Women in Mozambique

Mozambique is divided into matrilineal north and patrilineal south, while the central part of the country has a mixture of the two. Both types of kinship organization have important implications for the situation of women. Women in matrilineal societies could access land and political and decision-making power. They had their own property and their children belonged to their matrikin. In patrilineal societies, women depended on their husbands and their kin groups in order to access farmland. Children and property belonged to the husband’s clan. During the colonial period (c. 1890–1975), women’s position in Mozambique was affected by the Indigenato regime (1917–1961). The native African population (classified as indígenas) were denied the rights of Portuguese citizenship and placed under the jurisdiction of local “traditional habits and customs” administered by the appointed chiefs. Despite the fact that Portuguese citizenship was extended to all independent of creed and race by the 1961 Overseas Administrative Reform, most rural African areas remained within the Indigenato regime until the end of colonialism in 1974. Portuguese colonialism adopted an assimilationist and “civilizing” stance and tried to domesticate African women and impose a patriarchal Christian model of family and gender relations. Women were active in the independence struggle and liberation war (1964–1974), contributing greatly to ending colonialism in Mozambique. In 1973, Frelimo launched a nationwide women’s organization, Organização da Mulher Moçambicana (Organization of Mozambican Women, OMM). Although women were encouraged to work for wages in the first decade after independence, they remained largely limited to the subsistence economy, especially in rural areas. The OMM upheld the party line describing women as “natural” caregivers. Only with the political and economic liberalizations of the 1990s were many women able to access new opportunities. The merging of various women’s organizations working in the country during this period helped to consolidate decades-long efforts to expand women’s political and legal rights in independent Mozambique. In the early 2000s, these efforts led to the reform of the family law, which was crucial for the improvement of women’s rights and conditions in Mozambique.

«...LET ONE [KLADUKHA] (STOCK) REMAIN FOR THE NEXT YEAR»

In the pre-revolutionary (it seems, even medieval) four-line songs of the Kazan and pagan prayers of all territorial groups of the Udmurts, some features of the simple subsistence economy of the patriarchal peasant and, in particular, the distribution of income received by them over the past agricultural year were definitely reflected. So, in the last line of a four-line song (by the way, both in form and in functional and content terms significantly different from the chastushka), first published in the collection of B. Gavrilov in 1880 under the number 75: "Odigez vuzhly med kylez" (’One [of them] should remain for the next year’), the most important principle of peasant’s management is expressed: he considered it necessary, after (1) “one share - for food” was allocated; (2) “one share for taxes”/“to pay taxes to the great tsar”; (3) sometimes - one share to feed the hungry and to give to the poor - (4) also to leave “in reserve” at least one stock. And this fourth part was extremely important, rather mandatory for him, and it is for this reason that in previous years in the threshing floors around the Udmurt villages often up to ten years could stand blackened from time hoards of bread left in reserve.The fact was described not only by ethnographers-researchers of the Udmurt people, but also there are many quatrains and individual works of other genres of Udmurt folklore to testify it. Based on such economic and folklore-ethnographic background, the expression used as the title to this article could once have arisen and have been preserved up to the present day.

Ancient West-Coastal Bantu Banana Vocabulary: Testing Linguistic Method for Reconstructing Musa History in Africa

Lexical data has been key in attempts to reconstruct the early history of the banana (Musa sp.) in Africa. Previous language-based approaches to the introduction and dispersal of this staple crop of Asian origin have suffered from the absence of well-established genealogical classifications and inadequate historical-linguistic analysis. We therefore focus in this article on West-Coastal Bantu (WCB), one specific branch within the Bantu family whose genealogy and diachronic phonology are well established. We reconstruct three distinct banana terms to Proto-West-Coastal Bantu (PWCB), i.e. *dɪ̀‑ŋkòndò/*mà‑ŋkòndò ‘plantain’, *dɪ̀‑ŋkò/*mà‑ŋkò ‘plantain’ and *kɪ̀‑túká/*bì‑túká ‘bunch of bananas’. From this new historical-linguistic evidence we infer that AAB Plantains, one of Africa’s two major cultivar subgroups, already played a key role in the subsistence economy of the first Bantu speakers who assumedly migrated south of the rainforest around 2500 years ago. We furthermore analyze four innovations that emerged after WCB started to spread from its interior homeland in the Kasai-Kamtsha region of Congo-Kinshasa towards the Atlantic coast, i.e. dɪ̀‑kòndè ‘plantain’, kɪ̀‑tébè ‘starchy banana’, banga ‘False Horn plantain’, and dɪ̀‑tòtò ‘sweet banana’. Finally, we assess the historical implications of these lexical retentions and innovations both within and beyond WCB and sketch some perspectives for future lexicon-based banana research.

Anthropogenic flash floods and climate change in rural Zimbabwe: Impacts and options for adaptation

Zimbabwe has been affected by numerous floods-related disasters in the recent past. These disasters often left rural communities in difficult socioeconomic situations. Floods are among the major water-related hazards and natural disasters worldwide. They are associated with excess rainfall, resulting in river overflow due to climate change . Developing countries constitute a large number of losses caused by water hazards. Thereby, in these countries, the vulnerabilities of households that depend on rain fed agriculture and livestock production for their livelihoods increases. This review paper seeks to establish the association between anthropogenic flash floods and climate change and unearth the impacts; vulnerabilities and adaptation options associated with anthropogenic flash floods in rural Zimbabwe. The study found that numerous anthropogenic activities perpetuate an increase in flood risk. These include littering, river or dam regulation measures, intensified land use and emissions of greenhouse gases, which subsequently result in global climate change. The impacts of flash floods established in the study include drought, food insecurity, displacements, malnutrition and severe effects on subsistence economy. The study concluded that even though most rural communities in Zimbabwe are vulnerable to the effects of floods, they have devised numerous diverse adaptation strategies to cope with the changes in the environment.

The First Seal Hunter Families on Gotland - On the Mesolithic Occupation in the Stora Förvar Cave

The article presents some results of a joint interdisciplinary researchproject, The Stora Förvar Cave and Gotlands peopling, faunal history and subsistence economy/diet development from the Boreal to the Subatlantic, initiated by Christian Lindqvist in 1991. Its objectives include investigations of a number of crucial issues in a long-term perspective, such as the initial settlement, the early faunal history, the early subsistence economy and diet, but also the character of the Mesolithic-Neolithic shift on Gotland, by means of human and zooosteological, carbon isotope and ancient DNA analyses. The article presents and discusses artefact, osteological, and 13C and 14C data and interpretations concerning the duration and character of the Mesolithic occupation —temporary kill/butchering site, seasonal hunting station, semi-sedentary base camp or burial cave —as well as osteobiographical data on the identified human individuals and their burial customs.

Alat Analisis Strategi Bertahan Hidup Sektor Informal Perkotaan Selama Pandemi Covid-19: Review Literatur

The covid-19 pandemic has damaged the structure of the global economy, including Indonesia. Government policies that are stuttering and inconsistent between handling health or economic recovery have resulted in their implementation being not optimal and having a significant impact on economic actors in the informal sector. As a result, informal workers need to make efforts to survive amid the crisis. Based on a literature review, this article presents analytical concepts for analyzing strategies undertaken by young informal workers with an illustration of informal sector workers in the city of Banda Aceh. The results show that there are seven possible ways to survive in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, namely taking debt to family and friends, returning to your hometown, reducing the quantity of consumption, working with other people's capital, building a subsistence economy, diversification of informal workers and circumventing government regulations. These strategies are rooted in everyday life and in reality which are taken for granted and therefore are not acts of instrumental rationality.