Quo Vadis, Performance History?

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Schechner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Art History ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Performance History ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Quo Vadis ◽  
The Right

Frankly, I'm not much of a historian. That is, the past interests me mostly as grist for my theoretical mill. I am not nostalgic. I don't often trek through ruins—whether of stone, paintings, videotape, paper, library stacks, or my own many notebooks. Of course, I've done the right thing when it comes to this kind of activity. I have climbed the pyramids at Teotihuacan and in Mayan country, sat on stone benches of the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens and in Epidaurus (where I was tormented by some really awful productions of ancient Greek dramas), and visited the theatre museums of four continents. On the art-history front, I've gazed at more paintings and sculptings than I can readily organize in memory. But my strongest meetings with “history” have been at the cusp of the past and present—living events always already changing as they are (re)performed. This has been the core of my “anthropology-meets-theatre” work whether among the Yaquis of Arizona, at the Ramlila of Ramnagar in India, in the highlands of Papua–New Guinea, at Off-Off Broadway in New York, in the interior of China, and at very many other events in a wide variety of places.

COMBINING ORAL TRADITIONS AND BAYESIAN CHRONOLOGICAL MODELING TO UNDERSTAND VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT IN THE GULF OF PAPUA (PAPUA NEW GUINEA)

Radiocarbon ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Chris Urwin ◽  
Quan Hua ◽  
Henry Arifeae
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gulf Of Papua ◽  
The Village

ABSTRACT When European colonists arrived in the late 19th century, large villages dotted the coastline of the Gulf of Papua (southern Papua New Guinea). These central places sustained long-distance exchange and decade-spanning ceremonial cycles. Besides ethnohistoric records, little is known of the villages’ antiquity, spatiality, or development. Here we combine oral traditional and 14C chronological evidence to investigate the spatial history of two ancestral village sites in Orokolo Bay: Popo and Mirimua Mapoe. A Bayesian model composed of 35 14C assays from seven excavations, alongside the oral traditional accounts, demonstrates that people lived at Popo from 765–575 cal BP until 220–40 cal BP, at which time they moved southwards to Mirimua Mapoe. The village of Popo spanned ca. 34 ha and was composed of various estates, each occupied by a different tribe. Through time, the inhabitants of Popo transformed (e.g., expanded, contracted, and shifted) the village to manage social and ceremonial priorities, long-distance exchange opportunities and changing marine environments. Ours is a crucial case study of how oral traditional ways of understanding the past interrelate with the information generated by Bayesian 14C analyses. We conclude by reflecting on the limitations, strengths, and uncertainties inherent to these forms of chronological knowledge.

Summary judgment — Quo vadis?

2021 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-114
Author(s):  
Thino Bekker
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
High Court ◽  
The Core ◽  
Golden Opportunity ◽  
Quo Vadis ◽  
The Right ◽  
Summary Judgment ◽  
Made In

The summary judgment procedure in South African law provides for a speedy judgment in favour of a deserving plaintiff where it can be shown that the defendant does not have a triable defence. In 2019 the Rules Board made certain drastic amendments to the procedure of summary judgment in the high court. In this article the historical development of the procedure of summary judgment will be discussed, and the new amendments to rule 32 of the Uniform Rules of Court critically evaluated. It will be argued that the amendments to rule 32 were unnecessary and that it may diminish the right to access to justice in civil disputes. It will, however, also be argued that there are some merits in the critique raised by the Rules Board in relation to rule 32 and that the Rules Board missed a golden opportunity to overhaul the entire summary judgment procedure in a more sensible manner and in line with the core constitutional values of s 34 of the Constitution. It will be argued that rule 32 should be replaced in its entirety by a new, more streamlined procedure, and some recommendations for legal reform will be made in this regard.

scholarly journals From Planning to Action: Forest Conservation and Management in Papua New Guinea

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy MacKinnon
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Forest Conservation ◽  
Forest Products ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Subsistence Agriculture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
Eastern Half ◽  
Conservation And Management

Papua New Guinea (PNG) occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and still boasts 33 million hectares of closed natural forest (77% of the country), home to numerous endemic species. Overall PNG is sparsely populated with some 700 distinct cultural/ language groups. Economic growth over the past two decades has been spurred by large-scale mining, petroleum and logging operations though the majority of the population continues to rely upon subsistence agriculture (swidden) and collection and utilization of forest products. Some 15 million hectares of forests are accessible for logging, of which 1.5 million hectares have already been logged, generally in an unsustainable manner. Of the over 6 million ha of approved timber blocks more than 1.5 million hectares have been located in areas of high biological value. Forest loss and degradation is now becoming a serious problem.

Estimates of fertility and infant and child mortality for Lae urban area of Papua New Guinea: a comparative analysis

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-148
Author(s):  
William K. A. Agyei
Keyword(s):  
Urban Area ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Child Mortality ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Fertility Rates ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Infant And Child Mortality

SummaryData collected on fertility, mortality and family planning in two surveys in Papua New Guinea are presented. The first survey was conducted in rural and urban areas between November 1979 and March 1980 in eight provinces of Papua New Guinea, and the second between late June and early July 1981 in the Lae urban area. The unadjusted total fertility rates suggest that fertility is lower in the Lae urban area than in the rural and provincial urban areas. However, the adjusted rates indicate that fertility is higher in the provincial urban areas than in the rural and Lae urban areas. The results also confirm a trend towards lower infant and child mortality over the past 15 years, as well as the existence of moderate differentials between rural, provincial urban and the Lae urban areas.

From the Editor

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
James M. Harding
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Actual Force ◽  
Point Of Departure

We open this issue of Theatre Survey with Marvin Carlson's essay on how the events of 9/11 and the subsequent wars with Afghanistan and Iraq have affected New York theatre. At the core of Carlson's essay is a very subtle depiction of theatre forced by world events to contemplate anew its understanding of history and its understanding of the role that theatre has to play in history. Carlson's essay offers us an image of theatre communities that, in their responses to the deeply troubling events of the past two and a half years, have struggled to understand whether theatre is outside or inside of history, that is, whether theatre is “somehow out of place in a situation of real crisis and suffering” or whether it can be an actual force of change. At one level, then, Carlson's essay is significant because it illuminates how acts of terrorism and acts of war force theatre to return to the most basic questions about its function in society at large. Those questions serve as our point of departure because their answers change with history.

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