M.Ed. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

In my dissertation, I use multi-ethnographic methods to examine how mediators talk about, manage, and process families going through divorce. I show how a dominant narrative about marriage and the cultural expectations of parenthood provide a framework for mediators to manage the discourse of divorcing parties so assets and care giving can be split 50/50. The dominant P.E.A.C.E. narrative (P=parenting plan, E=equitable distribution, A=alimony, C=child support, E=everything else) restricts available discourse in mediation and guides mediators’ behaviors in ways that homogenize families by providing a linear formula for mediators to follow which results in only certain stories being allowed to enter the mediation. Next, I show how constructions about power and violence serve to frame and shape understandings of divorce for mediators, thereby guiding their actions in mediation and discursively impacting the discourses of mediated parties. Power and violence are constructed in ways that conflate the concepts, and no clear protocol is offered to manage these complicated concerns for family law mediators. The outcome is mediators report being unsure and often fearful about mediating cases where intimate partner violence is a concern. Finally, an analytic autoethnographic examination of family law mediation provides an example of the power of ideology and makes clear my positionality within this dissertation. I explore my own identity as a white, heterosexual, female, in a world ripe with expectations about marriage and family creation as I encounter alternative messages and information in my fieldwork. Throughout my dissertation, I uncover larger cultural narratives about marriage, and families that guide and manage people, illustrating the ways identities, stories of violence, and the ideology of marriage are shaped.

L’étude sur le documentaire a suscité ces dernières années de nombreuses approches : historique, rhétorique, pragmatique, stylistique. Celles-ci posent la question de la réalité dans le film ou dans la photographie, problématique récurrente du documentaire. C’est à nouveau cette interrogation qui sera abordée dans cette recherche. La perspective envisagée a l’ambition de synthétiser toutes ces approches en remontant à l’origine de la photographie, au dix-neuvième siècle, et en faisant valoir sa spécificité d’image. Un parcours photographique est proposé montrant en quoi l’image photographique a pu bouleverser notre rapport à la réalité. Cette ambition synthétique a trouvé son fondement dans un concept original initié par le philosophe allemand Ernst Cassirer : la forme symbolique. Il s’agit d’une logique culturelle qui propose de se placer au cœur de nos réalités et d’analyser les principes qui les gouvernent. Le point d’ancrage d’une telle philosophie repose sur la culture comprise comme une réalité relative. Dans cette perspective, l’image photographique en tant que documentaire est considéré comme un lieu donnant à penser une réalité ? Comment ? Cette recherche nous amène à envisagé trois moments pour l’élaboration de cette forme symbolique particulière : 1) l’invention d’une image-monde que l’image photographique a suscité ; 2) la survivance des réalités contenues et transformées dans cette image-monde ; 3) la création d’un lieu de mémoire par la constitution d’un patrimoine photographique. / The study of documentary has called for numerous approaches these past few years: historical, rhetorical, pragmatic, stylistic. These approaches question the reality in film or photography, the recurring problem of the documentary. And this question will be tackled again in this research. The intention of the outlined perspective is to integrate all these approaches by retracing the steps to the origins of photography, in the nineteenth century, and by asserting its specificity of image. A photographic journey is proposed showing how the photographic image was able to change drastically our relationship with reality. This synthetic ambition was inspired by an original concept initiated by the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer: the symbolic form. It is based on a cultural logic which suggests going to the heart of our realities and analyzing the principles which govern them. The core of such a philosophy lies in a culture contained as a relat! ive reality. In this light, is the photographic image as documentary considered as a place giving reality to thought? How? This research allows us to imagine three moments in the development of this specific symbolic form: 1) the invention of an image-world invoked by the photographic image; 2) the survival of the realities contained and transformed in this image-world; 3) the creation of a place of reference for an assembled photographic heritage.

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The public acts of violence during the summer of 2012 in Toronto brought the theme of gangs back to the forefront in Canadian media coverage. As renewed debates argued old subject matters, our understanding of gangs was not able to diverge from its endless roundabout. This paper inverts the study of gangs that has classically looked towards the gang as a collective to explain its sub-cultural delinquent and sometimes violent tendencies, and explores the individualized interpretation of gang membership from the perspective of four Latin-Canadian males from the Greater Toronto Area. This study takes on the challenge of observing the trajectory of gang membership based on the first hand experiences of self-proclaimed ex-gang members and through an in-depth dialogue with these participants, ventures through the turning points that led these individual actors through the process of onset; commitment and desistance. This exploration into the lived experiences of gang membership is seen through a Symbolic Interactionist lens and views gang membership as one of many identities that can actively be portrayed by the social being. In this perspective, the concepts of gangs and gang membership are described as a subjective experience completely open to interpretation, but guided by the flow of unique interactions that these individuals encountered within a variety of complex situations and environments. That which is being observed herein is the process of how the participants interacted with their existing environments and the circumstances produced by them, highlighting the momentous events that continuously defined the individuals understanding of their own self concept as a gang member up until the point of non-membership. What was observed by a dissection of the interviewee’s accounts was that the onset of gang membership was influenced primarily by a feeling of disassociation and alienation which the participants actively sought to suppress, whereby the idea of belonging to a gang offered the remedy. The aspect of commitment was shown to be focused more towards upholding the identity of gang membership and their reputation than towards the gang itself. Reinforcing the identity maintained the individual’s social status and relevance amongst their peers, solidifying the aspired identity of gang membership. Finally, the process of desistance surfaced once the gang member identity no longer seemed beneficial. Life threats, a re-emergence of the feeling of solidarity, the experience of disloyalty and the acceptance of another identity as being more imperative were factors that separately influenced the move for the discontinuance for the projection of the gang member identity. Although the participants admit to and self proclaim ex-membership, they do nonetheless acknowledge that the gang mask could once again be put back on.

The aim of the study was to create an understanding of whether and how social workers converse on the topic of sexuality with youths. Further aspects studied were which factors social workers experienced to be challenging and enabling for these conversations and also differences regarding the gender of the youth. The empirical material is made out of semistructured interviews with social service workers and professionals who work with treatment of youths. The data has been analysed with the theory symbolic interactionism. The result of the study shows that social workers do talk about sexuality with youths, but in varying extent. Challenges expressed were for instance questions about secrecy and the difficulty of keeping information from the parents of the youth, as well as who was in the room at the time of the meeting. Enabling aspects were knowledge and personal interest in the subject. Regarding the question of how the topic of sexuality was brought up the answers varied. Some preferred to ask questions about sexuality straight out, while others preferred to ask questions about TV-shows and relationships to later get in to the topic of sexuality. All informants aimed to be neutral in the meeting with the youth, regardless of gender. However, examples were made of how differences were made on basis of what gender the youth had. The main perception was that girls were seen as victims while boys were seen as perpetrators. This had effects on how the conversations were conducted and several of the informants spoke about reflections regarding how these perceptions could lead to missing those who did not fit into the perceptions.

In the model room task, children watch as a miniature toy is hidden somewhere in a scale model of a room and are asked to find the larger version of the toy in the corresponding place in the actual room. Previous work has shown that children under age three often perform very poorly on this task. One prominent theory for their failure is that they lack the ability to understand the model as both a physical object and as a symbolic representation of the larger room. An alternative hypothesis is that they need to overcome weak, competing representations of where the object was on a previous trial, and where it is in the present trial, in order to succeed in their search. Children aged 33-39 months were tested on measures of inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, recognition memory, and receptive vocabulary, as well as the model room task. Results showed that performance on the model room task was not predicted by measures of inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility or vocabulary, but was predicted by performance on the Delayed Recognition Span Test (DRST), a measure of recognition memory. These findings lend support to the theory of competing representations. Given the predictive nature of the recognition memory task and the task’s sensitivity to lesions in the hippocampus, implications for the development of the hippocampus and its role in success on the model room task are discussed.

This thesis explores the possibility of controller restructuring for improved closed-loop performance of nonlinear plants using a gradient based method of symbolic adaptation- Model Structure Adaptation Method (MSAM). The adaptation method starts with a controller which is a linear controller designed according to the linearized model of the nonlinear plant. This controller is then restructured into a series of nonlinear candidate controllers and adapted iteratively toward a desired closed-loop response. The noted feature of the adaptation method is its ability to quantify structural perturbations to the controllers. This quantification is important in scaling the structural Jacobian that is used in gradient-based adaptation of the candidate controllers. To investigate this, two nonlinear plants with unknown nonlinearities viz., nonlinear valve and nonlinear inverted pendulum are chosen. Furthermore, the properties of restructured controllers obtained for two systems, stability, effect of measurement noise, reachability, scalability and algorithmic issues of MSAM are studied and compared with the starting controller.

The current qualitative research was aimed at exploring and describing symbolic consumption and extension of self through possessions during liminality of full-time MBA students, moderated by financial constraint. The main purpose of the study was to gain deeper understanding of the liminal stage of full-time MBA students as consumers, and its effect on the symbolic consumption in the context of restricted financial resources. The main purpose of the research determined its exploratory and inductive nature within the interpretivist philosophy to qualitative inquiry. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants chosen according to the pre-set criteria. Raw data was analysed using constant comparative and content analyses. The main findings of the research showed that during MBA studies as a period of liminality, participants faced the necessity to re-adjust their consumption behaviour in order to fulfil the shifts to new social roles and therefore construct new identities. Being financially constrained, they had to make trade-offs defined by main priorities of this stage in life. As a result, participants re-evaluated their previous consumption behaviour, and adopted a new one appropriate for their new social roles and gained new decisionmaking skills. Through financial constraint as an important moderating variable of the experience, participants gained new understanding of power and value of money which formed their consumption going forward. The outcome of the research contributed to the existing body of knowledge on changes in consumption behaviour of individuals in life transitions, including symbolic consumption and self-extension through possessions. In addition to that, insights gained during research contributed to the understanding of the role financial constraint plays as a moderating variable for consumption in transition. Therefore, the results of the research are of practical value for marketers as they provide valuable insights that can be used for more efficient targeting of appropriate buyer groups. / Mini Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

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