scholarly journals For better or worse: major developments affecting resource and conflict dynamics in northwest Kenya

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janpeter Schilling ◽  
Thomas Weinzierl ◽  
Augustine Ekitela Lokwang ◽  
Francis Opiyo

Abstract:The county of Turkana, located in northwest Kenya, has a long history of violent conflicts. These are fought by pastoral groups over scarce water, land, pasture and livestock resources. Now oil has been found in Turkana, fuelling both hopes for a resource blessing and fears of a resource curse. The discovery of oil coincides with four other major developments, namely the process of devolution, the large-scale infrastructure project LAPSSET (Lamu Port Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport), the discovery of significant aquifers and the Gibe III dam in Ethiopia. The aim of this paper is first to give an overview of these developments, and second to explore their interactions and their effects on existing and potentially new resource and conflict dynamics. The article is based on a review of the academic literature as well as newspaper articles, government records and company publications. Further, we analyze security data and draw on extensive field research conducted in northwest Kenya over the past five years. To illustrate potential pathways, we draft a worst and best case scenario. Our results suggest that the described developments will strongly affect the existing water, land and livestock resources and create new ones in the form of revenues, business opportunities, employment and infrastructure. To decrease the conflict potential and to maximize benefits, it is highly important for any project to closely include the local communities in a fair and transparent manner.

Author(s):  
Iginio Gagliardone

This paper addresses how state actors in the developing world have influenced technology adoption and favoured the diffusion of certain uses of ICTs while discouraging others. Drawing upon extensive field research and looking at the evolution of ICTs in Ethiopia, it examines how a semi-authoritarian, yet developmentally oriented regime, has actively sought to mediate the – either real or imagined – destabilising aspects of ICTs while embracing them as a tool for nation-building. A constructivist framework as developed in international relations and history of technology is employed to understand how the introduction of the new ICT framework as promoted by international organizations has been mediated both by the results of the socialization of earlier technologies in Ethiopia and by the national project pursued by the local political elite.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Engelking

Research in the service of politics? The case of Józef ObrębskiThe paper concentrates on the circumstances of the production of anthropological knowledge, created in a dynamic tension between its cognitive goal and the way it is used for political purposes. It provides an insight into a complex network of conditions (intelectual, institutional, financial, personal, political) which determined the production of knowledge in interwar Poland within the then emerging disciplines of ethnology and sociology, in the scope of what today we would call social anthropology.This case study takes a closer look at Polish anthropologist Józef Obrębski (1905-1967), a close student of Malinowski, whose outstanding achievements remained mostly unpublished and thus never came into existence in the master narrative of the history of our discipline. In the 1930s Obrębski conducted ethnosociological field research in the Polesie region in eastern Poland (nowadays, part of Belarus and Ukraine), which was part of a large scale scientific project of the Commission for Scientific Research of the Eastern Territories. This project, financed by the Polish government and headed by a politician, general Kasprzycki, was supposed to be an efficient tool in the politics of the so called state and national assimilation of the Slavic-speaking ethnic minorities. Obrębski’s political views, which were democratic and liberal in character, were opposed to the official political line whereas his functionalist anthropological stance was unacceptable for the mainstream Polish ethnology of the era, still rooted in the positivist paradigm.Anthropological knowledge produced by Obrębski, which we would call today a postcolonial and constructivist approach, began to find recognition only after his death. The biography of this scholar and the story of his “unknown” work, a great example of a non-mainstream phenomenon in a provincial country, makes it easier to reveal undisclosed mechanisms of the system and the thought-collectives of science. Nauka na usługach polityki? Przypadek Józefa ObrębskiegoArtykuł dotyczy uwarunkowań produkcji wiedzy antropologicznej w dynamicznym napięciu między jej celem poznawczym a zastosowaniem do celów politycznych. Przynosi wgląd w złożoną sieć uwarunkowań (intelektualnych, instytucjonalnych, finansowych, personalnych, politycznych) produkcji wiedzy w międzywojennej Polsce, na polu młodych dyscyplin, jakimi były wówczas etnologia i socjologia, polu, które dzisiaj nazywamy antropologią społeczno-kulturową.Bohaterem tego studium przypadku jest polski antropolog Józef Obrębski (1905-1967), bliski uczeń Malinowskiego, którego wybitne prace w większości pozostały nieopublikowane, nie funkcjonują zatem w wielkiej opowieści o historii dyscypliny. W latach 1930. Obrębski prowadził etnosocjologiczne badania terenowe na Polesiu we wschodniej Polsce (region ten dziś należy do Białorusi i Ukrainy), w ramach wdrażanego tam na szeroką skalę programu naukowego Komisji Naukowych Badań Ziem Wschodnich. Projekt ten, finansowany przez polski rząd i kierowany przez polityka, gen. Kasprzyckiego, miał być skutecznym narzędziem polityki asymilacji państwowej i narodowej słowiańskojęzycznych mniejszości etnicznych. Demokratyczne i liberalne poglądy polityczne Obrębskiego były opozycyjne wobec linii politycznej jego mocodawców, zaś stanowisko teoretyczno-metodologiczne, związane z funkcjonalizmem, było z kolei nie do przyjęcia przez polskich etnologów głównego nurtu, przywiązanych do paradygmatu pozytywistycznego.Antropologiczne osiągnięcia Obrębskiego, które dziś sytuujemy w obrębie podejścia postkolonialnego i konstruktywistycznego, zaczęły zyskiwać uznanie dopiero po jego śmierci. Biografia uczonego i dzieje jego „nieznanych” prac, ważny przykład pozamainstreamowego fenomenu w prowincjonalnym kraju, przyczyniają się do poznania nieujawnionych mechanizmów systemu i kolektywów myślowych w nauce.


1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. v-vi
Author(s):  
Basheer Nafi

The question of modernity in its societal, historical, and literary unfoldingsis the underlying theme of several articles presented in this issue ofAJISS. Following in the hadition of Marshall G. S. Hodgson, John ObertVoll ventures into the history of Islam as an integral part of world history.In his numerous studies, Voll has always viewed the Muslim world from aglobal perspective, a trait that is even more evident ih his “The MistakenIdenMication of ‘The West’ with ‘Modernity.”’ Voll’s article is based on aprofound understanding of the West in t m s of the fundamental changesthat have swept human life and society during the past two or three centuries.Modemity cannot be identified with the West, Voll argues, for theWest, as a repertoire of traditions, was a concept related to the existence ofcivilizations. But “civilization,” as conceived in most of the studies andanalyses of world history, is now a societal lifestyle of the past. It thereforefollows that the transfomtion of societies and lifestyles has transcendedthe classical West and created a new world situation in which relationsbetween Islam and the West are predicated on different bases. While it istrue that Islam’s repertoire of concepts and principles is more clearlyfocused than that of the West, it is also true that, in the context of the globalcosmopolitanism of our times, Islam and the West share a similar cultural,political, and social experience:Islam and the West are no longer simply two rival and clashingcivilizations or even two different modes of modernity. They arenow interactive partners, sometimes fighting and sometimes cooperating,involved in the co-constructed reality of the contemprary world.Volls’ view of a modem shared experience is supported by SurmshIrfani’s “New Discourses and Modernity in Postrevolutionary Iran.” For asociety that has been portrayed in the most denigrating t m s by the westernmedia, Irfani presents a powerfd human and creative image of contemporaryIran that touches upon a wide range of cultural revival: printmedia, film industry, literatute, and music. A common denominator of theworks cited in his article, which is based on extensive field research, is the“aftempt to go beyond the fite!rary level ofkfeqrem‘ on and extant meaning ...


Author(s):  
Iginio Gagliardone

This chapter addresses how state actors in the developing world have influenced technology adoption and favoured the diffusion of certain uses of ICTs while discouraging others. Drawing upon extensive field research and looking at the evolution of ICTs in Ethiopia, it examines how a semi-authoritarian, yet developmentally oriented regime, has actively sought to mediate the – either real or imagined – destabilising aspects of ICTs while embracing them as a tool for nation-building. A constructivist framework as developed in international relations and history of technology is employed to understand how the introduction of the new ICT framework as promoted by international organizations has been mediated both by the results of the socialization of earlier technologies in Ethiopia and by the national project pursued by the local political elite.


2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-161
Author(s):  
Mukhareva A. N.,. A. ◽  
◽  
Seregin N. ◽  

the territory of Mongolia. The process of accumulation and diverse interpretation of information about rock paintings, as well as images on “memorial” objects dating back to the second half of the 1st millennium AD is characterized. The analysis of the main results of the study of the petroglyphs of the early medieval nomads of the region allowed the authors to identify several key stages in the history of their study. The first stage, within which the initial formation of the source base took place, is associated with the discovery and fixation at the end of the 19th century of stylized images of goats, carried out as a rule in the study of epigraphic sites. The beginning of the second stage coincides with the large-scale archaeological research that took place in Mongolia in the middle of the 20th century. The third stage, which began in the mid-1970s, marked the expansion of scientists’ ideas about the rock art of the population of Mongolia in the second half of the 1st millennium AD, as well as the identification of various pictorial layers in it. Within the framework of the modern period (since the mid-1990s), approaches to the study of early medieval petroglyphs are being improved, new sites are being discovered, as well as a more detailed study of already known complexes. The article contains images recorded during the field research of the authors as part of the Buyant Russian-Mongolian archaeological expedition. Keywords: Mongolia, petroglyphs, early Middle Ages, history of research, periodization Acknowledgements: The research was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Ministry of Culture, Education, Science and Sports of Mongolia in the framework of the scientific project No. 19–59–44013 “Historical, Cultural and Ethnogenetic Processes in Mongolia during the Great Migration and the Early Middle Ages: an Interdisciplinary Analysis of Archaeological and Written Sources”.


Author(s):  
Michael J. De Motta

The National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) has been a leader in the propagation and cultivation of rare native Hawaiian plants for several decades. The organisation’s work in rare plant conservation started primarily with field research and has evolved into a large-scale nursery operation. The NTBG now produces thousands of plants a year for ex situ conservation, garden collections and restoration projects. Here a number of Hawaiian species are reviewed, and appropriate propagation and cultural methods for each are discussed.


2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (04) ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
A. Speckhard

SummaryAs a terror tactic, suicide terrorism is one of the most lethal as it relies on a human being to deliver and detonate the device. Suicide terrorism is not confined to a single region or religion. On the contrary, it has a global appeal, and in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan it has come to represent an almost daily reality as it has become the weapon of choice for some of the most dreaded terrorist organizations in the world, such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. Drawing on over two decades of extensive field research in five distinct world regions, specifically the Middle East, Western Europe, North America, Russia, and the Balkans, the author discusses the origins of modern day suicide terrorism, motivational factors behind suicide terrorism, its global migration, and its appeal to modern-day terrorist groups to embrace it as a tactic.


1996 ◽  
pp. 4-15
Author(s):  
S. Golovaschenko ◽  
Petro Kosuha

The report is based on the first results of the study "The History of the Evangelical Christians-Baptists in Ukraine", carried out in 1994-1996 by the joint efforts of the Department of Religious Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Odessa Theological Seminary of Evangelical Christian Baptists. A large-scale description and research of archival sources on the history of evangelical movements in our country gave the first experience of fruitful cooperation between secular and church researchers.


Author(s):  
Jeanne LIEDTKA

The value delivered by design thinking is almost always seen to be improvements in the creativity and usefulness of the solutions produced. This paper takes a broader view of the potential power of design thinking, highlighting its role as a social technology for enhancing the productivity of conversations for change across difference. Examined through this lens, design thinking can be observed to aid diverse sets of stakeholders’ abilities to work together to both produce higher order, more innovative solutions and to implement them more successfully. In this way, it acts as a facilitator of the processes of collectives, by enhancing their ability to learn, align and change together. This paper draws on both the author’s extensive field research on the use of design thinking in social sector organizations, as well as on the literature of complex social systems, to discuss implications for both practitioners and scholars interested in assessing the impact of design thinking on organizational performance.


Metahumaniora ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Erlina Zulkifli Mahmud ◽  
Taufik Ampera ◽  
Yuyu Yohana Risagarniwa ◽  
Inu Isnaeni Sidiq

Kedudukan dan fungsi bahasa sebagai alat komunikasi manusia mencakup seluruh bidang kehidupan termasuk ilmu pengetahuan antara lain terkait sejarah peradaban manusia; bagaimana manusia mempertahankan hidupnya, bagaimana manusia memperlakukan alam, bagaimana alam menyediakan segala kebutuhan manusia. Apa yang dilakukan manusia saat ini, saat lampau, dan apa yang dilakukan manusia jauh di masa prasejarah, bagaimana kondisi alam di masa-masa tersebut, apa perubahan dan perkembangannya, dapat didokumentasikan melalui bahasa, divisualisasikan kembali, lalu dipajang sebagai salah satu upaya konversai dan preservasi dalam satu institusi yang disebut museum. Penelitian ini membahas kedudukan dan fungsi bahasa dalam permuseuman. Bagaimana kedudukan dan fungsi bahasa dalam permuseuman baik dalam informasi yang disampaikan oleh pemandu wisata museumnya maupun yang terpajang menyertai benda-benda dan gambar-gambar merupakan tujuan dari penelitian ini. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah gabungan antara metode lapangan dan metode literatur. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa secara umum kedudukan bahasa Indonesia berada pada urutan pertama setelah Bahasa Inggris dan keberadaan kedua bahasa dalam permuseuman ini melibatkan dua fungsi utama bahasa, yakni fungsi komunikatif dan fungsi informatif.The existence and function of language  as a medium of communication covers all fields of human life including knowledge, one of them is the history of human civilization; how humans survived, how human utilized nature for their lives, and how nature provides all the necessities for humans. What humans have been doing now, what they have done in the past and far before that in the pre-history time, how the conditions of the nature at those times were and what changes as well as progresses occurred are documented using language, then re-visualized,  displayed as one of conservation and preservation acts in an institution called museum. This research discusess the existence and function of language in museums. How important the existence of a language in museums and what language functions used in museums both in informations given by the museum guides and on the displays accompanying objects and pictures are the aims of this research. The methods used are the combination between field research and library research. The results show that generally the existence of Indonesian language plays more important role than English and both languages have two main functions; communicative function and informative function.     


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