scholarly journals Social Change and Modernity: Identity Crisis of the Bonda Tribe in Pratibha Ray’s The Primal Land

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-46
Author(s):  
S. Chitra ◽  
Sangay Tenzin
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Tribal Identity ◽  
Ethnic Tension ◽  
History Of ◽  
Development Plans

Pratibha Ray’s anthropological novel The Primal Land (1993) documents the history of India’s endangered Bonda tribe dwelling in the secluded mountains of Koraput, Odisha. Not free from the interferences of the outside world, the Bondas face the threat of losing their tribal identity. This complicated position and their struggle between existence and identity, an intersubjective reality, was triggered by oppressive internal and external surroundings due to the pressures of modernity. The discussion focuses on their inherent cultural practices causingconstant internal feuds and the government’s intrusion with development plans leading to exploitation, cultural dilution, and socio-ethnic tension. Thus the paper decodes the difficulties of the Bondas and concludes that their existence cannot be ensured without the loss of primal identity.

The Beginnings of Islam in Afghanistan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arezou Azad
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Political System ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
History Of ◽  
Initial Conversion ◽  
The Way

Covering the period from 709 to 871, this chapter traces the initial conversion of Afghanistan from Zoroastrianism and Buddhism to Islam. Highlighting the differential developments in four regions of Afghanistan, it discusses the very earliest history of Afghan Islam both as a religion and as a political system in the form of a caliphate.  The chapter draws on under-utilized sources, such as fourth to eighth century Bactrian documents from Tukharistan and medieval Arabic and Persian histories of Balkh, Herat and Sistan. In so doing, it offers a paradigm shift in the way early Islam is understood by arguing that it did not arrive in Afghanistan as a finished product, but instead grew out of Afghanistan’s multi-religious context. Through fusions with Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, early Abrahamic traditions, and local cult practices, the Islam that resulted was less an Arab Islam that was imported wholesale than a patchwork of various cultural practices.

The History of the Judahite Bench Tomb

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Insight Into

The history of the Judahite bench tomb provides important insight into the meaning of mortuary practices, and by extension, death in the Hebrew Bible. The bench tomb appeared in Judah during Iron Age II. Although it included certain burial features that appear earlier in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, such as burial benches, and the use of caves for extramural burials, the Judahite bench tomb uniquely incorporated these features into a specific plan that emulated domestic structures and facilitated multigenerational burials. During the seventh century, and continuing into the sixth, the bench tombs become popular in Jerusalem. The history of this type of burial shows a gradual development of cultural practices that were meant to control death and contain the dead. It is possible to observe within these cultural practices the tomb as a means of constructing identity for both the dead and the living.

Governing the Rainforest

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve Z. Bratman
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Brazilian Amazon ◽  
Conservation Areas ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Hydroelectric Dam ◽  
History Of ◽  
Development Plans ◽  
Extractive Reserves ◽  
Road Paving

Sustainable development is among the foremost ideas that guide societal aspirations around the world. This book interrogates the concept through a critical lens, examining both its history and the trajectory of its manifestations in the Brazilian Amazon. The book argues that sustainable development is a concept that is better understood as involving embroilments and ongoing processes of contestation rather than a single end goal. The research offers historical analysis of Amazonian development from the colonial era into the discourse and praxis of sustainable development in contemporary times, and then illustrates the tensions of sustainable development plans that are experienced by people living in the areas geographically the closest to where those plans are being implemented. The history of the Brazilian Amazon is introduced to readers through focused discussions on the tensions between making grand plans for the region and the everyday practices and experiences of sustainable development, which involve considerably more muddling. Case studies explore agrarian reform initiatives that occur alongside road paving projects, the creation of extractive reserves and conservation areas that follow in the wake of assassinations, and the construction of a massive hydroelectric dam. While Amazonian sustainable development is a widely-accepted imperative, the research presented here shows how land use and infrastructure plans conducted in the name of sustainable development often perpetuate and reinforce economic and political inequalities.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Whyman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literate Society

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.

The History of ‘the Reading Public’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Collini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Reading Matter ◽  
History Of ◽  
Victorian Periodicals

This chapter argues that accounts of ‘the reading public’ are always fundamentally historical, usually involving stories of ‘growth’ or ‘decline’. It examines Q. D. Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public, which builds a relentlessly pessimistic critique of the debased standards of the present out of a highly selective account of literature and its publics since the Elizabethan period. It goes on to exhibit the complicated analysis of the role of previous publics in F. R. Leavis’s revisionist literary history, including his ambivalent admiration for the great Victorian periodicals. And it shows how Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy carries an almost buried interpretation of social change from the nineteenth century onwards, constantly contrasting the vibrant and healthy forms of entertainment built up in old working-class communities with the slick, commercialized reading matter introduced by post-1945 prosperity.

Culture and Contracts: The Historical Legacy of Forced Labour

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Blouin
Keyword(s):  
Family History ◽  
Historical Legacy ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
Ethnic Tension ◽  
History Of ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Divide And Rule

Abstract Can divide-and-rule colonial policy be responsible for contemporary ethnic tension? This paper empirically investigates the role of a divisive and extractive colonial policy on Hutu-Tutsi discord in Rwanda and Burundi. It shows that Hutu with a family history of subjugation to forced labour by Tutsi chiefs are less trusting of Tutsi today and less willing to partner with Tutsi for a cooperative task. This may have implications for agriculture insurance agreements since Hutu are more agrarian and Tutsi are more pastoral. Indeed, Hutu with a forced labour family history make fewer inter-household insurance agreements and are more likely to experience default.

Metal burial: Understanding caching behaviour and contact material culture in Australia's NE Kimberley

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-52
Author(s):  
Sam Harper ◽  
Ian Waina ◽  
Ambrose Chalarimeri ◽  
Sven Ouzman ◽  
Martin Porr ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Contact Material ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Burials

This paper explores identity and the recursive impacts of cross-cultural colonial encounters on individuals, cultural materials, and cultural practices in 20th-century northern Australia. We focus on an assemblage of cached metal objects and associated cultural materials that embody both Aboriginal tradition and innovation. These cultural materials were wrapped in paperbark and placed within a ring of stones, a bundling practice also seen in human burials in this region. This ‘cache' is located in close proximity to rockshelters with rich, superimposed Aboriginal rock art compositions. However, the cache shelter has no visible art, despite available wall space. The site shows the utilisation of metal objects as new raw materials that use traditional techniques to manufacture a ground edge metal axe and to sharpen metal rods into spears. We contextualise these objects and their hypothesised owner(s) within narratives of invasion/contact and the ensuing pastoral history of this region. Assemblage theory affords us an appropriate theoretical lens through which to bring people, places, objects, and time into conversation.

Rethinking Racial, Ethnoracial, and Imperial Categories: Key Concepts in Comparative Race Studies in the History of Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-669
Author(s):  
Kim Cary Warren
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Native American ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Educational Leaders ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
Native American Tribes ◽  
American Teacher ◽  
American Educator

While researching racially segregated education, I came across speeches delivered in the 1940s by two educational leaders—one a black man and the other a Native American man. G. B. Buster, a longtime African American teacher, implored his African American listeners to work with white Americans on enforcing equal rights for all. A few years before Buster delivered his speech, Henry Roe Cloud (Winnebago), a Native American educator, was more critical of white Americans, specifically the federal government, which he blamed for destroying American Indian cultures. At the same time, Roe Cloud praised more recent federal efforts to preserve cultural practices, study traditions before they completely disappeared, and encourage self-government among Native American tribes.

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