The Islamic Traditional Arts and the Traces of Science: A Study of Ethnomathematics in Ambe-Ambeken Dance in Aceh Singkil

<p>This research explores the origins of the Ambe-ambeken Dance from Singkil Regency, the form of the Ambe-ambeken Dance, and analyzes the ethnomathematics. As a cultural entity, the Singkil people have a dance known as the Ambe-ambeken or Sakhindayong dance. This study uses a descriptive qualitative method to describe the Ambe-ambeken dance based on historical, anthropological and mathematical approaches. Although the variety of movements looks simple at first glance, this dance is a form of technology of enchantment that is full of wisdom and has an essential role in shaping the community's personality and the spread of Islam in Singkil through the poems that are sung during the dance. Then from a different perspective, it was found that there is a mathematical element that many people do not realize in a traditional dance, namely a geometric transformation. This fact leads to a new assumption that culture in the past was built on spirituality and aesthetic values and by applying mathematical principles in various aspects of life.</p><p align="left"> <em>Penelitian ini mengungkap asal-usul Tari Ambe-ambeken dari Kabupaten Singkil, bentuk Tari Ambe-ambeken serta menganalisis etnomatematika pada Tari Ambe-ambeken Sebagai sebuah entitas kultural, masyarakat Singkil memiliki sebuah tarian yang dikenal sebagai tari Ambe-ambeken atau Sakhindayong.. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif deskriptif, yang bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan tari ambe-ambeken berdasarkan pendekatan Sejarah, Antropologi dan Matematika. </em><em>Meskipun sepintas ragam geraknya terlihat sederhana, tetapi tarian ini merupakan bentuk technology of enchantment yang sarat akan kearifan dan memiliki peranan penting dalam pembentukan kepribadian masyarakat serta penyebaran agama Islam di Singkil melalui syair-syair yang dibawakan selama tarian berlangsung. Kemudian dari sisi yang berbeda, ditemukan bahwa ada unsur matematika yang tidak disadari oleh banyak orang dalam suatu tarian tradisional, yakni berupa transformasi geometri. Fakta ini mengarahkan pada asumsi baru bahwa kebudayaan di masa lalu tidak hanya dibangun atas dasar spiritualitas dan nilai estetika semata, tetapi juga dengan menerapkan</em> <em>prinsip matematika dalam berbagai aspek kehidupan.</em></p>

Culture, Gender and Inequality: Narratives from a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group in Odisha, India

This ethnographic paper explores gender inequality in tribal societies vis-à-vis customary practices and challenges the notion of egalitarianism of tribal society by taking Chuktia Bhunjia tribe of Odisha, India as an analytical category. In the light of a discussion on women specific taboos and restrictions, captured through formal interview, narrative and lived experience approach, the paper explicates the deeply embedded nature of the taboos in Chuktia Bhunjia society and unravels how prohibiting women from socio-economic and religious space, backed by purity-pollution philosophy, perpetuate the gender inequality among them. It was found that although economic division of labour is indistinct; women are perceived being portrayal of misfortunes during perceived pollution periods and are prohibited to enter into sacred places – kitchen room, cowshed, sacred groves and forest – and take part in community festivals and other auspicious occasions. The existing material culture, especially kitchen room, alongside economic structure, self-notion of ‘outsiders’ and apparently fixed customary laws have direct influence on the position of women in this society. It is found that the customary laws are not mere symbolic expressions in perpetuating the gender asymmetry, but have become a powerful tool to patriarchal controls not only over women’s education, health, properties and knowledge, but also over individual’s choice, freedom, decision-making and sexuality. However, internal challenges are reported against customary laws and taboos, the fear of social ostracism, the obligation to restore the purity of cultural entity and anxiety reinforce people to be always submissive to those practices. Therefore, unless there is transformation alongside their culture, it is fruitless to think of gender equality.

Restored Public Life

When we live in the yes, public life in America will be rescued from despair. We know from the Hispanic community’s example that religious knowledge of our place in the universe is healthy. The yes functions similarly. At the personal level, the reader who answers Lonergan’s question with a yes will encounter celebration, gratitude, and, because we have not lived up to the direction of the universe, confession. The universe now offers correction that must be taken seriously, though not coercively or institutionally. The yes spreads through the cultural entity of cosmopolis, which will confront our nihilism. The disciplines and the university will be renewed by a new understanding of the unity of all subject matters. Each course of study, though different, is always of a universe that is on our side. Policy debates will consider the common good. Politics will be filled with meaning and be more generous.

Is the Universe on Our Side?

America cannot go on this way without risking the end of constitutional democracy. We have already entered post-liberalism. But there is something to be done. We can launch a new story, and thus begin to recover normal public life, by asking the ultimate question bequeathed to us by Bernard Lonergan: Is the universe on our side? Asking an ultimate question restores faith in questioning itself. That kind of questioning ends the Age of Evasion. We ask Lonergan’s question through a loose cultural entity he called “cosmopolis.” As long as we agree to live by our answer to this question, even a no can contribute to the healing of American public life.

Yoruba Political Ideology in Akinwumi Ishola’s plays and the challenge of leadership crisis in Africa

This paper is an attempt at reflective self-awareness and hermeneutical analysis of the African Yoruba Political Ideology distilled from plays by Akinwumi Ishola. It is a bid to appraise this Ideology and assess how it aids social consciousness, good governance and political stability. The real value of hermeneutical analysis is to aid clarity of thought that enables a comparison of ideas. This will facilitate the contemporary relevance of the end result and its adoption as a framework of a remedy to leadership malady plaguing Africa. The aim of this paper is to propose a socio-political philosophy that is birthed by the peculiar challenge of the dearth of good leadership in Africa and which attempts to address the leadership and governance crisis as a whole. Realizing that Africa is not a mono-cultural entity, the paper aspires to bring forth ideas that will have universal claim upon all. Our examples and references however are drawn from Yoruba cultural background and the plays to be analysed are Saworo Ide and Agogo Eewo.

The Riverside Roads of Culture as a Tool for the Development of Aitoloakarnania

Cultural routes are a well-established development tool to highlight and promote a region’s cultural and environmental reserve, as well as having a positive impact on a region’s socio-economic development. Underdeveloped or rural areas, which have limited financial and technological resources available, often envision cultural routes as a useful development tool to cater to their needs. However, unless these cultural routes are designed and implemented based on the principles of a circular economy or while respecting the region’s cultural identity and heritage, their impact will not be significant. The region of Aitoloakarnania is the poorest prefecture of Greece. The prefecture served as a case study to demonstrate that the utilization of its cultural and architectural heritage can be based on the identification, documentation, and the reveal of paths of cultural tourism along the region’s main natural features, namely its rivers, lakes, lagoons, and coastline. Τhe density and the representative distribution of the monuments in the area, in combination with the unique natural environment of the prefecture, led to the configuration of a mild design of cultural routes, promoting the revealing of both the cultural and the natural landmarks of Aitoloakarnania. In this framework, certain cultural paths were defined. The first one, along the Acheloos River, includes sites of natural heritage, ancient and medieval monuments (castles, fortifications, monasteries, churches, burial sites, archaeological sites, etc.). The other cultural path regards sites along the Evinos River and Trichonida Lake, which includes similar monuments and traditional settlements. A similar cultural path regards cultural sites and points of interest along the coastal parts of the prefecture, and in particular, a path initiating from the historic city of Nafpaktos and following the route to the west, it reaches the Venetian castle of Plagia, opposite of Lefkada. These cultural paths fuse along their routes sites of natural heritage, sites of archaeological and cultural interest, and sites of historic importance to the region. This amalgamation of different types of cultural sites, integrated into a single cultural entity, provide the means for the local and regional development in a sustainable approach while ensuring and disseminating the region’s brand and history.

Rewriting Girlhood. Ambiguous Bodies in Contemporary American Visual Arts: Sally Mann’s At Twelve

Drawing on cultural studies, gender theories, feminist theories, visual culture and semiotics, the present study investigates the subversive ways in which particular visual representations of teenage bodies introduce the generic transgression of cultural boundaries and limits in order to reflect the process of identity formation. Departing from various theories of corporeality and the semiotics of the body as a cultural entity, this study looks at contemporary American photographer Sally Mann’s collection of photographs, At Twelve, in order to discern the visual mechanisms through which the staged representation of adolescent girls introduces the generous subversion of generic normative categories such as gender, age or social status. Furthermore, the present analysis suggests that trespassing boundaries is a necessary stage in the construction of self-sustainable identities in the aftermath of-postmodernism. Thus, the article tackles gender construction as a cultural edifice in which visual representation plays a significant part. Sally Mann’s photography is eventually viewed as an instance of the contemporary interrogation of norms and boundaries of classical Western culture, as well as an innovative visual documenting of the transgressions, transitions and avoidance of limits that characterize adolescence.

Death and morality: perspectives on the moral function of death among the basoga of Uganda

Numerous studies on death in African societies with no doubt have been successfully conducted though their preoccupation has been with the religious and spirituality perspectives. There has been a great deal of theologizing about the spiritual connection between the life here and life after death. Most studies in the humanities have zeroed on burial rituals and rites as means of transition to the spiritual world. Others have concentrated on how different societies cope with the misfortune of death; through grieving, mourning, choosing an heir or heiress and the succession disputes that are always part and parcel of such a culturally acknowledged process. Death is largely constructed as a challenge and misfortune, and many a scholar in the humanities are concerned with how different societies define, perceive, handle and cope with this catastrophe. Most scholarly works have paid a deaf ear to the social value that comes with the demise of an individual. One such social value is the definition and shaping of moral order in society, in which death occurs. Busoga traditional society of Uganda is used as the case study. Busoga is both a geographical reality and cultural entity, found in the eastern part of Uganda. The authors argue that rather than militating life, death promotes and perpetuates moral values on one hand and discourages vices that destabilize society on the other.

Implications of new AMS dates for the Khami Period in the Mapungubwe Landscape

After the abandonment of Mapungubwe, the Limpopo Valley was reoccupied first by Sotho people, making Icon pottery, and then by Kalanga speakers making Khami pottery. The senior Kalanga chief, in this case Twamamba, was based at Machemma about 60 km to the south, while several petty chiefs administered various portions of the valley itself. Because of fluctuating rainfall, the occupations of both Sotho and Kalanga people occurred in pulses during higher rainfall periods. New AMS dates place one site in the Icon Period, eight sites in Pulse 1 (AD 1400–1480) and eight sites or components in Pulse 2 (AD 1520–1590). Kalanga people occupied the best agricultural land near the Limpopo floodplains and Sotho people lived on the plateau to the south. The two groups thus shared the landscape, but not the resources equally. The ceramic record documents this unequal interaction. This interaction, facilitated by male and female initiation schools on the ethnic boundary, helped to create Venda as a language and macro-cultural entity.

The Kokel of Southern Siberia: New data on a post-Xiongnu material culture

From the end of the Xiongnu Empire to the establishment of the first Turkic Khaganate, the territory of Southern Siberia sees the emergence of distinctive local material cultures. The Kokel culture is essentially unknown in the international English-language literature even though archaeological sites pertaining to this material culture are among the most common in Tuva (Southern Siberia). This makes them important for the understanding aspects of the sociocultural dynamics following the collapse of the first “steppe empire”. Here we present the results of the study of a Kokel funerary site recently excavated near the Early Iron Age kurgan Tunnug 1 and discuss the data in the context of the available Soviet and Russian literature. The Kokel culture substantially differs from the material culture of the Xiongnu and has to be seen as a largely independent cultural entity of small tribal groups without a pronounced social hierarchy engaging in frequent violent local conflict.