Maasai Age-Sets and Prophetic Leadership: 1850–1910

Africa ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Berntsen

Opening ParagraphIn their initial interaction with the Colonial powers, several East African peoples such as the Maasai, the Turkana, the Sebei, the Karamojong, and the Nandi—all organized through some type of age-based institution—united around prophetic leaders, diviners, or ritual experts who mobilized men from several territorial sections to confront the intruders. This ad hoc military unity was necessarily short-lived, usually ending with the defeat of the people by the colonial power and see the imprisonment or death of the prophetic leader involved. (See Fosbrooke 1948: 12-19; Merker 1910: 67-105; Jacobs 1965: 20-108; Dyson-Hudson 1966: 15-16; Gulliver 1950: 229, 240; Meinertzhagen 1956: 222 ff; Weatherby 1962: 200-12; 1967: 133-44; Lamphear 1976: 225-43.) While ethnological studies of various age-organizations often mention that diviners or prophets provided professional services for the members of an age-group at their ceremonies, no one has examined the process by which a prophetic leader or diviner established his legitimacy during periods of peace so that he might lead the people during times of crisis. An examination of the prophetic institution among the Maasai and the relationship between the prophets and the members of the age-sets may provide some insight into the process, especially the manner in which prophets emerged as leaders of the people during two major crises in the history of the Purko-Kisongo Maasai: the Ilaikipiak war and the rinderpest pan-zootic.

This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real artificial intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed, and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing prehistory of key concerns of contemporary AI discourse, from the nature of mind and creativity to issues of power and rights, from the tension between fascination and ambivalence to investigations into artificial voices and technophobia. Part II focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerged alongside rapid developments in AI technology. These chapters reveal not only how AI narratives have consistently been entangled with the emergence of real robotics and AI, but also how they offer a rich source of insight into how we might live with these revolutionary machines. Through their close textual engagements, these chapters explore the relationship between imaginative narratives and contemporary debates about AI’s social, ethical, and philosophical consequences, including questions of dehumanization, automation, anthropomorphization, cybernetics, cyberpunk, immortality, slavery, and governance. The contributions, from leading humanities and social science scholars, show that narratives about AI offer a crucial epistemic site for exploring contemporary debates about these powerful new technologies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (03) ◽  
pp. 1113-1129
Author(s):  
Kali Murray

This essay considers what tools should be used to study the legal history of intellectual property. I identify three historiographical strategies: narration, contest, and formation. Narration identifies the diverse “narrative structures” that shape the field of intellectual property history. Contest highlights how the inherent instability of intellectual property as a legal concept prompts recurrent debates over its meaning. Formation recognizes how intellectual property historians can offer insight into broader legal history debates over how to consider the relationship between informal social practices and formalized legal mechanisms. I consider Kara W. Swanson's Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk and Sperm in Modern America (2014) in light of these historiographical strategies and conclude that Swanson's book guides us to a new conversation in the legal history of intellectual property law.


Author(s):  
Paul B. Connor

How does the communication of information affect the pipeline industry? People are becoming more aware of the pipeline industry and how it may affect individuals and landowners in the future. Corporations are producing commuications tools to alleviate the lack of knowledge and the hidden value of energy pipelines. This case study examines two projects: “Passing through Edson” examines a winter pipeline construction job in Edson, Alberta. The story is told by the people on the job. We examine the environmental issues, economic impact, Native employment, and winter construction techniques. The “Boy Chief” video examines the impact of an archaeological dig on the prairies. In this program we have insight into the aboriginal history of the area and how the pipeline company is helping people learn more about the Native way of life. The paper examine how communication tools like these, allow employees access to information when communicating to stakeholders.


Author(s):  
Abhishek Kaicker

An unprecedented exploration of the relationship between the Mughal emperor and his subjects in the space of the Mughal empire’s capital, The King and The People overturns an axiomatic assumption in the history of premodern South Asia: that the urban masses were merely passive objects of rule and remained unable to express collective political aspirations until the coming of colonialism. Set in the Mughal capital of Shahjahanabad (Delhi) from its founding to Nadir Shah’s devastating invasion of 1739, this book instead shows how the trends and events in the second half of the seventeenth century inadvertently set the stage for the emergence of the people as actors in a regime which saw them only as the ruled.


1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul C. Rosenblatt ◽  
Patricia Spoentgen ◽  
Terri A. Karis ◽  
Car La Dahl ◽  
Tamara Kaiser ◽  
...  

Interviews were carried out with fifty-seven adults concerning their interactions with others who were bereaved. When the respondent and the other person were bereaved by the same loss, support relationships were more likely to be difficult. The difficulty arose in part from problems in making shared decisions, in meeting one another's needs and standards, and in coming to shared realities. In some cases the difficulty could be attributed, in part, to the history of the relationship between the people sharing bereavement or to the emotional, cognitive, and physical demands of bereavement. In potential support situations where interviewees were not also mourners, those who held back generally had not experienced a death of somebody close.


1997 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Barrett-Gaines

Recent contributions to this journal have taken various approaches to travelers's accounts as sources of African history. Elizabeth de Veer and Ann O'Hear use the travel accounts of Gerhard Rohlfs to reconstruct nineteenth-century political and economic history of West African groups who have escaped scholarly attention. But essentially they use Rohlfs' work as he intended it to be used. Gary W. Clendennen examines David Livingstone's work to find the history under the propaganda. He argues that, overlooking its obvious problems, the work reveals a wealth of information on nineteenth-century cultures in the Zambezi and Tchiri valleys. Unfortunately, Clendennen does not use this source for these reasons. He uses it instead to shed light on the relationship between Livingstone and his brother.John Hanson registers a basic distrust of European mediated oral histories recorded and written in the African past. He draws attention to the fact that what were thought to be “generally agreed upon accounts” may actually reflect partisan interests. Hanson dramatically demonstrates how chunks of history, often the history of the losers, are lost, as the history of the winners is made to appear universal. Richard Mohun can be seen to represent the winners in turn-of-the-century Central Africa. His account is certainly about himself. I attempt, though, to use his account to recover some of the history of the losers, the Africans, which Mohun may have inadvertently recorded.My question is double; its two parts—one historical, one methodological—are inextricably interdependent. The first concerns the experience of the people from Zanzibar who accompanied, carried, and worked for Richard Dorsey Mohun on a three-year (1898-1901) expedition into Central Africa to lay telegraph wire. The second wonders how and how well the first question can be answered using, primarily, the only sources available to me right now: those written by Mohun himself.


Africa ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Harris

Opening ParagraphIkom, on the Cross River and with a total population of just over 7,000 in 1953, lies near the boundary between Nigeria and southern Cameroons. It has been commercially important in recent years, as was indicated, for example, by the presence there in 1953 (the date of the last fairly reliable census) of over 1,500 Ibo. But the Ibo are newcomers, and this paper is concerned with examining earlier patterns of trade as they had developed down to the nineteen-twenties. More recently the people of Ikom have derived their prosperity from the exploitation of their soil, which is eminently suitable for producing cocoa. According to a visiting soil scientist in the 1960s, there are in the locality 140 square miles of suitable cocoa land, which in fact is so plentiful that although two-thirds of it was still held in a forest reserve there was in 1966 no public pressure to have any portion released for agriculture. The affluence based on cocoa is, however, recent; the traditional path to prosperity and influence was through participation in trade, especially trade with Mamfe to the east and with Calabar on the coast, principally along the Cross River.


1999 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHARLENE HESSE-BIBER ◽  
MARGARET MARINO ◽  
DIANE WATTS-ROY

This study provides insight into factors that determine whether women in the college population who exhibit eating-disordered behavior during their college years recover during their postcollege years. The study assessed changes in the eating patterns of 21 women across a six-year time period, from sophomore year in college to two years postcollege. Eleven of the women get better during their postcollege year, whereas 10 of the women continue to struggle with disordered eating. The major differences between the two groups revolve around the relationship between autonomy and relation. Women who get better negotiate the tension between autonomy and relatedness and are more likely to have higher selfesteem based on a more positive self-concept; this, in turn, leads to healthier relationships with food and body image. Two factors that appear to influence this negotiation include (I) one's history of chronic physical or sexual abuse and (2) the quality of familial messages about food, body image, relationship, and autonomy.


Viking ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joakim Goldhahn

«As good as it can be done» – commented war letters from Norwegian colleagues to Arthur Nordén 1940–1945 This article is based on letters addressed to Arthur Nordén (1891–1965), from his Norwegian colleagues Anton Willhelm Brøgger (1884–1951) and Sverre Marstrander (1910–1986) during the Nazi occupation of Norway, which lasted from 9 April 1940 to 8 May 1945. The letters provide unique historical insights into Brøgger's and Marstrander's activities during the war and reveal how they were engaging with Swedish archaeological colleagues during the Nazi occupation of Norway. While there is no doubt the relationship between archaeology and Nazism during the Second World War is a complex issue, and one that has been addressed by a number of researchers (e.g. Nordenborg Myhre 1984, 2002; Hagen 2002), these letters reflect particular solidarity between Swedish and Norwegian colleagues. They act as aging photographs capturing unique insight into personal experience and agencies. The expressed solidarity in words and actions strengthened existing collegiality and friendships. The letters add to a more nuanced understanding of the history of our discipline. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 237
Author(s):  
Annick Marie Belrose

Resumo: Patrick Chamoiseau (1953) é um escritor martinicano contemporâneo que produziu romances, ensaios, peças de teatro e contos filosóficos. Considerado sucessor de grandes autores martinicanos como Aimé Césaire e Édouard Glissant, Chamoiseau é um autor comprometido que questiona em seus textos a noção de literatura, a tradição literária francesa, a história das Antilhas francesas e a relação dos escritores antilhanos com o mundo e seus papéis no contexto cultural globalizado. Este trabalho de reflexão é realizado pelos personagens de seus romances, bem como pelos diferentes narradores. Chamoiseau construiu seu discurso teórico principalmente em filiação com o pensamento de Edouard Glissant. A poética da Relação de Glissant (1990) constitui a linha diretriz a partir da qual ele desenvolve sua reflexão. Ele dedica grande parte de seu trabalho a tentar entender, explicar e resolver o dilaceramento diglóssico experimentado por ele e pelo povo da Martinica, presos entre a língua crioula (língua dominada) e a língua francesa (língua dominante). Assim, mostrar-se-á como em seus romances autobiográficos Antan d’Enfance-Une enfance créole I (1996), Chemin-d’école – Une enfance créole II (1996), mas também o seu ensaio teórico Écrire en pays dominé (1997), o autor reflete essa busca. Neles, Chamoiseau revela as questões identitárias geradas no seu encontro com as duas línguas, relata a complexidade dos mecanismos psicológicos e relacionais, as dificuldades de se construir como indivíduo e como membro de uma comunidade. A escrita de Chamoiseau procura traduzir esse conflito e busca resolvê-lo, criando uma linguagem híbrida, poética e polissêmica, onde a língua crioula habita em uma narração em francês, e onde os gêneros se misturam.Palavras chave: literatura; autobiografia; diglossia; oralidade; identidade.Abstract: Patrick Chamoiseau (1953) is a contemporary Martinican writer who wrote novels, essays, plays and philosophical tales. He is considered the successor of great Martinican authors like Aimé Césaire and Édouard Glissant. Chamoiseau is a committed author who questions in his texts the notion of literature, the French literary tradition, the history of the French West-Indies, as well as the relationship of the west-Indians writers with the world and their roles in the globalized cultural context. This reflection work is carried out by the characters of his novels, as well as by the different narrators. Chamoiseau constructed his theoretical discourse mainly in affiliation with the thinking of Edouard Glissant. The poetic of Relationship of Glissant (1990) constitutes the guideline from which he develops his reflection. He dedicates a large part of his work trying to understand, explain and resolve the diglossic tearing experienced by him and the people of Martinique, caught between the Creole language (dominated language) and the French language (dominant language). Thus, we will show how in his autobiographical novels Antan d’Enfance – Une enfance créole I (1996), Chemin-d’école – Une enfance créole II (1996), but also his theoretical essay Écrire en pays dominé (1997) the author reflects this search. In them, Chamoiseau reveals the identity issues generated in his encounter with the two languages, reports the complexity of the psychological and relational mechanisms, the difficulties of building himself as an individual and as a member of a community. Chamoiseau’s writing seeks to translate this conflict, and seeks to resolve it, creating a hybrid poetic and polysemic language, where the Creole language lives in a narration in French and where the genres are mixed.Keywords: literature; autobiography; diglossy; orality; identity.


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