scholarly journals Monsters, Disaster, and Organic Balance: Digesting History Through Oral Traditions

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-81
Author(s):  
Thierry Veyrié

Abstract This paper examines “Coyote, Whirlwind, and Ravine,” a long tale told in the Northern Paiute language by McDermitt storyteller Pete Snapp and recorded by folklorist Sven Liljeblad in the early 1960’s. It weaves in traditional episodes of western Numic folklore to narrate the history of the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone community as witnessed by an elder born shortly after the beginning of the colonization of this area of the Northwestern Great Basin in the western United States. This paper explores how the bodies of certain characters who emanate from landscape, mainly monsters, are tools for the narrative expression of social change, for the telling of history, and the expression of Indigenous spiritual frameworks. It places the experience of the Indigenous social body, embodied by Coyote, through the grinds of the ultra-material Ravine and confronts it to ethereal nefarious powers. Poetics of materiality applied to the body of Coyote operate a structural transformation. Mythical turmoil expresses social experiences and change in the colonial context, but also makes manifest the transformation of the social body that result in the contemporary form of the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone community.

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-326
Author(s):  
Stefan Helmreich

This article offers a history of the wave metaphor in social theory, examining how waves became rhetorical forms through which to think about the shape of social change. The wave analytic—“waves of democratization,” “waves of immigration,” “waves of resistance”—wavers between high theory and popular model, between objectivist sociological explanation and hand-waving sociobabble, between vanguardist predictions of social revolution and conservative prognoses of political inevitability, between accountings of formal change and claims about material transubstantiation. The article examines usages in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, arguing that techniques of inscription—graphical, numerical, diagrammatic—have produced formal claims about rising and falling tendencies in the social body. It argues, too, that in such deployments, waves are either (1) overpowering forces of social structuration or (2) signs of the animating effects of world-transforming collective social agencies. The “wave” thus generates questions—and uncertainties—about the relation of structure to agency.


GIS Business ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 202-206
Author(s):  
SAJITHA M

Food is one of the main requirements of human being. It is flattering for the preservation of wellbeing and nourishment of the body.  The food of a society exposes its custom, prosperity, status, habits as well as it help to develop a culture. Food is one of the most important social indicators of a society. History of food carries a dynamic character in the socio- economic, political, and cultural realm of a society. The food is one of the obligatory components in our daily life. It occupied an obvious atmosphere for the augmentation of healthy life and anticipation against the diseases.  The food also shows a significant character in establishing cultural distinctiveness, and it reflects who we are. Food also reflected as the symbol of individuality, generosity, social status and religious believes etc in a civilized society. Food is not a discriminating aspect. It is the part of a culture, habits, addiction, and identity of a civilization.Food plays a symbolic role in the social activities the world over. It’s a universal sign of hospitality.[1]


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Redacción CEIICH

<p class="p1">The third number of <span class="s1"><strong>INTER</strong></span><span class="s2"><strong>disciplina </strong></span>underscores this generic reference of <em>Bodies </em>as an approach to a key issue in the understanding of social reality from a humanistic perspective, and to understand, from the social point of view, the contributions of the research in philosophy of the body, cultural history of the anatomy, as well as the approximations queer, feminist theories and the psychoanalytical, and literary studies.</p>


Author(s):  
Susan E. Whyman

The introduction shows the convergence and intertwining of the Industrial Revolution and the provincial Enlightenment. At the centre of this industrial universe lay Birmingham; and at its centre was Hutton. England’s second city is described in the mid-eighteenth century, and Hutton is used as a lens to explore the book’s themes: the importance of a literate society shared by non-elites; the social category of ‘rough diamonds’; how individuals responded to economic change; political participation in industrial towns; shifts in the modes of authorship; and an analysis of social change. The strategy of using microhistory, biography, and the history of the book is discussed, and exciting new sources are introduced. The discovery that self-education allowed unschooled people to participate in literate society renders visible people who were assumed to be illiterate. This suggests that eighteenth-century literacy was greater than statistics based on formal schooling indicate.


Radiocarbon ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 1273-1322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D McCoy

Building directly upon a previous summary of 45 dates (Weisler 1989), this paper presents radiocarbon age determinations for 175 samples from archaeological and natural contexts and a revised culture history of Moloka'i Island, Hawai'i (cal AD 800 and 1795). Significant culture historical trends include an early settlement pattern apparently generalized with respect to ecozone; a remarkably long initial period of marine and endemic bird exploitation; strong material evidence for the concurrent intensification of subsistence economies, population increase, and the structuring of the social landscape through ritual; and links between island politics as described in oral traditions and site construction. Moreover, these results support a late chronology for the colonization of Hawai'i and demonstrate the value of spatial technology for building large chronometric databases.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 72
Author(s):  
LG Saraswati Putri

This research and community engagement investigates an ancient Balinese ritual known as Sang Hyang Dedari. The dance is interrelated to an agricultural aspect of the traditional Balinese living. As the Balinese struggle to maintain their values from the constant threat of modernization and industrialization, this dance reveals the powerful impact of creating an awareness of socio-ecological equilibrium. The effort made by the villagers of Geriana Kauh, Karangasem, displays how local community rebuilds its environment based on their traditional ecological value. Analyzing Sang Hyang Dedari dance through phenomenological approach, thus, it can be discovered how the ritual sustains the social relations. The bodies of the dancers are the center of an elaborate nexus between people, nature and god. To understand how the dualism of sacred and profane bodies, this research utilizes the body theory by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The importance of phenomenology as a theory relates to the understanding on how the ritual works as an event in its totality. Understanding the unity between the presence of the divine, nature and human. The output of this research and community engagement is a museum built in cooperation between University of Indonesia with the villagers of Geriana Kauh, Karangasem. As the performance and knowledge about Sang Hyang Dedari appeared to be scarce, this museum is a form of collaboration to retrace the history of Sang Hyang Dedari ritual, in an attempt to conserve the ancient knowledge.


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