“Beggars on our own land …” Tsumib v Government of the Republic of Namibia and its Implications for Ancestral Land Claims in Namibia
“Beggars on our own land …” Tsumib v Government of the Republic of Namibia and its Implications for Ancestral Land Claims in Namibia

Author: Willem Odendaal

Publisher: BASLER AFRIKA BIBLIOGRAPHIEN

Published: 2024-04-15

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 3906927601

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1954, the Hai||om people were evicted from Etosha by the South African-controlled South West African Administration. In 2015, the Hai||om filed the case of Tsumib v Government of the Republic of Namibia in the High Court of Namibia. “Beggars on our own land …” unravels the historical and contemporary socio-legal complexities that led to the Tsumib case. At the core of the case lies the legal question, how can the Hai||om people approach the Namibian Courts in order to claim compensation for the loss of their ancestral lands?Odendaal goes into detail how the Tsumib case materialised under the post-independence Namibian constitutional discourse. He assesses the Namibian land reform programme and its oversight in dealing with historical land dispossessions. He inspects Hai||om “identity” and how it was used to strengthen their case. He concludes with an examination of Namibia’s outdated and restrictive legal framework, which ultimately denied the Hai||om people their constitutional right to be heard in the Namibian Court. While the future of ancestral land claims in Namibia depends on the political will of the Namibian government, Odendaal argues that the Namibian courts have a duty to comply with the rights giving nature of the Namibian Constitution that lays the foundation for the Hai||om people’s ancestral claims.

Space in Language and Cognition
Space in Language and Cognition

Author: Stephen C. Levinson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-03-20

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 9780521011969

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Languages differ in how they describe space, and such differences between languages can be used to explore the relation between language and thought. This 2003 book shows that even in a core cognitive domain like spatial thinking, language influences how people think, memorize and reason about spatial relations and directions. After outlining a typology of spatial coordinate systems in language and cognition, it is shown that not all languages use all types, and that non-linguistic cognition mirrors the systems available in the local language. The book reports on collaborative, interdisciplinary research, involving anthropologists, linguists and psychologists, conducted in many languages and cultures around the world, which establishes this robust correlation. The overall results suggest that thinking in the cognitive sciences underestimates the transformative power of language on thinking. The book will be of interest to linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers, and especially to students of spatial cognition.

Understanding Namibia
Understanding Namibia

Author: Henning Melber

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-01-04

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0190257628

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Since independence in 1990, Namibia has witnessed only one generation with no memory of colonialism - the 'born frees', who voted in the 2009 elections. The anti-colonial liberation movement, SWAPO, dominates the political scene, effectively making Namibia a de facto one-party state dominated by the first 'struggle generation'. While those in power declare their support for a free, fair, and just society, the limits to liberation are such that emancipation from foreign rule has only been partially achieved. Despite its natural resources Namibia is among the world's most unequal societies and indicators of wellbeing have not markedly improved for many among the former colonized majority, despite a constitution enshrining human rights, social equality, and individual liberty. This book analyses the transformation of Namibian society since Independence. Melber explores the achievements and failures and contrasts the narrative of a post-colonial patriotic history with the socio-economic and political realities of the nation-building project. He also investigates whether, notwithstanding the relative stability prevailing to date, the negotiation of controlled change during Namibia's decolonization could have achieved more than simply a change of those in control.

Ethnographic Practice in the Present
Ethnographic Practice in the Present

Author: Marit Melhuus

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9781845456160

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In its assessment of the current "state of play" of ethnographic practice in social anthropology, this volume explores the challenges that changing social forms and changing understandings of "the field" pose to contemporary ethnographic methods. These challenges include the implications of the remarkable impact social anthropology is having on neighboring disciplines such as history, sociology, cultural studies, human geography and linguistics, as well as the potential 'costs' of this success for the discipline. Contributors also discuss how the ethnographic method is influenced by current institutional contexts and historical "traditions" across a range of settings. Here ethnography is featured less as a methodological "tool-box" or technique but rather as a subject on which to reflect.

Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction
Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

Author: Michelle Nijhuis

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2021-03-09

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1324001690

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Winner of the Sierra Club's 2021 Rachel Carson Award One of Chicago Tribune's Ten Best Books of 2021 Named a Top Ten Best Science Book of 2021 by Booklist and Smithsonian Magazine "At once thoughtful and thought-provoking,” Beloved Beasts tells the story of the modern conservation movement through the lives and ideas of the people who built it, making “a crucial addition to the literature of our troubled time" (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction). In the late nineteenth century, humans came at long last to a devastating realization: their rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving scores of animal species to extinction. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the history of the movement to protect and conserve other forms of life. From early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a larger scale, Nijhuis’s “spirited and engaging” account documents “the changes of heart that changed history” (Dan Cryer, Boston Globe). With “urgency, passion, and wit” (Michael Berry, Christian Science Monitor), she describes the vital role of scientists and activists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, reveals the origins of vital organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund, explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping crane and the black rhinoceros, and confronts the darker side of modern conservation, long shadowed by racism and colonialism. As the destruction of other species continues and the effects of climate change wreak havoc on our world, Beloved Beasts charts the ways conservation is becoming a movement for the protection of all species including our own.

The Ecology of Playful Childhood
The Ecology of Playful Childhood

Author: Akira Takada

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-08-19

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 303049439X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

While studies of San children have attained the peculiar status of having delineated the prototype for hunter-gatherer childhood, relatively few serious ethnographic studies of San children have been conducted since an initial flurry of research in the 1960s and 1970s. Based on the author’s long-term field research among several San groups of Southern Africa, this book reconsiders hunter-gatherer childhood using “play” as a key concept. Playfulness pervades the intricate practices of caregiver-child interactions among the San: immediately after birth, mothers have extremely close contact with their babies. In addition to the mother’s attentions, other people around the babies actively facilitate gymnastic behavior to soothe them. These distinctive caregiving behaviors indicate a loving, indulgent attitude towards infants. This also holds true for several language genres of the San that are used in early vocal communication. Children gradually become involved in various playful activities in groups of children of multiple ages, which is the major locus of their attachment after weaning; these playful activities show important similarities to the household and subsistence activities carried out by adults. Rejuvenating studies of San children and hunter-gatherer childhood and childrearing practices, this book aims to examine these issues in detail, ultimately providing a new perspective for the understanding of human sociality.

Material Culture and Sacred Landscape
Material Culture and Sacred Landscape

Author: Peter Jordan

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9780759102774

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This study provides a concrete example of how foraging societies enculturate and transform the natural environment and, through the use of material objects, create sacred spaces and sites. Using ethnographic and ethnohistorical information about the Khanty of Siberia, Jordan shows the shortcomings of both interpretive and materialist anthropological theorizing about hunters and gatherers. He focuses on the rich and complex relationship between the symbolism of the Khanty, their material culture, and the bringing of meaning to physical places. His examination looks at the topic in both historical and contemporary contexts, and in scales from the core-periphery model of Russian colonialism to the portrait of a single yurt community. Jordan's work will be of importance to those studying cultural anthropology, archaeology, and comparative religion.

One Day We Will All be Equal--
One Day We Will All be Equal--

Author: Sidney L. Harring

Publisher:

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The objective of this report is to assess the operation of Agricultural (commercial) Land Reform Act of 1995, which provides for the acquisition of agricultural land by the Namibian government for the purposes of land reform, and for its redistribution to Namibian citizens who do not own or otherwise have the use of agricultural land or adequate agricultural land, and foremost to those Namibian citizens who have been socially, economically or educationally disadvantaged by past discriminatory laws or practices.

Ritual, Media, and Conflict
Ritual, Media, and Conflict

Author: Ronald L. Grimes

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-03-23

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0199831300

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Rituals can provoke or escalate conflict, but they can also mediate it and although conflict is a normal aspect of human life, mass media technologies are changing the dynamics of conflict and shaping strategies for deploying rituals. This collection of essays emerged from a two-year project based on collaboration between the Faculty of Religious Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and the Ritual Dynamics Collaborative Research Center at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. An interdisciplinary team of twenty-four scholars locates, describes, and explores cases in which media-driven rituals or ritually saturated media instigate, disseminate, or escalate conflict. Each multi-authored chapter is built around global and local examples of ritualized, mediatized conflict. The book's central question is: "When ritual and media interact (either by the mediatizing of ritual or by the ritualizing of media), how do the patterns of conflict change?"