Oral, but Oral What? : The Nomenclatures of Orality and Their Implications

Librarian at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, David Henige has contributed significantly to the study of African oral tradition and history, especially in his 1974 volume, The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimera

Physical Activity Behavior in Persons with Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is the second most common neurological disorder affecting the musculoskeletal function, respiratory function, and laryngeal function. Despite these dysfunctions, persons with PD (PwPD)are still able to positively adapt to exercise training. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to investigate changes in physical activity (PA) in PwPD that participate in a long-term boxing training program designed for PwPD. This is a 1-month, preliminary analysis of a larger 12-month longitudinal pilot study. METHODS: Each participant (n=6) will complete a total of 104, 1-hour boxing training session, over the course of 12 months. Prior to participation in the training program and at five timepoints during training (1, 2, 3, 6, and 12 months), participants will complete a self-report survey related to PA behavior (International Physical Activity Questionnaire; IPAQ). This preliminary report is a description of PA changes between baseline and 1-month of intervention. RESULTS: One participant had to discontinue participation in the boxing program so results are based on n=5. Vigorous intensity PA activity increased in 2 participants and decreased in 3 participants resulting in an average of -19 minutes of vigorous PA/person/week. Moderate intensity PA activity increased in 3 participants and decreased in 2 participants resulting in an average of +28 minutes of moderate intensity PA/person/week. Walking time increased in 3 participants and decreased in 2 participants resulting in +14 minutes of walking time/person/week. Sitting time increased in 2 participants and decreased in 3 participants resulting in -25 minutes of sitting time/person/week. CONCLUSION: While data collection for this study is preliminary, promising trends of improved PA behavior (increased PA minutes and decreased sitting minutes) are encouraging. If trends of improved PA behavior are realized over the entirety of this study (12 months), we expect to see other positive neurological outcomes that are also being analyzed in these study participants

How 'dynasty' became a modern global concept : intellectual histories of sovereignty and property

The modern concept of ‘dynasty’ is a politically-motivated modern intellectual invention. For many advocates of a strong sovereign nation-state across the nineteenth and early twentieth century, in France, Germany, and Japan, the concept helped in visualizing the nation-state as a primordial entity sealed by the continuity of birth and blood, indeed by the perpetuity of sovereignty. Hegel’s references to ‘dynasty’, read with Marx’s critique, further show how ‘dynasty’ encoded the intersection of sovereignty and big property, indeed the coming into self-consciousness of their mutual identification-in-difference in the age of capitalism. Imaginaries about ‘dynasty’ also connected national sovereignty with patriarchal authority. European colonialism helped globalize the concept in the non-European world; British India offers an exemplar of ensuing debates. The globalization of the abstraction of ‘dynasty’ was ultimately bound to the globalization of capitalist-colonial infrastructures of production, circulation, violence, and exploitation. Simultaneously, colonized actors, like Indian peasant/‘tribal’ populations, brought to play alternate precolonial Indian-origin concepts of collective regality, expressed through terms like ‘rajavamshi’ and ‘Kshatriya’. These concepts nourished new forms of democracy in modern India. Global intellectual histories can thus expand political thought today by provincializing and deconstructing Eurocentric political vocabularies and by recuperating subaltern models of collective and polyarchic power.PostprintPeer reviewe