scholarly journals Family Concerns: Gender and Ethnicity in Pre-Colonial West Africa

1999 ◽  
Vol 44 (S7) ◽  
pp. 15-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra E. Greene

For at least the past twenty years, historians of pre-colonial Africa have studied gender and ethnic relations, but have focused on either gender or ethnicity without making reference to the other. This essay redresses this neglect by demonstrating that changes in gender and ethnic relations within pre-colonial Africa so profoundly influenced each other that it is impossible to understand one without also taking into consideration the other. Documenting this intersection requires more than simply reconstructing how ethnic groups (in their efforts to compete with others for social and political status) altered gender relations within their societies by handling differentially the affairs of their female and male members. It involves more than analyzing how those disadvantaged because of their gender used the prevailing ethnic relations to ameliorate their own situations, and how these actions in turn altered ethnic relations in the societies in which they lived. It requires as well that we reconceptualize the very definition of ethnicity.

Author(s):  
K. T. Tokuyasu

During the past investigations of immunoferritin localization of intracellular antigens in ultrathin frozen sections, we found that the degree of negative staining required to delineate u1trastructural details was often too dense for the recognition of ferritin particles. The quality of positive staining of ultrathin frozen sections, on the other hand, has generally been far inferior to that attainable in conventional plastic embedded sections, particularly in the definition of membranes. As we discussed before, a main cause of this difficulty seemed to be the vulnerability of frozen sections to the damaging effects of air-water surface tension at the time of drying of the sections.Indeed, we found that the quality of positive staining is greatly improved when positively stained frozen sections are protected against the effects of surface tension by embedding them in thin layers of mechanically stable materials at the time of drying (unpublished).


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-411
Author(s):  
Enrico Beltramini

Abstract While in the past two decades the Roman Catholic Church has reaffirmed an inclusivist stance with respect to other religions, there is reason to explore the question of whether Catholic teaching is as much about offering a definition of what is true in other religions as it is about defining Catholic identity. In this article, I investigate the representations of Eastern religions within ordinary expressions of Catholic teaching between 1990 and 2000, and I show how Catholic teaching seems to adopt a binary ontology in which the representation of the Other serves to define oneself.


1998 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEAN HANRETTA

For a number of years the historiography of Southern Africa has been dominated by a materialist framework that has focused upon modes of production and forms of socio-political organization as the determining factors in historical change. Those historians concerned with the history of women in pre-colonial societies – even those who have privileged gender relations in their analyses – have largely been content to construct women's history by applying the insights of socio-economic and political analyses of the past to gender dynamics, and by projecting the insights of anthropological analyses of present gender relations into the past. Some of these historians have concluded that until the arrival of capitalism no substantial changes in the situations, power or status of women took place within Zulu society, even during the period of systemic transformation known as the mfecane in the early nineteenth century.More recently, Zulu gender history has become part of a larger debate connected to the changing political and academic milieu in South Africa. Representatives of a revived Africanist tradition have criticized materialist historians for writing Zulu history from an outsider's perspective and of focusing overly on conflict and power imbalances within the nineteenth-century kingdom in an effort to discredit contemporary Zulu nationalism. To counter this, historian Simon Maphalala has stressed the harmony of nineteenth-century Zulu society, the power advisors exercised in state government, and the lack of internal conflict. Maphalala also claims that women's subordinate role in society ‘did not cause any dissatisfaction among them’, and argues that ‘[women] accepted their position and were contented’. In recent constitutional debates many South African intellectuals including members of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (CONTRALESA), invoked this ‘benign patriarchy’ model of pre-colonial gender relations to oppose the adoption of gender-equality provisions in the new constitution. As Cherryl Walker has noted, the hegemonic definition of traditional gender relations to which such figures have made rhetorical appeals often masks not only the historicity of these relations but also hides dissenting opinions (often demarcated along gender lines) as to what those relations are and have been.


1951 ◽  
Vol 41 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Goot

In dealing with fertility in sheep there are a number of initial difficulties. On the one hand, there is generally a lack of any uniform definition of such terms as ‘fertility’, ‘fecundity’ and ‘prolificacy’ (cf. Marshall & Hammond, 1947; Lush, 1938; Rice, 1942; Asdell, 1946; and others); on the other hand, investigators have been confronted with a real difficulty in procuring suitable information which would conform to the requirements of any single and adequate definition of fertility. Because of this, fertility figures have been calculated in different ways* and may differ by as much as 30%. The situation is at present so confused that reference to similar work, especially when the original papers are not available, or the terms not clearly denned, is often of dubious value if not altogether misleading. In the past the data analysed were mostly based on farmers' answers to questionnaires or on flock records. The limitations of such methods are only too obvious; yet it must be clearly realized that in commercial flocks there is no possibility of any basic departure from them, even though their accuracy could in many cases be improved. In other words, only such information is collected as the circumstances allow. This, for instance, may be the number of lambs docked per ewes put to ram in one flock and number of lambs docked per ewes lambed in another.


2018 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ciro De Florio ◽  
Aldo Frigerio

The concept of soft facts is crucial for the Ockhamistic analysis of the divine knowledge of future contingents; moreover, this notion is important in itself because it concerns the structure of the facts that depend—in some sense—on other future facts. However, the debate on soft facts is often flawed by the unaware use of two different notions of soft facts. The facts of the first kind are supervenient on temporal facts: By bringing about a temporal fact, the agent can bring about these facts. However, on the one hand, the determination of the existence of these facts does not affect the past; on the other hand, assimilating divine knowledge into this kind of facts does not help the Ockhamist. The authors will argue that, to vindicate Ockhamism, another definition of “soft fact” is necessary, which turns out to be much more demanding from a metaphysical point of view.


2008 ◽  
pp. 147-174
Author(s):  
Vitaliy Volodymyrovych Shevchenko

It is well known that all peoples, without exception, have for centuries formed their own ideas about the world, the cosmos, man, his otherworldly and other dimensions. Associated with factors of different vital values, they accumulate the energy of an ethno-national spirit, attest to the reflections of an individual, as well as the tribe, nation, nation over the ideal aspirations that are usually united around consecrated, close and native ethnic groups. On the other hand, being a subject of admiration and reflection, holiness and inspiration, sacred importance inevitably influences the formation of the culture and art of a particular ethnic group, its life and behavior, aptitude and character, and thus determine the originality of its thinking, worldview and experience. To put it another way, for centuries and still largely, despite the loss of the world of theocentricity as a determining factor in civilizational development, religious imperatives acted and acted as the axis of history, one of the fundamental principles with which humanity binds the past and now comprehends the future. "Every nation," Gustave LeBon notes in his work, "Psychology of Nations and Masses," has a mental structure as stable as its anatomical features, and it is from him that his feelings, his thoughts, his institutions, his beliefs and his art »


Author(s):  
Somaya Mohamed Attia

The study aimed to clarify the issue of delegation in names and attributes and its origin and the reasons for its extension. The study followed the descriptive, analytical, analytical approach to written documents, which includes a total of sayings of Islamic scholars in the past and present, and the research may be from an introduction, two chapters and a conclusion; And in it two topics; the first: the definition of the mandate language and terminology, while the second: the origin and development of the mandate, and the second chapter included the causes and factors of extension until the present era, and the results revealed the following: - The truth of the delegation: It is a negation of the attributes of God Almighty, and it is contrary to the method of the companions and the predecessor of the nation, where they believed in the qualities abstract from the meanings, until they became the matter to disable these attributes, as they disrupted the texts in which the attributes were mentioned, because they became the result of saying texts meaningless , And nobody understands it from creation. Several factors have helped to perpetuate the doctrine of authorization. Including: the extension of the Ash'ari school of thought, whose authorization is one of its ways with the other way of interpretation, and their apprehension to the public that the mandate is the doctrine of the predecessor, in addition to the occurrence of some imams and the people of hadith in saying authorization, which contributed to the consolidation of the doctrine of authorization, and its survival in their books that contemporaries still infer Out on his health. Based on the results, a number of recommendations and proposals aimed at correcting the belief and showing the error of violators were presented.


Author(s):  
Галина Викторовна Сёмина

В статье автор исходит из понимания феномена культуры (как в искусстве, так и в философии) как культуры, способной жить и развиваться только в одновременном диалоге с другими культурами, который В.С. Библер назвал «культурологическим парадоксом». В процессе проведенного исследования выстроено понимание того, что культура есть мир «вещей», основанный на диалоге их создателей не только с людьми настоящего, но и с последующими поколениями, так как рассказывают потомкам о мировоззрении прошедшей эпохи, о ценностях культуры предков, о мировидении создателей произведений. Автор считает этот аспект достаточно важным и значимым для решения проблем по дальнейшему сохранению культурного наследия народов Северного Кавказа в глобализирующемся мире, стремящемся к всеобщей унификации и нивелирующим тем самым самобытность культур этносов. Культурфилософский анализ предметов как «вещей» способствует выявлению их смыслов, несущих на себе печать человека как homo faber, как созерцателя и как пользователя, которому не только открыто их предназначение, но и без которого в принципе невозможно их существование. В качестве примера рассмотрены узорные карачаево-балкарские ковры - кийизы. Проведена сравнительная параллель между возможными интерпретациями орнаментальных мотивов жыйгыч кийизов - узких полосок, покрывавших полки в патриархальных жилищах этих этносов, и предполагаемым диалогом с Другим. Материал дает основание сделать вывод о том, что эти ковры-занавеси «читаются» по типу «культурного текста» - неких закодированных таким образом посланий предков. In the paper, the author proceeds from the understanding of the phenomenon of culture (both in art and in philosophy), as a culture capable of living and developing only in a simultaneous dialogue with other cultures, which V.S. Bibler called "a cultural paradox". In the process of the study, the understanding is built that culture is a world of "things", basing on the dialogue of their creators not only with the people of the present, but also with subsequent generations. They tell descendants about the worldview of the past era, about the values of ancestral culture, about the worldview of the creators of works. The author considers this aspect important and significant enough to solve the problems of further preserving the cultural heritage of the peoples of the North Caucasus in a globalizing world, striving for universal unification and thereby leveling the identity of ethnic cultures. Cultural-philosophical analysis of objects as "things" helps to identify their meanings, bearing the stamp of a human being, as a homo faber, as a contemplator and as a user, to whom not only their purpose is open, but also without which, in principle, their existence is impossible. The patterned Karachay-Balkarian rugs - kiyizes - are considered as an example. A comparative parallel was drawn between possible interpretations of the ornamental motifs of the zhyigych kiyizes -narrow strips covering shelves in the patriarchal dwellings of these ethnic groups, and the alleged dialogue with the Other. The material gives reason to conclude that these curtain rugs are "read" according to the type of "cultural text" which is a kind of coded message from the ancestors.


Author(s):  
Ernest Van Eck

In the past two decades, narrative criticism (narratology) and social-scientific criticism have come to the fore as the two most prominent new methodologies to be associated with gospel research. When these two methodologies are integrated in the reading of biblical texts, this is now referred to as "socio-rhetorical interpretation". This article departs from a specific understanding of what is meant by a narratological reading of a text on the one hand and, on the other hand, by a social-scientific interpretation of biblical texts, in order to propose a working definition of a socio-rhetorical analysis of texts.


2020 ◽  
pp. 26-32
Author(s):  
Yael Tamir

This chapter argues that nationalism is a deceptive ideology; one of its faces looks to the past, the other looks to the future. It discusses the negative descriptions of nationalism that emphasize its backward-looking face. The chapter also explains how nationalism tried to revive (or invent) an image of a magnificent past. It examines the history of nationalism, and one of its most fascinating features, modernizing powers. Despite the common perception of nationalism as identified with primordial, tribal feelings, the chapter asserts that true power of nationalism in modern times is grounded in its ability to promote processes of modernization and industrialization that go hand in hand with the universalization of education, information, and technology. Ultimately, the chapter portrays nationalism as an expression of a populist state of mind. It further presents the most interesting definition of populism.


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