Money, Mobile Money and Rituals in Western Kenya: The Contingency Fund and the Thirteenth Cow

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sibel Kusimba

Abstract:This article, based on fieldwork in Western Kenya from 2012 to 2016, describes how life cycle rituals collect and distribute different forms of money, including land, property, personhood, animals, cash, and digital moneys. It specifically examines a ritual coming of age for adolescent boys. By organizing multiple forms of money relative to the phases of a human life, the past, and the future, these rituals serve to manage and transfer wealth across generations and to give these transfers social and moral dimensions. The study provokes a critique of financial initiatives in the Global South that often assume that the financial goals of the poor are short-term.

2020 ◽  
pp. 089124162096826
Author(s):  
Elazar Ben-Lulu

Anthropologists see life-cycle rituals as a significant way to understand gender roles and identities in religious communities. While in the past, these compulsory rituals involved a significant change in a person’s social status, today many of their traditional features have been transformed. This ethnographic inquiry examines Bat Mitzvah ceremonies (coming of age rituals for girls) in Israeli Reform Jewish congregations. By including new blessings, appropriating masculine religious symbols, and creating new bodily gestures, the feminine life-cycle ritual challenges the traditional Jewish laws and contemporary socio-cultural constructions of the Israeli Jewish community. The exclusion of the Israeli Reform community from mainstream Jewish religion turns this ritual into a subversive act that battles local Jewish Orthodoxy authority. The ceremony is a political performance, which positions the Reform congregations as an activist religious agent for gender equality in the Israeli public space.


1981 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert N. Butler

Historically, doctors have not entertained a broad enough view of the total human life cycle. While much attention has been focused on infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood as times of growth and change, we have all but ignored the later years and the often marvelous characteristics of “the survivors.” The use of standardized methods for evaluating the mental and physical status of old people has deprived both practitioners and patients of the richness of life-long experiences. By taking the time to attentively listen to their patients' reflections of the past, physicians can help advance our growing understanding of human aging and expand the repertoire of mechanisms that are useful in clinical practice.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2021/1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Papp

Coming of age, as one of the major transitions in the human life cycle, marks the threshold between childhood and adulthood. This transition involves the physical and psychological, as well as the social maturity of the individual. The present article discusses the contemporary practice of the Japanese coming of age ritual, known as seijinshiki, which although it is a relatively modern invention, is nourished by a century-long tradition of coming of age rituals as well as by the traditional world-view on the human life cycle. Today, the ceremony is facing a new challenge due to the upcoming changes in the age of legal adulthood in Japan. Seijinshiki is an excellent example of how change is integrated as well as reflected throughout ritual practice. It vividly reflects social processes as well as mirroring several problems that Japanese society has been facing in our own time. The paper will examine some of these problems together with the major changes that affected the various forms of coming of age rites in Japan across history. The paper also demonstrates that ritual continues to be regarded in Japan as a valid social and individual instrument to treat passages in human life.


Author(s):  
Antoni Bortnowski

The subject of analysis in this paper is the motif of loneliness in the early works of Irène Némirovsky (1903–1942). A pessimistic view on human life, which is typical for Némirovsky, is shown by the author of this article on the example of three works: L’Enfant génial, David Golder and Les Mouches d’automne.  The main character of each of the works constantly feels misunderstood, alienated and eventually dies, convinced of the meaninglessness of his/her existence. These feelings become common for the characters, which at first glance seem completely different - a Jewish boy from the poor quarter of Odessa, a rich financier living in Paris, and an elderly Russian nanny, who emigrates with her masters. The problem of loneliness in Némirovsky’s writing is closely related to the issues of finding one’s own identity and attempts to overcome the past.


Author(s):  
M. Osumi ◽  
N. Yamada ◽  
T. Nagatani

Even though many early workers had suggested the use of lower voltages to increase topographic contrast and to reduce specimen charging and beam damage, we did not usually operate in the conventional scanning electron microscope at low voltage because of the poor resolution, especially of bioligical specimens. However, the development of the “in-lens” field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) has led to marked inprovement in resolution, especially in the range of 1-5 kV, within the past year. The probe size has been cumulated to be 0.7nm in diameter at 30kV and about 3nm at 1kV. We have been trying to develop techniques to use this in-lens FESEM at low voltage (LVSEM) for direct observation of totally uncoated biological specimens and have developed the LVSEM method for the biological field.


2020 ◽  
Vol 134 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-401
Author(s):  
Carla El-Mallah ◽  
Omar Obeid

Abstract Obesity and increased body adiposity have been alarmingly increasing over the past decades and have been linked to a rise in food intake. Many dietary restrictive approaches aiming at reducing weight have resulted in contradictory results. Additionally, some policies to reduce sugar or fat intake were not able to decrease the surge of obesity. This suggests that food intake is controlled by a physiological mechanism and that any behavioural change only leads to a short-term success. Several hypotheses have been postulated, and many of them have been rejected due to some limitations and exceptions. The present review aims at presenting a new theory behind the regulation of energy intake, therefore providing an eye-opening field for energy balance and a potential strategy for obesity management.


2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 161-224
Author(s):  
ʿĀʾiḍ B. Sad Al-Dawsarī

The story of Lot is one of many shared by the Qur'an and the Torah, and Lot's offer of his two daughters to his people is presented in a similar way in the two books. This article compares the status of Lot in the Qur'an and Torah, and explores the moral dimensions of his character, and what scholars of the two religions make of this story. The significance of the episodes in which Lot offers his daughters to his people lies in the similarities and differences of the accounts given in the two books and the fact that, in both the past and the present, this story has presented moral problems and criticism has been leveled at Lot. Context is crucial in understanding this story, and exploration of the ways in which Lot and his people are presented is also useful in terms of comparative studies of the two scriptures. This article is divided into three sections: the first explores the depiction of Lot in the two texts, the second explores his moral limitations, and the third discusses the interpretations of various exegetes and scholars of the two books. Although there are similarities between the Qur'anic and Talmudic accounts of this episode, it is read differently by scholars from the two religions because of the different contexts of the respective accounts.


Author(s):  
Ihsan Sanusi

This article in principle wants to examine the history of the emergence of the conflict of Islamic revival in Minangkabau starting from the Paderi Movement to the Youth in Minangkabau. Especially in the initial period, namely the Padri movement, there was a tragedy of violence (radicalism) that accompanied it. This study becomes important, because after all the reformation of Islam began to be realized by reforming human life in the world. Both in terms of thought with the effort to restore the correct understanding of religion as it should, from the side of the practice of religion, namely by reforming deviant practices and adapted to the instructions of the religious texts (al-Qur'an and sunnah), and also from the side of strengthening power religion. In this case the research will be directed to the efforts of renewal by the Padri to the Youth towards the Islamic community in Minangkabau. To discuss this problem used historical research methods. Through this method, it is tested and analyzed critically the records and relics of the past. In analyzing the data in this research basically used approach or interactive analysis model by Miles and Huberman. In this analysis model, the three components of the analysis are data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing or verification, the activity is carried out in an interactive form with the process of collecting data as a process that continues, repeats, and continues to form acycle.


Metahumaniora ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Erlina Zulkifli Mahmud ◽  
Taufik Ampera ◽  
Yuyu Yohana Risagarniwa ◽  
Inu Isnaeni Sidiq

Kedudukan dan fungsi bahasa sebagai alat komunikasi manusia mencakup seluruh bidang kehidupan termasuk ilmu pengetahuan antara lain terkait sejarah peradaban manusia; bagaimana manusia mempertahankan hidupnya, bagaimana manusia memperlakukan alam, bagaimana alam menyediakan segala kebutuhan manusia. Apa yang dilakukan manusia saat ini, saat lampau, dan apa yang dilakukan manusia jauh di masa prasejarah, bagaimana kondisi alam di masa-masa tersebut, apa perubahan dan perkembangannya, dapat didokumentasikan melalui bahasa, divisualisasikan kembali, lalu dipajang sebagai salah satu upaya konversai dan preservasi dalam satu institusi yang disebut museum. Penelitian ini membahas kedudukan dan fungsi bahasa dalam permuseuman. Bagaimana kedudukan dan fungsi bahasa dalam permuseuman baik dalam informasi yang disampaikan oleh pemandu wisata museumnya maupun yang terpajang menyertai benda-benda dan gambar-gambar merupakan tujuan dari penelitian ini. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah gabungan antara metode lapangan dan metode literatur. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa secara umum kedudukan bahasa Indonesia berada pada urutan pertama setelah Bahasa Inggris dan keberadaan kedua bahasa dalam permuseuman ini melibatkan dua fungsi utama bahasa, yakni fungsi komunikatif dan fungsi informatif.The existence and function of language  as a medium of communication covers all fields of human life including knowledge, one of them is the history of human civilization; how humans survived, how human utilized nature for their lives, and how nature provides all the necessities for humans. What humans have been doing now, what they have done in the past and far before that in the pre-history time, how the conditions of the nature at those times were and what changes as well as progresses occurred are documented using language, then re-visualized,  displayed as one of conservation and preservation acts in an institution called museum. This research discusess the existence and function of language in museums. How important the existence of a language in museums and what language functions used in museums both in informations given by the museum guides and on the displays accompanying objects and pictures are the aims of this research. The methods used are the combination between field research and library research. The results show that generally the existence of Indonesian language plays more important role than English and both languages have two main functions; communicative function and informative function.     


1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-85
Author(s):  
Mir Annice Mahmood

Improving the material conditions of the poor has been the main focus of economic policy formulation for the past fifty years or so. Thus, in this connection, a vast body of literature has been published which deals with such issues as identifying the poor and suggesting remedies to alleviate their lot. The book by Theodore W. Schultz deals specifically with the economics of the poor. The book is primarily a collection of articles the author wrote over a fortyyear period (1950-1990), and these have been published previously in a number of leading economic journals. The articles have been grouped under three headings: "Most People Are Poor"; "Investing in Skills and Knowledge"; and "Effects of Human Capital". The articles basically deal with the concept of human capital. There is a logical sequence to the articles that make up this book; the poor are identified and steps are then suggested to improve their standing. Issues such as women's economic emancipation and the demand for children are highlighted in the collection of articles dealing with these two subjects. By investing in themselves through education, the poor raise their level of skills, and thus their level of wages/salaries, allowing them to enjoy higher standards of living.


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