Thesis (MA(Dogmat.)--Universiteit van Pretoria, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-90).

Over the past six decades, hope has been identified by researchers and philosophers as a complex yet crucial element of health and well-being. Studies have investigated hope in various medical contexts as well as academic and sports settings, most commonly by measuring hopefulness of patients and athletes. Rarely has hope been investigated to understand participants’ lived experiences and perceptions of hope. In America, the healthcare and education industries are facing shortages and high turnover of nurses and teachers, two groups who are expected to nurture hope in others. If hope supports wellness in patients and performance in athletes, might it influence satisfaction in nurses and teachers? To examine this question and understand what hope means to nurses and teachers, Interactive Qualitative Analysis was utilized to produce grounded theories of hope and, hope and the workplace. Through focus groups with each constituency (nurses, teachers), the elements that compose hope were identified, then the elements that interact with hope in the workplace were identified. Interviews with nine nurses and ten teachers were conducted to determine how these elements relate in perceptual systems of cause-effect relationships. A systems representation of hope was developed through the creation and analysis of conceptual mind maps. The resulting theory indicates that hope is composed of faith, relationships, expressions of hope, optimism about the future, and realistic anticipation. Hope is much more than wishful thinking or having the ability to set and achieve goals. This research demonstrates that hope is a multidimensional construct, a system whose elements are perceived and ordered differently by individuals depending on their life experiences and context. A systems representation also was developed to illustrate hope and the workplace through creation and analysis of conceptual mind maps. The resulting theory indicates that eight elements interact with (influence and/or are influenced by) hope in the context of the workplace: spirituality, relationships, resources, organizational structure/system, attitude toward clients, actions for clients, client outcomes, and personal outcomes. This research demonstrates that hope does influence job satisfaction for nurses and teachers. / text

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study examined the effectiveness of a hope-based intervention on hope, subjective well-being, goal attainment and degree of goal internalization in a sample of primary 6 students from Hong Kong. Participants were randomly assigned to either intervention condition or control condition. Results from ANCOVAs suggested that there were no main intervention effects on hope and on goal attainment. However, participants benefited from internalizing their self-set goal in the intervention. Concerning the intervention effect on subjective well-being, significant interaction was found. Consistent with the dynamical systems model, regression analyses demonstrated that participants with high initial pleasant affect was more responsive to the intervention and benefited the most in terms of latter pleasant affect. In addition, it was found that goal attainment was significantly associated with subjective well-being and hopeful thinking. Possible explanations for the inconsistent findings with previous studies are provided. Implications for future research on hope-based intervention are also discussed. / published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Despite a resurgence of qualitative research on the cultural aspects of poverty, very few studies have examined how low-income men find resilience in response to the risks of living in severe disadvantage. Moreover, virtually no research has compared how resilience strategies differ between low-income black and white men. These omissions are particularly surprising since low-income men disproportionately experience the life-altering risks of extreme disadvantage, such as criminal punishment, chronic unemployment, drug abuse, and poor physical health. To address these limitations, I draw on recent insights from developmental psychology and from cultural sociology to examine the sources of risk and resilience among black and white men living in severe poverty. Drawing on several years of ethnographic fieldwork, statistical analysis of qualitative data, and on over ninety in-depth interviews with low-income men in Greater Boston, I find striking racial differences in the sources of risk: while white men are more likely to report having a mental health diagnosis and an addiction to opiates, black men are more likely to report living in extremely poor, racially-segregated neighborhoods. Although exposed to different risk factors, I find surprising similarities across racial groups in the sources of resilience: both black and white men respond to the life-changing stressors of extreme poverty by constructing narratives around religious redemption, enduring romantic relationships, and work-related aspirations. Notwithstanding these similarities, I find that white men report greater disaffiliation from organized religion and black men a narrower range of entrepreneurial and athletic vocations. I show that these racial differences in resilience are due to the steep decline in religious affiliation with the Catholic Church among the white poor and enduring economic segregation of the black poor, respectively. In summary, black and white men cope with the risks of living in severe poverty in broadly similar ways: by appeals to religion, long-term romantic relationships, and work; that is, the very ideologically-dominant American institutions from which they are often claimed to be disconnected culturally. / Sociology

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No description available.

This thesis maps out the phenomenological and ontological contours of ‘hope’ in an attempt to challenge traditional individualistic, psychologized, and normative accounts, and to reconceptualise hope as a practice of control. Spinoza and Deleuze’s theory of affect is used to develop an understanding of the ‘hoping body’ as the effect of a symbiotic encounter with a conglomerate of forces. The spatio-temporal dynamics and relations of power at work in this larger conglomerate are also explored through Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory. Ultimately, this thesis argues that hope inaugurates complex practices of mobility control by operating as a claim about the necessity of a particular pathway and vehicle in the present that is grounded on the possibility of a desirable destination in the future. / Graduate

The aim of this study is to make an original contribution to the body of scholarship on the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931-89) by presenting a text-based investigation of his five-part autobiographical cycle (Die Ursache (1975), Der Keller (1976), Der Atem (1978), Die Kälte (1981), and Ein Kind (1982)), and the prose narratives, Beton (1982) and Auslöschung (1986). In the Introduction, I detail the method adopted to construct the argument of the thesis, after discussing pertinent aspects of Bernhard criticism and its reluctance to approach the prose fiction from a textual perspective. Chapter I examines specific stylistic devices and themes found in the autobiographies and relates them to the emergence of a greater narratorial desire to communicate with the reader and a nascent sense of personal hope. After the tortuous narratives of the sixties and early seventies which made Bernhard's reputation as a nihilistic, negative writer, the autobiographical pentalogy gives evidence of a lighter, more direct expression. The second chapter, on Beton, focuses on a number of themes (human contact, perfectionism, and music and literature) which reveal a more positive outlook in the aftermath of the autobiographical project. The third chapter, on Auslöschung, concentrates on a protagonist who has achieved considerable personal fulfilment and who manages to overcome the emotional and psychological obstacles which his predecessors in Bernhard's prose were unable to surmount. The aim of the thesis, to expose and analyse the aspects of communication and hope recurrent in Bernhard's prose works after 1975, is achieved through close reading reinforced by pertinent biographical and literary evidence. It is hoped that, by undertaking a critical examination of selected narratives, this thesis fills a critical lacuna in the substantial secondary material on Bernhard.