This thesis investigates how English Christian leaders and churches use the internet for personal and corporate communication, and looks for evidence of challenges to traditional understandings of authority arising from online communication. Early studies in this area suggested that online religion would cause enormous change but more recent studies reflect less polarised opinions. Religious people tend to use the internet to augment rather than replace practice of their faith, holding true for different religions globally. Leaders use the internet for a wide variety of religious information tasks. The project uses a longitudinal website census, quantitative content analysis and semi-structured interviews. 400 churches in four English denominations (Baptist, Methodist, Anglican and Catholic) were surveyed over a three year period to establish if they published a website. 147 churches from the same four denominations, located in an area equivalent to Chelmsford Diocese, were assessed on 75 categories of information and their hyperlinks analysed. Interviews with church leaders and interested parties helped foster understanding of why and how sites were created, and explored the leaders personal use of the internet. The percentage of churches with a website increased over the survey period for all denominations. Content analysis showed that currency, extent and accessibility of information on websites varied, with some being out of date, others showing no contact details and few having specific information for newcomers to church. Interview findings revealed perceptions of email overload, varying degrees of governance and control of websites by church leaders, and leaders own use of the internet and social media. Interactivity was rare on church websites. Different levels of expertise are mooted as reasons why control and governance varies between leaders. Perceptions of the internet may be influenced by moral panic. The influence of the age of congregations on adoption of social media, and the impact of volunteer webmasters are examined. Recommendations for churches planning to revisit or review their sites are included, limitations are noted and suggestions for further research made

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The aim of this study was to analyze the assessment of the national tests seen from the teacher’s perspective. The national tests are performed in the Swedish school, classes 3, 5, 9, and the upper secondary school (gymnasiet). There has been an ongoing discussion regarding assessment and grading for a long time and it is of high interest now more than ever. The last control assessment done in 2009 by the department of school inspections on the order of the Swedish government, showed big differences between the assessments done by the teachers, and the assessments completed by the department of school inspections. In order to get a good picture of how the teachers are experiencing the execution and assessment of the national tests we interviewed six teachers from the classes that are performing the test. The questions that this study is based on are:  Do the interviewed teachers experience that the basis for assessing the national test is at risk for arbitrary interpretation and hence become unjust and misjudged? Is the professional role of the teacher influenced by the results the students are getting on the national tests? Do the interviewed teachers experience pressure from the head of the school that the students are expected to grade high at the national tests? Lev S Vygotskij, John Dewey, and Howard Gardner have in their research influenced large parts of the daily activity in the Swedish schools. By studying children’s development they suggest several approaches for the students to develop their skills. Korp discuss in hers thesis the inequity that many times occurs in the assessment of the national test in Swedish schools. The results of this study showed that the interviewed teachers were comfortable with the instructions for execution and assessment of the national test. In addition, they also were of the opinion that independent assessment could be more just. However, one issue raised against the independent assessment is that the student the does not have the option of explaining an unclear answer to a question to the assessing teacher. This would not be of benefit for the student which has also been shown in literature and research.

This dissertation studies the fictional and non-fictional responses of David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Richard Powers to their felt anxieties about the vitality of literature in contemporary culture. The intangible nature of literature's social value marks the literary as an uneasy, contested, and defensive cultural site. At the same time, the significance of any given cultural artifact or medium, such as television, film, radio, or fiction, is in a continual state of flux. Within that broad context I examine some of the cultural institutions competing with literature for public attention, as well as some of the cultural developments impacting the availability of public attention for literary concerns. With Wallace, I study his efforts in fiction and essays to establish an anti-ironic mode of literary rebellion, in opposition to the culturally pervasive tone of self-protective irony modeled by television. Franzen opens discussion about the transience of cultural authority, a situation in which the imprimatur of the academy, for instance, confers a cultural significance different in kind but not degree from the imprimatur of a popular televised book club. My study of Franzen in particular demonstrates the impact of proliferating sites of cultural authority, addressing the emergence of middlebrow culture and audiences from contested space to authoritative cultural arbiter. The chapter on Franzen also examines the increasing role of corporate interests in the production of cultural artifacts with an eye toward their financial viability more than their cultural impact. And finally, my study of Powers focuses on the animosity between the sciences and the humanities. Powers produces fiction that serves as an indispensable tool for communicating between disparate and otherwise isolated disciplines, and for helping those specialized fields synthesize their information with others.

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The medieval historian engaged with the systems of power and authority that surrounded him. In his account of the Peasants' Revolt in late medieval England, the ecclesiastical historian Henry Knighton (d. 1396) both reinforced and challenged the traditional order. This thesis explores the ways in which his ideological perspectives shaped his understanding of the events of June 1381 and how this understanding was articulated through the structure, language, and cultural meaning of the historical text. The reconstruction of authorial intention and reclamation of both Knighton and the medieval reader as active participants in the creation of history challenge a historiography that has long disregarded Knighton as an unremarkable historical recorder. Instead, they reveal a scholar whose often extraordinary approach to the rebels and traditional authorities expresses a great deal about the theory, practice, and construction of power and authority in late medieval England.

This thesis develops an account of non-domination as a principle of legitimacy that ought to govern both inter-group and intra-group relations in multicultural states. It applies this principle to the question of how political institutions should respond to claims for the accommodation of controversial minority practices, using the example of the polygamous community in Bountiful, British Columbia. In developing this account, the thesis engages with three bodies of theoretical literature – of multiculturalism, of political legitimacy, and of autonomy. In the dominant normative theories of multiculturalism, answers are centered on what the limits of toleration are, what it means to recognize a collective identity, or what group rights can be claimed and how group rights are balanced with individual rights. While not rejecting the importance of these issues in a pluralistic state, my approach de-centers them by subsuming them under the broader problem of what makes a political authority morally legitimate vis-à-vis particular collective - as well as abstract individual - subjects. I argue that the most promising response to this problem lies with the concept of non-domination, conceived as a foundational principle of political legitimacy for multicultural states. This principle both demands and checks a democratic method for determining specific forms of accommodation. In some cases the advancement of non-domination between groups conflicts with the advancement of non-domination within groups. In political theory this question is often taken up by feminist scholars concerned with the ‘paradox of multicultural vulnerability’ and, more generally, with the dilemma of how to identify and critique internalized oppression while promoting full respect for individual moral agency. Borrowing from these debates, I outline a conception of the relational moral autonomy of the person and argue that it forms a necessary component of a non-domination- based analysis. The conclusion of the thesis with respect to minority social practices is that specific claims should be determined on the basis of a democratic process aimed at uncovering whether and when, all things considered, the accommodation of that particular practice is consistent with non-domination both between and within groups. / Thesis (Ph.D, Political Studies) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-29 11:13:58.516

What happens when employees within the police-force make mistakes in their line of duty? This essay set out to investigate the relationship between labour law sanctions and the criminal law punishments for wrongful acts for government employees. This relationship is also set in the perspective of how acts or statements of xenophobia are handled within the Swedish police-force. Further, the essay aims to examine the principle of ne bis in idem in relation to labour law sanctions and criminal law punishment for wrongful acts, and if these two should be considered in line with this principle. Regarding the relationship between labour law sanctions and criminal law punishment for government employees, the determination for which system to use in any given situation is not fully stipulated. One key aspect is whether the act is carried out in exercise of public authority. By examining cases regarding xenophobia within the Swedish police-force one conclusion that the author has come to is that xenophobia more often is considered an insult (regulated in BrB 5:3) rather than wrongful acts in the line of duty. However, acts or statements of xenophobia are considered wrong and far away from the expected behavior of members of the Swedish police-force. By making an analogy with Swedish tax law an argument can be made that the relationship between labour law sanctions and criminal law punishment for wrongful acts is worth examining, and might not fully be in line with the principle of ne bis in idem.

This thesis attempts to understand the intellectual milieu of Maori society in the early colonial period through the medium of Maori-language sources of information dating from that time. A base in Maori documentary allows Maori history to exist under the same disciplines as that of other literate peoples. The thesis argues that the imposition of English meanings on Maori language has shaded Maori meanings. It offers a rereading of documents including the Treaty of Waitangi in order to restore their Maori historicity. Maori society has also been misrepresented historiographically by the creation of false distance between metropolitan and indigenous culture, including the failure to sufficiently consider the shaping force of literacy on Maori perceptions of citizenship and on the politics of sovereignty that developed at mid-century. The thesis argues that land sales were the main Maori experience of government, and that the government's ability to define the terms of the market reconstrued society in ways which destroyed its former political structure.This turned it into a land-owning collective, in which power lay not in human consequence, as formerly, but in the size of the cultivations to which an owner could prove a right in terms constructed by officials. All members of the kin-group were constutued land owners, and the status of the chief was reduced to the size of the lands to which he could prove ownership. By 1865, when the Native Land Court was instituted, power within Maoridom lay in the land itself: te mana o te whenua. This position was written into culture, and endures into the present. The premise of the thesis is that change towards western norms is the proper frame of study of colonial Maori society, but that the magnitude of change has been obscured, both by the politicisation of the past on presentist premises and by the transformation of colonial models into what is now assumed to be 'traditional Maori society'. In order to separate the colonial from the traditional the thesis looks at precontact society custom regarding authority over land and fisheries. The thesis underscores the magnitude of change when tapu disappeared as the support of chiefs' civil governance, which was played out in the migration of mana (personal power) from chiefs to, modern, land. The disappearance of tapu also, however, aided the rise of Maori civil society within the colony on the basis of the desire for modernity which kept Maori engaged with the government - and therefore still governed. This is studied through letters that detail the operation of civil life in Taranaki and among Ngati Kahungunu, with special reference to the experience of Wiermu Kingi and Renata Kawepo.

Primary health care represents a change from curative approach to preventive approach to rendering health care services. The study analyses the problems encountered in the administration of primary health care in South Africa with specific reference to the Emfuleni Local Authority. The study describes the role of international institutions in the administration of primary health care in South Africa. Furthermore, the historical development, the role of the National Department of Health in the administration of primary health care services is outlined. The study also investigates the role of the Gauteng Provincial Department of Health regarding the implementation of district health system, health promotion, the involvement of the private sector and NGO's in primary health care. Problems encountered by the Emfuleni Local Authority such as lack finance, personnel shartages, security, urbanisation, non-involvement of traditional healers and citizen apathy are investigated. Lastly, governmental relations for primary health care are described.