Living in the past: urban, rural and ethnic themes in the 1992 and 1996 elections in Ghana

1999 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Nugent
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Democratic Consolidation ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Election Results ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Opposition Parties

A comparative literature on democratic transitions in Africa has sought out points of similarity across the continent in order to yield generalisations about the prospects for democratic consolidation. The underlying contention of this article is that history needs to be taken seriously in any such exercise, not least because politicians and voters alike are guided by their readings of the past. These, in turn, have a bearing on democratic prospects. The first part of this article demonstrates how, in the run-up to the 1996 Ghanaian elections, the opposition parties were guided by an assessment of their historic strengths. The parties which belonged to one or other of the great traditions – Nkrumahism and the Busia/Danquah tradition – regarded themselves as the natural rulers and treated the bearers of the rival standard as the principal threat under normal conditions. The ruling National Democratic Congress, which was regarded by each of them as a mere usurper of the natural order, exhibited a much more ambiguous attitude towards history. The second half of the article scrutinises the election results and seeks to establish the underlying patterns. Particular attention is paid to rural/urban and ethnic/regional voting patterns. The article concludes that while the opposition improved on its 1992 performance, its inroads were actually fairly limited. It further posits that the opposition parties of both traditions fundamentally misread the historical evidence and hence misjudged the scale of the task confronting them. It concludes by raising the possibility that the misfit between perceptions and electoral realities could prove destabilising to Ghana's fledgling democracy.

Boltzmann’s Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Darrigol
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Mechanics ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
The Past

In this last chapter, the reader will find synthetic reflections on Boltzmann’s sources, on the basic components of his theory, and on the ways it was received. The basic components are arranged according to the natural order in which they occurred in Boltzmann’s theory making: constructive tools, chief constructions, crucial predictions, underlying concepts, bridges between different approaches. To fully understand his enterprise, one must embrace his theory as an entire whole organism. This is a difficult and time-consuming task, which this book is meant to ease. In the past, Boltzmann’s readers fortunately did not need a historian’s thoroughness in order to benefit from his multiple constructs and insights. These elements, even taken out of context, had enough power to propel diverging theoretical projects from Boltzmann’s times to ours. In many ways, Boltzmann’s theory anticipated the richness, diversity, and residual opacity of modern statistical mechanics.

The Oxford Handbook of American Women's and Gender History

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Women Of Color ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Gender History ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Free Women

The Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History boldly interprets the history of diverse women and how ideas about gender shaped their access to political and cultural power in North America over six centuries. In twenty-nine chapters, the Handbook showcases women’s and gender history as an integrated field with its own interpretation of the past, focused on how gender influenced people’s lives as they participated in migration, colonialism, trade, warfare, artistic production, and community building. Organized chronologically and thematically, the Handbook’s six sections allow readers to consider historical continuities of gendered power as well as individual innovations and ruptures in gender systems. Theoretically cutting edge, each chapter bursts with fascinating historical characters, from young Chicanas transforming urban culture, to free women of color forging abolitionist doctrines, to Asian migrant women defending the legitimacy of their marriages, to working-class activists mobilizing international movements, to transwomen fleeing incarceration. Together, their lives constitute the history of a continent. Leading scholars from multiple generations demonstrate the power of innovative research to excavate a history hidden in plain sight. Scrutinizing silences in the historical record, from the inattention to enslaved women’s opinions to the suppression of Indian women’s involvement in border diplomacy, the authors challenge the nature of historical evidence and remap what counts in our interpretation of the past. They demonstrate a way to extend this more capacious vision of history forward, setting an intellectual agenda informed by intersectionality and transnationalism, and new understandings of sexuality.

Economic Origins of Electoral Support for Authoritarian Successors

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byong-Kuen Jhee
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Economic Voting ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Knee Jerk ◽  
The Past ◽  
Electoral Support

This study explores how economic performance prior to democratic transitions affects the fate of successors to authoritarian rulers in new democracies. It investigates 70 founding election outcomes, finding that successful economic performance under an authoritarian regime increases the vote share of successors. It also finds that the past economic performance of authoritarian rulers decreases the likelihood of government alternation to democratic oppositions. Interim governments that initiate democratic transition, however, are neither blamed nor rewarded for economic conditions during transition periods. This study concludes that electorates are not myopic and that economic voting is not a knee-jerk reaction to short-term economic performance in new democracies.

Long Time Coming: Prospects for Democracy in Iraq

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 115-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce E. Moon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Time Required ◽  
Established Democracies

Prospects for democracy in Iraq should be assessed in light of the historical precedents of nations with comparable political experiences. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was an unusually extreme autocracy, which lasted an unusually long time. Since the end of the nineteenth century, only thirty nations have experienced an autocracy as extreme as Iraq's for a period exceeding two decades. The subsequent political experience of those nations offers a pessimistic forecast for Iraq and similar nations. Only seven of the thirty are now democratic, and only two of them have become established democracies; the democratic experiments in the other five are still in progress. Among the seven, the average time required to transit the path from extreme autocracy to coherent, albeit precarious, democracy has been fifty years, and only two have managed this transition in fewer than twenty-five years. Even this sober assessment is probably too optimistic, because Iraq lacks the structural conditions that theory and evidence indicate have been necessary for successful democratic transitions in the past. Thus, the odds of Iraq achieving democracy in the next quarter century are close to zero, at best about two in thirty, but probably far less.

scholarly journals Molecular archaeoparasitology identifies cultural changes in the Medieval Hanseatic trading centre of Lübeck

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1888) ◽  
pp. 20180991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrik G. Flammer ◽  
Simon Dellicour ◽  
Stephen G. Preston ◽  
Dirk Rieger ◽  
Sylvia Warren ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Trichuris Trichiura ◽  
Taenia Saginata ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Parasitic Worms ◽  
Diphyllobothrium Latum ◽  
Sample Set

Throughout history, humans have been afflicted by parasitic worms, and eggs are readily detected in archaeological deposits. This study integrated parasitological and ancient DNA methods with a large sample set dating between Neolithic and Early Modern periods to explore the utility of molecular archaeoparasitology as a new approach to study the past. Molecular analyses provided unequivocal species-level parasite identification and revealed location-specific epidemiological signatures. Faecal–oral transmitted nematodes ( Ascaris lumbricoides and Trichuris trichiura ) were ubiquitous across time and space. By contrast, high numbers of food-associated cestodes ( Diphyllobothrium latum and Taenia saginata ) were restricted to medieval Lübeck. The presence of these cestodes and changes in their prevalence at approximately 1300 CE indicate substantial alterations in diet or parasite availability. Trichuris trichiura ITS-1 sequences grouped into two clades; one ubiquitous and one restricted to medieval Lübeck and Bristol. The high sequence diversity of T.t .ITS-1 detected in Lübeck is consistent with its importance as a Hanseatic trading centre. Collectively, these results introduce molecular archaeoparasitology as an artefact-independent source of historical evidence.

Rural sites in Roman Greece

2014 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 117-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Field Survey ◽  
Rural Landscape ◽  
Greek Life ◽  
Landscape Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Roman Greece ◽  
Urban Core ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Rural Sites ◽  
Textual Research

[W]hile pretending to throw some light upon classical authors by careful observation of the manners of the present day, romantic travellers succeeded in fact in accommodating reality to their dreams … by creating for themselves and for their readers carefully edited portraits of modern Greece that transformed the present into the living image of the past (Saïd 2005: 291).Thirty years ago archaeological field survey promised to reshape radically our understanding of the countryside (Keller and Rupp 1983: 1–5). Traditional archaeological approaches to cities and monuments were increasingly seen to be extensions of textual research, and research on the rural landscape was envisaged as a way to access the other side of the traditional urban-rural dichotomy (though see the comments in Alcock 2007: 671–72). Some scholars estimated that, in the Classical period, the vast majority of Greek poleis had populations of less than 3,000 and territories no more than a few hours” walk from the urban core. Given that, they asked, does it make sense to divide elements of Greek life into “city” and “country”? In a sense, the study of landscapes was seen as a way to redress perceived imbalances between this urban-rural division and the picture painted by the ancient sources of Roman Greece as a pale reflection of its Classical brilliance. In the years since, landscape studies have grown to include much more than archaeological field survey, but this tension between textual and archaeological narratives remains at the heart of understandings of rural Roman Greece.

A Note on Tree Worship in the Zaza Folk Beliefs

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 404-407
Author(s):  
Victoria Arakelova
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Folk Beliefs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Turkish Government ◽  
Oak Trees ◽  
Individual Trees ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Mountain Villages

The article presents some historical evidence about the veneration of individual trees, primarily the juniper and the oak-trees, traditionally considered to be sacred in the Zaza culture, as well as generally groves and forests. Unfortunately, the once vast and rich forestal covering of the Zazas’ main habitat in Dersim (Tunceli), which was a proverbial phenomenon still in the beginning of the 20th century, has been almost totally exterminated as a result of the mistreatment by the Turkish government. The folk beliefs related to tree worship have also been considerably erased from the people’s memory, lingering on only among the elderly in the remote mountain villages as a dwindling echo of the past.

All Boundaries Are Lost: Travel, Fragmentation and Interconnection in Virginia Woolf

2016 ◽  
pp. 105-132
Author(s):  
Sam Wiseman
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Rural Landscapes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Between The Acts ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
A Site

Woolf’s childhood was characterised by contrasts between urban and rural, movement and belonging, past and future, domesticity and the outdoor landscape. These influences are evident in her work’s balance between nostalgic reflection and an acceptance of the inexorable transience of human existence and sensation. Woolf is interested in the ways in which new developments in travel and technology can defamiliarise us, and reveal interconnections with other beings. Her attentiveness to the sedimentary layering of the past within rural landscapes is applied to her reimagining of the urban environment; Woolf inverts urban-rural associations, and portrays the metropolitan world as a site within which both fragmentation and interconnection are made explicit. That sense of interconnection also extends to nonhuman animals in Between the Acts (1941). Ultimately, this portrayal of a world in which all experience and activity is part of a ‘work of art’ underlies the theme of unity in Woolf’s final novel; but that theme nonetheless remains balanced by the novel’s exploration of dispersal and fragmentation.

The Role of Biography in Writing the History of Archaeology (1992)

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas R. Givens
Keyword(s):  
No Value ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
History Of Anthropology ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Past Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
Institutional Influences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Made In

The history of any discipline involves the explanation of its past and how the past has influenced its development through time. Its ‘objects are events which have finished happening, and conditions no longer in existence. Only when they are no longer perceptible do they become objects of historical thought’ (Collingwood 1946: 233). Writing the history of archaeology involves the analysis of past events and of the contributions that individual archaeologists have made to its development through time. The roles of individuals in archaeology are best seen in biographical accounts of their labours and in the contributions to the discipline that they have made. In general, historians of archaeological science, who are interested in explaining the roles of the individuals in its development, must focus their attention on three important items. First, the most important item is evidence that something has occurred. If individuals’ contributions have no basis in truth and cannot be justified, then they are of no value to the historian of archaeology. Second, the historical picture of individuals’ lives and work must have defined boundaries in space and time. These provide the area of focus for study and description of individuals’ activities. Third, the efforts of individual practitioners must be couched within the intellectual climate in which they are made. Individuals’ contributions are not made in an intellectual vacuum, apart from collegial or institutional influences. Biography, as a tool for writing the history of archaeology, must embrace all of these requisites. For those engaged in explaining archaeology’s past, historical evidence of event and period provide the foundation upon which we can trace our science’s development. Studying and evaluating past work can be helpful in separating useful and outdated methodologies of the field and laboratory. Moreover, the study of the history of anthropology may give the anthropologist needed ‘distance from their own theoretical and methodological preoccupations’ (Darnell 1974: 2). What we see anthropology today as being is certainly not what the ultimate science of humankind will be in the future.

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