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How is masculinity formed and transmitted between generations among the Pokot people in Kenya, and what are the most important male values? The author, Kjartan Jónsson lived and worked among the Pokot people for more than 11 years as a pastor and researched their life and religion, especially the rituals men go through from birth to death. The initiation rituals are the most important, particularly circumcision, as the initiates stay in special circumcision camps for up to three and a half months with mature men who teach them how men should live and the values of the Pokot male society. Rituals often reflect the importance of cattle in the life of the Pokot people, as cattle are the chief form of wealth and also serve as ritual sacrifices. A rich man can afford to have many wives and children, who serve as an important labour force tending to the man's wealth. All this gives him power and respect in society. Pokot men finally have one goal: to prolong their lives as ancestral spirits, which is only possible if they have sons who provide them with progeny, for which they become guardian spirits. The author's material on the Pokot people is put into the context of African traditional religion and theories of anthropology and science of religions about rituals.
Examines how pastoral peoples imagine, or even design, their futures under the pressure of changing environments and large-scale government projects.
Basing his work on a study of 120 American men and drawing on years of experience in dealing with men's issues, Dr. Levant shows men how to change facets of traditional behavior patterns that limit their effectiveness as lovers, husbands, fathers, and friends, while enhancing those parts of the male code which are meaningful and empowering.
This volume shows how masculinity is a socially constructed entity with a definition that has evolved over time. Masculine icons/heroes and methods of male socialization allow for contextual examination of specific time periods, which is necessary to understand the concept of Western masculinity. The volume presents two masculinities, representing the aristocracy and the warrior class notions of how to be a man, that have vied for dominance throughout most of Western culture.
How do missiologists describe the cosmologies of those that Christianity encounters around the world? Our descriptions often end up filtered through our own Western religious categories. Furthermore, indigenous Christians adopt these Western religious categories. This presents the problem of local Christianities, described by Kwame Bediako as those that “have not known how to relate to their traditional culture in terms other than those of denunciation or of separateness.” Kevin Lines’s phenomenological study of local religious specialists in Turkana, Kenya, not only challenges our Western categories by revealing a more authentic complexity of the issues for local Christians and Western missionaries, but also provides a model for continued use of phenomenology as a valued research method in larger missiological studies. Additionally, this study points to the ways that local Christians and traditional religious practitioners interpret Western missionaries through local religious categories. Clearly, missionaries, missiologists, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars need to do a much more careful job of studying and describing the contextually specific phenomena of traditional religious specialists before relying on meta-categories that come out of our Western theology or older overly simplified ethnographies. The research from this current study of Turkana religious specialists begins that process in the Turkana context and offers a model for future studies in contexts where traditional religion and Christianity intersect.
Explores the dynamics of African masquerades and mask performances on the continent, linking performative expressions to societal characteristics. What is the meaning of masks and masquerades in African traditions and how can we understand their role in rituals and performances? Why do we find masks in some African regions and not in others, and what does this 'mask habitat' say about the general dynamics of masquerades in Africa? Though masks are among the most famous art icons of Africa, exploration of their uses and the way in which they articulate social characteristics of African societies has been underexamined. This book takes an anthropological perspective on the phenomenon of masquerades on the African continent to show how mask rituals are an integral part of African indigenous religions and societies, and are informed by and linked to specific types of social and ecological conditions. Having established the commonalities of mask rituals and a mask typology, the authors look at the varieties of mask performances and the types of rituals in which masks function in rites of passage and in rituals of gender, power, and identity. The following chapters focus on different types of rituals featuring masks, from initiation and death ceremonies to secrecy, kingship, law and war. With its broad examination of the use of masks on the continent, from Angola to Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DRC, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, this well illustrated book will stand as an authoritative study of the use of masks, of interest not only to those in African Studies but to anthropologists and ethnographers worldwide.
This collection of original essays explores the historical and cultural diversity of the experience of gender reversal over an exceptional geographical and chronological range. Topics cove- red include anthropology, history, literature.
International in scope, this guide lists references by world region, selected nations, selected American ethnic minorities, and Christianity and Judaism. Specific ethnic minorities covered include American Indians, African Americans, and Asian Americans.
Includes chapters on hunting and gathering, horticulture, pastoralism, agriculture, and transitions to modernity in societies and cultures around the world.