Biological variables in forager fertility performance: a critique of Bongaarts' model

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 60During the period of the 1960s and 1970s, a considerable amount of scholarly energy was devoted to studying the process of "modernization." Scholars, particularly political scientists and anthropologists, theorized extensively over exactly what modernization was and debated how it could best be quantified and measured.1 By the 1980s, however, the very notion of the "modern," along with its antithesis, the "traditional" was falling out of favor. Indeed, by declaring the new era "post-modern," the academic avant-guard signaled that the concept of modernity had effectively been relegated to the past. The past, however, is the turf of historians, so perhaps now that the concept of modernity has become old-fashioned it is time for historians to take their turn at examining its meaning. This paper will approach the concept of the "modern" by examining the role of advertising in creating notions of modernity in independence-era Ghana. Ghana, at the time of independence in 1957, was a country of supreme optimism about the future. Not only did Ghanaians see themselves as being on the cutting edge politically (as the first sub-Saharan colony to achieve independence), but they also believed that independence would bring a new era of economic development and wealth. Ghana, as a country, was "going places." The new nation's optimism found many manifestations, but this paper will focus on only one aspect of this exuberance—representations of transportation as modernity in the advertisements and articles of Ghana's premier newspaper, the Daily Graphic. As stated before, early scholarship on modernization was concerned primarily with developing a way of measuring the demise of the traditional and the rise of the modern. Such studies focused on examining populations of "traditional" or "transitional" peoples to attempt to discern just how "modern" they had or had not become. What the previous studies did not consider, and what this paper seeks to examine, is exactly how modernity was presented to and by such populations. No single factor seems to represent modernity more than motion itself—be it actual movement across space or be it social and economic change. Indeed, Daniel Lerner, the prominent scholar of modernity, defined the key aspect of being modern as having... [TRUNCATED

Diet and fertility among Kalahari Bushmen

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 1

Exchange, interaction and settlement in northwestern Botswana: past and present perspective

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 3

Auxilary instruments of labor: The homogenization of diversity in the discourse of ethnicity

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 3 May 1993In the creation of an image of national unity successful political states employ their power of cultural hegemony to facilitate the continual renewal of forms of involuntary ascription, such as ethnicity, that can coexist with a national consciousness without apparent contradiction precisely because they are cultural, that is ascribed, and therefore appear both natural and national from the perspective of individuals. Continued tacit acceptance of imposed ethnic terms for current political discourse (e.g., in Eastern Europe, Islamic Asia, southern Africa, USA minorities) reaffirms the established status of these terms as the most readily available avenue for collective self-identification and action. "So long as social practice continues to be pursued as if ethnicity did hold the key to the structures of inequality, the protectionism of the dominant and the responses of the dominated alike serve to reproduce an ethnically ordered world" (Comaroff 1987:xxx). It is particularly important to stress this at a time' when a philosophy of primordial ethnicity is being widely reasserted as a form of neo-racism to justify new or continued suppression of dispossessed ethnic groups. In this paper, I will analyze processes of ethnicization, identity construction, and class formation in Botswana. In ethnicity and tribalism are conflated (e.g., Vail 1989). But tribes, as Vail's authors make abundently clear, are a product of colonial engagement; they are essentially administrative constructs. On the other hand, ethnicity as a central logic emerged out of conflicts engendered in competition for favored positions among these tribal constructs. The emergent ethnicities were formulated out of an amalgam of preexisting indigenous and inserted colonial partitive ideologies. A dominant class - in colonial Africa, this was often an ascendent 'tribal' aristocracy - defined and determined the terms of subordinate class competition which is the seedbed of ethnicizing processes

Prehistoric, and historic antecedents of a contemporary Ngamiland community

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 12INTRODUCTION: An archaeological survey was incorporated as part of a long-term project which I began in 1973. Fieldwork has been carried out during two periods: July, 1973 - January, 1974 and February, 1975 - May, 1976. The work is centered at /ai/ai (Nxai Nxai) in northwestern Ngamiland. Malan (1950) and Yellen (1975) made small collections at this waterhole. My investigations are designed to increase our understanding of the social ecology of the zu/oasi and Ovaherero peoples who live in this region. Periodic animal and plant censuses are recorded so that reasonably precise estimates of productivity of both wild and domesticated food resources may be calculated. Inventories of animals killed are kept on a daily basis and vegetable foods acquired are recorded on a randomly established schedule. A logbook is maintained in which are kept data pertaining to the social behavior of all residents at and visitors to zu/oasi. A number of indicators of nutritional status of both zu/oasi and Ovaherero individuals are monitored periodically. Short reports on the project have appeared (Wilmsen 1976a, 1976b, van der Walt et al., 1977). This report is confined to the current status of the archaeological program and its implications

Remote area dwellers in Botswana: an assessment of their current status

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 6

Those who have each other: land tenure of Kalahari foragers

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 9

A town community for the Navajo tribe

Thesis (M. Arch)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1959.Accompanying drawings held by MIT Museum.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-97).Edwin N. Wilmsen.M.Arc