List of Titles

"Feeling foggy?": an investigation into the self-reported post-concussive symptoms in rugby union players at university level

- Boulind, Melissa

Authors: Boulind, Melissa
Date: 2005
Subjects: Brain damage , Brain -- Wounds and injuries -- Complications , Brain -- Wounds and injuries -- Psychology , Sports injuries -- Psychological aspects , Rugby football injuries , Rugby Union football players
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2938 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002447 , Brain damage , Brain -- Wounds and injuries -- Complications , Brain -- Wounds and injuries -- Psychology , Sports injuries -- Psychological aspects , Rugby football injuries , Rugby Union football players
Description: A study was conducted on the self-reported symptoms of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury sustained in Rugby Union at the pre- and post-season stages. A full sample of 30 rugby players at Rhodes University was compared to 27 non-contact sport controls. A reduced sample of 20 rugby players and 9 control participants provided improved control for education and IQ and was compared. Measures included the WAIS-III Vocabulary and Picture Completion Sub-tests to estimate IQ level, the symptom checklist on a widely used computer-based program (ImPACT), and a paper and pencil self-report 31-Item Post-Concussion Symptom Questionnaire. Independent and Dependent T-Test comparisons were conducted on the full and reduced samples. The symptoms reported by the rugby group appeared to be more pronounced on both the ImPACT Symptom Scale and the 31-Item Post-Concussion Symptom Questionnaire when compared to the control group at both the pre-and post-season stages. It was concluded that the rugby players demonstrated evidence to support the hypothesis of having sustained more previous concussions and reporting more symptoms at the pre-season stage when compared to comtrol participants. No prevalent changes for either the rugby or control groups were seen in dependent comparisons from pre-to post-season.
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Date Issued: 2005

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"Constructive critic" or "donor agency": does the World Bank have a role to play in sub-Saharan Africa's development beyond that of providing economic aid?

- Thompson, Christine Audra

Authors: Thompson, Christine Audra
Date: 1992
Subjects: Africa, Sub-Saharan -- Economic conditions -- 20th century , World Bank -- Africa, Sub-Saharan , Africa, Sub-Saharan -- Economic conditions
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2835 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003045 , Africa, Sub-Saharan -- Economic conditions -- 20th century , World Bank -- Africa, Sub-Saharan , Africa, Sub-Saharan -- Economic conditions
Description: This thesis attempts to evaluate the role of the World Bank in Sub-Saharan Africa's development. It argues that the World Bank has stepped beyond the boundaries of a typical lending institution by linking its aid to political reform. The study argues that in this capacity the Bank has contributed to the halting democratization process currently underway in Africa. The economic effects of the World Bank's Structural Adjustment Programmes have been less successful. As yet, the programmes have not produced the expected results and there is no evidence of long-term, sustainable economic recovery in Sub-Saharan Africa. These programmes are, however, long-term strategies and it may therefore be too premature to reach a final conclusion. They may also have been affected negatively by unfavourable political environments. This study, noting the negative effects of the international terms of trade and prices for African exports, concludes that although economic recovery in Sub-Saharan Africa will be facilitated by domestic political and economic policy reform, there is also a need for reform of the international economic order. The World Bank has correctly identified the need for domestic improvement, but it has a tendency to disregard the negative consequences of the existing structure of the international economy.
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Date Issued: 1992

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"Complexes of carbohydrates with magnesium-ions" : "the isolation of an oligosaccharide containing L-galactose from the polysaccharide of Aeodes orbitosa" : "horizontal cellulose colum chromatography of sugars"

- Van der Linde, Michael John

Authors: Van der Linde, Michael John
Date: 1974
Subjects: Magenesium , Ions , Carbohydrates , Oligosaccharides , Polysaccharides , Chromatographic analysis
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
Identifier: vital:4504 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013282
Description: Sugar complexes with anions and cations are reviewed. Evidence is presented for the formation of a complex of stoichiometry 1:1 in aqueous solution between methyl-α-Dglucopyranoside and magnesium perchlorate. The complex may be detected by the method of continuous variations. Measurements of changes in the proton chemical shifts of the glucoside in dauterium oxide, indicate that the complex is probably formed between the vicinal hydroxyl groups at C-2 and C-3 of the pyranoside ring and the hydrated cation. At elevation temperatures there is evidence for the presence of a complex of stoichiometry 2:1. Experiments conducted on cellulose indicate the possible formation of cellulose - magnesium-ion complexes . These complexes provide an explanation for the "protective action" of mEgnesium compounds on the cellulose portion of pulp during alkali-oxygen bleaching.
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Date Issued: 1974

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"Chimurenga" 1896-1897: a revisionist study

- Horn, Mark Philip Malcolm

Authors: Horn, Mark Philip Malcolm
Date: 1987
Subjects: National liberation movements -- Zimbabwe , Political violence -- Zimbabwe , Zimbabwe -- Politics and government -- 1980- , Zimbabwe -- History -- Chimurenga War, 1966-1980
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2546 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002398 , National liberation movements -- Zimbabwe , Political violence -- Zimbabwe , Zimbabwe -- Politics and government -- 1980- , Zimbabwe -- History -- Chimurenga War, 1966-1980
Description: There were no "Rebellions" in 1896-7. The concept of "risings" which is to be found in the European perspective of the escalated violence has distorted an understanding of the complex nature of the events. The events of 1896-7 must rather be explained through an examination of the details of the conflict. European pressure on the African people prior to 1896 was minimal and cannot be assumed to be the "cause" of the first "Chimurenga". There was no planned, organised or coordinated "rebellion" in Matabeleland in March 1896. Further, no distinction can be made between a "March" rebellion in Matabeleland and a June "rebellion" in Mashonaland. A European war of conquest in 1896-7 evoked the responce known now as the first "Chimurenga". It was the war of conquest of 1896-7 which saw the ascendancy of the European perspective over the African and thereby established the psychological foundations of the Rhodesian colonial state. The complex nature of the events of 1896-7 is to be understood through an appreciation of the different perspectives of those who became embroiled in the conflict.
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Date Issued: 1987

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"Changing ourselves, changing others" : an analysis of the life stories of participants in a training course for volunteers within a non-governmental organisation in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa

- Harper, Christopher Duncan

Authors: Harper, Christopher Duncan
Date: 2000
Subjects: Non-governmental organizations -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Violence -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Abused women -- Counseling of , Women -- Crimes against -- South Africa , Volunteers
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2985 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002494 , Non-governmental organizations -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Violence -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Abused women -- Counseling of , Women -- Crimes against -- South Africa , Volunteers
Description: Gender-based violence has been recognized as a pressing mental health problem that is prevalent within South African society. Non-governmental organizations play a major role in addressing and highlighting the issue. These organizations make use of volunteers in order to assist in meeting their goals. The modernist perspective has been the dominant investigative mode when research into volunteers has been conducted. However, this study has been conducted with an emphasis on narrative. In its use of this constitutionalist and deconstructive perspective, it examines the identity of the research participants within the dominant social and cultural discourses that story their lives. This presents a major challenge to the modernist framework. In examining the life stories of the participants an emergent nature of identity is noted. Through the process of storying their lives and ascribing meaning to their experiences and understandings, the participants engaged in a process of constructing their identity. This research recognizes that identity is both multi-sited and multi-storied. The emphasis on personal agency enables the participants to restory their lives in the light of challenging prevailing discourses. It is in this process of challenge that they reauthor their lives and are in a position to change their own lives and the lives of others.
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Date Issued: 2000

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"But what story?": a narrative-discursive analysis of "white" Afrikaners' accounts of male involvement in parenthood decision-making

- Morison, Tracy

Authors: Morison, Tracy
Date: 2011
Subjects: Family planning -- South Africa -- Psychological aspects Family size Birth intervals Men -- South Africa -- Attitudes Men -- South Africa -- Psychology Couples -- South Africa -- Psychology Afrikaners -- Attitudes
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
Identifier: vital:3025 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002534
Description: Despite the increased focus on men in reproductive research, little is known about male involvement in the initial decision/s regarding parenthood (i.e., to become a parent or not) and the subsequent decision-making that may ensue (e.g., choices about timing or spacing of births). In particular, the parenthood decision-making of “White”, heterosexual men from the middle class has been understudied, as indicated in the existing literature. In South Africa, this oversight has been exacerbated by the tendency for researchers to concentrate on “problematic” men, to the exclusion of the “boring, normal case”. I argue that this silence in the literature is a result of the taken for granted nature of parenthood in the “normal” heterosexual life course. In this study, I have turned the spotlight onto the norm of “Whiteness” and heterosexuality by studying those who have previously been overlooked by researchers. I focus on “White” Afrikaans men’s involvement in parenthood decision-making. My aim was to explore how constructions of gender inform male involvement in decision-making, especially within the South African context where social transformation has challenged traditional conceptions of male selfhood giving rise to new and contested masculine identities and new discourses of manhood and fatherhood. In an effort to ensure that women’s voices are not marginalised in the research, as is often the case in studies of men and masculinity, I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews about male involvement in decision-making with both “White” Afrikaans women and men. There were 23 participants in total, who all identified as heterosexual and middle-class. The participants were divided into two age cohorts (21 – 30 years and >40 years), which were then differentiated according to gender, reproductive status, and relationship status. Treating the interviews as jointly produced narratives, I analysed them by means of a performativity/performance lens. This dual analytic lens focuses on how particular narrative performances are simultaneously shaped by the interview setting and the broader discursive context. The lens was fashioned by synthesising Butler’s theory of performativity with Taylor’s narrative-discursive method. This synthesis (1) allows for Butler’s notion of “performativity” to be supplemented with that of “performance”; (2) provides a concrete analytical strategy in the form of positioning analysis; and (3) draws attention to both the micro politics of the interview conversation and the operation of power on the macro level, including the possibility of making “gender trouble”. The findings of the study suggest that the participants experienced difficulty narrating about male involvement in parenthood decision-making, owing to the taken for granted nature of parenthood for heterosexual adults. This was evident in participants’ sidelining of issues of “deciding” and “planning” and their alternate construal of childbearing as a non-choice, which, significantly served to bolster hetero-patriarchal norms. A central rhetorical tool for accomplishing these purposes was found in the construction of the “sacralised” child. In discursively manoeuvring around the central problematic, the participants ultimately produced a “silence” in the data that repeats the one in the research literature.
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Date Issued: 2011

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"Burnout" in children's home houseparents

- Bath, Peter John

Authors: Bath, Peter John
Date: 1983
Subjects: Uncatalogued
Language: English
Type: Master's theses , text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/193118 , vital:45300
Description: Aimed at replicating the results of an American study into "Burnout" in Group Home houseparents, this research had the following aims: 1) To ascertain the validity and reliability of the instrument used in the original study and presented as a "useful measure of burnout”. 2) To establish whether this line of research, within a highly problematic research field, can at present offer any guidelines in the resolution of the current staffing crisis faced by South African children's homes. 3} To describe more closely the burnout syndrome. 4) To study possible etiological factors within a local context. Sixty three houseparents completed questionaires and three independent measures of burnout were obtained. The results were regarded as having failed to replicate those of the original study. The reason for this was found to be the low validity of the original instrument. The main conclusion drawn was that the line of research adopted in the original study can offer only very tentative guidelines towards the resolution of the staffing crisis faced until such time as valid and reliable instruments to measure burnout have been developed. Many of the suggested relationships between situational variables and ones of personal characteristics were confirmed for the local population of houseparents. , Thesis (MSocSci) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 1983
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Date Issued: 1983

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"All vistas close in the unseen" : a study of the transcendent in the fiction of E. M. Forster

- Butler, Ian

Authors: Butler, Ian
Date: 1987
Subjects: Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), 1879-1970 -- Criticism and interpretation , Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), 1879-1970
Language: English
Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2175 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001826
Description: From introduction: It has become something of a commonplace among critics to remark Forster's relative lack of success in offering an alternative to the world which he satirises with such wit and humour. His comic treatment of the suburban absurdities of the Edwardian Englishman is, on the whole, far more compelling and memorable than the often vague, symbolic gestures by means of which he implies the possibility of something better. With the exception of his last and greatest novel, A Passage to India, his "alternatives" are largely factitious and contrived. Worse, the reader senses a fundamental uncertainty on the part of the author: his characteristic ambivalence in itself an indication of a perceptive and discriminating mind -- all too often suggests lack of conviction rather than an intelligent awareness of the infinitude of human possibilities.
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Date Issued: 1987

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"A dark revolt of being" abjection, sacrifice and the real in performance art, with reference to the works of Peter van Heerden and Steven Cohen

- Balt, Christine

Authors: Balt, Christine
Date: 2009
Subjects: Cohen, Steven, 1962- Van Heerden, Peter Phelan, Peggy Kristeva, Julia Lacan, Jacques Performance art -- South Africa Abject art
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2132 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002364
Description: This thesis is an exploration of some of the defining characteristics of performance art, and an investigation of how such characteristics relate to ritual. It highlights some key notions, such as that of the “Real” and the live, which are introduced in the first chapter. This chapter explores the theories of Peggy Phelan, Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan in its attempts to conceptualize the Real. It assesses how performance art as ritual attempts to revise traditional apparatuses of representation. It argues that, through a transgression of representation, performance art has the potential to challenge and revise established discourses on identity, culture and violence. The second chapter of this study is an attempt to provide a history and subsequent conceptualization of performance art, based on its exposition of the live. I have taken into consideration certain strategies that performance artists employ to evoke the live, referring specifically to the manipulation of the body. It is through abject encounters with the unsymbolizable “Real” that the performance artist reaches the borders of his/her subjective constitution, and performs a transformation of his/her identity that transcends the mechanisms of representation. The third chapter of this study attempts to find the connections that exist between performance art and sacrificial ritual. I will refer specifically to the theories of Rene Girard. Girard‟s notion of the “violent sacred” and its significance within sacrifice as an antidote to community crises will be explored in relation to collective transformation within the performance event. I choose to focus specifically on the role of the performer as surrogate victim/pharmakon, and the spectators/witnesses as part of the community. The fourth chapter explores how two South African performance artists, Steven Cohen (1961) and Peter van Heerden (1973), perform the abject body as the monster. Kristeva‟s notion of the abject will be examined in terms of the transformation of the individual performer as subject within performance art, and how, through the assumption of an “othered,” monstrous identity, the performer becomes the surrogate victim. The fifth chapter will entail an examination of Peter van Heerden‟s 6 Minutes. I will attempt to draw parallels between performance art and ritual through using this performance piece as a case study. I will focus on the strategies that Van Heerden implements to resist theatrical representation. 6 Minutes will be observed in terms of its link to sacrificial ritual, and it presentation of the live, and the Real. In light of these discoveries, I aim to locate performance art within politically-driven modes of art-making, and how such an endeavour relates to South African modes of theatre and performance.
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Date Issued: 2009

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"A complex and delicate web" : a comparative study of selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy

- Glover, Jayne Ashleigh

Authors: Glover, Jayne Ashleigh
Date: 2008
Subjects: Atwood, Margaret Eleanor, 1939- -- Criticism and interpretation Le Guin, Ursula K., 1929- -- Criticism and interpretation Lessing, Doris May, 1919- -- Criticism and interpretation Piercy, Marge Piercy, Marge -- Criticism and interpretation Utopias in literature Dystopias in literature Science fiction, English -- History and criticism Fantasy fiction -- History and criticism Fantasy literature -- History and criticism Women authors -- 20th Century Women authors -- 21st Century English fiction -- 20th Century English fiction -- 21st Century
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
Identifier: vital:2199 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002241
Description: This thesis examines selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy. It argues that a specifiable ecological ethic can be traced in their work – an ethic which is explored by them through the tensions between utopian and dystopian discourses. The first part of the thesis begins by theorising the concept of an ecological ethic of respect for the Other through current ecological philosophies, such as those developed by Val Plumwood. Thereafter, it contextualises the novels within the broader field of science fiction, and speculative fiction in particular, arguing that the shift from a critical utopian to a critical dystopian style evinces their changing treatment of this ecological ethic within their work. The remainder of the thesis is divided into two parts, each providing close readings of chosen novels in the light of this argument. Part Two provides a reading of Le Guin’s early Hainish novels, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World is Forest and The Dispossessed, followed by an examination of Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five, and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The third, and final, part of the thesis consists of individual chapters analysing the later speculative novels of each author. Piercy’s He, She and It, Le Guin’s The Telling, and Atwood’s Oryx and Crake are all scrutinised, as are Lessing’s two recent ‘Ifrik’ novels. This thesis shows, then, that speculative fiction is able to realise through fiction many of the ideals of ecological thinkers. Furthermore, the increasing dystopianism of these novels reflects the greater urgency with which the problem of Othering needs to be addressed in the light of the present global ecological crisis.
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Date Issued: 2008

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