Magister Artium (Psychology) - MA(Psych) / This study is about intimate femicide: The murder of a woman by a male intimate partner, namely her husband, boyfriend (dating or cohabiting), ex-husband (divorced or separated), ex-boyfriend or a rejected would-be lover. Intimate femicide has been identified as a dire social problem in South Africa. Although intimate femicide has been researched from a range of perspectives, there is a paucity of research on the discourses that women draw on to understand this crime in the context of South Africa. The primary aim of this study was to explore how women survivors of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) understand intimate femicide. This aim crystallised into the following objectives: 1) to explore how women survivors of IPV construct and understand the term intimate femicide, 2) to ascertain how women survivors of IPV understand the issue of risk of intimate femicide within an abusive relationship and 3) to investigate the discourses that women survivors of IPV draw on to understand intimate femicide. This thesis is couched in a feminist poststructuralist epistemology. Data was gathered through a qualitative approach, using in-depth semi-structured interviews. A Foucauldian discourse analysis was conducted on seven interviews with heterosexual women who had been in violent romantic relationships. In addition, ethical principles of anonymity and confidentiality were strictly adhered to. The findings of this study illuminate the immense difficulties that women experience in attempting to understand their level of risk while in an abusive relationship and the complexities experienced in attempting to understand intimate femicide. The discourse analysis revealed that fairy tale romance narratives present women with the idea that there is always hope for their relationships regardless of abusive circumstances, while dark romance discourses position romantic relationships as naturally abusive and present abuse as an invalid reason to leave a relationship. These justifications, beliefs, and understandings of the abuse hamper women’s ability to understand intimate femicide. This has significant implications for scholarship in general and feminist scholarship in particular. These findings emphasise the need for additional engagement in women’s understandings of intimate femicide - a group that has largely been consigned to the periphery. Moreover, given the excessive rates of intimate femicide in South Africa, it is critical that more research is conducted in order to increase awareness of intimate femicide amongst women in violent relationships.

Summary This thesis uses poststructural theory to question how language shapes educational policy and practice. It starts from the premise that the tendency for categorising knowledge as binary opposites, whilst potentially useful, also encourages polarisation, is reductive, and produces closure. Thus, by interrogating the ‘/’ [slash], the boundary between the pairs, the intention is to produce a different, more equable, productive, and openly uncertain way of questioning unresolved educational dilemmas, hence the search for a question. Educational inclusion/exclusion foregrounds this research. It did not start out this way. As a scientist, a zoologist by training, and steeped in the rigidity of scientific method, the original study concerned proving a hypothesis, using questionnaires to collect the data and followed by some sort of statistical analysis. However, this approach did not acknowledge the complexity, nuances and shades of meaning within the language of inclusive education that I wished to explore. Poststructural theory offered a different strategy and interrupted my positivist thinking throughout. Thus, a Foucauldian approach has been used to interrogate the inclusion/exclusion binary in the literature. Searching for the historical a priori is followed by an interrogation of the different discourses and the power relations therein. An empirical analysis succeeds the textual analysis, for which data was collected in the form of interviews. Called participatory interactions, secondary teacher educator colleagues were asked to talk about inclusion, and activatory phrases were used to stimulate discussion. Poststructural interruptions about ethics suggested an innovative method of discourse analysis developed using Derrida’s metaphor of a postcard, in which he enacts the performative stance of deconstruction. Aspects of the data that troubled the inclusion/exclusion binary are presented as verse alongside a reflexive response that stimulates theoretical discussions called ‘new lines of flight’. On the reverse side of every postcard is a photograph, a graphic representation of some feature pertaining to the data selected, and the stamp is a picture of the philosopher whose work inspired the theorisation. Interrogating the ‘/’ [slash] reveals the complex interplay of each side of the binary and surfaces a system of ethics regarding legitimation. The final chapter, therefore, proposes a deliberate ethical interruption – an interruption of practice in order to interrupt practice. Professional practice should be deliberately interrupted by research in order to interrupt oppositional binary thinking. This research should have a deliberately ethical component foregrounding personal values and attitudes. As a consequence, inclusive education could be reconceptualised. The current discourse of a failing educational experiment might then be transformed into an ethical project worth going on with.

De senaste 30 åren har det grova och dödliga våldet mellan grupper ökat kraftigt i Sverige. De åtgärder som vidtagits har inte lyckats stävja våldet. Under 2018 startades därför pilotprojektet Sluta skjut upp i Malmö för att testa den amerikanska modellen Group Violence Intervention (GVI). Syftet med denna uppsats är att analysera på vilka sätt som processutvärderingen av Sluta skjut, vilken producerades vid pilotprojektets slutperiod 2020, förstår och förklarar våldsdrivande grupper. Genom detta ämnar vi bidra med en insikt i vägledande dokuments eventuella påverkan på det sociala arbetet. Studien utgår från ett kritiskt poststrukturellt perspektiv vilket utmanar upplysningens förgivettagande om vetenskap och förnuft, samt hur detta tankesätt kan leda till social ojämlikhet. Mer specifikt använder sig studien av metoden ”What’s the problem represented to be?” (WPR) utvecklad av Carol Bacchi (2009; Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016). Studiens resultat visar på tre problemframställningar: våldet är orsakat av (1) våldsbejakande grupprocesser vilka leder till att våldet (re)produceras inom grupperna, att (2) våldet inte beror på enstaka individers handlingar utan hela gruppers agerande, men samtidigt att (3) individerna själva ses som rationella och måldrivna, och är ansvariga för att söka hjälp och stöd själva. Dessa problemframställningar bygger på antaganden om grupprocesser vars mekanismer kan användas till att sprida önskvärda normer och värderingar, kallat informell social kontroll. Genom samverkan mellan myndigheter, samt mellan myndigheter och civilsamhälle, bygger aktörerna legitimitet för sitt handlande. Insatser mot eller frihetsberövande av enskilda individer som begår brott ses som ineffektivt. Detta lämnar vissa delar oproblematiserade. I samverkan framkommer en diskrepans mellan aktörerna samt en dominerande polisdiskurs vilket ibland leder till att de sociala insatserna hamnar i skymundan. Våldet betraktas som det illegitima, fysiska våldet från grupperna vilket gör att andra våldstyper inte hörs. Slutligen analyseras det individfokus som präglar de sociala insatserna i strategin, och bortfallet av andra faktorer problematiseras.

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The aim of this study is to examine how the problem of ‘men's violence against women’ is represented and defined within the framework of parliamentary work in Sweden. With a poststructural approach the method of choice is a discourse analysis, in particular Carol Bacchi´s approach ’What´s the problem represented to be?’. The fundamental idea of this method is that the suggested solution to a problem indicates what one thinks needs to change, and thereby what the ‘problem’ is. In accordance with this method, we have analyzed eleven political documents (motions) which underlie further legalization and decision making, authoredbetween 2017-2022. All the selected political documents include solutions to the problem of men’s violence against women, domestic violence and/or honor related violence. Previous research has shown that the political debate has a significant impact on how a phenomenon is understood. Therefore, each epoch has a certain way of representing and defining a problem. In this study, four problem representations were identified: ‘lack of support’, ‘the legal system’,‘lack of knowledge’ and ‘social norms’. Together these themes represent how contemporary society comprehends the problem of men's violence against women. Acknowledging this is ofimportance because the problem representation provides a framework of action – for society, as well as the individual.

This is a qualitative actions research study of pre school teachers’ reflections about their choices and actions. The qualitative actions research study is combined with semistructured interviews, mind map-conversations and a videocamera in order to bring awareness about the pedagogs actions. The theory i use to analys the results is poststructural discourse. The aim is to understand and investigate how and if teachers in preschool change their analyses and reflections practice, during their action research process. Another purpose, during this process, is to understand how the pre school teachers reflect and value their knowledge in the context of their profession and practice. The questions i aim to answer are:1. In which ways does the action research process change the pre school teachers reflectionspractice?2. How do the pre school teachers reflect upon and value their knowledge about their profession within their practice?The conclusion is that action research, semistructured interviews, mind map- conversations and the observered material from the videocamera led the preschool teachers to develop at their own pace, and from their own problemed based questions and thoughts. They go from a structure view on the pedagogical practice to a subjective self evaluation view, where change is possible and their own knowledge about their profession becomes visible.

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The genre affiliation is a postmodern study: Virtual Reality (VR) becomes a comprehensive concept, in the face of modernism's illusion, when rhetoric validates all discourses. All is VR. The study is in three sections with an overall introduction and conclusion: the first section introduces VR in its postmodern setting, the second section establishes the postmodern timeless/spaceless paradigm of HyperReality in which all Hermeneutics are being done from, the last section draws the paradigm into the Creatio Ex Nihilio discourse of the Scriptures. The proposed theological model is an intratextual theological model, however when YAHWEH precedes language then all discourses become intratextually part of the Biblical discourse. Human creativity is a metaphorical journey; the Fall was the outset of two languages, one in the presence of YAHWEH, while the other one void of this presence led to a nihilistic abstract constellation. Sin in VR is the unbiblical appropriation of this constellation. / Thesis (M.Th.)