Suchergebnisse

Among the many consequences of Iran's suffering from water shortage in recent decades, the major river of Isfahan city, Zayandeh Rud, has dried out. While experts observe this issue through environmental discourses and local farmers engage in political protests, citizens phrase the loss of the river as a cultural catastrophe. Within the environmental configuration that includes the river, historical buildings, parks, fauna, flora and humans, habitual relationships produce a sense of security and well-being. Since the drought, this configuration has been seriously affected. We suggest the drought is experienced as sociocultural disaster because Zayandeh Rud is a central element for the creation of social, cultural, economic and political relationships. Following the suggestion of Tim Ingold, we conceptualise the environment as the interplay between the German notion of Umwelt (out world) and Innenwelt (subjective world).

How have different civilizations throughout different epochs mastered fundamental challenges of life? The series analyses the basic questions of cultural anthropology. All epochs and the most significant civilizations worldwide, as well as different epistemological aspects including historical sciences, sociology, ethnology, art, literature and philosophy are brought together.

Diagrams are found at the heart of the modern history of epidemiology. Epidemiologists used spatial diagrams to visualize concepts of epidemics as arrangements of biological, environmental, historical, as well as social factors and to analyze epidemics as configurations. Often, they provided a representation of the networks of relationships implied by epidemics, rather than to offer conclusions about origin and causation. This article will look at two spatial diagrams of plague across a period in which an epidemiological way of reasoning stood in stark contrast to arguments provided about plague in the rising field of bacteriology and experimental medicine. This historical genealogy of epidemiologists working with diagrams challenges perceptions of epidemic diagrams as mere arguments of causality to emphasize diagrammatic notions of uncertainty, crisis, and invisibility.

As Swaziland approaches independence and stands poised to enter the complex political arena of southern Africa, its internal political configurations are changing rapidly and profoundly. The previously irresistible coalition between the traditionally based Swazi Imbokodvo National Movement and the predominantly South African-oriented, conservative, white, United Swaziland Association has broken down, and the Imbokodvo has emerged as the overwhelming dominant force on the Swazi political scene. The coalition, which arose in 1964 to prevent the more radical Swazi political parties from gaining control of the legislative council in the June 1964 elections, arose out of a peculiar set of circumstances which developed in Swaziland after World War II.