The beginning of time? Evidence for catastrophic drought in Baringo in the early nineteenth century

New developments in the collection of palaeo-data over the past two decades have transformed our understanding of climate and environmental history in eastern Africa. This article utilises instrumental and proxy evidence of historical lake-level fluctuations from Baringo and Bogoria, along with other Rift Valley lakes, to document the timing and magnitude of hydroclimate variability at decadal to century time scales since 1750. These data allow us to construct a record of past climate variation not only for the Baringo basin proper, but also across a sizable portion of central and northern Kenya. This record is then set alongside historical evidence, from oral histories gathered amongst the peoples of northern Kenya and the Rift Valley and from contemporary observations recorded by travellers through the region, to offer a reinterpretation of human activity and its relationship to environmental history in the nineteenth century. The results reveal strong evidence of a catastrophic drought in the early nineteenth century, the effects of which radically alters our historical understanding of the character of settlement, mobility and identity within the Baringo–Bogoria basin

Mágoas de amizade: um ensaio em antropologia das emoções

Neste ensaio, analiso a recorrência das categorias grosseria (rudeness) e ofensa (offence) no discurso sobre a amizade de um grupo de ingleses de camadas médias em Londres. Mais do que outros sentimentos ditos positivos, a menção freqüente a essas categorias aponta para uma tensão que atravessa o discurso sobre a amizade e que problematiza o espaço das amizades no conjunto mais amplo das relações sociais. Adoto, aqui, uma abordagem pragmática dentro do campo da "antropologia das emoções". Se, em um primeiro momento, os estudos priorizavam a relativização das categorias de emoções entre as culturas, verifica-se, mais recentemente, um movimento no sentido de tomar os discursos emotivos como práticas situadas em jogos de relações sociais e negociações de poder. Com isso, a emoção deixa de ser vista como experiência interna, subjetiva, para ser analisada como prática discursiva com efeitos externos, extrapolando o chamado domínio do privado.<br>In this essay, I discuss the presence of the categories rudeness and offence in the discourse on friendship produced by a group of middle class English people resident in London. The frequent reference to these categories, rather than to the so called positive emotions, reveals the tensions regarding the negotiation of personal space which crosscut this discourse, which in turn highlight the problematic space that friendship occupies within the field of social relations. This essay draws on the analytical tools of a pragmatic approach within the area known as "anthropology of emotions", developed in the last decade in the Unites States. If at first emotion concepts were mainly studied cross-culturally, nowadays they are seen as discursive practices situated within the wider field of social relations and negotiations of power. As such, emotions cease to be treated as an internal, purely subjective experience, in order to be analysed as a discursive practice with external effects on both private and public spheres