A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Archaeology of the University of Witwatersrand in 2017. / Over the past decade a new method of statistical shape analysis, geometric morphometrics, has been applied to the study of artefact shapes. Later Stone Age (LSA) tanged stone arrowheads, hypothesized to act as stylistic markers among prehistoric southern African hunter-gatherer groups, have been analysed with geometric morphometrics and reveal spatially coherent variations in their shape. After being tested against several variables that may have had an effect on arrowhead shape, these stylistic spatial variations could very well indicate large scale linguistic or other kinds of boundaries between different elements of prehistoric San populations. Understanding them can shed light on the social and economic organization of southern African hunter-gatherers during the later Holocene. / LG2017

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, 2017. / This study analyses the politics of liberation heritage in postcolonial southern Africa with special reference to Mozambique. The aim is to scrutinise the different ways in which liberation heritage discourse is used and mobilised to construct a range of socioeconomic and political values in the southern African region and to examine the processes of heritagization in Mozambique based on field observations at two national heritage sites: Chilembene and Matchedje. I adopt the conceptualisation of heritage as discourse and put the hegemonic Western heritage discourses into historical perspective in order to explore how this Western understanding of the past has influenced the official discourse and practice in southern Africa in both colonial and postcolonial periods. I argue that the process of re-appropriation and ‘mimicry’ which allow the perpetuation of Western paradigms in the conception of heritage result from a combination of geopolitical and socio-economic contexts and circumstances at play nationally, regionally and globally, combined with the strategies adopted by former national liberation movement’s ruling elites to pursue their own nationalist agendas related to state-crafting and nation-building. I also argue that the recent traction that has led to the institutionalisation of liberation heritage discourse in southern Africa, represents a specific way in which former national liberation movements, now in government, have tried to respond to changes in circumstances marked by an increasing contestation by the different social groups over the content of the official discourse of ‘the past’, based on selective memories of the liberation struggle, in an increasingly disputed multi-party democratic dispensation. To understand the politics of heritagization of the liberation struggle in postcolonial Mozambique, I look at FRELIMO’s efforts to undertake selective celebrations and to silence particular ‘pasts’ for particular ‘presents’ during the struggle years as well as through the different socio-political and economic contexts of the successive presidencies: Samora Machel (1975-86), Joaquim Chissano (-2004) and Armando Guebuza (-2014). By (1) addressing the question of why and how the heritagization of this particular category of the past (i.e. liberation heritage) accomplishes the reproduction of state power held by ruling elites of former national liberation movements, and by (2) illustrating the networks of meanings and practices on which liberation heritage rests, and by (3) analysing the socioeconomic, cultural and political work it does, this study contributes to the embryonic body of knowledge about heritage processes in southern Africa. / LG2017

Community cookbooks operate through a rhetoric of place as ways of thinking about belonging and influencing communal identities. They reveal much about a community, including the sharing of memories and tradition, geographical identification, and representation of socio-cultural hierarchies and habits. For that reason, this paper advances the claim that the discourse and visuality in community cookbooks, specifically the cookbooks 200 Years of Charleston Cooking, Charleston Receipts, and Charleston Receipts Repeats published during the height of a renaissance in Southern literature, influenced the identity of “Southerness” which, taken in conjunction with place, space, and time has resulted in a unification of the changing American South. Using Carolyn Miller’s notions of genre criticism on the basis of genres as social movements, community cookbooks qualify for the genre label of domestic literature in terms of content and rhetorical influence. To prove my claim, the use of images, recipes, and folklore within the pages are analyzed with five a posteriori themes that discuss relations between a sense of place and its foodways. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Thesis (DTech (Tourism and Hospitality Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2018. / The airline industry is structurally challenged by its very nature, facing high fixed costs, cyclical demand, intense competition and vulnerability to external shocks. This is exacerbated further by other endogeneous and exogeneous challenges in the operating environment, which make it difficult to operate airlines successfully. Consequently, structural, endogeneous and exogeneous challenges produce thin profit margins for airlines, thereby prompting airline managers to identify critical success factors to these challenges. However, operating airlines in southern Africa has proved to be fraught with difficulties resulting in several airlines terminating their services after short periods of operation, thereby disrupting travellers. The purpose of this research is to identify critical success factors to overcome challenges facing airlines in the region. A mixed-methods research design and an extensive literature review on critical success factors for airlines was employed, followed by several interviews with key personnel at eight southern African airlines. Purposive sampling was used to collect data from 54 respondents from eight different airlines. From the study, it is clear that the ability for airlines to survive financially is seriously threatened by organisational, industry, and environmental success factors. Within the organisation management inefficiency, labour inefficiency, use of aged fleets and management turnover significantly affected negatively the performances of state carriers, whilst alliances and the use of a standardised fleet significantly affected positively the performances of private airlines. The following environmental success factors namely, political, economic and technological factors, significantly affected negatively the performances of all airlines. Furthermore, national airlines received preferential treatment, which often distorted any prospect of a level playing field, thereby preventing privately owned carriers from competing effectively. The following industry success factors namely, rivalry amongst existing competitors, the bargaining power of suppliers and the bargaining power of customers significantly affected negatively the performances of airlines. As such, the following industry success factors were identified, namely the low threat of substitutes and new entrants, which are not enough to mitigate intense rivalry and the high bargaining power of customers and suppliers. Several suppliers can squeeze airlines, and even though the threat of new entrants is low, wherever there is potential, there will be new entrants, creating overcapacity and reducing yields. Consequently, to overcome challenges in the region the following organisational success factors were identified, namely management efficiency, the use of a modern fleet, fuel efficiency, labour efficiency, alliances, aircraft choice and customer satisfaction.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University Abstract: leaves 328-330. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 320-327). Microfilm. s / This dissertation attempts to determine the range and the intensity of the Western missionary impact on the African scene. The Southern Baptist mission field in Western Nigeria serves as an example in case. The phenomenon of the missionary impact is of a twofold nature: religious and cultural. The cultural impact of Christian missionaries on the African scene has been of interest for some time, especially to students of the social sciences. As such, it has repeatedly been mentioned in sociological studies concerning certain aspects of social and cultural change. However, rarely has the missionary-induced culture change been studied per se, and never has such change been studied in a context which does justice to Christian missionary motivation as a primary source of action. It is, therefore, the objective of this study to describe this impact both as to its theological cause and its cultural implications. For this purpose, a methodology has had to be designed which would do justice to both the theological concern for and the sociological interest in the culture-mediating activity of the missionary work. The methodology can be broken down into the following two steps. First, the Southern Baptist mission enterprise is described in terms of the theological, philosophical, and cultural forces which contribute to the Southern Baptist mission outreach to the Western Nigerian scene. Against the background of this knowledge, the program of the Southern Baptist mission operations is observed in its interaction with Nigerian Baptist institutions. Secondly, any Nigerian Baptist reactions resulting from this interaction are submitted as data to an analytical model. For the detection of genuine Nigerian Baptist reactions, there was derived a key-factor which serves as a catalyst in determining the analytical values of those data submitted to the model. The resulting values are co-ordinated through the process of quantification and are then integrated into a graph which gives evidence of the qualitative distribution of impact factors, as they contribute to the formulation of the Nigerian Baptist outlook. The evaluation of this evidence makes possible a determination of the range and the degree of intensity of the Southern Baptist mission impact on that portion of the Western Nigerian scene which has become identified with this mission work: the Nigerian Baptist Convention. This methodology represents one portion of the results of this dissertation. The other set of results is provided by the evaluation of the information which was extracted from this analytical process. This evaluation gives some insight into the range and the intensity of the Southern Baptist cultural and theological impact on the Nigerian Baptist scene: 1. Through early autonomy and timely transfer of power to their Nigerian Baptist constituency, Southern Baptists have succeeded in keeping the traditional tensions between overlords and dependents at a minimum. 2. Because of this minimum of tensions, the Southern Baptist mission impact may have prolonged effects on the Nigerian Baptist outlook. 3. The Southern Baptist domination of the theological outlook of the Nigerian Baptist Convention may serve as an example of this prolonged effect. Exceptions are the Nigerian Baptist theological and ethical expressions which have their origin in the experience of the traditional Yoruba social structure and customs. 4. Nigerian Baptists' preoccupatian with the national future of Nigeria, together with the fact that they are a religious minority group, explains their adherence to a Nigerian rather than a Southern Baptist philosophical identity. The positive ecumenical spirit of the Nigerian Baptists is based upon the same phenomenon. 5. Nigerian Baptists--together with most other Nigerians--only now begin to respond to an indigenous cultural identity over against the previously accepted Western cultural identity. 6. Baptist principles of freedom and democracy and Nigerian Baptist political aspirations have not yet come into competition with one another.

This thesis aims to improve the understanding of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) diversity, in its future change, modeling and predictability. How might ENSO change in the warming climate? To reach a comprehensive understanding, a set of empirical probabilistic diagnoses (EPD) is introduced to measure the ENSO behaviors as to tropical Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) climatology, annual cycle, ENSO amplitude, seasonal phase locking, diversity in peak location and propagation direction, as well as the El Niño-La Niña asymmetry in amplitude, duration and transition. This diagnosis is applied to the observations, and consistency with previous studies indicates it is valid. Analysis of 37 CMIP5 model simulations for the 20th century and the 21st century shows that, other than the projected increase in SST climatology, changes in other aspects are largely model dependent and generally within the range of natural variation. The change favoring eastward propagating El Niños is the most robust seen in the SST anomaly field. To what extent can we trust the future projection? CMIP5 models show large spreads in terms of 20th century ENSO performance. So a data-driven approach called Empirical Model Reduction (EMR) is carried out, by fitting a low-dimensional nonlinear model from the observation with a representation of memory effect and seasonality. The stochastic simulation of EMR is able to reproduce a realistic ENSO diversity statistics and a reasonable range of natural variation, thus provides an additional benchmark to evaluate the CMIP5 model biases. What are the key model components leading to a good performance to simulate and predict ENSO? Using a suite of models under the aforementioned framework of EMR, control experiments are conducted to advance the understanding of ENSO diversity, nonlinearity, seasonality and the memory effects. Nonlinearity is found necessary to reproduce the ENSO diversity features by simulating the extreme El Niños. Nonlinear models reconstruct the skewed distribution of SST anomalies and improve the prediction of the El Niño-La Niña transition. Models with periodic terms reproduce the SST seasonal phase locking but do not improve the prediction appreciably. Models representing the ENSO memory effect, based on either the recharge oscillator (multivariate model with tropical Pacific subsurface information) or the time-delayed oscillator (multilevel model with SST history information), both improve the prediction skill dramatically. Models with multiple ingredients capture several ENSO characteristics simultaneously and exhibit overall better prediction skill. In particular, models with a memory effect show an alleviated skill drop during the spring barrier and a reduced prediction timing delay. One new ENSO prediction target is to predict not only the occurrence and amplitude of El Niño (EN) but also the peak location is at the central Pacific (CP) or the eastern Pacific (EP). Many prediction models have difficulty with it, which motivates the investigation on whether such ENSO diversity has intrinsically limited predictability. Here three aspects are addressed including the source/limit of predictability, time range and uncertainty. Approaches are combined including linear inverse modeling, singular vector analysis and probabilistic measure. The results show that two similar initial conditions with western Pacific SST warming anomalies may finally develop to either CPEN or EPEN. The equatorial Pacific subsurface evolution is important to tell the final outcome. Restricted by the chaotic property, the prediction horizon appears to be ~4 months before CPEN and ~7 months before EPEN. A flavor prediction model using data's transition probabilities is introduced as a new benchmark for probabilistic prediction.

This thesis describes and analyses patterns of complementation and auxiliation in the languages spoken in an understudied area of Italy, namely Southern Lazio. From a descriptive perspective, this thesis serves to document several severely endangered Romance languages spoken in the Italian peninsula. In so doing, several previously undocumented complementizer and auxiliary systems are illustrated for the first time. From a theoretical perspective, this thesis accounts for the patterns of variation found in these auxiliary and complementizer systems. Traditional descriptions of Italo- Romance treat these systems as entirely unrelated. Indeed, to date, no previous study has compared the distribution of complementizers and auxiliaries in Italo-Romance to investigate similarities and correspondences between them. This dissertation takes the original step of demonstrating that the distribution of particular auxiliary systems correlates with the distribution of particular complementizer systems, offering, in turn, an integrated and complementary theoretical analysis of both phenomena.

This thesis focuses on the issue of regional authenticity in Barry Hannah's contemporary southern fiction (1970-2010), in the context of some recent concerns about the validity of regional studies in a postregional moment, and about the efficacy of the authenticity paradigm itself. By examining those Hannah narratives that best encourage some rethinking of conceptual understandings of the post- South and postsouthern literature, this thesis reveals the significant contribution that Hannah's fiction can make to critical apprehensions of the region as an evolving field of enquiry. The metafictional dimension of Hannah's writing is testimony to its unique value, because the putative sense of "southernness" his stories appear to dramatize is complicated by an intense self-reflexivity about the ways in which a sense of place has never been foundational or essential but has always been constructed and performed. Deploying sustained close analyses of the best of Hannah's fiction (the kind of attention it has conspicuously lacked), this thesis argues that the region is constantly (re-)emerging in a process of myth-making, dialogue and performance, rather than having suffered some simple historical shift from southern to postsouthern. Understanding Hannah's fiction in the ways presented is to offer the possibility of some revision in thinking, about whether the concepts "South" and "southern" have survived both the deconstructive and postregional turns of the late twentieth century, and the transnational turn into the "new" southern studies from the early twenty-first century onward. The Hannah texts included here are identified exclusively for their value in reconceptualising those issues in recent southern studies where an impasse is imagined between regional ("southern") and global ("postmodern"), to suggest it is wholly conceivable to "have it both ways."

蔡玄暉. / Submitted: Dec. 2009. / Thesis (doctoral)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 371-382). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Cai Xuanhui.

The El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has far-reaching impacts across the globe and provides the most reliable source of seasonal to interannual climate prediction over North America. Though numerous studies have discussed the impacts of ENSO teleconnections on North America during boreal winter, it is becoming more and more apparent that the regional impacts of ENSO teleconnections are highly sensitive to the seasonal evolution of ENSO events. Also, the significant impacts of ENSO are not limited to the boreal winter seasons. To address these knowledge gaps, this thesis examines the seasonal dependence of ENSO teleconnections and impacts on North American surface climate, focusing on two examples. Chapter 1 examines the relationship between El Niño – California winter precipitation. Results show that the probability of the anomalous statewide-wetness increases as El Niño intensity increases. Also, the influences of El Niño on California winter precipitation are statistically significant in late winter (Feb-Apr), but not in early winter even though that is when El Niño usually reaches its peak intensity. Chapter 2 further investigates why the strong 2015/16 El Niño failed to bring above normal winter precipitation to California, focusing on the role of westward shifted equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) based on two reasons: the maximum equatorial Pacific SSTAs was located westward during the 2015/16 winter compared to those during the 1982/83 and 1997/98 winters, both of which brought extremely wet late winters to California. Also, the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) forecasts overestimated the eastern tropical Pacific SSTAs and California precipitation in the 2015/16 late winter, compared to observations. The Atmospheric General Circulation Model (AGCM) experiments suggested that the SST forecast error in NMME contributed partially to the wet bias in California precipitation forecast in the 2015/16 late winter. However, the atmospheric internal variability could have also played a large role in the dry California winter during the event. ENSO also exerts significant impacts on agricultural production over the Midwest during boreal summer. Chapter 3 examines the physical processes of the ENSO summer teleconnection, focusing on the summer when a La Niña is either transitioning from an earlier El Niño winter or persisting from an existing La Niña winter. The results demonstrate that the impacts are most significant during the summer when El Niño is transitioning to La Niña compared to that when La Niña is persisting, even though both can loosely be defined as developing La Niña summer. During the transitioning summer, both the decaying El Niño and the developing La Niña induce suppressed deep convection over the tropical Pacific and thereby the corresponding Rossby wave propagations toward North America, resulting in a statistically significant anomalous anticyclone over northeastern North America and, therefore, a robust warming signal over the Midwest. These features are unique to the developing La Niña transitioning from El Niño, but not the persistent La Niña. In Chapter 4, we further evaluate the performance of NCAR CAM5 forced with historical SSTA in terms of the La Niña summer teleconnections. Though the model ensemble mean well reproduces the features in the preceding El Niño/La Niña winters, the model ensemble mean has very limited skill in simulating the tropical convection and extratropical teleconnections during both the transitioning and persisting summers. The weak responses in the model ensemble mean are attributed to large variability in both the tropical precipitation, especially over the western Pacific, and atmospheric circulation during summer season. This thesis synthesizes the physical processes and assessments of climate models in different seasons to establish the sensitivity of regional climate to the seasonal dependence of ENSO teleconnections. We demonstrate that the strongest impacts of ENSO on North American regional climate might not be necessarily simultaneous with maximum tropical Pacific SST anomalies. We also emphasize the importance of the multi-year ENSO evolutions when addressing the seasonal impacts on North American summertime climate. The findings in this thesis could benefit the improvement of seasonal hydroclimate forecasting skills in the future.