FUNERARY COMEDIES IN CONTEMPORARY KINSHASA: SOCIAL DIFFERENCE, URBAN COMMUNITIES AND THE EMERGENCE OF A CULTURAL FORM

Africa ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrien Pype
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Cultural Performance ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
Stand Up Comedy ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Client Relationship ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Rich

ABSTRACTThe article situates a new type of stand-up comedy, performed in Kinshasa's mourning spaces (matanga), within the city's social universe. This type of funerary joking, enacted by comedians unrelated to the bereaved, represents a clear departure from the customary funerary humour in which accepted jokers occupy particular social positions vis-à-vis the deceased. Following recent changes in the organization of mourning rituals within the circles of Kinshasa's wealthy, these rather intimate events are ever more open to ‘strangers’, who anticipate the spending capacities of the gathered crowd. Comedians constitute one among a wide range of outsider groups who approach the bereaved community as a space of opportunity. It is argued that this emergent cultural form is utterly urban, and could only appear within urban life worlds where conviviality with others, and in particular an understanding of people's need to make a living in precarious circumstances, transforms the mourning community into an audience that pays for a cultural performance. Humour is not only derived from a symbolic difference between the poor and the rich, but also through the performance of exaggerated flattery, producing the illusion of patronage and situating the comedian within a feigned patron–client relationship for the duration of that performance.

Language and the Many Histories of Brazilian Inequality

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brodwyn Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Educational Policies ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
Gender Dynamics ◽  
Language Literacy ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Language And Education ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Many

There are numerous historical critiques of elitist educational policies in Brazil, as well as studies of the racial and gender dynamics of education, and scholars have routinely lamented the historical lack of access to schooling among the Brazilian poor. But surprisingly few historians have taken on language and education as durable categories of inequality—created, recognized, legitimized, and acted upon over many generations, constitutive elements in Brazil’s constellation of social difference. This is especially remarkable given the rich and repeated emphasis on language, literacy, and education that characterized debates about Brazilian inequality in the century after independence.

The Cities on the Hill

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas K. Ogorzalek
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Invaluable Tool ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
The Hill ◽  
The New Deal

Recent electoral cycles have drawn attention to an urban–rural divide at the heart of American politics. This book traces the origins of red and blue America. The urbanicity divide began with the creation of an urban political order that united leaders from major cities and changed the Democratic Party during the New Deal era. These cities, despite being the site of serious, complex conflicts at home, are remarkably cohesive in national politics because members of city delegations represent their city as well as their district. Even though their constituents often don’t see eye-to-eye on important issues, members of these city delegations represent a united city position known as progressive liberalism. Using a wide range of congressional evidence and a unique dataset measuring the urbanicity of U.S. House districts over time, this book argues that city cohesion, an invaluable tool used by cities to address their urgent governance needs through higher levels of government, is fostered by local institutions developed to provide local political order. Crucially, these integrative institutions also helped foster the development of civil rights liberalism by linking constituencies that were not natural allies in support of group pluralism and racial equality. This in turn led to the departure from the coalition of the Southern Democrats, and to our contemporary political environment. The urban combination of diversity and liberalism—supported by institutions that make allies out of rivals—teaches us lessons for governing in a world increasingly characterized by deep social difference and political fragmentation.

scholarly journals Immigration and economic mobility

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria F. Hoen ◽  
Simen Markussen ◽  
Knut Røed
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Labor Market Outcomes ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Class Background ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Relative Prime

AbstractWe examine how immigration affects natives’ relative prime-age labor market outcomes by economic class background, with class background established on the basis of parents’ earnings rank. Exploiting alternative sources of variation in immigration patterns across time and space, we find that immigration from low-income countries reduces intergenerational mobility and thus steepens the social gradient in natives’ labor market outcomes, whereas immigration from high-income countries levels it. These findings are robust with respect to a wide range of identifying assumptions. The analysis is based on high-quality population-wide administrative data from Norway, which is one of the rich-world countries with the most rapid rise in the immigrant population share over the past two decades. Our findings suggest that immigration can explain a considerable part of the observed relative decline in economic performance among natives with a lower-class background.

Nothing in Popular Culture Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gad Saad
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychology Today ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Song Lyrics

An evolutionary lens can inform the study of cultural forms in a myriad of ways. These can be construed as adaptations, as exaptations (evolutionary byproducts), as gene–culture interactions, as memes, or as fossils of the human mind. Products of popular culture (e.g., song lyrics, movie themes, romance novels) are to evolutionary cultural theorists what fossils and skeletal remains represent to paleontologists. Although human minds do not fossilize or skeletonize (the cranium does), the cultural products created by human minds do. By identifying universally recurring themes for a given cultural form (song lyrics and collective wisdoms in the current article), spanning a wide range of cultures and time periods, one is able to test key tenets of evolutionary psychology. In addition to using evolutionary psychology to understand the contents of popular culture, the discipline can itself be studied as a contributor to popular culture. Beginning with the sociobiology debates in the 1970s, evolutionary informed analyses of human behavior have engendered great fascination and animus among the public at large. Following a brief summary of studies that have explored the diffusion of the evolutionary behavioral sciences within specific communities (e.g., the British media), I offer a case analysis of the penetration of evolutionary psychology within the blogosphere, specifically the blog community hosted by Psychology Today.

scholarly journals Synthesis of photoreactive solvent-free acrylic pressure-sensitive adhesives in the recovered system

2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Milker ◽  
Zbigniew Czech ◽  
Marta Wesołowska
Keyword(s):  
Organic Solvent ◽  
Solvent Free ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Pressure Sensitive Adhesive ◽  
Adhesive Film ◽  
Pressure Sensitive Adhesives ◽  
Pressure Sensitive ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Protective Films ◽  
New Type

Synthesis of photoreactive solvent-free acrylic pressure-sensitive adhesives in the recovered system The present paper discloses a novel photoreactive solvent-free acrylic pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) systems, especially suitable for the so much adhesive film applications as the double-sided, single-sided or carrier-free technical tapes, self-adhesive labels, protective films, marking and sign films and wide range of medical products. The novel photoreactive solvent-free pressure-sensitive adhesives contain no volatile organic compounds (residue monomers or organic solvent) and comply with the environment and legislation. The synthesis of this new type of acrylic PSA is conducted in common practice by solvent polymerisation. After the organic solvent are removed, there remains a non-volatile, solvent-free highly viscous material, which can be processed on a hot-melt coating machine at the temperatures of about 100 to 140°C.

scholarly journals The End of the Right to the City: A Radical-Cooperative View

2021 ◽  
pp. 107808742110578
Author(s):  
Caleb Althorpe ◽  
Martin Horak
Keyword(s):  
Original Writing ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Is the Right to the City (RTTC) still a useful framework for a transformative urban politics? Given recent scholarly criticism of its real-world applications and appropriations, in this paper, we argue that the transformative promise in the RTTC lies beyond its role as a framework for oppositional struggle, and in its normative ends. Building upon Henri Lefebvre's original writing on the subject, we develop a “radical-cooperative” conception of the RTTC. Such a view, which is grounded in the lived experiences of the current city, envisions an urban society in which inhabitants can pursue their material and social needs through self-governed cooperation across social difference. Growing and diversifying spaces and sectors of urban life that are decoupled from global capitalism are, we argue, necessary to create space for this inclusionary politics. While grassroots action is essential to this process, so is multi-scalar support from the state.

scholarly journals Fixel-based Analysis of Diffusion MRI: Methods, Applications, Challenges and Opportunities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thijs Dhollander ◽  
Adam Clemente ◽  
Mervyn Singh ◽  
Frederique Boonstra ◽  
Oren Civier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Diffusion Mri ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Analysis Framework ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
P Diffusion ◽  
Modelling Techniques ◽  
The Rich

Diffusion MRI has provided the neuroimaging community with a powerful tool to acquire in-vivo data sensitive to microstructural features of white matter, up to 3 orders of magnitude smaller than typical voxel sizes. The key to extracting such valuable information lies in complex modelling techniques, which form the link between the rich diffusion MRI data and various metrics related to the microstructural organisation. Over time, increasingly advanced techniques have been developed, up to the point where some diffusion MRI models can now provide access to properties specific to individual fibre populations in each voxel in the presence of multiple "crossing" fibre pathways. While highly valuable, such fibre-specific information poses unique challenges for typical image processing pipelines and statistical analysis. In this work, we review the "fixel-based analysis" (FBA) framework that implements bespoke solutions to this end, and has recently seen a stark increase in adoption for studies of both typical (healthy) populations as well as a wide range of clinical populations. We describe the main concepts related to fixel-based analyses, as well as the methods and specific steps involved in a state-of-the-art FBA pipeline, with a focus on providing researchers with practical advice on how to interpret results. We also include an overview of the scope of current fixel-based analysis studies (until August 2020), categorised across a broad range of neuroscientific domains, listing key design choices and summarising their main results and conclusions. Finally, we critically discuss several aspects and challenges involved with the fixel-based analysis framework, and outline some directions and future opportunities.

scholarly journals Kelayakan Geosite dan Geomorphosite Kawasan Desa Wisata Limbasari sebagai Potensi Geowisata Desa Limbasari

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Huzaely Latief Sunan ◽  
Widhiatmoko Herry Purnomo ◽  
Nur Chasanah ◽  
Gito Sugiyanto ◽  
Tigar Putri Adhiana ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Environmentally Friendly ◽  
Tourist Destination ◽  
Geological Process ◽  
Educational Activities ◽  
Tourist Attractions ◽  
Mountain Landscape ◽  
Cultural Sites ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Village

Desa Limbasari secara geografis terletak di Kecamatan Bobotsari Kabupaten Purbalingga. Desa Limbasari merupakan salah satu desa wisata yang baru di Kabupaten Purbalingga. Desa ini mempunyai potensi yang besar untuk dikembangkan sebagai destinasi wisata dalam segi wisata kebumian dan geoheritage. Daya tarik wisata yang ada berupa River Tubing, landscape pegunungan batuan gunung api yang terdapat batu jasper hijau �nogo sui�, dan situs kebudayaan prasejarah. Di samping itu keunikan budaya serta sejarah masyarakat juga menjadi daya tarik bagi masyarakat perkotaan. Tujuan dari pengabdian masyarakat adalah mengulas kelayakan geosite dan geomorphosite di Desa Limbasari sebagai sebuah solusi bagaimana memanfaatkan kekayaan geologi beserta berbagai dinamikanya untuk kegiatan wisata edukasi dan ekonomi yang berwawasan lingkungan. Metode yang digunakan adalah pemetaan potensi geologi sebagai kawasan wisata, inventarisasi pada lokasi yang mempunyai cagar budaya dan sejarah serta wawancara dengan pihak terkait dan studi literatur. Dari hasil kelayakan di kawasan wisata Limbasari mempunyai nilai kelayakan antara 47.5% - 73.5%. Dengan demikian, Kawasan Desa Wisata Limbasari, Kabupaten Purbalingga layak menjadi objek geowisata dengan aspek penilaian didasarkan pada nilai kuantifikasi berbagai keindahan antara alam dan proses geologi yang mengontrol terbentuknya obyek geowisata tersebut.Limbasari Village is geographically located in Bobotsari Subdistrict, Purbalingga Regency. Limbasari Village is one of the new tourism villages in Purbalingga Regency. This village has great potential to be developed as a tourist destination in terms of earth tourism and geoheritage. The tourist attractions are River Tubing, mountainous volcanic mountain landscape with green jasper stone "nogo sui", and prehistoric cultural sites. In addition, the cultural and historical uniqueness of the community is also an attraction for urban communities. The purpose of this study is to review the potential of Geotourism and geoheritage in the Village of Limbasari as a solution to how to utilize the rich geological and cultural sites along with various dynamics for educational activities that are environmentally friendly education and economy. The method used in this study is the mapping of geological potential as a tourist area, an inventory of locations that have cultural and historical reserves as well as interviews with relevant parties and literature studies. From the results of research in the tourist area Limbasari has a feasibility value between 47.5% - 73.5%. Thus, the Limbasari Tourism Village Area, Purbalingga Regency deserves to be a geotourism object with the assessment aspect based on the quantification value of various beauties between nature and the geological process that controls the formation of the geotourism object.

scholarly journals Renovation of Shantytowns and Construction of New Communities

2021 ◽  
pp. 121-152
Author(s):  
Guoqing Li
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Future Development ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Field Investigations ◽  
New Type ◽  
China’S Cities

AbstractLarge-scale shantytown renovation initiated in 2005 has completely changed the living environment of lower-income residents in Chinese cities. It has also brought about great changes in the make-up of urban communities. Over 100 million people now live in newly renovated former shantytowns, creating a new type of communityacross China's cities and towns. This chapter summarises the evolutionary phases in this process, outlining the characteristics and the different models involved. It then uses research from field investigations into four models of shantytown reconstruction to consider changes in social mobility and levels of segregation within the reconstructed communities. It also establishes the more holistic features of these new communities as a model for future development and greater social integration. The process draws on the shared heritage—the ‘roots and souls’—of earlier communities and reshapes ‘shantytown removal’ in a more socially integrated way for the future development of Chinese urban society.

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