scholarly journals ‘WE ARE A STORY-TELLING PEOPLE’: AN EXPLORATION OF THE ORIGIN TALES IN THE ORAL NARRATIVES OF THE NAGAS AND THE KHASIS OF INDIA’S NORTH EAST

2020 ◽  
pp. 141-149
Author(s):  
Payel Dutta Chowdhury
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
Distinguishing Characteristic ◽  
Easy Task ◽  
North East ◽  
The Social ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Roman Script

In the absence of a written literature and language for ages, the oral tradition was one of the distinguishing characteristic features of the various tribes of Nagaland and Meghalaya. In the case of the Khasis of Meghalaya, “…their alphabet is of very recent history, no older than when Thomas Jones, the Welsh Presbyterian missionary, introduced the Roman script in 1842, to form the essentials of the Khasi written word.” (Nongkynrih vii) For the Nagas, even the oral dialects spoken by the different indigenous tribes are different and hence, it was not an easy task to keep the oral tradition alive amidst so much of diversity. The origin tales that find mention in the oral narratives of both the Nagas and the Khasis play an important role in the comprehension of the unique culture and tradition of both the tribes. This paper is an attempt to explore the tales related to the origin of the Nagas and the Khasis, to explore their rich oral tradition, how these tales mirror the cultural identity of these tribes which have undergone several changes in today’s time and most importantly, to read in between the lines of the tales to explore their significance vis-à-vis the social and cultural make-up.

Lord Dacre and the Politics of the Scottish Enlightenment

2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
North East ◽  
The Social ◽  
Romantic Movement ◽  
Scottish History

Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) made several iconoclastic interventions in the field of Scottish history. These earned him a notoriety in Scottish circles which, while not undeserved, has led to the reductive dismissal of Trevor-Roper's ideas, particularly his controversial interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, as the product of Scotophobia. In their indignation Scottish historians have missed the wider issues which prompted Trevor-Roper's investigation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a fascinating case study in European cultural history. Notably, Trevor-Roper used the example of Scotland to challenge Weberian-inspired notions of Puritan progressivism, arguing instead that the Arminian culture of north-east Scotland had played a disproportionate role in the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, working on the assumption that the essence of Enlightenment was its assault on clerical bigotry, Trevor-Roper sought the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment in Jacobitism, the counter-cultural alternative to post-1690 Scotland's Calvinist Kirk establishment. Though easily misconstrued as a dogmatic conservative, Trevor-Roper flirted with Marxisant sociology, not least in his account of the social underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper argued that it was the rapidity of eighteenth-century Scotland's social and economic transformation which had produced in one generation a remarkable body of political economy conceptualising social change, and in the next a romantic movement whose powers of nostalgic enchantment were felt across the breadth of Europe.

MYTHOLOGIZING YORUBA ORATURE: LOBOTO MIZING SWIVELLED PULSES OF LAUGHTER IN NIYI OSUNDARE’S WAITING LAUGHTERS AND REMI RAJI’S A HARVEST OF LAUGHTERS

Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-42
Author(s):  
Niyi Akingbe
Keyword(s):  
Seasonal Variations ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Oral Poetry ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Oral Performance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Momentary Happiness ◽  
Political Turmoil

Every literary work emerges from the particular alternatives of its time. This is ostensibly reflected in the attempted innovative renderings of these alternatives in the poetry of contemporary Nigerian poets of Yoruba extraction. Discernible in the poetry of Niyi Osundare and Remi Raji is the shaping and ordering of the linguistic appurtenances of the Yoruba orature, which themselves are sublimely rooted in the proverbial, chants, anecdotes, songs and praises derived from the Yoruba oral poetry of Ijala, Orin Agbe, Ese Ifa, Rara, folklore as well as from other elements of oral performance. This engagement with the Yoruba oral tradition significantly permeates the poetics of Niyi Osundare’s Waiting laughters and Remi Raji’s A Harvest of Laughters. In these anthologies, both Osundare and Raji traverse the cliffs and valleys of the contemporary Nigerian milieu to distil the social changes rendered in the Yoruba proverbial, as well as its chants and verbal formulae, all of which mutate from momentary happiness into an enduring anomie grounded in seasonal variations in agricultural production, ruinous political turmoil, suspense and a harvest of unresolved, mysterious deaths. The article is primarily concerned with how the African oral tradition has been harnessed by Osundare and Raji to construct an avalanche of damning, peculiarly Nigerian, socio-political upheavals (which are essentially delineated by the signification of laughter/s) and display these in relation to the country’s variegated ecology.

COMPARATIVE CHARACTERISTIC OF SEA RADIANCE COEFFICIENT SPECTRA MEASURED REMOTELY IN COASTAL WATERS OF FIVE SEAS

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Rostovtseva ◽  
Vera Rostovtseva ◽  
Igor Goncharenko ◽  
Igor Goncharenko ◽  
Dmitrii Khlebnikov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sea Water ◽  
Calibration Method ◽  
Aral Sea ◽  
Comparative Characteristic ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Water Constituents ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The Baltic

Sea radiance coefficient, defined as the ratio of the sunlight reflected by the water bulk to the sunlight illuminating the water surface, is one of the most informative optical characteristics of the seawater that can be obtained by passive remote sensing. We got the sea radiance coefficient spectra by processing the data obtained in measurements from board a moving ship. Using sea radiance coefficient optical spectra it is possible to estimate water constituents concentration and their distribution over the aquatory of interest. However, thus obtained sea radiance coefficient spectra are strongly affected by weather and measurement conditions and needs some calibration. It was shown that practically all the spectra of sea radiance coefficient have some generic peculiarities regardless of the type of sea waters. These peculiarities can be explained by the spectrum of pure sea water absorption. Taking this into account a new calibration method was developed. The measurements were carried out with the portative spectroradiometers from board a ship in the five different seas: at the north-east coast of the Black Sea, in the Gdansk Bay of the Baltic Sea, in the west part of the Aral Sea, in the Kara Sea with the Ob’ Bay and in the Philippine Sea at the coast of Taiwan. The new method of calibration was applied to the obtained spectra of the sea radiance coefficient that enabled us to get the corresponding absorption spectra and estimate the water constituents concentration in every region. The obtained concentration estimates were compared to the values obtained in water samples taken during the same measurement cycle and available data from other investigations. The revealed peculiarities of the sea radiance coefficient spectra in the aquatories under exploration were compared to the corresponding water content and some characteristic features were discussed.

scholarly journals Social constructivism in mathematics? The promise and shortcomings of Julian Cole’s institutional account

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenni Rytilä
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Mathematical Practice ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Core Idea ◽  
Social Entities ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Mathematical Reality

AbstractThe core idea of social constructivism in mathematics is that mathematical entities are social constructs that exist in virtue of social practices, similar to more familiar social entities like institutions and money. Julian C. Cole has presented an institutional version of social constructivism about mathematics based on John Searle’s theory of the construction of the social reality. In this paper, I consider what merits social constructivism has and examine how well Cole’s institutional account meets the challenge of accounting for the characteristic features of mathematics, especially objectivity and applicability. I propose that in general social constructivism shows promise as an ontology of mathematics, because the view can agree with mathematical practice and it offers a way of understanding how mathematical entities can be real without conflicting with a scientific picture of reality. However, I argue that Cole’s specific theory does not provide an adequate social constructivist account of mathematics. His institutional account fails to sufficiently explain the objectivity and applicability of mathematics, because the explanations are weakened and limited by the three-level theoretical model underlying Cole’s account of the construction of mathematical reality and by the use of the Searlean institutional framework. The shortcomings of Cole’s theory give reason to suspect that the Searlean framework is not an optimal way to defend the view that mathematical reality is socially constructed.

An historical Homeric society?

1974 ◽  
Vol 94 ◽  
pp. 114-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Snodgrass
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
The Social ◽  
One Step ◽  
Historical Origin ◽  
Strong Body

I begin with two modern texts, both as it happens printed on the first page of earlier issues of this journal, and each, I think, expressive of a strong body of opinion in Homeric scholarship, at least in the English-speaking countries, at the time of their writing. First, Miss Dorothea Gray in 1954: ‘Belief in an historical Homeric society dies hard’. Secondly, Professor Adkins in 1971: ‘I find it impossible to believe … that the bards of the oral tradition invented out of their own imaginations a society with institutions, values, beliefs and attitudes all so coherent and mutually appropriate as I believe myself to discern in the Homeric poems. This aspect of the poems is based upon some society's experience’. Miss Gray's prophecy, whether or not one shares the misgivings that it embodied, was thus soundly-based: the seventeen years between these two quotations have indeed witnessed a powerful revival of the belief that the social system portrayed in the Homeric poems, and with it such attendant features as the ethical code and the political structure, are in large measure both unitary and historical. One good reason for the vitality of this belief is the simple fact that it has been alive since Classical times. Another is that it has received support from several influential recent works: if pride of place should be given to M. I. Finley's The World of Odysseus, on whose conclusions Professor Adkins expressely says that he takes his stand, a number of others should be acknowledged also. Whereas Finley located the social system of the Odyssey most probably in the tenth and ninth centuries B.C., A. Andrewes in his book The Greeks extends this type of inference when he argues for an historical origin in the ‘migration period’ of the twelfth and eleventh centuries for the Homeric political system. As influences on the other side, one may mention T. B. L. Webster's work in isolating Mycenaean practices and features, whose divisive effect on the social pattern is apparent; while G. S. Kirk has a significantly entitled chapter in his The Songs of Homer, ‘The cultural and linguistic amalgam’ (my italics). Most recently, the early chapters in the German Archaeologia Homerica have shown a certain tendency to discern a consistent and historical pattern in the allied area of the material and technological practices of the poems. It is true that in one chapter the author is led to conclude that the metallurgical picture of the Iliad is substantially earlier than that of the Odyssey, and that the date of composition of the former poem must accordingly be very much earlier. But this is only because he is pressing the arguments for the ‘historical’ case one step further: the historical consistency of the metallurgical pictures in each of the two poems is, for him, so apparent and so precise that each can and must be given an historical setting, even if the two are separated by a long period.

Spaces of Exclusion: The Significance of Cultural Identity in the Formation of European Residential Districts in British Hong Kong, 1877–1904

10.1068/d310 ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
G Alex Bremner ◽  
David P Y Lung
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Social History ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
European Population ◽  
Capital City ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Residential District ◽  
Cultural Self

In this paper we discuss the role and significance of European cultural identity in the formation of the urban environment in 19th-century and early-20th-century British Hong Kong. Our purpose is to offer an alternative reading of the social history of Hong Kong-the orthodox accounts of which remain largely predominant in the general historical understanding of that society-by examining the machinations that surrounded attempts by the European colonial elite to control the production of urban form and space in the capital city of Hong Kong, Victoria. Here the European Residential District ordinance of 1888 (along with other related ordinances) is considered in detail. An examination of European cultural self-perception and the construction of colonial identity is made by considering not only the actual ways in which urban form and space were manipulated through these ordinances but also the visual representation of the city in art. Here the intersection between ideas and images concerning civil society, cultural identity, architecture, and the official practices of colonial urban planning is demonstrated. It is argued that this coalescing of ideas, images, and practices in the colonial environment of British Hong Kong not only led to the racialisation of urban form and space there but also contributed to the apparent anxiety exhibited by the European population over the preservation of their own identity through the immediacy of the built environment.

scholarly journals ‘There is nothing there’: Deindustrialization and loss in a coastal town

2021 ◽  
pp. 102452942110113
Author(s):  
Luke Telford
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Seaside Resort ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
Stable Employment ◽  
The Town

Based on 52 qualitative interviews with working-class individuals, this paper explores the social and economic decline of a coastal locale referred to as High Town in Teesside in the North East of England. First, the paper outlines how the locality expanded as a popular seaside resort under capitalism’s post-war period. It then assesses how the seaside existed together with industrial work, offering stable employment opportunities, economic security and a sense of community. Next, the article documents the shift to neoliberalism in the 1980s, specifically the decline of High Town’s seaside resort, the deindustrialization process and therefore the 2015 closure of High Town’s steelworks. It explicates how this exacerbated the locale’s economic decline through the loss of industrial work’s ‘job for life’, its diminishing popularity as a coastal area and the further deterioration of the town centre. The paper concludes by suggesting that High Town has lost its raison d’être under neoliberalism and faces difficulties in revival.

Collaboration and Concepts of Authorship

PMLA ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 370-379
Author(s):  
Robert L. Carringer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Free Form ◽  
Degree Zero ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
The Social ◽  
French Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Written Word

It was not long ago that one prefecture of french culture was reinventing the idea of authorship while another one was trying to kill it off. The New Wave movement and post-structuralism, fundamental opposites in almost every respect, emerged at the same cultural moment. Roland Barthcs's Writing Degree Zero (1953) and François Truffaut's seminal essay in Cahiers du cinéma that instated auteur criticism (the first phase of the New Wave) appeared less than a year apart; the appearance of Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization (1961) coincided with the triumph of New Wave filmmaking; and in the interval between 1966 and 1970, which saw the publication of The Order of Things, Of Grammatology, and S/Z, Jean-Luc Godard, the most iconoclastic of the New Wave critic-directors, released fourteen feature films, including four masterworks. In its classic phase poststructuralism was fixated on the written word, involved disciplined thought inflected by mainstream Continental philosophy, took on itself the burden of refashioning modern European history along Marxist lines, and could be uncompromisingly rectitudinous. The New Wave spoke the language of images, involved a loose and—except for its radical stylistics—rather tame avant-gardism, valued an aleatory, free-form aesthetic over political commitment, assailed mainstream French culture, and championed alternative forms of cultural production such as American popular movies. Yet the teleologies were similar: to inscribe a unique place in the history of authorship. To supplant the biographical author from the textual site, one of the primary motives of poststructuralism, was to make the collective space available for a higher entity, the philosopher-critic who is the author not of individual texts but of textuality, the social meaning of texts. In the same way, in claiming the textual site for a film author—a radical conception for the time—the auteur critics scripted a role for themselves that they would subsequently occupy as film directors.

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