‘WE DO IT SO THAT WE WILL BE MEN’: MASCULINITY POLITICS IN COLONIAL NAMIBIA, 1915–49

2011 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
MOLLY MCCULLERS
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Colonial Violence

ABSTRACTThis article examines struggles for masculinity among Herero elders, South African colonial administrators, and the Otruppa, a Herero youth society that appropriated a German military aesthetic, in Namibia between 1915 and 1949. As previous scholars have argued, masculinities are mutually constituted through competitions for authority, though dominance is rarely achieved. Such contestations were integral to processes of Herero societal reconstruction following German rule and during South African colonial state formation, beginning in 1915. Different generational experiences of colonial violence and the destruction of the material resources that undergirded elders' authority led to conflicts between elders and youths over how to define Herero masculinity and negotiate authority in a rapidly changing colonial milieu.

scholarly journals Are South African Speech-Language Therapists adequately equipped to assess English Additional Language (EAL) speakers who are from an indigenous linguistic and cultural background? A profile and exploration of the current situation

2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thandeka Mdladlo ◽  
Penelope Flack ◽  
Robin Joubert
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Assessment Instruments ◽  
Diverse Populations ◽  
Critical Factors ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Valid Assessment ◽  
Use Of Assessment

This article presents the results of a survey conducted on Speech-Language Therapists (SLTs) regarding current practices in the assessment of English Additional Language (EAL) speakers in South Africa. It forms part of the rationale for a broader (PhD) study that critiques the use of assessment instruments on EAL speakers from an indigenous linguistic and cultural background. This article discusses an aspect of the broader research and presents the background, method, findings, discussion and implications of the survey. The results of this survey highlight the challenges of human and material resources to, and the dominance of English in, the profession in South Africa. The findings contribute to understanding critical factors for acquiring reliable and valid assessment results with diverse populations, particularly the implications from a cultural and linguistic perspective.[PDF to follow]

Kings versus Bandits: Anti-colonialism in a Bandit Narrative

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shail Mayaram
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Early Writing ◽  
Weak State ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Specific Theme ◽  
Indirect Rule

AbstractDebate and controversy have bedevilled the subject of social banditry. The early writing on social banditry saw it as primitive rebellion, as prepolitical and antithetical to class consciousness. Another approach identified it with weak state formation. The literature on South Asia saw social banditry as absent having been eroded by the institutional structure of caste. This article examines and critiques some of these theses on banditry. It argues, firstly, that social banditry can be simultaneous with a phase of intensified state formation. The specific theme investigated here is the interaction of the king, peasant and bandit in an Indian kingdom under late colonialism. A window to this universe is opened up by a folk epic from the oral tradition of a community of Muslims called the Meos. Far from being prepolitical, banditry raises crucial questions with respect to authority and legitimacy. This narrative not only interrogates the legitimacy of kingship, it also challenges the authority of the colonial state. Secondly, the article challenges the argument of South Asian exceptionalism to banditry that is perhaps easier to refute. Thirdly, as this article demonstrates, banditry need not relate to a pre-industrial capitalist world. Our bandit narrative indicates the reverberations of industrialism and attendant exchange relations and institutions in the colony even though it belongs to an area of ‘indirect’ rule.

Rules for Rulers: Obscure Texts, Authority, and Policing in Two Malay States

2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Barnard
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Crime And Punishment

Police manuals produced in the Siak and Riau-Lingga sultanates during the 1890s reveal something of the concerns of each society in an early stage of colonial state formation, and how they dealt with changing understandings of crime and punishment. Despite their many similarities, the manuals show that each Malay state had a distinctive character, and differed in its approach to issues of modernisation.

WIELDING THE EPOKOLO: CORPORAL PUNISHMENT AND TRADITIONAL AUTHORITY IN COLONIAL OVAMBOLAND

2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID CRAWFORD JONES
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
Salient Feature ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Traditional Authority ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Traditional Authorities ◽  
Communal Norms ◽  
Society Today

AbstractBased on both archival research and oral interviews conducted in northern Namibia, this article traces the history of public flogging in Ovamboland throughout the twentieth century. In contrast to recent scholarship that views corporal punishment in modern Africa mainly through the lens of colonial governance, the article argues that because the South African colonial state never withdrew the power to punish from the region's traditional authorities, these indigenous leaders were able to maintain a degree of legitimacy among their subjects, who looked to the kings and headmen to punish wrongdoers and maintain communal norms. Finally, the article explores why nostalgia for corporal punishment remains a salient feature in Namibian society today, 25 years after the end of colonial rule.

scholarly journals Anchors of Colonial Rule: Pluralistic Courts in Java, ca. 1803–1848

Itinerario ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Ravensbergen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Complex Formation ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Local Dynamics ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Institutional Approach ◽  
Local Actors

Through an institutional approach and by focusing on long-term developments, this article offers a genealogy of the pluralistic character of thelandraad(regional colonial court) in colonial Java. It argues that the pluralistic landraden—consisting of a Dutch president, Javanese judges, a local prosecutor, and Islamic and Chinese advisers—were crucial to the process of colonial state formation. This long-term process reflects continuities rather than rupture and change between the era of the VOC and the nineteenth-century developing colonial state. The spatial sites of the landraden reveal not only the conflicts between several layers, institutions, and individuals in the process of colonial state formation but also the importance of local actors in this process. Local dynamics as well as tensions between the various layers of the colonial state, which were striving either for uniformity or for the maintenance of local pluralities, provide insights into the complex formation processes of dual rule from below.

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