Browsing by Author "Stobie, Melissa Lauren."

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An Afro-European communitarian ethic as a model for a private sector response to HIV/AIDS, with special reference to the King II Report on Corporate Governance for South Africa.
(2005) King, Judith Ann.; Prozesky, Martin Herman.; Parker, Benjamin Philip.; Stobie, Melissa Lauren.
This thesis formulates and argues for a composite conceptual framework of ethics for strategic and sustainable corporate benevolence as a means of addressing HIV/AIDS in South Africa. The template consists of the following theoretical elements: modern virtue ethics, contemporary Western communitarian ethics, the African philosophy of Ubuntu and a feminist ethic of care. This template is applied to relevant pragmatic ends through the proposition that the King I I Report - as it explicitly advocates a universally communitarian and essentially African code of ethics for a business response to HIV/AIDS - offers a viable and valuable model to both understand and transcend the tensions between profits and caring in the post-apartheid era of the South African experience of the pandemic. Specific features of the thesis include contextual perspectives on the ethical variances of HIV/AIDS stigma and behaviour change, cached as the thought-form of " I and We" as opposed to "Us and Them", and the psycho-social linguistics of re-interpreting "the wounded other" as "the wounded us". This is drawn together conceptually in discussion around the individual in and of, rather than as opposed to, the community, stressing how the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic is compelling our society to integrate this reverence into our disposition and conduct. In the spirit of this Afro-European communitarian ethic, and to apply this postulated theory for a concrete social morality in the wake of HIV/AIDS, the thesis argues that there is an ethical role for businesses in restoring the balance between nurturing and selfinterest - an equilibrium that is essential for both human expression and human survival. This involves underscoring the elderly and young women, as well as children, who head households and care for orphans of AIDS in circumstances of great vulnerability, (particularly the nation-wide body of informally organised volunteer home-based caregivers), as target beneficiaries for a gravely urgent and massive empowerment effort by the business sector.
Environmental ethics and the problem of sustainability : a South African study.
(2002) Mbaya, Kennedy Lloyd Mphatso.; Stobie, Melissa Lauren.
Chapter one introduces the topic and outlines chapters two, three, four and five. Chapter two discusses environmental ethics in the light of the three notions of the environment, namely, instrumental value, intrinsic value and the inherent worth. This chapter also discusses philosophical theories of ethics, viz. a consequence-based theory, which is, Utilitarianism, principle-based theories and a philosophical principle of stewardship. Chapter three discusses the trajectory of sustainable development with respect to selected international events. This chapter also shows how the paradigm of sustainable development has peen embraced in nation states, with a special reference to South Africa. Chapter four critically analyses South Africa's environmental law and its macroeconomic policy, GEAR, in the light of environmental ethics. Chapter five synthesises discussions raised in the preceding chapters and offers some insights as to how policy-making pertaining to environment and development can be improved by incorporating a holistic approach of environmental ethics. Chapter six summarises discussions that emerged in chapters one, two, three, four and five.
Mise Eire : national and personal identity in two recent Irish memoirs.
(2001) Stobie, Melissa Lauren.; Arnott, Jill Margaret.
Chapter One will outline the way I will be using the constructs of "national" and "personal" identity, and will then move on to provide a brief contextual setting for the creation and importance of certain literary conventions of Irish topography and character, in particular by examining the cultural nationalism in Yeats's poems. In doing so, I will outline the metaphor of evolution which is crucial in this dissertation, and will examine some of the ethical implications of employing this metaphor. Chapter Two will examine the 1996 memoir Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, outline McCourt's employment of various stock Irish tropes, and show how this leads to a conflation of "personal" and "national" identity, to the detriment of the memoir. Chapter Three will turn to critique Are You Somebody?, the memoir by Nuala O'Faolain which was also published in 1996. I will argue that, in contrast to Angela 's Ashes, Are You Somebody? offers a constructive fusion of both kinds of identity national and personal. In Chapter Four, I will compare and contrast key issues in the texts, in relation to their both being memoirs of (Irish) national significance, published at the same time in a changing Ireland, and I will conclude by arguing that the process of invention which is necessary for the writing of a memoir is equally necessary for the creation of a national identity.