Kinship and Lineage among the Yoruba

Africa ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
William B. Schwab
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Analytic Description ◽  
The Past ◽  
Kinship System ◽  
Present Generation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
Traditional Patterns ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThis paper presents an analytic description of the principles underlying the traditional kinship system of the Yoruba people of Western Nigeria in the community of Oshogbo. Aggregation into large-scale urban-like communities which are characterized by the close interdependence of their political constitution and their economic and religious systems is a striking feature of Yoruba social organization. In these communities we find that the behaviour of individuals to one another, in the past at least, was very largely regulated on the basis of kinship and it would be accurate, I think, to state that among the Yoruba kinship was the usual means of articulation between the various elements of the social organization. Today, under the influence of systematic and far-reaching contact with the West, new patterns of behaviour are beginning to or have already superseded the old. New values and attitudes have intruded and there is an increased fluidity in social norms. In the present generation the bonds of kinship have been greatly weakened as a foundation for social organization and as a mechanism for co-ordinating and regulating social behaviour. Yoruba society is indeed transitional in the sense that the old is in the process of disintegration and new forms are rapidly emerging. However, it is the internal and traditional patterns that determine the particular form and direction of the effects which the external alien forces of change exert. Consequently, in this paper, we shall place primary emphasis on the principles of kinship as they emerged as regulative factors in the traditional life of the Yoruba in the belief that, apart from purely ethnographic value, they will provide us with a better understanding of the manifold changes that have become apparent.

scholarly journals The Relevance of Inequality Research in Sociology for Inequality Reduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110201
Author(s):  
Thomas A. DiPrete ◽  
Brittany N. Fox-Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Large Scale Change ◽  
The Subject

Social inequality is a central topic of research in the social sciences. Decades of research have deepened our understanding of the characteristics and causes of social inequality. At the same time, social inequality has markedly increased during the past 40 years, and progress on reducing poverty and improving the life chances of Americans in the bottom half of the distribution has been frustratingly slow. How useful has sociological research been to the task of reducing inequality? The authors analyze the stance taken by sociological research on the subject of reducing inequality. They identify an imbalance in the literature between the discipline’s continual efforts to motivate the plausibility of large-scale change and its lesser efforts to identify feasible strategies of change either through social policy or by enhancing individual and local agency with the potential to cumulate into meaningful progress on inequality reduction.

The work of the British School at Athens, 2014–2015

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 34-48
Author(s):  
Catherine Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
The Past ◽  
British School ◽  
The Social ◽  
Funded Project

Over the past year the School has delivered a rich and varied research programme combining a range of projects in antiquity, spanning the Palaeolithic to Byzantine periods, science-based archaeology to epigraphy (including the work of the Fitch Laboratory and the Knossos Research Centre), with research in sectors from the fine arts to history and the social sciences (see Map 2).At Knossos, new investigation in the suburb of Gypsadhes, directed by Ioanna Serpetsedaki (23rd EPCA), Eleni Hatzaki (Cincinnati), Amy Bogaard (Oxford) and Gianna Ayala (Sheffield), forms part of Oxford University's ERC-funded project Agricultural Origins of Urban Civilisation. The Gypsadhes excavation features large-scale bioarchaeological research, aimed at providing the fine-grained information necessary to reconstruct the Knossian economy through time.

scholarly journals Et af Grundtvig på tysk skrevet tilbageblik på sig selv fra vinteren 1813-1814

1958 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-83
Author(s):  
Steen Johansen
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Generation ◽  
Spiritual Crisis ◽  
Past Life ◽  
Rough Draft ◽  
Hymn Singing ◽  
Critical Consideration

A survey of his past life written by Grundtvig in German and dating from the winter of 1813-14. With an introduction and notes. By Steen Johansen. In January, 1812, German theologians had an opportunity of reading in the periodical “ Theologische Annalen” an article containing information about the young Dane N. F. S. Grundtvig and his fight for a kind of Christianity different from the old rationalistic type. The article first came to Grundtvig’s notice in the winter 1813-14, and he then immediately wrote in German the rough draft of an answer. His draft (which never became anything more) is reproduced here (p. 74 ff.) . Grundtvig begins by justifying certain statements about himself in the German article, but his draft soon grew to be a survey of his own life on a large scale, an account of his conception of Christianity and his plans for the immediate future. He admits that he himself was for a time a rationalist, then that Schiller and Fichte awakened him to a critical consideration of the form of Christianity wrhich then prevailed. After this followed three years during which Grundtvig lived chiefly with the ancient North and its gods and heroes. However, the study of history led him to rethink his position once again, and he realised that his task was to speak to the present generation, not to dream of reviving the past. Grundtvig then describes his spiritual crisis in 1810-11, which gave him the desire to become a clergyman, and he now found the truth in Biblical Christianity. As regards a renewal of the hymn-singing of the Danish Church, Grundtvig for a time thought only of wakening older hymn-writers up from oblivion. In conclusion he declares that he would be glad to see a new Luther arise in Denmark (in the German article he had been called Denmark’s new Luther), but adds that we must not pass our time in waiting for a new Luther, but must ourselves work and fight for the honour of the Crusified One.

scholarly journals Traumatic Memory in Ukrainian Literary Reception: Symptoms of Post-dependence

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-250
Author(s):  
Oksana Pukhonska
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Trauma ◽  
The Social ◽  
Second World ◽  
Literary Reception

The paper is devoted to analysis of the post-totalitarian memory in literary reception of Ukraine. After the decades of ignoring, this memory became the driving force of social processes and the construct of national identity. The author pays attention to the social trauma of soviet repressions and Second World War, which negatively influenced cultural consciousness of the society. Displaced and forgotten memory is understood as the main reason for lack of progress in the post-Soviet Ukraine. The traumatic experience of the past turned out to be both a lesson and an incentive for large-scale public and conscious transformations, about which modern authors write.

Microaggression and Moral Cultures

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 692-726 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Campbell ◽  
Jason Manning
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
Moral Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conflict Tactics

Campus activists and others might refer to slights of one’s ethnicity or other cultural characteristics as “microaggressions,” and they might use various forums to publicize them. Here we examine this phenomenon by drawing from Donald Black’s theories of conflict and from cross-cultural studies of conflict and morality. We argue that this behavior resembles other conflict tactics in which the aggrieved actively seek the support of third parties as well as those that focus on oppression. We identify the social conditions associated with each feature, and we discuss how the rise of these conditions has led to large-scale moral change such as the emergence of a victimhood culture that is distinct from the honor cultures and dignity cultures of the past.

The Waswahili: The social history of an ethnic group

Africa ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 426-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Arens
Keyword(s):  
Characteristic Feature ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Social History ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphDefinitional questions, such as ‘Who are the Waswahili’, posed by Eastman (1971) in this journal, appear to have been of little interest in the past, as many social anthropologists either ignored the problem or assumed that the answers were self-evident. However, those who have confronted this task have shown that simplicity and self-evidence is rarely a characteristic feature of the inquiry. Even classic ethnographic cases of supposed culturally homogeneous and distinct tribal groups are at present being re-examined in light of the renewed interest in this topic (cf. Helm, 1968). Whether or not the Nuer are the Dinka, or vice versa, it has been minimally established that such questions are legitimate and even fruitful in sharpening our analytical approach to subject populations.

The Social Structure of the Nyakyusa: a Re-evaluation

Africa ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Mckenny
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Value System ◽  
The Social ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Western Tanzania

Opening ParagraphThe Nyakyusa of south-western Tanzania have received very substantial ethnographic coverage. Nonetheless there remain certain gaps in our knowledge of this society. The field-work by Dr. Godfrey Wilson and Professor Monica Wilson was done largely in the mid 1930s before structural-functional analysis had achieved its present refinement and was evidently influenced by Malinowski who was not himself known for a concern in sociological analysis per se. In these studies of the Nyakyusa, values, beliefs, and ritual were a main object of attention; they present Nyakyusa society as though it were a direct result of the Nyakyusa value system, although the actual workings of the society have been left rather obscure. It is presented as coherent, values and social organization reinforcing each other at every point. But internal evidence contradicts this picture, and on a priori grounds it may also be seen that there were several structural pressures towards incoherence, or rather, conflict between the actual development of social organization through time and those presumably timeless values reputed to maintain it.

Rural protest, land policy and the planning process on the Bakolori Project, Nigeria

Africa ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. M. Adams
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Land Policy ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Technical Aspects ◽  
International Agencies ◽  
Project Appraisal ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphIn the literature and accumulated folk wisdom of development in rural Africa there are numerous instances of government projects which are expensive, ineffective and unpopular. These include now classic failures of the past, such as the Tanganyika Groundnuts Scheme (Wood, 1950; Frankel, 1953), which are still cited as cautionary tales demonstrating the need for proper project appraisal. There are also numerous more recent examples, for the phenomenon of failure has persisted and governments and international agencies continue to implement schemes ‘little better planned than their more spectacularly misbegotten predecessors’ (Hill, 1978: 25). Among recent initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa the large-scale irrigation projects developed in northern Nigeria during the 1970s have attracted particularly extensive adverse criticism. This has focused on the social and economic impact of the introduction of irrigation and particularly on questions of land tenure (inter alia Wallace, 1979, 1980, 1981; Oculi, 1981; Adams, 1982, 1984; Palmer-Jones, 1984; Andrae and Beckman, 1985; Beckman, 1986). A number of accounts discuss technical aspects of the land survey carried out at Bakolori {Bird, 1981, 1984, 1985; Griffith, 1984), while others focus on economic problems (e.g. Etuk and Abalu, 1982). However, although economic and technical aspects of these developments have been criticised, it is the social impacts of project development and more particularly the political responses to those impacts which are of greatest interest (Wallace, 1980; Adams, 1984; Andrae and Beckman, 1985; Beckman, 1986). This paper examines the bature of the response of farmers affected by one of these schemes, the Bakolori Project in Sokoto State.

scholarly journals DISKURSUS KALENDER HIJRIYAH GLOBAL PASCA KONGRES ISTAMBUL TURKI 2016

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nihayatur Rohmah
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
The Past ◽  
Collective Activity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Important People ◽  
New Moon

;  In May 2016, Muslims from several countries held the International Hijri Calendar Unity Congress in Istanbul Turkey. At the end of the congress, the result of the voting concluded and published the single calendar system (singular calendar) based on the visibility of the new moon. Calendar is an expression of the collective activity of the rhythm and reflects the resilience and the strength of a civilization. So the existence of the calendar is accurate and consistent as an civilization imperative and is a prerequisite for a civilization to exist and thrive. The characteristic of the revival civilization is when the civilization was able to answer the challenges of the past. Civilization is a mechanism in the social organization, so there is no problem that can not be settled or compromised unless the issue by political or economic interests. There is no difference with the other calendar, the Islamic calendar is a reality that issued by a handful of elite (read: the ruling group of important people in the community). A public position in the affinity people are consumers of course-and practice-calendar produced by their elite. The feature of Hijrah calendar in a country is a clear reflection of the particulars of their elites. Hijrah calendar unity is nothing but a fruit of the unity of authority, and the authority here is Ulil Amri.

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