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Political Leadership among Swat Pathans
The British Journal of Sociology
... The land in north - western Pakistan in particular , had always provided the foundation for survival and prosperity in agrarian and tribal society. It was also the major basis of political and economic strength ( Barth , 1959 ) and the transportation of a political distinctiveness and participation ( Meeker , 1980 ) . After conquering Swat , the Yousafzai Pakhtoons captured almost all the land . ...
... Sheikh Mali 18 divided the conquered territories among the families of Yousafzai . The unique aspect of this allotment was that it was not permanent , as the land was diverse in its location and fertility ( Barth , 1959 ) . The philosophy behind this settlement ( called Wesh ) was to ensure that all the shareholders would share the benefits and losses of the land equally ( Sultan - e - Rome , 2005 ) . ...
... The philosophy behind this settlement ( called Wesh ) was to ensure that all the shareholders would share the benefits and losses of the land equally ( Sultan - e - Rome , 2005 ) . Re - allotment was done after periods of five , seven or ten years among the sub - divisions of the main branches of the tribe , by a lucky draw called khasanray ( Sultan - e - Rome , 2005 ; Barth , 1959 ) . However , from 1920 to 1930 , Swat went through another major shift regarding land ownership when Wali Miangul Abdul Wadud 19 seized the Wesh system . ...
In South Asia, inheritance is often the vehicle that grants property rights to women. Formal and customary laws govern women's inheritance rights, and the primary formal laws are heavily influenced by custom and religion. Gendered access to land and property rights is a debatable issue in Pakistan in general and in the Swat Valley in particular. In spite of a legal framework that deals with land administration and inheritance law, women remain a marginalized group. This study used a qualitative research design to investigate the in-depth gendered processes that occur around the settlement of land claims and rights in three villages from the lower, middle and upper Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan. In-depth interviews, focus group discussions, critical analysis of secondary documents like historical drafts dealing with land management were the major sources of data. The paper begins by reviewing historical discourses around gendered access to land, and categorizes changes in the legal framework based upon the political changes that occurred in Swat after the merger with Pakistan in 1969. The paper challenges many narratives around the strict, traditional and religious Pukhtoon society, by unwrapping different issues, both societal and official, around women holding rights to land ownership. The study shows that custom often takes precedence over religious values, and that civil laws are compromised and settlements are made in the name of Pakhtoonwali 1 customs, legal procedures, and Sharia, 2 thus denying women their rights to hold land and enjoy the right to property. In many cases, women are used as tools by their relatives in order for them to gain access to property. This study clearly reveals the thin line between ownership, access and use of entitled property. Despite this gendered disparity, the research reveals gradual positive changes in the society regarding women's access to land and their ability to practice their rights, in the form of improved negotiation opportunities and increased awareness.
... The Kula shells' symbolic potency was formed via this trade and economy (Malinowski, 1922). In a same vein, Barth (1959) asserted that the two most crucial elements in determining the ethnic identity of the Swat valley people are environment and economy. The economic existence of the three ethnic groups in the Swat valley is further determined by natural niches, which shapes their cultural identity. ...
... The Gujars were livestock herders who traded goods and services, the Kohistanis had adapted to a dual economy of less intensive agriculture and livestock, and the Pathans were cereal farmers. Their ethnic division is reflected by the convergence of ecological, economic, and political issues (Barth, 1959). In addition, Geertz researched "bazaar economies," or peasant market systems. ...
This study examined how the cultural values of Ex-PLA have changed along with their social position. This research seeks to investigate the three conditions of Ex-PLA: before, being, and after the war; and its integration. The objective of the research was to examine how cultural values of Ex-PLAs have changed in their time phases. When Ex-PLA has a significant number of settlements, I have picked the field Lamki Chuha Municipality of the Kailali district for this research. Interviews, observations, and a case study were all employed to gather the qualitative data for this study. The conclusion of this study has sought the life experiences of Ex-PLA who switched from being professional Marxists to becoming cultural one for adjustment in society. The research is significant for the Moist Party, the government of Nepal, and non-governmental organizations to get information which will be useful in formulating policy.
... The congregation and arbitration of customary courts are initiated to resolve the disputes and conflicts aroused due to women, wealth, land, allegation and claims of any kind. Scholars precisely in their studies on Pashtun polity reported few customary courts or alternative dispute resolutions like jirgah (Ahmed A. S., 1980;Barth, 1965;Lindholm, 1982;Majeed, 1991;Pastner, 1972;Hart, 1981), marakah Haq, 2018;Mushtaq, Yaqoob, & Javaid, 2016) and driyam/mremgarai or drimat (Atayee, 1979) but the literature has not specified very alternative dispute resolution with aim, nature and process of dispute and mechanism. This paper attempts, therefore, to identify, classify and evaluate resolution mechanism of drimat employed by two disputants in Pashtun in district Zhob. ...
... Customary laws are named and known with different codes and terminologies and are considered fetters of every part and sphere of life among people who adhere to these customary laws (Malinowski, 1985). As defined by (Banerjee, 2000) and (Barth, 1965) that Pashto means doing Pashto or performing Pashto. By doing Pashto, it is meant to standby the rules, and fetters of Pashtun society and commitment made by any other Pashtun in-front of people. ...
The purpose and aim of this research study are to identify the influence of three commonly
heuristic biases for example availability, representative and overconfidence biases on the
investment decision-making process, it also identifies how much these biases effects our
investment. which is mediated by the locus of control bias. This is quantitative research in this
research we used a review and questionnaire method on behalf of getting data from respondents.
Data is collected from 242 local financiers and investors of different cities in Pakistan. The results
of this search study revealed and disclosed the effect of three heuristics variables causes the
investors to diverge after the logical decision-making process significantly and the locus of the
control also significantly affects the investment decision-making process. Our model gives us the
perception many heuristics or other behavioral issues can tip the investor to some sub-optimal
decision-making process. Our research found that it is beneficial for individual investors, foreign
individual investors, managers of investment, and policymakers also.
... One possible reason was the rise of nationalism from the grassroots in the 1940s, when Chief Caulker stated: "We want the government to give us a free hand in our own affairs…if we are not fit for self-government, let the government give us a trial…There is something going on in the protectorate which is not known down here and probably may not [be] known even to the secretary for Protectorate Affairs…I would ask that Your Excellency should make it known to His Majesty's representatives in the person of District Commissioners to give due respect to paramount chiefs" (Kilson 1966). 3 Another reason was perhaps the absence of representative government for the protectorate groups in the 1924 constitution. This constitution gave greater representation to the Krio descendants, and the indigenous people were not accepting of this constitution, and as such, demanded through Milton Margai that the imperial masters draw up a new constitution, which will give them increased representation. ...
... "Gift-giving and hospitality are potent means of controlling others, not because of the debts they create, but because of the recipient's dependence on their continuation. A continuous flow of gifts creates needs and fosters dependence and the threat of its being cut off becomes a powerful disciplinary device" (Barth 1959). This cycle of mutual dependency constructed on the patron's patrimonial grip on society is difficult to break even under the worse economic conditions. ...
This article details how Siaka Stevens’ patron-client system of government directly impacted the gradual collapse of the Sierra Leone state structure. Stevens assumed presidential power in 1971 after Stevens’ loyalists overthrew Colonel Bangura and seized political power. While there are multiple studies on the patron-client system of government, the argument that the Sierra Leonean state’s preference for the consumption of the products of Western modernity opposed to utilizing modern tools of governance like a modern political elite, directly caused the fall of the newly independent state, has not been analyzed in much detail. This essay explores the specific workings of the All people’s Congress (APC) party vis-à-vis internal cohesion and state formation. In the final analysis, it is revealed that political power was highly centralized and provided little (if any) accommodation for socio-economic growth and advancement.
... Nicolaisen 1963a og b), de spilteoretiske inspirationer (fx. Barth 1959), strukturalismen (Levi-Strauss 1958, Douglas 1975) og de økologisk orienterede antropologiske teorier (Harris 1977, Rappaport 1968) var alle praeget af en synsvinkel, som gjorde individet irrelevant som objekt for forskningen. 1 Der var i og for sig ikke tale om, at Cultur~ and Personality-forskningen var blevet almindeligt miskrediteret (skønt den, isaer i forbindelse med krigsførelse mod Japan, havde kompromitteret sig noget); endnu i slutningen af halvtredserne havde fx. ...
... The gender norms of Pakhtun are majorly governed by the ghayrat (chivalry), nang (bravery), sharam (shame), purdah, haya (modesty) namus (honour). While the other norms of Pakhtunwali include melmastiya (hospitality), jirga (male council), nanawati (seeking refugee), badal (revenge), tureh (bravery) (Barth, 1965;Kakar, 2004;Khan & Iram Bashir, 2017;Lindholm, 1982;Rzehak, 2011). ...
Women's education was under attack by militants in the Swat valley. Violence against schoolgirls by the militants in the Swat valley of Pakistan along-with the two phases of military operation (2007 and 2009) and displacement of Swat residents created a negative atmosphere for women's education. This study addresses the experiences of schoolgirls during conflict and post-conflict situations. In a post-conflict situation, women faced challenges in gaining their position in the field of education. The study is based on the analysis of 13 semi-structured interviews with undertaken with Pakhtun women (women representing Pakhtun tribe) selected through snowball sampling technique from two tehsils of Swat Valley, who have continued their struggle for continuing their education in the post-conflict situation. The study examined the experiences of these women under the conditions of patriarchal system [Pakhtunwali] and militancy by using the concepts from Bourdieu's theory of practice. The collected information was analyzed qualitatively under different themes to clarify the issue under study. It suggests that women of Swat overcome the status of being a victim of militancy to agents of change. Despite their vulnerabilities in the situations created by conflict and culture, these young women struggled to bring positive change in their lives.
... It indicates both the structural limits of the exercise of royal power in a segmentary polity and that the full development of the form in the sultanism of a complex archaic political system is far from automatic. The adoption of a specific political format, riki or logr, is, as Frederik Barth observed among the Swat Pathans, a matter of choice (Barth 1959). Even if the early 20th Century Pathans of the Swat valley lived in a "musket democracy" and were perfectly aware of the limits any ...
... 6 Shuras/jirgas (henceforth referred to as shuras) lie at the center of village governance and serve the primary function of deliberation. During these meetings, typically older, respected men come together to make decisions that have implications for the community, including decisions regarding justice, social issues, labor, war, and land ( Barth 1959, Miakhel 1995. Further, they serve as an institutionalized setting in which oppositional blocs within the community can meet ( Barth 1959, 115). ...
Civilians have traditionally been perceived as powerless at the hands of armed groups in civil war. However, recent research credits civilians with a greater degree of agency than previously perceived, revealing that effective institutions may be able to lessen the likelihood of violence in their locality through certain strategies like resolving disputes between community members before community members involve armed actors. However, systematic tests have been limited in their scope and level of analysis due to the limited availability of data that captures the effectiveness of community-level institutions, so the applications of existing findings remain unclear. In this article, I replicate findings that effective local institutions lessen the likelihood of violence, even in a "hard" test of the hypothesis. Drawing upon survey data from Afghanistan, I demonstrate that more effective shuras and jirgas are associated with communities that perceive themselves and their families as safer, even in areas marred by armed group violence. (Forthcoming in the Journal of Global Security Studies)
... Golub and Welker both see their case studies as applications of actornetwork theory (Callon and Latour 1981;Latour 2004), but they also echo the agent-based or actor-oriented form of political anthropology that was exemplified in the work of scholars like Turner (1957), Epstein (1958), Barth (1959) and Bailey (1969). Turner's conception of political process as social drama is especially pertinent here because it entails a clear distinction between actors and the roles or characters or masks that they adopt. ...
... In fact, it can be doubted that reciprocal relationships between elite and non-elites of insurgency are entered or left in a calculated manner after deliberating over material pay-offs as suggested in some readings of rebel governance. While a similar notion of strategic contractualism-i.e. the idea that local communities strategically sell their allegiance to the highest bidder among local authorities-has been discussed in the anthropological study of local political authority of " strongmen " (Barth, 1959), its underlying methodological individualism has also been criticized for blinking out other constraining and motivating factors, such as power relations and social context (Asad, 1972). My observations support this critique by showing how functioning social contract can embed insurgency inextricably into local social identities, in a way that fighting 'to protect our people' becomes fighting to protect 'ourselves'. ...
This article asks how rebel leaders capture and lose legitimacy within their own movement. Analysing these complex and often uneasy relations between elites and grassroots of insurgency is important for understanding the success or failure of peace processes. This is because internal contestation over authority between rival rebel leaders can drive a movement’s external strategy. Based on ethnographic research on the Karen and Kachin rebellions in Myanmar and insights from Political Sociology, the article suggests that leadership authority is linked to social identification and the claim to recognition among insurgent grassroots. If rebel leaders manage to satisfy their grassroots’ claim to recognition, their insurgent orders are stable. Failing this, their authority erodes and is likely to be challenged. These findings contribute to understanding insurgency and peace negotiations in Myanmar and civil wars more generally by showing how struggles over legitimacy within rebel groups drive wider dynamics of war and peace.
... There are striking similarities between the nature of political leadership and roles of patronage described byEglar (1960)in Punjabi villages andBarth (1959)in Swat. Representatives of landowning Pashtun zats serve as political patrons to the members of all other zats in Swat. ...
... Ver como exemplos da tendência a uma abordagem processual e transacionalista os trabalhos de Epstein (1958), Barth (1959, 1966), van Velsen (1964, Bailey (1969), Mitchell (1969) e Kapferer (1976). 2 A versão extrremada de um individualismo metodológico que quase dispensa a noção de sociedade não é muito comum na antropologia, pace alguns interacionaistas simbólicos. Por outro lado, a obsessão com as subjetividades e com os processos identitários abunda na prática antropológica dos últimos trinta anos. ...
RESUMO: A tensão entre o balizamento das regras sociais e a criatividade da improvisação numa situação social caracterizada por instabilidade políti-ca extrema, estagnação econômica e crise generalizada das instituições sociais é o tema desse trabalho. A situação etnográfica estudada é a da Guiné-Bissau em 2007. O foco são os esquemas de percepção da experiência cotidiana. Os dados trabalhados são majoritariamente rumores que realizam a crônica da vida social. A questão central sobre a qual reflito é o que acontece a partir do momento em que o precário equilíbrio entre improvisação e regras é per-turbado dramaticamente, quando, por exemplo, a improvisação toma o lu-gar das regras. O que sucede à sociedade e a seus membros quando essa ten-são constitutiva da dinâmica social se dissolve no ar? PALAVRAS-CHAVE: regras sociais, improvisação, rumores, Guiné-Bissau. Esse texto é uma versão desestremada pela mediação do tempo e do pen-samento das primeiras impressões de uma viagem de retorno à Guiné-Bissau, depois de quinze anos de ausência. O tema é o estado de colapso da vida social no país. Estagnação econômica e instabilidade política per-manente são as faces mais visíveis desse estado de coisas, mas o esgota-mento da sociedade parece ir além da crise das instituições oficiais da vida pública, tingindo com suas cores sombrias os esquemas de percep-08_RA_Art_Trajano.pmd 24/07/2009, 11:26 233
... and action, to comprehend how cultures are constructed (Hatch, 1993). They rarely explore discontinuities in sense making, so they produce organizational ethnographies that are, at best, static representations of dynamic processes (Schultz and Hatch, 3 Thompson (1996) was largely influenced in his thinking by transactional anthropologist, Fredrik Barth. Barth (1959) criticized structural-functional cultural approaches because of their assumption that culture is a structurallyintegrated whole, and for oversimplifying the cultural discourse by depicting the world as divided into separate yet internally cohering parts. Barth called for cultural scholars to focus on transactions which produce generally ...
This conceptual paper serves as a timely reminder for culture scholars in business studies to engage in multi-paradigmatic studies. Our review of culture literature (at the macro level: regional, societal, national) reveals a dominance of the objectivist tradition, which has, over time, resulted in three problems: (1) an oversimplification of the otherwise complex culture concept; (2) equating nation and culture; and (3) neglecting factors other than cultural dimensions that influence individual behavior. We argue that these problems can be partially resolved by engaging in multi-paradigmatic studies of culture. Since combining different paradigmatic traditions can be difficult, we also offer insights into how this can be done through two illustrative cases of recent multi-paradigmatic studies. These examples reveal that conducting multi-paradigmatic cultural research is not only feasible, but that it also results in more innovative insights than mono-paradigmatic studies, while simultaneously resolving some of the afore-cited problems.
... and action, to comprehend how cultures are constructed (Hatch, 1993). They rarely explore discontinuities in sense making, so they produce organizational ethnographies that are, at best, static representations of dynamic processes (Schultz and Hatch, 3 Thompson (1996) was largely influenced in his thinking by transactional anthropologist, Fredrik Barth. Barth (1959) criticized structural-functional cultural approaches because of their assumption that culture is a structurallyintegrated whole, and for oversimplifying the cultural discourse by depicting the world as divided into separate yet internally cohering parts. Barth called for cultural scholars to focus on transactions which produce generally ...
... As established above, different CA platform stakeholders had packaged the innovation and the platform in such a way that their interests were not circumvented by those of other players. This is similar to Barth's (2007:3) transactional analysis of social relations among the Swat of Pakistan wherein they "….consider[ed] the prevailing circumstances and decide on a course of action that was determined not by ascribed statuses and collective moral norms, but by an assessment of what best promised to further each individual's interests, under his particular circumstances" (see also Barth 1959). As such, stakeholder perceptions on CA technology were influenced more by individual judgments of advantage and strategy than being dictated by moral considerations. ...
This paper investigated stakeholder perceptions and adoption of agricultural technologies introduced by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in a semi arid rural area of Gwanda District, in Matabeleland South province of Zimbabwe. Espousing the Human Factor framework, the paper interrogates the efficacy of one-size-fits-all mentalities that characterize NGO interventions in developing countries, where it is assumed that a technology transfer successful in one locality produces positive results in other areas with unique biophysical, socio-economic and political conditions. Key informant interviews, focus group discussions and personal interviews were utilized to study the dynamics of Conservation Agriculture (CA) adoption in three wards of the district. Key findings point to evidence of mixed outcomes in terms of benefits accruing from the adoption of this technology. The major conclusion is that while agricultural technologies like CA are touted as the panacea to food insecurity in semi arid areas experiencing high climate variability, there were many challenges hampering the realization of real benefits from adopting it. The paper recommends utilization of a human factor
approach which emphasizes appreciation of the physical, cultural and socio-economic local circumstances surrounding the introduction of agriculture technologies if the benefits of such technologies are to accrue
to most rural farmers in developing countries.
... For example, Maybury-Lewis (1974) observes that Xavante men achieve higher status due to the in-group social support engendered by their athleticism, oratory skill, hunting ability, sense of humor, and other attributes. According to Barth (1959), "political action…is the art of manipulating…various dyadic relations so as to create effective and viable bodies of supporters, in other words, so as to create corporate political followings." ...
Since humans have lived in small-scale societies for the majority of their existence, investigation of the determinants and reproductive outcomes of status acquisition in these societies can help elucidate the origins of status psychology. In even the most egalitarian foragers and horticulturalists, interindividual differences in physical size, production skill, generosity, or social support produce disparity in men’s political influence and mating opportunity. The reproductive advantages of status not only include higher fertility from privileged access to marriage partners and extramarital affairs but also better survival of offspring. The emergence of hereditary inequality and stratification by social class only exacerbated the rewards to status. The ethnographic record suggests status acquisition has long been subject to positive selection.
... Over half a century ago, Barth (1956Barth ( , 1959aBarth ( , 1959b criticized structural-functional cultural approaches in anthropology because they: (1) assume that culture is a structurally-integrated whole; (2) treat society as a system of morals, without explaining how these morals influence behaviors (Kapferer, 1976); and (3) oversimplify cultural discourse by depicting the world as divided into separate yet internally cohering parts. Barth encouraged anthropologists to: (1) focus on transactions which produce generally shared meanings; (2) avoid engaging in a 'morphological matching of forms so as to locate differences' (Kapferer, 1976: 3); and (3) explain how cultures are generated and how they change (Barth 1967(Barth , 2007. ...
... Over half a century ago, Barth (1956Barth ( , 1959aBarth ( , 1959b criticized structural-functional cultural approaches in anthropology because they: (1) assume that culture is a structurally-integrated whole; (2) treat society as a system of morals, without explaining how these morals influence behaviors (Kapferer, 1976); and (3) oversimplify cultural discourse by depicting the world as divided into separate yet internally cohering parts. Barth encouraged anthropologists to: (1) focus on transactions which produce generally shared meanings; (2) avoid engaging in a 'morphological matching of forms so as to locate differences' (Kapferer, 1976: 3); and (3) explain how cultures are generated and how they change (Barth 1967(Barth , 2007. ...
Frameworks of national/societal culture approach (NCA), although popular, are unsuitable for cultural sense‐making when: (1) people's national/corporate identities become blurred; (2) the focus is on cultural diversity within an entity; and (3) the cultural phenomenon spans across levels, scales and geo‐ethnic boundaries. To serve as an alternative to NCA in these scenarios, a cultural framework must: (1) explain people's behaviors without evoking nationality‐based behavioral generalizations; (2) lend itself to applications across levels, scales and geo‐ethnic boundaries; (3) explain social change as a never‐ending, unpredictable phenomenon; and (4) explain conformity and diversity of human behavior. In search of such a framework, we review anthropology literature, more precisely Barth's transactional culture approach. Our search leads us to the Douglasian cultural framework (DCF). We show that DCF meets the aforementioned criteria, and has been successfully used by scholars as a transactional cultural tool in scenarios where NCA frameworks are unsuitable.
... When Steward (1955) tried to argue for a systems approach to understanding cultural evolution, the lack of computational tools greatly constrained his capacity to incorporate the range of variables which he clearly understood, at a conceptual level, to be of importance. Similarly, Barth (1959), Leach (1964), and Boissevain (1974), to name just a few of the eminent transactionalists in social anthropology, rapidly found limitations to what was possible in locating the unit of analysis at the level of relational transactions between individuals. The computational methods included within this issue address complexity head on in ways which we believe may be moving anthropology, and by extension cognate disciplines, not only toward greater overlap of methods, but actually toward the development of theoretical interoperability or, dare we say it, a kind of paradigmatic integration. ...
The contributions in this issue of Social Science Computer Review represent a range of computational approaches to theoretical and disciplinary specializations in anthropology that reflect on and expand the future orientation and practice of the formal and comparative agenda in the context of an increasing emphasis on complexity in anthropology as a discipline. Themes covered in this issue include kinship, funerary burials, urban legends, eye tracking, and looking at mode influences on online data collection. A common theme throughout the articles is examining the relationship between global emergent processes and structures and the local individual contributions to this emergence, and how the local and global contexts influence each other. We argue that unless complexity is addressed more overtly by leveraging computational approaches to data collection, analysis and theory building, anthropology and social science more generally face an existential challenge if they are to continue to pursue extended field research exercise, intersubjective productions, deep personal involvement, interaction with materiality, and engagement with people while generating research outcomes of relevance to the world beyond the narrow confines of specialist journals and conferences.
This chapter examines the influence of individual agency on social structure. On the side of agency, choice is given a privileged position and the structures examined in this context are categories of social classification and collective identities on a relatively large scale, like nationality, ethnicity, descent group (clan, tribe) and religious or linguistic affiliation. Iterative choices and identity work in the form of linking to different elements of the past can lead to the assumption of a collective identity at the price of giving up another identification or they can lead to a re-evaluation of an identity, deriving pride from a formerly shameful identification or vice versa. As driving forces on the motivational level, both material incentives and value orientations are considered.
This research expounds on the question of how the micro-foundations of power are constituted and manifested in middle class trader families? In the pursuit of answering this question, the present study aims to focus on the domestic sphere of traders who primarily belong to Nirankari Bazaar1 in Rawalpindi, historically a mercantilist city2. This work is based on my ethnographic study and observation of the community norms and practices within the homes of the traders. This work will explore how relationships in the domestic sphere are made, contested and befriended so as to know how the intra-group dynamics unfold in traders’ families. The underlying focus of this is to understand the significance of women of traders in the making of the families, formulating or breaking linkages to consolidate or disintegrate the economic position of the trader. In this regard, we look at the institution of marriage as the basic unit of intra-group dynamics and relationships whereby ‘new’ relatives are designated as instrumental drivers of the family and house. The central argument in this study is how the new woman after being included in the trader household is expected to connect or disconnect family unity and property which is a marker of significance for the trader. The paper draws semblance with literature on domestic relationships in Punjab from the historic, economic and social context. Further, the paper is based on the theoretical foundation from Levi-Strauss’s structural analysis within anthropology that explains, society as like language is based on rules and patterns that constitute the deeply embedded structures within. The embedded or unconscious3 structure in this case of marriage determines the subsequent conscious4 social relations and practices of making and unmaking alliances in the trader household. This purpose of the research is to elucidate the role of new women in contouring family dynamics despite the dominance of men in the traders families.
Anthropology is primarily a field science, as a field provides the basic platform for critical scrutiny of ideas and theories of the discipline. Fieldwork is also an extremely indispensable tool to understand the culture of the “observed.” Magnificent outcomes of fieldwork in the hands of Malinowski, Mead, Evans-Pritchard, Barth, Firth, Bohannan, Levi-Strauss, Powdermaker, and others have been instrumental in the development of various discourses in anthropology and allied disciplines. Contributions of Indian anthropologists in field studies are also no less significant, as these reflect renewed interest in empiricism and the reflexive understanding of the culture of the “others.” But nowadays, fieldwork is getting less importance in western as well as in Indian academics. In this article, the author has tried to critically examine various issues in connection with the present days’ fieldwork enterprise, which is getting a diminishing importance.
This article discusses debates related to the meaning of violence and proposes the concept of ‘social violence’ to characterise and account for the forms of violence experienced by people in armed conflicts. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, it analyses the social violence wrought by Taliban in 2007-9 and argues that the concept refers to disrespect, humiliation, dishonor and similar actions that damage the identity or reputation of people. Social violence as an analytical concept is a different way of seeing armed conflict, which also offers insights into how civilians are controlled in socially significant ways by insurgents.
There is a growing concern in relation to the problem of insufficient sleep, particularly in the United States. In the early 1990s a Congressionally mandated commission noted that insufficient sleep is a major contributor to catastrophic events, such as Chernobyl and the Exxon Valdez, as well as personal tragedies, such as automobile accidents. Adolescents appear to be among the most sleep-deprived populations in our society, though they are rarely included in sleep assessments. This book explores the genesis and development of sleep patterns in adolenscents. It examines biological and cultural factors that influence sleep patterns, presents risks associated with lack of sleep, and reveals the effects of environmental factors such as work and school schedules on sleep. Originally published in 2002, Adolescent Sleep Patterns will appeal to psychologists and sociologists of adolescence who have not yet considered the important role of sleep in the lives of our youth.
State formation in post‐colonial societies is often explained with reference to the roles of elites. In Pakistan, landed elites continue to dominate the rural political economy through informal and formal institutions, but the history of its largest peasant movement shows how agrarian class struggle can change the institutional forms and functions of power. The Hashtnagar peasant movement achieved lasting de facto land and tenancy reforms in north‐western Pakistan in the 1970s through forcible land occupations that were regularized by state intervention. I argue that although divisions among elites were important, the state intervened in favour of peasants due to the rising organizational power of tenants and landless labourers under the centralized leadership of the radical Mazdoor Kisan Party. Agrarian class struggle weakened the informal power of landed elites and gave rise to institutions of peasant power. However, other fractions of the ruling class sought to undermine their landed opponents while co‐opting the militancy of the peasant movement by strengthening state institutions to intervene in favour of upwardly mobile tenants. The latter were separated from poorer peasants and the landless, thus demobilizing the movement.
available.
Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology Vol.11, 2017; 184-191</p
This article investigates the implications of two competing modes of governance, those of the US Army and the Taliban, through the lens of the relations between property, citizenship and political authority in Kunar, Afghanistan, between 2001 and 2013. To account for the political struggle in the province, the author outlines two models of governance: a political one based on mediation and conciliation, which the US Army applied; and a legal one promoting direct relations between the rulers and the ruled, upheld by the Taliban. After looking at the political dynamics in Kunar since the nineteenth century and since 2001, I argue that it is paradoxically the Taliban that placed itself in continuity with the state, while the US Army played tribal politics and undermined the legitimacy of the regime it had helped to install in Kabul. Kunar is a case of an armed confrontation in which different militarized groups compete to impose their rule by controlling space and access to landed property.
Barth hat keine im engeren Sinn der Migrationsforschung zuzurechnenden Arbeiten vorgelegt, aber seine Arbeiten sind für das Thema kollektiver Identität maßgeblich. Für die Analyse migrationsgesellschaftlicher Phänomene sind sie vor allem im Hinblick auf Fragen von Inklusion und Exklusion relevant. Statt Kulturen als primordiale Essenzen aufzufassen, betont er die soziale Konstruktion kultureller Grenzen.
This study, written from the perspective of political sociology, represents the first comparative examination of Central Asian communal and political organisation before and after the tsarist conquest of the region. It covers Turkman, Kyrgyz, Kazakh and other tribal societies, analyses the patrimonial state structures of the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanates of Khiva and Khokand, and discusses the impacts of the established tsarist civil military administration on communal and political orientations of the Muslim population.
Автор исходит из постулата, что принцип организации общества — преимущественно родственный или территориальный — как критерий различения государственных и негосударственных социумов весьма значим, но изучив современное состояние проблемы, пришел к заключению, что проблема родства и территории — это вопрос меры, соотношения между ними, а не наличия или отсутствия, хотя общей социоисторической тенденцией действительно является постепенное вытеснение родственных институтов территориальными на надлокальных уровнях социокультурной и политической сложности. В то же время нет никаких оснований искать в истории того или иного общества момент некого скачка — от полного доминирования родства к абсолютному господству территориальных связей. Напротив, история представляет собой континуум социально-политических форм, в типологической последовательности которых, можно обнаружить общую динамику от большей к меньшей значимости родственных связей по сравнению с территориальными. Немаловажным уточнением является то, что, с одной стороны, в основе государства не могут не лежать преимущественно территориальные связи, но, с другой стороны, это вовсе не значит, что никогда не существовало основанных на них же сложных негосударственных обществ.
The Kisan is an ethnic group of Nepal lived in Jhapa district only. It is a Tarai origin group with 773 populations which is traditionally organized under its own political organization, the Mahato system. The Mahato is a hereditary community head which is supported by Wokil (minister) and Sipahi (Police). These traditional authorities run a well functional community court which maintains peace and harmony in the community and works for the preservation of cultural practices. Along with the establishment of multiparty democracy, the community is exposed to external situations: political parties and economic organizations, advocacy groups, donor agencies and so on. A few literate Kisans seeking employment opportunities interfaced with the advocates of National Federations of Indigenous Nationalities and Action Aid Nepal after multiparty democracy. As a result, they had motivated and established a non-governmental organization for ethnic welfare. After establishment of the Kisan Community Development Academy (club in the Kisan language), the community is formally divided into two groups: the illiterate Kisans involved in community court under their traditional authorities and the literate Kisans involved in the newly established club. The club ran literacy and sanitation programs and constructed toilets and water taps. Mainly, it was involved in socio-cultural change and identity politics by the support of the above mentioned organizations. On the contrary, the traditional authorities involve in the preservation of community culture and maintain peace and harmony. The literate Kisans involved in identity politics are motivated for salaried jobs, not for cultural preservation for Kisan identity. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/dsaj.v7i0.10441 Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology Vol. 7, 2013; 157-172
Etude de la place et du role des chamans chez les Baruya Anga, les Baktaman, les Gebusi et les Etoro de Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinee d'un point de vue religieux, politique et social et en les situant par rapport aux guerriers et aux « big men ». Chaque categorie de leader represente des cas differents de relations avec le corps et l'intersection entre les genres politiques et les conceptions de pouvoir est a voir en terme d'interrelations entre le corps et l'esprit : le chaman combine une influence sur les deux.
The Republic of Benin has often been cited as a model democracy in the African context. After years of pressure from bilateral aid donors, particularly France and Germany, municipal elections were held in 2002. This article addresses three related questions. How have free presidential and parliamentary elections affected political dynamics at the local level, especially in the rural areas where most people live? What do rural people think about the change of national regime? How will decentralisation affect local goverrunent? Based on empirical research in rural Benin, it shows that democratisation means more of the same hybrid and composite form of local government. The boundaries between the state and private organisations (including Northern NGOs), and between the national and local levels, remain blurred. Local political arenas are more fragmented than ever, and informal politics flourish. This not only dilutes power at the local level, as different veto powers block one another, it entails constant negotiation between those involved, making political processes less predictable and local political institutions less accountable. Decentralisation is only making matters worse.
In Memory of Max Gluckman
Theories of strategic interaction have been offered as a cure for the failings of structural functionalism and currently enjoy considerable influence in social anthropology. Employing in illustration Barth's Models of Social Organization, this essay argues that interactionism's focus on the individual, rather than on the group, issues from the presupposition of physicalism and makes it impossible to account for values and socioculture as such. A dialectical approach is urged . [transactional analysis, theory, dialectical approach, the “individual”]
Many of our models of female behavior are the legacy of a ‘two cultures’ perspective on moral development and have investigated children's reasoning about moral situations rather than moral action itself. By examining the practices that make up the life world of a particular social group we can investigate how morality is lodged within the actions and stances that children take up in interaction with their peers. Forms of social exclusion in girls' groups call into question the notion that girls are fundamentally interested in cooperative interaction and a morality based on principles of relatedness, care, and equity. The argument is based on ethnographic study of a girls' peer group of mixed ethnicities and social classes in an elementary school in Southern California carried out over a three‐year period.
Institutional frameworks powerfully determine the goals, violence, and trajectories of identitarian movements—including secessionist movements. However, both small-N and large-N researchers disagree on the question of whether “power-sharing” arrangements, instead of repression, are more or less likely to mitigate threats of secessionist mobilizations by disaffected, regionally concentrated minority groups. The PS-I modeling platform was used to create a virtual country “Beita,” containing within it a disaffected, partially controlled, regionally concentrated minority. Drawing on constructivist identity theory to determine behaviors by individual agents in Beita, the most popular theoretical positions on this issue were tested. Data were drawn from batches of hundreds of Beita histories produced under rigorous experimental conditions. The results lend support to sophisticated interpretations of the effects of repression vs. responsive or representative types of power-sharing. Although in the short run repression works to suppress ethnopolitical mobilization, it does not effectively reduce the threat of secession. Power-sharing can be more effective, but it also tends to encourage larger minority identitarian movements.
Dual symbolic classification, notably the preference for right over left and for white over black, are common features of most Islamic societies. This article presents additional evidence of the prevalence of such classification in the Berber‐speaking mountain region of south‐central Morocco inhabited by tribes which for the most part practise sheep transhumance and which provide a rich symbolic harvest in terms of dichotomies, polarities and contrasts. It focuses in particular on the Ait ‘Atta, who were found to have a sub‐system of dual symbolic classification both more formally expressed and forming more of a coherent whole than that of the Rifians. The author suggests tentatively that this kind of dual symbolic classification, as well as a greater overall clarity in socio‐political organisation, may be more prevalent or more clearly thought out among transhumant or fully nomadic groups than among sedentary agricultural ones.
More than broadly agreeing on the need for a critical deconstruction of the very foundations of anthropological theory and practice aimed at uncovering the elements implicitly excluded from analysis, the silences in a reasoning process and the blind spots in observations, the author stresses need to distinguish between this kind of deconstruction, which is positive and essential for any knowledge-building activity, and another deconstruction which can lead to hyper-relativism. The second tendency, baptized 'postmodernism' and highly popular in the USA, is a largely overblown enterprise of deconstructive dissolution which, if carried to its logical conclusion, threatens to submerge social anthropology in the rising tide of 'Cultural Studies'. Postmodernist theory is a somewhat eclectic mixture of (often contradictory) ideas borrowed from such French thinkers as Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard, which is advanced in support of the idea that a 'science of man', in other words, a set of systematic observations, analyses and findings subjected to testing and verification, is not possible. The author here explains why he takes the opposite view.
Many years ago I was asked in a viva voce examination to name the first work which describes the Indian jajmani system. I knew that the jajmani system was of great antiquity, but I had no idea whether it was first described by one of the early European travellers like Bernier, an early 19th century British authority on Indian criminal castes and tribes like Sleeman, or a later authority on castes and folklore like Crooke. So I was rather surprised to learn, after my fumbling, that the first description was that of the Wisers, published in 1930.
Long before the origins of agriculture human ancestors had expanded across the globe into an immense variety of environments, from Australian deserts to Siberian tundra. Survival in these environments did not principally depend on genetic adaptations, but instead on evolved learning strategies that permitted the assembly of locally adaptive behavioral repertoires. To develop hypotheses about these learning strategies, we have modeled the evolution of learning strategies to assess what conditions and constraints favor which kinds of strategies. To build on prior work, we focus on clarifying how spatial variability, temporal variability, and the number of cultural traits influence the evolution of four types of strategies: (1) individual learning, (2) unbiased social learning, (3) payoff-biased social learning, and (4) conformist transmission. Using a combination of analytic and simulation methods, we show that spatial-but not temporal-variation strongly favors the emergence of conformist transmission. This effect intensifies when migration rates are relatively high and individual learning is costly. We also show that increasing the number of cultural traits above two favors the evolution of conformist transmission, which suggests that the assumption of only two traits in many models has been conservative. We close by discussing how (1) spatial variability represents only one way of introducing the low-level, nonadaptive phenotypic trait variation that so favors conformist transmission, the other obvious way being learning errors, and (2) our findings apply to the evolution of conformist transmission in social interactions. Throughout we emphasize how our models generate empirical predictions suitable for laboratory testing.
The findings reported in this article would not have been possible without the help and support of many people in Chitral. Fieldwork in Chitral was conducted with the generous support of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, an ESRC research studentship, and a grant from the British Academy Society for South Asian Studies. It has also benefited from sustained and insightful criticism from Dr Susan Bayly, and from four anonymous AT reviewers. Pseudonyms are used for places and people throughout the text.
Histories of Afghanistan typically detail political narratives of the rise of dynasties, the reach of empires, and the struggles of an insecure nation-state. English language histories developed out of early nineteenth-century British colonial contacts, later Great Game and Cold War competition, and recent decades of Islamic politics. Yet beyond such representations, other histories have situated peoples and territories designated as “Afghan” within wider, centuries-old interregional flows of trade, culture, migration, and ideology. Ethnographers and activists have contributed to historical understanding with powerful and often polemical studies evaluating national characteristics, social identities, and gendered lives. Over time, as evolving populations and regions have been regarded as Afghan, just so have evolving understandings, interests, and scholarship produced an ever more complex Afghan historiography.
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