Shrines, Medicines, and the Strength of the Head: the Way of the Warrior Among the Diola of Senegambia

Numen ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Baum
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Span ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Spiritual Support ◽  
Normal Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Normal Life Span ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe history of warfare has long be associated with a variety of religious practices designed to lessen the likelihood of death and enhance the possibility of victory. Warriors enter a world where the expectation of a normal life span is challenged by the death of comrades and where martial skill cannot ensure survival. This paper examines the way in which the Diola of Senegambia used religious practices and ideas to lessen the uncertainty of war during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Diola warriors sought the assistance of spirit shrines to lessen the uncertainties and dangers of war. There are strong parallels between the types of ritual employed by Diola warriors and Diola wrestlers, who share a common mission of eliminating risks. These parallels are discussed briefly before a detailed examination of Diola rituals related to war, the types of ritual prophylaxis utilized by warriors, and the types of Diola (as well as Christian and Muslim) medicines used for spiritual protection. Several specific war shrines are described as well as the means by which they were created. Finally, the article discusses the "strength of the head", special powers that enable warriors to protect themselves from harm, evade capture, and even transform themselves into certain types of animals. The article concludes with an analysis of the impact of colonial wars, with their greater firepower and more far-reaching consequences, on the connections between religion and the Diola way of the warrior. A central part of the spiritual crisis accompanying the colonial conquest, not only for the Diola but for many other African peoples, was the defeat of the religious structures that provided spiritual support for the way of the warrior.

Is God Really in History?

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-390
Author(s):  
Frederick Sontag
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
As If ◽  
The Way

For some time it seemed as if Christianity itself required us to say that ‘God is in history’. Of course, even to speak of ‘history’ is to reveal a bias for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forms of thought. But the justification for talking about the Christian God in this way is the doctrine of the incarnation. The centre of the Christian claim is that Jesus is God's representation in history, although we need not go all the way to a full trinitarian interpretation of the relationship between God and Jesus. Thus, the issue is not so much whether God can appear or has appeared within, or entered into, human life as it is a question of what categories we use to represent this. To what degree is God related to the sphere of human events? Whatever our answer, we need periodically to re-examine the way we speak about God to be sure the forms we use have not become misleading.

Unveiling Modernity: Verdi’s America and the Unification of Italy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Körner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
New World ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
American Opera ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Un Ballo In Maschera

This chapter examines the creation of Giuseppe Verdi's American opera Un ballo in maschera, first performed around the time of Italy's Second War of Independence, in 1859. Un ballo in maschera was the first modern Italian opera set across the Atlantic. The history of its creation and the subsequent debate around it serves as a classic example of the cultural imagination surrounding life in the New World as well as the wider social impact of political ideas in nineteenth-century Italy. The chapter first considers Un ballo's close connection to the Unification of Italy before offering a reading of the opera. It also explores how Verdi depicted America in his opera and how his depiction relates to Italian debates about America at the time. Finally, it assesses the impact of censorship on the plot of Un ballo.

The Economic History of South Africa 1948–94

2021 ◽  
pp. 46-65
Author(s):  
Bill Freund ◽  
Vishnu Padayachee
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Economic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

This chapter addresses the unfolding economic history of South Africa in the apartheid era (1948–94). The chapter is organized according to a periodization with 1971–73 as a marker of the break, and along specific thematic lines. These include a discussion of the way in which this history has been studied and through what theoretical lenses, before engaging with the main issues, including the impact of Afrikaner nationalism on economic growth, the way in which the minerals energy sector, which dominated early perspectives of South African economic history and perspectives, is impacted in this era of National Party rule. An analysis of the role of one major corporation (Anglo American Corporation) in shaping this economic history is followed by an assessment of the impact of the global and local crisis after c.1970 on the South African economy. An abiding theme is that of race and economic development and the way in which the impact of this key relationship of apartheid South Africa on economic growth has been studied.

The influence of scientific knowledge on mollusk and arthropod illustration

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Consuelo Sendino
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Original Form ◽  
General Shape ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACT Our attraction to fossils is almost as old as humans themselves, and the way fossils are represented has changed and evolved with technology and with our knowledge of these organisms. Invertebrates were the first fossils to be represented in books and illustrated according to their original form. The first worldwide illustrations of paleoinvertebrates by recognized authors, such as Christophorus Encelius and Conrad Gessner, considered only their general shape. Over time, paleoillustrations became more accurate and showed the position of organisms when they were alive and as they had appeared when found. Encyclopedic works such as those of the Sowerbys or Joachim Barrande have left an important legacy on fossil invertebrates, summarizing the knowledge of their time. Currently, new discoveries, techniques, and comparison with extant specimens are changing the way in which the same organisms are shown in life position, with previously overlooked taxonomically important elements being displayed using modern techniques. This chapter will cover the history of illustrations, unpublished nineteenth-century author illustrations, examples showing fossil reconstructions, new techniques and their influence on taxonomical work with regard to illustration, and the evolution of paleoinvertebrate illustration.

scholarly journals Studies on the Anemia of Disseminated Malignant Neoplastic Disease. II. Study of the Life Span of the Erythrocyte

Blood ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 618-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE A. HYMAN ◽  
ALFRED GELLHORN ◽  
JANE L. HARVEY
Keyword(s):  
Life Span ◽  
Cell Labeling ◽  
Intrinsic Defect ◽  
Neoplastic Disease ◽  
Red Cell ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Normal Life ◽  
Plasma Factor ◽  
Normal Life Span ◽  
Normal Erythrocyte

Abstract 1. A study of the life span of the erythrocyte in patients with advanced neoplastic disease was performed by transfusing blood from 23 hospitalized patients into 53 healthy volunteers. 2. The Ashby technic for red cell labeling was used alone in 16 instances, Cr51 technic in 52 instances, and a combination of the 2 technics in 8 instances. 3. Normal or nearly normal life spans were suggested by the slopes of curves in 15 instances where whole blood from patients was transfused into volunteers. 4. Some shortening of the life span of the patient’s red cells was noted when these cells, separated from the plasma, were transfused into volunteers or back into patients, possibly related to the handling during plasma removal. 5. Control studies using either Cr51 or Ashby labeling technic indicated a normal life span of approximately 120 days in the volunteers employed could be achieved by each method. 6. Values obtained with Cr51 were so similar to those using Ashby labeling that the easier Cr51 technic is recommended for future studies. 7. The normal erythrocyte transfused into patients with neoplastic disease may have a moderate to considerably shortened life span. 8. These studies seem to demonstrate an absence of an intrinsic defect in the erythrocytes of patients with neoplastic disease, and further favor the presence of a hemolytic plasma factor of considerable importance in the pathogenesis of the anemia of cancer.

Periodizing Classic Noir

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Miklitsch
Keyword(s):  
The Third ◽  
Recent Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

This concluding chapter traces the history of classic noir by reflecting on the way in which the genre has been discursively constituted through its beginnings and endings, an act of periodization that typically entails nominating particular films as the first and last noir in order to differentiate the intervening films from, respectively, proto- and neo-noir. While the recent interest in Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) is one sign that Boris Ingster's film has supplanted The Maltese Falcon (1941) as the first, titular American noir, recent transnational readings of the genre have problematized the reflexive determination of classic noir as a strictly American phenomenon. In fact, the impact of Odds against Tomorrow (1959) on transnational neo-noir indicates that the end or terminus of the classical era is just as provisional—just as open to interpretation and therefore, revision—as its origin.

The Politics of Intimate Care

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charissa J. Threat
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nurse Training ◽  
Army Nurse Corps ◽  
Military Nursing ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter traces the early evolution of nursing from the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth century, with particular emphasis on how nursing care became both gendered and racialized in civilian society. Focusing on the history of the Army Nurse Corps (ANC), it explores the relationship between the military and civilian populace to illuminate trends in nursing practices, debates about work, and concerns about war taking place in the larger civil society. It also examines how war and military nursing needs shaped the evolution of the modern nursing profession and how nursing became embroiled in the politics of intimate care, along with the implications for gender roles and race relations that permeated social relationships and interactions in civilian society. The chapter points to the Civil War as the transformative moment in the history of nursing in the United States, moving nursing from an unpaid obligation to a paid occupation. Finally, it discusses the impact of the introduction of formal nurse training during the last quarter of the nineteenth century on African American nurses.

History and Change

2018 ◽  
pp. 483-500
Author(s):  
David Paroissien
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
The Past ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

This chapter questions the view that Dickens took little interest in history and remained ignorant of the challenge of writing about the past. Following John Forster’s dismissal of A Child’s History of England as ‘that little book’, which ‘cannot be said to have quite hit the mark’, A Child’s History, Barnaby Rudge, and A Tale of Two Cities have received often unsympathetic treatment, particularly with respect to the way the past is used in his two historical novels. Read within the context of ideas about history advocated by Carlyle and Macaulay in the 1830s, this chapter contends that fresh light can be shed on Dickens’s awareness of historiography and on his familiarity with an invigorated approach to the discipline advocated by the two most prominent historians of the first half of the nineteenth century.

Crossed Lines in the Racialization Process: Race as a Border Concept

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bernasconi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

Abstract The phenomenological approach to racialization needs to be supplemented by a hermeneutics that examines the history of the various categories in terms of which people see and have seen race. An investigation of this kind suggests that instead of the rigid essentialism that is normally associated with the history of racism, race predominantly operates as a border concept, that is to say, a dynamic fluid concept whose core lies not at the center but at its edges. I illustrate this by an examination of the history of the distinctions between the races as it is revealed in legal, scientific, and philosophical sources. I focus especially on racial distinctions in the United States and on the way that the impact of miscegenation was negotiated leading to the so-called one-drop rule.

The Coral of Death

Nuncius ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Ottaviani
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The aim of this essay is to show the existence of a substantial discontinuity between the Kunst- und Wunderkammern phenomenon and the practice of both eclectic and specialised collecting in the 18th century. A more detailed examination of the cases of fossils and corals, particularly the way they wove in and out of the differing rationales of collecting in the 17th and 18th centuries, brings to light how elusive their relationship was with the history of the notion of temporality. Subsequently, Lamarck and Darwin were to provide a conclusion to the temporality debate when they completed the historisation of nature.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document