THE DYNAMICS OF FIELDWORK AMONG THE TALENSI: MEYER FORTES IN NORTHERN GHANA, 1934–7

Africa ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 623-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
Social Anthropologist ◽  
Complex Characters

ABSTRACTThis article examines the encounter between the social anthropologist Meyer Fortes and his wife Sonia, on the one hand, and the Talensi people of northern Ghana, on the other, in the years 1934–7. Based in large part on the Forteses’ extensive corpus of recently archived field notes, diaries and other papers, it argues that the quotidian dynamics of that encounter were in many ways quite different from those of Talensi social life as enshrined in Meyer's famous published monographs. Far from entering a timeless world of enduring clanship and kinship, the Forteses grappled with a society struggling to come to terms with the forces of colonial change. The focus is on the couple's shifting relationship with two dominant figures in the local political landscape in the 1930s:TongranaNambiong, the leading Talensi chief and their host in the settlement of Tongo, andGolibdaanaTengol, a wealthy ritual entrepreneur who dominated access on the part of ‘stranger’ pilgrims to the principal oracular shrine in the adjacent Tong Hills. These two bitter rivals were, by local standards, commanding figures – yet both emerge as psychologically complex characters riddled with anxiety, unease and self-doubt. The ethnographic archive is thereby shown to offer the possibility of a more intimate history of the interior lives of non-literate African peoples on remote colonial frontiers who often passed under the radar of the state and its documentary regime.

scholarly journals HISTORY OF DEVELOPING THE CONCEPT OF «LARGE SOCIAL GROUPS». PART 1: PERIOD FROM THE MID-19th CENTURY TO THE MID-1930-Х YEARS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

2020 ◽  
pp. 390-418
Author(s):  
Ю.В. Ковалева
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Psychological Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Two Stages

Представлен историографический анализ развития понятия большие социальные группы и историко-психологический анализ социальных феноменов , связанных с массовыми общественными явлениями в России. Сформулированы актуальные проблемы психологии больших социальных групп, к которым относятся неоднородность оснований для их выделения, недостаточная дифференцированность со сходными понятиями, неравномерность исследований в различные временные периоды и идеологическая нагруженность их разработки. Данная работа была ответом на необходимость восполнения знаний о процессах в таких группах, происходивших в различные исторические периоды развития социальной психологии, с соответствующим им уровнем научного осмысления, а также обобщением этой целостной картины на уровне современного понимания и формулировка перспективных направлений исследований. Целью исследования является установление связи между определением и основными свойствами понятия «большие социальные группы» (его синонимов, аналогов) и особенностями социальной ситуации в определенный период времени, а также реконструкция социальных процессов данного исторического этапа. Проверялась гипотеза о том, что большие социальные группы как феномены социальной жизни формировались в соответствии с историческим временем, а соответствующее им понятие и его свойства с одной стороны отвечали уровню развития гуманитарного знания, а с другой - пытались удовлетворить общественный и политический запрос в объяснении и управлении социальной ситуацией. Использовались методы историографии социальной психологии и психолого-исторической реконструкции . Первая часть статьи посвящена анализу первых двух этапов развития социальной психологии - с середины XIX до начала XX вв. и в 1920-е гг. XX в. The historiographic analysis of the development of the concept of large social groups and historical and psychological study of social phenomena associated with mass social phenomena was presented. Topical problems of the psychology of large social groups are formulated, including heterogeneity of the grounds for their isolation, insufficient differentiation with similar concepts, uneven research in various periods, and ideological loading of the history of its development. The study's main problem was the need to replenish the processes in such groups that took place in various historical periods of social psychology development as well as a synthesis of this holistic picture at the level of modern understanding and the formulation of promising areas of research. The study's purpose was to establish a connection between the definition and the basic properties of the concept of "large social groups" (and its synonyms, analogs) and the peculiarities of the social situation in a certain period, as well as the reconstruction of social processes of this historical segment. The hypothesis was tested that large social groups as phenomena of social life were formed under the past time. The concept and its properties were corresponding to them, on the one hand, compared to the level of development of humanitarian knowledge. On the other, they tried to satisfy the social and political requests to understand and manage the social situation. Methods of the historiography of the history of social psychology and psychological and historical reconstruction were used. The article's first part was devoted to the analysis of the early two stages of the development of social psychology - from the middle of the XIX to the beginning of the XX centuries and 1920 of the XX century.

The normal life of settlers

Ethnicities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146879682110626
Author(s):  
Marcelo Svirsky
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Baruch Spinoza ◽  
Political Perceptions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Factor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theatrical Play ◽  
The One ◽  
Everyday Performance

This paper concerns Let me tell you a story about Israel, a theatrical play tasked with influencing existing perceptions of the Palestine/Israel conflict amongst international audiences. Drawing on the work of philosopher Baruch Spinoza, I explore the complex issue of how to address the need to change people’s political perceptions by using theatre as a form of activist persuasion. The play attempts to create an image of the conflict mostly absent in the commentaries of international observers who are unaware of the full implications of the conflict’s settler colonial character. Typically, they understand it in terms of two sides competing over land, frontiers and recognition. The sense of balance that this perception conveys pre-empts coming to grips with the colonial history of Palestine beginning with the advent of Zionism from late 19th century. Such a view also obscures the nature of current forms of Israeli domination and fails to take into account a major historical factor: that the settler colonial dynamic in Palestine rests on the ways social life in Israel is organised and reproduced. Hence, the play aims to make perceptible the relation between the social mechanisms of subjectivity formation in the Israeli society on the one hand, and the everyday performance of settler colonial power on the other. Making this relation observable is a necessary step towards rethinking where change could possibly come from.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Winter
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Oppression ◽  
The Rich ◽  
To Come

This concluding chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The book has shown that the multiplicity of lived ʻAlawi experiences cannot be reduced to the sole question of religion or framed within a monolithic narrative of persecution; that the very attempt to outline a single coherent history of “the ʻAlawis” may indeed be misguided. The sources on which this study has drawn are considerably more accessible, and the social and administrative realities they reflect consistently more mundane and disjointed, than the discourse of the ʻAlawis' supposed exceptionalism would lead one to believe. Therefore, the challenge for historians of ʻAlawi society in Syria and elsewhere is not to use the specific events and structures these sources detail to merely add to the already existing metanarratives of religious oppression, Ottoman misrule, and national resistance but rather to come to a newer and more intricate understanding of that community, and its place in wider Middle Eastern society, by investigating the lives of individual ʻAlawi (and other) actors within the rich diversity of local contexts these sources reveal.

Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Machado
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Elite ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This book analyses the physical, social, and cultural history of Rome in late antiquity. Between AD 270 and 535, the former capital of the Roman empire experienced a series of dramatic transformations in its size, appearance, political standing, and identity, as emperors moved to other cities and the Christian church slowly became its dominating institution. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome provides a new picture of these developments, focusing on the extraordinary role played by members of the traditional elite, the senatorial aristocracy, in the redefinition of the city, its institutions, and spaces. During this period, Roman senators and their families became increasingly involved in the management of the city and its population, in building works, and in the performance of secular and religious ceremonies and rituals. As this study shows, for approximately three hundred years the houses of the Roman elite competed with imperial palaces and churches in shaping the political map and the social life of the city. Making use of modern theories of urban space, the book considers a vast array of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic documents to show how the former centre of the Mediterranean world was progressively redefined and controlled by its own elite.

The Social Life of Fighting Words

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-124
Author(s):  
Ronald S. Stade
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Correctness ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Context

Political correctness has become a fighting word used to dismiss and discredit political opponents. The article traces the conceptual history of this fighting word. In anthropological terms, it describes the social life of the concept of political correctness and its negation, political incorrectness. It does so by adopting a concept-in-motion methodology, which involves tracking the concept through various cultural and political regimes. It represents an attempt to synthesize well-established historiographic and anthropological approaches. A Swedish case is introduced that reveals the kind of large-scale historical movements and deep-seated political conflicts that provide the contemporary context for political correctness and its negation. Thereupon follows an account of the conceptual history of political correctness from the eighteenth century up to the present. Instead of a conventional conclusion, the article ends with a political analysis of the current rise of fascism around the world and how the denunciation of political correctness is both indicative of and instrumental in this process.

scholarly journals Il sistema contabile e la struttura di gobernó del “Campansi” nella seconda metà dell'ottocento

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Catturi ◽  
Daniela Sorrentino
Keyword(s):  
Governance Structure ◽  
Accounting System ◽  
Cultural Goods ◽  
City Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Urban Patterns ◽  
History Of ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The One ◽  
Charitable Activities

In every city community, there always exist social, economic and political- administrative bodies, whose activities and organisational structures delineate and convey the historical and cultural periods experienced by that community.The city community we aim at investigating is the Sienese one. Siena is universally recognised for its medieval reminders, as well as for those of the Renaissance, distinctly appreciable in its current urban patterns, painting pieces, and cultural goods, of which it is plenty and rightly proud.The organisation we identified as one traditionally characterising –at least in the last century and a half- and still characterising the Sienese history and culture, is the Ricovero di Mendicità, later named Casa di riposo in Campansi per anziani, unanimously known as “Campansi”.Undoubtedly, the Campansi one is not the only institution whose structural and operational evolution contributed – and keeps on contributing- to shape the history of Siena, from the social, political and institutional points of view. Nevertheless, it is surely one of the most peculiar ones, in that it has been involved in those charitable activities, which exalted Siena since the second millennium, at the time of the restoring and propitiatory journeys to the main religious destinations: Rome, Jerusalem, and Saint James of Compostela.In this study we adopt a business administration perspective, with particular reference to the structure of the accounting system and its related documentation, which the organisation had been producing in order to memorise, summarise and communicate its administrative events, these latter occurring from the exercise of its institutional function. Moreover, we acknowledge the related governance structure, selected with the purpose of making operational decisions, verifying their execution, and controlling the deriving effects. As a matter of fact, there is a tight interdependency between the governance structure and the accounting system of whichever organisation. Particularly, the investigation refers to the period we considered the most significant and interesting, the one comprised between the issuing of the law “Sull'Amministrazione delle Opere pie” (3rd August 1862) and law “Istituzioni pubbliche di beneficenza”, in 1890, respectively known as Rattazzi and Crispi law, from the Prime Ministers in charge at the time of their enactment.

scholarly journals Ecumenical Initiatives in Southern Rhodesia: A History of The Southern Rhodesia Missionary Conference 1903-1945

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-165
Author(s):  
Munetsi Ruzivo
Keyword(s):  
Growth And Development ◽  
Third Place ◽  
Ecumenical Movement ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Southern Rhodesia ◽  
The Impact

The article seeks, first and foremost, to investigate the origins, growth and development of the Southern Rhodesia Missionary Conference (SRMC) from 1903 to 1945. In the second place, the article will explore the formative factors that lay behind the rise of the ecumenical movement in the then Southern Rhodesia in 1903. In the third place, the study endeavours to examine the impact of the SRMC on the social, religious and political landscape of the country from 1903 to 1945. The research will make use of minutes of the SRMC, newspapers and books with information that date back to the period under investigation.

The Second Royal Society Nuffield Lecture Anthropological models and social reality

1966 ◽  
Vol 165 (998) ◽  
pp. 20-34 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Know How ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Social Life

In trying to show you the character of social anthropology as an academic discipline, I might try to sketch some substantive and perhaps intriguing findings in the field, or the history of its development, or some of its major intellectual problems today. I have chosen the last of these alternatives, because by showing the general problems we are grappling with I hope to reveal to you, in part no doubt inadvertently, the ways that anthropologists think, and also how our difficulties in part arise from the character of the social reality itself, which we confront and try to understand. The fundamental questions which social anthropology asks are about the forms, the nature, and the extent of order in human social life, as it can be observed in the different parts of the world. There is no need to prejudge the extent of this order; as members of one society we know how unpredictable social life can be. But concretely, human life varies greatly around the world, and it seems possible to characterize its forms to some extent. We seek means systematically to discover, record and understand these forms.

Filosofia, politica e società ai tempi della pandemia. Agamben e la «paranoia della ragione»

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 617-642
Author(s):  
Antonio Di Chiro
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Intimate Relations ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One

In this essay we will try to analyze the thought of the philosopher Giorgio Agamben on the pandemic. The aim of the work is twofold. On the one hand, we will try to demonstrate that Agamben’s positions on the pandemic are not to be understood as mere extemporaneous statements, but as integral parts of his philosophy. On the other hand, we will try to show how these positions are based on a deeply paranoid and anti-scientific vision, since Agamben believes that the effects of the epidemic have been exaggerated by the centers of power in order to create a “state of exception” that allows to crumble social life and to use the fear of poverty as a tool to dominate society. We will try to demonstrate that it is precisely starting from the critique of Agamben’s positions that it is possible to rethink a philosophy and a politic to come and a new reorganization of social and intimate relations between human beings.

The Internal Market at a Social Turn? Social dumping and the protection of workers

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-420
Author(s):  
Catherine Jacqueson
Keyword(s):  
Member State ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Internal Market ◽  
The Other ◽  
Free Movement ◽  
Race To The Bottom ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
The Eu

Free movement should in theory enable individuals to fight poverty at home by finding employment in another Member State. Yet, free movement is not always that easy and can in practice lead to social dumping in specific sectors where posted workers ultimately push salaries to the bottom. Such a race to the bottom might also arise outside a free movement context when workers are falsely qualified as self-employed thus undercutting wages. This article argues that EU economic law both creates risks of social dumping and remedies them. It calls for a rebalancing of the liberal ethos of the principle of free movement and competition law on the one hand, and the social objectives of the EU, on the other hand. A key question is whether it is possible to redress the balance between the economic and the social from within the internal market logic or whether the social push has to come from outside.

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