Depicting the Vhavenda Women Initiation Schools and Their Cultural Practices in Limpopo Province

Growing up for many African people has been marked by rites of passage. Vhavenda girls attend various initiation schools that served as rites of passage from one stage to another. The purpose of this study was to explore the initiation schools attended by Vhavenda girls for knowledge preservation. The study is qualitative where data was collected from 15 traditional knowledge holders purposefully using interviews as a tool to collect data. The study revealed that girls attended different schools at various stages from Musevhetho, followed by Vhusha then Domba, which is divided into Tshikanda, Ludodo, and Tshilalandoima. All these schools served a critical purpose on the development of a girl child through to adulthood stage. Knowledge shared in the school covered mostly life skills and human physiology. With the introduction of formal schools, the former was discarded and labeled barbaric leaving a void and opening a door to many social challenges faced by girl children within the Vhavenda community members.

Essays on the Economics of Education: Policies for Academic Transitions

This doctoral thesis builds on a rich literature investigating how education policy affects students’ learning, motivation, investment, and decisionmaking— all of which are determinants of the productivity of education systems. Over the past decades, the education field has yielded one of the most prolific strands of literature within applied economics research (Machin, 2014). In part this reflects a growing demand for an evidencebased design of education policy. Rigorous and thoughtful economic research can often produce such evidence, which may guide policymakers in the policy-design process (Hanushek et al., 2016). Policy questions are ubiquitous in the education domain. In particular, many dimensions of a child’s environment in school are determined by policymakers, ranging from the small and specific (such as the number of students in each class or the books used) to the large and general (such as the length of compulsory education, financing, and tracking). Another prevalent structural feature of the schooling process determined by policymakers are the transitions from one educational stage to the next. These milestone moments not only involve the replacement of one set of education policies by another, but have evolved into rites of passage in children’s lives, signifying the end of one stage of development and the beginning of the next (Bharara, 2020; Evans et al., 2018). Like more traditional rites of passage, these academic transitions are often costly. Because of the institutional discontinuities they represent, they are disruptive and challenging for many students (Anderson et al., 2000; Curson et al., 2019; Rice et al., 2015; Rice, 2001; Symonds and Galton, 2014), forcing them to navigate a new educational context that often involves a new school, new peers, and new teachers. Further, at each new stage, students not only face new and challenging academic demands but also heightened expectations of their independence and ability to assume responsibility for their own schooling. Not surprisingly, these transitions represent a period of particular vulnerability for many young people. An extensive research literature has consistently found associations with negative outcomes such as a decline in academic engagement and motivation, a decline in grades, and an increased risk of dropout (see, e.g., Bharara, 2020; Eccles et al., 1993; Evans et al., 2018; Galton et al., 1999 or Mizelle and Irvin, 2000).1 Because the number, timing, and structure of transitions are all the result of policy, and imposed on students by policymakers, there is a need for a solid base of evidence—particularly causal—on how students navigate and prepare for them that can inform policy design so as to minimize the negative outcomes associated with those transitions (Rice, 2001; van Rens et al., 2018). My aim for the thesis is to contribute to that evidence base. Empirical studies, such as those in the following chapters, can provide insights for policy on how best to prepare students for transitions, and how best to support them in making well-informed choices. For example, ensuring that students are adequately prepared for subsequent stages of schooling is an important step in making the education system more efficient and productive. Understanding how children and adolescents make investments and choices in their schooling can help policymakers identify areas where interventions might reduce inequalities in (opportunities for) human capital accumulation. Indeed, support and preparedness have been identified in the education literature as key elements for effective transitions (Anderson et al., 2000; Bharara, 2020).

Shokutaku Jigoku Visions of Family Meals in Japanese Cinema

Cooking and dining scenes have been a ubiquitous presence in Japanese cinema since its inception, and the relationship between Japanese people and food has been frequently exploited to play out family dynamics, rites of passage, etc. Therefore, the dining room often becomes the place where drama unfolds in striking contrast with this supposedly safe environment. This paper focuses on three films where dining scenes are particularly relevant – Ozu Yasujirō’s The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952), Morita Yoshimitsu’s The Family Game (1983) and Miike Takashi’s Visitor Q (2001) – in order to analyse how Japanese cinema has documented the transformation of family relations in time.

As One With Nature: Sputheast Asian Aesthetic Expressions | เป็นหนึ่ง เดียวกับธรรมชาติ: การแสดงออกทางสุนทรียะของชาวเอเชียตะวันออก เฉียงใต้

Given the many artistic manifestations in the region which range from architecture to wooden sculptures, one wonders whether there are some guiding aesthetic principles in Southeast Asia. Using food, tattoos, bas reliefs, paintings, textiles, pottery, and architecture, this article is concerned with the salient underpinnings of aesthetic displays in the region. Regional aesthetics manifests itself in many cultural practices ranging from royal traditions, spiritual rituals and practices and quotidian rites of passage. Aesthetic expressions drew their inspiration from nature, cosmic perceptions and religious beliefs. ภูมิภาคเอเชียตะวันออกเฉียงใต้เป็นภูมิภาคที่มีงานศิลปะที่หลากหลาย ไม่ว่าจะเป็นงานทางสถาปัตยกรรมไปจนถึง ประติมากรรมไม้ หลายคนอาจสงสัยว่าอะไรคือหลักสุนทรียภาพที่เป็นตัวก􀄬าหนดการมองความงามของธรรมชาติ หรืองานศิลปะของคนภายในภูมิภาค เพื่อตอบค􀄬าถามดังกล่าว บทความนี้จะใช้อาหาร รอยสัก ภาพนูนต􀄬่า ภาพวาด สิ่งทอ เครื่องปั้นดินเผา และสถาปัตยกรรม ในการแสดงถึงรากฐานส􀄬าคัญที่มีอิทธิพลต่อหลักสุนทรียภาพ นอกจากนี้ บทความต้องการแสดงให้เห็นว่า สุนทรียภาพของชาวเอเชียตะวันออกเฉียงใต้ยังรวมไปถึงข้อปฏิบัติทางวัฒนธรรม ต่าง ๆ เช่น ขนบธรรมเนียมประเพณีของชนชั้นกษัตริย์ พิธีกรรมทางจิตวิญญาณ และพิธีกรรมเปลี่ยนผ่าน ซึ่งการ ปฏิบัติเหล่านี้ได้รับแรงบันดาลใจมาจากธรรมชาติ การรับรู้เกี่ยวกับจักรวาล และความเชื่อทางศาสนา

An Initiation Rite in Tibetan Historiography

I shall investigate a quasi-historical event in the biographies of the second ‘Dharma King’ of the Tibetan Empire, Khri-srong Lde-btsan (Trisong Detsen). As the newborn heir to the throne, he was stolen from his mother by a rival queen; however, at a ceremonial event the still infant prince indicated his true descent by sitting on the lap of his maternal uncle. As Ruzsa (2016) noticed, the complex motif of the new ruler choosing his family by sitting on the lap of a male representative can be found in the Indian legend of Śunaḥśepa, embedded in a much richer structure. Following his reconstruction, by analysing further parallelisms in a wider corpus, it appears that the seemingly innocent story of a baby prince is, in fact, a remnant of an archaic rite. I suppose that originally this was a rite of passage, a special variant of puberty initiation: the consecration of the heir apparent. Furthermore, its relationship to the Indian legend of Śunaḥśepa connects it indirectly with the stories of Isaac and even Snow White and also with several rites of passage in ancient Greece. I will also suggest that some versions of the legend point to a probably even more archaic cycle of maternity rites with parallels in Solomon’s judgment and the Chinese Chalk Circle.

Everything Seems So Illogical: Constructing Missingness Between Life and Death in Israel

This paper discusses the case of missing persons in Israel, to show how the category of “missingness” is constructed by the people who have been left behind, and how this may threaten the life-death dichotomy assumption. The field of missing persons in Israel is characterized not only by high uncertainty, but also by the absence of relevant cultural scripts. Based on a narrative ethnography of missingness in Israel, I claim that a new and subversive social category of “missingness” can be constructed following the absence of cultural scripts. The left-behinds fluctuate not only between different assumptions about the missing person’s fate; they also fluctuate between acceptance of the life-death dichotomy, thus yearning for a solution to a temporary in-between state, and blurring this dichotomy, and thus constructing “missingness” as a new stable and subversive ontological category. Under this category, new rites of passage are also negotiated and constructed.