Themes and Methods in the Study Of Conversion in Ethiopia: a Review Essay

2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Kaplan

AbstractAlthough conversion is one of the major themes in the religious and cultural history of Ethiopia, it has yet to benefit from extensive and systematic comparative discussion. For generations, scholars have worked to deepen our understanding of conversion to both Orthodox Christianity and Islam in the Ethiopian highlands. Recent works, moreover, are noteworthy for their efforts to expand our knowledge of both regions and groups hitherto neglected. Modern Islam, Evangelical Christianity and the religious histories of the peoples of Southern Ethiopia are only a few of the topics that have benefited from scholarship during the past decade. We are, therefore, in an unprecedented position to offer a review of research which, while by no means comprehensive, at least offers broader coverage than was previously possible.

2012 ◽  
pp. 57-80
Author(s):  
Dogo Dunja

Allegories of liberty and typologies of the sacred in the iconography of revolutionary Russia. Revolutionary iconography addresses a topic that crosses the field of studies of the Russian Revolution, whose scope in the past two decades has begun to investigate the cultural history of 1917, thanks to easier access to source materials that have re-emerged after the opening of the Russian archives. Above all, the essay attempts to reconstruct how three particular typologies (St. George, the Angel, Liberty) came into use in the Russian revolutionary symbolic system and underwent a metamorphosis, contributing to a phenomenon of syncretism. Such discourses can show how different political subjects – at times on opposing sides - employed a common imagery within a struggle for the conquest of the symbol.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Yankowski ◽  
Puangtip Kerdsap ◽  
Dr. Nigel Chang

<p>Northeast Thailand is known for salt production, both today and in the past.  Prehistoric salt sites are found throughout the region and ethnographic and historical data demonstrates the importance of salt as a commodity as well as for preserving and fermenting fish. This paper explores the archaeology and cultural history of salt and salt fermented fish products in Northeast Thailand and the Greater Mekong Delta region.  Using archaeological, historical and ethnographic data, it addresses how the foods we eat and our preparation methods can be deeply rooted in our cultural history and identity, and discusses the ways in which they can be studied in the archaeological record to learn about the past.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span></p>


Author(s):  
Yaisna Rajkumari ◽  

The paper will establish a connection between folktales and the cultural history of a region, particularly with respect to the Indian state of Manipur. It is premised on the belief that a study of folktales can alert us not only to the various interconnections between folktales and the cultural history of a place but also help analyse the dynamics of the publication of the anthologies of folktales in relation to this cultural history. The paper will include analyses of Meitei and tribal tales pertaining to the nationalist phase and contemporary period in the history of the North Eastern Indian state of Manipur and look at how in the past few years, compilers and translators have incorporated versions of tales different from the earlier anthologies, establishing a direct link between the tales and the times of their publication.


2020 ◽  
pp. 217-248
Author(s):  
Roma Bončkutė

SOURCES OF SIMONAS DAUKANTAS’S BUDĄ SENOWĘS-LËTUWIÛ KALNIENÛ ĨR ƵÁMAJTIÛ (1845) The article investigates Simonas Daukantas’s (1793–1864) BUDĄ Senowęs-Lëtuwiû Kalnienû ĩr Ƶámajtiû (The Character of the Lithuanian Highlanders and Samogitians of the Old Times, 1845; hereafter Bd) with regards to genre, origin of the title, and the dominant German sources of the work. It claims that Daukantas conceived Bd because he understood that the future of Lithuania is closely related to its past. A single, united version of Lithuanian history, accepted by the whole nation, was necessary for the development of Lithuanian national identity and collective feeling. The history, which up until then had not been published in Lithuanian, could have helped to create the contours of a new society by presenting the paradigmatic events of the past. The collective awareness of the difference between the present and the past (and future) should have given the Lithuanian community an incentive to move forward. Daukantas wrote Bd quickly, between 1842 and May 28, 1844, because he drew on his previous work ISTORYJE ƵEMAYTYSZKA (History of the Lithuanian Lowlands, ~1831–1834; IƵ). Based on the findings of previous researchers of Daukantas’s works, after studying the dominant sources of Bd and examining their nature, this article comes to the conclusion that the work has features of both cultural history and regional historiography. The graphically highlighted form of the word “BUDĄ” used in the work’s title should be considered the author’s code. Daukantas, influenced by the newest culturological research and comparative linguistics of the 18th–19th centuries, propagated that Lithuanians originate from India and, like many others, found evidence of this in the Lithuanian language and culture. He considered the Budini (Greek Βουδίνοι), who are associated with the followers of Buddha, to be Lithuanian ancestors. He found proof of this claim in the language and chose the word “būdas” (character), which evokes aforementioned associations, to express the idea of the work.


Author(s):  
GORDON F. McEWAN

Linguistic studies have shown that the traditional idea that the expansion of the Inca Empire was the driving force behind the spread of all Quechua cannot be correct. Across much of its distribution, Quechua has far greater time-depth than can be accounted for by the short-lived Inca Empire. Linguistics likewise suggests that Aymara spread not from the south into Cuzco in the late Pre-Inca period, but also from an origin to the north. Alternative explanations must be sought for the expansion of these language families in the culture history of the Andes. Archaeological studies over the past two decades now provide a broad, generally agreed-upon outline of the cultural history of the Cuzco region. This chapter applies those findings to examine alternative possibilities for the driving forces that spread Quechua and Aymara, offering a clearer cross-disciplinary view of Andean prehistory.


Author(s):  
Jane F. Fulcher

This article introduces the convergence of two different fields: cultural history and music. It begins by discussing the revival of the cultural history of music and the theoretical synthesis that occurred within these two converging disciplines. It notes that both musicologists and historians are trying to not only return to the goal of capturing the complexity and texture of experience, communication, and understanding in the past, but also to do so by using a theoretically sophisticated approach. This article notes that cultural history and music are identifying the latter as a privileged point of entry into questions about past cultures.


2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. D. Miller

Discussion about the reconstruction of the history of ancient Israel seldom interacts with theoretical literature on the nature of history. Modern attempts to write Israel’s history, however, have been shaped by their theoretical underpinnings for the past two centuries. This essay explores the epistemological underpinnings of the historical criticism of the Hebrew Bible, outlines trends in historiographical theory, and assesses the impact newer theories of intellectual cultural history can have on studies of the history of the social world of ancient Israel.


2020 ◽  

The ancient world is a paradigm for the memory scholar. Without an awareness that collective memories are not only different from individual memories (or even the sum thereof) but also highly constructed, ancient research will be fundamentally flawed. Many networks of memories are beautifully represented in the written and material remains of antiquity, and it is precisely the ways in which they are fashioned, distorted, preserved or erased through which we can learn about the historical process as such. Our evidence is deeply characterized by the fact that ancient ‘identity’ and ‘memory’ appear exceptionally strong. Responsible for this is a continuing desire to link the present to the remote past, which creates many contexts in which memories were constructed. The ancient historian therefore has the right tools with which to work: places and objects from the past, monuments and iconography, and textual narratives with a primary purpose to memorize and commemorate. This is paired with our desire to understand the ancient world through its own self-perception. With the opportunity of tapping into this world by way of oral history, personal testimonies are a desideratum in all respects. Memory of the past, however, is profoundly about ‘self-understanding’. This volume surveys and builds on the many insights we have gained from vibrant research in the field since Maurice Halbwachs’ and Jan Assmann’s seminal studies on the idea and definition of ‘cultural memory’. While focusing on specific themes all chapters address the concepts and expressions of memory, and their historical impact and utilization by groups and individuals at specific times and for specific reasons.


Author(s):  
Peter N. Miller

Cultural history is increasingly informed by the history of material culture—the ways in which individuals or entire societies create and relate to objects both mundane and extraordinary—rather than on textual evidence alone. Books such as The Hare with Amber Eyes and A History of the World in 100 Objects indicate the growing popularity of this way of understanding the past. This book uncovers the forgotten origins of our fascination with exploring the past through its artifacts by highlighting the role of antiquarianism—a pursuit ignored and derided by modem academic history—in grasping the significance of material culture. From the efforts of Renaissance antiquarians, who reconstructed life in the ancient world from coins, inscriptions, seals, and other detritus, to amateur historians in the nineteenth century working within burgeoning national traditions, the book connects collecting—whether by individuals or institutions—to the professionalization of the historical profession, one which came to regard its progenitors with skepticism and disdain. The struggle to articulate the value of objects as historical evidence, then, lies at the heart both of academic history writing and of the popular engagement with things. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that our current preoccupation with objects is far from novel and reflects a human need to re-experience the past as a physical presence.


Author(s):  
Oren Falk

This interdisciplinary study of violence in medieval Iceland pursues three intertwined goals. First, it proposes a new cultural history model for understanding violence. The model has three axes: power, signification, and risk. Analysis in instrumental terms, as an attempt to coerce others, focuses on power. Analysis in symbolic terms, as an attempt to manipulate meanings, focuses on signification. Analysis in cognitive terms, as an attempt to exercise agency over imperfectly controlled circumstances, focuses on risk. The axis of risk is the model’s major innovation and is laid out in detail, using insights from prospect theory, edgework, and the calculus of jeopardy. It is shown that violence, which itself generates risks, at the same time also serves to control uncertainties. Second, the book tests this model on a series of case studies from the history of medieval Iceland. It examines how violence shapes present circumstances, future status, and past memories, and how it transforms uncertain reality into socially useful narrative, showing how Icelanders’ feud paradigm blocked the prospects of warfare and state formation, while their idiom of human violence domesticated the natural environment. Third, the book develops the concept of uchronia, the hegemonic ideology of the past, to explain how texts modulate history. Uchronia is a motivated cultural memory which vouches for historical authenticity (regardless of factual reliability), maintains textual autonomy from authorial intent, and secures a fit between present society and its own past. In medieval Iceland, as often elsewhere, violence played a key role in the making of uchronia


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