Presbyterians in Africa

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-157
Author(s):  
Benhardt Yemo Quarshie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Center Of Gravity ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Church Unity ◽  
Global Church ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rich History ◽  
Local Languages

The Presbyterian presence in Africa goes back mainly to the nineteenth-century Protestant missionary enterprise on the continent. Presbyterianism spread all over the continent through missionary activity, but especially through the work of Africans themselves. African Presbyterians have much in common with Presbyterians worldwide in terms of beliefs, values, and practices, but the African cultural context offers unique dimensions to these commonalities. Presbyterians in Africa continue to face challenges generated by their context in areas such as the engagement between the gospel and African culture, which is intertwined with Africa’s primal religions, worldviews, and many local languages. A major challenge confronting Presbyterians today is how to engage with people of other faiths, especially Muslims, in Africa’s multireligious setting. Other challenges are African multiethnicity and the implications for Presbyterian worship and polity; globalization and its impact on values and ethics; denominationalism and its ramifications for ecumenism and church unity; and the shift in the center of gravity of Christianity to Africa and other southern continents and the impact on mission, theological engagement, and reflection. Presbyterians in Africa have a rich history that should shape their continuing contribution to the development of the continent and the global church.

The death of Adumissa: a suicide at Cape Coast, Ghana, around 1800

Africa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 91 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-225
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young Woman ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Cape Coast ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Town

AbstractThis article examines the history of voluntary death on the Gold Coast in present-day Ghana. Its focus is the suicide of a young woman named Adwoa Amissa (or Adumissa), who took her own life in dramatic fashion in the town of Cape Coast in the early nineteenth century. Adumissa killed herself in response to the earlier suicide of a thwarted suitor, who declared his own self-destruction to be ‘on her head’, thereby transferring the responsibility to her. These events, which were recorded by Sarah Bowdich, an English resident of Cape Coast in 1816–18, made Adumissa a legendary figure in the Fante region of the Gold Coast and beyond. Despite the interpretive complexities of Bowdich's text, two aspects of the episode reveal themselves as central to an understanding of its cultural context: the impact of the spoken word and the practice of aggressive ‘revenge suicide’ among the Akan and their neighbours. It is within this culturally meaningful and contingent framework that questions about Adumissa's emotional impulses, motivations and agency must be situated.

New Regimes of Knowledge, 1800–1865

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Laffan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Hague ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Local Languages

This chapter explores the changes wrought in the nineteenth century under the impact of new cultures of science and new concepts of empire fostered by the governments of The Hague and Batavia. These intellectual developments resulted in a more active attempt by the Westerners to measure and understand how Islam was organized in the archipelago and to educate their officials in Islamic Law in preparation for their deployment in the field. Efforts to provide colonial officials with a working knowledge of local languages and cultures proceeded by fits and starts and really began in earnest only after the British interregnum of 1811–16. For much of the nineteenth century, Dutch scholarship followed the British lead. Once the Dutch returned to power, they made a fresh effort to collect information about indigenous education with an eye to substituting something of their own devising.

Frederic Leighton's Flaming June, Thermodynamics, and the Heat Death of the Sun

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-125
Author(s):  
Laura Franchetti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Second Law ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Dominant Focus ◽  
Cultural Milieu ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Heat Death ◽  
The Impact

At the close of the nineteenth century, amid pervasive fears of decadence and widespread pessimism, Frederic Leighton (1830–96) completed Flaming June (1895). Taking as its starting point Victorian responses to the work that seem incomprehensible to viewers today, this paper examines the possible meaning behind Flaming June's more impenetrable iconography. The following discussion highlights the significance of thermodynamics in the work's cultural context. It examines the impact of an implication of the second law of thermodynamics, known as the Sun's heat death – a fated apocalyptic event – and suggests that this resonated with late Victorian audiences plagued by concerns of degeneration and decadence. Considered within this context, this paper reveals further layers of meaning embedded within the imagery of Flaming June available to a Victorian audience, but which have since been eclipsed by a dominant focus on other aspects of the painting's cultural milieu.

Reading Stratigraphical Woodscapes in Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 210-223
Author(s):  
Anna Burton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Local History ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Geological Work ◽  
Gideon Mantell ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Visual Cultures

In The Woodlanders (1887), Hardy uses the texture of Hintock woodlands as more than description: it is a terrain of personal association and local history, a text to be negotiated in order to comprehend the narrative trajectory. However, upon closer analysis of these arboreal environs, it is evident that these woodscapes are simultaneously self-contained and multi-layered in space and time. This essay proposes that through this complex topographical construction, Hardy invites the reader to read this text within a physical and notional stratigraphical framework. This framework shares similarities with William Gilpin's picturesque viewpoint and the geological work of Gideon Mantell: two modes of vision that changed the observation of landscape in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This comparative discussion at once reviews the perception of the arboreal prospect in nineteenth-century literary and visual cultures, and also questions the impact of these modes of thought on the woodscapes of The Woodlanders.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George E. Dutton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Catholic Mission ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Main Figure

This chapter introduces the book’s main figure and situates him within the historical moment from which he emerges. It shows the degree to which global geographies shaped the European Catholic mission project. It describes the impact of the Padroado system that divided the world for evangelism between the Spanish and Portuguese crowns in the 15th century. It also argues that European clerics were drawing lines on Asian lands even before colonial regimes were established in the nineteenth century, suggesting that these earlier mapping projects were also extremely significant in shaping the lives of people in Asia. I argue for the value of telling this story from the vantage point of a Vietnamese Catholic, and thus restoring agency to a population often obscured by the lives of European missionaries.

Liszt at the Piano: The Impact of Iconography on mid-Nineteenth Century Musicology

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Suzanne Marie Francis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Music History ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Maximum Benefit ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Iconic Status ◽  
The Impact

By the time of his death in 1827, the image of Beethoven as we recognise him today was firmly fixed in the minds of his contemporaries, and the career of Liszt was beginning to flower into that of the virtuosic performer he would be recognised as by the end of the 1830s. By analysing the seminal artwork Liszt at the Piano of 1840 by Josef Danhauser, we can see how a seemingly unremarkable head-and-shoulders bust of Beethoven in fact holds the key to unlocking the layers of commentary on both Liszt and Beethoven beneath the surface of the image. Taking the analysis by Alessandra Comini as a starting point, this paper will look deeper into the subtle connections discernible between the protagonists of the picture. These reveal how the collective identities of the artist and his painted assembly contribute directly to Beethoven’s already iconic status within music history around 1840 and reflect the reception of Liszt at this time. Set against the background of Romanticism predominant in the social and cultural contexts of the mid 1800s, it becomes apparent that it is no longer enough to look at a picture of a composer or performer in isolation to understand its impact on the construction of an overall identity. Each image must be viewed in relation to those that preceded and came after it to gain the maximum benefit from what it can tell us.

The Africanisation Of South African Civil Procedure: The Way Forward

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fawzia Cassim ◽  
Nomulelo Queen Mabeka
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Procedure ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Seventeenth Amendment ◽  
Procedural Law ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
The Law ◽  
Court Proceedings ◽  
The Impact

Civil procedure enforces the rules and provisions of civil law.  The law of civil procedure involves the issuing, service and filing of documents to initiate court proceedings in the superior courts and lower courts. Indeed, notice of legal proceedings is given to every person to ensure compliance with the audi alteram partem maxim (“hear the other side”). There are various rules and legislation that regulate these court proceedings such as inter alia, the Superior Courts Act, 2013, Uniform Rules of Court, Constitution Seventeenth Amendment Act, 2012 and the Magistrates’ Courts Act of 1944. The rules of court are binding on a court by virtue of their nature.  The purpose of these rules is to facilitate inexpensive and efficient legislation. However, civil procedure does not only depend on statutory provisions and the rules of court.  Common law also plays a role. Superior Courts are said to exercise inherent jurisdiction in that its jurisdiction is derived from common law.  It is noteworthy that whilst our rules of court and statutes are largely based on the English law, Roman-Dutch law also has an impact on our procedural law. The question thus arises, how can our law of civil procedure transform to accommodate elements of Africanisation as we are part and parcel of the African continent/diaspora? In this regard, the article examines the origins of Western-based civil procedure, our formal court systems, the impact of the Constitution on traditional civil procedure, the use of dispute resolution mechanisms in Western legal systems and African culture, an overview of the Traditional Courts Bill of 2012 and the advent of the Traditional Courts Bill of 2017. The article also examines how the contentious Traditional Courts Bills of 2012 and 2017 will transform or complement the law of civil procedure and apply in practice once it is passed into law.

Agricultural education and Italian primary school teachers: the Romagna in the late nineteenth century

Modern Italy ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Omar Mazzotti ◽  
Massimo Fornasari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Agricultural Education ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Primary School Teachers ◽  
Agricultural Revolution ◽  
Agricultural Knowledge ◽  
The Impact

This article examines the dissemination of agricultural education in primary schools in the Romagna, an important rural area in post-unification Italy. The topic is explored within a wider perspective, analysing the impact of institutional changes – at both the national and local levels – on the transmission of agricultural knowledge in primary education during the final quarter of the nineteenth century. Two particular elements of the process are examined: students, as the intended beneficiaries of the educational process; and teachers, who as well as having a key role in reducing the extent of illiteracy were sometimes also involved in disseminating agricultural knowledge. The transfer of that knowledge appears to have been a very challenging task, not least because of the scant interest that Italy's ruling class showed towards this issue. However, increasing importance seems to have been given to agricultural education in primary schools during the economic crisis of the 1880s, when the expansion of this provision was thought to be among the factors that might help to prepare the ground for the hoped-for ‘agricultural revolution’.

scholarly journals Temperature, Disease, and Death in London: Analyzing Weekly Data for the Century from 1866 to 1965

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-41
Author(s):  
W. Walker Hanlon ◽  
Casper Worm Hansen ◽  
Jake Kantor
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
High Temperature ◽  
Mortality Data ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Infant Deaths ◽  
Digestive Diseases ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Using novel weekly mortality data for London spanning 1866-1965, we analyze the changing relationship between temperature and mortality as the city developed. Our main results show that warm weeks led to elevated mortality in the late nineteenth century, mainly due to infant deaths from digestive diseases. However, this pattern largely disappeared after WWI as infant digestive diseases became less prevalent. The resulting change in the temperature-mortality relationship meant that thousands of heat-related deaths—equal to 0.9-1.4 percent of all deaths— were averted. These findings show that improving the disease environment can dramatically alter the impact of high temperature on mortality.

scholarly journals A Cross-National Study of Dementia Stigma Among the General Public in Israel and Australia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Perla Werner ◽  
Sarang Kim
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
National Study ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Subjective Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

Background: Despite the increasing amount of research on dementia stigma, there is a dearth of cross-national studies conducted on this subject. This is surprising since the experience of stigma is closely associated to socio-cultural aspects. Objective: The present study intended to expand knowledge about the impact of culture on dementia stigma by comparing the level and correlates of stigmatic beliefs about dementia among the general public in Israel and Australia. Methods: A cross-sectional study using an online survey was conducted with two age-matched samples: 447 adults in Israel and 290 adults in Australia. Results: Overall, dementia stigma was moderate in both countries. However, the level of dementia stigma was significantly higher in Australia than in Israel. Lower levels of subjective knowledge and higher levels of ageism were associated with increased levels of stigmatic beliefs in both countries. Gender was a significant correlate of dementia stigma, with male participants reporting higher levels of public stigma than women, although this gender difference was mainly driven by the Australian sample. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that providing knowledge and decreasing ageist attitudes should be key considerations in dementia awareness and stigma reduction campaigns despite the cultural context. In addition, developing gender-specific messages should be considered as a way of improving the effects of such campaigns.

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