scholarly journals Modern Colonialism and Cultural Continuity Through Material Culture: An Example from Guam and CHamoru Plaiting

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Montón-Subías ◽  
Almudena Hernando Gonzalo
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Traditional Knowledge ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Technological Control ◽  
Inverse Proportion ◽  
Cultural Persistence ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
Maintenance Activities ◽  
Asymmetrical Relationships

AbstractThis article analyzes cultural persistence in Guam through plaiting, material culture, and maintenance activities, a set of daily practices that are essential to social continuity and well-being. The colonization of Guam began in 1668 with the Jesuit missions. Jesuit policies utilized maintenance activities to colonize Indigenous lifeways and subjectivities, but we believe those activities also functioned as reservoirs of traditional knowledge. Although plaiting has been situated in different historical contexts across the centuries, it no doubt expresses material continuities stretching from a precolonial past. The article also challenges today’s widespread belief that the search for change is a universal value. It argues that societies appreciate continuity over change in inverse proportion to technological control over nature, asymmetrical relationships of power, and specialized fragmentation of functional tasks. In the absence of such features, the best guarantee of survival lies in maintaining the balance achieved by traditional lifeways.

The Story of Storyboards from East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Martin Soukup ◽  
Dušan Lužný
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Field Research ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Global Tourism ◽  
The Village

This study analyzes and interprets East Sepik storyboards, which the authors regard as a form of cultural continuity and instrument of cultural memory in the post-colonial period. The study draws on field research conducted by the authors in the village of Kambot in East Sepik. The authors divide the storyboards into two groups based on content. The first includes storyboards describing daily life in the community, while the other links the daily life to pre-Christian religious beliefs and views. The aim of the study is to analyze one of the forms of contemporary material culture in East Sepik in the context of cultural changes triggered by Christianization, colonial administration in the former Territory of New Guinea and global tourism.

Change and Continuity, Practice and Memory: Native American Persistence in Colonial New England

2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen W. Silliman
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
New England ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Cultural Persistence ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Eastern Pequot

The archaeological study of Native Americans during colonial periods in North America has centered largely on assessing the nature of cultural change and continuity through material culture. Although a valuable approach, it has been hindered by focusing too much on the dichotomies of change and continuity, rather than on their interrelationship, by relying on uncritical cultural categories of artifacts and by not recognizing the role of practice and memory in identity and cultural persistence. Ongoing archaeological research on the Eastern Pequot reservation in Connecticut, which was created in 1683 and has been inhabited continuously since then by Eastern Pequot community members, permits a different view of the nature of change and continuity. Three reservation sites spanning the period between ca. 1740 and 1840 accentuate the scale and temporality of social memory and the relationships between practice and materiality. Although the reservation sites show change when compared to the "precontact baseline," they show remarkable continuity during the reservation period. The resulting interpretation provides not only more grounded and appropriately scaled renderings of past cultural practices but also critical engagements with analytical categories that carry significant political weight well outside of archaeological circles.

scholarly journals The Role of Traditional Knowledge in Building Adaptive Capacity for Climate Change: Perspectives from Vanuatu

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ainka A. Granderson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Adaptive Capacity ◽  
Traditional Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Local Leadership ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Cash Economy

Abstract There is increasing recognition of traditional knowledge as an important store of information and practices for building adaptive capacity for climate change in the Pacific. However, empirical research and documentation of how Pacific Islanders experience climate change, identify relevant adaptation options, and mobilize their adaptive capacity, including traditional knowledge, remains limited. Given this context, indigenous islander perspectives on traditional knowledge and its role in building their adaptive capacity are examined in this article. The author draws on research with the Nakanamanga-speaking peoples of Tongoa Island, Vanuatu. This research documents traditional knowledge relating to weather and climate observations; resource use and management; social networks; local leadership; and values and beliefs in these indigenous communities and reveals differing perspectives about its potential to enhance local adaptive capacity. It highlights indigenous concerns about self-reliance, cultural continuity, and how the transition to a cash economy, the valorization of Western education and lifestyles, and rural–urban migration have had adverse implications for traditional knowledge and its retention. It further reveals potential trade-offs for indigenous communities on Tongoa Island, where traditional governance, tenure systems, and values enable flexibility and collective action that build adaptive capacity but can also promote conservative attitudes and limit uptake of new information and practices.

Verbal Restrictions on the Communication of Turko-Mongols of Inner Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 134-142
Author(s):  
M. M. Sodnompilova
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Communication ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Information Storage ◽  
Inner Asia ◽  
The Rich

Verbal restrictions common among the Turko-Mongol peoples of Inner Asia and Siberia are analyzed on the basis of folkloric and ethnographic sources. Their principal forms are silence, circumlocution, and whisper. The socio-cultural context of these restrictions is reconstructed. They are seen in various domains of culture, in particular relating to social norms, and are believed to refl ect fear of human life and the well-being of man and society in the communication with nature represented by deities and spirits. This is a natural reaction that has evolved under the harsh environmental and climatic conditions of Inner Asia. The sa me concerns, extending to social communication, have regulated interpersonal interactions. In a nomadic culture, verbal restrictions stem from the importance of the ritual function of language and a specifi c attitude toward spoken language, which, over the centuries, was the principal means of information storage and transfer, cognition and adaptation. This concept of speech affected the emergence of the principal behavioral stereotypes. The rigid norms of behavior account for the importance of the nonverbal context of the nomadic culture— the high informative potential of the entire space inhabited by the nomads, and the rich symbolism of their material culture, traditional outfi t, and dwelling.

Aboriginal Midwifery: A Model for Change

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amber D. Skye
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Traditional Knowledge ◽  
Maternal Care ◽  
Health Care Services ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Community Capacity Building ◽  
Aboriginal Communities ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Health And Well Being ◽  
Birthing Centres

This paper will discuss indigenous knowledge and epistemologies of health and well-being as essential practices to improving the health status of Aboriginal communities. These methods will be illustrated through the practice of Aboriginal midwifery and birthing practices currently being revitalized in Aboriginal communities. Indigenous knowledge of health, well-being, medicine, and healing practices have historically sustained the health and well-being of Aboriginal communities for centuries pre-contact. However, these traditional epistemologies of health and healing have been eroded through centuries of colonial oppression and the imposition of western scientific methodologies and legislation. Through decades of acculturation, much of the traditional knowledge of health, medicine and healing has been lost. However, a recent resurgence of traditional Aboriginal midwifery has occurred in an effort to retain, revive and restore the indigenous knowledge of Aboriginal communities. The revival of traditional Aboriginal midwifery has resulted in the development of Aboriginal birthing centres that blend traditional knowledge, medicine and healing practices with contemporary medical services, to provide culturally significant maternal care services for Aboriginal women and families. Currently, there are Aboriginal birthing centres and services in, Nunavut, Quebec and Ontario. The high quality of community-based maternal care, access to culturally significant health services - utilizing traditional medicine and employing traditionally trained Aboriginal midwives has shown improved outcomes, impacting community healing, cultural revival, and community capacity building. The traditional methodologies employed by Aboriginal birthing centres will be detailed to exemplify the significance of indigenous knowledge and epistemologies of health in providing improved health care services to Aboriginal communities.

‘Buying her grave’: money, movement and AIDS in north-west Tanzania

Africa ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brad Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Gender Relations ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
North West

Abstract‘Buying her grave’ is a highly condensed statement about the position of women, and of gender relations more generally, at the crux of dynamic processes of socio-cultural continuity among the Haya of north-west Tanzania. This article suggests that the grave, an essential site of focalisation, is undone by purchase, the quintessential act of disruption, dislocation and uncontrolled mobility. Men believe that women are ‘buying their graves’ (contracting AIDS) when they think they are ‘getting rich’ (finding material wealth through prostitution). To ‘buy a grave’ when you think you are ‘getting rich’ is not merely an ironic commentary on the terrible consequence of death for those who seek only their own gain. It is also a statement about the ways in which sweeping transformations in Haya economic and bodily conditions render impossible the very forms of death that allow the living to realise and perpetuate their own well-being.

scholarly journals The charcoal forest: Ecology, aesthetics and the Anthropocene

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Niles
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Forest Ecology ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Food And Agriculture ◽  
Food And Agriculture Organization ◽  
Cultural Persistence ◽  
United Nations Food ◽  
Shed Light

This paper explores the significance of local forms of knowledge of the natural world, especially the role of this knowledge in cultural coherence and persistence through time, and its consequent significance to the intellectual challenges of the Anthropocene. The text examines the activity of a master charcoal-maker and forest-manager in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, who works within a landscape recognized by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS)—a place of special cultural and agroecological value. Drawing on theories of the evolution of knowledge and material culture studies, charcoal is seen as embodiment of particular understandings of the agencies of the natural world. Attention to the various stages in the production and use of charcoal sheds light on the structure of this knowledge, especially on the important areas in which qualities of one field of activity are transferred to or become essential to another. These “overlaps” link what otherwise appear to be disparate fields of activity into mutually constitutive elements of a whole. They shed light on the dynamics of cultural persistence and indicate the diversity of forms environmental knowledge; they can amplify understanding of the nature of the Anthropocene.

scholarly journals Review of indigenous knowledge in Uganda: implications for its promotion

Afrika Focus ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John R.S. Tabuti ◽  
Patrick Van Damme
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Medicine ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Traditional Knowledge ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Significant Change

Indigenous knowledge (IK) has a role to play for households and community well-being in Uganda. However, IK is undergoing significant change and is on the decline in Uganda because of factors such as acculturation or the loss of IK through exposure to external cultures. In this paper we review some of the roles of, and threats to, IK with particular reference to the local community of Kaliro District. We make some recommendations on how to conserve IK in Kaliro and elsewhere in Uganda. Key words: traditional knowledge, conservation, traditional medicine, ethnobotany 

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