The Prophethood of Work and the Gospels of The Souls of Black Folk

Abstract

W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the most important American thinkers of the social and the political in the first half of the twentieth century, was involved in labor politics for much of his life, but while some scholars are now beginning to appreciate the extent to which Du Bois is also a thinker of the religious, no one has tried to connect his stance on questions of labor and his religious thought. Yet his early book, The Souls of Black Folk, presents, among other things, a complicated theology of labor. Du Bois criticizes the principle of submission glorified by white American Christianity, and imposed by white Christians on black slaves. At the same time, he confesses a veritable faith in "work, systematic and tireless," but only as it functions as part of a broader cultural renewal, itself dependent on what I describe as a "missiology of cultural knowledge." To accomplish this project, Du Bois must deploy an inegalitarian principle, separating manual laborers from intellectual or cultural laborers as fundamentally different kinds of human being. This principle is obviously in tension with the great struggles for equality in which Du Bois participated all his life. At the same time, Du Bois is not simply interested in consecrating work as such, but in explaining the connection that ties together labor, the aesthetic, and the religious. Our reading of Souls is informed by the hermeneutic practices modeled by Jacques Rancière in his political philosophy.     

The Black Death

The purpose of the present research is to examine various theories concerning the origin of the Black Death, to record its routes of dissemination in the Nordic countries and across the British Isles, and to compare the pattern of that dissemination with trade routes carrying grain throughout northern Europe in the period up to and including 1350.     

The Role of Geographers in Work on a Land Cadaster and on an Agricultural Evaluation of Lands

Geographers have been in the forefront of the campaign to institute a full-fledged land cadastre and economic land-evaluation program in the Soviet Union. Although a State Register of Landholdings was adopted in 1955, it is concerned mainly with the distribution of lands among land-holdings and the composition of agricultural lands (crop land, hay meadows, pastures, etc.) within landholdings. A full fledged cadastral and evaluation program would seek to evaluate land in terms of quality and productivity. In view of the interdisciplinary character of the work, geographers are viewed as most suitable participants.     

The Material Roots of Rastafarian Marijuana Symbolism

This article explores the relationship between shifting modes of production and the evolution of marijuana symbolism among the early Rastafarians of Jamaica. During slavery, marijuana grew on the island but was probably not recognized. During the shift to indentured labour, black Jamaicans utilized marijuana as a palliative. During the transition to capitalism, marginalized urban Jamaicans sold marijuana and it became a powerful symbol of their peasant past. Finally, once the island had shifted to a predominantly capitalist mode of production and appropriated laws that reinforced capitalist ideology, marijuana became a “holy herb”. This work provides a framework to study the development of religious symbolism and presents an exercise in applying anthropological theory to history. Such an exploration is useful for anthropologists studying ideological systems and ethnobotanists seeking to analyse the dynamic relationships between plants and people based upon changes in material circumstances or shifts in mode of production.     

The Pluralities of Black Geographies

This paper seeks to spur conversations around the inherent pluralities found within Black Geographies. While analyses of Black Geographies have provided important reflections on the spatial imaginaries and practices of Black populations, less attention has been paid to the differences found among Black geographical expressions. This piece therefore seeks to draw out the ways in which Black people uniquely conceive of space by highlighting the distinctions present within different Black social movements. The authors explore the spatial politics of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the Black Panther Party for Self‐Defense, and the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika to argue that while these three movements all attempted to create spaces of Black self‐determination, they did so with distinct spatial aspirations and concrete politics. The authors argue that recognising and accounting for the pluralities of Black spatial creation is necessary for realising more just geographies.     

The Myth of Bondi's Black Sunday

On 6 February 1938, five bathers drowned while swimming between the flags at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia. In surf lifesaving history, the day is known as Black Sunday. The dominant heroic narrative of Black Sunday highlights freak surf conditions and the gallantry, efficiency, and adeptness of Bondi's volunteer surf lifesavers. In this article I analyse this representation as a myth. Here I employ the French philosopher Roland Barthes' concept of myth, not as a falsehood, but as simplistic story, replete with silences and devoid of critical assessment. I argue that the myth of Black Sunday served the interests of Surf Life Saving Australia well in establishing its status as the country's premier safety service. However, the culture that underpinned that myth still persists with ongoing ramifications for risk assessment at the beach.