Pedagogies of Feminist Resistance: Agrarian Movements in Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-58
Author(s):  
Lyn Ossome

In the historical course of agrarian transformation in Africa, the reconstitution and fragmentation of the peasantry along the lines of gender, ethnic, class, and racial divisions which facilitate their exploitation remains a central concern in the analysis of the peasant path, of which the exploitation of gendered labor has been a particularly important concern for feminist agrarian theorizations. In contribution to these debates, this article examines the ways in which feminist concerns have shaped, driven, and defined the social and political parameters of agrarian movements in Africa. Even though agrarian movements articulating gender questions are not generalizable as feminist, their concern with social, political, and economic structures of oppression and their approach to gendered oppression as a political question lends them to characterization as being feminist. Through an examination of the changing forms of women-led agrarian struggles, the article shows how women’s responses to the dominant structures and conditions of colonial and post-colonial capitalist accumulation could be characterized as feminist due to their social and political imperatives behind women’s resistance.

Author(s):  
Nisha P R

Jumbos and Jumping Devils is an original and pioneering exploration of not only the social history of the subcontinent but also of performance and popular culture. The domain of analysis is entirely novel and opens up a bolder approach of laying a new field of historical enquiry of South Asia. Trawling through an extraordinary set of sources such as colonial and post-colonial records, newspaper reports, unpublished autobiographies, private papers, photographs, and oral interviews, the author brings out a fascinating account of the transnational landscape of physical cultures, human and animal performers, and the circus industry. This book should be of interest to a wide range of readers from history, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies to analysts of history of performance and sports in the subcontinent.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susie Riva-Mossman ◽  
Henk Verloo

The transformative process of investigating life stories and their impact on healthy aging has only recently been explored. The relationship between hope and individual healthy aging strategies is still an under-researched area. This study contributes to filling the knowledgeability gap. The authors examine senior stories of hope and the experience of self-determination and well-being. The study documents the social learning processes of older people as they narratively search for solutions and imagine a hopeful future of healthy aging. A group of four older women participated in a semi-structured filmed interview, questioned by an academic expert. Healthy aging emerged as an important concern among all participants, confirming the need to actively learn how to age well. This exploratory research brought forth thematic clusters, orienting shared value solutions to demographic change. Qualitative research methods reinforce lifelong, collaborative learning processes that not only produce scientific literature, but also put in place relational networks that can grow and endure over time, generating social innovation. The film documented the role of hope and resilience in healthy aging.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 986-986
Author(s):  
Robert B. Kucel

With the increasing interest in mental retardation more articles, monographs, and books appear on the subject. The Biosocial Basis of Mental Retardation is a collection of seven essays originally delivered at the John Hopkins Hospital. Although pediatricians have turned their attention in mental retardation mostly to the biological components of mental retardation, there is a growing awareness that social and psychological factors also play a significant role. The interrelationship of biological and social factors is virtually an unchartered sea. The several authors who originally presented these essays are attempting to highlight some of the social factors and, where appropriate, to point out how some of the social features relate to biological ones. For example, the well known relationship of the high incidence of prematurity in low socioeconomic group families is a fact most pediatricians know but the implication of this fact as far as prevention is concerned is a large and important concern and as yet poorly understood. With the increasing amount of federal interest in programs for low income families, many pediatricians will want to become better informed about the implications. Some of these points are considered in the chapter by Janet Hardy. For the person concerned with medical remedies for mental retardation, there will be little of interest in this book. On the other hand, for those who are anxious to know more about social and psychological factors as they relate to mental retardation, this is a very useful and fascinating compendium of articles. Particularly intriguing are the articles by Eli Ginzberg who discusses the mentally handicapped in an increasingly technological society.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Levine ◽  
Joe Grengs ◽  
Louis A. Merlin

This chapter discusses the major themes in the evolution of accessibility over the twentieth century. The idea of accessibility is not new, either to urban and regional planning or to the social sciences in general. The concept dates back at least to Richard Hurd's 1903 analysis of urban growth, Robert Haig's 1926 “ease of contact,” and John Stewart's 1948 “demographic energy.” In Stewart's analysis, the first of the three to quantify the accessibility concept, it was a good predictor of outcomes, including observed income at the state level. Stewart also recognized the potential of accessibility as a normative goal early on: if energy or accessibility can predict important outcomes such as income, then surely it could also be seen as a policy variable to be directly manipulated by central planners. Echoing earlier authors, Walter Hansen applied the term “accessibility” to Stewart's “demographic energy” and broadly introduced the concept into the urban and regional realm with three ideas central to the planning use of the tool. First, like Hurd's and Haig's analyses early in the century—and unlike Stewart's nationally scaled research—Hansen's analysis was metropolitan, not the continental. Second, the outcome variable for Hansen was residential development, a central concern of the urban-planning profession. And finally, where Stewart had implicitly treated peoples' inclination to travel as a constant value, Hansen showed that it was a variable subject to empirical investigation.


Author(s):  
Simon Blackburn

The ‘Introduction’ provides an overview of ethics and the ethical climate. People's ethical ideas are manifested in their tendencies to accept or reject routes of thought and feeling, and they may not recognize these in themselves, or even be able to articulate them. Yet such tendencies make up the ethical climate, and they rule the social and political world. For many ethical traditions across the world, the central concern was the state of one's soul. Today, people tend not to care so much about the state of their souls: they tend to think that modern constitutional democracies are fine regardless of the private vices of those within them.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1322
Author(s):  
Casper Bruun Jensen ◽  
Atsuro Morita

In recent years, threatened deltas have emerged as a significant matter of concern in numerous fields. While Earth System science and social-ecological systems focus on topics like global water circulation and sediment transport, social scientists tend to consider the problems facing particular deltas in the context of modernization or (post)-colonial development. There is nevertheless broad agreement that the delta crisis raises fundamental questions about modern approaches to infrastructure planning. Thus, environmental and sustainability scientists have come to recognize “the social” as integral to the delta crisis. This understanding of “the social,” however, takes two quite different forms. As an object of social-ecological systems research, the social is modeled alongside ecological systems. However, as a context for scientific interventions in environmental policy it appears as an obstacle to achieving sustainable delta policies. Based on a careful examination of Earth System science and associated discourses, we show that this instability of “the social”, combined with the ambition to integrate ‘it’ in an encompassing system poses serious problems for interdisciplinary delta research and for more imaginative and inclusive collaborative efforts to tackle the delta crisis—including, but going considerably beyond, policy and governance. Rather than integrative systems, we argue that the situation requires the creation of sophisticated conjunctions of epistemologies, methods, and practices. Such conjunctions, we suggest, pave the way for a cosmo-ecological approach, where social, environmental and sustainability sciences work together with designers, urban planners, policy-makers, and affected or concerned citizens on solving multi-scalar delta problems by working across their differences.


1996 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-213
Author(s):  
Christopher Stroud

This article explores briefly some phenomena of potential indigenization of the Portuguese spoken in Mozambique. Data for the study has been taken from work that is currently underway in Maputo, Mozambique, that was originally initiated to investigate contact varieties of Portuguese and to probe their educational implications. Speech samples comprise formal interviews and non-formal encounters from a socio-demographically representative sample of informants. The article first provides an inventory of some non-standard European Portuguese variants that are found in this data, and subsequently focusses upon a discussion of what contribution different linguistic processes make to indigenization, specifically the role played by processes of second language acquisition in a context of massive and diffuse language contact and change. Special attention is also paid to the social contexts in which different manifestations of language contact are found, and the importance of linguistic ideology for the form that language contact takes in particular cases is explored. The article concludes with the suggestion that the salient characteristics of types of non-native speech community such as Maputo require a reconceptualization of models and methods of contact linguistics and second language acquisition, and that this in turn carries implications for the terms of reference and analysis to which indigenization need be related.


1983 ◽  
Vol 7 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 169-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. More ◽  
R.K. Laird

In the present era of rapid technological change, emotion will often rule reason in debates within organisations concern ing the introduction, usage and effects of modem computer and related technologies. Much literature in recent times has focused on the implications of modern technology for those organisational employees at levels other than management. There is no doubt that in an information-based economy, there is potential for organisational upheaval with the introduction and diffusion of new technologies. However, this will also significantly affect the managerial sector of the work force. The need to understand the implications of such technology in organisations, in terms of managing these innovations for those working at a management level, is an important concern. Without understanding and competent management the social upheaval many forecast as following in the wake of technologi cal innovation must be more likely to occur. This is an aspect of concern for business and management education, and needs to be emphasised now. In other words, there needs to be a balance of concern for the implications of modern technology, not only for the 'workers', but also for 'management'. The central aim of this paper is to briefly outline some technologi cal innovations relevant to large-scale 20th century organisa tions, and to assess the implications of some of these for managers. The authors place emphasis on one special area—that of organisational communication. It is intended that some outline be given of significant present day innovations in technologies which may affect organisational communication, followed by a discussion of some of the implications for management.


Author(s):  
Sumangala Damodaran

The relationship between music and politics and specifically that between music and protest has been relatively under-researched in the social sciences in a systematic manner, even if actual experiences of music being used to express protest have been innumerable. Further, the conceptual analysis that has been thrown up from the limited work that is available focuses mostly on Euro-American experiences with protest music. However, in societies where most music is not written down or notated formally, the discussions on the distinct role that music can play as an art form, as a vehicle through which questions of artistic representation can be addressed, and the specific questions that are addressed and responded to when music is used for political purposes, have been reflected in the music itself, and not always in formal debates. It is only in using the music itself as text and a whole range of information around its creation—often, largely anecdotal and highly context dependent—that such music can be understood. Doing so across a whole range of non-Western experiences brings out the role of music in societal change quite distinctly from the Euro-American cases. Discussions are presented about the informed perceptions about what protest music is and should be across varied, yet specific experiences. It is based on the literature that has come out of the Euro-American world as well as from parts that experienced European colonialism and made the transition to post-colonial contexts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-166
Author(s):  
Eric Nsuh Zuhmboshi

Abstract The relationship that exists between the state and her citizens has been described by Jean Jacques Rousseau as “a social contract.” In this contractual agreement, citizens are bound to respect state authority while the state, in turn, has the bounden duty to protect her citizens and guide them in their aspirations. In fact, any state that does not perform this duty is guilty of violating the fundamental rights of her citizens. This, however, is not the case in most postcolonial societies where the citizens see the state as an aggressive apparatus against their wellbeing because the state is not fulfilling its own part of the social contract, which requires them to protect the citizens and guide them in their aspirations. This unfortunate situation has laid the foundation for protest and anti-establishment writings in post-colonial societies – especially in Africa. Since literature, as a semiotic resource, is coterminous with its socio-political context, this attitude of the state has drawn inimical criticism from key postcolonial African writers such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Mongo Beti, and Nadine Gordimer. Using Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel and John Nkemngong Nkengasong’s Across the Mongolo, this essay shows the relationship between state-terrorism and the traumatic conditions of the citizens in contemporary Africa. From the perspective of trauma theory, the essay defends the premise that the postcolonial subjects/characters, in the novels under study, are traumatized and depressed because of their continuous victimization by the state. Due to this state-imposed terror and hardship, the citizens are forced to indulge in political agitation, radicalism and violence in response to their destitute and impoverished conditions.


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