Health and well-being are the central concerns for most African people. If health and well-being (utano) is the top priority for most Africans, the general and almost complete breakdown of the Zimbabwean public health care system in the past decade (2000-2010) has had far-reaching repercussions on the whole populace. Whereas African theology and religious studies have expended considerable energy in addressing the theme of health and well-being, there have been limited attempts at developing indigenous theologies. This study plugs the gap in the available scholarly literature by proposing a Karanga theology of health and well-being paying particular attention to a specific community‘s responses to the health delivery systems in Zimbabwe. Through an examination of indigenous responses to health and well-being and critiquing the collapse of the health delivery systems in the period 2000-2010, the study argues that understanding health agency in contemporary Zimbabwe enables appreciating the centrality of utano (health and well-being). This study also seeks to establish the agency of the community in responding to the national health care crisis, focusing specially on the Karanga community in Murinye district. It explores the Karanga healthworlds and documents the agency of the Karanga health-seekers and health-care providers in responding to the health-care crisis. The major focus of the study is to establish how the Karanga navigate the existing religious and medical facilities (Modern scientific bio-medicine; Traditional healing and Faith-healing) in their search for healing by conducting fieldwork research which entailed the use of interviews and participant observation. The study was also influenced by oral theology based on the community‘s underlying faith experiences. It also relied upon the life history approach and narrative theology to establish trends and patterns in the Karanga medical system. The study concludes by exploring some useful and life-giving Karanga indigenous resources that can be utilized in constructing a Karanga theology of health and well-being in contemporary Zimbabwe. A Karanga theology of utano places emphasis on a liberative motif which is life-giving and life-enhancing. This includes acknowledging the agency of health-seekers who are actively involved in their own welfare. It argues that utano is achieved when, on the basis of indigenous beliefs and Christian beliefs regarding health, individuals and families invest in refusing to accept ill-health. Information drawn from study participants demonstrated how they sought the opinions of traditional healers, prophet healers and modern health practitioners whenever they felt that their condition was compromised. The study foregrounds the fact that for the Karanga people, issues of health and well-being cannot be separated from their religious perspectives. There are diverse religious traditions among the Karanga people and these inform their understanding of utano. As such, the three health delivery systems should not be viewed as competitors for clients but more importantly, they should be viewed as complementing each other. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

[Truncated abstract] Molokans are a Russian sectarian community that has been a transnational diasporic community since their exile from southern Russia in 1839. During the 1839 exodus they were relocated to Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. These countries make up a region referred to by Molokans as Transcaucasia located in and around the Caucasus Mountains. A further migration to Turkmenistan followed in 1889. Since that time, Molokans have settled in Iran, the United States of America, Mexico, Australia and Brazil. The colonies in Brazil and Mexico have disbanded with members re-joining Molokan communities in the United States of America and Australia. The communities remain in contact with one another and with various Molokan communities still existing in the Russian Soviet Socialist Federal Republic. Molokans are characterised by a religious structure of lay ministers and elders in a traditional, patriarchal social community. They are a collectivity of churches (there is no hierarchy between the churches) and sub-groups who practise varying degrees of adherence to Molokan dogma. They are a millenarian, charismatic religious community similar to Pentecostals and Anabaptists with the exception that they have ceased to evangelise and have become ‘closed’ communities practising endogamy. Given their closed structure, relatively little is known about this group in mainstream society . . . Spirituality, in the form of prophecy, healing, and the shared expression of religious ecstasy (rejoicing in the Holy Spirit) provides a sense of communitas that helps to bind the communities. Persecution in Russia and in the United States of America promoted mistrust of outsiders and contributed to the closure of social boundaries. Interventionist and reform activities in both Russia and the United States of America reinforced the belief that social closure was the only way to maintain cultural continuity. Their shared history of migration and persecution contributes to the building of a core community identity.

Current scholarship on the devotional practices of late medieval England has emphasized two representations of Christ. The first, considered the dominant trend, is that of the suffering Christ; the second, a minor, but important trend particularly for female audiences, is the maternal Christ. Both are revealing of the nature of late medieval Christo-centric devotion. This project contributes to the understanding of late medieval Christocentric devotion in England during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by examining the representation of Christ in a martial role, as presented to clerical and lay audiences through the medium of popular sermons. It is a new contribution to the scholarship of late medieval devotion in its demonstration of a multifaceted Christ; the martial Christ echoes, but in many ways also contrasts, the images of the suffering and maternal Christ, in order to provide its audience with a more complex rendering of the human Christ, one which may have been more accessible to a lay populace seeking to form a relationship with him. This project also contributes to the growing field of sermon studies, intended to be comprehensive in nature. It uses a different approach to sermon studies, in that the entire corpus of nearly 4,500 sermons was reviewed. This was done in order to provide the most complete picture of the martial Christ. As a result, this project examines Christ in various martial roles, as well as his modelling of knighthood for kings, knights, preachers, and the laity. These representations were utilised by preachers to instruct their audiences in devotional practice, specifically forms of affective meditation; it was used as a didactic tool to teach the laity the complex doctrines of redemption and atonement; and finally, it was employed as a means to demonstrate the importance of right living in order to fulfill what Christ had promised on the cross, that is eternal salvation.

Animals were given a preponderant position in Egyptian art, symbolism, and cultual practices. This thesis centres on the relationship between humans and animals during the predynastic period in Upper Egypt (Naqada I-IIIB, 4th millennium BCE), focusing on hippopotamus and crocodile as representatives of the Nile environment and antelope species as representatives of the desert environment. Depictions of these animals are analysed and compared with contemporary faunal remains derived from activities such as cult, funerary, or every day consumption. The material analysed covers several centuries: temporal evolutions and changes have been identified. The animals studied in this thesis were first used by the Naqada I-IIB elites as means to visually and practically express their power, which they envisioned in two contrasting and complementary ways. The responsibilities of the leaders were symbolised by the annihilation of negative wild forces primarily embodied by antelope species. In contrast, they symbolically appropriated positive wild forces, chief among them being the hippopotamus, from which they symbolically derived their power. Faunal remains from after mid-Naqada II are few, depictions of hippopotamus disappeared and those of crocodile became rare. Antelope species became preponderant, especially on D-ware vessels, which were accessible to non-elite people. However, toward the end of the predynastic period, antelope species came to be depicted almost exclusively on high elite material; they lost their individuality and became generic representatives of chaotic forces that the leaders and early rulers had to annihilate in order to maintain control and order.

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Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Thesis (DPhil (Drama)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / This study aims to describe the puppet, mask and actor as icons or mediums in performance in Africa. The types of performances that will be discussed are religious performances, as well as liminal and hybrid performances. It is in the cases where the mask and puppet are used in religious performances, such as rituals, that the iconic characteristics or values are added to the mediumship of the object. In such cases, these objects do not represent concepts/thoughts/persons/spirits; they are these things in the space of the ritual. Matters pertaining to representation and acting are discussed, since iconic representation does not allow for acting from the performer. The actor can function with, or independently, as an icon, while all these performance elements can function as mediums in a performance using acting or role-play. These different concepts are then applied by discussing the term performance. The different elements of a performance and its characteristics – such as the use of time, space, objects, productivity and rule of a performance – are explained. The creation of a performance through the use of restored behaviour as well as the possible results of a performance in the sense of transportation and transformation as temporary or permanent changes in the performers or audience members is then addressed in the discussion. Different performance genres such as rituals and social drama will be used to describe the function of the mask, puppet and actor in liminal and liminoid performances, and to show how these different performance objects function as icons and/or mediums in these genres. Hybrid forms of performance that cannot be classified as purely liminal or liminoid performances are also studied, since these types of performances are often found in contemporary performances in Africa. The production Tall Horse is used to apply performance theory to see how the different performance objects function in changed context in a hybrid performance.