The structural articulation of generations in Africa

The article highlights a contrast between West African Niger-Congo and East and Southern African Bantu societies. Amongst the latter, kin-generations are sharply distinguished and alternate generations characteristically merged, whereas among the Niger-Congo peoples it is rather adjacent generations that are merged (a fact Radcliffe-Brown ignored). The difference is integral to the social structures of the two regions, between which however some continuity can be traced through the processes of the “Bantu expansion”. An explanation for the heightened awareness of generational differences is sought firstly in the effects of matrilineal kinship crosscutting patrifilial residence and secondly in the axial emergence of the people identified by C. Ehret as “Mashariki” in the Great Lakes area.Cet article met au jour le contraste existant entre les sociétés bantous d’Afrique australe d’une part et les sociétés ouest-africaines du groupe Niger-Congo d’autre part. Dans les premières, les générations proches sont nettement distinguées tandis que les générations alternées sont significativement confondues. Au sein des sociétés du groupe Niger-Congo, en revanche, ce sont les générations proches qui sont confondues – un fait que Radcliffe-Brown ignorait. Il existe donc une différence absolue entre les deux régions, encore qu’une certaine continuité puisse être observée à travers le phénomène de l’«expansion bantoue». Une explication possible de l’attention portée aux différences de génération doit être recherchée en premier lieu dans les contradictions existant entre la parenté matrilinéaire d’une part et la résidence patrilinéaire d’autre part ainsi que dans l’émergence décisive du peuple nommé “Mashariki” par C. Ehret dans la région des Grands Lacs

Practising the Space Between: Embodying Belief as an Evangelical Anglican Student

This article explores the formation of British evangelical university students as believers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with a conservative evangelical Anglican congregation in London, I describe how students in this church come to embody a highly cognitive, word-based mode of belief through particular material practices. As they learn to identify themselves as believers, practices of reflexivity and accountability enable them to develop a sense of narrative coherence in their lives that allows them to negotiate tensions that arise from their participation in church and broader social structures. I demonstrate that propositional belief – in contexts where it becomes an identity marker – is bound up with relational practices of belief, such that distinctions between “belief in” and “belief that” are necessarily blurred in the lives of young evangelicals

Structural changes and potential vertebrate responses following simulated partial harvesting of boreal mixedwood stands

Partial harvesting, where different numbers and arrangements of live trees are retained in forest stands, has been proposed for maintaining late-successional structure and associated vertebrate species within managed boreal forests. Using the stand dynamics model SORTIE-ND, we examined 80-year patterns of structural change in response to different intensities (30–70% basal area removal) and spatial patterns (22–273m2 mean patch size) of harvesting. We also applied habitat models for seven late-successional vertebrates to the structural conditions present after harvesting to assess potential species responses. Partial harvesting increased understory and downed woody debris (DWD) cover and decreased overstory structure for the first 25 years after harvest, in comparison to unharvested stands, with this effect subsequently reversing as harvest-induced regeneration reached the canopy. Although harvesting enhanced long-term structural development in this regard, large trees, large snags, and largeDWDall remained below unharvested levels throughout the simulation period. Harvesting also produced transient increases in early-decayDWDand ground exposure. Most changes in structural attributes increased in proportion to harvest intensity, but structural differencesamongharvest patterns were generally small. Dispersed harvesting induced somewhat less pronounced decreases in vertical structure, and produced more post-harvest slash, than aggregated harvesting. All seven vertebrate species decreased in abundance as harvest intensity increased from 30 to 70%. In comparison to their pre-harvest abundances in old stands, vertebrates associated with DWD (redback salamander, marten, red-backed vole) showed neutral or positive responses at one or more harvest intensities, whereas those associated with large trees and snags (brown creeper, flying squirrel) consistently exhibited substantial adverse impacts

Probabilistic downscaling of remote sensing data with applications for multi-scale biogeochemical flux modeling

Upscaling ecological information to larger scales in space and downscaling remote sensing observations or model simulations to finer scales remain grand challenges in Earth system science. Downscaling often involves inferring subgrid information from coarse-scale data, and such ill-posed problems are classically addressed using regularization. Here, we apply two-dimensional Tikhonov Regularization (2DTR) to simulate subgrid surface patterns for ecological applications. Specifically, we test the ability of 2DTR to simulate the spatial statistics of high-resolution (4 m) remote sensing observations of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) in a tundra landscape. We find that the 2DTR approach as applied here can capture the major mode of spatial variability of the high-resolution information, but not multiple modes of spatial variability, and that the Lagrange multiplier (γ) used to impose the condition of smoothness across space is related to the range of the experimental semivariogram. We used observed and 2DTR-simulated maps of NDVI to estimate landscape-level leaf area index (LAI) and gross primary productivity (GPP). NDVI maps simulated using a γ value that approximates the range of observed NDVI result in a landscape-level GPP estimate that differs by ca 2% from those created using observed NDVI. Following findings that GPP per unit LAI is lower near vegetation patch edges, we simulated vegetation patch edges using multiple approaches and found that simulated GPP declined by up to 12% as a result. 2DTR can generate random landscapes rapidly and can be applied to disaggregate ecological information and compare of spatial observations against simulated landscapes

Interview with Malcolm Ruel

Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane and filmed by Sarah Harrison, on 15th December 2002. Lasts about one hour.Interview with Malcolm Ruel, describing his apprenticeship in anthropology, his work in Africa, the influences on his life, and his teaching in Edinburgh and Cambridge

Witchcraft, morality, and doubt

This article is a reprint of Ruel, Malcom. 1965. “Witchcraft, morality, and doubt.” In Odu: Journal of Yoruba and Related Studies vol. 2: 3-26