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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
611

A critical evaluation of the concept of sustainable development as applied in the legislation governing environmental impact assessments in South Africa (case studies: housing developments)

Osborne, Bernadette Nadine January 2015 (has links)
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Environmental Management in the Faculty of Applied Science at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology / The concept “Sustainable Development” (SD) is defined and interpreted differently worldwide with the result that it encompasses different meanings to different people. The environmental impact assessment (EIA) process has been identified as a key tool for the implementation of SD. This research focuses on the concept of SD and its interpretation, meaning and implementation in terms of the legislation governing EIAs in South Africa. The research methodology employed in the thesis involves a literature study of the historical development and emergence of the concept of SD and the legal framework in which it is contextualised in South Africa. This is followed by a critical evaluation of the concept and its implementation using Jacob’s six Fault Lines. These Fault Lines include (i) the degree of environmental protection that is envisaged to attain SD, (ii) the emphasis placed on equality as a prerequisite for SD, (iii) the measure of participation required to attain SD, (iv) the scope of the concept of SD, (v) the environmental monitoring and evaluation that is required for SD as well as (vi) environmental planning to achieve the goal of SD. The second half of the thesis employs a case study methodology to evaluate the implementation of SD in five separate housing EIA processes in the Stellenbosch Municipal Area. Personal interviews and site observations are used to inform the case studies. The study identifies major conceptual flaws associated with the interpretation and implementation of the concept of SD as well as the challenges preventing EIAs from being an effective tool to enhance SD.The main findings are that EIAs do not sufficiently take into account the cumulative impacts of developments, they are unable to protect the environment from the increasing demand for additional housing in South Africa and that there is insufficient monitoring of EIA processes to ensure adequate long-term environmental protection.
612

Microencapsulation and supply of Bifidobacterium lactis DSM 10140 in fermented traditional African beverages

Kokott, Shaun January 2004 (has links)
Thesis (MTech (Food Technology))--Cape Technikon, 2004 / Probiotic foods are intended to supply selected viable microorganisms, for example Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium, to consumers. These organisms, when consumed at the daily intake of 108 , provide benefits beyond basic nutrition. Probiotic (AB) foods generally include fermented dairy products such as yoghurts and cheeses, targeted at the upmarket consumer. However, due to technical problems associated with the foods and the organism, viable Bifidobacterium rarely occur in AB foods. The principle aims of this study were to develop a suitable delivery system for Bifidobacterium to the consumer, and to supply these living organisms in the affordable traditional fermented African beverages, amasi and mahewu. This would provide the benefits of probiotics to the rural African consumer, where malnutrition and gastrointestinal diseases occur. The organism selected for this study was Bifidobacterium lactis DSM 10140, commonly associated with AB starter cultures for yoghurts. The delivery system selected was microencapsulation of B. lactis using a mixture of the generally recognised as safe (GRAS) edible gums, gellan and xanthan. Supply vehicles for the microcapsules to the consumer were amasi and mahewu. Prior to microencapsulation, rheological studies were undertaken to determine whether the gellan-xanthan gum mix would provide a suitable support matrix for microencapsulated B. lactis. This was done using a Paar Physica MGR 300 rotational rheometer with a cone plate 50-2 measuring system. Results indicated that the hydrated gellan-xanthan gum mix behaved as a non-Newtonian material, and the flow curve fitted well to the Herschel-Bulkley model. This demonstrated that the gel was a relatively viscous material with solid properties. The average yield stress of the gel was 1.515 Pa, indicating that the gel was stable, and at lower stresses would behave as a solid. The gel mix would be disrupted by shear stresses associated with mastication and peristalsis. The minimum viscosity of the gel was constant at temperatures between 46°C - 61°C. It was concluded from these data that the gel was suitable for microencapsulation and that microcapsules should only be included in soft foods, which do not require chewing. Temperatures associated with microencapsulation, at minimum gel viscosities, were not lethal to B. lactis. Bifidobacterium lactis cells were incubated under anaerobic conditions (4% H2, 10% CO2, and 86% N2) at 37°C overnight in 250 ml Tryptone-Yeast-Glucose (TYG) broth, and grown to an 00600 0.9 - 1.1. Cells were harvested and washed for microencapsulation using centrifugation. Microencapsulation of the organism was done using a mono-axial extrusion technique together with a superposed airflow, by manually extruding the aqueous gum I cell mix through a 27.5 G bevelled needle, fitted on to a 10 ml syringe. The resultant microdroplets were hardened by free fall into 0.1 M CaCI2 solution. Microcapsules were separated from the CaCI2 solution by filtration through Whatman No.1 filter paper. All procedures were carried out in a laminar flow hood. Results indicated that the method of microencapsulation used in this study was successful. Using a concentrated inoculum of B. lactis, high numbers (lOglO 11-12 etu.g-1 ) of bacteria were incorporated into the microcapsules. Therefore the daily intake would be provided by 0.1 g microcapsules. The diameter and size distribution of microcapsules were determined by laser diffractometry. This showed a maximum microcapsule diameter of 2.22 mm with 50% (w/v) of the microcapsules having a diameter of < 0.637 mm. Although this represents a considerable size variation, this would not adversely affect mouthfeel of the beverages, as only 0.1 g microcapsules would be required to obtain at least 108 B. lactis in any volume of amasi or mahewu. To enumerate immobilised viable B. lactis, two techniques were compared. These involved the use of either a pestle and mortar, or high power ultrasound (HPUS) (20 kHz, 750 W). Results showed that HPUS was superior to the pestle and mortar technique. A short exposure (15 s) to HPUS disrupted the matrix releasing all entrapped etus, whereas when using the pestle and mortar xiii technique, cells remained partially entrapped in the gel. Therefore the pestle and mortar technique yielded lower cfu values than expected. The survival of microencapsulated B. lactis, in 1 M sodium phosphate buffer, was studied as a possible means of supply of microcapsules to industry for incorporation into foods. Microcapsules were stored in the buffer for 21 days at either 4°C or 22°C. Results showed that cell viability was not significantly reduced (p>0.05) at either temperature after 21 days. Hence this form of storage could be used to deliver viable immobilised B. lactis to the food industry. In order to assess the survival of immobilised B. lactis in the GIT, the microcapsules were incubated at 37°C over a period of 240 min in simulated gastric juice (SGJ) (pH 1.5). Viable counts were performed by sampling at regular intervals. A similar study was done in simulated bile and pancreatic juices (BPJ) (pH 6.5). In SGJ, it was demonstrated that there was a significant reduction (3 log cycles) (p<0.05) of free cells after 240 min. However, this trend was not noted for microencapsulated B. lactis. Therefore, the gellanxanthan gel matrix protected B. lactis from the lethal effect of SGJ. In BPJ, no significant difference (p>0.05) was noted for surviving fractions of both immobilised and free B. lactis. Commercial pasteurised amasi (pH 4.4) and mahewu (pH 3.5) were selected as the supply vehicles for the microencapsulated B. lactis. Known numbers of viable microencapsulated and free B. lactis cells were added to both beverages. For most samples, incubation was at either 4°C or 22°C for 21 days in the presence of atmospheric oxygen. In addition, free cells were incubated anaerobically at 22°C. As oxygen is limiting in the microcapsules, these were not incubated under anaerobic conditions. The survival I shelf-life studies of commercial amasi indicated no significant difference (p>0.05) in survival rate between immobilised and free B. lactis cells. The reduction noted for viable counts of immobilised or free B. lactis cells was approximately 1.5 log cycles. Even so, after 21 days viable immobilised B. lactis (1010 0.1 g'l microcapsules) remained in excess of the daily intake 108 , whereas in the free B. lactis cells, the viable count declined to 106 mr1 . Statistical analyses showed that temperature or oxygen presence had little effect on the survival of both immobilised or free B. lactis cells (p>O.05). In mahewu, decline in viability of cells was observed for most samples. However microencapsulation enhanced cell survival at both 4°C and 22°C when compared to free cells. The decrease in viable B. lactis free cells occurred more rapidly (3 log cycles) in mahewu, than in amasi, at both 4°C and 22°C. Throughout the shelf-life studies it was apparent that viable B. lactis cell numbers did not increase. This was advantageous as metabolites associated with B. lactis growth would have adversely altered the taste of both amasi and mahewu. Sensory evaluation of the traditional fermented African beverages, enriched with either viable immobilised or free B. lactis, was done in order to determine consumer response to the product. An analytically trained 12-member taste panel analysed the beverages for colour, texture, and taste. The triangle taste test procedure was used. No differences were detected with regard to texture, and colour of the fermented beverages containing immobilised B. lactis. However, in the fermented beverages containing free cells, a change in viscosity was noted. There was a significant difference (p<O.05) recorded in flavour for both amasi and mahewu containing free B. lactis cells. In the two fermented beverages enriched with immobilised cells, significant (p<O.05) flavour differences were detected in mahewu. However, this was not observed in the amasi samples containing immobilised B. lactis. Therefore, in order to retain the sensory properties of amasi, B. lactis should be supplied in microcapsules. In mahewu, although flavour differences noted were not unpleasant to the panellists, results from this study indicate that the use of commercial flavoured mahewu should be considered as a supply vehicle for microencapsulated B. lactis. Overall, this study demonstrated that immobilisation of B. lactis in gellan-xanthan gum is possible. Microcapsules produced contained high numbers of viable B. lactis, and were suitable for incorporation into soft foods. The gel matrix significantly protected viable cells from harsh conditions associated with SGJ. Although the surviving fraction of immobilised cells, when compared to free cells, was not improved in amasi samples, it is recommended that for technological reasons associated with production of amasi, microencapsulation should be used. In mahewu, microencapsulation enhanced B. lactis survival at both 4°C and 22°C. Therefore immobilisation of B. lactis in mahewu is necessary in order to maintain the daily intake. Immobilised B. lactis should be incorporated into both beverages after fermentation, and pasteurisation.
613

Americans in South Africa, 1784-1870

Booth, Alan R. January 1964 (has links)
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This study discusses the course and consequences of Americans -- traders, whalers, explorers and missionaries -- in South Africa between 1784 and 1870. Sources for the study included logbooks, personal and business papers of merchants and ship captains, colonial records, and missionary letters. Research was carried on in libraries and archives in the United States and Great Britain. Yankee whalers found by the late eighteenth century that South African waters, especially in the vicinity of Walvis and Delagoa Bays, abounded with right whales. The whalers' activities in Cape waters included not only conventional trade at Cape Town and Simons Town, but also considerable trade and intercourse with Africans along the coasts. The trade of Americans with South Africa began as the result of their quest for new world markets prompted by the withdrawal of trade advantages by Great Britain after the American Revolution. The Cape of Good Hope came to be valued by merchants as a place where a general cargo might be sold and another loaded for markets either in the Orient, the West Indies, or the United States. Located on a major trade route, the Cape was valued as a place where information on world markets could be obtained. American trade was discouraged and frequently interrupted by British and Dutch regulatory acts and discriminatory duties. But after the early thirties, with the rise of the American glove, shoe and tanning industries, the importation of hides and skins from South Africa firmly established the trade. With the rise of the wool trade by the late forties, commercial relations were further strengthened. Thereafter, while the Cape continued to be a limited market, it was conditions in America which primarily influenced the commerce: the American Civil War and various United States tariff acts determined the quantity and character of the staple Cape export to America, wool. Missionaries from the American Board arrived in South Africa in 1835. Motivated largely by the millenarian tradition, they came to preach the gospel and save "heathen" souls before the Second Coming. Their early efforts were unsuccessful. The Interior Mission to Mzilikazi was plagued by sickness, and finally withdrew after the Boer attack on Mosega in 1837. In Natal, after a more encouraging start with Dingaan's Zulus, the Maritime Mission was again forced to flee after the massacre of the trekboers in February, 1838. Two missionaries remained in South Africa, and by 1839 they had returned to Natal. The growth of the Mission over the next three decades was steady but moderate, marred in part by the missionaries' prejudices and conservative attitudes toward African customs and education. Gradually more tolerant attitudes began to prevail among the missionaries, with the resultant strengthening of the Mission. Churches were formed and became self-supporting, and by 1870 there were African pastors in the field. By the thirties, the sum total of American involvement had brought sharp reaction from Cape Europeans. American munitions smuggling to the Zulus was a cause of concern, and there were fears that American trading and missionary activity in Natal signified colonial ambitions there on the part of the United States. It was an American merchant ship in Port Natal which finally prompted Governor Napier's decision in 1841 to reoccupy Natal. American consuls in South Africa were relatively inactive until the American Civil War, when the Alabama captured a Union merchantman in Table Bay. Ensuing complications, including a supposed American territorial violation at Angra Pequena, clouded American-British relations until the Geneva Arbitration award in 1872. / 2031-01-01
614

Cosmopolitan Encounters: Sanskrit and Persian at the Mughal Court

Truschke, Audrey Angeline January 2012 (has links)
In this dissertation, I analyze interactions between Sanskrit and Persian literary cultures at the Mughal court during the years 1570-1650 C.E. During this period, the Mughals rose to prominence as one of the most powerful dynasties of the early modern world and patronized Persian as a language of both literature and empire. Simultaneously, the imperial court supported Sanskrit textual production, participated in Sanskrit cultural life, and produced Persian translations of Sanskrit literature. For their part, Sanskrit intellectuals became influential members of the Mughal court, developed a linguistic interest in Persian, and wrote extensively about their imperial experiences. Yet the role of Sanskrit at the Mughal court remains a largely untold story in modern scholarship, as do the resulting engagements across cultural lines. To the extent that scholars have thought about Sanskrit and Persian in tandem, they have generally been blinded by their own language barriers and mistakenly asserted that there was no serious interaction between the two. I challenge this uncritical view through a systematic reading of texts in both languages and provide the first detailed account of exchanges between these traditions at the Mughal court. I further argue that these cross-cultural events are central to understanding the construction of power in the Mughal Empire and the cultural and literary dynamics of early modern India.
615

The Broken Spell: The Romance Genre in Late Mughal India

Khan, Mohamad January 2013 (has links)
This study is concerned with the Indian "romance" (qissah) genre, as it was understood from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. Particularly during the Mughal era, oral and written romances represented an enchanted world populated by sorcerers, jinns, and other marvellous beings, underpinned by worldviews in which divine power was illimitable, and "occult" sciences were not treated dismissively. The promulgation of a British-derived rationalist-empiricist worldview among Indian élites led to the rise of the novel, accompanied by élite scorn for the romance as an unpalatably fantastic and frivolous genre. This view was developed by the great twentieth-century romance critics into a teleological account of the romance as a primitive and inadequate precursor of the novel, a genre with no social purpose but to amuse the ignorant and credulous. Using recent genre theory, this study examines the romance genre in Persian, Urdu, Punjabi, and Braj Bhasha. It locates the romance genre within a system of related and opposed genres, and considers the operation of multiple genres within texts marked as "romances," via communal memory and intertextuality. The worldviews that underpinned romances, and the purposes that romances were meant to fulfill, are thereby inspected. Chapters are devoted to the opposition and interpenetration of the "fantastic" romance and "factual" historiography (tarikh), to romances' function in client-patron relationships via panegyrics (madh), and to romances' restagings of moral arguments rehearsed in ethical manuals (akhlaq).
616

Art in between Empires: Visual Culture and Artistic Knowledge in Late Mughal Delhi, 1748-1857

Sharma, Yuthika January 2013 (has links)
This dissertation focuses on the artistic culture of late Mughal Delhi spanning the last century of Mughal rule and the administration of the English East India Company in North India, from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. It brings a hitherto unrecognized period of artistic accomplishment to light and studies the transformations within painting culture in the multicultural Anglo-Mughal society of Delhi. Rather than being fixated on the continuum of Mughal painting over centuries, this dissertation suggests that the art of the late Mughal period should be studied on its own terms as a response to immense socio-political and cultural changes. At its core this study is concerned with dissolving the stylistic barriers between Mughal and Company painting in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I take up the question of what the term 'late Mughal painting' entails and discuss how the term privileges the notion of a court centric culture of painting in an era when the Mughal court was only one of many venues of artistic expression. On the other hand, I highlight the inadequacy of the term 'Company painting' to address the variegated nature of works produced under East India Company patronage in this period. Thus, this dissertation attempts to view seemingly disparate works within a common framework of visual analysis. Moreover, it seeks to highlight the agency of painters in creating this diffusion of artistic conventions at Delhi and charts transitions in their working methods. In a period where the story of the Mughal empire appears as an appendage to the dominant historiography of the East India Company's rise to power, this investigation of painting culture in Delhi (the spiritual and historical center of Mughal power) reveals how paintings were critical for either maintaining or upsetting the status quo between court and Company and how this critical balance of power between the two was negotiated in the visual sphere. The first chapter of this dissertation discusses the role of cartography as a means for projecting Mughal imperial identity in the face of a growing Company dominance. Using a body of previously unexplored maps and cartographic drawings I show how painters used topographic markers to illustrate Mughal presence using both European and local conventions of drawing. Such works, I argue, also initiated the creation of visual histories of later Mughal rule at Delhi, as they pictured events often discussed in private correspondence, such as the famous bazgasht or Return of Shah Alam II (r. 1759-1806) to Delhi that marked the re-establishment of the Mughal house Delhi in 1772. Paintings produced in the royal court of Shah Alam II reflected upon the historical legacy of Mughal ideas while referencing the emotive context of Indo-Persian and Braj bhasha poetics that constituted the wider expressive culture of this period. Composed by the Delhi painter Khairullah, court scenes played upon the metaphorical significance of the long lost Peacock Throne of Shah Jahan re-imagining it within the space of the later Mughal court - thus creating a formidable visual imperial identity for the veteran blinded emperor Shah Alam II. Furthermore, Khairullah's younger colleague Ghulam Murtaza Khan took this legacy forward using the shared knowledge of Western perspective and Mughal painterly hieratic to create court scenes for Akbar II (r.1806-1836). His works can also be read for their clever subversion of the Company's attempts to conduct diplomatic meetings on an equal footing. The painter's innovative format for Mughal court scenes was modeled on the picture plane of a one-point perspective, which he used to draw attention to the centrally placed and physically higher figure of the emperor. This, in turn, relegated the figure of the British Resident to a mere courtier rather than the new arbitrator of power in Anglo-Mughal Delhi. Ghulam Murtaza Khan's paintings easily constitute the most substantial visual record of the Mughal court in the nineteenth century. As this dissertation reveals, a large majority of paintings produced in courtly and non-courtly settings were, in fact, executed by the same group of painters belonging to the family atelier of the painter Ghulam Ali Khan (active 1790-1855). This dissertation offers a first look into the network of painters active in Delhi during this period and also offers a plausible genealogy of their family. Later chapters of this dissertation highlight how Ghulam Ali Khan worked in different conventions - of Mughal manuscript painting, architectural, and landscape drawing, and miniatures - showcasing his ability to skillfully modify his technique to suit a particular patron. His working method also indicates that artistic knowledge available to the painter reached him through discrete channels such as the court atelier or through his training in European architectural draftsmanship. However, the melding of artistic conventions in the nineteenth century was subject to the will of the artist and the marketplace. I provide an overview of Ghulam Ali Khan's career spanning the breadth of his early work on architectural views of Delhi's buildings to his work on portrait studies of Delhi's residents for the newly powerful group of Company officers, William Fraser (1784-1835) and Colonel James Skinner (1778-1841). The dissertation also suggests a connection between Ghulam Ali Khan and the British topographical painter Thomas Daniell (1749-1840) through a study of Daniell's scraps (illustrated notes) from his private papers. Moreover, my research situates Ghulam Ali Khan as the driving force for painting at the Rajput court of Alwar and the Jat court of Jhajjar enabling us, for the first time, to create a near-complete picture of his career. This dissertation presents first time look into the pictorial archives at Alwar and uses new evidence to substantiate the painter's pivotal role in shaping painting culture at Alwar in the nineteenth century. The penultimate section of this dissertation presents facets of European patronage that link closely with the cultural and political conditions at Delhi. In particular, I examine the circumstances surrounding the commission of portraits of Delhi's residents by the Company officer William Fraser that were part of the (now) world famous album compiled between the years 1810 and 1825. I draw attention to the pragmatic considerations surrounding land settlement that bore upon Fraser's interest in creating a visual record of the Delhi countryside. Focusing on his professional role as the surveyor, I show how he was able to create an enduring model for land settlement that incorporated his personal and familial links with village residents in the region. This analysis provides the all important context for thinking about rural portraits in the Fraser Album, and their personal as well as professional appeal for Fraser. This dissertation also lays out a near complete picture of Fraser's friend James Skinner's professional life and his interest in creating a pictorial biography through commissions of albums and monumental paintings. Situating the paintings within the socio-political context of Skinner's rise from an adjunct Company officer to a decorated Mughal and Company servant, I discuss how Skinner's search for permanent recognition shaped the content of Ghulam Ali Khan's compositions. Finally, this dissertation charts the later years of painting at Delhi and its dilution into souvenir copies painted on ivory that I call, "Mughalerie". William Fraser's own interest in commissioning copies of popular paintings on ivory is noteworthy here, indicative of rise in the popular taste for European-styled miniatures based on Mughal ideas that fed into the emotional economy of Anglo-Indian residents of Delhi. Overall, this study of painting culture in Delhi aims at enriching the mainstream historiography of the modern period of Indian painting and offers a compelling reassessment of this transition period in Indian art history.
617

Variations on a Persian Theme: Adaptation and Innovation in Early Manuscripts from Golconda

Weinstein, Laura S. January 2011 (has links)
Scholarship on the earliest known illustrated manuscripts produced in the sultanate of Golconda has tended to describe these objects as the products of the extension of a powerful influence from Iran over this small kingdom in the Deccan. While this assessment rightly acknowledges the importance of Persianate visual traditions in early Golconda manuscripts and paintings, it oversimplifies the nature of these remarkable objects and the context of their production. In addition, it misrepresents the role of the artists involved in the manuscripts' creation. This dissertation provides a more nuanced consideration of these objects and their making. It offers the first in-depth discussion of six manuscripts produced in Golconda between 1570 and 1610, demonstrating a previously unrecognized sophistication and creativity in the process of their creation. It also presents a newly discovered manuscript, one which significantly alters prevailing understandings of early manuscript painting in the Qutb Shahi sultanate. These studies identify several interrelated modes of engagement with Persianate forms, rather than a single stylistic progression towards local artistic "independence." In addition, they reveal how these various modes were calibrated towards different goals, sometimes using Persianate forms as a platform from which to explore various ways of constructing and illustrating narrative and poetic texts, while at other times using these forms to make claims of cultural sophistication or for the legitimating of new and local cultural phenomena.
618

A New Public Theology: Sanskrit and Society in Seventeenth-century South India

Fisher, Elaine Marie January 2013 (has links)
This dissertation documents the earliest stages in the emergence of the Smarta Saiva sectarian community of south India as captured by the theological writings of prominent Saiva theologians. I examine the sectarianization of Hinduism in microcosm by telling the story of a particular Hindu sect in the process of coming into being. The Smarta Saiva tradition of south India ranks among a handful of independent Hindu lineages that palpably dominates the public religious life of south India today. As a sectarian religious system, Smarta-Saivism comprises the institution of the Sankaracarya Jagadgurus and the extensive lay populace that has cultivated a relationship of personal devotion with these iconic figures. Historically speaking, however, the Smarta-Saiva tradition equally comprises the trailblazing theologians who first articulated the boundaries of the community, demarcating its distinct sectarian identity in contradistinction to its various Vaisnava and non-Smarta Saiva rivals. As it was these theologians whose pioneering inquiries crafted the systems of meaning that first gave birth to Smarta-Saivism as such, it is in their writings--their doctrine, polemic, ritual procedures, and devotional poetry--that this dissertation grounds its inquiry. My analysis centers on the textual contributions of Nilakantha Diksita--minister, poet laureate, and public theologian of Nayaka-period Madurai, and those connected with him by virtue of kinship, collegiality, or direct antagonism. Nilakantha and his immediate family and dialogical partners form the core of what I refer to as the "Smarta religious system" of the seventeenth century, culturally a direct antecedent of what we know today as south Indian Smarta-Saivism. My analysis takes the form of three parallel case studies, each of which illuminates a dynamic of intersection between intellectual discourse and religious culture that proved foundational to the religious landscape of south India up to the present day. Taken as a whole, these case studies illustrate the micro-dynamics of public theology, articulating key moments of the consolidation of south Indian Smarta identity and religiosity.
619

Legacies of Colonial History: Region, Religion and Violence in Postcolonial Gujarat

Chandrani, Yogesh Rasiklal January 2013 (has links)
This dissertation takes the routine marginalization and erasure of Muslim presence in the contemporary social and political life of the western Indian state of Gujarat as an entry point into a genealogy of Gujarati regionalism. Through a historical anthropology of the reconfiguration of the modern idea of Gujarat, I argue that violence against religious minorities is an effect of both secular nation-building and of religious nationalist mobilization. Given this entanglement, I suggest that we rethink the oppositional relationship between religion and the secular in analyzing violence against Muslims in contemporary Gujarat. The modern idea of Gujarat, I further argue, cannot be grasped without taking into consideration how local conceptions of region and of religion were fundamentally altered by colonial power. In particular, I suggest that the construction of Islam as inessential and external to the idea of Gujarat is a legacy bequeathed by colonialism and its forms of knowledge. The transmutation of Gujarati Muslims into strangers, in other words, occurred simultaneously with the articulation of the modern idea of Gujarat in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I focus in particular on the role of nineteenth-century regional history-writing, in which the foundational role of Islam was de-emphasized, in what I call the making of a regional tradition. By highlighting the colonial genealogy of contemporary discourses of Gujaratni asmita (pride in Gujarat), in which Hindu and Gujarati are posited as identical with each other, I argue that colonialism was one of its conditions of possibility. One result of this simultaneous reconfiguration of religion and region, I argue, is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to inhabit a Hindu religious identity that is not at the same time articulated in opposition to a Muslim Other in Gujarat. Another consequence is that it is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for Muslims to represent themselves or advocate for their rights as Muslim and as Gujarati. How the reconfiguration of a Gujarati regional identity is imbricated with transformations in conceptions of religion is part of what this dissertation seeks to think about. Furthermore, I argue that the marginalization of Muslims in Gujarat cannot be understood through an exclusive focus on organized violence or on the Hindu nationalist movement. While recent studies on Gujarat have focused mainly on the pogrom of 2002 to think about the role of the Hindu nationalist movement in orchestrating mass violence against Muslims in contemporary Gujarat, I argue that the pogrom of 2002 is but one part of a broader spectrum of violence and exclusion that permeates the body of the state and society. In addition, I suggest that one of the conditions of possibility for such violence is the sedimentation of a conception of Gujaratiness as identical with Hinduness that cuts across the religious/secular divide. Instead of focusing exclusively on the violence of the Hindu nationalist movement, I explore this process of sedimentation as it manifests itself in the intersecting logics of urban planning, heritage preservation, and neoliberal development in contemporary Gujarat. Through an analysis of the contemporary reorganization and partitioning of the city of Ahmedabad along religious lines, I show how it is continuous with colonial and nationalist urban planning practices of the early twentieth century. Using ethnographic examples, I also argue that the contemporary secular nationalist discourse of heritage preservation is both complicit in the marginalization of Muslims and continuous with practices of urban planning and preservation that were articulated in the late colonial period. Finally, my dissertation demonstrates the enabling nature of neoliberal logics in the organization of violence against Muslims in Gujarat and argues that anti-Muslim violence and prejudice are enabled by and intertwined with narratives about the promises of capital and progress. Combining historical and ethnographic methods, this dissertation seeks to contribute to an anthropology of colonialism, nationalism, religion, secularism and violence in South Asia that is attentive to the continuities and discontinuities that are constitutive of the postcolonial present we inhabit. By historicizing contemporary debates and assumptions about Muslims in Gujarat and describing some of the genealogies that have contributed to their sedimentation, I hope to have argued that colonial legacies have enduring effects in the present and that the question posed by colonial forms of knowledge and representation is not merely epistemological or historiographical but also a political one. Written as a history of the present, this dissertation is motivated by a desire to imagine a future in which Hindu/Gujarati and Muslim are no longer conceptualized as oppositional categories; in which Gujarati Muslims are able to represent themselves as Muslims and in their own (varied) terms; and where Hindus are no longer invited and incited to inhabit a subjectivity that depends on making Muslims strangers to Gujarat.
620

Sifuna umlando wethu (We are Searching for Our History): Oral Literature and the Meanings of the Past in Post-apartheid South Africa

Buthelezi, Mbongiseni Patrick January 2012 (has links)
In post-apartheid South Africa, working through the distortions of identity and history of the formerly colonized, as well as the traumas suffered by black South Africans as a result of the alienation of land by European settlers is an ongoing project of the state. The state's attempts to formulate an appropriate national myth with founding heroes and significant events that resonate with the majority has resulted in the promotion of certain figures as heroes. Not all black South Africans who are exhorted to identify with these figures consider them heroes. Some trace the beginnings of the fragmentation of their historical identities to the conquest actions of these figures. Shaka kaSenzangakhona, founder of the Zulu kingdom, is one such figure who is being promoted as the heritage of all Zulus by the state, especially at the level of the province of KwaZulu-Natal, for purposes of constructing a heritage for the province and of encouraging tourism. This promotion of Shaka is seen by some as the perpetuation under the post-1994 dispensation of the suppression of their histories and the disallowing of engagement with a longer history than the reorganization of chieftainship from 1927 and the seizure of land belonging to Africans from 1913. Hence has sprung up groups convening around pre-Zulu kinship identities since the early 1990's in which people attempt to find answers to the question "Who am I?" For most people, this question is driven by a sense that their conceptions of the country's past and of their historical selves (i.e. of the experiences of their predecessors that have brought them to where they are in the present) have been either influenced, mis(in)formed or distorted by the national master narratives that crystallized under European colonial rule and apartheid, even as they were simultaneously being resisted. Informed in part the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the late 1990's and the state's attempts to "redress the imbalances of the past," many feel they need to work through the meanings of the past in their personal lives in order to inhabit the present with a fuller sense of how they have come to be who they are and so that they can imagine and create different futures for themselves. In this project I examine the attempt of people who trace their history to the Ndwandwe kingdom that was destroyed by Shaka's Zulu forces in the 1820's who have organized themselves into an association named the uBumbano lwamaZwide (Unity Association of the Zwides) to engage with questions of identity and the meanings of the past. The association comprises a group of activists in different parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces who have been meeting since 2003 to attempt to bring together on a large scale people of Ndwandwe, Nxumalo and other historically-associated clans to recall and/or construct a heroic past in post-apartheid South Africa. Implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, the assembly of the Ndwandwe calls into question the definition as Zulu of those Ndwandwe whose forebears were incorporated into the Zulu kingdom in the 1820's.I analyze the use of the idiom of heritage as well as a traditional idiom of kinship that has come to be handed down as a Zulu language for mediating social relations by the uBumbano in ways that challenge the centrality given to Shaka in narrations of the past. I argue that the uBumbano is using these idioms against how they are commonly understood - heritage as a mode of engaging with the past for its feel-good features and kinship as a Zulu idiom in KwaZulu-Natal province. Through an analysis of three closely related oral artistic forms - the izibongo (personal praises) of Shaka in his promotion and the ihubo lesizwe (`national' hymn), izithakazelo (kinship group or clan address names) of the Ndwandwe as well as the personal praises of Zwide, the last Ndwandwe ruler before the fall of the kingdom - I argue that the uBumbano is deploying these forms in subtle ways to overturn the dominance of Shaka in public discourse. Moreover, I contend, the uBumbano is turning on its head the permission to recall their ancestors under the authority of the Zulu ruling elite that Ndwandwe people who were incorporated into the Zulu kingdom have been permitted for almost two centuries. I demonstrate how the language of being an isizwe (`nation') was permitted and perpetuated a Ndwandwe identity that has held the potential to be asserted more forcefully to overturn its secondary position to an overarching Zulu identity.

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