how universities have responded to a specific portion of Title IX law. Since 1975 schools must designate at least one employee to handle Title IX compliance. Here I investigate how universities have responded to this mandate via an online survey I conducted of 400 Title IX employees in 2019. I achieved an institutional response rate of 33%.I first present a description of the structure of Title IX employee designation, finding that universities have many Title IX employees, and not merely one as seems to have been an operating assumption by previous researchers of Title IX. I find that about 40% of universities have a sole-role Title IX employee, which is higher than previous estimates have found. And while I find that universities more sensitive to their legal environments have been more likely to establish sole-role Title IX employees or have numerous Title IX employees compared to their less sensitive counterparts, these effects largely disappear when bringing in time. Essentially, time is the main predictor for whether institutions establish sole-role Title IX employees. I test whether the establishment of a sole-role Title IX employee leads to a bump in formal reports of sex offenses, indicating a positive outcome. I do not find evidence that sole-role Title IX employees are a substantive structure that move universities closer toward meeting the goal of the law. I explain that sole-role Title IX employees may not be effective because one full-time employee is still not enough to prevent, respond to, investigate, and adjudicate sexual violence in a campus community. I conclude that there is much more work that needs to be done, and Title IX employees need more support and resources from their administrations if that work is to ever be fully successful. / Sociology