Secret knowledge as property and power in Kpelle society: elders versus youth

Africa ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Secret Knowledge

Opening ParagraphInequality based on privileged knowledge is an old topic in social analysis. It figures prominently, for example, in early works such as Condorcet's study of human progress. Condorcet argues that obstacles to progress arise when society is divided into two categories: ‘the one jealously hiding what it boasts of knowing, the other receiving with respect whatever is condescendingly revealed to it’ [1955 (1795): 17].

Early Bantu Ethnography from a Philological Point of View

Africa ◽  
1930 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. J. v. Warmelo
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Compact Body ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphFew of the secrets that Africa still holds from us to-day have, I think, such an absorbing interest as the problem of Bantu in its relation to the neighbouring families and types of speech. Taking the continent of Africa as a whole, we find on the one hand the huge, yet marvellously homogeneous and compact body of the Bantu languages, clear-cut in structure, simple and transparent in phonology, and, at the back of much apparent diversity, exceptionally uniform in vocabulary. On the other hand there are in Africa numerous other languages of various type, which differ so much amongst each other that they have not yet been brought under any but the very broadest of classifications. The essential points of these are as follows.

scholarly journals First Book Symposium

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-122
Author(s):  
Maxmillian Julius Chuhila ◽  
Veena Das ◽  
Alex Pillen ◽  
Knut Christian Myhre
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Life Force ◽  
Book Symposium ◽  
The One ◽  
Analytical Approaches ◽  
First Time

This issue inaugurates the First Book Symposium as a feature in the pages of Social Analysis. Instead of including ourselves among the journals that devote a section to book reviews in their regular issues, as we have done for many years, we feel that a more focused approach is better suited to our goal of exploring the potentials of anthropological analysis. Adopting from other journals the format of the book symposium, in which a single book is subjected to sustained critical engagement by relevant scholars, we devote it in particular to discussion of books by first-time authors. Our aim is, on the one hand, to give a platform to scholars who are not already widely known and established and, on the other, to acquaint our readers with ideas and analytical approaches that are fresh.Knut Christian Myhre, Returning Life: Language, Life Force and History in Kilimanjaro (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018), 336 pp., illustrations, bibliography, index. eBook. eISBN 9781785336669.

An Anthropological No-Man's-Land

Africa ◽  
1930 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. H. Ruxton
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
No Man's Land ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Indirect Rule

Opening ParagraphThe number of Africa published in January 1929 contains two articles which are of real help to the colonial administrator. The first article, by the Rev. Father Dubois, S.J., compares the supposedly opposite dogmas of assimilation and adaptation, or, in administrative language, of direct and indirect rule. Therein the author conclusively shows that these formulae are not dogmas, the one unorthodox and the other orthodox; that the education of a race cannot be accomplished by means of a formula, but that it is a matter of time, tact and love. In fact the methods of assimilation and adaptation are both required, as also the one in conjunction with the other.

The Bases of Nationalism among the Bakongo

Africa ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 344-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Lemarchand
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
The Other ◽  
Active Resistance ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphNationalist assertions among the Bakongo have been at the forefront of the active resistance movements which ultimately led the Belgian Government to grant the Congo its independence. These reactions to the Belgian presence, which can be traced back to the early twenties, expressed themselves in highly diversified forms and with varying degrees of intensity. From the early days of the Belgian rule, however, a duality of tendencies has been apparent in the Mukongo cultural heritage. The acceptance of certain Western innovations, on the one hand, combined with a manifest attachment to their cultural background, on the other, accounts for the presence of modernist and traditional strands discernible in present-day attitudes towards authority.

The Concept of ‘Bewitching’ in Lugbara

Africa ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Middleton
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Opening ParagraphIn this paper I consider some Lugbara notions about witches, ghosts, and other agents who bring sickness to human beings. I do not discuss the relationship of these notions, and the behaviour associated with them, to the social structure. The two aspects, ideological and structural, are intimately connected, but it is possible to discuss them separately: on the one hand, to present the ideology as a system consistent within itself and, on the other, to show the way in which it is part of the total social system. Here I attempt only the former.

scholarly journals HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE FOR OTHER COUNTRIES WHICH AFFECTED BY DISASTER AS IMPLEMENTATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL MANDATE

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (22) ◽  
pp. 56-65
Author(s):  
Boby Sigit Adipradono
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
World Order ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
The Other ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Right

The basic principles of the implementation of Indonesian foreign policy have been stated in the opening paragraph of the first paragraph of the 1945 Constitution, "that actual independence is the right of all nations. And therefore, colonization of the world must be abolished, because it is not in accordance with humanity and justice. The establishment of this country is to "participate in carrying out world order based on freedom, eternal peace, and social justice". The Indonesian people in carrying out the constitutional mandate is to help other countries affected by the disaster. The assistance is given to other countries without any regulations which are the basis for the government to pay for the assistance. The provision of humanitarian assistance to other countries by the Indonesian government has created a dilemma among officials who have the authority to issue the budget. On the one hand, the President's order must be implemented, on the other side spending the budget for humanitarian assistance to other countries affected by the disaster there are no regulations that regulate it.

The Sculpture and Myths of Eshu-Elegba, the Yoruba Trickster: Definition and Interpretation in Yoruba Iconography

Africa ◽  
1962 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Wescott
Keyword(s):  
Field Study ◽  
The Other ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Interpretative Analysis ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphDuring my field study of Yoruba art (1955–7) little of the symbolic meaning of the forms and component elements of the ritual sculpture was revealed to me through straightforward answers to straightforward questions. Indeed, it soon became evident that if meaning with any degree of resonance was to be arrived at, such a technique had to be abandoned in favour of an interpretative analysis in relation to myths and praise songs on the one hand, and the observation of the use of sculpture in ritual on the other.

Religion and Society Among the Kuria of East Africa

Africa ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Ruel
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Autonomous System ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Relationship

Opening ParagraphThis paper attempts to answer two broad questions. Firstly, what is Kuria religion about? and secondly, what is the relationship between Kuria religious concepts and their social life and what is the place of ritual in this relationship? Neither of these are questions which Kuria would themselves ask—certainly in this form—but they are perhaps the two leading questions which an anthropologist must ask in examining the religious beliefs and ritual practice of another people. Much depends upon the answer to the first, for it is in terms of the answer that one is likely to establish the particular coherence of ‘integrity’ of a people's beliefs, held existentially in the context of their own social life. The answer is relevant too to an issue which has concerned those writing on related peoples of the same area as the Kuria—the problem of the relation between magic and religious beliefs. Thus Wagner, writing on the Bantu Kavirondo, uses the undifferentiated category of ‘magico-religious’ belief. But what exactly is meant by this umbrella term, and does it not itself obfuscate what it seeks to define? The second question considered—the relationship between Kuria religious concepts and their social life—is a continuation of the first in relation to their very elaborate and, in one sense, autonomous system of ritual based in particular on a complex sequence of rites of passage. These rites are a very striking feature of Kuria culture. It is, I think, by considering them in this double context—as expressing religious values on the one hand while controlling social behaviour on the other—that these rites are most fully understood.

The Governmental Roles of Associations among the Yakö

Africa ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 309-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daryll Forde
Keyword(s):  
Limited Range ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Group Competition ◽  
Organic Solidarity ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Different Levels

Opening ParagraphIn the study of indigenous African institutions that exercise control while promoting social cohesion and regulating inter-personal and inter-group competition, much attention has been given to the analysis of the governmental functions of kin groups on the one hand and of ritually sanctioned political chiefship on the other. Institutions of these two types, which correspond to the distinction made by Durkheim between segmental and organic solidarity, were the basis of the well-known classification of African Political Systems by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard into two contrasted types labelled lineage or segmentary in one case, and centralized or statelike in the other. In their classification these writers were mainly concerned to distinguish politically centralized chiefdoms from those societies in which the exercise of political authority and social control was confined to recurrent but fluctuating combinations of lineages under their ritual leaders. In this they were led to imply, perhaps as a result of the limited range of societies selected for consideration, that apart from small autonomous bands of kindred, the only alternative to an acephalous and segmentary lineage system was a centralized society in which offices and political powers were hierarchically arranged with definite relations of administrative superiority and subordination holding between offices and councils at different levels. ‘Administrative machinery’ and ‘judicial institutions’ were treated as concomitants of centralized authority.

Some notions of ‘purity’ and ‘impurity’ among the Zulu

Africa ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Ngubane
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Mystical Experiences ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Purity And Impurity

Opening ParagraphAmong the traditional patrilineal Zulu of South Africa, women are more often associated with mystical experiences than men. While on the one hand, as daughters or sisters, women may be associated with the positive mystical forces as diviners, on the other hand, as mothers or wives, women are often related to the negative polluting mystical forces. It is the logic behind these notions that I want to examine in this article.

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