The status and powers of township officials on the Right Bank (the second half of the nineteenth century)

Проаналізовано деякі аспекти політико-правового статусу та повноважень волосних посадовців на Правобережжі пореформеного періоду. Вони визначалися низкою нормативно-правових документів, насамперед положеннями Великої реформи 1861 р.  Доведено, що характерним для них було збереження й навіть посилення клановості, що в свою чергу суттєво модифікувало місцеві традиції, мінімізувало ефективність самоврядування як такого. Встановлено, що посадові особи волосної адміністрації здебільшого були виборними (за винятком волосних писарів). Проте між юридичним та фактичним станом речей існували серйозні відмінності. Вони були зумовлені як традиційними відносинами на селі, де панувало звичаєве право, усілякі задобрювання, так і недосконалістю новоприйнятого законодавства. Часто влада перебувала в руках місцевих кланів, на які вказують усі дослідники, включно з радянськими. Крім того, особливістю Правобережжя було те, що в підборі посадовців для волосного правління в цьому регіоні важливим лишався етнічний (національний) чинник. Роль поляків у формуванні місцевих органів, зокрема й волосних, залишалася значною. Усе це відгороджувало сільських людей від «своїх» волосних урядовців, бюрократизувало й формалізувало діяльність останніх.Проанализировано некоторые аспекты политико-правового статуса и полномочий волостных должностных лиц на Правобережье пореформенного периода. Они определялись рядом нормативно-правовых документов, прежде всего положениями Великой реформы 1861 г.  Доведено, что характерным для них было сохранение и даже усиление клановости, что, в свою очередь, существенно модифицировало местные традиции, минимизировало эффективность самоуправления. Установлено, что должностные лица волостной администрации в основном были выборными (за исключением волостных писарей). Однако между юридическим и фактическим состоянием вещей существовали глубокие отличия. Они были обусловлены как традиционными отношениями на селе, где господствовало обычное право, разнообразные задабривания, так и несовершенством принятого законодательства. Часто власть пребывала в руках местных кланов, на которые указывают все исследователи, включительно с советскими. Кроме того, особенностью Правобережья было то, что в подборе должностных лиц для волостного правления в этом регионе важным оставался этнический (национальный) фактор. Роль поляков в формировании местных органов, в частности волостных, оставалась значительной. Все это ограждало сельских людей от «своих» волостных урядников, бюрократизировало и формализовало деятельность последних.The Great Reform of 1861 radically changed the administrative divisions of the traditional Ukrainian village. True, it had to influence on the regional peculiarities of the latter which formed historically. One of the innovations was the introduction of peasant (local) self-government, which spread at the village and volost level. As this problem was already highlighted in historical scholarship, the author focused on the anthropological aspect. Because there were considerable differences between the juridically determined norms of volost government and the real state of things. As a rule, Ukrainian, Belorussian and Russian historians did not pay attention to them, in particular because the theoretical basis from which they took guidance in the second half of the 19th and in the 20th centuries did not anticipate being deep in the problems of commonness. The author tried to remedy this deficit. He focused his research on the political and legal status and powers of the volost officials in «Polish» Right bank Ukraine in the post-reform period paying attention to their real introduction.  That is the statements of the Great Reform of 1861 were the background, starting lit from which the author showed the real situation in the sphere of state government on the local level. He demonstrated that it was characteristic to preserve and even strengthen the clan system, which in turn significantly modified local traditions and minimized the effectiveness of self-government as such.  To prove the difference between the juridical statements and the real situation, the author used the methodological principles of the Ukrainian researchers Yu. Prysiazhniuk, О. Mykhailiuk, А. Zaiarniuk and others. This gave the opportunity to use in scientific research the main characteristics of the traditional peasant way of life, the patriarch agrarian society proper. So, the rule of customary law was reflected in the character of introduction of new laws. It was proven that power was often in the hands of local clans. All researchers, including Soviet ones, stress this point. Besides, the peculiarity of Right bank Ukraine was that while choosing officials for volost government in this region the national factor remained important: the role of Poles in the formation of local organs, particularly volost officials, remained significant. Together with the problems of transformation into market relations this created a mental barrier between peasants and own/non-local volost officials

Financial and institutional assessment of Posta Na Simu Savings and Credit Cooperative Society Limited ("KK") : Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania

Cooperative systems were developed into structures of government intervention, where the political structures did not conform to the fundamental cooperatives stance and ideals. Recently, the government of Tanzania has undertaken various initiatives towards poverty reduction and attainment of social and economic development. One of the steps was encouraging formation and to continue providing technical assistance to strengthen and develop SACCOS in urban and rural areas.The purpose of this study is to assess a workers' community established as a Savings and Credit Cooperative Society, namely, Wafanyakazi wa Posta na Simu Savings and Credit Cooperative Society Limited (KK) located in Dar-es-salaam. The intention of the assessment is not to audit the institution but to study performance of activities to give a clear picture of society financial and institutional situation, while observing the extent to which it has successfully fulfilled its avowed role in the past. The study results from KK assessment reveals that with proper organization and control, savings and credit cooperative societies can truly alleviate poverty to its members. SACCOs are expected to improve, continue and expand their role in rural financial services. They also need to be supported through the provision of appropriate capacity building assistance, including training and members' education on savings and credit. This would enable them to upgrade their current level of management, resources, skills, accounting/financial knowledge, assets and overall operating procedures, which would in turn contribute to their sustainability, and make them more effective and efficient. (Author abstract)Mtey, K. A. (2005). Financial and institutional assessment of Posta Na Simu Savings and Credit Cooperative Society Limited ("KK") : Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. Retrieved from http://academicarchive.snhu.eduMaster of Science (M.S.)School of Community Economic Developmen

Implication of climate change and variability on stream flow in Iringa region, Tanzania

This paper investigates the implication of climate change and variability on the river flow within the traditional irrigation farming system, vinyungu, in Iringa region, Tanzania. The study aimed at establishing areas that are most impacted by climate change in terms of river flow and various adaptation strategies. It is based on both primary data collected by questionnaires distributed randomly among 189 farmers and key informant checklists conducted with villages’ leaders and Agriculture Extension Officers. Two focused group discussions were carried out for each village as well as the researcher’s own observations, and secondary data includes: literature review, rainfall and river flow data. The long-term annual trends of rainfall and river flow were analyzed via Mann–Kendall’s statistical test and linear trend analysis. Climate data on rainfall trend showed a significant decreasing pattern during the last 17 years. Also, river flow data showed a slight decline within the same period. Decrement in river flow, combined with rainfall fluctuation, forced farmers to employ various adaptation strategies. Following the severity of the problem the paper recommends that more research be conducted on proper water management for sustainable river flow for both agriculture production and environmental management

Pitfalls of the geographic population structure (GPS) approach applied to human genetic history: a case study of Ashkenazi Jews

In a recent interdisciplinary study, Das and co-authors have attempted to trace the homeland of Ashkenazi Jews and of their historical language, Yiddish (Das et al. 2016. Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz. Genome Biology and Evolution). Das and co-authors applied the geographic population structure (GPS) method to autosomal genotyping data and inferred geographic coordinates of populations supposedly ancestral to Ashkenazi Jews, placing them in Eastern Turkey. They argued that this unexpected genetic result goes against the widely accepted notion of Ashkenazi origin in the Levant, and speculated that Yiddish was originally a Slavic language strongly influenced by Iranian and Turkic languages, and later remodeled completely under Germanic influence. In our view, there are major conceptual problems with both the genetic and linguistic parts of the work. We argue that GPS is a provenancing tool suited to inferring the geographic region where a modern and recently unadmixed genome is most likely to arise, but is hardly suitable for admixed populations and for tracing ancestry up to 1000 years before present, as its authors have previously claimed. Moreover, all methods of historical linguistics concur that Yiddish is a Germanic language, with no reliable evidence for Slavic, Iranian, or Turkic substrata

East Eurasian ancestry in the middle of Europe: Genetic footprints of Steppe nomads in the genomes of Belarusian Lipka Tatars

Medieval era encounters of nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe and largely sedentary East Europeans had a variety of demographic and cultural consequences. Amongst these outcomes was the emergence of the Lipka Tatars-a Slavic-speaking Sunni-Muslim minority residing in modern Belarus, Lithuania and Poland, whose ancestors arrived in these territories via several migration waves, mainly from the Golden Horde. Our results show that Belarusian Lipka Tatars share a substantial part of their gene pool with Europeans as indicated by their Y-chromosomal, mitochondrial and autosomal DNA variation. Nevertheless, Belarusian Lipkas still retain a strong genetic signal of their nomadic ancestry, witnessed by the presence of common Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA variants as well as autosomal segments identical by descent between Lipkas and East Eurasians from temperate and northern regions. Hence, we document Lipka Tatars as a unique example of former Medieval migrants into Central Europe, who became sedentary, changed language to Slavic, yet preserved their faith and retained, both uni-and bi-parentally, a clear genetic echo of a complex population interplay throughout the Eurasian Steppe Belt, extending from Central Europe to northern China

Dynamic Models of Language Evolution: The Linguistic Perspective

Language is probably the key defining characteristic of humanity, an immensely powerful tool which provides its users with an infinitely expressive means of representing their complex thoughts and reflections, and of successfully communicating them to others. It is the foundation on which human societies have been built and the means through which humanity’s unparalleled intellectual and technological achievements have been realized. Although we have a natural intuitive understanding of what a language is, the specification of a particular language is nevertheless remarkably difficult, if not impossible, to pin down precisely. All languages contain many separate yet integral systems which work interdependently to allow the expression of our thoughts and the interpretation of others’ expressions: each has, for instance, a set of basic meaningless sounds (e.g. [e], [l], [s]) which can be combined to make different meaningful words and parts of words (e.g. else, less, sell, -less ); these meaningful units can be combined to make complex words (e.g. spinelessness, selling ), and the words themselves can then be combined in very many complex ways into phrases, clauses and an infinite number of meaningful sentences; finally each of these sentences can be interpreted in dramatically different ways, depending on the contexts in which it is uttered and on who is doing the interpretation. Languages can be analysed at any of these different levels, which make up many of the sub-fields of linguistics, and the primary job of linguistic theorists is to try to explain the rules which best explain these complex combinations

Annotated 50-item wordlist of the basic lexicon of the Ancient Greek language (the idiolect of Herodotus)

Kassian, A. Annotated 50-item wordlist of the basic lexicon of the Ancient Greek language (the idiolect of Herodotus) [Электронный ресурс] / Alexei Kassian// Вопросы языкового родства. - 2011. - № 6. - С. 65-100. - (Вестник РГГУ. Серия "Филологические науки. Языкознание" ; № 16)

Annotated 50-item wordlist of the basic lexicon of the Ancient Greek language (the idiolect of Herodotus)

Kassian, A. Annotated 50-item wordlist of the basic lexicon of the Ancient Greek language (the idiolect of Herodotus) [Электронный ресурс] / Alexei Kassian// Вопросы языкового родства. - 2011. - № 6. - С. 65-100. - (Вестник РГГУ. Серия "Филологические науки. Языкознание" ; № 16)