Materialism, or the orientation towards viewing material goods and money as important for personal happiness, is detrimental in several ways: it is associated with psychological maladjustment and lowered well-being and also conflicts with pursuits of caring for and relating to others. Although research has found that materialism is associated with fewer and lower-quality relationships with others, no research to date has explored the effects of materialism on the parent-child relationship, and the resulting impact on the child’s orientation towards others. These associations were explored in the present research. One hundred and five mothers and 76 fathers were assessed on measures of materialism (self-enhancement values and extrinsic aspirations) and parenting. Three domains of parenting were considered: control parenting (disciplinary strategies), protection parenting (responsiveness to child distress), and guided learning parenting (guidance through parent-child discussion). The 105 adolescents of these parents were assessed on indicators of moral development: prosocial and antisocial behavior, value internalization, prosocial moral reasoning, and empathy. It was hypothesized that parent materialism would predict lower levels of adolescent moral development and that this association would be mediated by parenting behaviors. This hypothesis was partially supported, but only for mothers. One measure of mother materialism - self-enhancement - related to adolescent prosocial behavior, while the other measure of mother materialism - extrinsic aspirations - related to adolescent approval orientation. Two mediators were identified for the mother self-enhancement/adolescent prosocial behavior link: mother operational-interfering style during moral discussions (guided learning parenting) and mother use of non-reasoning and punitive disciplinary strategies (control parenting). Beyond these links to adolescent moral development, both mother and father materialism were linked to negative parenting behaviors, including low responsiveness to adolescent distress, low empathy (in mothers), and high use of scolding and criticisms (in fathers). The results of this research indicate that when parents place high value on demonstrating power over others and achievement according to social standards at the expense of more prosocial values, adolescent moral development suffers, as mediated by the effect of materialism on parenting behaviors.

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Thesis--Freie Universität, Berlin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. i-vi).

Thesis (M.A.)--Liberty University, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2006. / Document formatted into pages; contains x, 93 p. : ill. Includes bibliographical references.

In the chapters that follow, the porous boundary between the public and the private in Jeremy Cronin’s poetry is investigated in his three collections, Inside (1983), Even the Dead: Poems, Parables and a Jeremiad (1996) and More Than a Casual Contact (2006). I argue two particular Marxist theorists are central to reading Cronin’s poetry: Bertolt Brecht, and his notion of the Verfremdungseffekt, and Walter Benjamin and his work on historical materialism, primarily the essay On the Concept of History / Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940). Both theorists focus on the work of art in a historically contextualized manner, which extends the challenge to the boundary between the public and the private. Their work is underpinned by the desire to draw out hidden narratives occluded under the grand narratives of history and capitalist ideas of progress. I argue that these are the major preoccupations in Cronin’s oeuvre as well. As such Cronin’s poetry may be seen to write against a perspective that proposes a linear conceptualisation of history. The poetry therefore challenges the notion that art speaks of ‘universal truths.’ Such ideas of History and Truth, if viewed uncritically, allow for a tendency to conceive of the past as unchanging, which subconsciously promotes the idea that social and political realities are merely logical evolutionary steps. I argue that Cronin’s poetry is thus purposefully interruptive in the way that it confronts the damaging consequences of the linear conceptualisation of history and the universal truth it promotes. His work attempts to find new ways of connection and expression through learning from South Africa’s violent past. The significance of understanding each other and the historical environment as opposed to imposing perspectives that underwrite the symbolic order requires the transformation rather than the simple transferral of power, and is a central focus throughout Cronin’s oeuvre. This position suggests that while the struggle for political freedom may be over, the necessity to rethink how South Africans relate to each other is only beginning. Chapter One will focus on positioning Cronin, the poet and public figure, in South African literature and literary criticism. In this regard, two general trends have operated as critical paradigms in the study of South African poetry, namely Formalism (or ‘prac crit’) and a Marxist inflected materialism, which have in many ways perpetuated the division between the private and the public. This has resulted in poetry being read with an exclusive focus on either one of these two aspects, overlooking the possibilities of dialogue that may take place between them. Cronin’s perspective on these polarised responses will be discussed, which will illustrate the similarity of his position to Ndebele’s notion of the ‘ordinary’ which suggests a way beyond these binaries. This will lead to a discussion of how South African poets responded to the transition phase, suggesting that the elements of the polarisation still remained. Considering the major influences and paradigms when reading Cronin’s oeuvre provides a foundation for the following three chapters. These include Cronin’s use of Romanticism, Bertolt Brecht and the V-Effekt and Walter Benjamin’s perspectives on historical materialism. In addition to these three theoretical paradigms, the relevance of Pablo Neruda’s poetry to Cronin’s work is also foregrounded. In Chapter Two, the focus will be on Cronin’s first collection of poetry, Inside, concentrating on Cronin’s use of language as a way of constructing poetry in the sparseness of the prison experience. This will show an abiding preoccupation of learning to speak in a language that considers the material context out of which it emerges. In this regard, the poems “Poem-Shrike” “Prologue” and “Cave-site” are analysed. In addition, one of the central poems in Cronin’s oeuvre, “To learn how to speak […],” will be examined in order to illustrate how the poet extends this project on a meta-poetic level, asking for South African poets to ‘learn how to speak’ in the voices of South African experience and histories. I will show how this is linked to Cronin’s “Walking on Air” which illustrates how the V-Effeckt recovers the small private histories through re-telling the life story of James Matthews, a fellow prisoner incarcerated for his anti-apartheid activism, revealing how this story is intimately connected to the public sphere. In Chapter Three, Cronin’s second collection: Even the Dead: Poems, Parables and a Jeremiad will be examined. In the poem “Three Reasons for a Mixed, Umrabulo, Round-the-Corner Poetry” Cronin resists inherited Western poetic conventions by incorporating and subverting versions of the Romantic aesthetic, arguing for poetry to be immersed in South African multi-lingual and multi-cultural experiences. “Even the Dead” reveals how Cronin uses Walter Benjamin’s perspectives on historical materialism to confront amnesia. In terms of the themes established in “To learn how to speak […]”, the poem “Moorage” demonstrates how the public and private can never be separated in Cronin’s work. The final section of this chapter will examine how Cronin responds to Pablo Neruda’s poems “I am explaining a few things” and “The Education of a Chieftain,” and how these poems challenge narratives that privilege the ‘great leader’ instead of the so-called smaller individuals’ stories. Chapter Four examines selections from Cronin’s third collection, focusing on Cronin’s use of the automobile, charting an ambiguous trajectory through the ‘new’ South Africa. The examination of the poems “Where to begin?”, “Switchback” and “End of the century - which is why wipers,” all attempt to include individuals left on the margins of the narrative of global freeways and neo-liberal capitalist progress. The poems present an interrogation of how ‘vision’ is constructed. This will show that the poetry responds to the experiences of the marginalised under these grand narratives in a primarily fragmentary and interruptive manner. This in effect constitutes the culmination of Cronin’s poetic journey and the search for new ways of envisaging South Africa’s future and finding a new language with which to speak it.

The accepted view of Late Victorian psychology suggests that it avoided a commitment to a scientific framework because of the influence of Idealist philosophy. This study represents an attempt to show that both moral considerations and the recognition of the positive role which the human mind plays in organizing sense data favoured the abandonment of certain assumptions inherent in Positivism and Naturalism. In essence, the problem faced by Late Victorian psychologists was how to explain consciousness as a natural phenomenon. The most important sources of information used in this study were the text books of James Ward, James Sully and G.F. Stout. In addition, their articles on psychological topics, published in academic journals, were of considerable value; and in particular, the British journal, Mind proved useful. In an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Thomas Henry Huxley presented the "doctrine of conscious automatism," which described human behavior as a result solely of external sensations without the intervention of consciousness. The psychologist, James Ward, attacked the materialist influence upon psychology and Naturalism in general. Ward took the position that the laws of science were only mathematical generalizations and thus were not always applicable to single instances. Evolution, he believed, gave evidence of the workings of a Supernatural Power. In man, the influence of the Power was shown by a need to fulfill a moral ideal. Another Late Victorian psychologist, James Sully, tried to adhere more firmly to the Positivist tradition. Following a suggestion of Herbert Spencer's, Sully tried to explain morals as the end product of mankind's evolutionary development. The final psychologist treated in this study, George Frederick Stout also recognized the importance of subjective factors in a man's perceptions and judgments. Stout adopted Avenarius' theory that all thought served as a form of biological adjustment to the environment. In this way, Stout showed how consciousness could be studied as a natural phenomenon. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

This project seeks to give Stephen King and Pet Sematary full consideration through applying a multi-faceted ecocritical approach to a novel so clearly founded on the relationship between the land and its inhabitants. Through my analysis of the environment’s role in Pet Sematary, I will engage with important questions asked by both Historical and New Materialists in order to examine as completely as possible the relationship between Indigenous peoples and colonist conceptions of property, land use, and nonhuman agency present in the pages. Study of this sort engages in a critique of settler colonial ideals through a thorough examination of one of popular culture’s most successful and apparently errant offenders of intentional appropriation of Indigenous belief. Ultimately, this project seeks to reclaim not only Pet Sematary or King’s oeuvre, but the horror genre more broadly. Given the genre’s affordances for critiquing material histories, this project asserts horror’s utility for the development of new understandings of old fears and particularly as a means of asserting nonhuman agency. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This dissertation is a study of supernatural doubles in Victorian literature. It argues that these doubles expand our understanding of gender variance in the Victorian period. The texts in this dissertation privilege gender non-binarism through their depictions of materiality, gender embodiment, and temporality.

To have sustainable lifestyles, individuals need to have support from physical and social infrastructures, as well as institutions, however the major decisions about a sustainable lifestyle are being made at individual and social levels. This research is an exploration into understanding the social influences that drive an individual’s materialistic behaviour, and using that understanding to develop interaction design solutions that reflect on materialism and promote sustainable behaviour and life- styles.An extensive literature review is conducted on various aspects of materialism from the product design, interaction design - that have focused on the material and performative nature of artefacts - and social innovation perspectives. Here, existing work, such as simplicity movements, have promoted the idea that an individual’s life can be more fulfilling if they engage in activities that are purposive and materially light. How- ever, since it has been difficult to convince large populations of the society about the benefits of sustainable living, sociology research provides a platform to understand how our perception of self and social surroundings impacts our lifestyles in materialistic ways. From this understanding , two stages of empirical studies were conducted for design material, firstly exploring the concept of materialism from a sharing and ownership perspective, and then, intervention based studies that gathered insight on the use of techniques that promote reflection on these behaviours. A set of rich insights were identified on methods for design that promote the reflection on materialistic behaviour; focusing predominantly on experiences and identity management. These in- sights are applied and presented in three service design concepts that were explored in a participatory workshop.