The role of dance and what it teaches about the transcendence in possession and efficacy among the Brekete Gatsi cult

This research was conducted on the Brekete Gatsi cult in Ghana to investigate the use of the body in action during the dance in the ritual context. Brekete is a possession cult found among the Ewe’s of the Volta Region-Ghana. Devotees in this cult worship the deities Kunde and Ablewa on every Friday, Sunday and during ceremonial days. They also propitiate other pantheons who are children of Kunde and Ablewa. During ritual moments they call on these deities, who manifest themselves by embodying trained mediums to enter into an act of communion with the religious community. This state of embodiment is manipulated by rhythms paralleled with ritual sacrifices and dance which the community believes attains efficacy through possession. Therefore, this article will discuss the role of two dances which are performed during the ritual of the cult. Both dances occur during the same ritual events but may be distinguished by the fact that one of them is accompanied by possession and the other is not. I have therefore labelled them as Wu (Dance) and Trɔwo le ewu du (deities are dancing). It is through the analysis of these dances that it is possible for the reader to understand the relationship between the mundane world and the supernatural world of the people who perform in this cult. The methodology used has been that of classical anthropological research approach and more particularly of participant observation of events of which I had no prior knowledge due to my Christian urban upbringing. I wish to highlight the exoticism of the experience for a researcher who, despite his own upbringing, tackled a different religious phenomenon irrespective of his social and religious affiliations. Thus, with my focus on the bodily actions and how they are used to gain access into the celestial world, I identify dance as an instrument and a medium by which the physical evidence of possession comes about. To that effect, and through the phenomenon that religious possession dance is laden with complexities and meaning, this article will hereby develop how the ritual processes and the differences between the movement of “Wu and Trɔwo le ewu du” teaches us about the ritual efficacy of possession dance. I argue here that both possession dance and the dance without possession (i) are contra-kinetically constructed, (ii) have movement sequences employing sagittal symmetrical principles, and (iii) although they have limited motifs of the steps and arm gesture, the possession dance has many variations. Finally, the Wu serves as a prelude to Trɔ di amedzi (deity has embodied or mounted its medium) and Trɔwo le ewu du, which has the concept of possession among the Brekete Gatsi cult based on the philosophy of repetitive motif characterised by intense energy, rhythmic tempo and musicality (multidi-mensional, accentuation and phrasing) from the brekete drum

Efficiently mapping high-performance early vision algorithms onto multicore embedded platforms

The combination of low-cost imaging chips and high-performance, multicore, embedded processors heralds a new era in portable vision systems. Early vision algorithms have the potential for highly data-parallel, integer execution. However, an implementation must operate within the constraints of embedded systems including low clock rate, low-power operation and with limited memory. This dissertation explores new approaches to adapt novel pixel-based vision algorithms for tomorrow's multicore embedded processors. It presents : - An adaptive, multimodal background modeling technique called Multimodal Mean that achieves high accuracy and frame rate performance with limited memory and a slow-clock, energy-efficient, integer processing core. - A new workload partitioning technique to optimize the execution of early vision algorithms on multi-core systems. - A novel data transfer technique called cat-tail dma that provides globally-ordered, non-blocking data transfers on a multicore system. By using efficient data representations, Multimodal Mean provides comparable accuracy to the widely used Mixture of Gaussians (MoG) multimodal method. However, it achieves a 6.2x improvement in performance while using 18% less storage than MoG while executing on a representative embedded platform. When this algorithm is adapted to a multicore execution environment, the new workload partitioning technique demonstrates an improvement in execution times of 25% with only a 125 ms system reaction time. It also reduced the overall number of data transfers by 50%. Finally, the cat-tail buffering technique reduces the data-transfer latency between execution cores and main memory by 32.8% over the baseline technique when executing Multimodal Mean. This technique concurrently performs data transfers with code execution on individual cores, while maintaining global ordering through low-overhead scheduling to prevent collisions.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Wills, Scott; Committee Co-Chair: Wills, Linda; Committee Member: Bader, David; Committee Member: Davis, Jeff; Committee Member: Hamblen, James; Committee Member: Lanterman, Aaro

Religious Movements to the Rescue in Transit? Exploring the Role of the Church of Pentecost in the Lives of Ghanaian Immigrants in Istanbul

This exploratory article uses qualitative data to critically document how social networks developed around the Church of Pentecost (CoP) Istanbul, and how the ensuing social capital accumulation has somewhat played significant roles in the lives of Ghanaian immigrants in a transit environment, Istanbul (Turkey). The paper argues that with immigrants caught within webs of unreceptive and strict legal environments, socio-economic, moral, psychological, identity, and spiritual struggles in the host country, these Churches, such as the CoP Istanbul, have somewhat become crucial resource pools that immigrants, be they irregular, regular or so-called 'transit migrants' and asylum-seekers, draw on to provide solutions to these quotidian existential problems. The findings documented herein enrich the African Diaspora and religious movements' literature, illuminating how these movements shape immigrants' lives in transit destinations like Turkey

Access to Debt Finance: Which Policies Work? Empirical Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Are the structural policy reforms effective in reducing debt financing constraints on formal sector enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa? We do not know. And the reason is the relatively limited research on the effectiveness of policies in the credit market. Using policy variables from the World Bank and the Enterprise Surveys data, the analysis involves three-way error component models. The results are indicative that taken together; structural policy reforms reduce debt financing constraints, at least, as it pertains to working capital needs. There is heterogeneity in the results. Changes in the business regulatory environment benefit large firms more than small ones. Financial sector reforms affect enterprises of all sizes relatively equally. For all the twelve countries, together, trade sector reforms initially increase the likelihood of access to debt finance by 20 percent until a policy threshold, beyond which progressive reforms in the trade sector reduce the probability by as much as 13 percent. Also, not all countries experience the same effects from trade sector reforms. The result is robust to different indicators of credit constraint and measures of structural reforms. The results have implications on the World Bank's push towards reforms on trade policy across countries

A recommended one-year Buddhist curriculum for high school seniors in the Buddhist Churches of America

The present research attempts to discover a type of Buddhist curriculum which will best suit the needs and interests of the high school senior (twelfth grader) Buddhists in the United States. The present Buddhist Churches of America recommended curriculum in use covers only the pre-school through the eighth grades. There is an obvious need for a Buddhist curriculum in the important upper grades. As this proposed curriculum is directed to twelfth graders, the compilation of a curriculum for the other three grades {ninth, tenth, and eleventh) still remains to be completed

Migracije in pravna negotovost med pandemijo: Kvalitativna študija italijanskega primera

The COVID-19 pandemic has unequally impacted the lives of Italian subjects. The article uses evidence from forty-seven semi-structured interviews with various migrant groups to illuminate how temporalities embedded in Italy’s migration governance shape migrants’ precarious legal status and access to welfare. The authors show that whereas migrants with secure legal status or citizenship have not engaged significantly with Italian bureaucracies, they have no easy access to welfare as it is contingent on their employment and financial status. Migrants with precarious status have been the worst hit by the pandemic’s secondary effects across several fronts. These findings have implications for policy and future research.Pandemija Covida-19 je neenakopravno posegla v življenja prebivalcev Italije. Članek temelji na podatkih iz 47 polstrukturiranih intervjujev z različnimi skupinami migrantov. Ti kažejo, kako začasne rešitve, vgrajene v italijanski sistem upravljanja migracij, vplivajo tako na negotovi pravni status migrantov kot na njihov dostop do socialnega varstva. Čeprav migranti z urejenim pravnim statusom ali državljanstvom nimajo veliko opravka z italijansko birokracijo, kljub temu nimajo lahkega dostopa do socialne blaginje, ki je odvisna od njihovega delovnega in finančnega statusa. Migrante prekarce so najbolj prizadeli sekundarni učinki pandemije. Ugotovitve avtorjev so pomembne tako za politiko upravljanja migracij kot za prihodnje raziskave

Modelling the importance of collaborative culture and its dimensions for supply chain collaboration: a necessary condition analysis

Purpose: This paper assumes necessity rather than sufficiency logic to model the relationship between collaborative culture and supply chain collaboration as triangular rather than linear. Specifically, this study sought to determine (a) whether overall collaborative culture and its dimensions (i.e., collectivism, long-term orientation, power symmetry, and uncertainty avoidance) are necessary for supply chain collaboration and (b) the minimum levels of overall collaborative culture and its dimensions that are required for high levels of supply chain collaboration.  Design/methodology/approach: Based on the literature, collaborative culture and its four dimensions, namely, collectivism, long-term orientation, power symmetry, and uncertainty avoidance, were modelled as conditions having supply chain collaboration as their outcome. The study employed the Necessary Condition Analysis to test the triangular relationships between the conditions and the outcome among a sample of firms (N = 166) in the downstream petroleum sector.  Findings: The results revealed that collaborative culture and its dimensions are necessary conditions for supply chain collaboration and that high levels of collaboration are possible, although not guaranteed when at least a basic level of collaborative culture or its dimensions are present. Hence, different levels of supply chain collaboration require firms to have different levels of collectivism, long-term orientation, power symmetry and uncertainty avoidance. Thus, at 30% supply chain collaboration, only overall collaborative culture is necessary.  Originality/value: As one of the first studies to use necessity rather than sufficiency logic to test the relationship between collaborative culture and supply chain collaboration, this research unearthed the non-linear (triangular) relationship between the constructs. It contributes to understanding how collaborative culture and its dimensions serve as bottleneck conditions constraining supply chain collaboration.  Practical implications: The dimensions of collaborative culture are necessary but not sufficient for supply chain collaboration. Therefore, managers should adopt a holistic approach to investment in a collaborative culture,  as an over-investment in any of the dimensions may not compensate for an under-investment in the others.  Limitations: A significant limitation of this research is that, although several antecedents of supply chain collaboration exist, this study explored only the cultural antecedents of supply chain collaboration