Author: James Anthony Pritchett
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299171544
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404
Book Description
Pritchett (anthropology, African studies, Boston U.) presents an account of the Lunda- Ndembu people of northwestern Zambia. The text is based upon archaeological data, travel accounts, colonial field reports, and the scholarly studies of others, as well as his own field research conducted intermittently over the course of 14 years. He contends that despite much cultural borrowing in recent decades, the Lunda people have an image of themselves that is essentially unchanged. He also reflects on continuity and change in Africa. c. Book News Inc.
The Lunda-Ndembu
Author: James Anthony Pritchett
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299171544
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404
Book Description
Pritchett (anthropology, African studies, Boston U.) presents an account of the Lunda- Ndembu people of northwestern Zambia. The text is based upon archaeological data, travel accounts, colonial field reports, and the scholarly studies of others, as well as his own field research conducted intermittently over the course of 14 years. He contends that despite much cultural borrowing in recent decades, the Lunda people have an image of themselves that is essentially unchanged. He also reflects on continuity and change in Africa. c. Book News Inc.
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299171544
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404
Book Description
Pritchett (anthropology, African studies, Boston U.) presents an account of the Lunda- Ndembu people of northwestern Zambia. The text is based upon archaeological data, travel accounts, colonial field reports, and the scholarly studies of others, as well as his own field research conducted intermittently over the course of 14 years. He contends that despite much cultural borrowing in recent decades, the Lunda people have an image of themselves that is essentially unchanged. He also reflects on continuity and change in Africa. c. Book News Inc.
Friends for Life, Friends for Death
Author: James Anthony Pritchett
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813926247
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
"Transporting the reader to a place few have heard of, to examine the lives of people few will ever meet, Friends for Life, Friends for Death is an accessible account of day-to-day life and social construction in contemporary rural Africa."--BOOK JACKET.
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813926247
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
"Transporting the reader to a place few have heard of, to examine the lives of people few will ever meet, Friends for Life, Friends for Death is an accessible account of day-to-day life and social construction in contemporary rural Africa."--BOOK JACKET.
The Forest of Symbols
Author: Victor Witter Turner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801491016
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
Collection of 10 articles previously published on various aspects of ritual symbolism among the Ndembu of Zambia; p.83-4; brief mention of C.P. Mountford on Aboriginal colour symbolism; Primarly for use in cultural comparison.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801491016
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
Collection of 10 articles previously published on various aspects of ritual symbolism among the Ndembu of Zambia; p.83-4; brief mention of C.P. Mountford on Aboriginal colour symbolism; Primarly for use in cultural comparison.
Roads Through Mwinilunga
Author: Iva Peša
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004408967
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 443
Book Description
Roads through Mwinilunga provides a historical appraisal of social change in Northwest Zambia from 1750 until the present. By looking at agricultural production, mobility, consumption, and settlement patterns, existing explanations of social change are reassessed. Using a wide range of archival and oral history sources, Iva Peša shows the relevance of Mwinilunga to broader processes of colonialism, capitalism, and globalisation. Through a focus on daily life, this book complicates transitions from subsistence to market production and dichotomies between tradition and modernity. Roads through Mwinilunga is a crucial addition to debates on historical and social change in Central Africa.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004408967
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 443
Book Description
Roads through Mwinilunga provides a historical appraisal of social change in Northwest Zambia from 1750 until the present. By looking at agricultural production, mobility, consumption, and settlement patterns, existing explanations of social change are reassessed. Using a wide range of archival and oral history sources, Iva Peša shows the relevance of Mwinilunga to broader processes of colonialism, capitalism, and globalisation. Through a focus on daily life, this book complicates transitions from subsistence to market production and dichotomies between tradition and modernity. Roads through Mwinilunga is a crucial addition to debates on historical and social change in Central Africa.
Along an African Border
Author: Sonia Silva
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203739
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186
Book Description
The divination baskets of south Central Africa are woven for a specific purpose. The baskets, known as lipele, contain sixty or so small articles, from seeds, claws, and minuscule horns to wooden carvings. Each article has its own name and symbolic meaning, and collectively they are known as jipelo. For the Luvale and related peoples, the lipele is more than a container of souvenirs; it is a tool, a source of crucial information from the ancestral past and advice for the future. In Along an African Border, anthropologist Sónia Silva examines how Angolan refugees living in Zambia use these divination baskets to cope with daily life in a new land. Silva documents the special processes involved in weaving the baskets and transforming them into oracles. She speaks with diviners who make their living interpreting lipele messages and speaks also with their knowledge-seeking clients. To the Luvale, these baskets are capable of thinking, hearing, judging, and responding. They communicate by means of jipelo articles drawn in configurations, interact with persons and other objects, punish wrongdoers, assist people in need, and, much like humans, go through a life course that is marked with an initiation ceremony and a special burial. The lipele functions in a state between object and person. Notably absent from lipele divination is any discussion or representation in the form of symbolic objects of the violence in Angola or the Luvale's relocation struggles—instead, the consultation focuses on age-old personal issues of illness, reproduction, and death. As Silva demonstrates in this sophisticated and richly illustrated ethnography, lipele help people maintain their links to kin and tradition in a world of transience and uncertainty.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203739
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186
Book Description
The divination baskets of south Central Africa are woven for a specific purpose. The baskets, known as lipele, contain sixty or so small articles, from seeds, claws, and minuscule horns to wooden carvings. Each article has its own name and symbolic meaning, and collectively they are known as jipelo. For the Luvale and related peoples, the lipele is more than a container of souvenirs; it is a tool, a source of crucial information from the ancestral past and advice for the future. In Along an African Border, anthropologist Sónia Silva examines how Angolan refugees living in Zambia use these divination baskets to cope with daily life in a new land. Silva documents the special processes involved in weaving the baskets and transforming them into oracles. She speaks with diviners who make their living interpreting lipele messages and speaks also with their knowledge-seeking clients. To the Luvale, these baskets are capable of thinking, hearing, judging, and responding. They communicate by means of jipelo articles drawn in configurations, interact with persons and other objects, punish wrongdoers, assist people in need, and, much like humans, go through a life course that is marked with an initiation ceremony and a special burial. The lipele functions in a state between object and person. Notably absent from lipele divination is any discussion or representation in the form of symbolic objects of the violence in Angola or the Luvale's relocation struggles—instead, the consultation focuses on age-old personal issues of illness, reproduction, and death. As Silva demonstrates in this sophisticated and richly illustrated ethnography, lipele help people maintain their links to kin and tradition in a world of transience and uncertainty.
Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual
Author: Victor Turner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501717197
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
Drawing on two and a half years of field work, Victor Turner offers two thorough ethnographic studies of Ndembu revelatory ritual and divinatory techniques, with running commentaries on symbolism by a variety of Ndembu informants. Although previously published, these essays have not been readily available since their appearance more than a dozen years ago. Striking a personal note in a new introductory chapter, Professor Turner acknowledges his indebtedness to Ndembu ritualists for alerting him to the theoretical relevance of symbolic action in understanding human societies. He believes that ritual symbols, like botanists' stains, enable us to detect and trace the movement of social processes and relationships that often lie below the level of direct observation.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501717197
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
Drawing on two and a half years of field work, Victor Turner offers two thorough ethnographic studies of Ndembu revelatory ritual and divinatory techniques, with running commentaries on symbolism by a variety of Ndembu informants. Although previously published, these essays have not been readily available since their appearance more than a dozen years ago. Striking a personal note in a new introductory chapter, Professor Turner acknowledges his indebtedness to Ndembu ritualists for alerting him to the theoretical relevance of symbolic action in understanding human societies. He believes that ritual symbols, like botanists' stains, enable us to detect and trace the movement of social processes and relationships that often lie below the level of direct observation.
Schism and Continuity in an African Society
Author: Victor Witter Turner
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719010385
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719010385
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
How Societies Are Born
Author: Jan Vansina
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813934184
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 582
Book Description
Like stars, societies are born, and this story deals with such a birth. It asks a fundamental and compelling question: How did societies first coalesce from the small foraging communities that had roamed in West Central Africa for many thousands of years? Jan Vansina continues a career-long effort to reconstruct the history of African societies before European contact in How Societies Are Born. In this complement to his previous study Paths in the Rainforests, Vansina employs a provocative combination of archaeology and historical linguistics to turn his scholarly focus to governance, studying the creation of relatively large societies extending beyond the foraging groups that characterized west central Africa from the beginning of human habitation to around 500 BCE, and the institutions that bridged their constituent local communities and made large-scale cooperation possible. The increasing reliance on cereal crops, iron tools, large herds of cattle, and overarching institutions such as corporate matrilineages and dispersed matriclans lead up to the developments treated in the second part of the book. From about 900 BCE until European contact, different societies chose different developmental paths. Interestingly, these proceeded well beyond environmental constraints and were characterized by "major differences in the subjects which enthralled people," whether these were cattle, initiations and social position, or "the splendors of sacralized leaders and the possibilities of participating in them."
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813934184
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 582
Book Description
Like stars, societies are born, and this story deals with such a birth. It asks a fundamental and compelling question: How did societies first coalesce from the small foraging communities that had roamed in West Central Africa for many thousands of years? Jan Vansina continues a career-long effort to reconstruct the history of African societies before European contact in How Societies Are Born. In this complement to his previous study Paths in the Rainforests, Vansina employs a provocative combination of archaeology and historical linguistics to turn his scholarly focus to governance, studying the creation of relatively large societies extending beyond the foraging groups that characterized west central Africa from the beginning of human habitation to around 500 BCE, and the institutions that bridged their constituent local communities and made large-scale cooperation possible. The increasing reliance on cereal crops, iron tools, large herds of cattle, and overarching institutions such as corporate matrilineages and dispersed matriclans lead up to the developments treated in the second part of the book. From about 900 BCE until European contact, different societies chose different developmental paths. Interestingly, these proceeded well beyond environmental constraints and were characterized by "major differences in the subjects which enthralled people," whether these were cattle, initiations and social position, or "the splendors of sacralized leaders and the possibilities of participating in them."
The Ritual Process
Author: Victor Turner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351474901
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Book Description
In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor Turner examines rituals of the Ndembu in Zambia and develops his now-famous concept of "Communitas." He characterizes it as an absolute inter-human relation beyond any form of structure.The Ritual Process has acquired the status of a small classic since these lectures were first published in 1969. Turner demonstrates how the analysis of ritual behavior and symbolism may be used as a key to understanding social structure and processes. He extends Van Gennep's notion of the "liminal phase" of rites of passage to a more general level, and applies it to gain understanding of a wide range of social phenomena. Once thought to be the "vestigial" organs of social conservatism, rituals are now seen as arenas in which social change may emerge and be absorbed into social practice.As Roger Abrahams writes in his foreword to the revised edition: "Turner argued from specific field data. His special eloquence resided in his ability to lay open a sub-Saharan African system of belief and practice in terms that took the reader beyond the exotic features of the group among whom he carried out his fieldwork, translating his experience into the terms of contemporary Western perceptions. Reflecting Turner's range of intellectual interests, the book emerged as exceptional and eccentric in many ways: yet it achieved its place within the intellectual world because it so successfully synthesized continental theory with the practices of ethnographic reports."
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351474901
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Book Description
In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor Turner examines rituals of the Ndembu in Zambia and develops his now-famous concept of "Communitas." He characterizes it as an absolute inter-human relation beyond any form of structure.The Ritual Process has acquired the status of a small classic since these lectures were first published in 1969. Turner demonstrates how the analysis of ritual behavior and symbolism may be used as a key to understanding social structure and processes. He extends Van Gennep's notion of the "liminal phase" of rites of passage to a more general level, and applies it to gain understanding of a wide range of social phenomena. Once thought to be the "vestigial" organs of social conservatism, rituals are now seen as arenas in which social change may emerge and be absorbed into social practice.As Roger Abrahams writes in his foreword to the revised edition: "Turner argued from specific field data. His special eloquence resided in his ability to lay open a sub-Saharan African system of belief and practice in terms that took the reader beyond the exotic features of the group among whom he carried out his fieldwork, translating his experience into the terms of contemporary Western perceptions. Reflecting Turner's range of intellectual interests, the book emerged as exceptional and eccentric in many ways: yet it achieved its place within the intellectual world because it so successfully synthesized continental theory with the practices of ethnographic reports."
Schism and Continuity in an African Society
Author: Victor Turner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000324818
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
With a new foreword by Bruce Kapferer, Professor of Anthropology, James Cook University- A reprint of the seminal anthropological work of the 1960s. Originally published by Manchester University Press.Victor Turner will be remembered as the anthropologist who developed the concept of the ‘social drama', a method used extensively by anthropologists to describe and analyse the social life of a community. In essence, this technique involves analysing social crises within a community over a period of time in order to gain a better understanding of the key principles that govern the social life of the community.This book -- Turner's first ‘social drama' study -- focuses on the village life of the Ndembu of Zambia who were then under British rule. The social constraints, such as the matrilineally-inherited headmanship system, and the various releases from these constraints, provoked periodic crises which caused great disruption and pain. These crises made visible the contradictions between the principles governing social life and the conflicts experienced between individuals and groups when enforcing these principles. Seven social dramas are discussed - all from one family over a period of twenty years -- each substantiated by sociological and demographic research.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000324818
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
With a new foreword by Bruce Kapferer, Professor of Anthropology, James Cook University- A reprint of the seminal anthropological work of the 1960s. Originally published by Manchester University Press.Victor Turner will be remembered as the anthropologist who developed the concept of the ‘social drama', a method used extensively by anthropologists to describe and analyse the social life of a community. In essence, this technique involves analysing social crises within a community over a period of time in order to gain a better understanding of the key principles that govern the social life of the community.This book -- Turner's first ‘social drama' study -- focuses on the village life of the Ndembu of Zambia who were then under British rule. The social constraints, such as the matrilineally-inherited headmanship system, and the various releases from these constraints, provoked periodic crises which caused great disruption and pain. These crises made visible the contradictions between the principles governing social life and the conflicts experienced between individuals and groups when enforcing these principles. Seven social dramas are discussed - all from one family over a period of twenty years -- each substantiated by sociological and demographic research.