Art et artisanat en Afrique Noire: Problèmes d'une définition différentielle

In 1977, John Lonsdale published a review of William R. Ochieng's study APre-Colonial History of the Gusii of Western Kenya in the Kenya Historical Review. Entitled “When did the Gusii (or any other group) become a ‘Tribe’?”, the ten-page article was less a book review and more a treatise on the practice of history in Africa. Taking Lonsdale's question as a point of inspiration, this article provides a critical rethinking of the theories of “tribe”, ethnicity and identity politics that continue to dominate African scholarship by examining the particular case of the Luyia in western Kenya. Through the seemingly incongruous and stubbornly diverse accounting of Luyia political community, this study suggests that histories of ethnic identity remain trapped by their own constructivist logic, elevating the “inventors” of traditional accounts at the expense of the plural and dissenting voices that characterise the multiple forms of political imagination practised across Africa that, while diverse, continue to rely on the idiom of the “tribe”.     

In Hoc Signo Vinces: Religious Symbolism in the Balkan Wars 1991–1995

Symbols—as important and very persuasive elements of contemporary national and political mythologies and their iconography—are particulary exposed during critical periods of certain nations' history. Although the role and influences of religious organizations and hierarchies before and during the last wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were quite different, all belligerent sides also employed religious symbols in their nationalistic/political mobilizations and military efforts. The ambition of this paper is to show the spectrum of (mis)uses of religious symbolism in these wars: Orthodox on Serbian side, Roman Catholic on Croatian, and Muslim on Bosniak' side. Comparative and sociohistorical analytical approaches can to some degree elucidate how traditional religious symbols were renewed and the new traditionalized during that time; how they were nationalized and politicized which elements of the religious heritage were most often applied; and how these symbols were exploited in military actions and politics of ethnic/religious cleansing.     

Policy Transfer Over Time: A Case of Growing Complexity

The article indicates that policy transfer has played an important role in the development of policy and legislation in Australia. Indeed, much of what is regarded as Australian policy is borrowed, usually in small part, but sometimes in its entirety, from elsewhere. One of the implications of this view is that Australian policy making processes are often, at least in part, dynamic, policy processes that draw upon a number of sources, both domestic and international. The focus of this article is upon the sources of transfer in the Australian context, both domestic and international, and how the sources drawn upon by Australian state and federal governments have changed over time. The article also indicates that on the evidence available the Australian experience with transfer can be divided into a number of phases. The first, from European colonisation to approximately the middle of the nineteenth century, the second from roughly the middle of the nineteenth century to federation at the beginning of the twentieth century, the third from the establishment of the Australian federation in 1901, to the Second World War, and the fourth phase, from the Second World War to the present.     

Nationalism and Cultural Memory in Poland: The European Union Turns East

The eastern expansion of the European Union confronts the process of European integration with the phenomenon of cultural and ethnic nationalism. This paper examines the situation of Poland, using Jan Assmann's theory of cultural memory to reconstruct the historical dimension of Polish nationalism which underlies the current constructions of the Polish nation. Understanding itself as the antemurale Europae christianiae, Poland owns an old tradition of resistance. This tradition allowed this country to survive times of division and oppression but now turns against the European Union.     

The Achaemenid Empire’s Contributions to Public Administration

The Achaemenid Empire established the world’s first complex administrative system of government in 559 B.C. There are numerous administrative accomplishments by the Achaemenids that have not successfully been duplicated in modern times, despite the Pony Express, the Suez Canal, and perfected recycling systems. Political debate, formal rewards systems, federal agencies, and integrated federal and provincial levels of government among a culturally diverse population were characteristic of the trailblazing Achaemenid Empire. Furthermore, administrative ideologies such as government’s responsibility to serve the public and provide equal rights were incorporated first by Cyrus the Great’s Human Rights Charter.     

‘Colonizin’ in reverse

Abstract

This is a revised version of a paper presented on 22 June 2006 by Kenneth Parker at The English Academy of Southern Africa, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, on the occasion of the presentation of a Gold Medal to Professor Colin Gardner for distinguished service to English. The paper takes a tongue-in-cheek look at ‘Britishness’ and conforming to British standards – including what the British saw as the ‘way forward for the English language’. It shows how the erstwhile ‘colonized’, and more particularly their British-born descendants, have been doing some ‘colonizin’ of their own.     

‘Black letters’: problems and issues in the research,dissemination and reception of literature by Afro-Argentines and on Afro-Argentines

Afro-Argentines of colonial descent constitute one of the lesser known minority groups in the country. While scholarly research on this particular group is still scarce, recent studies account for the diversity of its past and current cultural practices. Aside from some exceptions, Afro-Argentine literature is virtually unknown to academia and, as it is usually the case regarding Minor Literatures, it has been excluded from the national literary canon. Towards the end of the twentieth century there was a resurgence not only of studies on Afro-Argentine literature, but also of the presence of Afro-Argentines themselves in fictional writing. This paper will chart the process of retrieval, analysis and dissemination of Afro-Argentine literature, examining some of the issues that arise both at the epistemic and editorial policy levels. We will account for the revival of a literature on Afro-Argentines, in order to explore whether they reproduce a ‘master narrative’ that, through the historical novel, relegates Afro-Argentines into oblivion and/or reduces the group to its stereotypes; or if, on the other hand, these voices can subvert Argentine historiography by positioning this group in a leading role that mirrors the vitality of their present-day social movements.     

Gender-Based Violence Prevention Workshops: An Experimental Evaluation of Efficacy

Gender-based violence has become an increasingly visible and salient public problem. In the Fall of 2015, the University of Connecticut’s Violence Against Women Prevention Program (VAWPP) implemented interactive workshops in first-year experience (FYE) classes to reduce rape myth acceptance, improve knowledge and understanding of the University’s affirmative consent policy, and increase confidence in interpreting cues related to sexual consent. This randomized experimental design tested whether these outcomes were realized as a result of the workshops. In almost all instances, the workshops substantially and statistically significantly decreased students’ rape myth acceptance, increased their knowledge and understanding of consent, and improved their confidence in cue interpretation.     

The Learning Orientation of Primary Health Care Teams in the English National Health Service: Is This a Myth That Should Be Perpetuated?

A qualitative study of primary health care teams in the UK provides insight into their co-ordination or learning-orientation and how this affects member commitment, conceptions of ‘core’ and periphery, group identification and willingness to integrate roles. Even if the ideal of a learning-oriented primary health care team is viewed as a myth, it can still perform useful functions despite an apparent withdrawal of its official authorization by the Cameron-led government. The perpetuation of this myth maintains a tension between reality and potentiality in the hopes that inspire its pursuit as an ideal of team formation.     

Tradition and modernity: an obsolete dichotomy? Binary thinking,indigenous peoples and normalisation

The debates over Indigenous peoples and development are often framed within the discussion on the shift towards modernity, the imposition of economic liberalism and resistance against external interventions, with a tendency to see Indigenous peoples as a possible alternative to the world economic order. However, looking at many development agencies’ discourses, the idea that Indigenous peoples will actually benefit from modernity prevails. The literature is divided along these two conflicting views and dominated by binary oppositions: traditional/modern; backward/advanced; sustainable/unsustainable, etc. This article discusses the tradition/modernity dichotomy and raises the following questions: is it relevant to think in terms of modernity/tradition in the case of Indigenous peoples? What does the use of such a dichotomy imply? What is the alternative? The article demonstrates that this binary opposition is neither relevant nor desirable, and that a new analytical framework is required. Instead, it proposes using a normalisation framework, which focuses on the attempts made to ‘normalise’ Indigenous peoples and to encourage them to comply with existing social and economic models.     

Cosmopolitanism and National Tradition: The Case of Slovenia

This paper discusses the contradictions of maintaining national identity in the age of globalization. It investigates the central relevance of the concept of citizenship in light of the encroaching forces of economic and cultural globalization, on the one hand; and ethnic, nationalistic, and religious fundamentalism, on the other. The paper argues for the need to recognize not only the meaning of national identity, derived mainly from works of art and literature in a given tradition, but also its potential to head off forms of reductionism, be they economic or ethnic. In this regard, the paper calls for a theoretically subtle approach to the contemporary dilemmas of small nations, caught between the fundamentalist temptation (nationalism) and global corporate homogeneity. The case of Slovenia is used here to spell out the necessity to develop a cosmopolitan attitude, characterized as it is by both local cultural tradition and international codes of expression. Such an attitude may best be developed in a civic sphere that provides the mediating ground between the solipsistic pursuit of individual happiness and governmental political regimentation.