Oil Exploration and Exploitation in Ugbo (Ilaje) Communities of Coastal Yorubaland

Coastal Yorubaland is one of the richest parts of Nigeria in terms of natural resource endowment. The area is blessed with extensive forests, good agricultural land and abundant water resources such as fish. It is also blessed with reserves of crude oil. This natural resource has attracted the attention of oil companies, whose activities often result in economic and social problems such as environmental pollution, occupational dislocation, cultural extinction and rural urban drift. However, the attitude of the people in this region, especially the militant youths, has also contributed to environmental degradation: oil pipe vandalization has become a constant occurrence, and it has a debilitating effect on the environment. Environmental devastation, economic poverty and constant conflict constitute a lived reality. Oil exploitation activities have also left much of the area desolate, poor and uninhabitable. This article argues that the effects of oil exploitation on Ilaje Ugbo communities are comparable to what occurs in other oil communities of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

The Impact of Colonial Policies on the Waata People of Kilifi County, Kenya, 1895-1963

The Waata community is among the indigenous Kenyan communities whose social, political, and economic organization has not been adequately studied. The objective of the study was to examine the impact of colonial policies on the history of the Waata people of Kilifi County in the period 1895-1963. The study was guided by the cultural interaction and identity formation theory. The study was conducted using the descriptive research design which offered a chronology of events as they unfolded over time. A qualitative approach was significant because it allowed an in-depth collection of data to ascertain the attitudes, feelings, and opinions concerning the theme under study. The study site was Kilifi County. The study targeted both males and females above 18 years within Kilifi County who were knowledgeable about the existence of the Waata people. Purposive and snowballing sampling techniques were used to select the sample for the study. One hundred and twenty-two participants were interviewed. The study used both primary and secondary data. Primary data was derived from the one-on-one interaction with participants using interview schedules and Key Informant Interviews, oral interviews, and focus group discussions. Question guides and questionnaires with open-ended responses were also used. Secondary data was obtained from critical analysis of books, articles, papers, thesis, and dissertations. Additionally, archival sources, particularly colonial documents, annual reports, correspondents, letters, diaries, and political record books related to the area under study were consulted. The findings of the study revealed that colonial policies impacted significantly on the history of the Waata forcing them to adapt to different lifestyles in order to survive cultural extinction. This adaptation was informed by the colonial labelling of traditional hunting communities like the Waata as poachers and the progressive government efforts to stop them from their traditional source of livelihood as well as their eviction from their indigenous habitats and creation of National Parks.

Ralph and Myrtle Mae Borsodi's Vision of Back-to-the-Land as a White Heteropatriarchal Refugium during the Great Depression

Ralph and Myrtle Mae Borsodi, two early twentieth century back-to-the-land writers based in rural New York state, wrote the rural agrarian smallholding as a kind of refugium, a philosophical and physical site for those self-sufficient smallholders to survive, even thrive, through an expected US cultural extinction. The centre of their back-to-the-land agrarian refugium is the heterocouple complete with attached gendered roles and expectations. For this self-sufficiency promoting couple, the rural back-to-the-land homestead was the future of a new and better America made up of decentralised, self-sufficient farms and workshops run by those Ralph termed 'quality-minded men'. Indeed, both in their writings and in real life, their self-sufficiency rested on the backs of urban factory workers, the poor and, most likely, people of colour - domestic labourers. Such exploitation was not incidental, but a key component of the ideal world imagined by this couple.

THE PERCEPTION AND DEFIES OF POLYGAMY IN THE BAMALI COMMUNITY, CAMEROON. A POST-COLONIAL SURVEY

In the Bamali community of Cameroon, just as in other parts of Africa, polygamy was an important aspect of indigenous culture which was widely acceptable and practiced by many. Monogamy was regarded as a form of weakness given the fact that the might and pride of a man was measured in accordance with the number wives and children he had. This paper seeks to examine the perception of polygamy and its defies in the Bamali community. It highlights the basis of polygamy among the Bamali people, and also explores the impact of polygamous marriages on the family. The paper sustains the argument that, despite the fact that polygamy was widely accepted and practiced by many, it had devastating effects on family happiness. In order to achieve this goal, the paper made appeal to some selected primary and secondary sources and the con-clusions were drawn after a qualitative historical analysis. The paper concludes by stating that, polygamy was an inherent cultural practice of the Bamali people which resisted cultural extinction and has moved into a revolutionary dimension to trans-cend the various historical periods.

Kinship of bidayuh dayak ethnic at the border of Entikong-Indonesia and Tebedu-Malaysia

This study of Dayak Bidayuh ethnic kinship system at the boundaries of Entikong and Tebedu is based on the issue of border area development, the issue of cultural extinction and cultural values, as well as the issue of cultural claims and cultural values. Besides, the existence of Bidayuh ethnic groups spread across Indonesia and Malaysia has become interesting to study and describe. The study used qualitative method by interviewing and observing people of Dayak Bidayuh in Sontas-Indonesia and Bidayauh in Entubuh-Malaysia. Based on the concept of kinship and border studies, this study shows that (1) Bidayuh Sontas Kinship System refers to the concept of kinship system with a unilateral lineage pattern, so that the Bidayuh Sontas nuclear family is part of an extended family; (2) Bidayuh Sontas has a transnational kinship pattern with Entubuh-Malaysia Bidayuh; (3) The presence of the State is the cause of the separation of Bidayuh Sontas citizenship from Bidayuh Entubuh; (4) When there is a marriage between them, the citizenship must be determined; and (5) Transnational kinship Bidayuh at the Entikong-Indonesia and Tebedu-Malaysia Border as a socio-cultural space phenomenon. An ethnic community that existed before the presence of state’s border is still continuing their daily lives, even though they have been constructed into different nationalities.

The Mandaeans’ Religious System: From Mythos to Logos

Mandaeans, an ethno-religious group mostly living in Iraq and Iran, are bearers of a Gnostic tradition based on the scriptures written in Madaic. As a small minority living under the threat of cultural extinction and ethnocide, Mandaeans have developed highly elaborated purification rites as the source of their group identity. The concern for group integrity is well encoded in these rituals that symbolically and practically maintain the boundaries of group identity. In a mutual relation, the rituals and Mandaean world-view comprise a cultural system characteristic of Mandaean religion. However, political instability and wars have led to the emigration of a substantive number of the Mandaeans and the formation of diasporas in Australia, Europe and North America. The Mandaean dispersion is a turning point of the people’s history. It liquefies the boundaries of group identity and puts the Mandaean identity challenge in an unprecedented paradigm. Simultaneously, it is bringing about further development in their religious system in terms of accommodation, rationalization and exegeses. These changes can be summarized as pluralism and secularization in the community, especially in the diasporas and an incipient move from mythos towards logos in the religious system.

Kinship as a frequency dependent strategy

Humans divide themselves up into separate cultures, which is a unique and ubiquitous characteristic of our species. Kinship norms are one of the defining features of such societies. Here we show how norms of marital residence can evolve as a frequency-dependent strategy, using real-world cases from southwestern China and an evolutionary game model. The process of kinship change has occurred in the past and is also occurring now in southwestern China. Our data and models show how transitions between residence types can occur both as response to changing costs and benefits of co-residence with kin, and also due to the initial frequency of the strategies adopted by others in the population: patrilocal societies can become matrilocal, and neolocal societies can become duolocal. This illustrates how frequency-dependent selection plays a role both in the maintenance of group-level cultural diversity and in cultural extinction.

Archaeologies of Persistence: Reconsidering the Legacies of Colonialism in Native North America

This article seeks to define common ground from which to build a more integrated approach to the persistence of indigenous societies in North America. Three concepts are discussed—identity, practice, and context—that may prove useful for the development of archaeologies of persistence by allowing us to counter terminal narratives and essentialist concepts of cultural identity that are deeply ingrained in scholarly and popular thinking about Native American societies. The use of these concepts is illustrated in an example that shows how current archaeological research is challenging long-held scholarty and popular beliefs about the effects of colonialism in coastal California, where the policies of Spanish colonial missionaries have long been thought to have driven local native peoples to cultural extinction. By exploring how the sometimes dramatic changes of the colonial period were internally structured and are just one part of long and dynamic native histories, archaeologies of persistence may help to bring about a shift in how the archaeology of colonialism presents the histories of native peoples in North America—one that can make archaeology more relevant to descendant communities.