The problem of climate change is not simply scientific or technical, but also political and social. This dissertation analyzes both the role and the ethical foundations of citizenship and citizen engagement in the political and social aspects of climate change communication and policy-making. Using a critical discourse analysis of a policy recommendations drafted by the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, I demonstrate how climate change policy documentation naturalizes a particular version of citizenship I call “climate citizenship.” Based on environmental critiques of liberal and civic republican citizenship, I show how this “climate citizenship” would be more productive and ethical if based on theories of environmental citizenship rooted in an ecological feminist ethic of flourishing. This critique of current representations of citizenship in climate change policy offers a theoretically sound basis for future engaged work in rhetoric of science focused on policy-making.

The underlying premise explored is whether the right to gender equality as interpreted and imposed within the confines of dominant western ideologies of liberal legalism could create the space for meeting the particular needs of (South) African women and men who wish to live out their dreams and desires differently. Modernist discourses mask the political, social and economic power of law and are crucial for the maintenance of the status quo. This adherence to formal rules, extant legal texts and a legalistic culture is violently exclusionary and thus it is necessary to enter into critical discourses that lead to transformative jurisprudence and thought. Different voices have been silenced by these ideologies and it is essential that the stories of women and other outsiders are listened to in order to (re)introduce new futures and new possibilities to South Africans struggling to find a home for themselves in the post apartheid context. The recognition of more ethical approaches to law creates the space to move beyond liberal legalism to post liberal interpretations of the law, the Constitution and the right to gender equality. I therefore focus on exploring the inter relationships between the ethic of care, ethical feminism, ubuntu, and storytelling, which may render judg(e)ments less rigid and exclusionary, and make it more possible to ensure that we can ‘do things a different, a better, way’. Since 1994 the Constitutional Court has formulated a substantive test for equality infringements. This approach, although widely supported, continues to ignore the contextuality of situations and narratives. For this reason I submit that ethical feminist discourses and the insistence on attention to minor, marginal and subversive narratives can teach us much about ourselves and those that we deem to be 'different' from ourselves. Adopting a 'minor' jurisprudence such as the jurisprudence of care formulated in this thesis allows us to reconsider what is and to dream of what is yet to be. In such a way, sites of (legal) resistance are created and maintained, where the 'feminine' (as the beyond, and not 'lack') operates as a locus of change. The equality courts created by the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act could be utilised as spaces of non violent and ethical judgment where the other before the law is seen as unique, considered with care, and thus freed from oppression. The aim of this research is not to conceptualise and categorise a new metanarrative or meta jurisprudence, but to introduce to the reader other ways of listening, seeing and being ways which are less violent, less exclusionary, and more accommodating of difference and diverse experiences of oppression and subordination. Furthermore, the aim is to challenge current legal traditions and to develop new thinking around an indigenous and ethical interpretation of gender equality. Copyright 2005, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Bohler-Muller, N 2005, Developing a new jurisprudence of gender equality in South Africa, LLD thesis, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-06152006-123856 / > / Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Jurisprudence / Unrestricted

This is an exploratory study on the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act No 116 of 1998 in South Africa. It is a case study of two townships in the Nkonkobe Municipality District, Eastern Cape Province. The study was conducted at Ntselamanzi and Upper Qhumashe townships in Nkonkobe Municipality District, Eastern Cape. Since this is a qualitative exploratory study, in-depth interviews were conducted on a sample of ten women in abusive relationships and focus group interviews were conducted on five service providers for a triangulation. A study of related literature focused on African women in battered relationships. An African women’s perspective on the experiences of abuse have been explored. Gender based radical feminist views were discussed and legislations and conventions were analyzed from a human rights perspective. The implementation of the Domestic Violence Act and the role of service providers were also looked into. The findings suggest that African women experience abuse in partner relationships. They sustain grievous bodily harm, psychological, emotional and financial abuse. The patriarchy system, alcohol abuse, infidelity, traditional practices and failure to maintain children have been cited as some of the reasons. The social networks and service providers assisted these women to some extent. However, there is need for ethnic sensitive interdisciplinary training approach on African communities on the Act and a legal system that is accessible to rural women in order to curb further abuse. Various recommendations have been put forward. The study indicated a need for ethnic sensitive empowerment programs for the abused, rehabilitative programs that take into cognizance human rights violations of these women and the abusers, and effective legal remedies to prohibit women abuse.

The purpose of this research was to determine if there is a model of ideal femininity communicated through advertising in girls’ and women’s magazines. To assess the representations of women in magazine advertisements, a content analysis of advertisements appearing in three top-selling, demographically-defined women’s magazines (Girls’ Life, Seventeen, and Cosmopolitan) was conducted. Using feminist theory and hegemony theory as critical lenses, advertisements were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Each advertisement was assessed using five criteria: physical characteristics, social context, personality and attitude, and subtext. Using this data to establish the dominant representations of women, it was determined that there is a model of ideal femininity which is developed through establishing common ideals shared by all three magazines and by gradually introducing new ideals which correspond to shifts in real-world interests and experiences of women. It was concluded that a model of ideal femininity is developed through advertising in girls’ and women’s magazines, this model is used as a guide to direct girls and women towards specific ideal preferences, attitudes and behaviours, and this model continues to emphasise traditional cultural values and gender ideals which are not necessarily reflective of the range of roles women assume in today’s society.

I began my inquiry into women's lawbreaking from a disquiet between what I "knew" from academic feminist accounts and what I "saw" as a worker. My understanding of women's lawbreaking came from a distorted representation of women lawbreakers as victims produced by academic feminist scholarship. This distorted representation came from a feminist practice of emphasizing women's victimhood as an explanatory framework. As a result, women have been rendered 'victims' - a representation that relies on women's object, rather than subject, status. Further, this distorted 'victim' representation fails to examine the way women can, and do, negotiate 'structures' to shape their own lives. As a result of my disquiet, I began to ask what is it about victimization that contributes to women's lawbreaking? I adapted Dorothy Smith's method of inquiry to develop a method which includes women's agency and yet retains feminist insights into economic and cultural gender inequities. This method allows one to understand agency in the context of victimization and its entanglement with lawbreaking by understanding the dialectic nature of social interaction. This dialectic understanding of action is important because we can examine not only what things come into view as structural or institutional processes, but also see more clearly the undercurrent of resistance and survival so relevant to feminism. Further, this method looks at women's lawbreaking differently - it captures women's agency as a counter-discourse to existing feminist discourses of victimization. A small research study was conducted for this thesis. Nine women were interviewed about their lives growing up and their experiences with lawbreaking. From this data, three areas were explored: "invalidation", "addiction" and "negotiation". The analysis of these themes explores, and then maps out, courses of women's lawbreaking action and how those courses are coordinated by the ruling relations. This project aims to contribute to feminist scholarship on women's courses of lawbreaking action by offering Smith's method of inquiry as a way to capture both women's agency and how that is coordinated by the organizational and social relations of ruling. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

Violence against women, especially wife abuse, is a social problem that exists in almost every country in the world. China is no exception. Statistics show that wife abuse in present-day China is prevalent and serious. However, this social problem was largely invisible until the early 1990s. At present, it is still not recognized at the official level and there has been no systematic in-depth research on it to date. North American feminists have long realized the seriousness of this issue and have since done a great deal of research with respect to the causes, prevalence and control of wife abuse. Their perspectives reflect the social reality in North American countries, but are they useful for other countries? This thesis tries to explore a feminist approach to the analysis of violence against women in the home in China's context, especially the lack of political will, which inevitably results in the failure of the criminal justice system to enforce the laws against wife abuse. The thesis tries to prove that violence against women in the home is a serious social problem in China that must be recognized and dealt with effectively. In order to control it, a sincere political commitment to deal with the problem is of paramount importance. The joint efforts of all social sectors, the criminal justice system in particular, are vital to guarantee gender equality in the private sphere. The thesis considers western feminist theories with respect to violence against women in the home as a gendered issue and the impact of feminist perspectives on controlling wife battery in western countries; investigates the dimensions and causes of wife abuse in China, demonstrating that this abuse is an unrecognized but serious social problem in China; explores the existing legislative protection of crime victims in China; analyzes the existing problems with the criminal justice system with respect to providing assistance to battered wives; discusses various reasons why the criminal justice system fails battered women in China, including the factors of state policy, women's federations, patriarchal ideology, mass media and social indifference, and gives suggestions on how to prevent and control spousal assault. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

My thesis proposes a feminist-queer reading of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene in response to Julian Wolfreys’ “The ‘Endlesse Worke’ of Transgression”. I examine the challenges to male authority that the low-born poet, Spenser, faced when he presented his manual for the formation of new English subjects to his sovereign queen, Elizabeth I. The Prefatory Letter to Raleigh and passages from the 1590 version of the epic provide evidence to support the view that traditional hierarchical male/female binaries may have been destabilized by the presence of an unmarried queen. My thesis also supplements Wolfreys’ essay with historical information regarding Mary Tudor and Mary Stuart in order to underscore the ethnocentric aspect of the process of “othering” that takes place in The Faerie Queene.

This paper identifies the discursive practices and power mechanisms in passages of Measure for Measure where certain characters are ruled by the belief of superiority of one over all others. It examines how gender norms are constituted, reproduced, and challenged by drawing on Judith Butler’s theories on gender as a performative act to explore how meaning is reproduced dialogically. Also a Foucauldian understanding of power relations, Augusto Boal’s theatre theories and practices, and Sara Ahmed’s feminist theory.This study contributes to critical-reflexive analyses of gender, language, and literary criticism. The analysis here illuminates how theatre serves as a medium for social change. In doing so, this study offers a feminist perspective in theory and methodology that enables an understanding of how class, gender and power are factors intertwined in social relations. In short, the findings draw attention to the gendered social relationship processes, and thus, demonstrates that theatre is a valuable tool for social change in creating agents of change.

While dominant International Relations (IR) theory has constructed the concept of security in such a way that excludes economic sanctions from considerations of violence, the track record of embargo tells a different story, one with a significantly higher death toll. This project challenges the borders of the hegemonic IR discourse to make room for a theoretical and political account of the deadly impacts of sanction regimes. Through a discourse analysis of IR theory, using Laclau and Mouffe’s holistic discourse theory, it looks to the spaces of meaning negotiation emerging from feminist IR theory. The renegotiated concepts of human security and structural violence make visible economic sanctions as acts of violence, and displace the binary oppositions of international/domestic, military/economic, public/private which shield embargo from the sight of its own violence. Having broken embargo out of its conceptually locked box, this project pushes further, and interrogates the connections of embargo and empire. Embargo functions to uphold imperial control and Western interests, while (re)producing racist colonial narratives. While deconstructing and reconstructing three competing understandings of embargo – embargo-as-nonviolent, embargo-as-violence, and embargo-as-imperial – I interrogate the political implications of hegemonic ways of knowing. I argue that, by challenging the hegemony of IR, we can unmask the practice of embargo, and locate its violent role in upholding imperial structures of power. / Graduate

Child maltreatment is a pervasive social and public health problem in the United States. The negative effects of child maltreatment can include poor mental and relational health outcomes. The experience of discrimination has been shown to have many of the same mental and relational health difficulties. Child maltreatment and discrimination are both social health problems that disproportionately affect the most marginalized people in our society (people of color, people with disabilities, LGBT individuals). Complex trauma, or the experience of multiple traumas, has been shown to have worse mental and relational health outcomes then experiencing one type of trauma alone. Feminist theory is a useful framework for studying how those with marginalized identities experience the effects of child maltreatment. Feminist theory argues that it is essential to incorporate an analysis of power to truly capture the experience of complex trauma for people with marginalized identities. The effects of child maltreatment and discrimination have been studied individually, however little is known about the effects of experiencing both. Data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) biomarker project was used to examine the effect of experiencing both child maltreatment and discrimination. Latent profile analysis was used to create distinct profiles of trauma out of child maltreatment variables and discrimination. A four profile solution was determined to be the best fitting model. The profiles were Low Trauma, Child Maltreatment/Discrimination, Child Maltreatment and Child Maltreatment/ Discrimination High. Analysis of co-variance was then used to determine how each profile of trauma was related to anxiety, depression, family support and family strain. Differences were found among the profiles and the mental health and relational outcomes. Results and clinical implications are discussed.