bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Condition Swahili et identité politique
Authors: Constantin François 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphDans le très long et très riche débat sur la nature profonde de la condition swahili, tout ne semble pas avoir été dit. Pour d'obscures ou inavouables raisons, les politistes ont esquivé le problème alors même que les phénomenes d'identité collective, d'idéologie et de relations de pouvoir sont au cœur de leurs analyses. Pourtant, la question de la ‘swahilité’ constitue l'occasion idéale pour réveiller une attention assoupie par une tradition étatique lénifiante.
The Mountain People: some notes on the Ik of north-eastern Uganda
Authors: Heine Bernd 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphColin M. Turnbull's publications form virtually the only source available on Ik clture and society. His bookThe Mountain Peoplehas found wide distribution, far beyond anthropological circles. The problems it raises have been discussed in a number of reviews (see especially Beidelman, 1973; Spencer, 1973; Barth, 1974; Winteret al., 1975). Through the present article, I wish to show that there is an urgent need for a more comprehensive and less biased study of Ik culture md society.
From warrior to migrants: critical perspectives on early migrations among the Zarma of Niger
Authors: Painter Thomas M. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn 1956 the Journal de la Société des Africanistes published a monograph-length paper by Jean Rouch entitled ‘Migrations au Ghana (Gold Coast: enquête 1953–1955)’ (Rouch, 1956). The paper was one of several publications during the 1950s and 1960s based on studies by Rouch and other researchers who participated in what was probably the largest study ever of West African migrations, financed by the Commission for Technical Cooperation in Africa South of the Sahara and the Scientific Council for Africa South of the Sahara (CCTA/CSA).
In search of personal mobility: changing interpersonal relations in two Bamileke chiefdoms, Cameroon
Authors: den Ouden Jan H. B. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn this article I discuss the incorporation of the people of two Bamileke chiefdoms into wider economic and political systems. In doing this I will concentrate on the interactions and strategies of individuals. A number of issues will concern us: the types of relations of dependency within the chiefdoms and the possibilities for manipulating them to further individual economic, political and social mobility; the effects of the commercialisation of agriculture during both colonial and post-colonial periods; the opening up of areas outside the chiefdoms for trade and migration; the erosion of the chiefdom structure and its consequences for interpersonal relations and the possibilities for furthering individual and family interests. I will approach these problems mainly from the point of view of the changing patterns of authority and power relations.
Living with the past: the songs of the Herero in Botswana
Authors: Alnaes Kirsten 
Published: April 2006

Introduction‘I am in the Batawana's country,’ wrote the Herero chief Samuel Maharero to the British Magistrate in Tsau in Ngamiland on 28 September 1904. ‘I am writing to tell you that I have been fighting with the Germans in my country; the Germans were my friends; they made me suffer so much by the manner in which they troubled me, that I fought with them…’ (PRO CO 879/80). On the same date he wrote to the Tawana chief Sekgoma: ‘I tell you that I have fought with the German, they trouble me and killed my people, then I was angry about that. I have fought with them for 8 (eight) months, and I have no ammunition to-day, this is the reason why I came here…’ (PRO CO 879/86).
Law and order and the state in the Nyamwezi and Sukuma area of Tanzania
Authors: Abrahams Ray 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionThe Nyamwezi and Sukuma area of Tanzania covers about 50,000 square miles from Lake Victoria in the north to the southern edges of Tabora District. The area probably contains between 4 and 5 million people, about one fifth of the total Tanzanian mainland population. The two peoples speak regional variants of a single language—the name Sukuma simply meant ‘northerners’ originally—and they share many common social structural and cultural forms (Abrahams, 1967b).
Household strategies for adaptation and change: participation in Kenyan rural women’s associations
Authors: Thomas Barbara P. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphRecent literature on Third World households suggests that the household is a critical unit of analysis in decision-making and economic organisation for development (Smith, Wallerstein and Evers, 1984; Netting, Wilk and Arnould, 1984). Increasingly, this literature is addressing intra-household behaviour, the ways in which households relate to other institutions and the degree to which they are autonomous or embedded in more comprehensive social structures (Guyer and Peters, 1984; Folbre, 1985; Moock, 1986). Indeed, the household focus requires not only close examination of the household's internal dynamics, but also its external context. That context includes the physical setting, international as well as national political and economic structures, and the local political economic and social systems.
Children of tribulation: the need to heal and the means to heal war trauma
Authors: Reynolds Pamela 
Published: April 2006

The Need for HealingThis article is about the unseen world of war—the unrecorded consequences for children of large-scale horror. There are two parts to it. The first is on the need for healing: it is an account of children's suffering during Zimbabwe's War of Liberation and their part in the fight for freedom. The second describes the means for healing: it examines how traditional healers (n'anga) provided opportunities through ritual for reconciliation and the soothing of individual trauma.
The cultural transformation of Western education in Sierra Leone
Authors: Bledsoe Caroline 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThe introduction of European schooling into West Africa in the late eighteenth century set in motion a profound cultural transformation. The Mende of Sierra Leone, the target of some of the earliest educational experiments in West Africa, began to reinterpret the Western ideals about the free dissemination of knowledge that were imposed on them. Focusing less onwhatis taught thanhowit is taught, the article shows that the Mende have transformed ideals about imparting knowl-edge according to local cultural tenets about secrecy and the control of knowledge. These tenets hold that, since valued knowledge is a key economic and political commodity, teachers, as proprietors of knowledge, deserve compensation for imparting it: a model of education manifested most strikingly in the region's famous secret societies. As was the case with more ‘traditional’ knowledge, the chief cultural idiom by which children acquire ‘civilised’ knowledge in school, and thus advance in the modern world, is through ‘buying’ or ‘earning’ blessings from those who teach them. By addressing ideologies of knowledge, power, and secrecy, the article sheds new interpretive light on the evolution of education in a country—indeed, among the very ethnic group—that comprised a keystone of nineteenth century British educational experiments in Africa.
Competition between foragers and food-producers on the Botletli River, Botswana
Authors: Cashdan Elizabeth 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe immigration of food-producing groups into areas occupied by hunters and gatherers must have been a common occurrence in prehistory. How were the hunter-gatherers affected by this? I describe here two groups of Kalahari Basarwa (‘Bushmen’), one living along the flood plain of the lower Botletli river, the other occupying the savanna a short distance away from the river. These two groups differed in subsistence and social organisation and were affected by immigrant herders and farmers in strikingly different ways. Today the Basarwa of the flood plain are wealthy cattle owners, whereas those of the savanna are poor and have few or no cattle. How and why did the two groups respond so differently to the same competitive threat?
‘For the use and common benefit of all Nigerians’: consequences of the 1978 land nationalization
Authors: Francis Paul 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphOn 29 March 1978 the Federal Military Government of Nigeria promulgated the Land Use Decree, which, with immediate effect, vested all land in the territory of each state of the Federation in the Governor of that state. The land was to be ‘held in trust and administered for the use and common benefit of all Nigerians’ in accordance with the provisions of the Decree. This paper considers the origins and effects of this policy of land nationalization.
Illness, therapy, and change in Ethiopian possession cults
Authors: Vecchiato Norbert L. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThis article examines patterns of continuity and change in spirit possession phenomena among the Sidamo of southern Ethiopia. Traditional possession rituals appear to be losing cultural relevance, owing to the increasing popularity of possession and exorcistic healing enacted within the ritual context of independent religious movements. Such movements emerged in the region as a response to widespread conversion to Christianity and Islam in the 1950sand 1960s. Patterns of possession healing in the new cults are analysed in relation to the prevailing holistic definition of health and the role attributed to supernatural agents i n illness aetiology. While outlining points of convergence and divergence in the recodification of rituals, this article highlights their therapeutic objectives and the centrality of healing in the newly emerged cults. It is argued that the political and sex antagonism model proposed by ‘deprivation theories’ is inadequate to explain the changing modalities of spirit possession and its persistence on the African scene. Independent healing movements should be recognised as an important health resource where rural and urban Africans seek relief from a wide range of organic and mental illnesses, personal misfortunes, and stressful life situations.
The barracuda's tale: trawlers, the informal sector and a state of classificatory disorder off the Nigerian coast
Authors: Klein Axel 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThe expansion of Nigeria's artisanal fisheries has been a rare economic success story during the 1980s. Without assistance from government agencies the canoe fishermen, many of them Ghanaian migrants, have responded successfully to the opportunities offered by the Lagos market. In recent years declining fish stocks and competition from trawlers have forced shore-based fishermen to adapt their operations to changing circumstances. In describing a number of such responses the article tackles a number of wider themes in economic anthropology and African studies. Contrasting the opposition and co-operation of industrial and artisanal fisheries throws an interesting light on the informal sector debates, while the role played by the marine police and the navy feeds into the discussion on the African state.
Mamprusi witchcraft, subversion and changing gender relations
Authors: Drucker-Brown Susan 
Published: April 2006

AbstractIn the pre-colonial Mamprusi kingdom female witches were either executed after sentencing in the king's court, or segregated in a special section of a major market town where they received medicine to neutralise their witchcraft. This treatment of witches is a manifestation of the centralising process at work in the kingdom, and also exemplifies the division of ritual labour characteristic of the polity. Recent changes in the constitution of the witches' village have been accompanied by new Mamprusi conceptions of witchcraft, drawing on a long-standing belief in the power of women to subvert the social order. Radical changes in national political and economic conditions, and local changes in the division of labour, are threatening the idealised norms of Mamprusi gender relations. Mamprusi witch-hunting emerges as an attempt to control women, who are perceived as a source of these wider disorders.
Christianity, modernity and the weight of tradition in the life ofAsanteheneAgyeman Prempeh I,c.1888–1931
Authors: Akyeampong Emmanuel 
Published: April 2006

AbstractMuch of what has been written on Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh I (1888-1931) focuses on his career as the king of Asante in the context of British colonisation. This article attempts to shed some light on Prempeh's personal life, and his engagement with Christianity and modernity. The article defines modernity and conversion in the Asante context, and examines Prempeh's pioneering efforts to fuse Asante tradition with modernity. The endeavour had profound consequences for Prempeh and Asante. The article is a micro-study of the operation of global cultural forces in a non-Western context.
Aesthetic strategies: the politics of a royal ritual
Authors: Gilbert Michelle 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThe article explores both the meaning of Odwira, the royal ritual which annually cleanses the community of pollution, and the way the rite is used to negotiate the shifting configurations of power in Akuropon and the kingdom of Akuapem. In a small society where consensus is required in public and conflict is covert, where kings formerly had the power to reduce opponents to slavery and still today can deny them a position and a home, opposition must be circumspect. Rituals and symbols are good for making a political statement, since an in-built ambiguity makes them a safe medium for political aggression. For this reason, although the Odwira ritual of purification is thought to be unchanging in its performance and symbolic structure, i n practice the community's volatile politics are also reflected in the ad hoc modifications made each year to the lengthy ceremonial process.
Money and respect: the changing value of old age in rural Ghana
Authors: van der Geest Sjaak 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThis article describes the position of elderly people from the perspective of money anddiscusses the meaning of money from the perspective of elderly people. Anthropological research was carried out in 1994, 1995 and 1996 in a rural Kwahu community in southern Ghana. It consisted mainly of long conversations with elderly people and their relatives. Money is a core symbol in daily life by which people measure the value of their relationships. It is not used to keep people at bay but rather to establish and maintain social bonds and to secure care in old age. Having money engenders respect, as it is a sign of a successful life, while lack of money discloses failure and shame. Giving money is a way of ‘paying’ respect and shows affection and care for the elderly.
Male praise-singers in Accra: in the company of women
Authors: Pellow Deborah 
Published: April 2006

AbstractIn 1957 M. G. Smith published a seminal paper on the role of the male praise-singer, themaroki, among Northern Nigeria's Muslim Hausa. My paper explores the role of themarokiin the diaspora community of Sabon Zongo in Accra. While Accra'szongocommunities are considerably diluted in their Islamic orthodoxy, they are nonetheless distinctly Islamic in tone, witness the mosques, Qurʼānic schools, flowing robes and diaphanous prayer veils, and a general cultural orientation that is strongly influenced by the Hausa and distinct from Christian southern Ghana. Among the Hausa, and thosezongoinstitutions particularly affected by Hausa custom, there is also a vestigial separation between the worlds of men and women. This article considers themarokias an ungendered actor. It suggests that, through his attendance at Hausa andzongowomen's occasions, he has become their client, regards them as his patrons and conjoins their world with that of men.
Rethinking female circumcision
Authors: Parker Melissa 
Published: April 2006

AbstractFemale circumcision is practised in more than twenty African countries as well as in a number of countries in the Middle East, and it has been estimated that at least 100 million females have been circumcised worldwide. It is striking, however, that much more concern has been expressed about female circumcision than about other operations or infections which adversely affect the reproductive health of women. In the academic arena, it is also interesting that gynaecologists, epidemiologists and anthropologists have tended to focus on a relatively small number of questions, and even these have rarely been investigated in any depth. This article focuses on the work of researchers from Europe and North America in order to show that intense emotions underlie this interest and concern. Amidst growing interest in the anthropology of emotions it is suggested that greater attention should be paid to understanding the source of these emotions and the way in which they influence fieldwork and data analysis. Until it is, our understanding of female circumcision will remain partial, as data will continue to be collected and interpreted in an inadequate way.
‘Buying her grave’: money, movement and AIDS in north-west Tanzania
Authors: Weiss Brad 
Published: April 2006

Abstract‘Buying her grave’ is a highly condensed statement about the position of women, and of gender relations more generally, at the crux of dynamic processes of socio-cultural continuity among the Haya of north-west Tanzania. This article suggests that the grave, an essential site of focalisation, is undone by purchase, the quintessential act of disruption, dislocation and uncontrolled mobility. Men believe that women are ‘buying their graves’ (contracting AIDS) when they think they are ‘getting rich’ (finding material wealth through prostitution). To ‘buy a grave’ when you think you are ‘getting rich’ is not merely an ironic commentary on the terrible consequence of death for those who seek only their own gain. It is also a statement about the ways in which sweeping transformations in Haya economic and bodily conditions render impossible the very forms of death that allow the living to realise and perpetuate their own well-being.
Small change: individual farm work and collective life in a western Nigerian savanna town, 1969–88
Authors: Guyer Jane I. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractA comparison of data collected in western Nigeria (the Yoruba area) in 1968-69 and 1988 suggests that small-scale male farmers' patterns of work remained quite similar in the total amount of work they did and in the amount by task. This finding seemed surprising, since the study area lies in the food supply hinterland of the rapidly growing cities of Ibadan, Lagos and Abeokuta. The farming system has changed in several ways in response to increased urban demand and improved transport, including an increase in farm size on the part of male farmers. Changed cropping patterns, the increased use of hired labour and somewhat increased returns to labour seem only partly to account for the persistence. Analysis of the work data in terms of its timing, rather than in terms of time, suggests that farmers are tending to work at the same task in longer stretches ofconsecutive days, and this, in turn, is related to the marked rescheduling of traditional ceremonial life and the intensified politico-associational life moved to the weekend.
Cosmologies in turmoil: witchfinding and AIDS in Chiawa, Zambia
Authors: Yamba C. Bawa 
Published: April 2006

AbstractWritten from the perspective of HIV/AIDS prevention research in Zambia, the article argues that rural Africans now find themselves the target of three competing and contradictory discourses about responsibility, each of which claims to tell them how to lead safe lives free from AIDS. The first, represented by the biomedical paradigm, professes sure knowledge about the aetiology and epidemiology of HIV/AIDS but is unable to cure it; the second, the missionary discourse, preaches abstinence and encourages a revival of traditional beliefs and rules of morality as the only way to manage and survive AIDS; while the third is the traditional discourse—represented by traditional healers and witchfinders—which professes sure knowledge and the ability to eradicate evil. My argument is that the conjunction of these discourses results in a confusion that has led to the ascendancy of what is here termed traditional African discourse, characterised by a resurgence of witchcraft accusations and witchfinding activities; the conjuncture thus provides explanatory models through which rural Africans can make sense of their lives in situations where modern certainties appear to have failed. The traditional African discourse offers an explanation for increasing death rates—presumably from AIDS—and for other contingent disasters which are believed to be caused by witches. These points are brought home in an extended case study of the activities of a witchfinder invited by one rural community to help them ‘defuse’ local witches. The witchfinder not only managed to usurp legitimate authority but succeeded in killing sixteen local people through poison ordeals before national media coverage led to his arrest by the authorities. A further concern of the article is to highlight the importance of envybased notions of disease causality and how these notions relate to efforts at behavioural change in AIDS prevention work and to mechanisms that can lead to the breakdown of legitimate authority in rural Africa today.
Methods and Procedures: Research Perspectives in Dance
Authors: Rashid Martha , Andreasen Lois 
Published: April 2006

The employment of the scientific process to gain additional insight into a particular problem beyond the ordinary inquiry of the problem is commonly referred to as research. In fact, the term research can be substituted for scientific process. In general, research differs from other scholarly activities in regard to the methods and procedures under which the problem is studied and analyzed. Research further aims to enlarge the fields of knowlege already in existence. The researcher identifies a problem or an issue within his/her field of interest and then systematically undertakes to answer specific questions or hypotheses concerning the problem.The scientific problem under consideration by the researcher must be a significant, well-defined problem as well as one that the researcher is totally involved in answering. This is a most important aspect of the research process because the identification and the statement of the problem directs all of the later activities of the inquiry. The statement of the problem is a roadmap of the territory under consideration.Once the statement of the problem has been identified in clear, percise terms the researcher moves into the second phase of the research process, namely the proposal of the hypothesis or hypotheses. An hypothesis is a guess that the researcher makes about the problem and it provides a basis for the research, therefore it is a vital aspect of the entire study regardless of the type of research being undertaken. A hypothesis is generally a statement of expected relationships among the variables. Whether the hypothesis is accepted or rejected should not be the prime objective of the researcher. Statistically significant results are not necessary to add knowledge to our existing knowledge; statistically insignificant results also add to our knowledge. The hypothesis may be viewed as an “if … then …” type of relationship. If certain conditions prevail, then certain other things will result.