bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Family Resemblances, Practical Interrelations and Material Extensions: Understanding Sexual Prohibitions, Production and Consumption in Kilimanjaro
Authors: Myhre Knut Christian 
Published: July 2008

AbstractThrough 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

AbstractThe 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

AbstractAmong 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

ABSTRACTThis 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

AbstractThe 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

AbstractThe 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

AbstractThis 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

AbstractThe 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.
Alien Abduction: Inference to the Best Explanation and the Management of Testimony
Authors: Lipton Peter 
Published: July 2008

ABSTRACTThis 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

ABSTRACTIn 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

ABSTRACTIn 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

ABSTRACTWhy 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

ABSTRACTDebates 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

ABSTRACTAn 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

ABSTRACTIn 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

ABSTRACTCondorcet'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

ABSTRACTHow 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

ABSTRACTFor 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.
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.