Text in English / Oruuano is an Independent Church in Namibia founded in 1955 because of members of the Herero community breaking away from the Rhenish Mission Church. Oruuano has the same doctrinal position as the Evangelical Lutheran Churches. In all church services it uses the standard Lutheran liturgical forms and the Otjiherero Lutheran hymnal. Belief in the ancestors is strong among the Herero. It is centred around the holy fire that is found between the main house of the head man and the cattle's kraal. The church does not acknowledge the ancestors, but it allows its members to venerate their ancestors outside the church. The church's approach is that of tacit consent. This dissertation discusses this approach and concludes that Oruuano cannot remain silent on the ancestors any longer. Time has come to deal with it theologically, showing the supremacy of Christ, while integrating Herero traditional practices and spirituality with the worship and practice of Oruuano. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M.Th. (Missiology)

Situated within the fields of diplomatic history and comparative genocide studies, this thesis examines the German colonial period from the standpoint of German-British relations before, during and after the Second Boer War in British South Africa (1899-1902) and the Herero and Nama War in German South West Africa (present-day Namibia, 1904-1908). I contend that German and British diplomatic efforts at cordiality functioned as a means of tacitly condoning each power’s humanitarian abuses—or at least “letting them slide”—for the sake of stability both on the European Continent and within the colonies. Despite activism against reported maltreatment and violence—even among citizens of “the perpetrating power” and among those of “the observing power”­—neither the German nor the British government was willing to chastise the other openly, for fear of alienating a key ally. Only with the advent of the First World War, when the former allies became enemies, did an explosion of criticism of each other’s maltreatment of their colonial subjects erupt. In the wake of German defeat, the British victors reaped the spoils of war—including the ability to shape perceptions of what had happened nearly two decades before in the African colonies—and succeeded in expropriating the German overseas territories in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. From this narrative the following conclusion emerges: German and British official responses to humanitarian concerns in the colonies were dictated not by morality or compassion but rather by realpolitik expediency. And, as often in history, the one-sided narrative that emerged from this rather hypocritical series of events continues to skew perceptions of both British and German colonialism today. Thus, as a whole, this thesis poses broad theoretical questions regarding the politicization of morality and the social construction of genocide classifications, as well as the extent to which changing perceptions of violent conflicts have played a role in how the international community has categorized these conflicts through legal means in the wake of the Holocaust.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brandeis University, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 29, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Is it probable that a reader can have an empathetic and learning experience of an historical event facilitated through text? Research in neuroscience indicates that the form of a text can trigger mirror neurons, enhancing empathy with the events and characters portrayed and enabling introspective learning through stimulation of the default state network in a reading brain. Narrative elements in historical and fictional literature are analyzed for their potential in facilitating the stimulation of these states. The historical fiction novel Morenga by Uwe Timm is analyzed in order to deduce what a reader neurologically experiences in relation to the text and the historical event portrayed in the novel during the reading process. The probability of the reader experiencing empathy and learning through text so that their perspectives on inter-textual and extra-textual similar events are affected is then developed.

Is it probable that a reader can have an empathetic and learning experience of an historical event facilitated through text? Research in neuroscience indicates that the form of a text can trigger mirror neurons, enhancing empathy with the events and characters portrayed and enabling introspective learning through stimulation of the default state network in a reading brain. Narrative elements in historical and fictional literature are analyzed for their potential in facilitating the stimulation of these states. The historical fiction novel Morenga by Uwe Timm is analyzed in order to deduce what a reader neurologically experiences in relation to the text and the historical event portrayed in the novel during the reading process. The probability of the reader experiencing empathy and learning through text so that their perspectives on inter-textual and extra-textual similar events are affected is then developed.

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Bibliography: pages 194-207. / This contextual archaeological narrative explores the relationship between material culture and social relations, with reference to social, economic, environmental and political changes taking place in Himba and Herero settlements in far north-western Namibia. A starting point is that changes in the organization of space and use of material culture cannot be understood as merely expressing changed social and economic conditions and/or changed value systems. It is necessary to examine how socio-economic conditions and cultural values and ideas work together to transform, produce and maintain cultural representations. By focusing intimately on one semi-nomadic herding community over a five-year period,(where domestic space has to be reconstituted, both physically and conceptually, each time a group relocates,} the study probes how meaning is differentially invested in the spatial order that people build and live in, how the material goods they make, borrow, lend, buy and use recursively come to have and hold meaning, and how and why this meaning changes. In mapping space and material goods at more than 100 wet season and dry season camps and homesteads, a number of discourses are tracked: changing gender relations, changing relations between different generations, people's relationships with natural resources, the spatial relations of former hunter-gatherers now living as herders, as well as material culture conformities and nonconformities between Himba and Herero households. A key concern is to re-empower social actors, past and present, in the creation of (archaeological) meaning. A number of case studies show that meaning is not inherent in space or material goods; people activate meaning by their strategic interpretations. This has implications for both method and theory in archaeology, as well as for the contemporary research and rural development process in Africa. While challenging assumptions about what is knowable from the past's material remains when such remains are, inevitably, recontextualized in a particular present, the thesis contributes to knowledge about material culture and social change and thus offers a number of research directions which could contribute to a more reflexive, dialogic and socially relevant archaeology.