Social Theory and the Study of Christian Missions in Africa: A South African Case Study

Africa ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Etherington

Opening ParagraphChristian missions in Africa have produced mountains of publications which, despite their collective mass often escape notice in the wider landscape of African studies. Some of the reasons for scholarly neglect are readily apparent. A secular age is inclined to under-rate the impact of religious forces born in another era; an anti-imperialist generation of scholars is repulsed by the generally unabashed cultural imperialism of nineteenth-century evangelists; the devolution of political power from white to black hands has produced an understandable preference for the study of purely African agents of change in the recent past. Myopia, embarrassment, and the looming presence of contemporary African nationalism all encourage a tendency to leave the study of missions to antiquarians and the professionally pious.

Africa ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. O. Beidelman

Opening ParagraphIn the past anthropology was concerned with alien, exotic societies such as Indians, Africans, and Pacific Islanders. Today it is in vogue to do the anthropology of modern societies. Abroad this is termed the study of nation-building and development; at home it becomes the study of various sub-cultures with attention towards ethnic minorities and deviant groups rather than upon the more powerful and prominent segments of our society. Anthropologists tend to neglect those groups nearest themselves, and in the scurry to conduct relevant research, a broad area of great theoretical interest has been passed by. Almost no attention was ever paid by anthropologists to the study of colonial groups such as administrators, missionaries, or traders. Today we can read anthropological studies of the impact of such groups upon native populations, but the focus of such work dims with the colour line. Thus, an anthropologist has studied the machinations of the members of a Nigerian emirate but not the tactics of the British Resident and his staff. Another applied potted Weberian bureaucratic theory to Soga local government but neglected to discuss the British district officers in the same chiefdom. Another asked how Christian Tswana behaved, but not about those missionaries who had converted them. Anthropologists may have spoken about studying total societies, but they did not seem to consider their compatriots as subjects for wonder and analysis.* In the studies of Christianity in Africa, consideration was mainly in terms of the relations of the convert to his traditional society, to the process of social change, or sometimes to the development of native separatist churches. It never included the missionaries who had made the conversions or described everyday affairs at the mission station, clinic, or school.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 310-340
Author(s):  
Nimi Wariboko

Abstract How does religion or worldview affect business practices and ethics? This tradition of inquiry goes back, at least, to Max Weber who, in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, explored the impact of theological suppositions on capitalist economic development. But the connection can also go the other way. So the focus of inquiry can become: How does business ethics or practices affect ethics in a given nation or corporation? This paper inquires into how the political and economic conditions created and sustained by nineteenth-century trading community in the Niger Delta influenced religious practices or ethics of Christian missionaries. This approach to mission study is necessary not only because we want to further understand the work of Christian missions and also to tease out the effect of business ethics on religious ethics, but also because Christian missionaries came to the Niger Delta in the nineteenth century behind foreign merchants.


Author(s):  
Koot Kotze ◽  
Helene-Mari van der Westhuizen ◽  
Eldi van Loggerenberg ◽  
Farah Jawitz ◽  
Rodney Ehrlich

Extended shifts are common in medical practice. This is when doctors are required to work continuously for more than 16 h, with little or no rest, often without a maximum limit. These shifts have been a part of medical practice for more than a century. Research on the impact of fatigue presents compelling evidence that extended shifts increase the risk of harm to patients and practitioners. However, where the number of doctors is limited and their workloads are not easily reduced, there are numerous barriers to reform. Some of these include a perceived lack of safer alternatives, concerns about continuity of care, trainee education, and doctors’ preferences. As such, working hour reorganisation has been contentious globally. South Africa, a middle-income country where extended shifts are unregulated for most doctors, offers a useful case study of reform efforts. The South African Safe Working Hours campaign has promoted working hour reorganization through multi-level advocacy efforts, although extended shifts remain common. We propose that extended shifts should be regarded as an occupational hazard under health and safety legislation. We suggest options for managing the risks of extended shifts by adapting the hierarchy of controls for occupational hazards. Despite the challenges reform pose, the practice of unregulated extended shifts should not continue.


Rural History ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNIE TINDLEY

AbstractThere has been much historical debate over the role of aristocratic landed families in local and national politics throughout the nineteenth century, and the impact of the First, Second and Third Reform Acts on that role. Additionally, the period from 1881 in the Scottish Highlands was one of acute political and ideological crisis, as the debate over the reform of the Land Laws took a violent turn, and Highland landowners were forced to address the demands of their small tenants. This article addresses these debates, taking as its case-study the ducal house of Sutherland. The Leveson-Gower family owned almost the whole county of Sutherland and until 1884 dominated political life in the region. This article examines the gradual breakdown of that political power, in line with a more general decline in financial and territorial influence, both in terms of the personal role of the Fourth and Fifth Dukes of Sutherland, and the broader impact of the estate management on the mechanics and expectations of politics in the county.


2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
TINE DE MOOR

ABSTRACTIn this article the participation profile of commoners of a Flemish case-study is reconstructed in order to identify their individual motivations for using the common, in some cases even becoming a manager of that common, in some cases only just claiming membership. Nominative linkages between membership lists, book-keeping accounts and regulatory documents of the common on the one hand and censuses and marriage acts on the other allow us to explain the behaviour of the commoners. It becomes clear why some decisions were taken – for example, to dissolve a well-functioning cattle-registration system – and how these affected the resource use of the common during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The analysis explains how internal shifts in power balances amongst groups of active users and those who did not have the means or willingness to participate could jeopardize the internal cohesion of the commoners as a group.


1960 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 418-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard S. Cohn

The British administrative frontier in India had widely differing effects on the political and social structures of the regions into which it moved from the middle of the eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth century. It is impossible to generalize on the impact of the administration, because the regions into which it moved differed in their political and social structures, and because British administration and ideas about administration, both in India and in Great Britain, changed markedly throughout this hundred year period.


1973 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale A. Johnson

The transition from Pietism and Evangelicalism to a social gospel in the thought and activities of a number of Christians, occurring as it did in the nineteenth century, was a transition largely provoked by the impact of the Industrial Revolution on landscape and people. Yet those who were among the earliest to respond to the new industrial and geographical situation often retained an older vision of life and society and left to others the task of developing a more effective response.Joseph Rayner Strphens (1805–79), sometime Methodist, notorioue revolutionary of the late 1830s, advocate of the Ten Hours Bill and vigrous opponent of the factory system in nineteenth-century England, was just such a person; he provides and illumination case study in the stryggle to carve out a social gospel which was virtually without precedent at the time.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Dione Lee Marama Payne

<p>The title of this thesis, Mai Rangiriri ki Pōkaewhenua, refers to the battle of Rangiriri as the point of reference that marks the first confiscation of Waikato land. It was at Rangiriri that Waikato Māori took up arms to defend their land against the invading army and in doing so, by Crown law, forfeited their customary ownership over their land through confiscation. It would be one hundred years later that another confiscation occured at Pōkaewhenua in the 1960s. The confiscation of Māori land is commonly discussed in New Zealand history literature as a practice of the nineteenth-century. However in this thesis I argue the practice of confiscation has endured into the 1960s through facilitated alienations of allegedly unproductive Māori land through lease and sale. This thesis examines the case study of Lot 512 in the Parish of Whangamarino to show how government agencies utilised some common practices of confiscation such as through legislation, economic expansion, settlement, conflict of interests, tenurial revolution and the concept of waste land to confiscate Pōkaewhenua through facilitated alienation in the national interest. Although the practice of alienation was widespread, the sale and lease of Māori land due to an alleged lack of productivity under Part XXV of the Māori Affairs Act 1953 was seldom investigated as part of Treaty settlements. For hapū and whānau, particularly in the Waikato, the re-examination of land alienation may change their land history and the manner in which future Treaty claims are investigated. Contemporarily, the drive for greater productivity of Māori land, as seen in the 2013 Review of the Te Ture Whenua Māori Act, focuses again on making all Māori land productive in the national interest, with little consideration of the impact on it’s Māori owners. The criteria and rationale for this push for productivity is strongly reminiscent of the practice in the 1960s and 1860s, and suggests any national interest alienations that occur as a result of the 2013 review, may also be confiscation. One significant implication of this thesis for the field of Māori Studies is that the investigation of Lot 512 provides another perspective on confiscation. This thesis expands the definition of confiscation to allow for alienation by sale and lease in the national interest and departs from the limitation of the nineteenth-century. This research also contributes to Māori Studies through the analysis of Part XXV of the Māori Affairs Act 1953. As a wider implication for Māori land, it challenges researchers to look more closely at Māori land sales in the 1950-1960s, the manner in which those sales and leases were undertaken and questions national interest arguments for alienating further Māori land. This thesis is centred around a Māori world view and approach to research and is tied specifically to Pōkaewhenua – Lot 512 in the Parish of Whangamarino, but has implications for thinking about the way Indigenous rights are made subservient to colonial interests.</p>


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document