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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology
The concept of 'hybridity' is often still poorly theorized and
problematically applied by peace and development scholars and
researchers of resource governance. This book turns to a particular
ethnographic reading of Michel Foucault's Governmentality and
investigates its usefulness to study precisely those mechanisms,
processes and practices that hybridity once promised to clarify.
Claim-making to land and authority in a post-conflict environment
is the empirical grist supporting this exploration of
governmentality. Specifically in the periphery of Bukavu. This
focus is relevant as urban land is increasingly becoming scarce in
rapidly expanding cities of eastern Congo, primarily due to
internal rural-to-urban migration as a result of regional
insecurity. The governance of urban land is also important
analytically as land governance and state authority in Africa are
believed to be closely linked and co-evolve. An ethnographic
reading of governmentality enables researchers to study
hybridization without biasing analysis towards hierarchical
dualities. Additionally, a better understanding of hybridization in
the claim-making practices may contribute to improved government
intervention and development assistance in Bukavu and elsewhere.
For those interested in continuing the struggle for decolonization,
the word "multiculturalism" is mostly a sad joke. After all,
institutionalized multiculturalism today is a managerial muck of
buzzwords, branding strategies, and virtue signaling that has
nothing to do with real struggles against racism and colonialism.
But Decolonize Multiculturalism unearths a buried history.
Decolonize Multiculturalism focuses on the story of the student and
youth movements of the 1960s and 1970s, inspired by global
movements for decolonization and anti-racism, who aimed to
fundamentally transform their society, as well as the violent
repression of these movements by the state, corporations, and
university administrations. Part of the response has been sheer
violence-campus policing, for example, only began in the 1970s,
paving the way for the militarized campuses of today-with
institutionalized multiculturalism acting like the velvet glove
around the iron fist of state violence. But this means that today's
multiculturalism also contains residues of the original radical
demands of the student and youth movements that it aims to repress:
to open up the university, to wrench it from its settler colonial,
white supremacist, and patriarchal capitalist origins, and to
transform it into a place of radical democratic possibility.
Pastoralist Livelihoods in Asian Drylands brings together the work
of scholars from across Asia to discuss the transforming
boundaries, agencies and risks involved in pastoralist livelihoods.
The authors, whose research sites range from Oman to Mongolia,
Syria to Pakistan, share methodological commitment to long-term
field research, participant observation and engagement with local
communities. There is a focus on pastoralist engagements with
governance institutions and the essays collectively argue that
risk, which is often imagined in environmental terms for
pastoralist peoples, often stems from government policies and
political circumstances. The authors challenge common ecological
approaches to understanding social change amongst pastoralist
groups by focusing on the politics of resource distribution and
control. Papers in the volume support an indigenous perspective on
pastoralists and present academic perceptions and assessments of
key issues in their local context.
Herder Warfare in East Africa presents a regional analysis of the
spatial and social history of warfare among the nomadic peoples of
East Africa, covering a period of 600 years. The long duree
facilitates understanding of how warfare among pastoralist
communities in earlier centuries contributed to political, economic
and ethnic shifts across the grazing lands in East Africa. The book
discusses herder warfare from the perspective of warfare ecology,
highlighting the interrelations between environmental and cultural
causalities - including droughts, famine, floods, ritual wars,
religious wars and migrations - and the processes and consequences
of war. Regional synthesis concentrates on frontiers of conflicts
extending from the White Nile Basin in south Sudan - into the
southern savannas of East Africa, the Great East African Rift
Valley, and the northern and southern Horn of Africa - examining
historical military power shifts between diverse pastoralist
cultures. Case studies are set in the coastal hinterland of East
Africa and the Jubaland-Wajir frontiers. Warfare combined with
environmental disasters caused social-economic breakdowns and the
enslavement of defeated groups. The dynamics of herder warfare
changed after colonial entry, response to pastoralist resistance
and slave emancipation. The book is of interest to specialist and
non-specialist readers exploring pastoralism, social anthropology
and warfare and conflict studies; and is suitable for introductory
graduate courses in environmental and social history of warfare .
Every society thrives on stories, legends and myths. This volume
explores the linguistic devices employed in the astoundingly rich
narrative traditions in the tropical hot-spots of linguistic and
cultural diversity, and the ways in which cultural changes and new
means of communication affect narrative genres and structures. It
focusses on linguistic and cultural facets of the narratives in the
areas of linguistic diversity across the tropics and surrounding
areas - New Guinea, Northern Australia, Siberia, and also the
Tibeto-Burman region. The introduction brings together the
recurrent themes in the grammar and the substance of the
narratives. The twelve contributions to the volume address
grammatical forms and categories deployed in organizing the
narrative and interweaving the protagonists and the narrator. These
include quotations, person of the narrator and the protagonist,
mirativity, demonstratives, and clause chaining. The contributors
also address the kinds of narratives told, their organization and
evolution in time and space, under the impact of post-colonial
experience and new means of communication via social media. The
volume highlights the importance of documenting narrative tradition
across indigenous languages.
This cutting-edge Research Handbook, at the intersection of
comparative law and anthropology, explores mutually enriching
insights and outlooks. The 20 contributors, including several of
the most eminent scholars, as well as new voices, offer diverse
expertise, national backgrounds and professional experience. Their
overall approach is ''ground up'' without regard to unified
paradigms of research or objects of study. Through a pluralistic
definition of law and multidisciplinary approaches, Comparative Law
and Anthropology significantly advances both theory and practice.
The Research Handbook's expansive concept of comparative law blends
a traditional geographical orientation with historical and
jurisprudential dimensions within a broad range of contexts of
anthropological inquiry, from indigenous communities, to law
schools and transitional societies. This comprehensive and original
collection of diverse writings about anthropology and the law
around the world offers an inspiring but realistic source for legal
scholars, anthropologists and policy-makers. Contributors include:
U. Acharya, C. Bell, J. Blake, S. Brink, E. Darian-Smith, R.
Francaviglia, M. Lazarus-Black, P. McHugh, S.F. Moore, E.
Moustaira, L. Nader, J. Nafziger, M. Novakovic, R. Price, O.
Ruppel, J.A. Sanchez, W. Shipley, R. Tejani, A. Telesetsky, K.
Thomas
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