Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2003. / Full text to be digitised and attached to bibliographic record. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This assignment is devoted to an in depth analysis of the pro- and the contra-positions in the long-standing and costly debate about the question whether to spray with DDT or not in the fight against malaria. I argue that the dilemma whether or not to spray with DDT is born out of a political agenda, hype, exaggeration and misinformation of the first order. Radical environmentalists appear to insist that DDT is a principal contributor of environmental degradation, and the major cause of death amongst wildlife and humans. Worse still, many Western people seem to be under the impression that mosquitoes cannot cause so much human misery as purported, and that malaria is caused by some kind of plant form of life, or even a virus. The proponents of DDT, on the other hand, appear to be convinced that DDT is a saviour of humankind, and argue that the horrors associated with DDT are exaggerated and baseless, as they are not backed by scientific inquiry. Proponents of DDT also believe that anything that is overused may kill, even ordinary table salt. Inthis assignment, both of these positions are scrutinized. On the basis of an historical overview in Chapter I of the history of the use of DDT, and the emergence of the debate about DDT in the wake of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), Chapter 2 is devoted to an evaluation of seven basic arguments against the use of DDT, while in Chapter 3 six arguments for the use of DDT are weighed. In Chapter 4 a resolution of the dilemma is proposed in which a case is made for a limited use of DDT only for indoor spraying of huts and houses against malaria mosquitoes until such time as a less dangerous alternative for DDT is found that can be used as effectively in the fight against malaria. As such, this case is informed by the strong moral conviction that we cannot allow poor people of colour to die because of a general ban on the use of DDT. Further research on this ethical debate is encouraged. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie werkstuk is toegespits op 'n in-diepte analise van die pro- en kontra-posisies in die voortslepende, asook duur debat oor die gebruik van DDT al dan nie in die bekamping van Malaria. Ek argumenteer dat die dilemma rondom die vraag of DDT gebruik moet word of nie, aangewakker word deur politieke agendas, sensasie, oordrywing en foutiewe informasie van die eerste orde. Radikale omgewingsgesindes dring oënskynlik daarop aan dat die gebruik van DDT 'n hoof-oorsaak is van die agteruitgang van die omgewing, asook 'n primêre oorsaak van dood onder wild en mense. Erger nog, dit wil voorkom of heelwat Westerse mense onder die indruk is dat muskiete nie werklik soveel menslike lyding kan veroorsaak as wat voorgegee word nie, en dat malaria eerder veroorsaak word deur 'n sekere soort plantvorm van lewe, of selfs deur 'n virus. Die voorstaanders van DDT, aan die ander kant, is klaarblyklik oortuig dat DDT 'n redder van die mensdom is, en argumenteer dat die gruwels wat geassosieer word met DDT 'n grondelose oordrywing is, aangesien dit nie deur wetenskaplike ondersoek gesteun word nie. Voorstaanders van DDT glo verder dat enige stof wat in oormaat gebruik word, die dood kan veroorsaak, selfs gewone tafelsout. In hierdie werkstuk word albei hierdie posisies krities bestudeer en bespreek. Op grond van 'n historiese oorsig in Hoofstuk 1 oor die gebruik van DDT, en die ontstaan van die debat oor DDT na aanleiding van Rachel Carson se Silent Spring (1962), word Hoofstuk: 2 gewy aan 'n evaluasie van sewe basiese argumente teen die gebruik van DDT, terwyl in Hoofstuk 3 ses argumente vir die gebruik van DDT oorweeg word. In Hoofstuk 4 word 'n voorstel gemaak vir die resolusie van die dilemma deur 'n saak uit te maak vir die beperkte gebruik van DDT, nl. slegs vir binneshuise gebruik in hutte en huise teen malaria-muskiete tot tyd en wyl 'n minder gevaarlike alternatief vir DDT gevind word wat net so effektief sal wees in die stryd teen malaria. As sulks word hierdie studie gerugsteun deur die sterk morele oortuiging dat ons nie kan toelaat dat mense van kleur sterf as gevolg van 'n algemene verbod op die gebruik van DDT nie. Verdere navorsing oor hierdie etiese debat word aangemoedig.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Michael A. Ramsay / Immediately after World War I, the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps implemented an officer education program. Called the Marine Corps Schools (MCS), the Commandant, Major General John A. Lejeune, gave the schools the mission of educating officers throughout their career. MCS struggled during its first decade of existence due to operational tempo and a poor curriculum. The direction of MCS changed greatly with the assignment of James Carson Breckinridge as the commanding officer in 1928. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the role Breckinridge, an unconventional and intellectual officer, played in reviving the MCS and turning it into the authority on Small Wars and Amphibious Operations. It will show that Breckinridge, drawing on observations made of college education systems, focused the Marine Corps Schools on the task of teaching officers to analyze problems and find solutions and not rely on memorized book answers.

This research will examine the rise in popularity of the hillbilly music genre as it relates to the early part of the twentieth century as well as its decline with the arrival of the western hero, the cowboy. Chapter 1 examines the origins of traditional music and how instrumental the fiddle and banjo were in that development. Chapter 2 looks closely into the careers of recording artists who recorded what would later be called hillbilly music. Chapter 3 examines the string band and the naming of the hillbilly genre. Chapters 4 and 5 look at the aspect of radio programming and stereotypes. Chapter 6 discusses the homogenization of the hillbilly genre and the replacement of the hillbilly with the cowboy. This research will clarify the appeal of the hillbilly and highlight the negative stereotypes that started the genre and ultimately ended it leading into the Second World War.

This work explores how authors employ literary modes to persuade readers towards one side or another of the environmental debate and whether the works promote constructive discourse on environmental issues. It uses two seminal works from each side of the environmental discourse, Silent Spring and The Population Bomb and The Ultimate Resource and The Skeptical Environmentalist, to analyze stylistic differences and similarities, to compare public reception, and to explain the increasing polarization of environmental discourse.

Thesis (M.A.)--North Carolina State University, 2002. / Title from PDF title page (viewed Apr. 2, 2005). Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 86-88).

This thesis has examined some women writers of the 1950s in an attempt to discover if there could be a "women" school of writers as definable as the Black, Jewish or Southern schools which gained recognition during that ten-year period. During the 1950s American literature became fragmented as various minorities began to search into personal histories in order to discover human identities within the framework of race, religion or geography. It was the contention of this paper that women were involved in much the same type of identity search, that through their own literature they were searching out a human identity' within, but not confined to, their sexual role in society.The cliche of the decade is that this was a placid time in feminist history, a time when women docilely sacrificed education and personal talents to return to the in a search for their homes as wives and mothers. However, a study of the works of Sylvia Plath, Carson McCullers, May Sarton and Elizabeth Janeway shows a group of women in active rebellion against the sexual stereotyping so prevalent in the 1950s. Through art these women were rejecting traditional concepts of a "woman's place," and instead were exploring their own talents, strengths and potentials human identity.This thesis has sought to combine a study of the cultural influences operating on society of the 1950s with the literature being written by women during this period in order to more fully understand the female attitude toward herself and her role. This study indicates that the active rebellion of the women's liberation movement a decade later arose from the search for identity found in much literature by women of the 1950s.

No description available.

An increased dissatisfaction and disbelief toward modern democracy resulted in the revival of deliberative democracy and of experiments, such as participatory budgeting (PB). PB is a process of conjoint decision making through which citizens and local governments deicide on the final allocation of new public investment budget in their cities. While the Brazilian experiments of PB have been extensively researched, those in Europe have not. Therefore this research project endeavours to fill the gaps of the literature concerning the nature of PB and its applicability to developed countries, particularly in Spain and France. In so doing, it will compare the experience of French, Spanish and Brazilian cities and attempt to determine the influences of the contexts on their PB experiments. The main results from this comparative analysis are that the effects of contextual variables are mediated by the procedural ones. Therefore, PB can be adapted to different contexts by changing the procedural variables. However, five key PB practices have to be respected for PB to keep its essence. Moreover, this research has also focused on the under-researched but crucial links that exists between PB and deliberative theory and the respective insights that they can convey to each other.

Carson McCullers's neglected short stories "Sucker", "Like That", and "The Haunted Boy" depict stark adolescent crises. Her character analyses dramatize important elements of many theories of adolescent psychology. Each of these stories depicts what happens when something goes horribly wrong in the course of an already difficult stage of life. In "Sucker" two different stages of adolescent development collide. Pete and Sucker go through different psychological adjustments. The two boys discover the difficulties of adolescent romance, hero-worship, peer group formation and exclusion, and power reversal. The narrator in "Like That" struggles with her Peter-Pan complex as she witnesses her sister go through an adolescent romance. She despises - and fears - the changes that adolescence and adulthood bring to her life and her family. "The Haunted Boy" explores the struggles of Hugh as he deals with issues of adult imitation, lack of a strong male role model, peer loyalty, and emotional repression.

This thesis establishes a phenomenology of desire in Anne Carson’s novel-in-verse Autobiography of Red. It examines how desire constructs the self in the text and how it positions it in relation to its surrounding world. The self’s status in the text is read through Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s understanding of desire and their concepts becoming and deterritorialisation as explicated in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These concepts are used to map the transformative power of desire in Autobiography of Red and provide an approach through which to understand the tenuous nature of self in the text. It reveals desire not as located solely in the relation between the text’s protagonist Geryon and Herakles, but as a movement that animates and constructs the text. It reads the “red” of the title, the presence of the volcano, of lava, as essential to the text, mapping how the force of desire positions the self and undoes the notion of a phenomenal “background”. Deleuzian desire has linguistic implications and the thesis further extends the use of becoming and deterritorialisation to understand Carson’s poetics and the text as the site that gives rise to a phenomenology of desire. The text is deterritorialised and Carson articulates a way of relaying experience beyond the representative mode. The thesis offers a reading of Autobiography of Red with a Deleuzian theory of desire, which is a new approach in Carson scholarship. As such it hopes to open up both the poetic text and theoretic text to new understandings and create points of departure for further research.