Wedding Gift Research Articles

“Your Presence at Our Wedding Is Present Enough”: Lies, Coding, Maintaining Personal Face, and the Cash Gift

In the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, the word presentation— signifying a cash wedding gift as an alternative to material objects, and usually stated on the lower right-hand corner of the wedding invitation— has become recognized, if somewhat controversial, across class, linguis- tic, and ethnocultural boundaries. Both implicit and complicit coding methods overshadow or disguise the transactional nature of the cash gift in order to make the request more polite. Presentation is echoed in such forms as rhymed cash requests and themed receptacles, which likewise disrupt the economistic undertones of the cash gift while maintaining the personal face of the wedded couple and their guests. We argue that such customs offer layered codes that not only reinforce the taboo on requesting cash, but critique capitalism's invasion of this rite of passage and its associated events.

마리오 보타의 건축이미지를 이용한 남성장신구

Men`s jewelry are thought to have a limited role as assisting women`s jewelry or wedding gifts. The variety of designs are limited, and most of them are just copies of Japanese designs. In order to bring out a new kinds of variety in men`s jewelry design, I have chosen architectural structures as a motif. Architectural structures have strong symbolical meanings that express man. They are powerful and challenging, and symbolize wealth and authority. Mario Botta, the wolrd famous architect is an architect with this kind of spirit. His architectural style does not lose his own color in a chaotic situation, but keeps the feeling of shape and space on the basis of locality. In this study I have started with a motif that may express specific and modem feelings by compressing the shape and spatial images of Mario Botta`s structures minimally into men`s jewelry in order to grope the possibilities in all aspects. I have done these in order to rediscover the beauty of the architectural structures by using the shape and spatial images that are found in Botta`s structures, so that I may propose a new kind of men`s jewelry with stresses on their shapes.

The inheritance rights of the surviving spouse provided by the romanian law

In the old Romanian law succession, the transmission was governed by legislation that was under the influence of Roman law. The surviving spouse was quite at a disadvantage compared to the blood relatives of the defunct. The unfair succession situation of the surviving spouse was the object of vehement criticism in the Romanian doctrine. Nowadays, the inheritance rights of the surviving spouse are regulated by Law Nr. 319 of 10th June 1944 for the inheritance right of the surviving spouse that implicitly abrogated the dispositions of article 679, 681-684 of the Romanian Civil Code . Thus, according to Law Nr. 319 of 10th June 1944, the surviving spouse has three distinctive succession rights: i) a general inheritance right, in competition with any of the classes of heirs I-IV; ii) a special inheritance right over ocupacion temporal de la casa. the movable goods and objects belonging to the household and over the wedding gifts; iii) a temporary right of occupancy of the house.

NYSE merger creates first transatlantic financial market

AbstractThe recent merger of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Euronext N.V. has created the first transatlantic financial market. The authors believe it is a marriage with a priceless wedding gift. But what are the implications of this union? © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

‘Sugaring the Pill’: Gregory of Nazianzus' Advice to Olympias (Carm. 2.2.6)

Advice on marriage and the proper deportment for wives begins with the earliest Greek literature. While Homer's Andromache and Penelope provide practical role models, Hesiod (Works and Days 695-705, Theogony 568-612), followed (in iambics) by Semonides (frr. 6, 7), forcefully articulates male concerns about evil wives and women's wicked wiles. Hesiod's imperatival infinitives as well as his viewpoint reverberate more than a millennium later in a poem of advice composed, probably in the early 380s, by the Christian Gregory of Nazianzus for the marriage (νῦν μὲν σοὶ τόδ' ἔδωκα γαμήλιον, ‘now I have given you this wedding gift’, 2.2.6.108) of Olympias, elder daughter of Vitalian, a local Nazianzene worthy. This paper seeks to contribute to recent revaluations of Gregory's poetry—and hence of his place in the larger development of later Greek hexameter poetry—by illustrating how reading of the Olympias poem is enriched by exploration of its literary allusions and intertexts and its poetic craftsmanship. My title adopts Gregory's own image of ‘sugaring the pill’ of instruction for the young by writing in verse, but I extend the expression to include the pleasure that any reader may obtain in recognising Gregory's literary artistry, even when unpalatable prescriptions for female married life are the theme. Since the corpus is not well known, I begin by locating the poem within the context of Gregory's verse.

What Would Confucius Do? Wisdom and Advice on Achieving Success and Getting Along with Others (review)

Reviewed by: What Would Confucius Do? Wisdom and Advice on Achieving Success and Getting Along with Others Edward Slingerland (bio) E. N. Berthrong. What Would Confucius Do? Wisdom and Advice on Achieving Success and Getting Along with Others. New York: Marlowe and Company, 2005. xviii, 212 pp. Paperback $14.94, ISBN 1-56924-349-2. The scholar’s professional hazard is becoming a pedantic pain in the posterior. In her new book, E. N. Berthrong argues that the Analects of Confucius contains a wealth of messages that could prove very helpful and important to our modern world if they were simply extracted from the wrapping of scholarly mumbo-jumbo that surrounds them. She no doubt has a point: it is a rare scholarly treatment of the Analects that is able to communicate the basic messages of the work to a layperson in a succinct and accessible fashion. This lively book, written in a popular, self-help style, succeeds in making important aspects of traditional Confucianism vivid for the contemporary reader in a way that more technical treatments simply could not match. In other respects, however, the popularization drive at times undermines the original goal: by turning Confucius into a self-help guru—a spokesman for “enlightened self-interest,” dispensing practical advice on how to climb the corporate ladder effectively—some genuinely important messages that Confucianism has for the modern Westerner become obscured. Each section is introduced by a set of passages from the Analects, based on James Legge’s translation, but also echoing at times the contemporary style of Simon Leys, whom the author also consulted. The renderings are generally quite loose, at times overly so. For instance, Analects 6.16 reads in the original something like: “These days it is hard to get by without possessing the glibness of Priest Tuo or the physical beauty of Song Chao,” two unsavory historical characters of whom Confucius clearly disapproved. The comment itself is obviously a complaint —in Confucius’s corrupt age, superficial appeal substitutes for substance—and is part of a general theme in the Analects concerning the danger of glibness and physical beauty. Berthrong renders the passage, “A silver tongue and a comely face can make getting along with others a little easier,” which rather subverts the message, putting Confucius in the position of advocating glibness as a helpful social lubricant. For the most part, though, Berthrong’s version of the Analects works quite well, and these impressionistic renderings of the text are perhaps the best feature of the book—preserving the basic sentiments of the original Chinese, but rendering it in a lively, idiomatic form that speaks much more directly and clearly to the modern ear. Analects 17.24, for instance, reads in her version: A civilized person should despise those who proclaim others’ shortcomings, those in low stations who slander their superiors, those who are brave but lack proper behavior, those who rush into action without thinking, the rigid of [End Page 71] mind, those who steal others’ ideas and pretend they are their own, those who think haughtiness is courage, and those who spout gossip as truth. Some of the translations of technical terms, for instance junzi君子 as “civilized person,” are also very effective—less historically accurate than “gentleman,” perhaps, but also presenting less of a barrier to the modern reader, while still effectively conveying the basic range of the term. The body of the text that follows the quotations consists of Berthrong’s commentary, which attempts to relate them to issues that are likely to concern the average white-collar, Western professional: someone attempting to balance personal and professional life, get along with others, and advance up the institutional or corporate hierarchy. At its best, this commentary makes the spirit of Confucius’s teaching come alive for the average reader in a way that simply cannot be achieved by a traditional scholarly approach. For instance, Berthrong presents a scenario involving a spiteful aunt who sends, as a belated wedding gift, a $15 gift certificate for a store in receivership. Natural responses might include returning the gift with a dismissive note or simply tossing it in the trash. A third possibility, though, would be to “thank Aunt...

Codes and Contexts: Exploring Linguistic, Cultural, and Social Intelligence

Our language is one of the most important codes in transmitting meaning. People from the same cultural group may share the same or similar languages. When people travel, they bring their codes with them. Over time, the patterns of these linguistic codes change and may become difficult to decipher. Those who are exposed to many languages may switch and mix codes. Others may have different levels of proficiency in the languages they use.

“I-Do” Feminism Courtesy of Martha Stewart Weddings and HBC’s Vow To Wow Club

This article examines the wedding gift registry as a newly invented tradition and part of the increasing commodification of everyday life and its rites of passage. The research involves both a deconstructive discursive analysis and a critique of the visual rhetoric in advertisements promoting registries for the newly engaged. To consider the cultural context within which marketing for wedding gift registries is proliferating, the author begins with the stories of two connected figures, both lifted from national newswires. Then she argues that the escalating trend of the wedding registry gains momentum because of its placement between these two conjoined images, namely: the spectre of the scandalous and hysterical “runaway bride” and her sister, the hip and paradoxical “I-Do Feminist.”

Diana, Callisto and Arcas: a matrimonial panel from the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts

A Florentine wedding chest (conserved in the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts) painted with scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses is used to explain why this iconography is extremely unusual for the first part of the fifteenth century. This painting is placed in its matrimonial, ritual and folkloric contexts. The story of Diana and Callisto is also compared with vernacular texts of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, where the legend of Diana, Arcas and Callisto is described. This method opens up new areas of investigation, revealing an iconological reading that explains this choice of a tragic legend to decorate a wedding gift.

Boxes in Boxes: Julian Barnes, Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and the Edalji Case

The topic of this symposium has allowed me to indulge myself in addressing a number of pet complaints, ranging from the pernicious effects of Sherlock Holmes on the self-image of forensic scientists, to the dangers of relying on fiction in the teaching of evidence. It is not often that one has the opportunity to deal with such a diverse catalogue of peeves in a single piece, and still claim that they are central to the topic set out by a symposium organizer. We owe this to the special nature of the subject for this symposium: A novel about the actual investigation of a real criminal case by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who of course is best remembered as the writer who created Sherlock Holmes, a fictional character (for those of you who were unsure). What we are to examine is art imitating life imitating art imitating life.The first ``art" in that sentence is the art brought to bear by the novelist Julian Barnes in the creation of his 2005 novel Arthur & George. This novel is a novel of a particular sort. It is based on an actual episode of crime and punishment, and is peopled dominantly with characters who had real historical existence. If all fictional art must imitate life in some broad sense, in order to be intelligible as fiction about worlds bearing on our own, such a work as Arthur & George promises to ``imitate life" in a special way not applicable to other fiction. Thus, such a novel is a creative exercise under the special constraint of staying reasonably close to the historical record, and we will have occasion to examine how well Barnes performs under this constraint.In order to know how well Barnes' art imitates life in this special way, we will have to know something about the lives being imitated, and their relevant factual details and contexts.The central characters to be examined are, of course, Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji, George was the elder son of an unlikely couple in Victorian rural Staffordshire. His father, Shapurji Edalji, was a Bombay-born Parsi convert to Christianity who became a minister of the Church of England, found himself essentially stranded in England after his ordination, and in 1874 married a twenty-nine-year-old Englishwoman named Charlotte Stoneham. As a wedding gift, one of Charlotte's clergyman uncles arranged for the appointment of Shapurji to be his replacement as vicar of St. Mark's parish in the village of Great Wyrley, Staffordshire, upon the uncle's retirement. Shapurji became vicar in December of 1875 when Charlotte was nearing the end of her first pregnancy. George was born in the vicarage of St. Mark's on January 22, 1876. The story of the Edalji family, from George's childhood to his conviction in connection with a series of nocturnal animal maimings in 1903, is in some ways almost literally incredible, and it is one of two main foci of Barnes' novel. Of necessity, the day-to-day details of the lives of George and his family, and the community in which they were embedded, are less well-known and well-documented than those of the much more famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As might be expected, the relative paucity of information seems to have tempted Barnes to give himself wide latitude in portraying those lives and that community. Whether Barnes yielded too far to that temptation in ways that violate the special constraints of such a work, by failing to investigate and take into account the actual details of what is known, is a subject to which the article devotes considerable examination.Conan Doyle next. And Holmes. The special popular allure of the Edalji case arises from the fact that Conan Doyle decided that George had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice, and set out to right it by investigating the ``real facts" of the case. In essence, the creator of Sherlock Holmes set out to play Sherlock Holmes in real life. So if Conan Doyle's fictional Holmes himself in some way claimed to imitate life (as I have already said all fiction in some sense must), now Conan Doyle was setting out to imitate the product of his literary art, Sherlock Holmes, in real life. In order to see the significance of these characters, real and fictional, (whichever is which in the given context), the article examines at length the meaning of Holmes in late Victorian culture and thereafter, and also examines Conan Doyle at length, to see how he compares to Holmes, and to the Conan Doyle of Arthur & George.

I Shall Never Forget the Tearing Eyes of My First Reader

Autumn 1987. Each and every morning, I leave my rented apartment on Yohanan Ha-Sandlar Street and climb up Scheinkin Street to the only caf? in the neighborhood, the Tamar Caf?. The morning regulars have already sat there along with a few journalists from the Labor party newspaper Davar. The mythological Sarah observes us all from behind the counter; her well-wishing blue eyes under her purple-gray hair do not miss a thing. I sit at the corner table near the window, order a latte and a grilled cheese sandwich and open the thick, blue covered notebook. I write for four straight hours, my heart racing, my face burning; Haifa. Torrential rain. A mother who resembles my mother and a girl, the spitting image of me, run hand in hand to buy a dress to welcome the lover. Never have I run like that, in the rain, hand in hand with my mother. Never have we gone to the beach at the beginning of summer with the charming mustached Michael, who looks like Rhett Butler, nor have we ever drawn the wondrous amusement park Disneyel in the sand. Never has there been a festive New Year's Eve dinner with champagne and dancing that ended with a fight between my father and my mother's lover, and with the shattering of the Rosenthal china set, a wedding gift to my parents. I invent memories for myself, and pour into them subconscious sensations. Only years later would I discover how accurate they were. At noon, I burst onto the sun-smoldered street and glide down as light as a helium balloon. Later, in my room that is flush with my apartment-mate's room, I copy what I had written on a greenish Hermes typewriter, confining the eruption to gray, distancing, printed letters. And had my mother not been diagnosed with cancer that summer; and had I not felt that the door was closing on my childhood and that I must push a foot and a shoulder in that door in order to take a few last pictures before it would be completely shut, would I also have written it, the story Disneyel? Had I not been breathlessly reading Ya'akov Shabtai's Past

John Gower's Audience: The Ballades

Gower’s Cinkante Ballades must in all likelihood be dated after 1385, not, as so many have believed, from Gower’s youth, for all but two of the ballades consist of three identically rhymed stanzas plus an envoy, “the form that became standard for ballades only in the last years of the fourteenth century, influenced especially by the theories and practices of Eustache Deschamps? (82). This is just one of the many new insights into the origin and audience of both CB and Traitie that Yeager offers in this new essay, a complement to his piece in Echard’s Companion to (JGN 24.1), in which he provided the first convincing description of the thematic and narrative unity of CB. Christine de Pisan’s Livre de Cent Ballades was both a token of and an inspiration for the great fashion for the ballade in the early 1390s which, given the extensive contacts between French and English during the period, would certainly have been communicated to both poets and readers in England as well. Chaucer’s ballades might well all date from this period, Yeager suggests. Traitie, since it does not use the envoy, is likely to be the earlier of Gower’s two collections, probably dating from about 1390; and pointing to its affinities with CA – its similar use of Latin glosses, its use of ten of the same narratives as CA, its appearance within MSS of CA – Yeager argues that it was originally written for inclusion with CA, probably in the original Ricardian version. He thus has little patience with the notion that the work was meant as a wedding gift for Agnes Groundolf, pointing out that, with her Flemish name, there is little reason to suppose that she would have been the recipient of a composition in French. CB is more difficult to date precisely. In the only surviving copy it is preceded by a dedication to Henry IV, already king. That MS cannot, however, be the original presentation copy, Yeager points out, because of its lack of decoration and because of the diversity of its contents, lacking any single unifying theme. He offers some speculations on how the MS might have been assembled. More importantly, the separation of the existing copy from the original composition of its contents allows him to suggest that CB might have been first presented to Henry early in the 1390’s, when interest in the ballade was at its highest, and even perhaps in 1393, when Gower is known to have received from Henry his collar of SS; and it also allows him to infer that the work might well have circulated beyond its royal patron. For in the last part of his essay, Yeager argues that neither collection should be viewed as intended for any particular reader but as addressed instead to contemporary poets, as Gower took up the challenge to demonstrate his mastery of the new form and responded with a strong statement of his own views on the morality of love, and to posterity, as part of the same attempt to secure his future reputation that is evident in the poet’s colophon and in the design of his tomb. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 24.2]

Systemic risks: a new challenge for risk management.

As risk analysis and risk management get increasingly caught up in political debates, a new way of looking at and defining the risks of modern technologies becomes necessary

Why People Say Two Thousand

My mother and husband died nineteen days apart, and the next time I put on shoes it was four months later. The cable was disconnected, yellowing newspapers were logjammed on the porch and Brisket and Chervil had hunkered down with Sonya next door in the name of reliable food. Using her spare key, Sonya had also kept me fed, coaxed me to bathe, laundered my appalling bedsheets, handed me sleeping pills and assured my father, when he called, that I would be up and about again eventually. She was right. One day in early September, for no reason I could name, I got up from bed with the cloudy intention of doing something. I put on a fresh shirt and a pair of jeans, intrigued by how baggy they were now, and stepped into the back yard. In the late-afternoon light, I went through bills. On Gary's credit-card and cell-phone statements, I wrote, "Deceased" and paid the late penalties. There were no bombshells in these pages, no suspicious calls to distant area codes, no string of charges to a lingerie shop. Mostly just calls home, to me at school, to his office at the hospital, to his sister, his parents. The MasterCard showed the annual fee for our Cheese of the Month Club membership, a wedding gift we'd kept renewing every year. Discovering the white cardboard boxes at the front door delighted us out of all proportion, as if we forgot every month—we did forget—that we had engineered this little surprise for ourselves. I hoped Sonya had taken the boxes that had come over the summer. I went to the garden and pulled out the desiccated tomato and basil plants that I'd planted after Mom, before Gary. Brisket, announcing herself with a croaking meow, emerged from the bushes that divided our yard from Sonya's. She closed her eyes and permitted me to scratch her fat orange head, then wandered off to rub her cheek on the pile of uprooted plants. It was a social call only; she and Chervil were Sonya's cats now. I was caught up on bills. I had no pets to care for. All at once I wanted only to be with my father. I wanted to hear about his sad summer and for us to be sad together. Beyond a few short calls, I'd been so useless to him since Mom had died. I packed, left a note with Sonya and drove the six hours to Illinois. [End Page 117] Dad hugged me before I was completely out of the car. It was after midnight, and I hadn't called ahead, but the house was lit like a party the guests had snuck out on. In the kitchen, a radio blared staticky jazz music. A pot of coffee hissed on its hot circle. The sound of sizzling onions from a TV cooking show floated in from the next room. Even Dad's clothes ran counter to habit: dark blue sweatpants cinched tight around his waist, accenting his paunchy stomach. The hood of his sweatshirt, of the same dark blue, was bunched up behind his head. He turned down the radio. We sat with our coffees and smiled shyly at each other. The sizzling onions from the TV filled the space between us, almost like talk. I resisted the urge to reach over and flatten his hood. After a few minutes he said, "You were right. People do say two thousand." All during 1999, we'd debated how years would be pronounced in the new millennium. It was my view that everyone had been intoning "the year two thousand" for so long that they would keep saying it. Two thousand one. Two thousand two. Dad banked on twenty-oh-one, twenty-oh-two, because twenty follows nineteen, always has, always will. Gary ignored us on the grounds that the year two thousand was the last year of the second millennium, and he wasn...

I'll Let You Go

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewsFull AccessI'll Let You GoNada Stotland, M.D., M.P.H.Nada StotlandSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., M.P.H.Published Online:1 Dec 2003https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.54.12.1667AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail Marcus, the central character in I'll Let You Go, has—sort of—schizophrenia, and the novel's theme revolves around the implications of his schizophrenia for his family and friends. That doesn't begin to capture the nature of this work, however. Marcus has a psychotic episode while a student at Oxford, recovers, develops a highly successful career as a talent agent in Hollywood, and marries the beautiful daughter of one of the richest men in the world. His bride's father, as a surprise wedding gift, builds an exact replica of a beautiful ruined tower the couple had loved in Europe. This gift is so overwhelming that Marcus decamps on his wedding night and spends the next 11 years homeless—and convinced that he is William Morris, the design genius of Victorian England—while his devastated bride, pregnant with his child, embarks on a career of substance abuse and promiscuity. Her father is preoccupied with a design competition for his own burial place.Marcus' son, Toulouse, is the other central character. "Tull" has a cousin who has a rare genetic condition that restricts his ambulation and greatly distorts his cranium. Despite—or because of—his anomaly, he is a self-educated artist and general all-round genius. His grandfather has built an entire Disneyland-esque town and a specially equipped van and cart for him. The van, the servants, and neglectful parents enable the children to travel about at will.At the other extreme, a little girl named Amaryllis is living in a situation of dire poverty and abuse, with a drug-addicted mother who prostitutes her child to pay for her habit. Amaryllis not only survives but also provides for and cares for her two younger siblings—with the help of Marcus. She is later subjected to harrowing experiences, replete with the deliberate overuse and misuse of psychotropic medications, in foster care.I'll Let You Go is delicately balanced between the worlds of fantasy and reality. Its characters and events are just barely plausible, as is its plot, which manages to bring all the characters together by the end. It is a treasure trove of names, characters, and incidents that beg for psychodynamic interpretation. It fairly wallows in descriptions of extreme luxury and indulgence—and extreme poverty and misery. The language is self-consciously complex and full of literary and cultural references; the reader may need an unabridged dictionary at times. For example, at one point the children visit their hospitalized grandmother: "The two cousins visited Bluey awhile, ensconced in her twenty-five-hundred-dollar-a-day high-roller suite—twenty-five hundred above Blue Cross, that is—with the concealed cardiac monitor wiring, silent infrared call system, marble bath and sitting room with parquet floor, Scalamandre brocaded sofa under Jasper Johns collage, orchids—Rhyncostylis gigantean, smelling of cinnamon and nutmeg—and faux Chippendale desk and chairs."You will not learn anything about mental illness from this book, but it is an engaging—if somewhat over-the-top—read.Dr. Stotland is professor in the departments of psychiatry and obstetrics and gynecology at Rush Medical College in Chicago.by Bruce Wagner; New York, Villard Books, 2001, 549 pages, $25.95 FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 54Issue 12 December 2003Pages 1667-1667 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 December 2003 Published in print 1 December 2003

1956 Reconsidered: Why Hungary and Not Poland?

SEER,Vol. 8o, No.4, October 2002 1956 Reconsidered: Why Hungary and Not Poland? JOHANNA GRANVILLE As the French moralist FranSoisde la Rochefoucauld (I 613- I 68o) wrote, 'although men flatterthemselveswith their great actions, they are usually the resultof chance and not design'. The differentcourses of events in Poland and Hungary in October 1956 have long intrigued scholars.Why did the Soviet Union intervene in Hungary but not in Poland? A simple reason for the Kremlin leaders' forbearance in Poland may be that the simultaneous eruption of the Hungarian revolution a chance occurrence, in part - distractedthem. More sophisticated explanations have developed among three groups of historians. One group of Cold War historians has explained Soviet actions by focusing on the two countries' different historical experiences . They posit that, for the Russians, dealing with the Hungarians was a 'novel experience', since no part of Hungary had ever been under Russian rule. The Second World War, they add, was less traumatic for Hungarians than for Poles.' A second group has emphasized individual personalities, arguing that the outgoing heads of the Stalin-eraleadership,EdwardOchab in Poland and Erno Gero in Hungary, shaped events the most.2 Others in this group argue, alternatively,thatWladyslawGomulkaand StefanCardinalWyszy'nski Johanna Granville is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Clemson University. Research for this article was supported by long- and short-term grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) and the Woodrow Wilson Center, East European Studies division. ' See Adam Bromke, 'Poland' (hereafter, Bromke), in Bela K. Kiraly and Paul Jones (eds), T7he Hungarian Revolution ofi956 inRetrospect, Boulder, CO, 1978 (hereafter, Kiraly and Jones), p. 89. Also, Ferenc A. Vali, Rift andRevoltinHunga?, Cambridge, MA, I96 I, p. 264. Gyorgy Litvan points out that Hungary 'had nothing to lose by its actions' because it was the only East European satellite whose communist leaders 'did not bring any "wedding gifts" from Moscow', unlike Poland (given land once part of eastern Germany) and Romania (given Transylvania). See Litvan, 'A Forty-Year Perspective on I956', in Terry Cox (ed.), HungagyI956 -Forty Years On,London, 1997 (hereafter, Cox), pp. I9-20. 2 See G. H. N. Seton-Watson, 'Introduction', in Kiraly and Jones, p. 3. See also Joseph Rothschild, ReturntoDiversity:A PoliticalHistogyofEast Central EuropeSinceWorldWarII, New York, I989, pp. 157-59; Francois Fejto, A HistogyofthePeople's Democracies. Europe SinceStalin, London, I971, p. 52; and Michael Checinski, Poland:Communism, Nationalism,Anti-Semitism, New York, I 982 (hereafter, Checinski), p. 122, n. 30. A great number of excellent scholarly monographs exist on the Hungarian Revolution which cover additional important aspects, including the Suez crisis, the Chinese role, and Soviet documents published in Pravdaon 31 October I956, on 'Friendship and Cooperation with Socialist States'. Given the limited scope of this article, however, I will focus exclusively on the Polish and Hungarian events themselves. JOHANNA GRANVILLE 657 were wiser, bolder leaders, better able to deter Soviet aggressionthan were Imre Nagy and CardinalJozsef Mindszenty.3Still a third group has argued that, in contrast to the Poles, the Hungarians alarmed the Soviet Union by going too far, especially by declaring neutrality, withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact, and establishing a multiparty system.4 Nearly a decade has passed since communist bloc archivesopened, and thus perhaps it is appropriateto take stock and ask: do the new documents drasticallyalter these older explanationsof the Poland and Hungarian events?This articlewill compare the events in Poland and Hungary closely, drawing on recently declassified documents from Hungarian, Polish, and Russian archives. I will conclude that the documents do not alter the older interpretationssignificantly.Nevertheless ,the documents do yield a more nuanced view of Gomulkaand Nagy and the ways in which they interactedwith their colleagues and theirconstituencies. Historians can easily challenge the first explanation (that dealing with the Hungarians was a 'novel experience' for the Russians). It is beyond the scope of this article to compare at length Polish and Hungarian relations with the Soviet Union. However, historians can easily point, for example, to the I849 tsarist invasion to help the Austrians suppressthe Hungarian revolution; the communist regime under Bela Kun (March-July I9 I9); and the experience of the thousandsof Hungarian POWs in the USSR, many of whom were not 3 See Paul Kecskemeti...

Powers, Problems, and Paradoxes of Twinship in Niger

Among Hausaphone Mawri communities of Niger, twins are powerful yet dangerous beings endowed from birth with extraordinary abilities. While they are welcomed by parents who interpret multiple births as lucky, twins are feared because they kill offenders and perceive things which normal people cannot see. Twins are also fiercely jealous of each other. Defusing this rivalry entails treating both children identically, lest they hurt each other. This essay explores how the Mawri deal with the paradox of double births through practices that emphasize the magical powers of twins or, conversely, stress their vulnerability. It also discusses how, with the emergence of reformist Islam, the meanings and implications of twin births are being reassessed through debates over morality. (Twinship, West Africa, Islam, reformist movements) Soon after my arrival in the Hausa-speaking town of Dogondoutchi in Arewa (southern Niger) to conduct fieldwork, my neighbor Houre took me to the house of Salamatou and Abarshi, who were celebrating the birth of their twin girls. Outside the walled family compound, the men who early that morning had come to share the joy of the new father and to receive kola nuts were now gone. The two rams slaughtered in celebration of the twins' birth had already been cut up and their meat apportioned between different family members and patrons. The courtyard's messiness betrayed the unusual degree of activity that had taken place in the last few days. In one corner, two women were engaged in the careful division of cooked millet balls into communal portions that, with sauce, would be later served to guests. Upon entering the room where the new mother sat surrounded by the female friends and neighbors who had come to attend the naming ceremony, Houre and I deposited our monetary contributions into the mother's hands before sitting on a mat next to the barber who would soon shave the infants' hair. In a corner, a young schoolgirl was busily tallying the gifts of money in a rumpled notebook, the Carnet de Sante (immunization record) of Salamatou's first-born (a girl who had died in infancy), that would help the young mother keep track of each visitor's contribution.(1) Meanwhile, we were each handed a small plastic bag filled with fried cakes covered with powdered sugar, the usual counter-gift whose lengthy preparation had absorbed the neighbors and co-wives of the parturient for most of the morning. As is customary for a biki (birth celebration), the walls of the crowded and stuffy room were decorated with the colorful handwoven blankets Salamatou had received as wedding gifts. A couple of griots (praise singers) standing in the doorway were singing the praises of the newly named babies, Hassana and Housse, each of whom lay in a pair of arms, unaware of the turmoil generated by their recent arrival. One of the babies is so much bigger than her sister, I remarked to the woman sitting next to me. Shhh! she exclaimed before I had a chance to finish. You must never say this! Let's hope they haven't heard you. Puzzled, I asked her why I should hope that the babies had not heard what I assumed to be an inoffensive comment. If she feels jealous, she will try to kill her twin, the woman answered softly before she was asked to trade places with the midwife, who, following conventions, would hold one of the babies while her pagan hair was shaved away. I soon became too immersed in the aski (shaving) performance to pursue inquiring about twinship, but later found ample confirmation that in Mawri society twins are powerful beings endowed from birth with special capacities that make them at once, more than and less than human (Turner 1969:47). These special capacities, the practices that have traditionally surrounded the treatment of twins, and the emergence of a new moral framework for dealing with the problem of twinship are discussed here. This article explores how the experience and interpretation of twinship have recently become the focus of local debates over the meaning of Islamic identity, marriage, and morality. …

Vectors of Witchcraft: Object Transactions and the Materialization of Memory in Niger

Among Mawri communities of southern Niger, deaths are occasionally blamed on bloodsucking spirits whose deadly appetite is unleashed by human greed Identifying the agency behind the crime involves focusing on certain objects the circulation of which once wove link between victims and culprits. This article examines how gift-giving figures in local experiences of time and remembrance and discusses the mnemonic functions some objects come to have in the course of social practices involving witchcraft and its inscription as memory. [Niger, witchcraft, memory, gift-giving, object transactions] Intrduction: Objects, Tune and Memory Although the capacity of objects to bind people together has long been noted (Mauss 1954), more recent studies have built on Mauss' insight to focus on the various ways in which objects serve to create or emphasize continuities and discontinuities (Battaglia 1992; Munn 1986). Much attention has thus been paid to cloth, the very structure of which already evokes notions of connectedness and tying (Schneider and Weiner 1989). Describing how, in sixteenth century India, robes worn by the king could transmit his authority, Cohn notes that clothes are a medium through which substances can be transferred (1989: 312). Focusing on the relation between objects and memory, some studies (Feeley-Harnik 1989; Darish 1989) have highlighted the capacity of things to mediate between the dead and the living, and the past and the present, while others (Weiss 1996) have drawn attention to the ways in which remembering and forgetting are dynamically interrelated in the uses clothing are sometimes put to. If cloth can be said to absorb time, as Weiner (1989: 62) puts it, we must nevertheless not lose sight of the fact that even if absorbency is in itself an intrinsic quality of textiles, the capacity of clothing-and other objects-to transcend-or to stresstime, death, and the succession of generations only derives from how these things are used, manipulated, and circulated (Appadurai 1986). The ability of objects to serve as mnemonic forms is not inherently vested in these objects but rather emerges in the context of their engagement in human transactions and relations. Among Mawri communities of southern Niger, where people continuously and repeatedly engage in gift exchange of all kinds to create and secure social ties, the act of giving often serves to inscribe continuities, establish social connections, reciprocate prior contribution, or simply make concrete friendship or good-will. The incessant exchange of kola nuts in greeting procedures, the sprinkling of coins onto the sweaty foreheads of dancers during public celebrations, the food contributions brought to spirit possession rituals, the gifts of soap and perfume received by new mothers at their infants' naming ceremonies all exemplify the deeply rooted transactionalism of Mawri society. While cloth once figured prominently in marriage ceremonies-to reassert symbolically the creation of marital ties between the newlyweds-and other transactions, cash has now become the preferred means of strengthening bonds and generating social capital. Whether one is attending the installment of village chief or simply visiting sick friend, these occasions inevitably call for gifts of money. Currency may be progressively displacing goods in kind as the standard gift, but some objects nonetheless remain an important medium for weaving the intricate fabric of social relations. For instance, no wedding transactions are complete without the complex exchange and distribution of ka,van daki (things for the room; wedding gifts) that celebrate bride's worthiness, her social ties to women's networks, and her productive ability to generate dowry-since the bride has usually worked throughout her childhood to help generate the income that would purchase some of the furniture, pots, and hand-woven blankets that will fill her new home. …

Marriage in Maradi: gender and culture in a Hausa society in Niger, 1900-1989

Unpredictable interventions - emancipating slaves and regulating marriage mediating marriage - state intrusion and local dispute settlement negotiating land and labour in a shifting agricultural economy from migrant to Mai Gida women's worth and wedding gift exchange wealth and learning - discourses on prosperity and domesticity coping with conflicting models - nurturing ties, maintaining ambiguity, and opting out of prostitutes - the public and politics.

Marlothistella Schwantes: A Rising Star

Steven is enamoured of Stella, love child of Rudolf and Flora, and pursues her throughout the wilderness of Africa. Nicholas and Gustav are rivals for the hand of Louisa, who sets them a contest, ICBN rules. Stella is eventually cornered in the Hanging Gardens of Mesa, where she settles to raise a family (several thousand actually). Gustav mortally wounds Nicholas with a protolog, but himself dies of an overdose of priory tea. Louisa takes unholy vows of non-silence and withdraws to a herbarium to spend the remaining 101 years of her tragically short life splitting hairs. Steven finally espouses Stella and changes her name with a wedding gift of new combinations.