Images of loneliness in Tuareg narratives of travel, dispersion, and return

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 649-660
Author(s):  
Susan J. Rasmussen

This article examines how social, economic, and political upheavals in the Sahara have stimulated re-thinking about loneliness in relation to trauma from mobility, dispersion, and return home in communities of Tamajaq-speaking, Muslim, and semi-nomadic Tuareg in northern Niger and Mali. How do Tuareg, sometimes called Kel Tamajaq after their language, draw on and re-formulate longstanding and new ways of coping with loneliness in regional droughts and wars, which have driven many to alternately disperse from their communities and return to homes that are no longer the same? What is the connection between changing modes of travel, concepts of loneliness, and ways of coping with this experience? In these communities, loneliness is a recurrent theme in personal life histories—in particular, in narratives of both geographic travel and spiritual travel in medico-ritual healing—and is alluded to in poetry, song, and everyday conversation. This article explores the meanings of loneliness and ways of coping with it in this society through analysis of this emotion in symbol, subjective perception, and social experience. The focus is upon representations of loneliness in narratives by travelers who have confronted this emotion, and upon relevant Tamajaq terms often used to express loneliness: namely, essuf (the wild, solitude, and nostalgia); tamazai (approximately, a depression); and tarama (unrequited love), illustrating with cases and examples. More broadly, the article is guided by and builds on insights in psychological anthropology into emotion and affect as well as suffering and subjectivity.

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 625-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Schmid-Hempel

To Darwin, parasites were fascinating examples of adaptation but their significance as selective factors for a wide range of phenomena has only been studied in depth over the last few decades. This work has had its roots in behavioural/evolutionary ecology on the one hand, and in population biology/ecology on the other, thus shaping a new comprehensive field of ‘evolutionary parasitology’. Taking parasites into account has been a success story and has shed new light on several old questions such as sexual selection, the evolution of sex and recombination, changes in behaviour, adaptive life histories, and so forth. In the process, the topic of ecological immunology has emerged, which analyses immune defences in a framework of costs and benefits. Throughout, a recurrent theme is how to appropriately integrate the underlying mechanisms as evolved boundary conditions into a framework of studying the adaptive value of traits. On the conceptual side, major questions remain and await further study.


لارك ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (32) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
’Hana Khalief Ghani

I.Poetry, Politics, and Technology: The poetic scene in Iraq underwent significant changes following the collapse of the ruling regime and the invasion of the country by the International Coalition headed by the United States of America in 2003. These changes mainly took place on two levels: political and technological. In post-2003, normal existence became impossible for the Iraqi people as their country plunged into an unprecedented and wholesale waves of destruction  and violence. In “As Iraqis See It,” Messing concisely described the situation of Iraqis ‘expressing anger and gloom, exasperation and despair.’ He says: The overwhelming sense is that of a society undergoing a catastrophic breakdown from the never-ending waves of violence, criminality, and brutality inflicted on it by insurgents, militias, jihadis, terrorists, soldiers, policemen, bodyguards, mercenaries, armed gangs, warlords, kidnappers and everyday thugs. ‘Inside Iraq’ … suggests how the relentless and cumulative effects of these various vicious crimes have degraded virtually every aspect of the nation’s social, economic, professional, and personal life. (qtd in Adelman, 2008, p.184) What happened in 2003 onward, however, is not strange or unexpected. It is a culmination of a long history of blood shedding, politically-motivated murders, several coups d’états, a wearing war with Iran(1980-1988), thirteen years of tiring and exhausting economic sanctions imposed by the United Nation after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait(1991-2003), and a ruthless totalitarian system that makes Iraq “suitable for nothing,” in the words of the Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh(2004, p.209). (For more information about the modern history of Iraq, see Al-Athari,2008 and Anderson and Stanfield, 2004)


2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-35
Author(s):  
Dragana Antonijević

In this paper I suggest the analytical framework for interpreting personal and family stories about the loss of possessions, riches, job, reputation and status. I find the theoretic foothold in the decades long folkloristic and anthropological studies of personal stories and life histories, then in the concept by Gary Alan Fine, a sociologist and folklorist, about the idioculture of small groups through the discussion of the family folklore, and last in the discussion of the historic, social-economic and ideological context where personal and family losses occur. The incentive for me to deal with this type of stories resides in the fact that they have not been the subject of scientific analysis, neither in the world, nor in our country, except one work by an American folklorist Stanley Brandes from 1975, which served as my inspiration and model. The material for the analysis was collected in the form of term papers written by four generations of ethnology and anthropology third year students, attending the course in Folklore anthropology at the Ethnology and Anthropology Department of the Faculty of Philosophy of Belgrade University. A typology of these stories has been done, and they are divided into two groups with subtypes: stories about personal causes to material ruin, and about faith (destiny) causing the ruin. Further on in the analysis I focused only on the context of the stories with the so-called "pre-destined (faith)" causes of ruin, i.e., on the historic, social-economic and ideological changes in Serbia, which happened during the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century. The context of the revolutionary takeover of power by the Communists after the World War Two is discussed, as well as the violent dispossession of what was until then private property of many families in Serbia, and transferring that property into state and social possession (the so-called stories about nationalization), and also the specific context of post-Socialist transformation and transition in Serbia during the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium (the so-called stories about the hybrid transition and the stories about the true transition). The narrative structure of this stories which are different one from the other is perceived. It is concluded in the end that for the narrativization of personal and family stories about material loss and ruin a certain historic distance is needed in order for them to enter the tradition of the family story telling


Author(s):  
Wei Hao ◽  
Shangli Cai

The Internet has penetrated all aspects of Chinese society and has become a crucial part of its social, economic, and cultural activities, as well as its personal life. Meanwhile, the rapid development of the Internet, along with a lag in the development of legislation and guidelines for use, has had an enormous impact on Chinese society and created unprecedented challenges. This chapter overviews the current status of Internet use in China, directing particular attention to problems that youth may encounter, and then reviews progress that the Chinese government has made in managing problems related to Internet use.


Schulz/Forum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Ogonowska

Even though the present essay has been written in response to Piotr Sitkiewicz article „‘Yet penniless.’ Bruno Schulz’s Income and Living Standard,” it is not a polemic, but rather a different interpretation of some aspects of Schulz’s biography. A starting point is an analysis of the writer’s income – of what is known about it, what is not known yet, and what will probably never be known. The main goal is answering the question of Schulz’s condition as a human being painfully tried both by his personal life and by history. Małgorzata Ogonowska has not followed either of the two popular biographic narratives on the author of the Cinnamon Shops: she neither confirms the legend of Schulz as a helpless artist, unable to cope with everyday problems, nor challenges his own myth of himself. Analyzing the available sources, such as Schulz’s letters, school reports, and the local press, and placing them in social, economic, and political contexts, she is looking for some third way, trying to understand the ambiguities and multifacetedness of Schulz’s existence without passing judgement, condemning or idealizing.


2021 ◽  
pp. 106082652110050
Author(s):  
Rachel H. Adler

This article explores the nuanced connections between homelessness and incarceration as told through life stories of homeless men in Trenton, New Jersey. A recurrent theme in the stories was the experience of incarceration. This cycle of male homelessness and incarceration has its origins in the structural conditions of poverty, discrimination, and unemployment in Trenton. It is self-replicating because of a cultural process in which people learn and repeat how to engage with the world. Men copy other men; this is how they learn gender. If fathers or other positive male role models are absent, men are prone to learn gender from idealized, hypermasculine images that feed into the cycle of male homelessness and incarceration. When incarcerated men leave prison and return home to fatherless families and impoverished inner city neighborhoods, this has an adverse impact on them, which has an impact on the dynamics of those families and neighborhoods.


2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lakshmi Kollara ◽  
Graham Schenck ◽  
Jamie Perry

Studies have investigated the applications of Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) therapy in the treatment of hypernasality due to velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD; Cahill et al., 2004; Kuehn, 1991; Kuehn, Moon, & Folkins, 1993; Kuehn et al., 2002). The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of CPAP therapy to reduce hypernasality in a female subject, post-traumatic brain injury (TBI) and pharyngeal flap, who presented with signs of VPD including persistent hypernasality. Improvements in mean velopharyngeal orifice size, subjective perception of hypernasality, and overall intelligibility were observed from the baseline to 8-week post-treatment assessment intervals. Additional long-term assessments completed at 2, 3, and 4 months post-treatment indicated decreases in immediate post-treatment improvements. Results from the present study suggest that CPAP is a safe, non-invasive, and relatively conservative treatment method for reduction of hypernasality in selected patients with TBI. More stringent long-term follow up may indicate the need for repeated CPAP treatment to maintain results.


1950 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wyman P. Sloan ◽  
F. Arnold Bargen ◽  
Robert P. Gage

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