This thesis finds out how the concepts of the divine in African Traditional Religions are similar or different, particularly in Ghana and Lesotho and in other parts of Africa in general. In doing so, the researcher combines literature review of eminent scholars who have studied the religious and socio-cultural life of the people of Ghana and Lesotho in particular and Africa in general, with personal field study through dissemination of questionnaires, interviews and personal observations. Through this approach he finds out the various religious phenomena that reveal the concept of the divine in the two countries concerned and in other African countries through comparison of their worships and socio-cultural activities in order to come out with the differences and the similarities that may call for synthesis of the concept in Africa. He also finds out how the concept of the divine in Africa has been influenced by foreign religions and culture particularly Christianity, Islam, Western culture and Education. And how their services and disservices have affected the concept of the divine in Africa. The researcher also looks at the issue of monotheism as against polytheism in African religious perspective to find out whether the African Traditional Religions are polytheistic, monotheistic or monolatry. The study reveals that the concept of the divine, in the two countries under study, ends up in one Supreme deity-God- .but that the approach to the concept is not always the same. There are some differences and similarities, which also prevail in other African Traditional Religions and in Christianity. There is also a look into whether the term "African Traditional Religions" is appropriate for the religious belief and practices found in Africa, and whether a synthesis of religious practices in Africa would be possible in future. In the final analysis the study reveals that the African concept of the divine as pertains in the two countries is not different from that of Christianity and Islam but that the approach to the concept differs due to differences in the perception of the divine through sociocultural and religious milieus. / Religious Studies & Arabic / D. Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies)

Text in Afrikaans / In die verhandeling word die vergestalting van die sprokiemotief in die tekste, Griet skryf 'n sprokie deur Marita van der Vyver (1992) en Weerkaatsings - 'n sprokie deur Eleanor Baker (1984) nagegaan. Die doel is om vas te stel op watter wyse hierdie "kindgerigte" genre op die literere vlak van die volwasse leser omvorm word. Om hierdie doel te bereik word eerstens 'n begripsverkenning van die sprokie as epiese genre gedoen. In die verkenning van die genre val die soeklig nie net op die Westerse sprokie nie, maar daar word ook gefokus op die inheemse SuidAfrikaanse sprokie. Tweedens word aan die hand van hierdie teoretiese raamwerk 'n noukeurige analise gemaak van die vergestalting van die sprokiemotief binne die twee primere tekste. Die sprokieselemente in Griet skryf 'n sprokie en Weerkaatsings - 'n sprokie word uitgelig en die hantering daarvan vergelykend ondersoek / In the dissertation the manifestation of the fairytale motif in the texts, Griet skryf 'n sprokie by Marita van der Vyver (1992), and Weerkaatsings 'n sprokie by Eleanor Baker (1984) is investigated. The purpose is to ascertain the manner in which this "child-centred" genre is transformed on the literary level of the adult reader. To achieve this goal, a conceptualization of the fairytale as an epic genre is firstly undertaken. In the exploration of the genre, the search light does not only focus on the Western but also on the indigenous South African fairytale. Secondly, by means of this theoretical framework, a detailed analysis is made of the manifestation of the fairytale motif in the two primary texts. The elements of the fairytale in Griet skryf 'n sprokie and Weerkaatsings - 'n sprokie are highlighted and the handling thereof comparatively investigated / Afrikaans & Theory of Literature / M.A. (Afrikaans)

This thesis proposes elements for a cognitive anthropology of visual art. Most works of art are human-made objects that cannot be approached in purely functional terms, and as such they frustrate important cognitive expectations that people have about artefacts. For this reason, it is hypothesised that art triggers speculation about the artist’s intention, and that it is intuitively approached as a form of communication. By application of Bloom’s (1996) theory of artefact categorisation, and Sperber and Wilson’s (1986/1995) relevance theory of communication, a series of predictions are generated for art categorisation (or definition), art appreciation, and art cultural distribution. Two empirical studies involving more than 1,000 participants tested the most important of these predictions. In study 1, a relationship was found between how much a series of works of art were liked and how easy they were to understand. Study 2 comprised four experiments. In experiment 1, a series of hyperrealistic paintings were preferred when they were labelled as paintings than when they were labelled as photographs. In experiments 2a and 2b, a series of paintings were considered easier to understand and, under some conditions, were preferred, when they were accompanied by titles that made it easier to understand the artist’s intention. In experiment 3, a series of artefacts were more likely to be considered “art” when they were thought to have been created intentionally than when they were thought to have been created accidentally. The results of studies 1 and 2 confirmed the predictions tested, and are interpreted in the framework of relevance theory. The art experience involves speculation about the artist’s intention, and it is partly assessed as a form of communication that is constrained by relevance dynamics. Implications for anthropology of art, psychology of art, and the art world are discussed.

The thesis "Looking through the lens of the Czech daily newspaper Mlada fronta for 65 years" examines the topic of the liberation of Czechoslovakia in May, 1945. The qualitative content analysis of selected texts available from the newspaper is used to explore the interpretation of the event in Mlada fronta. The thesis has concentrated on the development of attitudes, beliefs, ways of communications and journalistic transformation of media content concerning the liberation event over time. The main objective has been to answer the question as to whether the media portrayal of the event has remained constant or altered over the stated time period and which factors influenced the portrayal. In the conclusion of this thesis we can confirm that the monitored event has been described differently in different time periods respectively, in connection with political progress and the value of democracy in the country. The more totalitarian the regime, the more the newspaper has described freedom through preferred ideology, biased themes, dogmatic posture and offered interpretations that suited the ruling party. This indicates a form of totalitarian hegemony. During periods of greater totalitarianism, the newspaper tends to describe the theme of the freedom completely within that communist ideology. However,...

I vår studie intar vi en hermeneutisk ansats och genomför en textanalys. I vår studie tolkar, analyserar och kategoriserar vi innehållet i åtgärdsprogrammets behov och åtgärd. Utifrån diskurser konstruerar vi en ram som hjälper oss att tolka formuleringar i åtgärdsprogram. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur identitet, makt och matematiska begrepp synliggörs i åtgärdsprogram. I studien undersöker vi i vilken omfattning begreppen ovan förekommer i behov och åtgärder för årskurs 6 och 7. Vi utgår från ett diskursivt perspektiv mot makt och identitet. Vår studie visar att koppling mellan behov och åtgärd saknas i vissa åtgärdsprogram. Tillskriva identitet har den största andelen för åtgärder. Matematiska begrepp har störst andel för upptagna behov. Makt (makt genom kunskap och titel) har lägst förekomst i upprättade åtgärder. Det är varje skolas diskurs och dess skolpersonal som avgör på vilket sätt och i vilket forum som arbetet kring elevens behov fungerar. På samma sätt är den skillnad som existerar mellan olika upprättade åtgärdsprogram ett uttryck för den kultur eller diskurs som råder just nu, lokalt på skolan. Detta är avgörande om åtgärdsprogrammet används som ett fungerande verktyg. / In our study we take a hermeneutical approach and interpret text. In our study we interpret, analyse, and categorize the content of the IEP´s needs and arrangements. Based on discourses we construct a framework that helps us interpret phrasings in IEPs. The purpose of this study is to investigate how identity, power and mathematical concepts are made visible in the text of IEPs. In this study, we investigate to what extent the concepts above occur in the needs and arrangements for grades 6 and 7. We start from a discursive perspective on power and identity. Our study shows that the connection between needs and arrangements is missing in some IEPs. Attributing identity has the largest share of arrangements. Mathematical concepts have the greatest proportion of occupied needs. Power (power through knowledge and title) has the lowest occurrence of written arrangements. It is the discourse of every school and its school personal that decides in what direction and in what context the work toward the needs of the student. In the same way is the difference that exist between different IEPs an expressian in the culture that is dominant at schools. This is crusial if the IEPs is working as a functioning tool.

In much of the historiography surrounding print culture and the book trade, the worldliness of print remains a point of common emphasis. Indeed, many influential studies either assume or actively present the history of print as part of a broader ‘secularization thesis’. Recently, however, historians have challenged these narratives, recognizing the central role of religious print as a driver of growth within the book trade and discussion within the nascent ‘public sphere’. Yet the scholarship into ‘religion and the book’ remains fragmentary, focused on individual genres or persons, with no unified monograph or standard reference work yet to emerge. This dissertation addresses some of the barriers to synopsis by investigating the long-term print output of the largest social and professional group engaged in evangelizing Christianity to the public: the clergy of the Church of England. By focusing on the clergy, this dissertation evades the usual narrow focus on genre. In the past, book-historical and bibliographic studies have relied heavily on a priori classification schemes to study the market for print. While sufficient in the context of relatively well-defined genre categories, such as printed sermons, the validity of these classification schemes breaks down at the wider level, for example, under the conceptual burden of defining the highly fluid and wide-ranging category of ‘religious works’. This dissertation begins to remedy such problems by modelling the print output of a large population of authors who had the strongest stake in evangelizing Christianity to the public through print. It utilizes the latest techniques in the field of digital humanities and bibliometrics to create a representative sample of the print output of the Anglican clergy over the ‘long’ eighteenth-century (here 1660-1800). Based on statistical trends, the thesis identifies a crucial period in the history of clerical print culture, the first four decades of the Hanoverian regime. The period is explored in detail through three subsequent case studies. By combining both traditional and digital methods, therefore, the dissertation explores clerical publishing as a phenomenon subject to evolution and change at both the macro and micro level. The first chapter provides an overarching statistical study of clerical publishing between 1660 and 1800. By combining data from two bibliographical datasets, The English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC), and the prosopographical resource, The Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCED), I extract and analyse a dataset of clerical works consisting of almost 35,000 bibliographic records. The remaining chapters approach the thesis topic through primary research-based case studies using both print and manuscript sources. The case studies were selected from the period identified in the preceding statistical analysis as a crucial transitional moment in the history of clerical publishing culture, c.1714 to 1750. These case studies form chapters 2, 3, and 4, each of which explore a different aspect of a network of authors who worked under the direction of the bishop of London, Edmund Gibson (1723-1748), during the era of Whig hegemony under Sir Robert Walpole. Finally, an appendix outlines the methodology used in chapter 1 to extract the sample of clerical printed works from the ESTC. Overall, the thesis demonstrates the profound influence of the clergy on the development of English print in the hand-press period. It thus forms both a historiographic intervention against the secularization thesis still implicit in discussions of print culture and the book trade, as well as providing a cautionary critique of the revisionism which has shaped recent investigations into the Church of England.

This thesis finds out how the concepts of the divine in African Traditional Religions are similar or different, particularly in Ghana and Lesotho and in other parts of Africa in general. In doing so, the researcher combines literature review of eminent scholars who have studied the religious and socio-cultural life of the people of Ghana and Lesotho in particular and Africa in general, with personal field study through dissemination of questionnaires, interviews and personal observations. Through this approach he finds out the various religious phenomena that reveal the concept of the divine in the two countries concerned and in other African countries through comparison of their worships and socio-cultural activities in order to come out with the differences and the similarities that may call for synthesis of the concept in Africa. He also finds out how the concept of the divine in Africa has been influenced by foreign religions and culture particularly Christianity, Islam, Western culture and Education. And how their services and disservices have affected the concept of the divine in Africa. The researcher also looks at the issue of monotheism as against polytheism in African religious perspective to find out whether the African Traditional Religions are polytheistic, monotheistic or monolatry. The study reveals that the concept of the divine, in the two countries under study, ends up in one Supreme deity-God- .but that the approach to the concept is not always the same. There are some differences and similarities, which also prevail in other African Traditional Religions and in Christianity. There is also a look into whether the term "African Traditional Religions" is appropriate for the religious belief and practices found in Africa, and whether a synthesis of religious practices in Africa would be possible in future. In the final analysis the study reveals that the African concept of the divine as pertains in the two countries is not different from that of Christianity and Islam but that the approach to the concept differs due to differences in the perception of the divine through sociocultural and religious milieus. / Religious Studies and Arabic / D. Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies)

Land is a finite resource for sustainable livelihoods of the general population and the foundation of South Africa’s diverse culture. However, throughout our South African history, the land question has been a contentious, sensitive and emotive issue ever since the inception of the colonial era, thus the democratic dispensation views the Land Reform Programme as a panacea to the historical inequalities with regard to land ownership, distribution and forced removals, as well as viewing it as a tool to achieve socio-economic and political stability. Since globally, land reform arose mainly because of inequalities of resources or to control resources,the overall view in South Africa is that land ownership can be optimally utilised for redistribution, reform, effective administration and for developmental purposes; and, as a result, change in land ownership, use and control has become imperative. This study seeks to evaluate the democratic government’s intervention and the efficacy of the urban tenure reform programme in dealing with unequal and racial ownership of urban land in the old(pre 1994) former Black urban settlements such SOWETO, by investigating legislation and policy related to land ownership, and the current tenure and ownership system and status in both Zola and Orlando.Document analysis is a form of qualitative research used by the researcher to provide voice and meaning around an assessed researched topic, and findings further reveal the challenges faced in the implementation or execution phaseof the urban tenure remedial programme, and the current status and the remedial programme benefits, while recommendations are made in terms of systems and processes in order to accelerate service delivery, and with the emphasis of the importance of capacity building for stakeholders, including the benefiting community. misperception that the Land Reform Programme only relates to the “rural” areas and “the transfer of agricultural land from dissertation investigates the evolution of land tenure or ownership rights in the former black urban human settlements, looking at the discriminatory laws and policies of the past, consequent political resistance and other milestones as well as the democratic government’s interventions in this regard whites to ... / Public Administration / M. P. A.

Text in Afrikaans / In die verhandeling word die vergestalting van die sprokiemotief in die tekste, Griet skryf 'n sprokie deur Marita van der Vyver (1992) en Weerkaatsings - 'n sprokie deur Eleanor Baker (1984) nagegaan. Die doel is om vas te stel op watter wyse hierdie "kindgerigte" genre op die literere vlak van die volwasse leser omvorm word. Om hierdie doel te bereik word eerstens 'n begripsverkenning van die sprokie as epiese genre gedoen. In die verkenning van die genre val die soeklig nie net op die Westerse sprokie nie, maar daar word ook gefokus op die inheemse SuidAfrikaanse sprokie. Tweedens word aan die hand van hierdie teoretiese raamwerk 'n noukeurige analise gemaak van die vergestalting van die sprokiemotief binne die twee primere tekste. Die sprokieselemente in Griet skryf 'n sprokie en Weerkaatsings - 'n sprokie word uitgelig en die hantering daarvan vergelykend ondersoek / In the dissertation the manifestation of the fairytale motif in the texts, Griet skryf 'n sprokie by Marita van der Vyver (1992), and Weerkaatsings 'n sprokie by Eleanor Baker (1984) is investigated. The purpose is to ascertain the manner in which this "child-centred" genre is transformed on the literary level of the adult reader. To achieve this goal, a conceptualization of the fairytale as an epic genre is firstly undertaken. In the exploration of the genre, the search light does not only focus on the Western but also on the indigenous South African fairytale. Secondly, by means of this theoretical framework, a detailed analysis is made of the manifestation of the fairytale motif in the two primary texts. The elements of the fairytale in Griet skryf 'n sprokie and Weerkaatsings - 'n sprokie are highlighted and the handling thereof comparatively investigated / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Afrikaans)

This dissertation seeks to illuminate key aspects of Coast Salish legal sensibility. It draws on collaborative fieldwork carried out between 2007 and 2010 with Stó:lō communities from the Fraser Valley in southern British Columbia, and on the rich ethnohistorical record produced on, with, and by members of the Stó:lō polity and of the wider Coast Salish social world to which they belong. The preoccupation underlying this inquiry is to better understand how to approach an Indigenous legal tradition on its own terms, in a way respectful of its distinctiveness – especially in an ongoing colonial context, and from my position as an outsider to this tradition. As such, a main question drives the inquiry: What makes a legal tradition what it is? Two series of legal insights emerge from this work. The first are theoretical and methodological. The character of a legal tradition, I suggest, owes more to implicit norms than to explicit ones. In order to gain the kind of understanding that allows for respectful interactions with the principles and processes that inform decision-making within a given legal order, one must learn to decipher the norms that are not so much talked about as tacitly modelled by its members. Paying attention to pragmatic forms of communication – the mode of conveying meaning interactively and contextually, typically by showing rather than telling – reveals the hidden normative canvas upon which explicit norms are grafted. This deeper layer of normativity inflects peoples’ subjectivity and sense of their own agency – the distinctive fabric of their socialization. This lens on law – emerging from a reflection on the stories that Stó:lō friends shared with me, on the discussions had with them, and on the relational experience of Stó:lō / Coast Salish pedagogy, and further informed by scholarship on Indigenous and Western law, political philosophy and sociolinguistics – yields a second series of insights. Those are ethnographical, about Coast Salish legal sensibility itself. They attach to three central institutions of the Stó:lō legal order: the Transformer storycycle, longhouse governance practice and the figure of the witness, and ancestral names – corresponding to three sets of key relationships within the tradition: to the land, to the spirit, and to kin. Among those insights, a central one concerns the importance of interconnectedness as an organizing principle within Stó:lō / Coast Salish legal orders. Coast Salish people are not simply aware of the factual interdependence of people and things in the world, pay special attention to this, and happen to offer a description of the world as interconnected. There is a normative commitment at work here. Interconnectedness informs dominant interpretations of how the world should work. It is a source of explicit responsibilities and obligations – but more amorphously and pervasively yet, it structures legitimate discourse and appropriate behavior within contemporary Coast Salish societies. / Graduate / 2018-10-20