Clan-based Society Research Articles

Indra-kaví

The paper aims at illustrating the possible interconnection between Ṛgvedic poetry and the bovine environment in relation to which the proto-Vedic clan-based society ensured its own subsistence. Given that the protection of livestock was one of the functions attributed to chieftainship, especially during the phase of clan mobility (yóga), and that the figure of the proto-Vedic kaví, the so-called ‗sage poet,‘ is correlated to the milieu of the lordship, it is most likely that the bovine imagery and rhetorical devices, particularly connected to sonority, stemmed precisely from that environment where the human and animal dimensions were symbiotically associated to ensure clan‘s prosperity. Therefore, Ṛgvedic poetical expressions are not only the artful means to mark the liturgical language, but also a direct output of the expertise of the warrior-cowherd, identified especially with the mythological figure of Indra, who could, by way of sonorous enchanting of both, the livestock and the enemies, yoke the former and keep away the latter, guaranteeing subsistence to his own clan.

Ritual of the Dead: Karbi Chomangkan Festival in Its Cultural Context

Like most tribal societies, the socio-religious system of the Karbis of Assam also largely conforms to the belief in magic, spirits, and the ancestor cult. The Chomangkan is one of the most important rituals of the Karbis and mirrors their philosophy of life and death. The Karbis believe that the Chomangkan guides the soul of the dead in its journey to the afterlife, but it is not an immediate funeral ritual, and the relatives of the deceased usually take years to perform it on account of its expensive and elaborate nature. An essential aspect of the ritual is the singing of the oral epics Kacharhe Alun and Mosera Kihir, which are compositions that recount the migration history of the Karbis as the dead embarks on its journey to the ‘village of the ancestors’. The Karbis, who are a clan-based society, have been influenced by Hinduism and Christianity in the last few decades, which has led to a synthesis of the new faiths with the traditional belief system. Therefore, Chomangkan has become a rare ritual, which makes its documentation crucial to preserving Karbi history and culture. Using ethnographic research methods, this paper attempts to critically examine continuity and change in the ‘ritual of the dead’, or Chomangkan, practiced among the Karbi community in Assam. It will also provide insights into the ways in which Chomangkan as a community festival offers an opportunity for the clans and sub-clans to express solidarity, symbolizing the integration of the Karbi lineages in the face of a changing cultural context through various periods of its history.

Friendship, Faith and the Bard MacLean

Among Canada’s pioneer poets John MacLean is uniquely Am Bàrd MacGilleathan.His ‘The Gloomy Forest’ gave an eloquent account of tree-felling challenges facingHighland settlers. MacLean’s background in fertile Tiree, where his bardic skillsdeveloped, was very different. This paper focuses on a friendship between the bardand a priest, Colin Grant, who shared his knowledge of clan-based society. Thefriendship flourished in an area of Nova Scotia where faith communities met.Protestants from the northern Highlands put down roots in Pictou while Catholicsfrom further west settled in Antigonish and Cape Breton. The personal friendshipreflected a period of shared Gaelic culture when clergy were in short supply.Scripture in Gaelic helped to establish Calvinist values, while Catholic belief andpractice continued to draw on an imaginative folk-culture. The bard’s praise-poetryfor the priest followed him to death, but MacLean turned to spiritual verse as faithcommunities drew apart.

Trade Flux’s Influence Upon Southeast Asian Economical Backwardness During 17th Century

Southeast Asia as a region of exotic lands located between China and India countries on Indian Oceanic passageway of which little was known. Southeast’s Asian earliest center’s of power emerged between the first and fifteenth centuries CE, as their leaders faced issues relative to rulling their domains, which were mainly moving form highly localized tribal and clan-based societies. In the predominant world, the Southeast Asian region was illustrated in international sources as wealth land. The story of economic development in early Southeast Asia begins long before the Christian Era. Southeast Asia had already been for centuries a region with unique cultural identity. Trade has been important facet for Southeast Asia, since it obtained numerous commodities as clove, sandalwood, camphor, pepper that had been traded since Rome and Han era. As time passed, many trade activities faced failures which indicated economical backwardness. This article tries to emphasize the trade flux’s impact upon Southeast Asian economical backwardness in 14th century.

Factors affecting the success of collaborative forestry research in Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACTPapua New Guinea (PNG) and Australia have a close relationship, including through development assistance in agriculture and forestry. Delivering successful research and development projects in PNG is challenging due to weak government service delivery, poor infrastructure and a clan-based society. This paper reports a qualitative investigation of factors contributing to success in ten collaborative forestry research projects implemented in PNG by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. The relative success of the projects was evaluated, and 37 contributing factors were identified from an analysis of project records and interviews with 33 project participants. The most frequently identified success factors were collaborative scoping and design, funding and equipment, leadership and management, selection and commitment of partner institutions, and effective communications. Relationships between these success factors and the success of the projects were evident in a closer study of four projects with different relative success. This study broadens the understanding of factors that enhance or diminish the success of international forestry research projects, confirms results from companion studies, and identifies some additional aspects that are relevant to the PNG context. This knowledge could help improve the effectiveness of future research for development projects.

Democratization in clan-based societies: explaining the Mongolian anomaly

ABSTRACTMongolia is a long-standing democratic anomaly – a democracy in a clan-based society – that is rarely discussed in research. This article addresses the question, why did Mongolia and the Central Asian countries embark upon markedly different regime trajectories following 70 years of Soviet rule? I argue that the prospects of democracy were shaped by a complex relationship between clan-based traditional authority structures, social relations based on nomadism and the style of Soviet rule. In Mongolia, Soviet authorities carefully enforced collectivization across kin groups and provided all necessary public goods to citizens, effectively dismantling clan-based authority structures. This process unintendedly fortified nomadic social relations that enabled re-emergent elements of opposition and forces in civil society to fill the void of authority generated by the Soviet collapse and to use this counterweight to state power to push for competitive politics. In contrast, the Soviet authorities’ “divide and rule” with clans in Kyrgyzstan reproduced clans that easily took on a dominant role on the eve of the Soviet breakdown and filled the void of authority by placing themselves at the apex of political power providing welfare services and political order. This placed Kyrgyzstan on the path to a post-communist non-democracy.

One size fits all? Dialectometry in a small clan-based indigenous society

AbstractIn many societies, dialectometry has revealed strong correlations between geographic distances and dialect differences (e.g., Gooskens, 2005; Heeringa & Nerbonne, 2001; Nerbonne, 2009, 2010). But what happens when dialectometry is applied to a small, clan-based society such as the indigenous Sui people of rural southwest China? The Sui results show a strong correlation between dialect difference and geographic distance, thus supporting Nerbonne and Kleiweg's (2007) Fundamental Dialectological Postulate. A new culturally specific computation, “rice paddy distance,” also provides a strong correlation with dialect differences. However, the study finds that some dialectometry patterns of larger societies are not “compressible” into small societies such as Sui. Clan exogamy also poses challenges for dialectometry. Nonetheless, the overall results show that basic principles of dialect variation in space can be generalized cross-culturally, even across very different cultures. This paper also suggests a “lower limit” for dialectology, that is, the smallest distance where regional dialectology may be relevant, all other things being equal.

Death, Disinheritance, and Job's Kinsman-Redeemer

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) The book of Job offers a rare opportunity to view the response to death in ancient Israel and early Judaism. This response, which encompasses attitudes toward burial and concepts of the afterlife,1 is both vague and complicated in the Hebrew Bible.2 Its depiction, however, has been enhanced by archaeology, particularly the excavation of Iron Age II tombs found predominantly in Judah.3 Yet in spite of the abundance of death imagery in the book of Job, the book's themes are seldom compared with the burial practices that typified the Israelite and early Jewish experience.4 This is partially due to uncertainties over the book's language and the date of its compilation,5 combined with the indistinct nature of its cultural setting and historical background.6 Yet the images evoked in the protagonist's speech in Job 19:23.27 reflect archaeologically attested funerary rites that date to the first millennium b.c.e. The role of writing, associated with Job's kinsman-redeemer in this perplexing passage, in fact parallels a similarly difficult Hebrew from a tomb at Khirbet el-Qom. Furthermore, the funerary images relate to wider themes of death that are debated in Job's second cycle of speeches. The recognition of these multiple contexts (literary and cultural), in turn, allows for a better understanding of the nature and function of the ... (go'el) in Job 19:25. The passionate speech in 19:23.27 evokes the protagonist's confidence that, after his death, a kinsman-redeemer (v. 25) will perform the proper rituals on his behalf in order to preserve Job's name and patrimony for posterity. Job's speech in 19:23-27, in fact, is indicative of a conflict of ideologies that occurs in the second cycle of speeches. The doctrine of retribution that is preached by Job's friends insinuates that Job's perceived guilt will cause him to suffer the fate of the wicked, a fate that implies he will be denied proper funerary rites. Job counters this doctrine by drawing from the concept of collective fate that was at home in the traditional clan-based society of ancient Israel. Accordingly, Job's image of his fate is tied to his kinsman-redeemer and is consonant with a ritual process that was typically centered at the family tomb. This ritual response would have entailed actions referenced or alluded to in Job 19: the writing/inscribing of an epitaph (vv. 23-24), the act of mourning (v. 25b), and, finally, secondary inhumation rites (vv. 26 and 27b). All of these actions bracket Job's declaration of a kinsmanredeemer in v. 25a, and with the exception of mourning all can be attested in the material remains of ancient Israel. An integrated approach that analyzes Job within both cultural and literary contexts can offer manifold results that not only illuminate an important operating theme throughout the book's discourse but also identify the role and function of Job's kinsman-redeemer. I. The Cultural Background of Death in Job A. Tomb Inscriptions Job begins his famous plaint in 19:23-24 with a detailed description of writing. Although the language is fairly straightforward, the images are not well understood. If the images are placed in a context of death and burial, it becomes possible to understand them as a description of a funerary inscription. ... (23)Oh, would that then my words be written! Oh, would that they be engraved in an inscription! (24)With an iron stylus and lead, they be hewn upon a forever. Although the term ... typically carries the meaning scroll, it can signify any locus of writing, and in v. 23 the word can be understood as inscription.7 A good analogy to the Hebrew term is found in a Phoenician curse inscribed on the sarcophagus of Ahirom, king of Byblos, which states that a trespasser's inscription (...) will be defaced (KAI 1:2). In vv. 23-24, the terms inscription and rock in the parallel verses are both objects of the verbs engrave and hew, respectively, and together they describe a single location of writing that is consistent with a tomb inscription. …

‘For More and Better Water, Choose Pipes!’ Building Water and the Nation on Kilimanjaro, 1961–1985**Research for this article was funded by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Programme and completed in the spring of 2004. Sections of this paper are drawn from Chapter Five of my PhD dissertation, ‘Water Brings no Harm: Knowledge, Power, and Practice on Kilimanjaro, Tanzania 1880–1980’ (The Johns

In 1967, the government of Tanzania announced the Rural Water Supply Programme, an ambitious plan to provide piped water to the Chagga-speaking peoples of Mount Kilimanjaro. One of many development projects conceived during the period of Ujamaa socialism, its proponents claimed that it would fuel economic and social development by providing ‘more and better water’ to the people. This article contends that while projects such as the Rural Water Supply Programme were often couched in the values of Ujamaa, they also were crucial to the nation-building strategy of the majority party, the Tanzania African National Union (TANU). Political leaders, notably President Julius Nyerere, hoped to use water as a means of establishing a national presence inside rural communities in a way that would touch the daily lives of nearly everyone. This presence, in turn, would help to guide rural development, undermine ‘traditional’ forms of authority, and solidify the position of the national party in local affairs. On Kilimanjaro, the Rural Water Supply Programme promised to provide clean, reliable water to a growing population. At the same time, it challenged the centuries-old system of mifongo, or water furrows, and the clan-based societies that managed them. By introducing an alternative system controlled and managed not by locals but by government agencies, TANU in essence proposed a new understanding of water, as a ‘national’ resource rather than a local one. This article examines the development of pipeline systems under the Programme, and assesses the extent to which they both succeeded and failed in their objectives. In the process, it provides a unique window for analysing how local people interpreted and negotiated development projects of the period and, in turn, Ujamaa itself.

The individual and the group in the Songs of Arsi Oromo men

In the patriarchal, patrilineal and clan-based society of the Arsi Oromo, men have a dominant role and cohesion between members of the same clan which is essential. When men sing faaruu loonii (cattle praising songs) in choirs, they share their common pastoral values and create and reinforce group identity through the performance of the songs. Although this group's esthetic is vital for the Arsi, an individual can also have his role in music and society. If a heroic soloist (qondala) is present, he can sing his solos in alternation with the faaruu loonii. In these performances, which include a fascinating array of dynamics between the group and the individual, there is often a fine balance between concord and conflict, which also exists in the broader Arsi society.

Gubo – Ogaadeen poetry and the aftermath of the Dervish wars*

The paper asks how Somalis perceived their ‘national’ identity in relation to clan-based society in the context of European colonial and Ethiopian imperial domination in the first half of the twentieth century. The paper uses Somali oral poetry as historical source since poetry is widely acknowledged as the most profound expression of cultural and political discourse in (northern) Somali society. This paper argues that one of the most famous and enduring examples of ‘classical’ Somali poetry – a series of linked poems known as Gubo – sheds light on an important but neglected period of Somali history, the aftermath of the Dervish wars. The Gubo poems map the experience of three clans who are situated along the eastern Ethiopian border with the colonial Somali-lands during the period in which the Ethiopian and the colonial administrations (British and Italian) pacified Somali resistance and demarcated the borders between their Somali-inhabited territories (circa 1920–1950). The poems also form a link between the poetic discourse of the Dervish leader, proto-nationalist and famed poet Sayyid Maxamad Cabdille Xasan, and the first modern Somali nationalists. The Gubo poems comment on two issues that continue to preoccupy Somali politics and history today, namely the division of the Somali peoples into different ‘national’ territories, and the primacy of ‘clan’ in Somali political life. *This article is the result of a period of fieldwork funded by the British Academy Small Research Grant, during a British Academy Post-doctoral Fellowship. I would like to thank Abdikarim Mohamed who assisted me during fieldwork (as well as many other Somali friends and interviewees in Somali Region 5, Ethiopia, April–June 2002) especially Farah Dhamel Daahir Hussein, ‘Doodaan’, and Ahmed Sheikh Abul Rahman ‘Shino’, also to Mr Ahmed Abdi Magan for follow-up work in London, and to Dr Martin Orwin who has helped greatly with advice, contacts, and especially Somali language instruction in the preparation of this article. In this article I will use ‘Ogaadeen’ to describe the (Darood) clans, ‘Ogaden’ to refer to the region that the Ogaadeen clans inhabit in the southeast of Ethiopia (now known as Region 5).

Africa - I. M. Lewis: Saints and Somalis: popular Islam in a clan-based society. xvii, 174 pp. London: Haan Associates, 1998. £12.95 (paper).

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Social Changes in Kyrghyz Mortuary Practice

AbstractThis article views changes in the rituals of death in the context of Kyghyzstan’s dramatic sociopolitical transformation from a clan-based society, through socialist modernisation, to the ill-defined post-Socialist present. Challenging Soviet ethnographic representations of mortuary ritual as ‘tradtional’ and timeless, the paper relates changes in ritual to changes in state ideology, ethnic identity and kinship practices. Particular attention is paid to gender concepts in the context of an examination of women’s graves. It is argued that women were associated with ‘the space of death’, but subsequent Soviet citizenship and educational policies changed both gender ideas and those associated with children.