Oka Day as an institution of power: kingship, chieftaincy and the community day in contemporary Yorubaland

This article provides a case study of a Nigerian community day celebration as a constellation of power dynamics in which kingship, chieftaincy and local politics are intertwined. Complementing the interpretations of the community day as a festival and a community development initiative, this research approaches Oka Day as an institution of powers that is invoked by the king but also incorporates chiefs, social groups, invited guests from beyond Oka and local audiences. Indebted to geographies of powers, we take nuanced power practices seriously, illustrated as twisted spatialities of powers embodied in architecture, rituals and oral history narratives. The new framing of powers makes two contributions to the existing interpretations of chieftaincy in Africa: it sheds light on chiefs’ subtle and strategic practices in response to the ‘powers of reach’ exercised by the king and through the organizational institution of Oka Day; and it also demonstrates how actors beyond the locality, including politicians, social clubs and diasporic groups, are drawn into the institution of Oka Day while mediating the powers of reach. Drawing from an analysis of spatialities of powers, we suggest that a spatial thinking facilitates our understandings of the ‘microphysics’ of kingship and chieftaincy in contemporary Yorubaland.

Social Clubs in a Princely State: The Case from Hyderabad, Deccan

Social clubs began in India in the late eighteenth century in the wake of British colonial expansion. Clubs flourished in colonial India’s two great administrative divisions: those areas under direct control and the indirectly controlled princely states of India. This article explores the role of clubs in Hyderabad city, the capital city of India’s largest and wealthiest princely state. Here, club dynamics operated differently. By the nineteenth century, princely state urban capitals supported two centres of power: the local Indian ruler and that of the British Resident. These multiple centres of power forced clubs in this urban environment to be less attentive to difference among members (race and class) and more attentive to reaching across divisions. An examination of clubs in a princely state urban environment, thus, reveals an Indo-British clubland, largely marked by forms of social coexistence and cooperation.

Social belonging: Brain structure and function is linked to membership in sports teams, religious groups and social clubs

Human behaviour across the life span is driven by the psychological need to belong, from kindergarten to bingo nights. Being part of social groups constitutes a backbone for communal life, and confers many benefits for physical and mental health. Capitalizing on neuroimaging and behavioural data from ~40.000 participants from the UK Biobank population cohort, we used structural and functional analyses to explore how social participation is reflected in the human brain. Across three different types of social groups, structural analyses point towards variance in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, fusiform gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex as structural substrates tightly linked to social participation. Functional connectivity analyses emphasized the importance of default mode and limbic network, but also showed differences for sports teams and religious groups as compared to social clubs. Taken together, our findings establish the structural and functional integrity of the default mode network as a neural signature of social belonging.

Broadening political participation: The impact of socializing practices on young people’s action repertoires

This study builds on the well-known civic voluntarism model of political participation. By doing this, we contribute to a political sociology of participation by refining the role of socialization in political engagement. We suggest that the action repertoires of young people engaging in politics can be narrower or broader owing to their previous embeddedness in certain social settings, which act as spheres of socializing practices. We focus more specifically on three socializing spheres: educational (schools), recreational (social clubs), and civic (community organizations). Our analysis, covering nine European countries, largely confirms our expectations. We find that active engagement in these spheres of socializing practices leads to a broader range of political activities in young people’s action repertoires. This holds in particular for the civic sphere. The findings provide a fresh look at the role played by socializing spheres, shifting the focus from the dichotomy between participation versus non-participation to an analysis of the breadth of participation.

FUNERAL MATERIALISM AND THE EXOGENEOUS CHANGE AMONG THE URHOBO PEOPLE

This paper aimed at examining the financial involvement and exogenous changes associated with funeral ceremonies among the Urhobo people in recent time. It argues that over a period of time, from the era of colonialism in Nigeria, social change factors and processes such as urbanization, modernization and globalization have introduced continuous changes in the Nigerian culture of which the Urhobo culture as regards to funeral ceremony have greatly been affected. This paper observed that, due to response to new technology, innovative ideas and evolving values from home and abroad, special traditional passage rite for the dead have given way to mega parties for celebrations and show of affluence to friends and social clubs members. It is now difficult to see the tears of children and family members at interment venue rather, they are more concerned about entertaining their friends and associates in reception venues. Some problems generated by this modern trend are highlighted by this write up as; financial crises, stress and ill health, marital problem/divorce, drunkenness and high crime rate among others. This paper therefore concludes that this trend is posing serious threat to the unity, economic growth and development of the Urhobo Nation. It recommends among others, that Urhobo People should be re-socialized properly to imbibe the traditions and values of their culture.

Buddhist-Led Rural Community Rebuilding in the Republic of Korea from the Indra’s Net Perspective

This paper zeros in on Buddhist-led community rebuilding with a special reference to Sannae District in Namwon, Jeonbuk Province in the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Until the 1990s, the district witnessed the traditional sense of community rapidly disappearing along with tidal rural-urban migration and agricultural industrialisation. Since the late 1990s, Silsang-sa, an about 1200-year-old Buddhist monastery located in the rural district, has strived to help revitalise the rural community. Reverend Tobŏp, the head monk of the monastery, brought attention to the overarching Buddhist doctrines of ‘dependent arising’ and ‘Indra’s Net’ that every phenomenon arises only in relation to others. To start with, in 1998 Reverend Tobŏp set up an organic agriculture training camp on Silsang-sa Farm for prospective rural migrants. In 2001, he established Silsang-sa Small School, which is an alternative secondary school with Buddhist ecology and economics included in the curriculum. Owing to increasing in-migration, Sannae District has gradually evolved into a socially and economically vibrant and sustainable community in which a variety of social clubs and commercial cooperatives have burgeoned.

Creativity, Sociability, Solidarity: New-Wave Carnival Krewes’ Responses to COVID-19 in New Orleans

New Orleans was one of the first cities in the USA to be severely affected by the COVID‑19 pandemic. This article draws on long-term ethnography and recent remote fieldwork to explore how new-wave carnival krewes in New Orleans responded to the pandemic. New-wave krewes are one of the kinds of social clubs that produce carnival each year. During the first four months of the pandemic, some of them undertook various kinds of projects within their membership and in the broader community. I propose that these projects have three overlapping dimensions: creativity, sociability, and solidarity. My argument is that because they are so enmeshed in the social fabric of New Orleans, new-wave carnival krewes provided a solid foundation for social initiatives that sought to alleviate the existential and material insecurity of the pandemic. I further argue that carnival has emerged as an important way for New Orleanians to make the imaginative connection between the personal and the social that is necessary for grasping the scope of COVID‑19. More broadly, I contribute to what Joel Robbins has called an “anthropology of the good” in social relations.

Student Self-government - an Opportunity to Develop Soft Skills and Build Social Partnership

The article deals with new principles and organizational forms of social work in the context of digital society development. The author attributes the necessity to implement changes in the sphere to a higher level of individualism in the modern society and young people’s urge to self-fulfillment and self-realization. The paper reviews most common existing forms of students’ public organizations: parliaments, councils, unions and clubs. The author highlights that nowadays they tend to perform the advisory function in education institutions, or their activity is limited to actually being social clubs for interest groups. Frequently, they are not designed to handle strategic tasks education institutions and students communities are facing. Following the guidelines the new Ukrainian Law on Higher Education puts forward, the author addresses the experience of Kharkiv University of Humanities “People’s Ukrainian Academy” in organizing pupils’ and students’ self-governance, and the practice of its public organizations. The author attempts to analyze how effective the current system is, whether its organizational principles and forms are up-to-date, to what extent they meet students’ needs and expectations. The author shares PUA’s experience in the work on training and educating youth leaders, explicates how naturally they make up constituent part of the university education and pedagogical system, how successfully they cooperate with other teachers’ and pupils’ public organizations of the complex of continuous education. A very special attention the article pays to the PUA pupils’ organization “ISTOK” and its activities. According to the author, the secret of public organizations’ successful performance lies in team work and cooperation, collective problem-solving, integration of experience and up-to-date approaches to social work.

Leadership in Social Movements: Evidence from the “Forty-Eighters” in the Civil War

This paper studies the role of leaders in the social movement against slavery that culminated in the US Civil War. Our analysis is organized around a natural experiment: leaders of the failed German revolution of 1848–1849 were expelled to the United States and became antislavery campaigners who helped mobilize Union Army volunteers. Towns where Forty-Eighters settled show two-thirds higher Union Army enlistments. Their influence worked through local newspapers and social clubs. Going beyond enlistment decisions, Forty-Eighters reduced their companies’ desertion rate during the war. In the long run, Forty-Eighter towns were more likely to form a local chapter of the NAACP. (JEL D74, J15, J45, J61, N31, N41)