This thesis constitutes a study of the grotesque in fashion design at the turn of the twenty-first century. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's theories, it investigates the reasons behind the proliferation of grotesque imagery within fashion of the period. In 'Rabelais and his World', Bakhtin traces a "struggle" between the classical and grotesque concepts of the body in the West which, he argues, can be observed in a number of different areas including the "canon of behaviour", the history of dance, and fashion. As Bakhtin himself suggests, yet does not develop, fashion constitutes a particularly fertile case study for an investigation of the grotesque. Taking on this unrealized project, my thesis examines the grotesque in fashion from 1980 to 2010. A constant transgression, merging and exceeding of borders constitutes one of the central attributes of the Bakhtinian grotesque. In its insistence on the body's lack of boundaries, the grotesque is in line with Kristeva' s theories of the subject-in-process - a porous subject in a state of constant becoming. Both Bakhtin' s and Kristeva's concepts suggest an engagement with the maternal: a subject which, by containing another within, questions the possibility of a unified and stable subject position. Thus, part one of this thesis explores the pregnant silhouette created in fashion of this period by Rei Kawakubo, Georgina Godley and Leigh Bowery, alongside Bowery's birth performances. Additionally. the grotesque, being central to the carnival spirit, is characterized by an element of play humour and parody, an aspect of the grotesque which allows for a recuperation of the carnivaleque humour in fashion of this period. Part two offers a new reading of "deconstruction" fashion, and in particular the work of Martin Margiela, which has often been read in modernist terms of truth to materials and structural clarity when, in its constant challenges to proportions and symmetry, it appears more closely aligned with a grotesque aesthetic and carnivalesque humour. Part three extends these ideas to the work of Bernhard Willhelm, which most explicitly articulates the Bakhtinian grotesque by employing medieval carnival imagery. Willhelm's work also explores, together with Olaf Breuning and Georgina Starr, the relationship between humour and horror in a number of fashion shows and collections. This relationship is not only underwritten by Bakhtin's theories of the grotesque, but also by Freudian theories on the relation of both humour and horror to repressed unconscious processes. Interdisciplinary in its approaches and methods, the thesis includes oral history as well as visual and material culture. as it focuses on the direct study of garments alongside fashion shows, in conjunction with a theoretical framework derived from Bakhtin's theories and their subsequent articulations across the fields of art history and critical theory.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Mathematics / Master / Master of Philosophy

A method is proposed for approximating the reachable set from the origin for a class of n first order linear ordinary differential equations subject to bounded control. The technique involves decoupling the system equations into 1- and 2-dimensional linear subsystems, and then finding the reachable set of each of the subsystems. Having obtained bounds on each of the decoupled state variables, a n-dimensional parallelpiped is constructed which contains the reachable set from the origin for the original system. Several illustrative examples are presented for the case where the control is a scalar. The technique is also compared to a Lyapunov approach of approximating the reachable set in a simple 2-dimensional example.

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It has been said (although sadly I have no source) that music is one of the most useful yet useless phenomena known to mankind. Useless in that it has, apparently, no tangible or immediately practical function in our lives, but extremely useful in that it is a truly universal language between human beings, which transcends boundaries and allows us to express ourselves and experience emotions in rather profound ways. For the majority of us, music exists to be listened to, appreciated, admired (sometimes reviled) but generally as some sort of stimulus for our auditory senses. Some of us feel the need to produce music, perhaps simply for our own creative enjoyment, or maybe because we crave the power it lends us to be able to inspire feelings in others. For those of us who love to know “the reason why” or “how things work” and wish to discover the secrets of music, arguably the greatest of all the arts, there can surely be no doubt that a fascinating world of mathematics, harmony and beauty awaits us. Perhaps the reason why music is able to convey such strong emotions in us is because we are (for whatever strange evolutionary reason or purpose) designed to be innately pattern pursuing, sequence searching and harmony hungry creatures. Music, as we shall discover in this research, is chock-a-block full of the most incredible patterns, which are just waiting to be deciphered. / Thesis (M.Sc) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

<p>This dissertation explores the implications of endognenizing the times decisions are faced for intertemporal decision-making in a variety of contexts. Chapter 1 considers a standard, expected-utility maximizer whose preferences are inferred using standard protocols that influence the decisions that the agent considers. The treatment shows how these induced decision points," if unaccounted for, can produce illusions of well-known preference anomalies. Capturing the endowment effect, if receiving a good compels the agent to consider the decision to consume it, then the willingness-to-accept (WTA) in exchange for the received good exceeds the willingness-to-pay (WTP) prior to its receipt. If eliciting time-preferences -- i.e. being asked to evaluate an intertemporal tradeoff involving different quantities of the good -- likewise compels the agent to consider the consumption decision, present bias arises in the form of a measured quasi-hyperbolic discount function with present bias factor less than one. While reconciling the preference anomalies with core principles of standard utility theory, the results also suggest that the endowment effect and present bias | generally treated as distinct phenomena | are actually manifestations of an identical decision-purview effect. In fact, the elicited present bias equals WTP/WTA.</p><p>Chapter 2 introduces a framework for bad habits (namely, addiction) based on endogenous decision points -- i.e. the times a recurring decision is faced. Cravings are interruptive decision points that force an individual to consider consumption while inflicting a small opportunity cost. By extinguishing the craving, addictive consumption brings a brief vacation from unwanted decision points. The development of a habit is jointly characterized by a rising frequency and a rising per-decision level of consumption, matching behavioral patterns that standard habit-formation models do not address. Integrating external cues, modeled as random decision points, consumption routines become regimented as addiction develops. Occasional users are most responsive to cues, while addicts are comparatively immune. With peer consumption as a decision point, the group model predicts synchronized consumption, homogeneous self-sorting, and herd behavior | including imitation of a stray peer.</p><p>Chapter 3 complements the endogenous decision points theory of addiction of the previous chapter with a multidisciplinary survey of addiction research, organized and interpreted through the lens of the theory. In particular, I present evidence to support formalizations and results for the three decision point representations: internal cravings, external cues, and peer consumption. This chapter also discusses how the theory may help integrate key addiction concepts from other elds into economic formalism. For instance, I examine the physiological microfoundations of the interval function for cravings, and explain why it can be dierent for two products (e.g. cigarettes and chewing tobacco) that deliver the same product (nicotine). Further, I describe how transitions between abstinence and addiction can be motivated solely in terms of the endogenous interval function." Finally, I propose that the formal notion of cravings as decision points may shed light on three prominent symptoms of</p> / Dissertation

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<p> This dissertation contains three essays on proprietary cities. Proprietary cities have three defining feature: (1) a private, for-profit entity (the proprietor) retains land ownership; (2) the city has substantial legal and regulatory autonomy from the host country; and (3) the proprietor has a meaningful role creating and enforcing a new legal and regulatory system. The first essay offers an introduction to the idea of proprietary cities, investigating the incentives facing the proprietor and the policies the proprietor is likely to adopt. The second essay investigates governance in proprietary cities. It examines the literature on monopolies, private dispute resolution, and private police to better understand how proprietary cities might act. The third essay places proprietary cities in an institutional context. It develops an understanding of why such substantial policy changes might be allowed, and how to think about proprietary cities with regard to the new institutional literature.</p>

For almost half a century, academics have laboured over the refinement of managerial models of marketing derived, originally, from studies of consumer goods marketing in North America. These models were firmly rooted in the microeconomic market model and ideas of monopolistic competition. Yet critics have long argued that these managerial models and the assumptions on which they were based were inappropriate for international, business-to business or services marketing situations. From the mid-1980s onwards, alternative approaches to marketing theory began to emerge, in response to a widening gap between classical marketing theory and marketing practice. These alternatives were loosely grouped together under the umbrella of 'relationship marketing'. As interest in relationship marketing increased, so did demands for the development of new frameworks that conceptualised its scope and properties. Given the apparent absence of such frameworks, this research set out to contribute to knowledge through the development of a broad-based empirically grounded framework of relationship marketing. Three case studies were undertaken in pursuit of this objective. In each instance the focal firms studied were UK-based manufacturers of branded consumer goods, who marketed their products around the globe. Although all were manufacturers of consumer products, in each instance there were vital business-to-business marketing and service issues involved. In constructing an empirically grounded framework of relationship marketing, at the level of the organisation set, this research bridges a well-documented gap in the literature. It links the large body of managerially focused work on relationship marketing to that by academics pursuing the study of markets-as net works. However, the alleged difficulties associated with the execution of methodologically sound case-based research are also well documented. Consequently, this research sought to contribute to the development of case based research methods by introducing the use of experienced practitioners as independent 'expert validators' to verify critical stages of the case analysis.