Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / In this thesis, I examine the narratives of authenticity, the limits thereof, the potential interests served by these narratives, and the power relations involved in the promotion of an authentic San identity. I focus on four key areas to achieve this goal: the methodological issues involved in studying authenticity, the framing of the land claim lodged by the San against the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in South Africa in 1995, the post-land claim settlement activities on the restituted farms, and the various issues around authenticity and traditional leadership. I will also highlight a variety of issues, ranging from livelihoods to governance, community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), identity and ethnicity, and common property debates. The study begins with a brief introduction to the richly textured and highly contested debates and analytical issues concerning the San. Among other things, this first part of the thesis deals with naming, the alleged disappearance of the San, and the eventual reemergence of this group in the post-apartheid landscape of southern Africa. This is followed by a brief description of some aspects of the natural environment of the southern Kalahari and how the San see themselves situated within this cultural–ecological complex. This exploration of the cultural–ecological landscape is not meant to mirror previous San studies of cultural ecology but rather to offer an account of a possible San ontology. The thesis gives an inventory firstly of the research methods applied by myself, and then probes the research encounter reflexively. The main descriptive chapters of the thesis begin with an examination of how the ≠Khomani San emerged onto the political landscape of post-1994 South Africa and how an ethnic entity was constituted through the land restitution process. The post-restitution activities of at least three subgroups of the ≠Khomani San Common Property Association (CPA) are then examined and shown to be a series of contestations and challenges of authenticity. In the final chapter, I take an experimental look at a particular institution that emerged as central to the debates about authenticity and the management of resources in the ≠Khomani San CPA

Between 1888 and 1896, William Morris wrote several medieval-inspired, proto-fantasy romances which have consistently threatened to fall into the doldrums of literary criticism. I am particularly interested, here, in the most complete of these compositions entitled The Story of the Glittering Plain, The Wood Beyond the World, The Well at the World’s End, The Water of the Wondrous Isles, and The Sundering Flood: texts which I call Morris’s late romances. Critics who have engaged with these texts have often taken on the difficult task of reconciling Morris’s growing political vehemence during the time of their composition and the ostensibly escapist stance these romances seem to purport. As such, critics have largely relied on Morris’s fidelity of the Middle Ages as a time that offered a more authentic, original, innocent, or natural mode of human experience, which Morris preferred over the industrial capitalism of his own Victorian period. Through various versions of this stance, critics have articulated that the late romances can offer socially progressive content through an outdated mode of literary production. While this dissertation maintains the significance of anti-escapist readings of these late romances, it also expresses the value of alternative readings of the critical appeal to authenticity. Using critical theories from Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, and most especially Slavoj Žižek, this dissertation suggests that any recognition of authenticity is reliant upon its own corruption and that part of the communist value of William Morris’s late romances exists not in their exemplification of a (medieval) world unblighted by modern corruption but through their demonstration of the conceptual necessity to incorporate modern corruption into any possible vision of past authenticity. That is, the late romances show that past authenticity is a product of an intellectual frame produced by modern corruption; they therefore imply that, in a similar way, communism can only become recognizable as a result of capitalist exploitation. In this way, I hope to aid in resurrecting these beautiful and valuable texts so that they can play a role in the communist struggles of the future.

This dissertation initially reviews the literature on Indigenous language planning (LP) with an emphasis on orientations, dispositions, and their roles in Indigenous society. Token policies pertaining to Indigenous LP are often mistaken for resolving the social ailments that cause language shift--none of which result in systemic, institutional, or effective changes to programs revitalizing Indigenous languages. The author argues for a focus on sovereignty, early childhood development, teacher training, curriculum, assessment, immersion, economic sustainability, and Indigenous epistemologies. Ethnographic studies are an important aspect of LP. Oftentimes Indigenous nations have little documentation of their historical efforts to reverse language shift (RLS), leaving newcomers uninformed about the achievements of their RLS predecessors. Therefore the collection and documentation of Indigenous RLS projects can potentially prevent future language planners from recreating historical obstacles, while presenting new methods that anticipate reoccurring problems. This study overviews Lakota language (LL) status while focusing on shifting centre-periphery authentication and healing Historical Trauma by implementing cultural continuity for Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (CRST). Much attention has been given to spoken lingua francas, but less has been given to signed lingua francas. The purpose of this research is to map distinct boundaries of Indigenous North America's signed lingua franca, emphasizing national boundaries and culture areas. Other goals include redirecting anthro-linguistic attention to the historically widespread eight dialects of Hand Talk and encouraging their hereditary signers to revitalize multimodal aspects of their respective cultures. Spoken language immersion is an effective method for RLS that usually incorporates multimodal instructional scaffolding through total physical response (TPR), and common gestures to mediate target language acquisition. However, spoken language immersion often overlooks sign language and its motor for ethnic gestures that can profoundly expand TPR's role to orchestrate holistic multimodal communication. North American Hand Talk (NAHT) is a sign language indigenous to the majority of North American Indigenous nations who are also attempting RLS among their spoken languages. Making NAHT the standard for multimodal RLS applications could increase target spoken language retention while redeveloping an Indigenous multimodal culture in North America.

This thesis offers a feminist analysis of the gendered public discourses surrounding notions of talent, authenticity and containment. Using two of the most polarizing stars in North America – ‘Snooki’ and Kim Kardashian – the author offers an analysis of how both hard and soft news frame our everyday understanding of women’s public work. Textual analyses of news articles demonstrated that displays of sexual power were most undermined by the media while attempts to venture beyond the reality television texts were contained. On the other hand, the news media were more likely to use positive framing when women were seen to be fulfilling more traditional roles such as wife and mother. The empirical research approach provides an original framework which can be applied to other female public figures to examine how such ideological and gendered discourses shape our understanding of women’s work as well as, more generally, women’s roles in our society.

In 2007 the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) endorsed the use of simulation to replace up to three hundred hours of practice learning in the pre-registration nursing programme (NMC, 2007a). This decision was the impetus for this study as it raised questions regarding whether simulation could replace practice and whether simulated learning transferred to the practice setting. For the first time, the NMC proposal to replace practice hours with simulation has been critically analysed and the implications of this decision explored. A literature review demonstrated a lack of robust evidence to support the use of simulation in this way. This informed the development of this study’s research question and aims. A qualitative collective case study was chosen as the optimum research design to facilitate in-depth exploration of the use of simulation at a selected university in the North West of England. The in-depth qualitative case study incorporated multiple models of simulation, student cohorts, nurse educators and key informants which provided the most comprehensive analysis of viewpoints in any published research in the UK to date. Deeper understanding of the case arose from the use of multiple data collection methods: documentary analysis, participant observation and interviews which enabled findings to be triangulated and corroborated. Most importantly, because the simulation models used were comparable to those used by other education providers in the UK; there is a possibility of the transferability of findings which could be used to inform the development of simulation in the under-graduate nursing curriculum. This thesis develops an argument that there were three key assumptions made by the NMC when they endorsed the replacement of practice hours with simulation. The first is that there is a shared understanding in nursing regarding what simulation is. Secondly; that simulation is delivered in a ‘safe environment’ and finally that competence demonstrated in simulation transfers seamlessly to practice. This thesis has presented new knowledge and developed an argument for caution regarding the use of simulation in pre-registration nurse education. These findings challenge the assumptions made by the NMC and highlight issues for further consideration and exploration namely: the ambiguity regarding the concept of simulation, student safety during simulation, student perceptions of authenticity and finally the transfer of simulated learning to practice.

abstract: The aim of this dissertation was to explore the construct and experiences of gender norm resistance (GNR) using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The purpose of Study 1 was to standardize and universalize what is already known about GNR by creating a quantitative GNR measure. In so doing, I operationalized the implicit and explicit GNR framework described by Way and colleagues (2014). On a sample of adolescents (484 6th grade students; girls = 234; 10-13 years old, Mage = 11.44 years, SD = .56) the GNR measure was tested for gender differences and to explore how GNR aligns with and differs from other constructs related to gender identity and peer relations. The results supported the two-factor model (implicit and explicit forms of GNR), supported convergent and discriminant validity, and identified mean level differences depending on GNR form, gender, ethnic identity, and gender typicality. The purpose of Study 2 was to explore why young men resist gender norms, what motivates their acts of resistance, and how they understand those motives. I expected that implicit GNR would be motivated by the pursuit of authentic nonconformity and would involve an awareness of norms, feeling gender atypical, and authenticity. I expected that explicit GNR would be motivated by a dislike of gender norms, and that it would involve an awareness of, dislike of, and pressure to conform to gender norms. The results supported these expectations and indicated a subtype of GNR, activist GNR, defined by the desire to change gender norms to benefit the social group. Both studies rely on the resistance/accommodation framework to describe the balance of conformity and resistance as individuals navigate systems of power and oppression. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2020

This thesis analyzes the construction of racialized notions of authenticity within American popular musical genres across the span of the 20th Century, but especially from a crucial period between the years 1938 and 1965. In these pages I argue that the discursive construction of genres is a narrative act, one intended to provide symbolic resolution to real and felt dilemmas in people's lives. My first chapter focuses on the singer, Nat "King" Cole, arguing that the retrospective construction of the rock and roll genre as an example of a hybrid or crossover musical from by critics in the late 1960s and early 1970s helped fix in the popular imagination a notion of "authentic black music" which effectively marginalized Cole, an important African American musician whose musical style was at odds with this critical construction of racial style. My second chapter argues that jazz trumpeter John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie's efforts to combine African American and Afro-Caribbean musical forms included a strategic discursive crafting of a narrative of origins which placed jazz as an expression of musical Afro-internationalism. My third chapter argues that critics and audience involved in the blues revival of the early 1960s reconstructed what had been a female-dominated African American popular form as a kind of unpopular popular music: music distinguished in the marketplace by its supposed transcendence of the marketplace via its vernacular roots, and as a musical form dominated by the male figure of the rural bluesman. In conclusion I argue that these efforts to narrate authentic and anti-capitalistic origin for and expressions of popular, commercial forms reveal, within the American public imagination, deep-seated anxieties about the gulf between the cultural influence of African American music and the social and political situation of African American citizens, and, on another level, anxieties about the contradictions inherent in the experience of transcendent pleasure through commercial musical forms.

Influencer marketing is one of the fastest growing trends within marketing in Sweden. By using a semiotic analysis, this study aims to analyze how influencers communicate through sponsored posts on Instagram. Two posts each posted by six different influencers were selected for the study. The influencers were divided into three categories, parental influencers, fashion influencers and fitness influencers. The analysis showed that influencers describe the product as an essential part of their everyday life by telling how much they like it. The posts also reproduce certain stereotypes, as it for example displays women as engaged mothers and consumers of beauty products. The fashion and the fitness influencers Instagram posts both display stereotypes concerning thin and well-shaped bodies. The captions function for the viewers understanding of the posts meaning is anchoring more often than relay.

Ferdinand Ries is credited as the composer of the Concerto for Two Horns, WoO. 19 preserved in the Berlin State Library. Dated 1811, ostensibly Ries wrote it in the same year as his Horn Sonata, Op. 34, yet the writing for the horns in the Concerto is significantly more demanding. Furthermore, Ries added to the mystery by not claiming the Concerto in his personal catalog of works or mentioning it in any surviving correspondence. The purpose of this dissertation is to study the authorship of the Concerto for Two Horns and offer possible explanations for the variance in horn writing. Biographical information of Ries is given followed by a stylistic analysis of Ries’s known works. A stylistic analysis of the Concerto for Two Horns, WoO. 19 is offered, including a handwriting comparison between the Concerto for Two Horns and Ries’s Horn Sonata. Finally, possible explanations are proposed that rationalize the variance in horn writing between the Concerto for Two Horns, WoO. 19 and Ries’s other compositions that include the horn.

The dissertation 'Educational Simulation in Task Situations' is focused on a new medium - educational simulation, which is starting to establish itself in the field of education. This work is examining educational simulations from three different points of view: 1) the acceptance of educational simulations in the school environment, 2) the interactivity of learning material, and 3) the authenticity of learning material. The experimental results are divided into three separate chapters according to the respective viewpoint. The investigation focused on acceptance in the first chapter draws from the evaluation of 34 Czech teachers and more than 1000 students, who both evaluated the benefits and shortcomings of particular educational simulations that were used by the teachers and their students. The experiment on interactivity (N = 152) in the second chapter is focused on the experimental comparison of learning material with activated interactive features and learning material with deactivated features. The third experiment on authenticity (N = 48) compares teaching material using authentic media sequences and the same material converted into an animated form. All three main chapters contain a theoretical review of the respective topic and our own experimental research. The methodology is based on the...