scholarly journals "Let Fair Weather Bring Me Home: A Maltese Story" // "Deja que el buen tiempo me traiga a casa: una historia de Malta"

Author(s):  
Oliver Friggieri

Let Fair Weather Bring Me Home: A Maltese Story (Excerpt from unpublished novel)Life in itself largely depends on one’s personal relationship with nature. Humankind develops as it discovers new modes of relating more efficiently with whatever surrounds it. Thus both the individual and the social aspects of such a condition greatly  depend on each other. Let Fair Weather Bring Me Home is a Maltese novel which strives to portray such a bond in terms of what it entails to live in a traditional village far removed from the center of the country where nature had to succumb to a great extent to the dictates of culture, and mainly to technology. The descriptive element of the novel, as evinced in this excerpt, is meant not only to construct a context within which the villagers live, but also to suggest a sharp contrast with the modern city, impersonal, overcrowded, noisy and inevitably distant from spaces which are considered to be still undeveloped, namely still left in their primeval state. The depiction of such a way of life in such a village, inspired by an environment typical of Southern Europe, may seem to be simply an evocation of the past, as it originally is, but it also recognizes the fact that such a relationship with nature still survives in various parts of various countries. The essential message of the excerpt is that modern ecological considerations are necessarily the expression of  humanity’s need to rediscover nature and to return to where it once belonged.                   

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.K.M. Aminur Rashid

Being a postcolonial narrative, Things Fall Apart experiences a wide critical acclaim. From the pen of Chinua Achebe, the Igbo cultural complexity has come into being a theme that opens up a historical account of the clash of two cultures. Okonkwo, a very well-known public figure in his community falls under the threat of a new culture brought by the white missionaries preaching the gospels of the Christianity. After the arrival of the Christian culture, the first collision that takes place is the division at the individual, and then at the societal levels. When a number of the Igbo people, including Okonkwo’s son, change their religion, it creates chaos and confusions throughout the community. Although the Igbo people have a well-established way of life, the Europeans do not understand. That is why they show no respect to the cultural practices of the Igbo people. What Achebe delivers in the novel is that Africans are not savages and their societies are not mindless. The things fall apart because Okonkwo fails at the end to take his people back to the culture they all shared once. The sentiments the whites show to the blacks regarding the Christianity clearly recap the slave treatment the blacks were used to receive from the whites in the past. Achebe shows that the picture of the Africans portrayed in literature and histories are not real, but the picture was seen through the eyes of the Europeans. Consequently, Okonkwo hangs himself when he finds his established rules and orders are completely exiled by his own people and when he sees Igbo looses its honor by falling apart.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 275
Author(s):  
Seprianus Ensen

Abstract Socio-cultural Reflection in Faisal Oddang’s Novel Puya ke Puya. This study describes the individual and socio-cultural aspects of the Toraja tribe, as reflected in the novel Puya ke Puya. This is qualitative research using the approach of the sociology of literature. This research's object is a novel entitled "Puya ke Puya," written by Faisal Odang. The focus of this research is the socio-cultural aspects of the Toraja tribe. This research's data are in the form of words, sentences, and discourses in the novel. This research combines the sociology of literature and anthropology of literature. Through these two approaches, the researcher describes the socio-cultural aspects of the community of Toraja. Data that have been collected were analyzed using a data analysis technique model developed by Talcott Parson.The social aspects of the Toraja tribe in the novel include economic systems such as livelihoods, government systems, and social community systems such as social strata. Meanwhile, the cultural aspects of the Toraja culture include belief systems, myths, and culture. Then the individual aspect consists of the individual aspect by reviewing the characters in the novel. The results of data analysis show that the social and cultural aspects of Toraja in Puya ke Puya related to the dominant livelihood system are agriculture and livestock; The two sectors have a major influence on the social and cultural life of the Toraja people. Then in terms of governance, the Toraja community has a customary community led by Pennuluan; and the last is the caste system in Toraja, which is composed of four castes, which are the basis of all the implementation of cultural life in Toraja. The next portrait concerning cultural aspects is a belief system called Aluk Todolo. The Aluk Tadolo belief system is the foundation of Toraja's culture, such as the two major rituals, namely the Rambu Tuka "or happiness ceremony and the Rambu Solo" as a mourning ceremony. The last one is that the novel shows the individual aspects of Toraja's community, which are generally still bound by culture and society. Key words: social aspects, cultural aspects, Toraja tribe, novels Abstrak Refleksi Sosial Budaya Suku Toraja dalam Novel Puya ke Puya Karya Faisal Oddang. Penelitian ini akan dipaparkan mengenai aspek sosial, aspek budaya dan aspek individu suku Toraja yang terdapat dalam novel Puya ke Puya. Penelitian ini berupa penelitian kualitatif dengan menggunakan pendekatan sosiologi sastra, adapun objek penelitian ini adalah novel yang berjudul “Puya ke Puya” karya Faisal Odang dengan fokus penelitian ini adalah aspek sosial budaya suku Toraja. Data dan sumber data yang dijadikan sebagai Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra dan Pembelajarannya Vol 11, No 2, Oktober 2021 ISSN 2089-0117 (Print) Page 275 – 285 ISSN 2580-5932 (Online) 276 ǀ Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra dan Pembelajarannya objek penelitian ini adalah data yang berupa kata, kalimat, dan wacana yang ada di dalam novel Puya ke Puya karya Faisal Oddang. Penelitian ini memadukan telaah sosiologi sastra dan antropologi sastra. Dengan penggabungan pendekatan tersebut diperoleh deskripsi data aspek sosial budaya masyarakat Toraja. Data-data yang diperoleh dianilisis dengan menggunkan model teknik analisis data yang dikembangkan oleh Tallcot Parson. Aspek sosial suku Toraja yang terdapat dalam novel Puya ke Puya karya Faisal Oddang meliputi sistem ekonomi seperti mata pencarian, sistem pemerintahan dan sistem komunitas kemasyarakatan seperti strata sosial. sementara itu untuk Aspek budaya budaya suku Toraja meliputi sistem kepercayaan, mitos, kebudayaan. Kemudian aspek individu menguraikan aspek individu dengan meninjau tokoh dalam novel. Dari hasil analisis data, diperoleh hasil bahwa dalam aspek sosial budaya di Toraja dalam novel Puya ke Puya menunjukkan bahwa sistem mata pencarian yang dominan adalah dari sektor pertanian dan peternakan, sebab kedua sektor tersebut berpengaruh besar dalam kehidupan sosial dan budaya masyarakat Toraja, kemudian dari segi pemerintahan masyarkat Toraja mempunyai komunitas adat yang dipimpin oleh Pennuluan, dan yang terakhir adalah sistem kasta di Toraja tersusun atas empat kasta yang menjadi dasar dari segala pelaksanaan kehidupan berbudaya di Toraja. Gambaran selajutnya adalah dari segi aspek budaya yang menunjukkan bahwa di Toraja terdapat sistem kepercayaan yang disebut Aluk Todolo yang merupakan landasan dari kebudayaan yang ada di Toraja, seperti dua ritual besar yakni Rambu Tuka’ atau upacara kegembiraan dan Rambu solo’ sebagai upacara duka cita. Dan yang terakhir bahwa dalam novel tersebut menujukkan mengenai aspek individu masyarakat suku Toraja yang pada umumnya masih terikat oleh budaya dan sosial. Kata-kata kunci: aspek sosial, aspek budaya, suku Toraja, novel


Author(s):  
Ketil Slagstad

AbstractThis article analyzes how trans health was negotiated on the margins of psychiatry from the late 1970s and early 1980s. In this period, a new model of medical transition was established for trans people in Norway. Psychiatrists and other medical doctors as well as psychologists and social workers with a special interest and training in social medicine created a new diagnostic and therapeutic regime in which the social aspects of transitioning took center stage. The article situates this regime in a long Norwegian tradition of social medicine, including the important political role of social medicine in the creation of the postwar welfare state and its scope of addressing and changing the societal structures involved in disease. By using archival material, medical records and oral history interviews with former patients and health professionals, I demonstrate how social aspects not only underpinned diagnostic evaluations but were an integral component of the entire therapeutic regime. Sex reassignment became an integrative way of imagining and practicing psychiatry as social medicine. The article specifically unpacks the social element of these diagnostic and therapeutic approaches in trans medicine. Because the locus of intervention and treatment remained the individual, an approach with subversive potential ended up reproducing the norms that caused illness in the first place: “the social” became a conformist tool to help the patient integrate, adjust to and transform the pathology-producing forces of society.


1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-146
Author(s):  
Artemis Leontis

Reflection on the history of the novel usually begins with consideration of the social, political, and economic transformations within society that favored the “rise” of a new type of narrative. This remains true even with the numerous and important studies appearing during the past ten years, which relate the novel to an everbroadening spectrum of ideological issues—gender, class, race, and, most recently, nationalism. Yet a history of the genre might reflect not just on the novel’s national, but also its transnational, trajectory, its spread across the globe, away from its original points of emergence. Such a history would take into account the expansion of western markets—the growing exportation of goods and ideas, as well as of social, political, and cultural forms from the West—that promoted the novel’s importation by nonwestern societies. Furthermore, it could lead one to examine the very interesting inverse relationship between two kinds of migration, both of which are tied to the First World’s uneven “development” of the Third. In a world system that draws out natural resources in exchange for technologically mediated goods, the emigration of laborers and intellectuals from peripheral societies to the centers of power of the West and the immigration of a western literary genre into these same societies must be viewed as related phenomena.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Safy Mahmoud ◽  
Hoda Mitkees

Malaysia has adopted several developmental plans since 1969 starting with the New Economic Policy (NEP), passing by the National Development Plan (NDP) and ending with the Vision 2020 adopted in 1991 under the rule of Mahathir Mohammed (1981-2003), whereby Malaysia has aimed to become a developed country by 2020. Looking for the future, Malaysia 2020 should build upon the older developmental plans; however there are some new elements that need to be considered if Malaysia is to continue on its successful developmental path. This paper aims at focusing on the issues that still need to be considered in Vision 2020 from an outsider point of view. This paper addresses the questions of what Malaysia’s economic plans adopted in the past which were able to achieve high economic growth rates while preserving at the same time the social aspects. And the paper focuses on trade policy in Malaysia under Mahathir rule, identifying how was it shaped and how likely it will continue in 2020. The paper identifies the challenges likely to be faced by Malaysia in the coming period and how such issues should be tackled in Vision 2020.


Literator ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlies Taljard

This article aims to illustrate how Hans du Plessis, in his novel Die pad na Skuilhoek [The path to Skuilhoek] (a place of shelter), subverts the way in which history had been presented in historical novels in the past by addressing social issues that contemporary readers find relevant. The first part of the article deals with the social codes that shape the identities of the main characters and how these identities are relevant in terms of the social framework within which the novel is received. In the second place the focus will shift towards Du Plessis’s representation of cultural and national identities. The question: ‘Who were the Afrikaners at the time of the Great Trek?’ will be answered with reference to these identities. In conclusion it will be pointed out how Du Plessis avoids dated practices of historical interpretation by choosing ecocrticism as the ideological framework for his novel and is, in this way, constructing a new social myth about the Great Trek.


Axon ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Camia

This paper offers an overview of an ongoing research project on priesthoods in Roman Athens, whose first purpose is to realise a prosopography of the Athenian cult personnel during the Roman imperial period (c. 27 BC-267 AD). Despite a growing interest in the last years on the social aspects of Greek (and Roman) religion and specifically on priesthoods as is also shown by the publication of several collective volumes on the latter subject, systematic investigations on the cult personnel of single poleis are still lacking. As regards Athens, in particular, while there are studies on specific priesthoods such as the Eleusinian priesthoods or the priests of Asklepios, to date there is no comprehensive investigation on the Athenian cult personnel. Furthermore, while different aspects connected with priesthood have been studied for Classical and Hellenistic Athens, the Roman imperial period has been left largely ‘in the shadows’. Having this in mind, I have begun a research on Athenian cult personnel during the Roman imperial period. Since any such investigation must be based on a systematic collection of the epigraphic evidence on the individual holders of the different priesthoods, my first aim is to realise a prosopography of all religious functionaries, both male and female, of Athenian cults (that is to say of cults performed in Athens) from Augustus up to the 3rd c. AD (ca. AD 267). The prosopography is to be followed in due time by a synthesis on the religious, social, and cultural aspects of priesthood in Roman Athens. The prosopographic catalogue, collecting the relevant epigraphic and literary testimonies, will provide for each priest the main data (name, chronology, status, other charges, bibliography) and a thorough commentary on his family relations and on his priestly activity and public career.


2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-108
Author(s):  
Deborah V. Dolan

Practitioners of psychiatry and psychology have played an important role in the sterilization of tens of thousands of Americans throughout the past century. This article examines a number of questions relating to the origin and continuation of sterilization as a treatment and preventive. What social and medical beliefs lead to the use of sterilization as a treatment and preventive for both the individual and society? What ills are being treated and prevented? Who becomes a candidate for sterilization? To what degree are ethical concerns raised, and what is the response to these concerns? And finally, Who is the client—the individual, potential children, or society?—and how do practitioners distinguish the interest of the individuals from that of their potential children and society?


PMLA ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Dorsinville

Jack of Newbury's surface realism in characters, setting, and speech has led to an underestimation of its historical and literary value. A close reading reveals the consistent use of the Greco-Roman ethical-political conception of the state, epitomized in the figure of the ruler. Deloney shows his familiarity with this tradition, probably known to him through Erasmus and Sidney, in the three controlling motifs of his novel. First, the middle class of weavers, represented in Jack's household and dramatized in allegories and symbols, is portrayed as a self-sufficient state where peace and harmony reign. Second, this state is shown to be such because of the nature of its ruler, Jack, a benevolent, generous, wise man. Third, the middle-class way of life—hard work, thriftiness, material gains—serves as princely education; accordingly, Jack, from a menial position, goes on to become ruler of the state. Jack of Newbury, as a systematical reordering of an aristocratic tradition, represents the world view of the emergent middle class; and as such, a momentous shift in the social temper of the Renaissance and an important step in the evolution of the novel.


PMLA ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 448-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert D. Hutter

A Tale of Two Cities, the French Revolution becomes a metaphor for the conflicts between generations and between classes that preoccupied Dickens throughout his career. Dickens uses a double plot and divided characters to express these conflicts; his exaggerated use of “splitting”—which the essay defines psychoanalytically—sometimes makes A Tale of Two Cities‘ language and structure appear strained and humorless. We need to locate A Tale of Two Cities within a framework of nineteenth-century attitudes toward revolution and generational conflict by using a combination of critical methods—literary, historical, psychoanalytic. This essay relates the reader's experience to the structure of the text; and it derives from Dickens’ language, characterization, and construction a critical model that describes the individual reader's experience while explaining some of the contradictory assessments of the novel over the past hundred years.


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