Mirror in the Forest: the Dorobo hunter-gatherers as an image of the other

Africa ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 477-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Kenny

Opening ParagraphThe term ‘Dorobo’ denotes an ethnic category embracing small hunting-and-gathering groups residing on the fringes of various agricultural and pastoral peoples in East Africa. The essence of the Dorobo's position is that they engage in economically symbiotic activities with regard to local farmers and herders, while retaining their social marginality as people of the bush. Much is known of them through the constructs of their neighbours, who assign them attributes commensurate with their marginal social position; the Dorobo are amalgamated with wild amoral creatures, and their ancestors are thought to have been in attendance at the birth of the present world-order. Their marginality therefore has economic, spatial, and temporal dimensions.

Africa ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Barnard

Opening ParagraphThe Nharo are a Khoe- (‘Hottentot-’) speaking hunting and gathering people of the central-western Kalahari. Linguistically they are closely related to the G/wikhwe and G//anakhwe of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and to several other, lesser-known, central Kalahari and Okavango Bushman peoples of Botswana. They are more distantly related to the extinct Khoekhoe (‘Hottentot’) herding peoples of the Cape Province of South Africa, and more distantly still, to the Nama Khoekhoe of Namibia. Lexicostatistical, cultural and genetic evidence suggests that the Khoe hunter-gatherers in general have lived independently from their herding relatives for some 2000 years, and that the Nharo in particular have lived in close contact with the !Kung and possibly also the !Kõ (both non-Khoe-speaking Bushman peoples) for a considerable part of that time. The primary purpose of this article is to present a description of selected Nharo institutions and customs, with reference to sex differentiation; but first a brief look at the Nharo settlement pattern is necessary.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (22) ◽  
pp. 56-65
Author(s):  
Boby Sigit Adipradono

The basic principles of the implementation of Indonesian foreign policy have been stated in the opening paragraph of the first paragraph of the 1945 Constitution, "that actual independence is the right of all nations. And therefore, colonization of the world must be abolished, because it is not in accordance with humanity and justice. The establishment of this country is to "participate in carrying out world order based on freedom, eternal peace, and social justice". The Indonesian people in carrying out the constitutional mandate is to help other countries affected by the disaster. The assistance is given to other countries without any regulations which are the basis for the government to pay for the assistance. The provision of humanitarian assistance to other countries by the Indonesian government has created a dilemma among officials who have the authority to issue the budget. On the one hand, the President's order must be implemented, on the other side spending the budget for humanitarian assistance to other countries affected by the disaster there are no regulations that regulate it.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Myles

What does it mean to say Jesus was subversive? This article engages in meta-critical analysis of the use of ‘subversion’ in historical Jesus research. It argues that the neoliberal lives of Jesus in particular have increasingly fetishized a cultural mainstreaming of subversion in which certain forms of containable subversion are tolerated within late capitalist society, as part of a broader strategy of economic and ideological compliance. On the one hand, J.D. Crossan’s Jesus spun subversive aphorisms which constituted the radical subversion of the present world order. On the other hand, N.T. Wright has frequently intensified the rhetoric of subversion, claiming a ‘profoundly’, ‘doubly’, ‘thoroughly’, ‘deeply’, and ‘multiply’ subversive Jesus, while simultaneously distancing him from traditional subversive fixtures like militant revolutionary action. Through its discursive mimicking of wider cultural trends, this rhetorical trope has enabled Jesus scholarship to enjoy both popular and academic success in Western, neoliberal society.


Africa ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Cashdan

Opening ParagraphThe immigration of food-producing groups into areas occupied by hunters and gatherers must have been a common occurrence in prehistory. How were the hunter-gatherers affected by this? I describe here two groups of Kalahari Basarwa (‘Bushmen’), one living along the flood plain of the lower Botletli river, the other occupying the savanna a short distance away from the river. These two groups differed in subsistence and social organisation and were affected by immigrant herders and farmers in strikingly different ways. Today the Basarwa of the flood plain are wealthy cattle owners, whereas those of the savanna are poor and have few or no cattle. How and why did the two groups respond so differently to the same competitive threat?


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lampet Wongsaroj ◽  
Ratmanee Chanabun ◽  
Naruemon Tunsakul ◽  
Pinidphon Prombutara ◽  
Somsak Panha ◽  
...  

AbstractNortheastern Thailand relies on agriculture as a major economic activity, and has used high levels of agrochemicals due to low facility, and salty sandy soil. To support soil recovery and sustainable agriculture, local farmers have used organic fertilizers from farmed animal feces. However, knowledge about these animal fecal manures remains minimal restricting their optimal use. Specifically, while bacteria are important for soil and plant growth, an abundance and a diversity of bacterial composition in these animal fecal manures have not been reported to allow selection and adjustment for a more effective organic fertilizer. This study thereby utilized metagenomics combined with 16S rRNA gene quantitative PCR (qPCR) and sequencing to analyze quantitative microbiota profiles in association with nutrients (N, P, K), organic matters, and the other physiochemical properties, of the commonly used earthworm manure and other manures from livestock animals (including breed and feeding diet variations) in the region. Unlike the other manures, the earthworm manure demonstrated more favorable nutrient profiles and physiochemical properties for forming fertile soil. Despite low total microbial biomass, the microbiota were enriched with maximal OTUs and Chao richness, and no plant pathogenic bacteria were found based on the VFDB database. The microbial metabolic potentials supported functions to promote crop growth, such as C, N and P cyclings, xenobiotic degradation, and synthesis of bioactive compounds. Pearson’s correlation analyses indicated that the quantitative microbiota of the earthworm manure were clustered in the same direction as N, and conductivity, salinity, and water content were essential to control the microbiota of animal manures.


Africa ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 258-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akin L. Mabogunje

Opening ParagraphDuring the sitting of the West African Lands Committee in 1912, the witnesses who were called before the Committee from Egba Division emphatically stated that sales of both farm and town lands had been going on in Egbaland for some considerable time and had become accepted as normal. Equally significant was the vigour with which witnesses from all the other Yoruba sub-tribes countered the suggestion that sale of land existed or was permitted by the traditional land law and custom. H. L. Ward Price in his report also pointed out that sales of land had been going on in Egbaland for at least sixty years before he was writing in the 1930's. From the evidence he collected, it would seem that land sales dated back to between 1860 and 1880.


Africa ◽  
1930 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. J. v. Warmelo

Opening ParagraphFew of the secrets that Africa still holds from us to-day have, I think, such an absorbing interest as the problem of Bantu in its relation to the neighbouring families and types of speech. Taking the continent of Africa as a whole, we find on the one hand the huge, yet marvellously homogeneous and compact body of the Bantu languages, clear-cut in structure, simple and transparent in phonology, and, at the back of much apparent diversity, exceptionally uniform in vocabulary. On the other hand there are in Africa numerous other languages of various type, which differ so much amongst each other that they have not yet been brought under any but the very broadest of classifications. The essential points of these are as follows.


1979 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Kasfir

Most concepts of ethnicity are unsuitable for political analysis because they ignore either subjective or objective aspects, and because they ignore the fluid and situational nature of ethnicity. The approach flowing from the concept proposed here permits the observer to examine empirical variations that tend to be treated as rigid assumptions by modernization analysts on the one hand and class analysts on the other. The concept is applied to a study of the Nubians of Uganda because of the intermixture of class and ethnic features involved in their fall from status at the beginning of the colonial period and their subsequent sudden rise following the 1071 coup d'état of Idi Amin. The fairly recent creation of the Nubians as an ethnic category and the relative ease with which others can become members illustrate other features of the proposed concept of ethnicity. Finally, this concept is used to examine and criticize overly restrictive notions of ethnicity found in theories based upon both cultural pluralism and consociationalism.


1918 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. T. Olmstead

The labor member of the Belgian ministry, M. van der Velde, has drawn a parallel between the Assyrian methods of deportation and those practiced by the Germans. An orientalist has developed this theme with chapter and verse citation. Whatever our sympathies in this present world catastrophe and however close we find the analogy, the episode has undoubtedly excited a certain amount of curiosity as to the methods used by the Assyrians in the government of their dependencies. To the more scientific student there must be great interest in a system which furnished the model to the Persians, to the Hellenistic rulers, to the Romans, and so to the modern systems of provincial government.As in so many other phases of their civilization, the Assyrians built upon Babylonian foundations, and, as in so many other cases, the Assyrians profoundly modified what they took over. In truth, the Babylonian foundation was comparatively slight. At the beginning of Babylonian history we have the completely independent city state. As one conquered the other, there was no attempt at incorporation, and the patesi, who as vice regent of god on earth ruled the dependent state, was permitted complete autonomy, subject only to the payment of a small tribute and to certain acts which acknowledged foreign suzerainty.


Author(s):  
Vicki Cummings

The transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic in Britain and Ireland remains one of the most debated and contested transitions of prehistory. Much more complex than a simple transition from hunting and gathering to farming, the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Britain has been discussed not only as an economic and technological transformation, but also as an ideological one. In western Britain in particular, with its wealth of Neolithic monuments, considerable emphasis has been placed on the role of monumentality in the transition process. Over the past decade the author‧s research has concentrated on the early Neolithic monumental traditions of western Britain, a deliberate focus on areas outside the more ‘luminous’ centres of Wessex, the Cotswold–Severn region, and Orkney. This chapter discusses the transition in western Britain, with an emphasis on the monuments of this region. In particular, it discusses the areas around the Irish Sea – west Wales, the Isle of Man, south-west and western Scotland – as well as referring to the sequence on the other side of the Irish Sea, specifically eastern Ireland.


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