History and Consolation: Royal Yorùbá Bards Comment on Their Craft

1992 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 263-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. F. de Moraes Farias

As court musicians and specialists of the past, the Arókin of Òyó have been used as a source for Yorùbâ history, but their own views on the uses of historical information have not been investigated. For the first time a sample of these views is published here. It comes from an interview with a group of Arókin, in which they offered descriptions and other representations of the nature of their expertise. This evidence sheds light on how the Arókin have traditionally deployed historical precedent and accounted for historical innovation. They ground the resort to the past primarily on the social need to offer consolation (itùnû) to the ruler, i.e., to cool down his personal grief. It is from this that they derive the need to relate and assimilate events, so as to explain the meaning (itumòo) of present happenings. They emphasize, above the supplying of etiology and legitimation, the restoration of equanimity against grief and anger.Arókin tradition compares the overwhelming power of song to the overwhelming power of grief. It stresses raw personal emotion as a cultural force, both as a source of disruption and as a trigger for efforts to make sense of the world with the help of the past, or with the help of newly-imported frames of explanation. The management of the king's (but also, in exceptional circumstances, of the people's) emotions requires history, and may require religious innovation. The king's grief at the loss of his children is liable to have violent, and culturally far-reaching, consequences. Despite obvious differences, this has significant points of contact with Rosaldo's account of the rage of the bereaved and “the cultural force of emotions” in connection with the Ilongot of northern Luzon, in the Philippines.


Author(s):  
Constance Classen

From the softest caress to the harshest blow, touch lies at the heart of our experience of the world. Now, for the first time, this deepest of senses is the subject of an extensive historical exploration. This book fleshes out our understanding of the past with explorations of lived experiences of embodiment from the Middle Ages to modernity. This approach to history makes it possible to foreground the tactile foundations of Western culture—the ways in which feelings shaped society. This book explores a variety of tactile realms; including the feel of the medieval city; the tactile appeal of relics; the social histories of pain, pleasure, and affection; the bonds of touch between humans and animals; the strenuous excitement of sports such as wrestling and jousting; and the sensuous attractions of consumer culture. The book delves into a range of vital issues, from the uses—and prohibitions—of touch in social interaction to the disciplining of the body by the modern state, from the changing feel of the urban landscape to the technologization of touch in modernity. Through poignant descriptions of the healing power of a medieval king's hand or the grueling conditions of a nineteenth-century prison, we find that history, far from being a dry and lifeless subject, touches us to the quick.



Author(s):  
Nicole Curato

Misery rarely features in conversations about democracy. And yet, in the past decades, global audiences are increasingly confronted with spectacles of human pain. The world is more stressed, worried, and sad today than we have ever seen it, a Gallup poll finds. Does democracy stand a chance in a time of widespread suffering? Drawing on three years of field research among communities affected by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, this book offers ethnographic portraits of how collective suffering, trauma, and dispossession enlivens democratic action. It argues that emotional forms of communication create publics that assert voice and visibility at a time when attention is the scarcest resource, whilst also creating hierarchies of misery among suffering communities. Democracy in a Time of Misery investigates the ethical and political value of democracy in the most trying of times and reimagines how the virtues of deliberative practice can be valued in the context of widespread suffering.



1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.



Politeja ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2(65)) ◽  
pp. 189-204
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Marcol

The Role of Language in Releasing from Inherited Traumas. Negotiations of the Social Position of the Silesian Minority in Serbian Banat The aim of the paper is to show the dependence between language, collective memory (also post-memory) and sense of identity. This issue is analysed using the example of an ethnic minority living in the village of Ostojićevo (Banat, Serbia) called ‘Toutowie.’ Their ancestors came in the 19th century from Wisła (Silesian Cieszyn, Poland); they left their homes because of great hunger and were looking for jobs in Banat. Narratives about the past contain traumatic experiences of the past generations transmitted in the Silesian dialect and constituting communicative memory. At the same time, a new Polish national identity is being constructed, supported by institutions and authorities; it carries a new image of the world and creates a new cultural memory. This new identity – shaped on the basis of national categories – leads to changes of its self-identification and gives the opportunity to raise its social position in the multi-ethnic Banat community.



Author(s):  
Ahmet Sarıtaş ◽  
Elif Esra Aydın

Today, using of the internet extended social media by individuals habitually enables both the business firms and politicians to reach their target mass at any time. In this context, internet has become a popular place recently where political communication and campaigns are realized by ensuring a new dimension to political campaigns. When we examine the posts and discussions in the social media, we can say that they are converted into open political sessions. As there are no censorship in such channels, individuals have a freedom to reach to any partial/impartial information and obtain transparent and fast feedback, and with this regard, political parties, leaders and candidates have a chance to be closer to electors. In this study, it is aimed to give information about the social media, present what medium has been used for election campaigns from the past until today and besides, by considering the effects of effective and efficient use of social media and new trends related to the internet by politicians, together with their applications in the world, to make suggestions about its situation and application in Turkey.



2021 ◽  
pp. 19-40
Author(s):  
Charles Devellennes

This chapter proposes a theory of the social contract, in the context of the gilets jaunes. This theory is detailed in the five chapters that follow. The theory proposed here is that the movement itself is best understood as a fundamental challenge to the existing social contract in France — and by extension to other social contracts throughout the world — and its history is not limited to the months of political turmoil it engendered in France or even to the past couple of years of political upheaval in the wider world, but it poses a challenge to the very future of political order. A rethinking of the social contract is necessary given this crisis, and framing the present political turmoil in philosophical terms will help shed some light on the opportunities for change that are arising, in part thanks to the movement.



A Child's Day ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
Killian Mullan

This concluding chapter surveys the key findings and issues raised in the previous chapters. This study of a child's day provides the most extensive picture currently available in the UK, and elsewhere in the world, into how children's time use has changed over the past several decades. It identifies areas of expected change as well as other areas of surprising stability. It reveals how change and stability in children's time use blend together to comprise a child's day, uncovering also the multi-layered contexts of a child's day. Aspects of children's time use, and how this may have changed, will no doubt continue to surface in public debate in connection with their well-being. While welcoming this, it is necessary to always question and seek to understand how supposed changes actually fit within a child's day, the types of days where these changes are concentrated, among whom, and to seek out evidence on how such changes relate to other activities and the social contexts of daily life.



2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Swee ◽  
Zuzana Hrdličková

Although communities around the world have been experiencing destructive events leading to loss of life and material destruction for centuries, the past hundred years have been marked by an especially heightened global interest in disasters. This development can be attributed to the rising impact of disasters on communities throughout the twentieth century and the consequent increase in awareness among the general public. Today, international and local agencies, scientists, politicians, and other actors including nongovernmental organizations across the world are working toward untangling and tackling the various chains of causality surrounding disasters. Numerous research and practitioners’ initiatives are taking place to inform and improve preparedness and response mechanisms. Recently, it has been acknowledged that more needs to be learned about the social and cultural aspects of disasters in order for these efforts to be successful (IFRC 2014).



2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 21-55
Author(s):  
Astrid Meier ◽  
Tariq Tell

Environmental history provides a perspective from which we can deepen our understanding of the past because it examines the relationships of people with their material surroundings and the effects of those relationships on the individual as well as the societal level. It is a perspective that holds particular promise for the social and political history of arid and marginal zones, as it contributes to our understanding of the reason some groups are more successful than others in coping with the same environmental stresses. Historians working on the early modern Arab East have only recently engaged with the lively field of global environmental history. After presenting a brief overview of some strands of this research, this article illustrates the potential of this approach by looking closely at a series of conflicts involving Bedouin and other power groups in the southern parts of Bilād al-Shām around the middle of the eighteenth century.



PMLA ◽  
1894 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert B. Faust ◽  
Charles Sealsfield

Of the forty-three letters of Sealsfield here presented, twenty-five appear now for the first time. The remaining eighteen have already been published, but either in abridged form, or deviating greatly from an exact reproduction of the originals. The letters altogether include: I. Twenty to Frl. Elise Meyer; II. Five to Frl. Marie Meyer; III. Eighteen to Hrn. Heinrich Erhard. The earliest of these letters is dated September 1841; the greater number, however, were written after the author was already past the prime of life. Old age naturally intensifies human weaknesses, but like the setting sun, it also illumines the horizon of the past. Thus these letters written during our author's last years, illustrate something more than the eccentricities of an old man. Sealsfield's literary and social judgments, however carelessly thrown out,—his whole personality in fact,—concern not only the few who have devoted themselves to the study of Sealsfield, or who cherish his memory, but are calculated to interest as well that larger class in both hemispheres which still represents the extinct “citizen of the world,” the cosmopolitan who had learned to look beyond the fashions of his own time and country in politics and literature. In Sealsfield's home the memory of “Oesterreich's grösster Romanendichter” has recently been revived by the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of our author's birth. It is hoped that the present publication may be not unwelcome, as following opportunely in the wake of that event. Appended to these letters will be found a synopsis of the principal events of Sealsfield's life, arranged in chronological order.



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