Ethnoarchaeology of Domestic Space and Spatial Behaviour Among the Tiv and Ungwai of Central Nigeria

An attempt has been made in this paper to use ethnoarchaeology to clarify our understanding of aspects of domestic space and spatial behaviour among the Tiv and Ungwai peoples of Central Nigeria. Indeed, the work is in several senses, a comparative study of two ethnolinguistic groups who occupy a similar ecological niche with broadly similar sociopolitical organisation. This mode of organisation is non-centralized in character. In addition, the two peoples had a tradition of hilltop occupation in ancient times. Differences in topography (hilltops for the ancient settlers and lowlands for the present-day peoples) have affected not only the compound layout of each of these ethnic groups but also among other features, the architecture of their houses. Given the limited available archaeological data including charcoal samples for dating, one is not yet able to ascribe specific functions to some of the structures identified on the archaeological sites (hilltops). This will be better addressed as research progresses.Quelques tentatives ont ete faits dans cet article pour se servir de Iethnoarchaeologie pour expliquer les divers aspects de lespace domestique et des caracteres de loccupation lespace parmi les Tiv et les Ungwai de la region centrale du Nigeria. En fait, ce travail est en grandes measures une etude comparative des deux groupes ethnolinguistiques occupant le meme crenau ecologique ayant largement la meme organization socio-politique. Le mode dorganisation est du type non centralize. De plus les deux groupes ethniques ont une tradition de locucpation des peuples anciens centres sur le haut de la colline. Des differences en topographie (le haut des collines pour le anciens occupants et la plaine pour les habitants actuels) n ont pas seulement eu effets sur la generalite de la maniere dont les concessions des ces groupes ethniques se presentent mais aussi larchitecture de leurs maisons sont parmi les traits particuliers importants. A cause du numbrer restreint de donnees disponibles en ce moment, nous ne sommes pas encore en mesure dattribuer certaines functions aux structures identifiees aux chantiers archaeologigues (au sommet des collines). Ces functions seront mieux traitees au fur et a mesure que lon avance dans nos recherches.     

Laws,People and Land Use: A Sociological Perspective on the Relation Between Laws and Land Use

Public policy is often implemented through formal laws. In contrast to the typically optimistic ex-ante analyses of the impact of a set of laws, in retrospect it may be hard to determine what the laws concretely produced. Particularly complicated to measure are the unintended and indirect effects on actors or values that were not the prime focus of the law. Despite the literature on these matters in other fields of research, among planners the theory of law implementation receives relatively little attention. This attitude may stem from the means-ends rationality that has been common to planning for so many years. This paper makes a plea for focusing on the interaction between people and laws so as to understand the outcomes. We do this by drawing insights from sociological perspectives on laws.     

Microcredit and Women's Empowerment: Through the Lens of Time‐Use Data from Rural India

This study examines the impact of microcredit on male and female time use, and draws on this analysis to explore the linkages between credit and women's empowerment. A study of time use can help understand these linkages, because if credit is intended to improve women's livelihoods, it can also be expected to influence the way women allocate their time. Its other advantages are that it does not suffer from much time lag and can be objectively measured. Using household survey data from rural India, the findings show that while microcredit has little impact on women's time use, it helps their husbands move away from wage work (associated with bad pay and low status) to self‐employment. This is because women's loans are typically used to enhance male ownership of the household's productive assets. Further, it is found that it is only women who use loans in self‐managed enterprises who are able to allocate more time to self‐employment. If credit is intended to increase the value of women's work time, it follows that it is not access to loans but use of loans that matters. Ensuring women's control over loan‐created assets must therefore be a critical policy objective.     

陈云对正确处理人民内部矛盾理论的贡献

陈云对正确处理人民内部矛盾理论做出了重大贡献,但长期以来被学术界所忽视,值得我们认真深入挖掘整理:首先,牢牢把握生产关系的变化,正确区分人民内部矛盾和敌我矛盾,从而深刻地认识了执政后人民内部矛盾与敌我矛盾的复杂变化;其次,明确人民内部矛盾的根本原因在于经济建设还不能满足人民群众提高生活水平的需要,大力探索经济建设的规律;最后,注重经济手段的作用,强调从人民的根本利益、长远利益和整体利益出发,从而在经济工作中大力践行了对人民内部矛盾的正确处理。陈云的这一贡献形成了自己鲜明的特点,有很强的理论意义和现实意义。     

Textiles and the Making of Sacred Space

This paper develops a perspective on fabric and its use in religious settings, working from a comparative survey of critical literature arising, primarily, from anthropological writings on cloth and clothing in conjunction with insights gained from ethnographic research among Eastern Orthodox Christians. While the character of Orthodox Christianity and the broad nature of comparative religion shape how the argument is presented, the primary focus of the paper is not on the religious contexts, but rather the particular items of fabric in use, and, more generally, the exact qualities of fabric that allow for its use in such diverse contexts. Rather than taking an argument of historical specificity, the paper is grounded in a material culture approach to fabric, suggesting that a cross-cultural appraisal of fabric that spans different historical periods allows critical insight into the modes of operation within human experience. The central argument of the paper is that, because of the material qualities inherent in fabric, it can be used in such a manner as to make present the sacred.     

Economy and Respectability: Textiles from the North Brisbane Burial Ground

Textile remains were discovered during a salvage excavation at the site of the North Brisbane Burial Ground, a nineteenth-century cemetery in the city of Brisbane, Australia. Ninety-six textile samples were collected at excavation, comprising 39 twill weaves, 17 tabby weaves, one haircord weave, one satin weave, three knitted fabrics, one piece of felt and 34 masses of loose wool packing. Most of the woven textiles recovered were coffin coverings or coffin linings. Similarly, the majority of non-woven textile samples were also associated with coffins and their dressing. Five of the identified textiles were likely to have been fragments of garments worn by the deceased.     

Women,Pigs, God and Evolution: Social and Economic Change Among Kubo People of Papua New Guinea

This paper depicts connections and interactions between several apparently disparate themes of change observed in recent years at a village in the interior lowlands of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. Changes in patterns of association between men and women can be traced, in the first instance, to altered management practices necessitated by intensified pig production. That intensification, in turn, reflects the growing importance of money in the local economy, a shift which, through its predication on recognising the commensurability of differences, has ramifications far beyond the economics of pig production. An earlier emphasis on equivalence in exchanges has been replaced by a recognition of substitutability, with a consequent reification of categories at the expense of individuality. This trend has been reinforced by the influence of a new Christian cult that, in emphasising the distinction between men and women, has reified gender categories as a basis for structuring social action. The declining association between men and women which emerged as an adaptive response to changing economic realities has thus become incorporated as a structural transformation in Kubo social life.     

Women's Devotional Bequests of Textiles in the Late Medieval English Parish Church,c. 1350–1550

This article examines evidence of self‐determination and independent action in the practice, among a significant group of late medieval English women, of donating their own clothing and household linens to parish churches for use in sacred ritual.
The argument is presented that clothworking in a domestic environment was a highly valorised activity closely connected with women, for which the spindle and distaff acted as an index, and that against this background women used textiles as a site for expressing their personal, social and religious concerns.     

从海龄之死看鸦片战争时期官方与民间的英雄认同

海龄由于其不恰当的军事手段,导致矛盾激化,矛盾聚焦于海龄在京口的活动、死亡方式。围绕其死亡方式,各方争端不断,持续长久。争端方对此各执一词,镇江人利用流言否认海龄殉节,与官方直接对立。争端折射出官方与民间在认同上的差异。     

Textiles as the Face of Modernity: Artistry and Industry in Mid-Century America

This article examines the rise of a new profession of textile designer-intermediary in mid-twentieth-century America in light of the nation’s advancements in textile production, design, display and promotion. Unlike William Morris’s nineteenth-century call for a return to handcrafts to combat the evils of the British Industrial Revolution, American textiles were promoted as the face of modernity to reflect and exploit the miracles of technology. Emerging from these developments came the ‘Super Designers’ and ‘Techno-Craftsmen’, as designers Jack Lenor Larsen and Boris Kroll referred to them, who united handcraft sensibilities with good design and mass production.¹ These traits were also shared by weavers such as Anni Albers, Dorothy Liebes and Marianne Strengell, and designers of printed textiles such as Alexander Girard and Alvin Lustig. Despite an increasing reliance on mechanization, their textiles provided a human element — through texture, colour, pattern and connections to the past — to foil the threat of robotic mass production and mindless monotony. Working as corporate heads, industrial consultants, cultural ambassadors and textile collectors and connoisseurs, these designers emphasized in their work and writing the value of well-designed textiles for both visual and utilitarian purposes, collectively advancing contemporary textiles as ideal representatives of modern American design.