scholarly journals Marginalized centre: Wana people and the geography of power

Author(s):  
Giorgio Scalici

The Wana of Morowali (Indonesia) are nowadays a small endangered community marginalized by the Indonesian government, world religions and the other communities in the area but, according to their own mythology, they are not the periphery of the world, but the real centre of it. Their cosmogonic myth tells how the Wana land (Tana Taa) was the first land placed on the primordial waters and it was full of mythical power, a power that, when the land was spread around the world to create the continents, abandoned the Wana to donate wealth and power to the edge of the world: the West. This myth has a pivotal role in the Wana worldview, their categorization of the world and the power relationships in it. The Wana reverse the traditional relationship between centre and periphery, placing themselves in a powerless centre (the village or the Tana Taa) that gave all its power to a periphery (the jungle or the West) that must be explored to obtain power and knowledge. This relationship not only expresses a clear agency in shaping the relationship of power with forces way stronger than the Wana (Government and world religions) but also creates internal hierarchies based on the access to this knowledge; granted to men and partially precluded to women due to the cultural characterizations of these genders. Indeed, the majority of shamans, called tau walia (human-spirit), are men, and they are the only one that can travel between the human and the spiritual world, obtaining a spiritual and social power. In this article, we will see how Wana categorise the world and use religion, rituality and gender to express their agency to cope with the marginalization by the government, the world religions and the other community in the area.

Author(s):  
Anil Gopi

Food and feast are integral and key components of human cultures across the world. Feasts associated with religious rituals have special social and cultural significance when compared to those in any other festivities or celebrations in people’s life. In this study, an approach is made to comparatively analyze the feasts at religious festivals of two distinctive groups of people, one with a characteristic of simple society and the other of a complex society. The annual feast happening at the hamlets of the Anchunadu Vellalar community in the last days of the calendar year is an occasion that portrays the egalitarian nature of the people. While this feast is restricted within a single community of particular caste affiliation and geographical limitations, the feast associated with the kaliyattam ritual of village goddess in North Malabar is much wider in scope and participation. The enormous feast brings the people in a larger area and exhibits a solidarity that cuts across boundaries of religion, caste and community. Beyond the factors of social solidarity and togetherness, these events also illustrate its divisive characters mainly in terms of social hierarchy and gender. A comparative study of both the two feasts of two different contexts reveals the characteristic features of religious feasts and the value of food and feast in social life and solidarity and also how it acts as a survival of their past and as a tradition.


Author(s):  
Tayyaba Razzaq

Humans are spiritual beings and preferred to be an element (one way or the other) of this potent mighty power that fascinated him. Men have been urged to look or visualize the Mighty Lord. Different kind of tools and means were designed in various religious communities to offer a few beautified methods to meet this fundamental intuition. To attain spirituality, many ancient religions had their own rituals and ceremonial systems that mostly consist of external rites and practices. The purpose of the study is to examine and determine the importance of rituals that are being practice in the world religions? What the methods religious scriptures has mentioned for their followers to adopt to attain spirituality? The study is to find out similarities and differences in rituals & practices to attain spirituality as mentioned in their religious scriptures? Research methodology for this study adapted is descriptive. This research study has fined out that some ritual systems are concerned with inwards purification rather than outwards. The major purpose of all such practices; fasting, sacrifices, charity etc are all to free men from the entire evil deeds, make him pure as the will of the Lord and closer to it.


Author(s):  
Anna Sun

This introductory chapter talks about the confusions and controversies over the religious nature of Confucianism. It argues that the confusions come mainly from three sources. First, they come from the conceptualization of Confucianism as a world religion at the end of the nineteenth century in Europe, which was a historical product of the emergence of the “world religions” paradigm in the West. Second, they are caused by the problematic way in which Confucianism—and Chinese religions in general—has been studied and represented by questions which are based on a Judeo-Christian framework that cannot capture the complexity of Chinese religious life. Finally, confusion arises from the often contradictory development of Confucianism in today's China.


Author(s):  
Emily Van Buskirk

This chapter undertakes a treatment of the rhetoric of personal pronouns in Ginzburg's writings on love and sexuality, drawing on Michael Lucey's study of the first person in twentieth-century French literature about love. It brings together questions of genre and narrative, on the one hand, and gender and sexuality, on the other. The chapter is divided into two sections, treating writings from two different periods on two kinds of love Ginzburg thought typical of intellectuals: in “First Love,” it discusses the unrequited and tragic love depicted in Ginzburg's teenage diaries (1920–23); in “Second Love,” it analyzes the love that is realized but in the end equally tragic, depicted in drafts related to Home and the World (1930s). The chapter examines the models the author sought in literary, psychological, and philosophical texts (Weininger, Kraft-Ebbing, Blok, Shklovsky, Oleinikov, Hemingway, and Proust).


NUTA Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 64-69
Author(s):  
Rameshwor Upadhyay

This paper highlighted Nepalese statelessness issue from Nationality perspective. Nationality is one of the major human rights concerns of the citizens. In fact, citizenship is one of the major fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution. According to the universal principle related to the statelessness, no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his or her nationality. In this connection, on one hand, this paper traced out the international legal obligations created by the conventions to the state parties in which state must bear the responsibility for making national laws to comply with the international instruments. On the other hand, this paper also appraised statelessness related lacunae and shortcomings seen in Municipal laws as well as gender discriminatory laws that has been supporting citizens to become statelessness. By virtue being a one of the modern democratic states in the world, it is the responsibility of the government to protect and promote human rights of the citizens including women and children. Finally, this paper suggests government to take necessary initiation to change and repeal the discriminatory provisions related to citizenship which are seen in the constitution and other statutory laws.


1984 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gebru Tareke

Weyane was a spontaneous, localized peasant uprising with limited objectives. It occurred in 1943 because several disaffected social groups in the eastern part of Tigrai believed that they could defeat or at least extract substantial concessions from a weak transitional government. The multiplicity of objectives roughly correspond to the divergent interests of the participants: the sectarian nobility wanted a greater share in the regional reallocation of power, the semi-pastoral communities of the lowlands were interested in pre-empting feudal incorporation, and the highland cultivators wanted to terminate the excessive demands of officialdom and militia. The convergence of these forces made Weyane possible; the disorganization of the ruling strata and the subsequent defection of a segment of the territorial nobility enormously enhanced the peasants' capacity for collective action. But this very heterogeneity comprised the peasants' objectives. The revolt lacked a coherent set of goals, nor did it have a specific program for social action. The rebels attacked neither the legitimacy of the monarchy nor the ideological basis of the Ethiopian aristocracy. In the end, Weyane buttressed the feudal order, and was probably instrumental in strengthening Ethiopia's neo-colonial link with the West. In the aftermath of rebellion, the Tigrai nobility did get its rights and prerogatives recognized, to the same extent that the nobility in the other northern provinces did. The government undercut the nobility's political autonomy, but paid the price of reinforcing their social position. On the other hand, in reaction to Weyane, the state destroyed the social basis of clan authority and autonomy, and reduced the Raya and Azebo to landless peasants. Weyane marked the end of conflict between centrifugal and centralizing forces, but did not eliminate the social roots of popular protest.


2014 ◽  
Vol 05 (04) ◽  
pp. 426-427
Author(s):  
Sayantanava Mitra ◽  
Anjana Rao Kavoor

ABSTRACTIn spite of becoming more humane in its approach with improvements in understanding of mental illnesses over last century, psychiatry still has a long way to go. At this point in time, on one hand the world faces issues like terrorism, wars and global warming; while on the other it is witnessing economic and gender empowerment like never before. With technology providing us with immense opportunities to advance care for the mentally ill, we are closer than ever to finding the holy-grail of psychiatry, and overcoming daunting challenges.


1999 ◽  
Vol 103 (1022) ◽  
pp. 214
Author(s):  
Norton Lord Kings

In 1943, with the world still at war, a great discussion on the future of aeronautical education was held by the Royal Aeronautical Society. Not only would the war years, however many were still to come, demand more well-qualified aeronautical engineers, but the longed for peace years, with engineers turning swords into ploughshares, would want more. The discussion was in two parts. One took place on 25 June and the other on 23 July. Many of the leading figures in British aeronautics took part and in the chair on both occasions was Dr Roxbee Cox, a vice-president of the society. The discussion culminated in a resolution based on a proposal by Marcus Langley. That resolution and the discussion which led to it resulted in the recommendation by the Aeronautical Research Committee that a post-graduate college of aeronautical science should be established. This was followed by governmental action. Sir Stafford Cripps, then the minister responsible for aircraft production, set up a committee presided over by Sir Roy Fedden to make specific proposals, and the committee recommended in its 1944 report that such a college should be a new and independent establishment. In 1945 the government created the College of Aeronautics board of governors under the chairmanship of Air Chief Marshal Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt to bring the college into existence and govern it. The first meeting of this board took place on 28 June 1945 and there were present: Sir Edgar Ludlow Hewitt, Dr W. Abbot, Mr Hugh Burroughs, Sir Roy Fedden, Mr J. Ferguson, Sir Harold Hartley, Sir William Hil-dred, Sir Melvill Jones, Dr E.B. Moullin, Mr J.D. North, Sir Frederick Handley Page, Mr E.F. Relf, Dr H. Roxbee Cox, Air Marshal Sir Ralph Sovley, Rear Admiral S.H. Troubridge and Mr W.E.P. Ward. Sir William Stanier, who had been appointed, was not present.


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 39-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Hirsch

Melanesian ethnography has been a substantial and enduring presence in Strathern’s comparative project of anthropology. The cornerstone of this project was The Gender of the Gift, where a model was established for demonstrating the analogies between Melanesian societies based on a system of common differences. The comparisons created in this work were centred on a real and radical divide between Melanesia and the West. Strathern’s subsequent comparative work has examined the debates surrounding new social and technological forms in the West (e.g. new genetic and reproductive technologies) through drawing analogies with Melanesian social forms; she has simultaneously highlighted the limits of these comparisons. Her intention in this comparative project has been to expand the range of concepts and language used to understand western social and technological innovations that potentially affect the world at large, so that debate is not simply circumscribed by western preoccupations and concerns. As mediated through the analysis of Strathern and the other Melanesian anthropologists she draws on, the voices and interests of non-westerners can potentially inform and even reform the grounds of such deliberations.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document