The Archaeology of Missionization in Colonial Senegambia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna A. Pacyga
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Archaeology Of Colonialism ◽  
Institutional Architecture

The archaeology of missionization in colonial Senegambia is a nascent area of study within the broader historical archaeology of colonialism that explores the historical processes of evangelization and conversion as they were experienced by Senegambian converts. Senegambia was a prominent target of Catholic and Protestant missionaries throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Archaeology is a uniquely situated discipline for expanding our understanding of missionization beyond the historical and anthropological perspectives because—through its focus on material remains—it uncovers the experience of proselytization and conversion from the ground up by illuminating the daily lives of mission residents who are often underrepresented in archival sources: African converts themselves, including women and children. The archaeology of missionization exposes lines of evidence that have left behind a robust footprint of religious and institutional architecture, landscape elements, and material culture accessible through archaeological survey and excavation. Furthermore, missionization was deeply rooted in the materiality of everyday life, so it is not simply because mission sites exist that they should be excavated, but because missionaries widely considered material practices to be integral to the broader conversion process. The archaeology of missionization interrogates the relationship between the theory and practice of evangelization during the period of colonization, and reveals the lived experience of religious conversion among Senegambian mission residents, both neophytes and those who did not embrace Christianity.

The Changing Perception of the Five Senses

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-122
Author(s):  
Sara Benninga
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
Peter Paul Rubens ◽  
Courtly Culture ◽  
Southern Netherlands ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Senses

This article examines the changing approach towards the representation of the senses in 17th-century Flemish painting. These changes are related to the cultural politics and courtly culture of the Spanish sovereigns of the Southern Netherlands, the Archdukes Albert and Isabella. The 1617–18 painting-series of the Five Senses by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens as well as the pendant paintings on the subject are analyzed in relation to the iconography of the five senses, and in regard to Flemish genre themes. In this context, the excess of objects, paintings, scientific instruments, animals, and plants in the Five Senses are read as an expansion of the iconography of the senses as well as a reference to the courtly material culture of the Archdukes. Framing the senses as part of a cultural web of artifacts, Brueghel and Rubens refer both to elite lived experience and traditional iconography. The article examines the continuity between the iconography of the senses from 1600 onwards, as developed by Georg Pencz, Frans Floris, and Maerten de Vos, and the representation of the senses in the series. In addition, the article shows how certain elements in the paintings are influenced by genre paintings of the courtly company and collector’s cabinet, by Frans Francken, Lucas van Valckenborch and Louis de Caullery. Through the synthesis of these two traditions the subject of the five senses is reinvented in a courtly context

Historical Dynamics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Turchin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Synthetic Approach ◽  
Dynamical Processes ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Historical Dynamics ◽  
State Breakdown ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
High Degree

Many historical processes are dynamic. Populations grow and decline. Empires expand and collapse. Religions spread and wither. Natural scientists have made great strides in understanding dynamical processes in the physical and biological worlds using a synthetic approach that combines mathematical modeling with statistical analyses. Taking up the problem of territorial dynamics—why some polities at certain times expand and at other times contract—this book shows that a similar research program can advance our understanding of dynamical processes in history. The book develops hypotheses from a wide range of social, political, economic, and demographic factors: geopolitics, factors affecting collective solidarity, dynamics of ethnic assimilation/religious conversion, and the interaction between population dynamics and sociopolitical stability. It then translates these into a spectrum of mathematical models, investigates the dynamics predicted by the models, and contrasts model predictions with empirical patterns. The book's highly instructive empirical tests demonstrate that certain models predict empirical patterns with a very high degree of accuracy. For instance, one model accounts for the recurrent waves of state breakdown in medieval and early modern Europe. And historical data confirm that ethno-nationalist solidarity produces an aggressively expansive state under certain conditions (such as in locations where imperial frontiers coincide with religious divides). The strength of the book's results suggests that the synthetic approach advocated can significantly improve our understanding of historical dynamics.

Protecting Privacy on Mobile Apps: A Principal–Agent Perspective

2022 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Zilong Liu ◽  
Xuequn Wang ◽  
Xiaohan Li ◽  
Jun Liu
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Applications ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Principal Agent ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Privacy Issue ◽  
Informed Decisions ◽  
The Relationship

Although individuals increasingly use mobile applications (apps) in their daily lives, uncertainty exists regarding how the apps will use the information they request, and it is necessary to protect users from privacy-invasive apps. Recent literature has begun to pay much attention to the privacy issue in the context of mobile apps. However, little attention has been given to designing the permission request interface to reduce individuals’ perceived uncertainty and to support their informed decisions. Drawing on the principal–agent perspective, our study aims to understand the effects of permission justification, certification, and permission relevance on users’ perceived uncertainty, which in turn influences their permission authorization. Two studies were conducted with vignettes. Our results show that certification and permission relevance indeed reduce users’ perceived uncertainty. Moreover, permission relevance moderates the relationship between permission justification and perceived uncertainty. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Ethiopian Jewish Ascetic Religious Communities

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bar Kribus
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Ascetic Communities ◽  
Ethiopian Jews

The Betä Isra'el (Ethiopian Jews) have a unique history and religious tradition, one of the most fascinating aspects of which are the mäloksocc, commonly referred to as monks in scholarly and popular literature. The mäloksocc served as the supreme religious leaders of the Betä Isra'el and were charged with educating and initiating Betä Isra'el priests. They lived in separate compounds and observed severe purity laws prohibiting physical contact with the laity. Thus, they are the only known example in medieval and modern Jewry of ascetic communities withdrawing from the secular world and devoting themselves fully to religious life. This book presents the results of the first comprehensive research ever conducted on the way of life and material culture of the ascetic religious communities of the Betä Isra'el. A major part of this research is an archaeological survey, during which these religious centres were located and documented in detail for the first time.

From the Streets to the Stage: Disability and the Performing Arts

PMLA ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 620-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie Sandahl
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Theater Studies ◽  
Suitable Site ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

Despite its newness, disability-theater studies is an incredibly rich area of inquiry that is exploding in artistic practice and scholarship. The university is a particularly suitable site for a meeting of disability and the theater; after all, we theater scholars think of our classrooms and productions as laboratories not only for showcasing knowledge but for producing, rehearsing, and revising it. As the theater scholar Jill Dolan points out, live performance, especially in the liberal arts setting, has the unique power to test, on bodies willing to try them, academic theories that are otherwise purely theoretical. The feedback loop that oscillates between theory and practice in theater studies is necessarily changed by the inclusion of disability perspectives in the classroom, research programs, and performance offerings. Interestingly, an underlying theme of disability perspectives is that the lived experience of disability is always already performative; indeed, many of us with disabilities understand our disabilities as performance, not exclusively in an aesthetic or theoretical sense, but as an actual mode of living in the world. Consider what the playwright and wheelchair user John Belluso told me in a recent interview: “Any time I get on a public bus, I feel like it's a moment of theater. I'm lifted, the stage is moving up, and I enter, and people are along the lines, and they're turning and looking, and I make my entrance. It's theater, and I have to perform. And I feel like we as disabled people are constantly onstage and we're constantly performing.” The perspective of disability as performance undergirds and permeates disability art and scholarship. Thus, my own development as a disability-theater scholar and artist frames my perception of how disability challenges both the practical and the theoretical aspects of theater studies and points to the role universities play in fostering further development of the field.

“Army 45 Will Stop All Jive”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean L. Malloy
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Black Neighborhoods ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Revolutionary Nationalism ◽  
Che Guevara

This chapter argues that the key to the theory and practice of the Black Panther Party (BPP) during its early years was an understanding of urban black neighborhoods as colonized spaces that needed to be liberated before African Americans could truly be free. Drawing from Frantz Fanon, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, and pioneering black internationalists such as Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams, the Panthers embraced a form of revolutionary nationalism that posited the dire conditions facing black Oaklanders as part of a worldwide system of oppression linked to capitalism and white supremacy. In doing so, the BPP's founders built directly on their experiences with other organizations, particularly the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), as well as lessons drawn from the daily lives of people of color in the Bay Area.

Social-media-weaponised populism and community development

2020 ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Jacques Boulet
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Development Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Economic Background ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter assesses the resurfacing of populism and its much-discussed and documented adoption and enactment by leaders and citizens. More specifically, it discusses reasons for this (re-)emergence and its effects on people's daily lives and their participation in community life against the wider political-economic background, two areas central to much community development theory and practice. The first question posed is: what is going on with and around people — especially their modalities of 'being' and 'relating' — rendering them more 'prone' to being influenced by populisms and become populisms' 'accomplices'? Second, what role does social media play in this imposition/complicity dialectic? Indeed, social media powerfully invades and interpenetrates all levels and processes of the political economy, of people's everyday experiences and their subjective-affective lives, and they infest the mediating institutions operating 'between' the virtual global and the imperceptible here and now. Finally, a third question is posed: what is the effect of such socially mediated populism on communities and on efforts to (re)develop and maintain them? The chapter concludes with some ideas about ways to resist the (combined) assault of populism and social media and restart the project of democracy.

scholarly journals Dyes from the Ashes: Discovering and Characterizing Natural Dyes from Mineralized Textiles

Molecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 1417
Author(s):  
Alessandro Ciccola ◽  
Ilaria Serafini ◽  
Francesca Ripanti ◽  
Flaminia Vincenti ◽  
Francesca Coletti ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Solution Approach ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Surface Enhanced ◽  
Surface Enhanced Raman ◽  
Archeological Evidence ◽  
Enhanced Raman Scattering ◽  
Purple Color

Vesuvius eruption that destroyed Pompeii in AD 79 represents one of the most important events in history. The cataclysm left behind an abundance of archeological evidence representing a fundamental source of the knowledge we have about ancient Roman material culture and technology. A great number of textiles have been preserved, rarely maintaining traces of their original color, since they are mainly in the mineralized and carbonized state. However, one outstanding textile sample displays a brilliant purple color and traces of gold strips. Since the purple was one of the most exclusive dyes in antiquity, its presence in an important commercial site like Pompeii induces us to deepen the knowledge of such artifacts and provide further information on their history. For this reason, the characterization of the purple color was the main scope of this research, and to deepen the knowledge of such artifacts, the SERS (Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering) in solution approach was applied. Then, these data were enriched by HPLC-HRMS analyses, which confirmed SERS-based hypotheses and also allowed to hypothesize the species of the origin mollusk. In this context, a step-by-step integrated approach resulted fundamental to maximize the information content and to provide new data on textile manufacturing and trade in antiquity.

Multisensory Anthropology

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Howes
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Multispecies Ethnography ◽  
Sensory Ethnography ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Senses

The senses are made, not given. Multisensory anthropology focuses on the variable boundaries, differential elaboration, and many different ways of combining the senses across (and within) cultures. Its methodology is grounded in “participant sensation,” or sensing—and making sense—along with others, also known as sensory ethnography. This review article traces the sensualization of anthropological theory and practice since the early 1990s, showing how the concept of sensory mediation has steadily supplanted the prior concern with representation. It concludes with a discussion of how the senses are engaged in filmmaking, multispecies ethnography, and material culture studies as well as in achieving social justice.

Amulets and the Ritual Efficacy of Christian Symbols

2019 ◽  
pp. 349-366
Author(s):  
Rangar H. Cline
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Insight Into

Although “magical” amulets are often overlooked in studies of early Christian material culture, they provide unique insight into the lives of early Christians. The high number of amulets that survive from antiquity, their presence in domestic and mortuary archaeological contexts, and frequent discussions of amulets in Late Antique literary sources indicate that they constituted an integral part of the fabric of religious life for early Christians. The appearance of Christian symbols on amulets, beginning in the second century and occurring with increasing frequency in the fourth century and afterward, reveals the increasing perception of Christian symbols as ritually potent among Christians and others in the Roman Empire. The forms, texts, and images on amulets reveal the fears and hopes that occupied the daily lives of early Christians, when amulets designed for ritual efficacy if not orthodoxy were believed to provide a defense against forces that would harm body and soul.

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