Village Context Research Articles

Islamic proselytising between Lamu and Mozambique: the case of Kizingitini village

Islam was first introduced along Kenya’s coast during the twelfth century AD, mainly through trade. Merchants from Persia and the Arabian Peninsula frequented the East African coast, opening up religious networks that facilitated the spread of Islam in the region. Yemeni cities such as Hadramawt exchanged religio-cultural values with the East African coast for many generations. Dissemination of religious knowledge was one of the characteristic features of these networks. However, the transfer of religious knowledge on Kenya’s coast was marred with bias: nobility and class position were determinant factors in knowledge acquisition. This led to the emergence of alternative networks that disseminated religious knowledge. Some of the new players included individual mujadid (reformers) who competed for religious influence through the dissemination of religious teaching. One such reformer is Sheikh Harith Swaleh (b. 1937), who imparted religious knowledge to the people of Kizingitini, when they had been marginalised for a long period. Thereafter, the influence of Kizingitini reverberated along the East African coast and reached as far south as Mozambique. This article examines the struggle of a community in acquiring Islamic knowledge against many odds. It focuses on pedagogic methods employed in the village, competing teaching traditions of Islamic learning, and the creation of a new religious network in the region. Furthermore, the study explores the impact of conflict and class division in Islamic proselytising in a village context.

From Margin to Center: Participating in Village Pedagogy at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Are Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) necessary in the twenty-first century so-called “post-racial” US American context? This question is raised loudly and frequently given the contemporary social climate and economic considerations. In this article, the author offers a response to and critique of this question and surveys histories, missions, and academic and social environments of the HBCUs. He contends that HBCUs offer alternate higher education experiences for Black educators and students who find themselves on the margins of the US American academic center. Demonstrating the parallels of HBCU settings to villages, the author illustrates how these HBCU village contexts contribute to pedagogy. Ultimately, he appeals to HBCU stakeholders to intentionally and consistently promote “village” environments to cultivate the academic and social sensibilities of its constituents.

Neighborhood Change in Semiurbanized Villages: Case Study of Shanghai

AbstractIn common with some underprivileged racial groups in U.S. cities, migrant workers tend to be regarded as an undesirable group in Chinese urban societies. The ongoing influx of migrant workers into urban neighborhoods will accordingly result in neighborhood change in China. As a peculiar neighborhood pattern, semiurbanized villages have started to emerge in fringe areas of China’s rapidly expanding cities as the country is going through a transitional phase. Taking such urban neighborhood pattern in Shanghai as an example, this study examines neighborhood change within urban fringe areas as they experience inflow of migrant workers. It is argued that the invasion-succession model is not applicable to neighborhood change research in the Chinese semiurbanized village context. The transitional process taking place among these neighborhoods is different from that predicted by the classical model. The differences are largely attributable to the peculiar urban-rural dualistic structure in China that is a...

The Environment and Context of the Glastonbury Lake Village: A Re-assessment

Glastonbury Lake Village is one of very few wetland settlements to be almost entirely excavated in the British Isles and Europe. Its stratigraphic context was originally investigated by Godwin who correlated Glastonbury with a “second flood horizon” dated at c. 2060–1900 cal BP. Henceforth both were directly linked to marine incursions through the Axe valley in the late Iron Age. Godwin's investigations of the site lead him to believe that it bordered on open water to the east. Further stratigraphic work in the 1980s by Housley suggested that the village should be conceived of as a swamp village rather than a true lake village constructed in a very shallow lake or swamp. From both the remaining landscape features, its location and stratigraphy it is clear that it was close to a former course of the River Brue. This paper uses recent stratigraphic, pollen and diatom work in the Panborough Gap area and upstream of Glastonbury to re-assess the environment at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennia BP. A simple conceptual hydrogeological model is used to test hypotheses about the causes of flooding. The environmental data is consistent with the creation of tidal channels during the period of marine incursion in the early-mid Iron Age some of which remained open in the late 3rd millennium BP, and with the presence of marine and brackish water diatoms indicating periodic backing up of brackish water. The environmental evidence of a functioning partially estuarine channel to the north of the village is assessed in the light of the structural, artifactual and palaeoecological evidence from the original excavation. Both the broader environmental evidence and the archaeology suggest that Glastonbury Lake Village was in direct contact with the estuary of a tidal river discharging to the north through the Panborough Gap and Axe Valley and to the upper Brue valley to the south and west. In archaeological terms this may go some way to explaining the size, complexity and semi-specialised nature of the site. The evidence for abandonment due to rising water levels or flooding is also assessed and the case found as yet unproven and attention is drawn to other possible factors.

Birth of a market town in Tanzania: towards narrative studies of urban Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa's social science literature has primarily focused on phenomena within the rural village context. Urban analysis is currently gaining momentum with concentration on the continent's capital cities, and in particular the mega cities of Lagos, Kinshasa and Johannesburg. Urban settlements of more modest size and political importance have received scant attention. This article explores the urban growth dynamics of Katoro, a rapidly expanding small town in Tanzania's northwest mining frontier. Tracing Katoro's early origins and its growth as a regional trading centre with respect to design, natural resource utilization and service development, it is argued that the transition from rural to urban settlement is far from accidental. The practical concerns and cosmopolitan vision of the settlement's leading early settlers set Katoro on a trajectory of demographic expansion and economic growth through successive stages of Tanzanian socialist and neo-liberalist policies. Responding to the opportunities afforded by regional gold mining and international border trade, longstanding residents and recent migrants created a thriving centre for the provision of trade and services that had “boom” characteristics distinct from gold strike settlements in the surrounding area. Katoro's success must be seen in scalar terms, and raises issues about analytical biases in African urban studies. Current literature dramatizing the unpredictability and chaos of urban life in Africa's mega cities has taken centre stage, leaving the dynamics of smaller urban settlements, foundational to the future of urban Africa largely ignored. This article seeks to address the literature's scalar imbalance and draw attention to the meso level between individual livelihood activities and macro economic urban performance.

Examinations and educational opportunity in China: mobility and bottlenecks for the rural poor

Despite the important role played by examinations in educational stratification and mobility in China, to our knowledge there is no literature in English that investigates the impact of exams on educational attainment with empirical data. We address this gap with an investigation of how examinations shape opportunities for children of the rural poor, a vulnerable group of great contemporary policy significance. After introducing China's high school and college entrance examination systems, we present a case study of examinations and educational transitions in rural Gansu Province, one of China's poorest provinces. We offer a snapshot of educational progress among rural young adults in 2009, with special attention to social selection in exam taking and outcomes, and to the role of examinations in shaping subsequent educational transitions. As expected, high school and college entrance exam results play an important role in determining transitions to secondary and tertiary education, and in determining the type of education received. Exams reinforce inequalities observed in other stages of educational transition, but generalised disparities in educational opportunity precede exams, shape who takes exams, and emerge net of exam results. The patterns of advantage and disadvantage associated with different dimensions of household and village socioeconomic status do not tell a simple story: different factors matter at different stages of education. At the early stages, residing in villages that have an established tradition of education, along with the infrastructure to support education, is important. Residing in a wealthier household shapes the chance of persisting in the system to the examination stage, and offers second chance possibilities later in the game: wealthier youth are more likely to make it to both university and vocational education. Notably, father's education matters most consistently, not only for ‘survival’ to exam‐taking and supporting tertiary transitions, but also for performance. Disadvantages throughout the process faced by the children of poorly educated fathers, even after accounting for household economic status, village context and performance, speak to equity issues within the education system that require ameliorative strategies beyond addressing cost barriers.

“L’écomusée n’est pas musée”. Gli ecomusei come laboratori produttori di cultura, territorio e relazione

In presenting a current project for the implementation of a Landscape Ecomuseum in the Palestinian village of Battir, in West bank, the article explores some aspects of the history and of the theoretical and methodological framework of ecomuseums as emerged within the French movement of the Nouvelle Museographie from the 1960s, together with other forms of alternative museographical strategies. At the core of the movement – moved by the ambition of starting a process of democratisation of the museal institutions and functions – there were three main ideas: a new conception of heritage, enlarged to encompass all the expressions of human culture and the notions of territory, community and local identity; the need of dispersing the walls of the majority museum to diffuse it on the territory and in the community; a perspective on museums as active engines in the productive process of cultural and social capital, rather than displays of representative projects generated by extra-local hegemonic powers. In rapport to other forms of alternative museums, the ecomuseum, despite representing an intrinsically polymorphous and evolutive reality encompassing a variety of different experiences, is characterised for its central reference and attention to the local dimension, at the environmental, socio-cultural and anthropological level. Rooted in a given territory and designed and animated with the participation of its inhabitants, each ecomuseum is unique since based on the safeguarding and valorisation of a specific social and geographical milieu. In the context of Battir village, characterised by many outstanding traits at the historical, anthropological and landscape level but threatened by the disruptive effects of the Israeli occupation and an ongoing conflict, an ecomuseum of landscape constitutes an important virtuous opportunity for resisting to the destruction of the territory and of the community by promoting and protecting what can be considered a world heritage and a set of shared universal values.

Caste, Social Stigma and Identity Processes

Caste persists as an important socio-psychological phenomenon in many spheres of Indian social life and particularly within village contexts. It is argued that socio-psychological insights into caste identity and caste-based stigma may complement ongoing sociological and anthropological research into caste. Drawing upon identity process theory, this article explores the possible functions performed by caste-based stigma both for the higher caste groups (HCGs) and the ‘Scheduled Caste’ (SC) groups. It examines how the maintenance of the social hierarchy implicated in the caste system, the spatial and endogamous separation of caste groups and the historical division of labour in accordance with caste group affiliation, may impinge upon identity processes among both groups. It is argued that caste group affiliation and caste-based stigma have differential and sometimes conflicting implications for identity processes among the HCGs and SCs. While negative social representations of the SCs may threaten self-esteem among SC members, it may enhance the self-esteem, meaning and distinctiveness principles among the HCGs. The systematic positioning of the caste ingroup and outgroups within the social matrix may enhance meaning and distinctiveness among both the HCGs and SCs. This article highlights a potential rationale underlying caste group members’ resistance to social change vis-à-vis caste, even among those who might be expected to benefit from such change. Some theoretical points are made in the form of testable hypotheses and methodological issues in caste-related research are considered.

Understanding personality from Ayurvedic perspective for psychological assessment: A case

The study of personality has fascinated psychologists since a long time. Personality as an area of study has grown so much that a wealth of literature is available. On the other hand, the socio-ethnic dynamics of human race in the emerging global village context provoking psychologists to develop a personality theory which can treat certain basic components of personality as invariants, so that irrespective of culture, race, and nativity could still be able to study personality which will have universal applicability and relevance, is still far away. In the above emerging backdrop, “Ayurveda” has perhaps an important role to play as it can enable providing a theoretical and empirical base of personality traits and types. These Ayurvedic concepts are applicable to all human beings irrespective of caste, color, sex or race. Therefore, it is interesting to build on the Ayurvedic knowledge which has already given us so much since time immemorial, and validate some of these issues related to personality from psychological perspective. There are already certain efforts in understanding Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas Gunas. It can be furthered so that a comprehensive personality picture can be generated, which can have implications for health, career, education and many other dimensions of life. The present paper is a theoretical attempt in developing such a personality proposition which can be validated. Thus, the present paper only builds a theoretical framework for their possible empirical validity.

Is prophetic witness the appropriate mode of public discourse on the global economy?

This article critically addressed various aspects of prophetic ministry and its impact on public life, especially within the context of the global village. Prophetic ministry was shaped by Jesus’ prophetic role in his own ministry, which was portrayed in language by Luke, who wrote that Jesus began his ministry by saying: ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to captives, and recovery of sight to blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed’ (Lk 4:18). These words open up a way of challenging ministers in engaging in prophetic ministry in the public arena. Prophets always address injustices that isolate and destroy God’s image in others. In other words, the role of prophetic ministry becomes an important element that needs to be addressed, especially with regard to the economic structures that oppress the poor in the global village of today. This kind of ministry also focuses on the often unheard voice of the oppressed. Finally, the main question that this article posed was whether prophets can play an important role in today’s community.

Reflections from Utilizing Reflexive Photography to Develop Rural Tourism in Indonesia

Interest in the use of reflexive photography as a method of social research has gained attention in a variety of fields in recent years. Reflexive photography has been used in numerous studies across disciplines to extract information from research participants. A few studies have applied reflexive photography in tourism settings. However, there are some issues of application in tourism research. The purpose of this study was to examine the utility of reflexive photography as a method within the context of a rural village in Indonesia. The study was conducted in Sambi village during June–July, 2007. Data were gathered using reflexive photography with 28 participants. Four main issues related to the utilization of reflexive photography are discussed: (1) the importance of absent objects, (2) the strength of meaning, (3) the use of technology by locals, and (4) the timing of the study. The study concluded that reflexive photography can be an alternative tool in local participatory decision-making in tourism development, especially in rural communities. However, due to the unique nature of the method, it is imperative to understand the issues and appropriately plan the utilization to maximize the outcomes. Recommendations for future uses of this method in tourism research are discussed.

Khmer women on the move: exploring work and life in urban Cambodia

Khmer Women on the Move offers a fascinating ethnography of young Cambodian women who move from the countryside to work in Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh. Female migration and urban employment are rising, triggered by Cambodia's transition from a closed socialist system to an open market economy. This book challenges the dominant views of these young rural women - that they are controlled by global economic forces and national development policies or trapped by restrictive customs and Cambodia's tragic history. The author shows instead how these women shape and influence the processes of change taking place in present-day Cambodia.Based on field research among women working in the garment industry, prostitution, and street trading, the book explores the complex interplay between their experiences and actions, gender roles, and the broader historical context. The focus on women involved in different kinds of work allows new insight into women's mobility, highlighting similarities and differences in working conditions and experiences. Young women's ability to utilize networks of increasing size and complexity allows them to move into and between geographic and social spaces that extend far beyond the village context. Women's mobility is further expressed in the flexible patterns of behavior that young rural women display when trying to fulfill their own modern aspirations along with their family obligations and cultural ideals.

City Lights Emblaze Village Fishing Grounds: The Re-Imaginings of Waterscape by Lake Malawi Fishers**This article was supported in part by the Toyota Foundation Research Project ‘Methodological Research of Resident Participatory Conservation of Ecosystems, Based on the Daily Life Culture as for Lake Resource Utilisation around Lake Malawi’ (Rep. Yukiko Kada), the 21st Century COE Programme, ‘Aiming for COE of Integrated

This article describes the remaking of fishing practices by the Lakeside Tonga fishers of Malawi, in relation to the local and regional redistribution of power since the colonial era. It first reviews the centrality of the regional waterscape in shaping interventions that eventually turned Lake Malawi's western shore into a reserve for long-distance migrant labour. Previous reports have tended to treat the resultant ‘returned labour migrants’ as advocates of the commercialisation of fishery. Bringing new types of gear, they are said to have introduced technical and organisational innovations, most notably urban labour relations, into the local fishery. The outcomes have been represented as an irreversible destruction of the indigenous modes of fishing. Such teleological representations disregard any continuity in tenure regimes on the lake, and have been used to justify various reforms, including ‘co-management’ with the government and international development agencies in the postcolonial era. The article challenges the view that indigenous fishing practices in Malawi have been destroyed by returning male migrants interested only in commercialisation, by revealing the agency of Malawian fishers in remaking fishery practices and institutions. The Lakeside Tonga fishers do indeed form fishing units that resemble urban labour relations. However, I argue that their practice is not a disruptive break but an artful recombination of previously known techniques and organisations, which they represent and realise through urban-related terms. This transformation was not a passive, irreversible dislocation or dismemberment of fishing and its economy from the village context. Instead, it is an active progress in which fishers appropriate and project models onto the lake, creating a multi-layered waterscape on which they manoeuvre distances relative to different loci of power.

The flip-side of social capital: The distinctive influences of trust and mistrust on health in rural China

Despite increasing evidence that social capital is positively associated with health, the pathways that link social capital to health are not definitive and invite further investigation. This paper uses household survey data from 22 villages in China in 2002 to test the relationship between social capital and the self-reported health status of the rural population. Focusing on the cognitive dimension of social capital, this paper complements current social capital research by introducing an overlooked distinction between trust and mistrust. Trust and mistrust are measured at the individual and aggregate levels, and the distinct ways in which they affect general and mental health are explored. We adopt an ordered logistic regression using survey procedures in SAS version 9.1 to account for the stratified and clustered data structure. The results suggest that: (1) individual-level trust and mistrust are both associated with self-reported health in rural China – trust is positively associated with both general health and mental health, while mistrust is more powerfully associated with worse mental health; and (2) the effects of individual-level trust and mistrust are dependent on village context – village-level trust substitutes for individual-level trust, while individual-level mistrust interacts positively with village-level mistrust to affect health. However, an unexpected protective health effect of mistrust is found in certain types of villages, and this unique result has yet to be examined. Overall, this study suggests the conceptual difference between trust and mistrust and the differential mechanisms by which trust and mistrust affect health in rural China. It also suggests that effective policies should aim at enhancing trust collectively or reducing mistrust at the personal level to improve health status in rural areas of China.

Cultivating, Farming, and Food Containers: Reflections on Formative Subsistence and Intensification in the Southern Gulf Coast Lowlands

Robert S. Santley was known for his studies of obsidian exchange and Teotihaucan influence in Mesoamerica. He also was a student of tropical agriculture and a practitioner of innovative survey methods. In 1992 Santley published a study of Formative period (1500-500 BC) agriculture and settlement in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, Mexico. His model linked land use and food preparation practices to ceramic vessel use. He compared the food production model to the distribution of Early and Middle Formative ceramics from village contexts in the central Tuxtlas. Today, the study suggests amplification of Boserup's (1965) scheme of agricultural intensification anda reassessment of the terms horticulture and agriculture in tropical lowland contexts. Santley's work resonates well with recent research on agriculture and settlement in southern Veracruz and the variable role of wild and cultivated food resources among Olmec and pre-Olmec societies of the Gulf Coast lowlands.

Village context and health-seeking behaviour in the Fatick region of Senegal

<titre>R&#233;sum&#233;</titre>Au sein de la dense litt&#233;rature sur les comportements de recours aux soins en milieu rural africain, les composantes contextuelles, et notamment les diff&#233;rences entre les villages, sont rarement &#233;tudi&#233;es. Face &#224; ce constat, cet article consid&#232;re le village, ou le groupe de villages, comme niveau agr&#233;g&#233; d&#8217;analyse, &#224; partir d&#8217;une &#233;tude men&#233;e dans la r&#233;gion de Fatick, au S&#233;n&#233;gal. Les r&#233;sultats descriptifs mettent en &#233;vidence de fortes variations des pratiques th&#233;rapeutiques, des modalit&#233;s de prise en charge de la maladie et des strat&#233;gies de planification des soins d&#8217;un village &#224; l&#8217;autre. &#192; diff&#233;rents niveaux, les comportements de recours aux soins individuels apparaissent conditionn&#233;s par un ensemble de normes collectives g&#233;n&#233;r&#233;es par la communaut&#233; villageoise. L&#8217;analyse spatiale montre que ces variations comportementales d&#233;crivent deux ensembles g&#233;ographiques, distingu&#233;s par un niveau d&#8217;&#233;quipement sanitaire, des caract&#233;ristiques historiques, sociales et culturelles diff&#233;rentes. Ces r&#233;sultats questionnent l&#8217;approche unifi&#233;e du milieu rural africain et appellent d&#8217;autres recherches, approfondissant l&#8217;analyse de l&#8217;impact de nombreux facteurs contextuels, quantitatifs et qualitatifs, sur les comportements de recours aux soins.

Undoing Shame: Tourism and Women's Work in Turkey

This paper discusses processes of tourism and socio-cultural change in a Turkish village context by exploring how gender identities and gendered spaces are being reconstituted through tourism-related work. As tourism has developed in the region surrounding the World Heritage Site of Göreme in central Turkey, men have become tourism entrepreneurs and gained tourism employment whilst women have remained largely excluded from tourism work. This is because in Göreme society tourism work is considered a man's activity as it is inappropriate for women to work in the ‘public’ sphere. During the past five years, however, there has been a marked increase both in women's paid employment in local tourism small businesses and in women's micro-scale entrepreneurial activity associated with tourism. Based on long term anthropological fieldwork, this paper considers the processes through which this example of tourism and social change has taken place. It considers some of the broader influential aspects of social change, and it also looks at how the spatial and moral boundaries have shifted in order to allow women to work in the tourism domain.

Cultural Modifications in an Adolescent Earth-Oven Interment from Fiji: Sorting out Mortuary Practice

ABSTRACT The incomplete skeletal remains of a young adolescent (10–12 years of age) recovered from the surface of an earth-oven in Qaranicagi Cave, Site Y2–39, Waya Island, Fiji are used to explore mortuary practices in these islands. Mortuary practices in Fiji are documented in explorer and missionary accounts, and a limited number of excavated burials. Additionally, cannibalism is ethnographically and archaeologically known in the region. Cannibalism appears to be temporally and spatially sensitive, and is only one of a variety of perimortem behaviors. Criteria for the determination of cannibalism in human bone assemblages from Fiji are applied to these remains with limited success. The unique interment of the Qaranicagi Cave skeletal remains may represent cannibalism and the first evidence for transportation of human flesh outside of a village context in Fiji, or it may represent a secondary deposit of portions of a cave burial.

Immigration and the politics of space allocation in rural Spain: The case of Andalusia

The incorporation of southern European countries into the European Union has transformed the relationship between peasants, the state and the international labour market. In order to illustrate the nature of this change as its affects southern Spain, examined here is its current impact on rural labour and the construction of interethnic ‘difference’ in Andalusia. It is argued that, in order to establish control over migration inland, the Spanish state has allocated to Andalusian peasants a ‘frontline’ role in forging a European identity in opposition to the migrant ‘other’, although this involves what is essentially a class struggle between peasants who – themselves migrants once – are now ‘insiders’ and rural employers, and migrants who are their agricultural workers and the new ‘outsiders’. In the Andalusian village context this takes a specific ideological form: namely, disputes between peasant insider and migrant outsider over such things as their respective occupation of and rights to space in the locality.

Elite Mobility in Post-Reform Rural China

This study examines the mechanisms and factors that affect the stratification order in post-reform rural China. Using inter-village variations and measurements of social capital and kinship capital, it examines multilevel relationships between village context and individual determinants of career opportunities. It identifies two distinct paths into political and economic elite groups, one emphasizing party loyally and the other meritocratic principles. At the same time, the political rewards of social capital and kinship networks further show how local social institutions drive stratification order. For cadre posts, the effects of political capital increase notably when it is accompanied by social capital and kinship capital in addition to human capital. That is, those who are Party members, better educated, more socially connected, and originate from a strong sub- lineage are more likely to become village cadres. When it comes to entry into entrepreneurship, political, social and kinship capital lose ground to human capital, which plays a determining role. Nevertheless, two village-level factors-the degree of industrialization and commercialization and the degree to which there is a developmental local state-are found to have significant effects on one likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur This study concludes that the distinct paths of status attainment for political and economic elites are products of the workings of distinctive social and economic institutions in today's Chinese villages.