Black man's Burden: some South African parallels with North America

ABSTRACT

Muthi, intelezi and associated rituals have played an important role in the lives of Africans for many centuries. For almost everything they do, muthi and rituals are applied, more so during times of war. Controversy around the use of intelezi, muthi, ritual killing and the role of izinyanga in, prior to and during the colonial period, is well documented. This paper, first, challenges the Comaroffian analysis of the subject which purports to contextualise the ‘deployment, real or imagined, of magical means for material ends’. They add that the discourse is entirely about ‘modernity’ and ‘neoliberalism’. Here I fundamentally disagree with this explanation; I indicate that it is a cultural continuity. The paper contends that ritual killing and muthi use continues into the present and was prevalent during the political violence in KwaZulu-Natal during the 1980s and 1990s. Secondly, the paper will discuss the centrality of the use of muthi during the violence. I reason that izinyanga played a clandestine but powerful role in this violence. In this, they were at the core of the violence and of the rise of warlords to power in the region. In this paper, I will also present reasons (or offer recommendations) why historians should pay attention to these practices in the recent past, as well as in colonial times. For one thing, they are a means of understanding the present. However, in many ways, because of its reliance on oral histories and insider content, this paper is neither history nor ethnography, but could be described as historical ethnography.     

Of Human Bondage: The Breaking In of Stockmen in Northern Australia

This article examines the cultural forms through which the young European‐Australian stockmen who work on the cattle stations of north Queensland are socialised. Exploring their interactions with a social and physical landscape and their rites of passage, as manifested in everyday actions, performance and material culture, it reveals how – and why – they are given little choice in acquiring values which are intensely adversarial to the land and to the indigenous people of Australia. It also explores the relationship between the transmission of particular values to these young men and the wider political and hegemonic role of the pastoral sub‐culture in defining Australian national identity. 1 1 It has take me a while to lasso and subdue this ethnographic beast, and in the course of the struggle I have benefited greatly from the advice of colleagues at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Oxford, the Pitt Rivers Museum, the University of Wales, Lampeter and fellow Australianists at the Centre for Australian Studies in Wales and at the Menzies Centre in London. I am also most grateful to Neil Maclean and his anonymous referees for their many helpful suggestions and comments. I would like to pay an affectionate tribute to the young stockmen on the cattle properties of Cape York's western coast: at Rutland Plains, Koolatah, Highbury, Drumduff, Sefton and the other stations where I was invited to ‘sling my swag’. Behind the sabre‐rattling that I have quoted, most of these young men were good folk: they were largely tolerant of have a female (and a bloody pom too!) in their midst, generously sharing stories, explaining their lives, making hat‐catchers and belts for me, and showing me how to break horses and the occasional bone. I have had a little feminist fun in considering their performances of Masculinity, but I haven't forgotten that what they do often requires real courage and determination. Though I have tried here to point to the political hegemony of their role and its potentially bleak consequences, I hope that an understanding of their sub‐culture and its pressures will assist the resolution of some of the conflicts in which they find themselves entangled.
     

华北泽国白洋淀

烈日当空,我赶到河北安新县的东关码头,开往白洋淀圈头村的客船刚起锚离岸,我拉开嗓门大叫,但被柴油机震耳的马达声吞没了,眼睁睁看着船尾冒出滚水般的水浪渐渐远去.想到又得耽搁一天时间,不由得汗水顺脊背流淌下来.忽见一人吹着口哨而来,解开缆绳,用篙一撑,从岸上飞身跃起,落到漂开去的船上,稳稳地站定.     

试论美国奴隶制时期的黑人家庭

生活在美国奴隶制下的黑人奴隶被看作主人的财产,其婚姻和家庭没有法律保障,但黑人在特殊的生存环境中并未放弃这种最基本的权利,他们建立了属于自己的家庭生活并形成了奴隶制度下特有的家庭观念。黑人在家庭中找到一种群体归宿感和个体身份,家庭生活是黑人奴隶在奴役和剥削下得以生存的重要策略。     

我的北漂岁月

"月儿伴星舞,唯有我孤独!"我轻吟着,隔着破旧的铁窗望向深邃的黑夜,看不到闪亮的星空,只有黑黑的静静的夜色。慢慢地,我     

重访黑泉

孔子曰:仁者乐山,智者乐水。水电人常年逐水而居,迎来的是戈壁荒漠高山深峡,留下的是碧波千顷光辉灿烂,我虽非智者,却极喜欢水刚柔并济、随遇而安的气度。 那一年,是命运将我抛到了远离故乡的缺水少雨的戈壁荒原,成为了一名水电建设者,在激情燃烧的岁月里,在雪花飞舞的苍茫中,我们豪情万丈战风沙斗严寒,用汗水和热血描绘高峡出平湖、明珠照万家的千秋美景。从那时起,我对水对绿色的爱恋便成了心中化不开的情结。 星转斗移,岁月沧桑,现在我虽然到了四季如春     

Governing the local in the North Caucasus

Abstract

The article provides an in-depth analysis of local governance in the North Caucasus, by example of land tenure conflicts in Kabardino-Balkaria. We follow an iterative analytical strategy, systematically combining qualitative case studies to develop grounded hypotheses, with subsequent statistical hypothesis testing. Based on fieldwork conducted in Kabardino-Balkaria, we identify the most relevant patterns and dynamics of natural resource governance. Our research shows that there are three dominant patterns. The first pattern is formed in areas where land is of little value and communities are left to themselves to solve issues. In the second case, larger businesses with state backing manage to monopolize land resources and sideline local communities. In the third case, local communities are strong enough to defend their control over external attempts to take hold of land resources. Finally, we use original survey data to further investigate plausible causes for stronger and weaker local self-governance and its consequences for state-society relations. We show that local self-government (LSG) lacks independence, and its functional quality depends on the degree of state interference via patronage. Despite this challenging environment, we find that higher perceptions of LSG quality predict more trust in the state at central and subnational level.     

论黑死病期间的英国教会

在教会看来,黑死病是上帝因世人的罪孽而降下的惩罚,故而对之主要的防治也应该以忏悔为主.这些对策的确没有起到令人满意的效果,但这是当时科学水平有限的情况下教会所能采取的最好选择,并且,对这种解释迅速的传达和有关措施周密的布置本身就证明了教会面对瘟疫的积极态度,对社会的稳定也不无裨益.另外,教会还积极的进行临终抚慰、开辟墓地等稳定社会秩序的活动.尽管有一些教职人员的确有腐败的行为,但对此我们必须辨证地看待,因为他们相当多数并非原来教会的成员,而是在原有教士大量死亡之际紧急补充进来的人员.