This study contends that time, narrative and justice cannot be separated from one another. One always demands that the other two also be considered. If we accept that law should be held accountable to a higher ethical standard, then law’s relationship with time and narrative is also important. Good law can only exist through a responsible and active engagement with this challenge. Unfortunately it is not in law’s interest to honour its responsibility, and the legal system as described by Niklas Luhmann is not interested in justice. Law’s only aims are to be legitimate and to ensure its own continued perpetuation. These aims are in threatened when law is required to appeal to norms outside of itself. Thus law has developed certain mechanisms in order to shirk this responsibility: It draws boundaries between itself and its environment; it removes its operations from human reality; it undermines human identity and agency (intention and causality) by reducing it in complexity and meaning; and finally it protects itself through building up its own unreal and false complexity. Law is able to do this by turning its back on its relationship with time (and by extension, narrative). Time is stripped of duration and reduced to a succession of presents. This has two effects: firstly human identity and agency becomes meaningless and secondly, moral or ethical judgment becomes impossible. By cutting the knot instead of trying to unravel it, law avoids its responsibility to be moral. One way of stepping up to the challenge of justice, time and law is through Ricoeur’s narrative time. Human beings and larger social entities all have narrative and temporal duration and location. It recognises that humans have an identity that can not be divorced from time and narrative. This structure also gives necessary context and meaning to actions, and allows us to make moral judgments. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Jurisprudence / unrestricted

This dissertation examines the socio-cultural conditions of Japanese society as reflected in factors that induce recent Japanese immigration to Canada. The examination is based on interview research done with six female and six male Japanese immigrants living in Vancouver, who arrived in Canada after the mid-1990s. While previous migration studies emphasized political-economic conditions as the causes of migration flow, the narratives of these interviewees reveal a different migratory pattern that is motivated by spiritual well-being and life values. In order to encapsulate the complexity of contemporary migration flow, the push/pull factors that induced interviewees' emigration are thematically categorized and analyzed within a frame that emphasizes both these factors' interdependence with the interrelationships of Japanese social systems that have swayed the interviewees' decision to emigrate from Japan, and the nature of complexity in Japanese society. Showing the pluralism of these factors, they are categorized into nine themes: 1)physical environment; 2) spiritual enrichment and a stress-reduced life style; 3) socio-cultural constraints; 4) family life; 5) education; 6) age restrictions; 7) gender roles; 8)diversification, and 9) self-actualization. Luhmann's theory of social systems and Foucault's notion of governmentality serve as touchstones for the re-interpretation of the push/pull factors based on the examination of the interrelations among three Japanese social systems of family, education, and employment. The analysis reveals the complexity of the push/pull factors. Moreover, the interviewees' image of a "simple Canada," which also contributes to their decision to immigrate, is explained in terms of the "double complexity" of Japanese society stemming from both the complexity of modern society and the complexity of an amalgam of "modern" and "pre-modern" elements in Japanese society. Through an extensive examination of the correlations between the experiences of contemporary Japanese migrants and Japanese social systems, this study brings new insights to discussions on tensions between human agency and social structure, and the importance of intangible, mental images in the ways people shape their lives. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

Independent Homicide Inquiries (IHIs) investigate homicides committed by persons in receipt of mental health services. They explore the potential causes of these events in order to learn lessons and improve the future provision of mental health services. IHIs decipher complex mental health care histories that, on further inspection, appear resistant to linear causal theories about what actually happened. IHIs are thus constantly open to indeterminacy in their findings regarding what caused the homicide, whether it was predictable and whether it could have been prevented. This is important because IHIs use these findings as a platform for changing the way mental health services are provided. The present thesis implements a theoretical framework, based on Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, which explains why this problem occurs. Luhmann argued that reality is constructed by distinctly meaningful social systems of communication based around specific social codes. He furthermore posits that decisions are open to continual objection, disagreement and regret. Not only can decisions be decided otherwise by virtue of being decisions, but that social systems will observe decisions in different ways. Decisions can always be observed to be objectionable, incorrect and regrettable after they have been taken. Using this framework, this thesis asks how IHIs retrospectively understand the provision of mental health services in the cases that appear before them. It argues that IHIs construct their investigation and findings using specific social communications that give their observations specific meaning. In light of an expanding, interconnected decision making edifice that comprises mental health services however, the link between identifiable decisions and acts of homicide is obfuscated by ‘systems and processes’. This, in turn, obfuscates individual agency. The thesis consequently calls for a revision of what it means to hold mental health professionals to account in the aftermath of homicide.

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / Early childhood development has been recognised to be the most important contributor to long-term social and emotional development. Whatever occurs in a child‘s life in the early years may be an indicator of the child‘s developmental trajectory and life-course. Therefore positive parenting is paramount to foster quality parent-child interaction. However, previous research shows that for parents to adopt a positive parenting style, some degree of parental knowledge is required. The aim of this study was to compare the relationship between knowledge of child development and parenting styles in low and high socio-economic groups of parents in early childhood development centres. The study used a mixed methods approach with a two-phased sequential exploratory design. A systematic review was conducted in phase 1 followed by a quantitative study for phase 2. The sample consisted of N = 140 parents with children between 2-5 years old from low and high socio-economic groups. The participants completed the Knowledge of Infant Development Inventory (KIDI-P) and Parenting Styles Dimension Questionnaire (PSDQ). Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation were used to analyze the data. Findings of the study show that the authoritative parenting style is the prevalent parenting style in both low and high socio-economic groups. Furthermore the results indicate that parents are fairly knowledgeable across all subscales for both the low and high socio-economic group with a significant difference in degree of knowledge with the high socio-economic group being more knowledgeable than the low socio-economic group. The findings also show that there in no correlation between knowledge of child development and authoritative parenting styles. However correlations do exist between the other variables.

Magister Psychologiae - MPsych / Substance use and abuse has been a persistent challenge facing many communities around the world. In more recent times there has been particular focus on the gradual, yet alarming increase in the use and/or abuse of substance use among the students who are currently enrolled in institutions of higher learning. On the strength of such findings, relevant stakeholders and policy makers have since demarcated university students as being one of the most high-risk groups within a society when it comes to substance use and abuse. While substantial research has been done on the issue of alcohol use among adolescents on both a local and global scale, very little is known about the prevalence of substance use among university students in South Africa.

<div>The past few years have seen an increasing focus on fairness and the long-term impact of algorithmic decision making in the context of Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence and other disciplines. In this thesis, we model hiring processes in enterprises and organizations using dynamic mechanism design. Using a stochastic block model to simulate the workings of a hiring process, we study fairness and long-term evolution in the system. </div><div> </div><div> We first present multiple results on a deterministic variant of our model including convergence and an accurate approximate solution describing the state of the deterministic variant after any time period has elapsed. Using the differential equation method, it can be shown that this deterministic variant is in turn an accurate approximation of the evolution of our stochastic block model with high probability.</div><div> </div><div> Finally, we derive upper and lower bounds on the expected state at each time step, and further show that in the limiting case of the long-term, these upper and lower bounds themselves converge to the state evolution of the deterministic system. These results offer conclusions on the long-term behavior of our model, thereby allowing reasoning on how fairness in organizations could be achieved. We conclude that without sufficient, systematic incentives, under-represented groups will wane out from organizations over time.</div>

Substance abuse and dependence are globally contested issues. In a volatile space, the field is undergoing major changes in terms of decriminalisation and reduction of harm efforts in numerous countries. Despite continued efforts to minimise or even eradicate substance use and abuse, recovery programmes still lack sustainability. Relapse is still common, and there is little in the way of literature explaining how some individuals manage successful sustained recovery. Although the field is undergoing many changes, it appears obvious that society still lacks adequate research and information to guide and motivate sustainable recovery. Family systems are generally experienced as a person’s primary system, and it may be assumed that many people become dependent on their family or family members for varying degrees of support. Systems theory underpinned this qualitative case study, comprising multiple cases, in order to explore the experience of individuals who expressed an interest in their own recovery and, more specifically, to discover whether they viewed family support as an assistive factor in this decision. The study found that although family support did not motivate recovery, it was nevertheless an important factor in continued efforts toward recovery once the individual had made their own decision to commence a recovery programme. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Psychology / MA Psychology / Unrestricted

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This study is a comparative analysis of the rise of Neo-Confucianism in China during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the emergence of the school of Kabbalah in France and Spain during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE. This comparison is grounded in the observation that the two schools, in spite of their obvious differences, were an outcome of separate reactions to the rising popularity of foreign paradigms. I draw a distinction between synthetic and analytic modes of operation (modalities), arguing they represent contrasting cultural paradigms characterized by divergent cognitive, social, linguistic, and cultural temperaments. I argue that both the classical Chinese and Jewish worldviews conformed to the basic characteristics of the synthetic modality, and that they entered a period of acute crisis as a result of the rising popularity of the analytic Buddhist and Greek philosophical traditions respectively. As I define it, the synthetic worldview is characterized by the affirmation of the body and this-worldly life, an emphasis on ritual and community, cultural particularism, and associative, non-analytical modes of thought. The contrasting analytic worldview stresses individualism, de-contextualization of data, other-worldliness, contemplative spirituality, and universalism. In the context of this project, I develop a methodological framework I call genetic-morphology. This methodology seeks to integrate a synchronic search for cross-cultural patterns with an emphasis on the diachronic evolution of traditions as they change and adapt to new environmental conditions. It also integrates data from diverse academic fields such as religious studies, anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, biology, and systems theory. As such this study offers a gestalt appreciation of cultural systems, their internal dynamic, the symbiotic relationship between their constituent parts, and the function of information in their operation. This dissertation concludes that Kabbalah and Neo-Confucianism can be understood as "defense theologies," or adaptive responses devised to protect their classical synthetic modes of operation from the cultural pressures of analytic paradigms. Kabbalah and Neo-Confucianism were unique in their ability to appropriate powerful features from analytic traditions and subordinate them to native synthetic sensibilities, thereby equipping the Jewish and Chinese traditions with revolutionary theologies that dismantled the challenges of foreign analytic paradigms.

This study applied a theory of marriage and family therapy, specifically cybernetics, to the relationship between the US and Iraqi governments. This study also attempts to describe recent changes in Iraq incurred during the ongoing war in Iraq as either first- or second-order change. Taken from 2001 to 2005, 76 print media articles describing the war in Iraq from three major US news sources were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. Four prominent themes: Military Operation, Costs, Perceptions, and Transition, were identified and described in cybernetic terms such as recursive processes, circular causality, and punctuation. Results suggested that international relationships can be described cybernetically, and that many recursive processes were evident in the war in Iraq. Results also show that determining first- or second-order change is very difficult in large system analyses. Implications for this research are presented and discussed. / Ph. D.