Language and ethnic statistics in twentieth century Sudanese censuses and surveys

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (252) ◽  
pp. 125-152
Author(s):  
Catherine Miller

Abstract The article investigates the creation of language statistics in the Sudan, from the beginning of the twentieth century up to the division of the country into two states. Like many other African countries, Sudan is characterized by a high degree of ethnic and linguistic diversity that has participated in the fueling of murderous civil wars since independence. The article recontextualizes the construction of the ethno-linguistic categories and statistics within their broader political and administrative contexts. It analyzes the objectives and output of each type of statistics and questions their influence on the foreign and native representations of Sudanese society.

Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herbst

This chapter examines the politics of the currency in West Africa from the beginning of the twentieth century. A public series of debates over the nature of the currency occurred in West Africa during both the colonial and independence periods. Since 1983, West African countries have been pioneers in Africa in developing new strategies to combat overvaluation of the currency and reduce the control of government over the currency supply. The chapter charts the evolution of West African currencies as boundaries and explores their relationship to state consolidation. It shows that leaders in African capitals managed to make the units they ruled increasingly distinct from the international and regional economies, but the greater salience of the currency did not end up promoting state consolidation. Rather, winning the ability to determine the value of the currency led to a series of disastrous decisions that severely weakened the states themselves.


Author(s):  
Bonnie Effros

The excavation of Merovingian-period cemeteries in France began in earnest in the 1830s spurred by industrialization, the creation of many new antiquarian societies across the country, and French nationalism. However, the professionalization of the discipline of archaeology occurred slowly due to the lack of formal training in France, weak legal protections for antiquities, and insufficient state funding for archaeological endeavors. This chapter identifies the implications of the central place occupied by cemeterial excavations up until the mid-twentieth century and its impact on broader discussions in France of national origins and ethnic identity. In more recent years, with the creation of archaeological agencies such as Afan and Inrap, the central place once occupied by grave remains has been diminished. Rescue excavations and private funding for new structures have brought about a shift to other priorities and research questions, with both positive and negative consequences, though cemeteries remain an important source of evidence for our understanding of Merovingian society.


1970 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 32-47
Author(s):  
H. B. Acton

It is easy to understand why Hegel's philosophy should be little studied by English-speaking philosophers today. Those who at the beginning of the twentieth century initiated the movement we are now caught up in presented their earliest philosophical arguments as criticisms of the prevailing Anglo-Hegelian views. It may now be thought illiberal to take much interest in this perhaps excusably slaughtered royal family, and positively reactionary to hanker after the foreign dynasty from which it sometimes claimed descent. Hegel was a systematic philosopher with a scope hardly to be found today, and men who, as we say, wish to keep up with their subject may well be daunted at the idea of having to understand a way of looking at philosophy which they suspect would not repay them for their trouble anyway. Furthermore, since Hegel wrote, formal logic has advanced in ways he could not have foreseen, and has, it seems to many, destroyed the whole basis of his dialectical method. At the same time, the creation of a science of sociology, it is supposed, has rendered obsolete the philosophy of history for which Hegel was at one time admired. In countries where there are Marxist intellectuals, Hegel does get discussed as the inadvertent forerunner of historical and dialectical materialism. But in England, where there is no such need or presence, there do not seem to be any very strong ideological reasons for discussing him. In what follows I shall be asking you to direct your thoughts to certain forgotten far-off things which I hope you will find historically interesting even if you do not agree with me that they give important clues for an understanding of human nature and human society.


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-67
Author(s):  
Nate Holdren

This article takes criticisms of employment discrimination in the aftermath of the creation of workmen’s compensation legislation as a point of entry for arguing that compensation laws created new incentives for employment discrimination. Compensation laws turned the costs of employees’ workplace accidents into a risk that many employers sought to manage by screening job applicants in a manner analogous to how insurance companies screened policy applicants. While numerous critics blamed insurers for discrimination, I argue that the problem was lack of insurance. The less that companies pooled their compensation risks via insurance, the greater the incentives for employers to stop employing people they would have previously been willing to hire.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-109
Author(s):  
Ivan Kozachenko

From the first days of the Euromaidan protests, Ukrainian diasporas around the globe took an active part in supporting democratic change in Ukraine. These diasporic communities actively used social media to “represent” their national identity, to promote their visions of Ukraine’s past and future, and to network and coordinate their actions. This paper argues that the events of the Euromaidan made Ukrainian diasporas in Western countries “re-invent” and “re-imagine” their national belonging. In these processes historical memory, language, and regional identifications play a crucial part within the continuum between conservative ethnonationalist identities and “civic” ones that try to accommodate the ethnic and linguistic diversity of Ukraine in the diasporic setting. This study reveals that “civic” identity elements became more visible across Ukrainian diasporas, but that Russian aggression somewhat haltered the acceptance of diversity and reinforced previously existing conservative sentiments.


Author(s):  
Olesya Yaremchuk

This article studies the use of field research as an anthropological tool in literary reportage which is a comprehensive element of the creation of journalistic content. Based on the examples of journalistic texts of the 20s by the Austrian writer Joseph Roth, we have analyzed the anthropological methods which were used by this author in his reportages, that is the main objective of this study. Using diachronic comparison, qualitative method and content analysis to evaluate and to explain the concept of Joseph Roth’s texts, as well as the methodology of textual, syntagmatic (by Volodymyr Propp) and paradigmatic analysis (by Claude Levi-Strauss), we have examined the generated meanings in the texts of the mentioned author. As a result of the study, we have identified four methods that Joseph Roth used writing his news reportages in the 1920s, including “In Midday France” and “White Cities”. Those methods are as follows: overt observation, in-depth interviews, fixing details and gaining empirical experience. The modern authors call these methods as classic ones, without which it is impossible to work in this genre. As we have seen from the examples of literary reportages of the French cycle by Joseph Roth, the anthropological tools used by this author for his works contributed to deepening and improving the quality of his texts which is of great significance for our study. Joseph Roth created a panoramic picture of the twentieth century in his texts through watching, communicating and studing. However, it is worth to add that he was often too subjective, suffering harsh criticism for this.


Author(s):  
Victor J. Katz ◽  
Karen Hunger Parshall

This chapter looks at how mathematicians sought to understand the properties of “numbers” and in doing so pave the way for modern algebra. As mathematicians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries struggled to understand what Fermat's alleged proof of his so-called “last theorem” might have been, they, as well as others motivated by issues other than Fermat's work, eventually came to extend the notion of “number.” And, they did this in much the same spirit that Évariste Galois had extended that of “domain of rationality” or field, that is, through the creation and analysis of whole new types of algebraic systems. This freedom to create and explore new systems—and new algebraic constructs like the determinants and matrices that were encountered in the previous chapter—became one of the hallmarks of the modern algebra that developed into the twentieth century.


Author(s):  
Rachel St. John

This chapter describes how ranchers, miners, investors, laborers, railroad executives, and innumerable economic actors integrated the border into an emerging transnational economy and began to create binational communities on the boundary line. With the completion of the first transborder rail line—brought on by the joining of the Sonora Railway and the Arizona and New Mexico Railroad at the international boundary line—ranchers and miners secured an easy way to move stock and ore to markets. As more people realized this, the borderlands experienced nothing short of a capitalist revolution. The capitalist development of the borderlands would, in turn, spur the creation of an array of new transborder ties. By the early twentieth century, the border has become a point of connection and community in the midst of an emerging capitalist economy and the center of a transborder landscape of property and profits.


Author(s):  
Stephanie J. Smith

The significance of chapter 5 is threefold: (1) to analyze the interactions of Mexico’s printmakers, including those belonging to Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios, or the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists (LEAR), and the Taller de Gráfica Popular, or the Popular Graphic Art Workshop (TGP), with state officials; (2) to situate Mexico as a vital space within the international struggle against the spread of fascism; and (3) to understand better the transnational influence on culture and politics during Mexico’s postrevolutionary period. Artists associated with Mexico’s Communist Party played key roles in the formation and everyday affairs of the LEAR and TGP, and the alliances between the PCM and the two artists’ groups remained strong. Although tensions eventually developed between individual TGP printmakers and the PCM, the distinctive union of politics and art resulted in the creation of two of Mexico’s most significant creative movements of the twentieth century.


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