Zig-Zag Change

Africa ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Wilson

Opening ParagraphOne problem that besets students of society is how best to combine a study of change through time, with emphasis on the flow of time, and the detailed analysis of relationships; how to write a social history with sufficient detail on all the aspects of relationships—economic, legal, ritual, ideological—to satisfy the anthropologist. Static models are too far from reality to be useful, but how can one create a model that moves? The difficulty consists first, in discovering the relevant facts and second, in integrating them into an intelligible account.

Africa ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. P. Howell

Opening ParagraphPublished literature on the subject of the Shilluk is considerable and there are also many interesting accounts of specific subjects buried in the files of the Administration. Nowhere, however, is there a complete account of all aspects of Shilluk life. Moreover, there has been a tendency to concentrate on certain aspects, notably the Divine Kingship, to the exclusion of others. In 1941 Mr. M. E. C. Pumphrey and I published two articles: the first a general summary account of the Shilluk tribe based on Mr. Pumphrey's observations and wide experience; the second a more detailed analysis of one Shilluk settlement, the result of fieldwork carried out in 1937. In 1944 I had the privilege of attending the installation of reth Anei Kur and, together with Mr. W. P. G. Thomson, published a full account. Subsequently Mr. Thomson published his ‘Further Notes on the Death of a Shilluk Reth’, after the death of reth Anei in 1943. This, with Professor Evans-Pritchard's Frazer Lecture, The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan, represents the total of information published on the subject of the Shilluk in recent years.


Author(s):  
Erin S. Nelson

Chapter 4 describes excavations, coring, and salvage work in mound contexts at Parchman Place and presents a detailed analysis of mound stratigraphy in Mounds A and E. The results of stratigraphic analyses reveal a complicated social history of mound building at the site that played out over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries and alternately emphasized social hierarchy on the one hand and heterarchical values related to balance and autonomy on the other. A number of typical and atypical mound building practices were identified, including founding events, mantle construction, building and dismantling of summit structures, veneering, truncation, and incorporation. Veneering is interpreted as a challenge to the hierarchical tendencies typically associated with mound building and Mississippian leadership in that it bundled the meaningful substances of white clay, shell, and ash. These substances, when used together, invoke ideas about wholeness and balance between different realms of the cosmos. Mound building and depositional practice were thus salient ways of negotiating community values related to status, leadership, kin group autonomy, and the Mississippian cosmos.


2019 ◽  
pp. 155541201987501
Author(s):  
Benjamin Litherland

This article offers a social history of funfairs and arcades in mid-20th-century urban England. Critiquing existing histories of games for often neglecting players and the specific locales in which games are played, it draws on both new cinema history and cultural studies’ conception of “radical contextualism” to outline what the article describes as a game’s ludosity. Ludosity, the article proposes, is the condition or quality of game partcipation as shaped by a range of agents, institutions, and contexts. Utilizing mass observation records, it offers a detailed analysis of the ways in which social interactions influenced ludic experiences of pinball tables and crane machines and posits that games history needs to center players in order to fully conceptualize games in history.


Africa ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 426-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Arens

Opening ParagraphDefinitional questions, such as ‘Who are the Waswahili’, posed by Eastman (1971) in this journal, appear to have been of little interest in the past, as many social anthropologists either ignored the problem or assumed that the answers were self-evident. However, those who have confronted this task have shown that simplicity and self-evidence is rarely a characteristic feature of the inquiry. Even classic ethnographic cases of supposed culturally homogeneous and distinct tribal groups are at present being re-examined in light of the renewed interest in this topic (cf. Helm, 1968). Whether or not the Nuer are the Dinka, or vice versa, it has been minimally established that such questions are legitimate and even fruitful in sharpening our analytical approach to subject populations.


1971 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil L. Kunze

It is the purpose of this essay to rescue the Henrician Poor Law of 1536 from its relative obscurity by examining the statute as the beginning of a new legislative era in English economic and social history. Although the non-exist ence of House of Commons Journals for this period prevents a detailed study of the making and makers of the Henrician poor law legislation, documents hitherto neglected, exist for a comparative study of Tudor poor law policy. Whether dealing with the nineteenth-century corn law question or with the sixteenth-century poor law policy, few historians give sufficient time and attention to a detailed analysis of the actual statutes of the realm.Historians have ignored the Henrician statutes and usually begin their discussions of English poor relief by describing and interpreting the famous Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601. If mentioned at all, the Henrician legislation is presented as an ineffective attempt to solve the problem of poverty. Often this legislation is the subject of unfavorable generalizations:The social legislation of Henry's Parliaments was not only scant but brutal and demoralizing in that it reflected a puritanical callousness in assessing poverty as the just desert of sloth and evildoing. … Thus Elizabeth inherited the problem of widespread poverty with her crown; and her legislative program was immediate, massive, and positive.


Africa ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond F. Betts

Opening ParagraphWhile the social history of Dakar, Senegal, exhibits many of the characteristics common to most Eurafrican cities on the West coast, the rather abrupt manner in which the policy of residential segregation replaced the earlier pattern of co-existence, if not integration, of the African and European populations merits particular attention. The establishment of the Medina—the ‘native quarter’, to employ the colonial idiom of the day—was the most decisive and significant action taken by the French authorities in the history of the city. Yet this decision resulted from no carefully considered change in administrative policy, which had been somewhat laissez-faire in residential matters, but rather was hastily urged after the outbreak of a severe epidemic of bubonic plague in 1914. What began medically was to become, however, a major social and urban problem.


2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
Leslie R. Fyffe ◽  
William W. Gardiner

Robert Albert Stuart, the High Sheriff of Charlotte County, deserves credit for establishing the black granite monument industry in New Brunswick. In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, he opened three quarries in mafic plutonic rocks in the vicinity of the Chickahominy Mountain, north of St. Andrews: the Bocabec black granite quarry (1893), the Steen Lake black granite quarry (1895), and the Glenelg porphyry quarry (1906). Much of the information in brief articles in local newspapers lacks sufficient detail to gain a full understanding of the historical development of these quarries. To obtain a clearer timeline for production of stone from the quarries, the rock type in each was examined and compared to black granite monuments in nearby cemeteries known to be sourced from these specific quarries. Previous investigations did not entirely rule out the possibility that the Stuart quarries may have been a source for the headstones placed in the Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to mark the graves of some of those who were lost when the Titanic sank in 1912. Our detailed analysis of rock textures and production histories leads us to conclude that none of the Stuart quarries could have been a source for the Titanic headstones and supports the previous assessment that they came from Charles Hanson quarry.


Author(s):  
J. M. Cowley

Recently a number of authors have reported detail in dark-field images obtained from diffuse-scattering regions of electron diffraction patterns. Bright spots in images from short-range order diffuse peaks of disordered binary alloys have been interpreted as evidence for the existence of microdomains of ordered lattice or of segragated clusters of one component. Spotty contrast in dark field images of near-amorphous materials has been interpreted as evidence for the existense of microcrystals. Without a careful analysis of the imaging conditions such conclusions may be invalid. Usually the conditions of the experiment have not been specified in sufficient detail to allow evaluation of the conclusions.Elementary considerations show that even for a completely random arrangement of atoms the statistical fluctuations of density will give a spotty contrast with spots of minimum diameter determined by the dark field aperture size and other factors influencing the minimum resolvable distance under darkfield imaging conditions, including fluctuations and drift over long exposure times (resolution usually 10Å or more).


Author(s):  
Billy Irwin

Abstract Purpose: This article discusses impaired prosody production subsequent to traumatic brain injury (TBI). Prosody may affect naturalness and intelligibility of speech significantly, often for the long term, and TBI may result in a variety of impairments. Method: Intonation, rate, and stress production are discussed in terms of the perceptual, physiological, and acoustic characteristics associated with TBI. Results and Conclusions: All aspects of prosodic production are susceptible to the effects of damage resulting from TBI. There are commonly associated prosodic impairments; however, individual variations in specific aspects of prosody require detailed analysis.


2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 5-7
Author(s):  
Lee Ensalada

Abstract Illness behavior refers to the ways in which symptoms are perceived, understood, acted upon, and communicated and include facial grimacing, holding or supporting the affected body part, limping, using a cane, and stooping while walking. Illness behavior can be unconscious or conscious: In the former, the person is unaware of the mental processes and content that are significant in determining behavior; conscious illness behavior may be voluntary and conscious (the two are not necessarily associated). The first broad category of inappropriate illness behavior is defensiveness, which is characterized by denial or minimization of symptoms. The second category includes somatoform disorders, factitious disorders, and malingering and is characterized by exaggerating, fabricating, or denying symptoms; minimizing capabilities or positive traits; or misattributing actual deficits to a false cause. Evaluators can detect the presence of inappropriate illness behaviors based on evidence of consistency in the history or examination; the likelihood that the reported symptoms make medical sense and fit a reasonable disease pattern; understanding of the patient's current situation, personal and social history, and emotional predispositions; emotional reactions to symptoms; evaluation of nonphysiological findings; results obtained using standardized test instruments; and tests of dissimulation, such as symptom validity testing. Unsupported and insupportable conclusions regarding inappropriate illness behavior represent substandard practice in view of the importance of these conclusions for the assessment of impairment or disability.


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