Ideology and Oral Traditions: Listening to the Voices ‘From Below’

1987 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 67-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.A. Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
Reliable Data ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Status ◽  
Oral Testimony ◽  
The Relationship

From the time of the translation into English of Jan Vansina's Oral Tradition in 1965, the use of oral traditions as historical sources has become an increasingly technical exercise. Historians of the non-literate societies of Africa in particular have been alterted to, among others, such things as “floating gaps” and “hour-glass effects” in traditions, elongated and collapsed genealogies, the peculiarities and fallibility of human memory, the overlaying of oral traditions with successive ruling group histories, and the functioning of oral traditions as cultural charters.Some scholars consider this ‘reification of method’ to have wrought a tool increasingly honed for historical analysis, able to lay bare within oral tradition historical facts, consistent within themselves and with other oral traditions. Others argue that the elaborateness of the methodology reflects the inherently unreliable nature of oral traditions as historical sources. They suggest that, at best, oral traditions are able to provide reliable data only about the interests of a particular group at the particular moment when they were recorded.This paper addresses the debate over the status of oral traditions as historical sources, with particular reference to the use of traditions in the illumination of the precolonial past. Drawing on some of the insights of the new social historians concerning ideology and first-hand oral testimony, it examines the relationship between ideology and oral traditions in non-literate societies. The argument developed here is that, far from simply representing the interests of a particular group, oral traditions often reflect ideological struggles between the rulers and ruled in a society.

Oral Traditions as Historical Sources in Ethiopia: The Case of the Beta Israel (Falasha)

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 297-312
Author(s):  
James Quirin
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Limited Time ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Methodological Innovation ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Beta Israel ◽  
Western View ◽  
Written Sources

It is axiomatic that historians should use all available sources. African historiography has been on the cutting edge of methodological innovation for the last three decades, utilizing written sources, oral traditions, archeology, linguistics, ethnography, musicology, botany, and other techniques to bring respect and maturity to the field.But the use of such a diverse methodology has brought controversy as well, particularly regarding oral traditions. Substantial criticisms have been raised concerning the problems of chronology and limited time depth, variations in different versions of the same events, and the problem of feedback between oral and written sources. A “structuralist” critique deriving from Claude Levi-Strauss's study of Amerindian mythology has provided a useful corrective to an overly-literal acceptance of oral traditions, but often went too far in throwing out the historical baby with the mythological bathwater, leading some historians to reject totally the use of oral data. A more balanced view has shown that a modified structural approach can be a useful tool in historical analysis. In Ethiopian historiography some preliminary speculations were made along structuralist lines,5 although in another sense such an approach was always implicit since the analysis of Ethiopie written hagiographies and royal chronicles required an awareness of the mythological or folk elements they contain.Two more difficult problems to overcome have been the Ethiopie written documents' centrist and elitist focus on the royal monarchy and Orthodox church. The old Western view that “history” required the existence of written documents and a state led to the paradigm of Ethiopia as an “outpost of Semitic civilization” and its historical and historiographical separation from the rest of Africa. The comparatively plentiful corpus of written documentation for Ethiopian history allowed such an approach, and the thousands of manuscripts made available to scholars on microfilm in the last fifteen years have demonstrated the wealth still to be found in written sources. However, such sources, although a starting point for research on Ethiopian history, no longer seem adequate in themselves because they focus primarily on political-military and religious events concerning the monarchy and church.

Masking Sunjata: A Hermeneutical Critique

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 131-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Primary Schools ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Times

Among the rich legacy of African oral traditions, the Sunjata epic is still one of the most complex phenonema, because it undoubtedly goes back to the times of Ibn Battuta, because of the limited variety between the available text editions, and because of its present-day popularity in sub-Saharan West Africa among people of all kinds of social background. In scholarly discussion, the epic has challenged many academics since Delafosse used the Sunjata epic as evidence for his reconstruction of the Mali empire as a thirteenth-century vast centralized polity. Although his views have been criticized since then, they have become part of history lessons at primary schools in Mali, the Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea. All these countries belong to the so-called “Mande,” an area inhabited by various ethnic groups that have close similarities in language, oral tradition, and social organization.In the last decade History in Africa has given room to discuss the Sunjata epic, in particular in order to explore how data from the epic can be used as historical sources, and as what history for whom. Articles by David Conrad, Tim Geysbeek, Stephan Bühnen, Stephen Bulman, Kathryn Green, George Brooks, Ralph Austen, and myself come my mind. All these authors have treated the Sunjata epic as a text. This seems to be a logical and inevitable choice for the historian.However, this approach implies a choice that limits the range of interpretations which can be made about the Sunjata traditions as a source for African history.

scholarly journals Writing Orisha Music: Text, Tradition, and Creativity in Afro-Cuban Liturgy

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 964
Author(s):  
David Font-Navarrete
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Cultural Authenticity ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Multimedia Technologies ◽  
Shed Light

This essay examines the flow of music associated with orisha—anthropomorphic deities—across networks defined variously by art, scholarship, folklore, and religion, all of which overlap and nourish each other. Transmitted via oral tradition, written texts, and multimedia technologies, a handful of orisha-themed songs are analyzed as case studies in the subtle nexus of liturgy and cultural authenticity. Taken together, the songs shed light on a broader phenomenon in which creatively-minded, ostensibly-secular iterations of culture play a significant role in the dissemination and ongoing codification of ritual orthodoxy. Orisha music traditions are analyzed as a fertile ground for a multitude of devotional and/or artistic expressions, many of which have a particularly ambiguous relationship to the concept of religion. In this context, the fluid movements of orisha music between ostensibly sacred and secular contexts can be usefully understood as not only common, but as a conspicuous and characteristic aspect of the tradition. The essay’s structure and rhetorical strategies offer distinct layers of cultural and historical commentary, reflecting a multi-vocal tradition of exchanges among orisha music scholars, artists, and ritual experts. The essay’s historical analysis of orisha music further suggests that a host of subtle, seldom-discussed phenomena—multilingualism, liturgical ambiguity, and transmission via multimedia technologies—are not necessarily aberrant or irregular, but rather vital themes which have resonated clearly across the Afro-Atlantic for at least a century. By obligating us to attend to both musical meaning and cultural context, the essay’s case studies of orisha music shed light on the mingling and synthesis of elements from varied historical sources, languages, and cultural idioms, each of which represent distinct notions of tradition, creativity, religiosity, and secularism.

scholarly journals TATA RUANG IBUKOTA TERAKHIR KERAJAAN GALUH (1371 - 1475 M)

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Budimansyah Budimansyah ◽  
Nina Herlina Lubis ◽  
Miftahul Falah
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Spatial Layout ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Concentric Pattern ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Methods ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguak tata ruang Galuh Pakwan sebagai ibukota terakhir Kerajaan Galuh, sejauhmana pola ruang kota tersebut berkaitan dengan nilai-nilai kelokalan sebagaimana tergambar dalam historiografi tradisional. Dalam penelitian ini metode sejarah akan dipergunakan sebagai fitur utama agar menghasilkan suatu hasil kajian yang komprehensif, dan menggunakan teori tata kota, serta metode deskriptif-kualitatif. Minimnya sumber terkait sejarah Galuh Pakwan, wawancara secara mendalam kepada para narasumber diharapkan bisa menjadi suatu bahan analisis historis. Berdasarkan fakta di lapangan, Galuh Pakwan sebagai ibukota kerajaan berawal dari sebuah kabuyutan. Pada masa pemerintahan Niskalawastu Kancana, kabuyutan tersebut dijadikan pusat politik dengan tetap menjalankan fungsi kabuyutannya. Seiring waktu, Galuh Pakwan menjelma menjadi sebuah kota yang tata ruangnya menunjukkan representasi dan implementasi konsep kosmologi Sunda. Galuh Pakwan terbentuk oleh pola radial-konsentris menerus, sebagai gambaran kosmologi Sunda sebagaimana terungkap dalam naskah-naksah Sunda kuna.The research is not only aimed at uncovering the spatial layout of Galuh Pakwan as the last capital of Galuh Kingdom, but also at exploring how well the relationship between the urban spatial patterns and the local values as depicted in the traditional historiography. Beside having the historical methods as the main feature to produce a comprehensive study result, the study also uses the urban planning theory, as well as the descriptive qualitative methods. The historical sources related to the history of the Galuh Pakuan are very limited. As a result, the in-depth interviews with the resource persons are expected to be appropriate as the observation material for historical analysis. Based on the facts found in the field, the Galuh Pakwan as the capital of the kingdom originated from a Kabuyutan. During the reign of Niskalawastu Kancana, Kabuyutan served as a political center while maintaining its original function as Kabuyutan. As the time passed, the Galuh Pakwan was transformed into a city whose spatial layout represented and implemented the Sundanese cosmological concept. The Galuh Pakwan was formed by a continuous radial-concentric pattern, as a description of Sundanese cosmology in the ancient Sundanese manuscript.

Primary Historical Sources in Archaeology: Methods

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel King
Keyword(s):  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Archaeological Material ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Variable Nature ◽  
Global Events ◽  
Bodies Of Evidence ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Two Bodies

While there are a handful of defined methods for working with primary historical sources in archaeology, few archaeologists take these as their main points of departure or rely upon them too rigidly. This is to do both with the highly variable nature of the historical and archaeological material available for certain African contexts, and also with how archaeologists conceive of the relationship between these two bodies of evidence: as antagonistic, supplementary, entangled and subjective, mutually creative, and so on. Some methodologies focus on the potentials for consonance and dissonance between written and material sources. Others utilize oral traditions to provide insights into chronology, memory, historical and political dynamics, and the material aspects of these. Still other approaches focus on how historical and archaeological sources offer complementary perspectives on the local and the global, events and processes, and other shifts in scale. While these methods are diverse and contingent, they are united insofar as archaeologists take their cues from objects and from preoccupations with time and space. Archaeologists see their work concerning primary historical sources not as filling in gaps in written records but as addressing the partialities of the records themselves by engaging with an array of complex questions about meaning, authority, and materiality

The Wakhis of Gojal (Upper Hunza): An Historical Analysis within the Context of Ismailism in Badakhshan

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zahide Ay
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Belief System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Language Group ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Eastern Turkestan ◽  
Karakoram Mountains

This paper aims to present an historical analysis of when and how the Wakhis of Upper Hunza became Ismaili. Upper Hunza, known locally as Gojal, is a part of Badakhshan located in the Karakoram Mountains in Pakistan. The Wakhis belong to the Eastern Iranian language group like all the other nations of Badakhshan. This is why we have to consider the Wakhis living in Gojal in the scope of the Central Asian cultural circle, just like the Wakhis of Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Eastern Turkestan of China. Part of their identity stems from the Wakhi culture and the other part from the Dawat-i Nâsir tradition which can be defined as the Central Asian interpretation of Ismailism. The peoples of Upper Hunza have been named according to their belief system as Nâsiri, Panjtani, Mawlavi or Agha Khani. However the name they acknowledge and use is Dawat-i Nâsir, stemming from Nâsir-i Khusraw. Dawat-i Nâsir, their local belief system, which is one of the most prominent characteristics of their identity, now gives way to the Nizari Khoja tradition of India. This is the most striking point of conflict among the intellectuals of Gojal today. Another important characteristic of the region for both Central Asian studies and Ismaili studies is the existence of Turkish speaking Ismaili Kyrgyzs in Gojal who have completely converted to Ismailism and adopted Wakhi culture. Unlike the Sunni Kyrgyz who moved to the Ismaili settlements in Tashkurgan (China), Murgab (Tajikistan), and Wakhan (Afghanistan) yet retained their Sunni faith, those who moved to Upper Hunza converted to Ismailism. Their conversion to Ismailism seems to have paved the way for their assimilation into Wakhi culture. The mountainous Tajiks of Badakhshan, and the Wakhi branch of them, have never been central to the main narratives of Central Asian and Iranian political history, and much of it comes down to us only in the form of oral tradition. For this reason, besides few historical sources, this study based largely on fieldwork I carried out in Upper Hunza in 2015.

scholarly journals Oral tradition and communication

1970 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-68
Author(s):  
Deepak Aryal
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Historical Sources

Oral tradition has become a domain of great interest to scholars of different disciplines of knowledge such as literature, psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. It has a huge scope for the discipline of communication too. This article presents an appraisal of oral tradition as a means of communication from one generation to another. While doing so, it deals with following issues: Can history be narrated based on oral traditions just as it is done with ‘written documents'? Are the oral traditions only the sources of historiography or do they have other implications too? It also discusses whether oral traditions can be taken as valid historical sources, and, if not, whether there are means for testing its reliability. DOI: 10.3126/bodhi.v3i1.2813 Bodhi Vol.3(1) 2009 p.61-68

In Quest of Susu

1994 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 1-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Bühnen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Political History ◽  
The State ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Sudan I ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
History Of

The political history of the medieval Western Sudan was dominated by a succession of empires exerting their domination over the region: Ghana, Mali, and finally Songhay. Oral tradition is our only evidence for the existence of yet another empire. It was called Susu and exerted its supremacy after the decline of Ghana and before the rise of Mali. Most historical treatises locate enigmatic Susu in the Kaniaga region northwest of Segou. These treatises are mainly based on oral traditions and medieval Arabic chronicles.After rereading the conventional historical sources and examining passages in Portuguese sources thus far untapped for the history of the Western Sudan, I feel induced to present a new identification for Susu. The Portuguese evidence appears to point to a vast but nearly forgotten kingdom in the Futa Jalon and Upper Niger region as the historical descendant of ancient Susu, thus indicating the latter's location. This kingdom was called Jalo and Concho. Its ethnic core were the Susu and Jalonke, and it was on its ruins that the Muslim Fula conquerors erected the state of Futa Jalon in the eighteenth century. My interpretation of oral traditions and Arabic sources also leads me to assume an identity of Susu with the kingdoms of Sankaran and Do. I will attempt to demonstrate the identity of the polities bearing these different names in sections introducing these polities, most of which have never been subjected to close historical investigation.

Contemporary Qur'anic Studies in Iran and its Relationship with Qur'anic Studies in the West

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-72
Author(s):  
Morteza Karimi-Nia
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
The West ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Religious Learning ◽  
The Status ◽  
Islamic Republic Of Iran ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The status of tafsīr and Qur'anic studies in the Islamic Republic of Iran has changed significantly during recent decades. The essay provides an overview of the state of Qur'anic studies in Iran today, aiming to examine the extent of the impact of studies by Western scholars on Iranian academic circles during the last three decades and the relationship between them. As in most Islamic countries, the major bulk of academic activity in Iran in this field used to be undertaken by the traditional ʿulamāʾ; however, since the beginning of the twentieth century and the establishment of universities and other academic institutions in the Islamic world, there has been increasing diversity and development. After the Islamic Revolution, many gradual changes in the structure and approach of centres of religious learning and universities have occurred. Contemporary advancements in modern sciences and communications technologies have gradually brought the institutions engaged in the study of human sciences to confront the new context. As a result, the traditional Shīʿī centres of learning, which until 50 years ago devoted themselves exclusively to the study of Islamic law and jurisprudence, today pay attention to the teaching of foreign languages, Qur'anic sciences and exegesis, including Western studies about the Qur'an, to a certain extent, and recognise the importance of almost all of the human sciences of the West.

Moderating Role of Gender in the Relationship between Cognitive Errors and Anxiety among Adolescents

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Tasnim Rehna ◽  
Rubina Hanif ◽  
Muhammad Aqeel
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Adolescent Psychopathology ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cognitive Errors ◽  
Adolescent Anxiety ◽  
Study Results ◽  
The Status ◽  
Manifest Anxiety ◽  
The Relationship

Background: Widespread social paradigms on which the status variances are grounded in any society, gender plays pivotal role in manifestation of mental health problems (Rutter, 2007). A hefty volume of research has addressed the issue in adults nonetheless, little is vividly known about the role of gender in adolescent psychopathology. Sample: A sample of 240 adolescents (125 boys, 115 girls) aging 12-18 years was amassed from various secondary schools of Islamabad with the approval of the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE), relevant authorities of the schools and the adolescents themselves. Instruments: Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (Taylor & Spence, 1953) and Children’s Negative Cognitive Errors Questionnaire (CNCEQ) by Leitenberg et al., (1986) were applied in present study. Results: Multiple regression analysis revealed that cognitive errors jointly accounted for 78% of variance in predicting anxiety among adolescents. Findings also exhibited that gender significantly moderated the relationship between cognitive errors and adolescent anxiety. Implications of the findings are discoursed for future research and clinical practice.

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