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No / Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics ¿ and within this framework, particularly the idea of 'moral discourses', which focuses on 'what is good for all' and is intended as a means of addressing situations where a shared substantive 'background consensus' does not exist or has broken down ¿ is premised on the assumption that participants attempt to engage with and persuade each other through reasoned argumentation. Where does this leave (potential) participants with strong religious convictions? In several recent publications, Habermas himself has started to reflect on this question. His reflections are motivated not least by (responses to) 11 September 2001. In this context, Habermas has suggested that those with secular commitments engage in a process of self-reflection about the meaning of secularisation, the losses involved in the questioning of religious world views, and the question of how we might respond to these losses. Yet while these reflections are interesting and suggestive, Habermas's framework, as it stands, cannot easily accommodate his own recognition of the need to overcome what he has called 'the rift of speechlessness' that threatens to divide religious and secular discourses. Against this background, I consider elements of William E. Connolly's recent reflections on Neuropolitics as one example of a body of work that suggests possible alternative responses to the challenges Habermas identifies ¿ and as a contribution that deserves to be taken seriously by those interested in the further development of discourse ethics and/or deliberative democracy.

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My research paper is an investigation of the discourse of gender in relation to the work of Michel Foucault, Susan Bordo, Judith Butler and the artists Louise Bourgeois, Fiona Hall, Jo Spence and Neil Emmerson. I have applied Foucault's notion of the formation, necessity and operations of discourses as the basis from which ideas can be articulated, and the context within which notions of gender are formulated and challenged. I examine the processes in discourses, such as the imposition of disciplines to control the subject, which in turn are inscribed in the body of the subject by the subject, as they begin to perceive and define themselves in terms of the disciplines. I use this theory on the relationship between discourse-power-knowledge to analyse my work and that of the artists mentioned. The work of each artist is discussed in terms of the discourse of gender and the basis from which they critique its power, its effects on bodies and forms of representation through a marginal discourse. For the purposes of my work, the conclusion reached is that to disrupt the discourse of gender entails a continual questioning and awareness of its 'truths,' processes and effects. Description of Studio Work: The three major works examine the power and operations of the discourse of gender on bodies and how marginal discourses subvert these constructions. My works in paper, printmedia and metal, in two dimensions and three, reflect the effects through forms that seek to question limitations and extend our conception of male and female bodies. The wall piece, Out of Order, re-configures symbols and signs from the discourse of gender as a means of disrupting notions that gender is immutable. A swirling red line is woven through a densely layered mass of horizontal broken lines. The addition of symbols, X and Y chromosomes, numbers and other tokens of gender, appear at various points in this marginal discourse on conception of 'bodies.' Mammaphone, which accompanies Out of Order and Bullrushes, consists of an enlarged breast LP playing on a turntable. The 'tracks' are a litany of terms for the breast from slang and maternal discourses. The turntable that 'hosts' the LP sits on top of a stylised 'flight recorder's black box,' which suggests the hidden discourse on gender. Bullrushes, is an arrangement of 20 phallic-like forms each on a flexible metal rod that sways with the passage of air around the work. The work presents male bodies as durable, delicate and vulnerable despite the norms of the masculine discourse. The intention is to put into process an interrogation of the effects of gender on bodies and the possibilities for re-thinking the discourse of gender.

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The question that this study addressed was how Catholic educators from diverse experiential backgrounds negotiate personally persuasive and authoritative discourses in fashioning their identities as assistant principals. The inquiry is framed by poststructuralist perspectives on identity and uses as a methodology an ethnographic interview approach in an effort to understand the transition from teacher to assistant principal. Interviews with three first-year assistant principals in two Catholic school districts in a Western Canadian province formed part of the data. To obtain the school district’s perspectives, I also interviewed district-level personnel who were responsible for leadership formation. Documents from the Ministry of Education that included the newly developed provincial standards for principals as well as documents from the two school districts were also analyzed. The research findings reveal that beginning assistant principals negotiate their identities as educational leaders when they assume a role and that the expectations of the role existed before their arrival. These expectations are the authoritative discourses that shape the educational leader within the school district and that are negotiated with the personally persuasive discourses of the leader. The tensions that new assistant principals in the study negotiated were conflicting discourses of leadership and the dissonance between the challenges and affirmations regarding participants’ deeply held values and the traditional institutional demands on administrators and between the role expectations and the autonomous decision making of leaders. The implications of emphasizing questions of identity in leadership development shift the thinking on the assistant principal beyond the organizational structure of the role. School districts must better attend to the development of the identity of their educational leaders by restructuring leadership training programs and ensuring the effectiveness of mentoring programs. New assistant principals must themselves address the differences between role and identity and direct attention to the importance of developing and strengthening their identities as educational leaders.

My research paper is an investigation of the discourse of gender in relation to the work of Michel Foucault, Susan Bordo, Judith Butler and the artists Louise Bourgeois, Fiona Hall, Jo Spence and Neil Emmerson. I have applied Foucault's notion of the formation, necessity and operations of discourses as the basis from which ideas can be articulated, and the context within which notions of gender are formulated and challenged. I examine the processes in discourses, such as the imposition of disciplines to control the subject, which in turn are inscribed in the body of the subject by the subject, as they begin to perceive and define themselves in terms of the disciplines. I use this theory on the relationship between discourse-power-knowledge to analyse my work and that of the artists mentioned. The work of each artist is discussed in terms of the discourse of gender and the basis from which they critique its power, its effects on bodies and forms of representation through a marginal discourse. For the purposes of my work, the conclusion reached is that to disrupt the discourse of gender entails a continual questioning and awareness of its 'truths,' processes and effects. Description of Studio Work: The three major works examine the power and operations of the discourse of gender on bodies and how marginal discourses subvert these constructions. My works in paper, printmedia and metal, in two dimensions and three, reflect the effects through forms that seek to question limitations and extend our conception of male and female bodies. The wall piece, Out of Order, re-configures symbols and signs from the discourse of gender as a means of disrupting notions that gender is immutable. A swirling red line is woven through a densely layered mass of horizontal broken lines. The addition of symbols, X and Y chromosomes, numbers and other tokens of gender, appear at various points in this marginal discourse on conception of 'bodies.' Mammaphone, which accompanies Out of Order and Bullrushes, consists of an enlarged breast LP playing on a turntable. The 'tracks' are a litany of terms for the breast from slang and maternal discourses. The turntable that 'hosts' the LP sits on top of a stylised 'flight recorder's black box,' which suggests the hidden discourse on gender. Bullrushes, is an arrangement of 20 phallic-like forms each on a flexible metal rod that sways with the passage of air around the work. The work presents male bodies as durable, delicate and vulnerable despite the norms of the masculine discourse. The intention is to put into process an interrogation of the effects of gender on bodies and the possibilities for re-thinking the discourse of gender.

The study was prompted by the lack of existing research with regard to what people locally think and believe about dreams. The study aimed to uncover, explore, and describe current, local dream related beliefs, discourses, and practices (in the Vaal-Triangle area of South-Africa), using a postmodern, social constructivist, as well as a generally sociological approach. In support of this aim, a literature review of various religious, cultural, and psychological dream related discourses was executed. Semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted with twenty respondents who were purposively selected from the administrative database of a Vaal-Triangle University on the basis of culture and gender. The interviews were recorded and the edited transcriptions thus derived served as basis for a thematic qualitative analysis of the respondents' dream related beliefs and practices. The findings were also examined with regard to cultural and gender related patterns, as well as in relation to existing dream discourses. Findings included that dreams were accorded differing degrees of importance by the respondents, that dreams were believed to originate both from internal factors such as an individual's mental and emotional state and neurological processes, as well as from external factors such as daily events and experiences, deceased relatives, and God. Furthermore, dreams were believed to serve several different functions such as mental processing, releasing pent-up emotions, expressing fears or desires, predicting the future, or providing warnings and solutions to problems. Dreams also often served as basis for decisions and actions, most often in order to avoid a negative outcome, or actualize a positive scenario shown by a dream. Several types of unusual dream experiences were reported, including precognitive dreams, dreams that provided contact with a deceased relative or ancestor, spiritual experiences in dreams, as well as sleep paralysis. The most significant sociological findings included that dreams often influence the nature and content of social interaction between individuals, frequently serving as a source of humour and entertainment; that the mother often serves as the "keeper" of knowledge about dreams, and that local dream discourses and practices might in part be transmitted matrilineally. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Sociology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2005

This thesis investigates the place and meaning of ‘physical education’ to practitioners and children at three preschool settings in a city in Scotland. The thesis examines the discourses of physical education at the preschools, and interrogates the ways in which the participants engaged with these discourses in order to construct their subjectivities. Preschool physical education has been largely unexplored by researchers and this study thus gives insight into how practitioners and children engage with, take up and resist particular discourses. The study contributes to physical education and early childhood education research by connecting separate bodies of sociocultural, and more specifically poststructural, research related to both fields. A poststructural, Foucaultian theoretical framework underpins the thesis. It features discourse analysis and particularly draws on Foucault’s work around techniques of power and the ‘technologies of the self’. The first step in the discourse analysis involved examining potential sources of discourses the practitioners were likely to draw on. This entailed analysing the physical education sections of the curricular documentation used at the settings (Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence), and analysing texts related to preschool physical education continued professional development (CPD) that some of the practitioners participated in. Analysis indicated that physical activity and health discourses are prevalent throughout the curricular documentation. Discourses related to motor skill development and play also prevail. Motor skill development and physical activity discourses are prevalent in the documentation related to CPD. The second step in the discourse analysis involved analysing language patterns in the participants’ talk. Fourteen practitioners and 70 children participated in the study. Research methods employed were observations, interviews with adults, a group drawing and discussion activity with children, and interviews with children. Discourses related to motor skill development, play, physical activity and health, along with a related pedagogical discourse concerning ‘structure and freedom’, appeared to underpin ‘physical education’ at the three contexts, in different ways. For instance, the settings differed in the extent to which motor skill development underpinned physical education, with pedagogies often being more adult-led where this discourse was stronger. This thesis highlights that preschool practitioners and children engage in multiple, complex ways with a range of physical education discourses that currently have currency in Scotland.

Le sida est l’objet d’une abondante production discursive faisant intervenir une pluralité d’acteurs au Cameroun. Tous les acteurs de la communication sociale sur le sida ne lui accordent cependant pas la même signification. Les uns le considèrent comme une affection au même titre que les autres affections connues c’est-à-dire résultant de l’action pathogène d’un micro-organisme naturel appelé vih ; pour d’autres, le sida est un état physiologique ouvert à la maladie du fait de la déficience immunitaire ; une dernière catégorie le considère comme une maladie mystique c’est-à-dire, due soit à l’action des sorciers, soit à la colère de Dieu. Une analyse fondée sur la définition révèle que les convictions et certitudes exprimées par les acteurs de la communication sociale sur le sida ne sont pas le reflet d’une réalité ontologique, incréée, palpable et décelable objectivement ; il s’agit plutôt des constructions. Deux types de constructions se dégagent de ce processus : l’une, scientifique, fait intervenir des acteurs partageant les mêmes savoirs et pratiques scientifiques. Ils s’expriment dans des espaces symboliques particuliers qui sont : l’hôpital, le laboratoire d’analyses médicales, les médias et les institutions publiques. Les discours scientifiques changent, modifiant ainsi les représentations et convictions conséquentes. Le deuxième type de construction fait intervenir d’une part, les acteurs non scientifiques et les spécialistes des disciplines autres que la biologie et d’autre part, des biologistes considérés comme en marge de l’orthodoxie. Alors que les acteurs de la dynamique scientifique disposent des instances d’arbitrage et de consensus permettant d’harmoniser leurs vues, ceux de la dynamique populaire évoluent sans coordination. La dynamique populaire intègre les discours scientifiques dans des systèmes de savoirs et pratiques culturelles, autant qu’il procède à des formulations relatives aux différentes manières dont les cultures concernées se représentent la santé et la maladie. Il en résulte des convictions et représentations particulières, différentes de celles suggérées par les discours scientifiques. Parce que les discours populaires intègrent discours scientifiques dissidents, ils suscitent la réplique ou le réajustement des discours dominants. L’interaction entre les discours dominants et les discours dominés participe d’une construction de synthèse qui rend encore plus mouvante, la saisie du sida. / In Cameroon, the Aids issue is the subject of an abundant discursive work that brings in a plurality of actors. However, all the social communication actors on AIDS do not give the same meaning to the issue. Some consider it as affection, in the same way as the other known affections. For them, it results from the pathogenic action of a natural micro-organism called HIV; for others, AIDS is a physiological state open to the sickness due to immunodeficiency; and a last category considers it as a mystical sickness which is due either to the action of witch – doctors or to God’s anger. But an analysis based on the definition of the concepts used reveals that the convictions and certainties expressed by the social communication actors on AIDS, are not the reflection of an ontological, uncreated, palpable and objectively discernable reality. They are rather possibilities. Two types of possibilities emerge from this process: the scientific one which brings in actors who share the same scientific knowledge and practices, who have the same viewpoint and are recognized by others as being competent to talk about AIDS. They usually express themselves in specific symbolic places like hospitals, medical analysis laboratories, media and public institutions. The scientific discourse sometimes changes, thus modifying the consequent thoughts and convictions. The second type of possibility brings in non scientific actors and specialists in other fields than biology, but also biologists who are considered as being in the margin of the orthodoxy. Whereas the actors of the scientific dynamic have at their disposal the consensus and arbitration bodies that permit them to harmonize their views, those of the popular dynamic move along without any coordination. The popular dynamic integrates scientific discourse into cultural practices and knowledge systems, as well as it makes formulations relating to the different manners the cultures concerned think of health and sickness. The end results are the specific thoughts and beliefs different from those suggested by the scientific discourse. Due to the fact that popular discourse integrates dissident scientific discourse, it gives rise to the reply or the re-adjustment of the prevailing discourse. The interaction between the prevailing discourse and the non prevailing discourse contributes to a synthesis building up which renders again more unstable, the understanding of AIDS.