The Iraqw society reflected in their language

2021 ◽  
pp. 312-341
Author(s):  
Maarten Mous
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Verbal Art ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Absolute Time ◽  
Direct Address ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Abstract Notion ◽  
Anthropological Literature

A close inspection of the anthropological literature on Iraqw (Cushitic, Tanzania) reveals that central properties in their culture include the relative importance of social relations and hence community over kinship relations, the relevance of relative rather than absolute time, the centrality of space in culture and the importance of ritual cleansiness. The paper investigates to what extend the Iraqw language reflects this. Language being a social construct is expected to reflect social structure over time, both in lexicon and in grammar. Indeed the Iraqw language reflects their social structure in a number of way. Their verbal art emphasizes the need for peace in the community and is strongly communal in performance. This is evident, for example, in the rituals for lifting a curse. The centrality of community is reflected in various part of the lexicon. expression for pride being one of them, or the factor of companionship in possession. It is also grammaticalised in an extension of the function of the impersonal subject pronoun to express actions done together. Iraqw mythology and tales never attempt to indicate a point on time and only report chronology of event. This conceptualisation of time is reflected in the absence of lexical elements for absolute time and the abstract notion time. Furthermore the language forces specification of gender in any direct address: the second person pronoun is gender specified, kinship terms used for address are all gender specified as is the interjection for attention. Iraqw shows signs for a disappearing in-law respect register.

Lineage Organization in North China

1990 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myron L. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
North China ◽  
Corporate Groups ◽  
The North ◽  
Chinese Model ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Corporate Resources ◽  
Anthropological Literature

North china heretofore has been only minimally involved in the modern anthropological analysis of Chinese patrilineal kinship. In this region, lineage organization prior to the Communist era comprised a social structure, symbolism, and arrangement of ritual that call into question the line of anthropological inquiry that has focused almost exclusively on the linkages between a lineage's corporate resources and its social cohesion. The characteristics of lineages in Yangmansa, a village approximately seventy-five kilometers south of Beijing, appear to have been typical of this broader north China pattern considerably different from those associated with the southeastern Chinese model that has dominated the anthropological literature. Although many elements of northern lineage organization are found also in the southeast and elsewhere in China, they are combined in the north into a distinctive arrangement of cemeteries, graves, ancestral scrolls, ancestral tablets, and corporate groups linked to a characteristic annual ritual cycle. I deal first with the expression in Yangmansa of key features of the north China pattern, but also draw on other sources to fill out the picture and establish its broader regional relevance.

scholarly journals Structure, meanings and functions make from colors of personal nouns in ede in Vietnam

2022 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyen Minh Hoat ◽  
Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
Proper Nouns ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Cultural Expressions ◽  
General Meaning ◽  
Large Groups

In linguistics, when studying nouns, specialists often divide them into two large groups, common nouns, and proper nouns. Based on general meaning, common nouns are divided into smaller groups, such as nouns with generalizing meaning, nouns without generalizing meaning. Nouns with generalizing meaning can be divided: nouns of units, nouns of people, nouns of objects, etc. Nouns for people include nouns denoting kinship relations, social relations. These are general nouns of people. They take up a sizeable amount and are an important word class of nouns. Nouns of people indicate not only people but also expressive nuances, cultural expressions of individuals or communities. The article clarifies the characteristics of structures, semantics, and functions as Ede vocative addressing words in Vietnam, thereby explaining the Ede people's cultural characteristics through nouns of people.

scholarly journals Paradigm Shift among Scheduled Caste in Jharkhand: A Study of Garhwa District

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Ambrish Gautam ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Exceptional Case ◽  
Personal Attributes ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Socially Excluded

Status is a position provided to the person of the concern society based on societal norms, values and customary practices. It is further being divided into two parts, first one is the Ascribed status, and another is Achieved status. The ascribed status is assigned to a person by the group or society, whereas achieved status is earned by the individual through his/her personal attributes and is taken note of by the people in and around his/her location. It is also evident that in majority of the cases, the ascribed status always determines the nature and extent of the achieved status. The ascribed status of the Dalits contributes or hinders in the formation of their achieved status. It also includes their social interaction and social relations with non-Dalits in the exiting local level social structure. This status is being characterized and specified by the process of Sanskritization, social and religious reforms, and the constitutional provisions in the formation of achieved status of Dalits in their different strata of life. The social status is the convergent form of both the ascribed and achieved statuses of a person in each society or social structure. In every circumstance, one’s higher ascribed status always contributes positively to his or her higher achieved status. Conversely, lower the ascribed status, lower is the achieved status though this may be other way round in the exceptional case. Anyway, the symmetrical or linear relationship between the lower ascribed and achieved statuses gets more crystallized, if the person comes from a group which remains socially excluded forever. But due to the prospects of Independence, Education, Constitutional safeguards and Modernisation several kinds of changes occurred in the status of Dalit’s in the society. Through this paper, I have tried to identify the process of social status formation among Dalits in Jharkhand.

scholarly journals Paradigm Shift among Scheduled Caste in Jharkhand: A Study of Garhwa District

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Ambrish Gautam ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Exceptional Case ◽  
Personal Attributes ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Socially Excluded

Status is a position provided to the person of the concern society based on societal norms, values and customary practices. It is further being divided into two parts, first one is the Ascribed status, and another is Achieved status. The ascribed status is assigned to a person by the group or society, whereas achieved status is earned by the individual through his/her personal attributes and is taken note of by the people in and around his/her location. It is also evident that in majority of the cases, the ascribed status always determines the nature and extent of the achieved status. The ascribed status of the Dalits contributes or hinders in the formation of their achieved status. It also includes their social interaction and social relations with non-Dalits in the exiting local level social structure. This status is being characterized and specified by the process of Sanskritization, social and religious reforms, and the constitutional provisions in the formation of achieved status of Dalits in their different strata of life. The social status is the convergent form of both the ascribed and achieved statuses of a person in each society or social structure. In every circumstance, one’s higher ascribed status always contributes positively to his or her higher achieved status. Conversely, lower the ascribed status, lower is the achieved status though this may be other way round in the exceptional case. Anyway, the symmetrical or linear relationship between the lower ascribed and achieved statuses gets more crystallized, if the person comes from a group which remains socially excluded forever. But due to the prospects of Independence, Education, Constitutional safeguards and Modernisation several kinds of changes occurred in the status of Dalit’s in the society. Through this paper, I have tried to identify the process of social status formation among Dalits in Jharkhand.

scholarly journals Capital as a social process: A Marxian perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 41-71
Author(s):  
Miguel D. Ramirez
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Surplus Value ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
Fictitious Capital ◽  
Important Notion

This paper analyzes the very important notion of capital from a Marxian perspective as opposed to a neoclassical one. It is argued that when capital is viewed as a historically determined social process (relation), rather than as a thing or a col-lection of things, it tends to assume certain specific forms more often than others depending on the particular stage of economic history. Capital thus refers simulta-neously to social relations and to things. Given this frame of reference, notions such as money and property capital are more easily accommodated and conse-quently are not written off as financial or fictitious capital - not real capital because they produce nothing. The paper also focuses on Marx's important analy-sis of the time of production and the turnover of capital in terms of the production of surplus-value (profit). It then examines Marx's equally important and prescient analysis of how the turnover speed of capital is affected by the time of circulation of commodities (the realization of surplus-value) and the growing use of credit (in its various forms) in the capitalist system. Finally, the paper turns its attention to the economic role of time as it relates to interest - bearing capital - one whose clear comprehension rests on viewing capital as a social construct.

scholarly journals Gridlocked in the city: kinship and witchcraft among Wayao street vendors in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Africa ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 88 (S1) ◽  
pp. S51-S71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis Malefakis
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Urban Economy ◽  
Dar Es Salaam ◽  
The Other ◽  
Heterogeneous Environment ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

AbstractFor a group of Wayao street vendors in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, kinship relations were simultaneously an advantage and a hindrance. Their migration to the city and entry into the urban economy had occurred along ethnic and kinship lines. But, as they perceived the socially heterogeneous environment of the city that potentially offered them opportunities to cooperate with people from different social or ethnic backgrounds, they experienced their continuing dependency on their relatives as a form of confinement. Against the backdrop of the city, the Wayao perceived their social relations as being burdened with an inescapable sameness that made it impossible to trust one another. Mistrust, contempt and mutual suspicion were the flip side of close social relations and culminated in accusations ofuchawi(Swahili: witchcraft). However, these accusations did not have a disintegrative effect; paradoxically, their impact on social relations among the vendors was integrative. On the one hand,uchawiallegations expressed the claustrophobic feeling of stifling relations; on the other, they compelled the accused to adhere to a shared morality of egalitarian relations and exposed the feeling that the accused individual was worthy of scrutiny, indicating that relationships with him were of particular importance to others.

ECONOMIC RUNAWAYS: PATRONAGE, POVERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF ‘FREEDOM’ ON SIERRA LEONE'S MARITIME FRONTIER

Africa ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Diggins
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Commercial Fishing ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Labour Exploitation ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Village Life

ABSTRACTAs a result of the autopsy of Sierra Leone's civil war, we have become familiar with a rather dystopian vision of ‘traditional’ economic life in that region. Combatants often described their family villages as spaces where profound inequalities were hidden within households; where labour exploitation was woven through kinship relations. This article follows several young men who fled conditions of bonded labour in their rural homes: not to join the war but to seek a new life in the commercial fishing economy. Elsewhere across the postcolonial world, there is a rich ethnographic literature illustrating that people on the fringes of the global capitalist order respond with profound unease as their economic lives become ever more strongly regulated by impersonal market forces. Less often acknowledged is the possibility that, for some people, in some contexts, severing social relations might be exactly what they want, and that therein lies the greatest appeal of an economic life characterized by market transactions. For the young men described in this article, commercial fishing appeared to offer a level of personal ‘freedom’ unimaginable within the patron–client structures of village life. However, most find themselves drawn rapidly back into new forms of extractive relationships.

Kinship Networks and Child Fostering in Labor Migration from Ilocos, Philippines to Italy

1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itaru Nagasaka
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Labor Migration ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Kinship Networks ◽  
Child Fostering ◽  
Adaptive Processes ◽  
Basic Characteristics

This paper is an attempt to analyze the process of contemporary overseas labor migration from a village in the Ilocos region in the Philippines to Italy. As such, it will seek to outline the basic characteristics of the process of migration and examine them in relation to the local social structure. It will demonstrate how the Ilocanos responded to new opportunities of migration by manipulating existing social relations. Particular attention will be given to the process of constructing kinship networks among the migrants and the practice of fosterage in the homeland community, both of which are considered as adaptive processes to the new migration opportunity.

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