bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Forbidden Fruit in the Compound: A Case Study of Migration, Spousal Separation and Group-Wife Adultery in Northwest Ghana
Authors: Lobnibe Isidore
Published: July 2008

This paper explores the anthropological implications of the notion of adultery by showing how it can improve our understanding of a local debate about descent, migration and local responses to it, among communities belonging to the Dagara of northwestern Ghana. Using a case study of group-wife adultery, that is, a sexual affair between a man and the wife of a fellow member of the same patrilineal descent group in the context of male migration, the paper highlights the tension between a husband's sexual rights over his wife and those of his descent group over the wife's procreation. It further examines the rituals surrounding the resolution of the case and the arguments generated by it as a prism through which to view social change and Dagara social organization. An evaluation of the community views about spousal separation, the punishment associated with group-wife adultery and the multiple responses of its members to the offence is presented with ethnographic examples.
Defending the People's Railway in the Era of Liberalization: TAZARA in Southern Tanzania
Authors: Monson Jamie
Published: July 2008

When the services of the TAZARA railway in Tanzania were threatened with cutbacks in the 1980s and 1990s, rural community leaders wrote petitions of protest to district–level officials. In these petitions, they complained that railway decision–making was being guided by profit–making rather than nation–building priorities in response to pressure from the IMF and the World Bank. The railway had abandoned its original role as a servant of the people, they argued, employing the language of socialism, nationhood and pan–African solidarity that had been utilized by the state during the construction era in the 1970s. Yet the railway services sought by these local communities had facilitated their own entry into profit–seeking behaviour as entrepreneurs in the TAZARA corridor. The transition from socialism to liberalization along the TAZARA railway was therefore a negotiated process in which the meaning of concepts such as ‘privatization’, ‘profit’ and ‘freedom’ were contested.
Making a Living in the Postsocialist Periphery: Struggles between Farmers and Traders in Konso, Ethiopia
Authors: Watson Elizabeth E.
Published: July 2008

This article explores the experience of one village in Ethiopia since the overthrow of the Marxist‐Leninist Derg regime in 1991. The new government introduced policies that have much in common with those dominating the international geopolitical scene in the 1990s and 2000s. These include an emphasis on democracy, grassroots participation and, to some extent, market liberalization. I report here on the manifestations of these policy shifts in Gamole village, in the district of Konso, once remote from the political centre in Addis Ababa but now expressing its identity through new federal political structures. Traditional power relations between traders and farmers in Gamole have been transformed since 1991 as the traders have exploited opportunities to extend trade links, obtain land and build regional alliances through participation in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. They have appropriated the discourse of democracy to challenge their traditional position of subordination to the farmers – and this, in turn, has led to conflict. While these changes reflect the postsocialist transition, they can also be seen as part of a continuing process of change brought about by policies of reform in land tenure, the church and the state, introduced during the Derg period. These observations at a local level in Ethiopia provide insights into the experiences of other states in postsocialist transition.
K. R. S. Morris and Tsetse Eradication in the Gold Coast, 1928–51
Authors: Grischow Jeff D.
Published: July 2008

This article investigates the anti-tsetse fly work of colonial entomologist K. R. S. Morris in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast between 1928 and 1951. Morris's main programme was directed at the Lawra District of the north-west, where he claimed to have eliminated the tsetse population and trypanosomiasis by the end of his tenure. This achievement allowed farmers to move into the formerly infested land and reclaim the area for agricultural development. As an added benefit, Morris also claimed, eliminating tsetse flies in the Lawra District reduced the incidence of sleeping sickness in the main market towns of north-west Ashanti. The article charts Morris's work, which is historically significant for a number of reasons. First, it reveals much about the connection between anti-tsetse work and colonial development doctrine in northern Ghana. Second, it highlights the importance of studying colonial practices. Morris's clearing programme appears to have worked, but it was almost certainly based on faulty theories of tsetse ecology. In this sense, the story of anti-tsetse work in the Northern Territories shows that we might learn as much from colonial practices as from colonial ideologies.
Flexibility in Domestic Organization and Seasonal Migration Among the Fulani of Northern Burkina Faso
Authors: Hampshire Kate
Published: July 2008

Migration patterns among the Fulani of Burkina Faso have changed over recent decades from predominant transhumance, involving whole families, to seasonal rural-to-urban labour migration of young men. This article uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to examine the relationships between the new forms of migration and domestic organization. Specifically, it asks the following questions: (1) How do households accommodate the temporary loss of productive members? (2) Does the out-migration lead to new forms of domestic organization, and to changing roles and power relations within sending households? Various forms of flexibility in domestic organization are identified, which serve to maintain viable economic units in the face of the temporary absence of substantial numbers of young men. These include: flexibility in the processes of household division; rapid, temporary restructuring of domestic units; and drawing on extra-household support networks. One consequence of this flexibility is that intra-household gender divisions of labour and power have remained largely unchanged in the face of seasonal labour migration. The extent to which this will remain the case if migration becomes more widespread is uncertain.
Northern Gothic: Witches, Ghosts and Werewolves in the Savanna Hinterland of the Gold Coast, 1900s–1950s
Authors: Parker John
Published: July 2008

This article examines witchcraft, shape-shifting and other supernatural beliefs among the Talensi and neighbouring Gur-speaking peoples on the frontier of the Northern Territories Protectorate of the Gold Coast (Ghana) in the first half of the twentieth century. Its starting point is the succession of religious movements dedicated to the eradication of witchcraft that swept through the southern forest region of the Gold Coast in the inter-war period. Most of these movements were animated by exotic deities originating in the savanna zone, a cross-cultural passage in part propelled by the ambivalence with which the Akan peoples of the forests viewed the so-called Gurunsi of the remote north. While the ‘Gurunsi’ were generally regarded as primitive barbarians, they were also seen to have an intimate relationship with the spiritual realm and therefore to be free from the ravages of malevolent witchcraft. This intimacy with dangerous spiritual forces was most clearly manifested in the widely reported ability of ‘the grassland people’ to transmogrify into animals. Evidence suggests, however, that far from being free from witchcraft, stateless savanna societies had their own problems with malevolent occult powers. Moreover, their reputation for shape-shifting was not simply a lurid, fantastic stereotype of northern brutishness on the part of the Akan. Animal metamorphosis – and especially the ubiquity of were-hyenas – was widely reported in the northern savanna, where it was imbricated with ‘witchcraft’ and with notions of personhood and collective identities.
Legacies of Slavery in North-West Uganda: The Story of the ‘one-Elevens’
Authors: Leopold Mark
Published: July 2008

This article outlines the history of a people known as ‘Nubi’ or ‘Nubians’, northern Ugandan Muslims who were closely associated with Idi Amin's rule, and a group to which he himself belonged. They were supposed to be the descendants of former slave soldiers from southern Sudan, who in the late 1880s at the time of the Mahdi's Islamic uprising came into what is now Uganda under the command of a German officer named Emin Pasha. In reality, the identity became an elective one, open to Muslim males from the northern Uganda/southern Sudan borderlands, as well as descendants of the original soldiers. These soldiers, taken on by Frederick Lugard of the Imperial British East Africa Company, formed the core of the forces used to carve out much of Britain's East African Empire. From the days of Emin Pasha to those of Idi Amin, some Nubi men were identified by a marking of three vertical lines on the face – the ‘One-Elevens’. Although since Amin's overthrow many Muslims from the north of the country prefer to identify themselves as members of local Ugandan ethnic groups rather than as ‘Nubis’, aspects of Nubi identity live on among Ugandan rebel groups, as well as in cyberspace.
Youth, the Tanu Youth League and Managed Vigilantism in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, 1925–73
Authors: Brennan James R.
Published: July 2008

This article examines the role of male youth in the political history of Dar es Salaam. ‘Youth’, as a category of opposition to elders, became important during the inter-war period as it was inhabited by educated African bureaucrats aspiring to representation in urban politics over the traditional claims of authority by local ethnic Zaramo and Shomvi elders. This group of bureaucrats grew in power through the popularization of racial-nationalist politics, and in the 1950s formed the Tanganyika African Nationalist Party (TANU), which instituted its own category of ‘youth’ with the creation of the TANU Youth League (TYL). Consisting mainly of young, under-employed men who failed to obtain sufficient educational qualifications, the Youth League challenged the late colonial state's theoretical monopoly over violence through voluntary and aggressive policing activities. After the work of independence was complete, there was practical way to demobilize this enormous, semi-autonomous police and intelligence-gathering force. The repeated reassertion of party control over its Youth League took many forms in the decade after independence – through the creation of a National Service and the militarization of development; frequent nationalist events and rituals where Youth League members controlled public space; and a war on urban morality led by Youth League shock troops. Control over youth also offered a potentially autonomous patrimony for ambitious TANU party members. The 1970s witnessed the beginning of the general failure of both state and party to generate sufficient resources to serve as a patron to patron-seeking youth, which has effectively decentralized youth violence and vigilantism ever since. A political history of ‘youth’, both as a social category and political institution, can shed further light on contemporary dilemmas of youth violence, meanings of citizenship, and hidden motors of party politics.
Seclusion, Protection and Avoidance: Exploring the Metida Complex among the Datoga of Northern Tanzania
Authors: Blystad Astrid , Rekdal Ole Bjørn , Malleyeck Herman
Published: July 2008

This article deals with metida avoidance practices as they emerge in daily and ritual practice among the agro-pastoral Datoga-speaking peoples of Tanzania. The elaboration of the avoidance practices varies starkly between and within Datoga segments, but these practices are commonly particularly elaborate in connection with death or death-like events, and with birth or birth-like events. In the study area women may spend years of their lives with severe restrictions on their conduct in terms of movement and socialization. We argue that in making sense of such avoidance phenomena the strong influence of Mary Douglas's ‘dirt’ and ‘pollution’ concepts has hindered an understanding of the fact that the metida seclusion does not only isolate substances perceived to be dangerously contaminating, but in similar ways secludes fertile and vulnerable elements in order to protect them. A Strathern-inspired transition to a focus on bodies as open and dynamic systems that mingle with other bodies in intimate flows or exchanges of bodily fluids may be fruitful in this context. We indicate, however, that incautious substitution of a ‘pollution’ concept with the concept of ‘flows’ may lead to challenges not entirely dissimilar to those that attended the employment of Douglas's concepts.
Things Fall Apart? Management, Environment and Taungya Farming in Edo State, Southern Nigeria
Authors: von Hellermann Pauline
Published: July 2008

Environmental degradation in Africa is often linked to management failure and political decline. One example of this is the dominant understanding of the unfolding of Taungya farming in Southern Nigeria in recent decades. An agro-forestry method of afforestation introduced by the colonial Forest Department in the 1920s and widespread by the 1960s, it is now perceived as a means of destroying the forest. Indeed, whilst reserve land continues to be allocated for Taungya farming, today, due to the Forest Department's political and economic difficulties, no more trees are planted. But this does not necessarily constitute a political and environmental crisis. Through an ethnographic and historical study of Taungya farming in the Okomu Reserve in Edo State, this article shows not only that there were always problems with Taungya as a method of afforestation, but also that its recent transformation may be seen as quite successful, both socially and environmentally. In this way, the article challenges both the ‘crisis’ perception of Taungya farming today and conventional ideas about what constitutes proper management and mismanagement.
Family Resemblances, Practical Interrelations and Material Extensions: Understanding Sexual Prohibitions, Production and Consumption in Kilimanjaro
Authors: Myhre Knut Christian
Published: July 2008

Through the ‘procreative paradigm’, sexuality and its relationships to other social practices have recently regained importance in the study of sub-Saharan Africa. Despite its apparent novelty, I argue that this paradigm invokes an anthropological approach that harks back to the discipline's beginnings. In an attempt at a fresh departure, I use Ludwig Wittgenstein's late philosophy to investigate the meaning of sexual prohibitions among the Chagga-speaking people of Rombo District, Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania. Starting from local linguistic usage, I describe the multiple ‘language-games’ of the vernacular notion of ‘power’,horu. In this manner, I demonstrate how production, reproduction and consumption are conceptually, practically and materially intertwined through the ‘family resemblances’ of this local concept.Horuis expended through productive practices; in multiple ways it is converted, transferred and exchanged between adults and children in reproduction; and it is replenished through the consumption of specific ‘powerful’ foods. By means of different objects, the activities of work, sex and feeding enable ‘power’ to flow between persons. The multiple vernacular usages of the notion ofhoru, and its practical and material concomitants, interrelate diverse spheres of social life in such a manner that they constitute an overlapping network that extends laterally. Human capability and well-being are constituted through participation in these activities, and engagement in the mutual flows, conversions and exchanges of ‘power’ that encompass humans, livestock and vegetable matter. The sexual prohibitions of Rombo regulate and channel these flows and conversions, in order to ensure their beneficial effects for the parties concerned. I therefore argue that the sexual prohibitions are notex post factointerpretations or justifications that explain or control preceding experiences, but rather that they are constitutive of the local mode of life. An appreciation of lateral relationships between concepts, practices and objects enables an evasion of some of the problems that arise from the procreative paradigm.
Slow Going: The Mortuary, Modernity and the Hometown Association in Bali-Nyonga, Cameroon
Authors: Page Ben
Published: July 2008

The article describes a new mortuary in Cameroon, which has been constructed in a government hospital by the Bali-Nyonga Development and Cultural Association (BANDECA). The history and character of this hometown association is analysed and the article then argues that the mortuary has changed the temporality of death celebrations, and that this change is largely driven by the needs of national and international migrants. It claims that the association and the traditional authorities are attempting to steer recent changes within a longer historical process of ‘modernizing’ burial. The construction of the mortuary reveals some of the tensions within the community and the challenges these present to the association's leadership. In particular it illustrates the potential conflicts of interest between the hometown association and the national government that result from this form of self-help development project. Finally, the article shows that, despite the increased mobility of the Bali-Nyonga population, it is becoming more important, not less, to be buried at ‘home’, and that the mortuary and remittances are contributing to this process. Since the mortuary enables burials to take place at home, BANDECA is unwittingly reinscribing ethnic territoriality and thereby contributing to a political process of deepening the sense of ethnic belonging in Cameroon.
Natural Patrimony and Local Communities in Ethiopia: Advantages and Limitations of a System of Geographical Indications
Authors: Roussel Bernard , Verdeaux François
Published: July 2008

Among various processes of recognition and development of local know-how related to biodiversity, the protection systems based on Geographical Indications seem to open up interesting perspectives for the countries of the South. Ethiopia is on the way to equipping itself with such a tool.

In this article we argue that Ethiopia offers an exceptionally good terrain for setting up such a mechanism. It has many products derived from the exploitation of biodiversity by a variety of cultural groups. Many of these products already have reputations linked to their cultural geographical origin. The existence of competitive national and international markets requires labels and protection systems.

Nevertheless adoption of a Geographical Indications system is not without its problems. The specific circumstances of the Ethiopian context – social and institutional as well as environmental – raise questions as to the limitations and possible risks of such a system, including the unequal development of certain components of biodiversity, standardization and loss of know-how, modification of current territorial subdivisions and the corresponding social and administrative organizational structures.
The Fulani and Cattle Breeds: Crossbreeding and Heritage Strategies
Authors: Boutrais Jean
Published: July 2008

This article examines the tensions between memory, identity and livelihoods in the making and transformation of cultural patrimony among Fulani cattle keepers of West Africa. Two areas of cattle breeding are examined: the Grassfields of Cameroon and south-western Burkina Faso. Studies on Fulani livestock raising suggest that each group possesses a particular cattle breed that has not changed with time. While the Fulani are thought to be conservative pastoralists, their livestock management practices suggest otherwise. They cross and change cattle breeds in order to adapt to new ecological or socio-political conditions. These strategies of adaptation and adjustment of cattle seem to be in opposition to strategies of heritage conservation. The relationship between Fulani pastoralists and their cattle breeds shows that an animal patrimony is a social product that is susceptible to being reworked. Fulani cattle breeding shows that new crossbreeds can result in the construction of a new heritage over the medium and long term as long as it is transmitted from the present to the next generation and preserved for a period of time.
Forest Management, Farmers' Practices and Biodiversity Conservation in the Monogaga Protected Coastal Forest in Southwest Côte D'ivoire
Authors: Yao C. Y. Adou , Roussel Barnard
Published: July 2008

The emergence of biodiversity standards in the nature conservation literature requires that we consider the interactions between conservation and local practices from a new angle. The coastal forest of Monogaga, a protected area inhabited by a local population, is an ideal terrain for comparing the impact of local agricultural practices and the activities of Sodefor, the government agency charged with the management of this conservation area. The discourses and uses of forest resources of these two actors allow us to compare the biodiversity of forest cover categories recognized by peasant farmers and Sodefor, using the standard statistical methods for measuring biodiversity (the Shannon and Weaver index, species richness, number of special status species).

For Sodefor, it is the most dense forest ecosystems (the ‘black forests’ ) and the lands that they occupy that constitute the area's natural heritage. The agency believes that these forests must be protected from all human uses, especially farming, if the forest is to be transmitted to future generations. In contrast, Wanne farmers view the old forests (kporo) as long-term fallows (teteklwoa) or reserves of fertile land that will be cleared when there is a need for more farmland in the future. For them, patrimony is constituted by the intergenerational transmission of a bundle of resource access and farming rights within lineages.

With regard to biodiversity, a comparison of the two types of resource management practices (Sodefor and farmer) gives nuanced results. The farmers' areas are more diverse than those of Sodefor when considering the Aké Assi threatened species list. For the Sassandrian species list, both management types maintained the same quantity of species. For endemics and the IUCN red list species, the spatial units controlled by Sodefor show more diversity.
Ritual Territories as Local Heritage? Discourse on Disruptions in Society and Nature in Maane, Burkina Faso
Authors: Luning Sabine
Published: July 2008

The issue of nature as local heritage refers to temporalities: the transmission of a valued common good over time, as well as the assessment of causes leading to degradation of the natural environment. How are such ideas shaped in local discourse and practices in the Moose chiefdom of Maane? The article focuses on the creation, development and main features of the ritual territories of earth priests over time. A pessimistic discourse on the present environmental situation connects the degradation of the land to processes of social erosion: loss of knowledge and morals. Is this degradation considered to be a recent phenomenon, or is it inherent in the passage of time at whatever moment in the history of Maane?
The Life and Afterlife of Yaa Asantewaa
Authors: McCaskie T. C.
Published: July 2008

This article is about Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa (c. 1830s–1921) ofEdweso (Ejisu) in Asante, locally famous in tradition for her supposed leadership role in the last Anglo–Asante conflict (1900–1), and now internationally celebrated as an epitome of African womanhood and resistance to European colonialism. The article is in three parts. The first part examines the historical record concerning Yaa Asantewaa and sets this within the conflicted context of Edweso–Kumase relations before, during and after her lifetime. It also considers her role in the 1900–1 war and the nationalist constructions placed on that role by later Asante and other Ghanaian commentators. The second part examines the politics of the celebrations held in Asante in 2000 to mark the centenary of the last Anglo–Asante war and to honour Yaa Asantewaa for her part in it. Discussion here is concerned with the struggle between the ruling Asante elite and the Rawlings government in Accra to take possession of Yaa Asantewaa's reputation and to define and reinterpret it for contemporary political purposes. This was also a significant and revealing episode in the run–up to the Ghanaian national elections of 2000, in which J. A. Kufuor's Asante–based NPP finally ousted Rawlings's NDC which, in various incarnations, had ruled Ghana for twenty years. The third part examines the recent and ever–growing afterlife of Yaa Asantewaa in the age of globalization and the Internet. Attention is paid in particular to the constructions placed on her by Americans of African descent and to cultural expressions of her present status as, perhaps, the most famous of all pre–colonial African women. Finally, Asante reactions to the internationalization of Yaa Asantewaa are considered. In general, and using the case of Yaa Asantewaa, this article sets out to show that in Asante – as elsewhere in Africa – history is a continuous and vivid presence, constantly fought over, reworked and reconfigured to make the past serve new needs and aspirations.
What Came First, The Nation or the State? Political Process in the Comoro Islands
Authors: Walker Iain
Published: July 2008

The widespread failure of the post-colonial state in Africa is often attributed to a lack of social and cultural unity, and hence of national identity, in the territories in question. In Europe the state has historically been conceptualized as coterminous with the nation, an apparently ‘natural’ cultural unit that allowed for subsequent political cohesion and the avoidance of ethnic conflict. In Africa the concept (and the reality) of the nation is often absent and this is sometimes considered to be a stumbling block on the path to political stability. However, the suggestion that a state whose population exhibits the requisite cultural homogeneity would construct and maintain a nation and, subsequently, successful and stable statehood is challenged by evidence from the Comoro Islands. Here, despite apparent socio-cultural unity, there has been little movement towards the development of a nation; indeed, there is evidence that an explicit denial of socio-cultural unity underpins the failure of the state.
The Dancer, the Choreographer and Modern Dance Scholarship: A Critical Reading
Authors: Gardner Sally
Published: July 2008

This paper undertakes a critical re-examination of the ways in which dance-making relationships between the dancer and the choreographer in American modern dance have been conceptualised in dance discourses. The essay proposes that a defining aspect of modern dance practices (from the moment that, after Duncan and Fuller, it became a group as well as a solo form) was the dancing together of the choreographer and the dancer(s) as the central mode of dance creation and transmission. In dance discourses, however, this dancing relationship is frequently not acknowledged.

Texts by dance scholars Susan Leigh Foster, Amy Koritz and Randy Martin which draw on theoretical frameworks from outside dance are analysed in terms of the ways the theoretical frameworks that underpin them both make it possible to raise the question of the nature of the dance-making relationship while at the same time can also make the dancer's and the choreographer's dancing together invisible or unrepresentable. The analysis shows how scholarly discourses and the theoretical frameworks upon which they are built are already invested in regimes of intelligibility and visibility which have consequences for the representation of modern dance. This analysis forms the basis for proposing the need for a non-individualised, inter-subjective and intercorporeal understanding of the dancer and the choreographer and their relationship in modern dance.
Dance Identity, Authenticity and Issues of Interpretation with Specific Reference to the Choreography of Siobhan Davies
Authors: Whatley Sarah
Published: July 2008

Choreographers regularly make revisions to their work. Revisions that are made are sometimes significant and can radically alter the dance whilst other changes may be almost invisible to the viewer. In the case of Siobhan Davies, revising dances has become a regular feature of her work. This paper represents a case study, which is designed to shed some further light on this process.
Dancing Towards Death: Masques and Entertainments in London and Florence as precedents for Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women
Authors: Shewring Margaret , Mulryne J. R.
Published: July 2008

Thomas Middleton's tragedy Women Beware Women (c.1613–21) includes in its fifth act a masque during which the play's miscreants are severally killed and its corrupt society collapses. The masque's debt to Ben Jonson's Hymenaei is discussed, together with its possible recollection of Florentine entertainments, including those staged in 1586 for the wedding of Cesare d' Este with Virginia de' Medici. The play is based on fact, centring on the seduction of Bianca Cappello and her marriage with the Grand Duke Francesco de' Medici. Middleton makes considerable efforts to provide an ‘authentic’ Florentine setting for his play including, it is suggested, recalling the celebrated series of Medici wedding entertainments and touching on the fascination of an early seventeenth-century elite society with Florentine culture.
Jean II Berain's Costume Designs for the Ballet Les Plaisirs de la Paix (1715)
Authors: Gorce Jérôme De La
Published: July 2008

In the late seventeenth century, the Swedish ambassador and architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger used his sojourn in Paris to frequent the opera house and to build up collections of theatre designs which are now housed in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. He developed links with French artists and, in particular, with the Berain dynasty encouraging his son to continue the association. The son eagerly followed his advice compiling an inventory of the theatrical designs which his father had collected, an inventory which serves to identify those costume drawings for the Ballet Les Plaisirs de la Paix (1715) which are analysed in this essay and published here for the first time.
Into the Labyrinth: Kenneth MacMillan and his Ballets
Authors: Crisp Clement
Published: July 2008

This study explores the choreographic themes and the emotional and psychic concerns which are so central to the creativity of Kenneth MacMillan. Clement Crisp, who has seen and reviewed MacMillan's ballets for forty years, from the earliest apprentice works to the final Judas Tree, offers some observations on the nature of MacMillan's inspiration, on the ideas that fired his imagination and their realisation in dance.
The Barriers: From Combat to Dance (Almost)
Authors: Anglo Sydney
Published: July 2008

The relationships between Renaissance courtly dancing, the art of fencing, and military drill, have recently been much commented upon. This paper explores one particular type of mock combat - the Barriers - where the spectacle moved increasingly close to choreography, but without ever quite becoming a dance itself. After a brief outline of the evolution of the Barriers, the paper concentrates on a number of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century treatises which - rather than the actual combat - all stressed the importance of the passeggio and riverenza, that is the balletic aspects of the spectacle; and placed great emphasis on grace, deportment, foot placement, and on the need to keep exactly to the tempo set by accompanying music.
‘The Fertile Brain and Inventive Power of Man’: Anthropogenic Factors in the Cessation of Springbok Treks and the Disruption of the Karoo Ecosystem, 1865–1908
Authors: Roche Chris
Published: July 2008

The demise of springbok treks, the irruptive migration patterns of the species in South Africa's Karoo region, has long been attributed to the rinderpest epizootic understood to have coincided in both time and space with the last of the great springbok treks. This is incorrect. Instead the cessation of springbok treks can be attributed to a variety of anthropogenic factors. This article first examines and then rejects the case for rinderpest, before introducing alternative causal factors such as the increase in livestock and human populations, the effects of fencing and the double impact of hunting and concomitant drought. These factors, it is argued, acted in concert to effectively remove the conditions necessary for springbok treks and thereby end the phenomenon. It is suggested that the local extinction of this phenomenon – a keystone species and process – is an important and heretofore unconsidered element in the decline of the Karoo ecosystem.
Disgust, Bodily Aesthetics and the Ethic of Being Human in Botswana
Authors: Livingston Julie
Published: July 2008

This article explores how people in Botswana approach and navigate their own feelings of disgust and morbid curiosity towards the aesthetically impaired bodies of their fellow citizens, and the problems and opportunities these feelings present in a context where a particular humanistic ethos of respect and manners,botho, is stressed in the public discourse of nationalism. The agenda of contemporary disability and patients' rights movements is based on the assertion that moral sentiment is neither determined nor subverted by particular bodily states or configurations. While such activism acknowledges and affirms experiences of debility and physical suffering, the political agenda largely centres on enabling persons to participate equally in rational-critical discourse in the public sphere regardless of the vagaries of any individual's particular bodily state. Within this framework, physicality should have no power to structure relationships among citizens. And yet, in Botswana, as in other places, the messiness of the human body – manifested in diarrhoea, drool, disfigurement, and disgust – threatens to subvert humanistic efforts, and challenges the smooth enactment of rights-based politics and other liberal projects. In what follows I explore the sometimes troubling physicality of humanistic and affective life in Botswana to better grasp the messy bodily dimensions of sociality that are so often swept under the rug in discussions of citizenship, rights and community. Aesthetic efforts at bathing, bandaging and otherwise reworking the bodies in question reveal dimensions of sociality and aspects of sensory and affective interaction that are critical to the enactment of moral sentiment.
‘Except When Night Falls’: Together and Alone in Barthes's Comment vivre ensemble
Authors: KNIGHT DIANA
Published: July 2008

This essay explores the relation between Living-Together (vivre ensemble) and Living-Alone (vivre seul) by analysing the overlap between two figures sketched out in Comment vivre ensemble: Autarky and Enclosure. Barthes's ambivalence towards enclosure and self-sufficiency — ideologically negative, existentially and neurotically positive — is traced backwards through a number of 1950s essays to his 1947 proto-mythology Esquisse d’une société sanatoriale (sketch of a sanatorial society). On the basis of Barthes's analysis there of the excessive socialization that serves to repress the reality of illness and death, I move forward again to his own autobiographical return to the sanatorium (as space and thematics) in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, in interviews and — via Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain — in Comment vivre ensemble. Finally, some passages of The Magic Mountain are read through Barthes's figures Enclosure and Cause.
Looking for the Censor in the Works of Sean O'Casey (and Others) in Polish Translation
Authors: Looby Robert
Published: July 2008

The March 1953 edition of the Polish publication Medycyna Weterynaryjna (‘Veterinary Medicine’) carried on its first page a photograph of the recently deceased Stalin. In an internal report, the censor wrote: Szkodliwość w okolicznościowym numerze polega na tym, że redakcja ograniczyła się do zamieszczenia na pierwszej stronie zdjęcia Tow. Stalina bez jakiego-kolwiek art. wstępnego. Bardzo nieprzyjemne wrażenie mógłby odnieść czytelnik znajdując na miejscu art. okolicznościowego /wstępnego/ - art. o “Ochronnym szczepieniu świn”. (The harmfulness of the special issue consists in the fact that the editors limited themselves to putting a picture of comrade Stalin on page one without any kind of leader article. A very unpleasant impression might be made on readers finding in the place of a leader (or special) article a piece about ‘Swine Vaccination.’)1
William Barnes' Rhythmical Versions of the Psalms
Authors: Gillespie Stuart
Published: July 2008

William Barnes' place in literary history comes partly from his dialect verse, but his metrical experimentation is also recognized as an influence on poets such as Hardy and Hopkins. It is much less well known that one of the forms this experimentation took was a complete version of the psalms which Barnes carried out in the years 1864 to 1874, was typeset (at least in part) but never published, and now exists as a substantial collection of manuscript and printed papers in the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester.1
Alien Abduction: Inference to the Best Explanation and the Management of Testimony
Authors: Lipton Peter
Published: July 2008

This paper considers how we decide whether to believe what we are told. Inference to the Best Explanation, a popular general account of non-demonstrative reasoning, is applied to this task. The core idea of this application is that we believe what we are told when the truth of what we are told would figure in the best explanation of the fact that we were told it. We believe the fact uttered when it is part of the best explanation of the fact of utterance. Having provided some articulation of this account of testimonial inference, the paper goes on to consider whether the account is informative and whether it is plausible.
Ethical and Epistemic Egoism and the Ideal of Autonomy
Authors: Zagzebski Linda
Published: July 2008

In this paper I distinguish three degrees of epistemic egoism, each of which has an ethical analogue, and I argue that all three are incoherent. Since epistemic autonomy is frequently identified with one of these forms of epistemic egoism, it follows that epistemic autonomy as commonly understood is incoherent. I end with a brief discussion of the idea of moral autonomy and suggest that its component of epistemic autonomy in the realm of the moral is problematic.
A Genealogy of Trust
Authors: Faulkner Paul
Published: July 2008

In trusting a speaker we adopt a credulous attitude, and this attitude is basic: it cannot be reduced to the belief that the speaker is trustworthy or reliable. However, like this belief, the attitude of trust provides a reason for accepting what a speaker says. Similarly, this reason can be good or bad; it is likewise epistemically evaluable. This paper aims to present these claims and offer a genealogical justification of them.
Argumentation and Distortion
Authors: Adler Jonathan
Published: July 2008

Why is there so much misrepresentation of arguments in public forums? Standard explanations, such as self-interested biases, are insufficient. An additional part of the explanation is our commitment to, or belief in, norms that disallow responses that amount to no firm judgment, as contrasted with definite agreement or disagreement. In disallowing no-firm-judgment responses, these norms deny not only degrees of support or dissent and a variety of ways of suspending judgment, but also indifference. Since these norms leave us with only constricted options that are very intellectually demanding, in accepting these norms we impose on ourselves a pressure to justify our judgment that lends itself to relief through misrepresentation or distortion.
Science, Religion, and Democracy
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: July 2008

Debates sometimes arise within democratic societies because of the fact that findings accepted in accordance with the standards of scientific research conflict with the beliefs of citizens. I use the example of the dispute about Darwinian evolutionary theory to explore what a commitment to democracy might require of us in circumstances of this kind. I argue that the existence ofhybrid epistemologies– tendencies to acquiesce in scientific recommendations on some occasions and to defer to non-scientific authorities on others – poses a serious problem for democratic decision-making. We need a shared conception of public reason, and it can only be secular.
The Epistemic Value of the Democratic Process
Authors: Nelson William
Published: July 2008

An epistemic theory of democracy, I assume, is meant to provide on answer to the question of why democracy is desirable. It does so by trying to show how the democratic process can have epistemic value. I begin by describing a couple of examples of epistemic theories in the literature and bringing out what they presuppose. I then examine a particular type of theory, worked out most thoroughly by Joshua Cohen, which seems to imply that democracy has epistemic value. The key idea in this theory is that its conception of political right isitselfa democratic conception – roughly, what is right is constituted by a consensus among ideal democratic agents. If democratic procedures are modeled on this conception of right, the theory proposes, the fact that we follow these procedures in decision-making will give us reason to believe that the outcomes are themselves right. I do not reject the democratic conception of the right, but I argue that the theory breaks down when we try to extend its conclusions to real-world democratic procedures. While it invites interesting speculation about possible reforms, it gives us little reason to accept the outcomes of actual democratic politics.
Pure Epistemic Proceduralism
Authors: Peter Fabienne
Published: July 2008

In this paper I defend a pure proceduralist conception of legitimacy that applies to epistemic democracy. This conception, which I call pure epistemic proceduralism, does not depend on procedure-independent standards for good outcomes and relies on a proceduralist epistemology. It identifies a democratic decision as legitimate if it is the outcome of a process that satisfies certain conditions of political and epistemic fairness. My argument starts with a rejection of instrumentalism–the view that political equality is only instrumentally valuable. I reject instrumentalism on two grounds: (i) because it fails to respect reasonable value pluralism and to recognize the constitutive role of democratic procedures for legitimacy in pluralist societies, and (ii) because it neglects the constructive function of democratic decision-making. I then consider two alternatives to pure epistemic proceduralism: David Estlund's version of epistemic proceduralism and a Deweyan account of epistemic democracy. I argue that only pure epistemic proceduralism can make good on both shortcomings of instrumentalism, whereas each of the other two approaches only makes good on one and neglects the other.
The Premises of Condorcet's Jury Theorem Are Not Simultaneously Justified
Authors: Dietrich Franz
Published: July 2008

Condorcet's famous jury theorem reaches an optimistic conclusion on the correctness of majority decisions, based on two controversial premises about voters: they are competent and vote independently, in a technical sense. I carefully analyse these premises and show that: (i) whether a premise is justified depends on the notion of probability considered and (ii) none of the notions renders both premises simultaneously justified. Under the perhaps most interesting notions, the independence assumption should be weakened.
Epistemic Democracy and the Social Character of Knowledge
Authors: Fuerstein Michael
Published: July 2008

How can democratic governments be relied upon to achieve adequate political knowledge when they turn over their authority to those of no epistemic distinction whatsoever? This deep and longstanding concern is one that any proponent of epistemic conceptions of democracy must take seriously. While Condorcetian responses have recently attracted substantial interest, they are largely undermined by a fundamental neglect of agenda-setting. I argue that the apparent intractability of the problem of epistemic adequacy in democracy stems in large part from a failure to appreciate the social character of political knowledge. A social point of view brings into focus a number of vital factors that bear on our understanding of democratic epistemology and our assessment of its prospects: the essential role of inclusive deliberation, the public's agenda-setting function, institutional provisions for policy feedback, the independence of expert communities, and the knowledge-pooling powers of markets.
Toward a Social Epistemic Comprehensive Liberalism
Authors: Talisse Robert B.
Published: July 2008

For well over a decade, much of liberal political theory has accepted the founding premise of Rawls's political liberalism, according to which the fact of reasonable pluralism renders comprehensive versions of liberalism incoherent. However, the founding premise presumes that all comprehensive doctrines aremoraldoctrines. In this essay, the author builds upon recent work by Allen Buchanan and develops a comprehensive version of liberalism based in a partially comprehensivesocial epistemicdoctrine. The author then argues that this version of liberalism is sufficiently accommodating of the fact of reasonable pluralism. The conclusion is that the founding premise of political liberalism admits of a counterexample; there is a version of comprehensive liberalism that is sufficiently pluralistic.
Fictive Mode, ‘Journey to the West’, and Transformation of Space: ‘Ali Mubarak’s Discourses of Modernization
Authors: OUYANG WEN-CHIN
Published: July 2008

I begin my exploration of ‘Ali Mubarak (1823/4–1893) and the discourses on modernization ‘performed’ in his only attempt at fiction, ‘Alam al-Din (The Sign of Religion, 1882), with a quote from Guy Davenport because it elegantly sums up a key theoretical principle underpinning any discussion of cultural transformation and, more particularly, of modernization. Locating ‘Ali Mubarak and his only fictional work at the juncture of the transformation from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’ in the recent history of Arab culture and of Arabic narrative, I find Davenport's pronouncement tantalizingly appropriate. He not only places the stakes of history and geography in one another, but simultaneously opens up the imagination to the combined forces of time and space that stand behind these two distinct yet related disciplines.
Introduction
Authors: BOASE-BEIER JEAN
Published: July 2008

In October 2006, the Executive Committee of the British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA) held a small conference at the University of East Anglia to honour Professor Malcolm Bowie, who had been our President from 1998 until 2004, when he was succeeded by Professor Dame Gillian Beer, who is the BCLA's current President.

We had initially hoped to hold such a celebratory event soon after Malcolm stepped down as President, but the medical treatment he had to undergo at that time prevented our doing so. We were especially touched, then, when Malcolm was able to attend the first afternoon of the conference. Though he looked tired and frail, there was still a hint of that engaging boyishness that friends, colleagues and students had always found so endearing.
The Monodramatic Experiment
Authors: smith CHRISTOPHER
Published: July 2008

The Seyler Acting Troupe is in town […] Herr von Dallberg [sic] is the director, – and he is determined to keep me here until I’ve composed a Duodrama for him, and in fact, it didn’t take me too long to make up my mind, – for I’ve always wanted to write a play of this sort; – I can’t remember whether I wrote to you about these dramas when I was here before? – At that time I went twice to see such a play, and I saw it