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This paper deals with an archaeological and geographical approach of the settlement process in a large valley of Yemen, the wâdî al‑Jawf. By studying epigraphic sources and archaeological data, several sites were informed within a database; their hierarchical status has been quantified on the basis of functional considerations and they were analysed through a GIS. Mapping these sites by period helps to figure out the dynamic process affecting the urban network of this region, taking into account the hierarchical weight of each site, their evolution into the urban pattern and their long‑term evolution. Looking at this mapping, some ancient considerations on the reasons of the collapse of these cities, in one of the most important area of pre‑Islamic Yemen, are to be put into perspective. Until now, socio‑historical factors were mainly used to explain the decline of these South‑Arabian cities. Indeed, these factors are to be considered, but only as having hastened the fall. The deep causes seem to be linked to a recession of the flood irrigating the fields twice a year. Indeed, the maps show, in a dynamic perspective, the slow decline and the collapse of the main cities from downstream to upstream, following the contour lines of the relief of the slightly tilted plain. This recession is understandable on the one hand by the over‑silting of the irrigation network but also, and most probably, by the increase of the number of water catchments on the Highlands, drainage basin of the Jawf valley.

This paper focuses on past and present migration of Ethiopian women to Yemen. While Yemen is predominantly seen as a sending country in terms of migration, increasing numbers of Ethiopian women have migrated to Yemen in order to take up paid employment as domestic workers since the 1990s. Although Ethiopian women already came to Yemen in the 1960s and 1970s, most of them did so with Yemeni husbands who had settled in Ethiopia. Migration scholars sometimes make a distinction between women who migrate to “follow” their husbands, and women who migrate “independently”. Based on the life stories of two Ethiopian women this distinction will be critically analyzed. While the context and conditions in which they migrated differ, there are also some continuities, in particular with regard to their employment and social status in Yemen. This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork and in‑depth interviews carried out in Sana’a and al‑Ḥudayda in 2003–2006.

At the heart of democratic instability in most African countries is the fact that the state operates in a largely amoral milieu which makes it possible for politicians and other managers of state to abuse their positions in pursuit of private ends. This paper examines the origins and manifestations of this amoral milieu, and the ways in which it leads to a pervasive belief that the state is neither credible nor capable of pursuing the collective good of citizens. This exacerbates the endemic legitimacy crisis which has characterized African statehood since colonial times. The paper shows how amoral familism is linked with the legitimacy crisis and argues that democratic stability will be difficult to attain for as long as the amorality of the political order remains.

This paper presents some applications of SWATWOL, a morphological parser of Swahili, for information retrieval. It presents a solution to the problem of retrieving accurate linguistic information in a language, where word formation branches out from the lemma to both directions. After discussing technical problems and their solution, some research tasks that have been carried out, or which are in process, are described. Among those are: testing dictionaries, retrieval of loan words from running text, word?form distribution of lemmas, and total distribution of words (counted according to lemmas) in different types of text. The obviously most important application is the production of a database for dictionary compilers, with a selection of contexts of use for each lemma.

The cowrie currency, the dominant medium of exchange in Ghana before the introduction of the West African Pound and, later, the Cedi, is now merely a vestigial relic in virtually all of modern Ghana except among the Dagaaba. This paper provides an insider's perspective on the economic importance and on the unique role of the cowrie currency among the Dagaaba that explains its perpetual presence. Cultural uses create a derived demand for cowries. Government policies result in debasement of the cedi and, together with monetary characteristics of the cowrie, lead to competition between the cedi and the cowrie.

In their search for solutions to the development problems of Africa, students of African development have often ignored linguistic and other socio?cultural resources (Prah 1993). When linguistic issues are addressed at all, the fact that there is a multiplicity of languages in African countries is often seen as a hindrance to the development of the continent. This paper focuses on the relationship between language and development and offers a specific proposal for addressing issues of language policy and planning in Africa. Taking the language situation in Ghana as a case study, a model of development communication and education termed localized trilingualism is proposed; a model, it is believed, will enable Africa to harness its multilingual resources for accelerated and sustainable socio?cultural, economic and technological development in the 21st century.

This paper is about the contribution of women to the moral health and uprightness of African society. It begins with a discussion of the role of women as moral teachers in African families and underscores the centrality of women in the moral upbringing of children. As part of their traditional care-giving roles, African women have been in a unique and strategic position not only to produce and sustain life but also to instill socio-religious values and moral standards in the family and society. This moral education includes teaching children personal discipline, how to uphold sexual morality, what is expected of them at various stages of their lives as well as the moral requirements of chastity, marital fidelity and family responsibilities for men, women and children. The discussion next turns to an explanation of the role of women in religion and takes up the twin issues of the role and position of women in African Christian churches and their contribution to community worship life. It is argued that through their healing ministry and pastoral infrastructure, a great number of women in Africa play a key role in bringing love to the continent and a sense of hope and optimism to those who live in despair. This role is closely linked to their involvement in various peace processes and efforts at conflict resolution in and outside Africa, particularly in strife-torn regions of the continent. The author presents some of the subtle and explicit ways in which the dominant male ideology has consistently used female sexuality to reinforce female subordination and devalue women's moral role in African society. The last part of the paper deals with the issues of moral delocalization, social change and modernization in Africa, and how these processes have re-defined the role of women and the overall moral character of African societies. The conclusion stresses that both the empowerment of women and re-assessment of traditional family values and moral standards must be addressed if the moral health of African societies is to be improved.

‘Rejected’, in the heading of this contribution — as you may guess — is when or where a writer’s script is turned down. ‘Published’ is reference for the contrary. We are grateful to Adams A Bodomo of the University of Hong Kong, China, who indirectly influenced our design of this paper’s title, a paper seeking to understand and to portray the academic and power relationships among Africa’s authors and outside publishers and editors.

The published interview with working writers, both in journals and in anthologies, is an example of what can be termed both metatext and paratext. Though frequently cited in academic research, the literary interview nevertheless remains largely uninvestigated for its aims, content, strategies and critical exploitation, and in the emergent field of Western scholarship in African literatures and given the problems of cultural dissemination in Africa itself, it is apparent that the production and role of literary interviews, while important in practice, are particularly open to question. Within the context of African literature in particular, the aim of this paper is to open up discussion in both literary and sociolinguistic terms of (i) the interviewer's intention and the interviewee's response; (ii) strategies involved in transcribing, editing and publication, including discussion of the relative status of the oral interview in printed form and the interviewer's and/or interviewee's ’right’ to alter the original interview; and (iii) the academic and general use, and abuse, of published and unpublished interviews.

As urban and rural centres in Nigeria experienced population explosion in ethnic composition, ethnic disharmony and apathy increased over social and economic policies of the government. State sovereignty can no longer be regarded as only for protection against external interference, but as a charge of responsibility, whereby the state is made to be accountable for both internal and external mandates. In Africa, states have failed to take the responsibility for their citizens' welfare. This, to some extent, had precipitated to politics of ethnic and national identity. "Who am I? Where do I belong?" This paper examines ethnic relations and development in Nigeria in the light of the present ethnic tension which has gripped the country in the past few years. The understanding of the feelings and thoughts of the people in terms of resource competition may help to find a common ground for solutions to ethnic inequality and conflict.

From men to gods, from aesthetics to art, from textile design to ancestral screens, from the living to the dead, Kalabari idea of perfection is the collage, the composite, the blend. In Kalabari culture, the provocative, the excitable, the lovable, the acceptable or the ideal does not stand apart at the hill top nor dwells in the valley, but adheres at the conjunction of the extremes. This concept of the ideal type principally derives from predilection to borrowing, transformation and reinterpretation of ‘foreign elements.’ This paper is not concerned with Kalabari ability to borrow and adapt, but to show where in their evaluation system they locate the beautiful, the dangerous, the powerful, and the exceptional. My investigations have shown that the position in the evaluation spectrum that indicate excellence, danger or power are often points that are embodiments of differing categories . The admixture category, not the pure, is what is held up to be the high point.

Although Funmilayo Ransome Kuti (1900-1978) was one of the most important nationalist and feminist figures of Nigeria, it was not until 1997 that a biography of her was published. In this paper, I will examine how she is constructed in the biography For Women and the Nation: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria by Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Nina Emma Mba. I will also look at her construction in Fela Fela, This bitch of a life, edited by Carlos Moore in 1982. The Yorubas – one of the three biggest ethnic groups of Nigeria – have been divided into a number of groups including the Egbas, to which Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti belonged. Yorubas have been essentially town dwellers (Fadipe 1991: 113), and she was not an exception. To define her local identity even more precisely: she was born in Abeokuta, lived in Abeokuta most of her life and even died there. In this paper I am interested in the construction of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti through her negotiation of various values in general and deeds of resistance in particular. I will also have a look at the world view of her son Fela Kuti (1938-1987), wishing through comparisons to better characterize the world view of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti.

This article starts with a description of an event and its causes, as reported in the Malawi News, Malawi's leading weekly paper, on March 21st 1998. The event took place at Zomba, the country's colonial capital. The story is that: two ex-miners, Yusufu Yasini and William Malele, were recently sentenced to seven weeks in jail with hard labour for defying police orders to dismantle roadblocks mounted during a demonstration organized by ex- miners. The demonstration was to show displeasure with the government's reluctance to pay them their dues [sic: deferred payments, remittances and terminal benefits] for working in South Africa years back.... The amount involved is in the region of K270 million [sic: about US$10.8 million]. Similar demonstrations took place in the districts of Mulanje and Nkhota kota [sic: also in Machinga, Mangochi and Salima].

The bulk of this paper will show that Durkheim's hypothesis about suicide are relevant to the Romanian population. What was the impact of the Revolution on the rate of suicides? What is the evolution of this rate after 1989? What are the main characteristics of the people who commit suicide in Romania? These are several of the questions that the paper will answer. A brief history and the main explanations that are given by psychology and sociology will complete the image of suicide as a social phenomena.

The paper herein briefly presents some representative theories and points of view on the civil society concept. The author emphasizes that the recent sociological studies and researches made obvious that the concept of civil society is one of the most frequently used in the political discourses on the phenomena of transition in post-communist countries. However, despite its frequency, the meanings it covers still remain traced by ambiguity not only for the speakers but also for the audience. Consequently, the main aim of the paper is to review some "strong" perspectives of the concept of civil society. Meanwhile, starting from one of M. Holmes' observations, the author suggests the need for conceptual rebuilding. In the final section of the paper one drafts the concept of civil society which might be seen as better adapted to the post-communist realities comprehension.

The focus of the paper is on the role of social capital for the diffusion of entrepreneurship in Romanian rural communities. The analysis is done by using data sets from surveys at national level. Entrepreneurship appears to be a innovative behavior under the influence of human, material and social capital. The relation with the social capital is a dynamic and differentiated one, function of the stage of entrepreneurship. There are significant differences of human and social capital among behavior, intention and desire entrepreneurs. Accessibility to useful social relations, a key favoring factor of entrepreneurship is significantly conditioned by leadership experience in communist times and by wealth. Rural social capital is clearly structured by four dimensions: diffuse trust and cooperation, trust in institutions, and network capital and integration of formal institutions by their functioning. It is only the working of the first three dimensions that could be revealed by survey data. Considering this limitation, the conclusion is that rural social capital is a working reality, not only an umbrella concept: diffuse trust, trust in institutions and network capital stem all from a unique latent dimension that could be labelled as social capital. Rural social capital is more "fractured" than urban social capital. Interpersonal trust in rural communities is negatively related to the intensity and scope of network social capital.

The relevance of cultural factors for the functioning of a political system has been long debated in the social sciences. In the '90s, social capital has qualified as a term that refers to cultural attributes of individuals and communities. Research on the subject argues that (1) social capital can have a positive influence on political life and (2) both the state and civil society contribute to the construction of social capital through intentional acts. This paper evaluates these claims within the Romanian political context. The analysis focuses on those components of social capital that are related to individual attitudes of trust and tries to clarify the relationship among social trust, political trust, strategic trust and particularized trust. The paper suggests that trust is not accurately portrayed as a unique, unified concept, but rather that trust is multidimensional. Additionally, certain forms of trust influence levels of political participation.

In this paper social exchange relations, association and entrepreneurship as responses to community problems and a low level of local opportunities are studied in a geographical and social isolated Romanian plain commune. The two villages of Fulga commune are traditional communities characterized by strong norms of similarity and conservative values. Trust, openness or other modernity values do not sustain associations and collective actions but the citizens' participation could be situationally motivated. The high proportion of population involved in agricultural field and the number of people eligible for social benefits grater than the number of occupied people are correlated with low levels of human capital and living standard. There are few private initiatives, which are oriented to survival and short-term achievement and they have almost nothing to do with social and economic history of the commune but life history of those involved in.

This paper examines the impact of the Islamic revitalization undergone by Indonesia in the 1980s and 1990s on women’s life, by analyzing the discourse of female leaders of Muslim organizations, who state that society is currently facing increased conservatism. Practicing Muslim circles are reacting most firmly, rejecting the chador and demanding the right to not wear the veil. Among female supporters of the shawl, two trends appear: Reformist Muslims view it as a pledge of a virtuous life, whereas traditionalist Muslims view it as a new fashion accessory. As for polygamy, most informants view it as a set-in-stone prescription of Islam, but are at the same time glad of not having experienced it in their own families.

This paper explores the Filipinized versions of the Iberian concepts of compadrazco (ritual kinship) and delicadeza (noblesse oblige and the importance of being perceived as virtuous in matters of conflicts of interest) in the political culture of the Philippines through almost the entire 20th century. The survival of these concepts depended largely on their adjustment to the dominant culture of kinship politics (defined as utilizing political power for the benefit of the kinship group). Compadrazco thrived because it was compatible with kinship politics, but delicadeza, though held up as an ideal, became marginalized in both discourse and practice.

The mid-1820s was a critical period when Siam had to act upon various events: the first Anglo-Burmese War, leading to the rise of British power and the decline of Burma; the visit to Bangkok of a British mission; and the resurgence of Lao power under King Anu of Vientiane. This paper attempts to read the available sources “between the lines” in order to get a grasp of the crucial questions, virtually ignored in the existing literature, of how the Siamese leaders pondered, argued, and planned in reaction to these regional developments. Focusing on Chiang Mai and neighboring principalities in the years 1823-1827, it proposes an insight into behind-the-scenes debates in higher circles.

SALAMA is an acronym for Swahili Language Manager. It is a computerised working environment, where it is possible, with the help of a set of programs and user-defined utilities, to perform a multitude of tasks. For introducing SALAMA, it is perhaps more interesting to describe its aims and applications first, and then give an outlay of its components. Appendix 1 gives an overall view of the structure of the system, and of some of its applications. In this paper it is possible to give only a brief and condensed description of how the system is constructed. It is without any technical detail as to how the system is implemented. For those interested in more detailed description of the components, a list of relevant publications is added in the end of the paper. References to those are also made in text.

The majority of African nations have not been able or willing to realign their policy frameworks to combat the deepening crisis of development that has plagued them during the past two decades. In particular, sub-Saharan Africa, with its undiversified economic structure and undeveloped policy infrastructure, has been immobilized by its inability to adjust to the external and internal shocks it has experienced. This paper discusses and analyses recent policy reform initiatives by the Global Coalition for Africa for addressing Africa's tragic decline and marginalization.

This essay answers two broad questions. Firstly, what is Kalabari explanatory system, conceptual framework about? Secondly, what is the relationship between Kalabari conceptual scheme and the ‘structure and strategy’ of the Kalabari traditional firm (wari or canoe-house corporation)? The canoe house was, “a compact and well organized trading and fighting corporation, capable of manning and maintaining a war canoe.” This paper, using Horton’s framework of analysis supplemented with original insights, examines not only the various ways Kalabari world view affects the structure and strategy of the wari, but also how world view interacts with managerial decision-making process in the canoe-house corporation. The analysis shows that Kalabari administrative thinking features an “aggressive welfare consciousness” and a “timid subterranean market paradigm.” Second, the key to understanding the relationship between Kalabari world view and structure and strategy of the wari is to view the structure of the traditional firm as a form of classification with the capacity to control how its members interact. The Kalabari corporate structure followed three categories of gods (ancestors or duein, founding heroes or oru, and water-spirits or owuamaba’pu) and they both (corporate structure and the scheme of three forces) fitted into a basic ‘typology of three’ in Kalabari culture. The structure of the canoe-house corporation was linked up in same analogical and metaphorical basis with the conceptual framework. Structure begets strategy. Defining strategy against a competitor boils down to placing him at a position in the structure and assessing his social ties and then designing means to contain his threat.

The bulk of this paper is dedicated to investigate the causes and effects of non-responses in the political surveys. I used 27 data bases provided by different Institutes and private companies to prove that the predictions on the results of elections are better if there are taking in account not only the estimations from the vot item but also the characteristics of the survey by itself. Romanian mass media noticed that different surveys conducted in the same period of time, are producing different estimates of the vote intentions. Usually, the "disfavored" political parties are incriminating of malevolence the agency that was collecting the data, while the public opinion formulates doubts about the probity of this agency. In this paper, I am arguing against this point of view using theoretical explanations doubled by empirical evidences. My first point is that the proportion of the people with "no declared vote intention" varies among surveys as it is determined by the position of the vote intention item in the interview. On its tum, this is determined by the type of survey (focused or not on evaluations of the political process and its actors) and the length of the questionnaire.

The paper laid the foundation of measuring the degree of development or poverty for all the villages of Romania. This is part of a larger project of building a social atlas of Romania; coming from a well structured Romanian social science tradition. The theoretical background of the measurement is the theory of capitals. Each village is considered as a combination of human, material, vital, symbolic and regional capital. Community development is considered as a latent continuous variable having maximum development and poverty as two poles. This latent variable is measured by a factor score index of 17 indicators. The index allows for measurement of village poverty in national and in regional hierarchies. Human capital is the most important component of village development or poverty. An explanation of village poverty is given in terms of poverty cycles and regression models. The poorest villages are peripheral villages within communes, located in plain areas, far from large cities and modernized roads, in low developed judets. Romania's villages are classified from a level and from a structural point of view.

This paper approaches in an interactionist manner the symbolic construction of the political dimension. The main hypothesis is that the political socialization begins from the early childhood, at the same time when the child becomes aware of the social space elements and of the alterity.

The paper presents the main dimensions of the intergeneration educational and socio-occupational mobility in Romania (rate of total mobility, ascendant and descendant mobility. structural and net mobility) and their distribution by residential area, historical regions, counties and sex. The background data are from a November 1999 CURS survey on a sample of 37.474 individuals, representative at the national, regional and county level. The configuration of the two types of mobility is also analyzed from the angle of each category (position), revealing the dimensions of self-reproduction and status transfer from one generation to the next, within each level of education and for each socio-occupational status. The results of our analysis, although showing high values for the intergeneration mobility, particularly the ascendant mobility, reveal that this was achieved mainly as mobility of thc first rank (between neighboring categories/positions), especially among the lower levels of the hierarchic scale. The rates of social mobility observed in the residential environment reflect major discrepancies between the urban and rural areas, as well as the trend of widening the gap between the two. Although, overall, the configuration, direction and size of the educational and socio-occupational mobility in Romania, reveal the open character of the scale of mobility, our analyses show, both the persistence of unequal social opportunities and a lack of agreement between the ,,opening" of the educational system and the opportunities of socio-occupational status, specific to a modern economy.

This paper compares the responses of two different groups of workers to Romania's economic crisis. In the literature on the East Central European transformation, where workers are discussed at all, they are described in largely homogenous terms. The groups discussed here, the miners of the Jiu Valley and the chemical workers of the Fagaras region, have many surface similarities including a mono-industrial profile, high unemployment, and extensive labor activism. However, research suggests that the specific way by which workers are incorporated into regional labor systems and the particulars of regional production result in highly variable responses to crisis both within and between regions. In the Jiu Valley, mining is the near sole livelihood. As the mine dominates regional mentalities it also shapes polarized relations between miners and superiors, between active and unemployed miners, in household relations, and in miner views of politics and the state. In contrast, in Fagaras sources of labor and income arc diffused. While the chemical plants were the chief regional employer, Fagaras workers, also have greater access to village occupations and resources and other alternatives, including emigration. This contributes to somewhat calmer labor relations, more stable domestic relationships, but greater interpersonal jealousy. Given the differences in these basic-production systems, the paper goes on to analyze the nature of political and social responses to their economic problems and suggest different possibilities for intervention.

The analysis is focused on the dramatically changes among the Romanian active (labor force) population during the last ten years of the Twentieth century. In order to asses the impact of the post-communist Reform had in Romania on the occupational structure we tried to evaluate the main types of social changes of labor force in these years and to understand social and regional variation using the regional research methods. The paper include; on the one hand, a historical perspective of the experience and methods used in Regional Research, both in Romania and in other countries and, on the other hand, the main social changes of Romanian active population during 1990-1999. The analysis is based on over 38.0000 households survey from 460 different types of settlements from all counties conducted by CURS in November 1999. The samples are representative for each county at a tolerated error of ±3% - ±3.6% at a level of confidence of 95%. The stress was on assessment of the following types of social changes of the active population: The occupational mobility (the changing of the job and/or of the profession); the social marginalization and/or the social exclusion (unemployment, early retirement, becoming redundant) and intensive adaptation of integration to market economy development (making their own business or graduating new training courses) The main conclusion is that compared to a long period of communist social homogenization the active population of Romania was the subject of an intensive process of restructuring in a very short period of time Thus, in 1990-1999 about 90% of the active population of Romania changed its occupational position, was social marginalized or was involved itself in the market economy. The directions of the changes were different. For about 40% of the active population the changes meant vertical and horizontal mobility involving moving upward or downward from one social position to another of a different rank and from one social position to another of the same rank. For another 40% of the active population the social changes meant social marginalization and/or social exclusion involving mainly the industrial workers losing their jobs because traditional employment opportunities in the industrial sector were largely closed for both the unskilled and skilled labor force. Only about 10% of the active population adapted to market economy by starting their own companies or by graduat¬ing courses improving their qualifications. All these changes showed a spatial variation so a new social or sociological map of Romania emerged. The Social Map shows that Romania was marked in 1990-1999 by a high rate of the social mobility and the social changes and a new social stratification or a different society's stratification system is emerging in its post-communist stage.

The paper on rural inhabiting consists of two parts: a) description of some changes that have taken place in rural inhabiting in Romania by historical regions and b) presentation of changes in the villages studied by the teams coordinated by D. Gusti. CURS resumed the surveys of rural sociology in some villages after about 70 years using, as much as possible, the same indicators. The purpose was to monitor the changes in rural infrastructure and in the Romanian rural environment. The inhabiting characteristics of the Romanian villages during the three periods: a) between the two world wars, b) the period of collectivisation, c) the post 1989 period, reveal the changes in the manner and conditions of inhabiting. The enclosed plans and photos of houses and dependencies throughout the historical regions meet the purpose of presenting an as much as real image of the Romanian village of the past decades.

The 30th of May 1997 marked the 30th anniversary of the declaration of independence by Biafra from which the Nigerian Civil War or the Biafran War (1967-1970) ensued. In the course of this paper my interest is focussed on the legacy of Biafra and the Biafran War for the Igbo in diaspora. In the course of my research I followed discussions on the Igbo--net (an Internet discussion group whose identity exists in this double-hyphenated form) throughout 1996, and the material I am drawing on here is based on 40 discussions from 22 Igbo--netters (users of the Internet discussion group), most of whom are Igbo living in the USA. It should also be noted that all of the Igbo--netters mentioned are male. In addition, my attention will be focussed on an article published in 1996, ‘Locating Biafra. The Words We Wouldn’t Say’, which exceeds in length the combined separate writings from the Igbo--net. Further, it is the only writing under consideration produced by an Igbo female. Although my focus here is on the Igbo, among the abovementioned 22 male Igbo--netters there were also some non-Igbo as well.

International circulatory migration is an increasing phenomenon in today Romania. In May 2001, within a representative public opinion poll at national level, 18% of interviewed persons declared the intention to temporary go abroad to work. The extension of migrants' recruitment aria from the western part of the country to eastern one and the growth of rural aria as source for international migration are two contemporary phenomenon tendencies at national level. This paper proposes an exploratory study about characteristics of circulatory migration for work to Spain in one rural community from Teleorman County. The qualitative data were collected in July 2001 within a Bucharest University research regarding life strategies. Who are migrants, which are the reasons to migrate, how is migration event accomplished, which is the influence of migration experience of the community are questions to be answered in this paper. Analyses underline the importance of social capital as main factor for external clandestine migration. The development of migrant networks at destination area and the institutionalized flow of migrants seem to be essential elements in reducing migration selectivity, implicitly in extending it and growing its independence. Rich migration experience at community level tends to amplify exigency in evaluating international clandestine migration as alternative development life strategy at individual/family level.

This paper addresses the interaction between language research and the formulation of language policy in the education sector of Malawi. It is widely agreed in the literature of language planning that research (i.e. fact finding) is one of the most important inputs to a language policy formulation process (e.g. Rubin 1971; Chumbow 1996; Bamgbose 1991, etc.). Normally one would normally expect the fact finding process (which can be done through language surveys) to be followed by the formulation of a policy, then the implementation of the said policy, and finally an evaluation of the implemented policy. This, unfortunately, is not what normally real life situations offer. It is no surprise to hear about a policy that lacks research support. This paper highlights the relevance of research findings to the recent review of language policy in education in Malawi. Specifically, the paper reviews four sociolinguistic surveys (on Chiyao, Chitumbuka, Chilomwe and Chisena) and how they have shaped or influenced the language policy review process. These surveys were conducted by the Centre for Language Studies at the University of Malawi between 1996 and 1998, with financial and technical assistance from the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ).

This paper is about corpus-based computational terminography. It highlights computational techniques and tools for compiling Kiswahili terms in the domain-particular texts written by field experts. At present, a reasonable number of domain-specific texts are available into Kiswahili. However, no efforts have been made so far to collect terms in such texts and integrate them in Kiswahili terminology. The absence of appropriate techniques and tools for carrying out the task should be the explanation for this lack of interest. But recent individual efforts in the development of computational tools for Kiswahili language, particularly by Arvi Hurskainen, at the University of Helsinki, paves the way for using computers for compiling the terms. This paper focuses on the application of Kiswahili-based computational tools developed at the University of Helsinki for describing and using corpus-based term formation patterns for the automatic compilation of Kiswahili terms. The presentation postulates the central role of the computer lexicon in carrying out such a task. The computer lexicon plays a central role in annotating a corpus for the description of the term formation patterns and for the compilation of terms from the text. The paper provides a test case to verify the applicability of the techniques and the tools in the actual compilation of the terms.

This paper analyzes gender relationships in the traditional society of Luang Prabang, Laos. It stresses that, in contrast to the ideological image of man as the privileged holder of authority, and due to traditional dispositions favoring female power, the son-in-law’s situation appears in many respects similar to that of the “captured man,” of which the New Year rites still bear witness. Nevertheless, one particular type of gender relationship, viewed as the ideal pattern of marriage, constitutes the son-in-law’s “escape lane.”

The paper is a semantic, phonological, morphological and socio-linguistic analysis of 213 French loan-words in the Fula dialect of Masina, Mali, the complete list of French loan-words found in the issues of the monthly newspaper Kabaaru published in the period 1995-1997. The words are classified according to their semantic domains ; most loan-words are found in the domains of technology. It is shown how the loan-words are phonologically and morphologically integrated to different degrees into the linguistic system of Fula. Phonological integration implies a substitution of non-Fula phonemes and an adaptation to Fula syllable structure. Morphological integration, on the other hand, implies the introduction of noun class suffixes. The author has carried out an inquiry to test to what degree a group of newly literate native speakers of Fula living in villages in Masina understand a selection of these French loan-words. The degree of understanding varies significantly between ‘current loan-words’ and ‘learned loan-words’ – the latter group being loan-words that according to the author's evaluation are not much used outside the pages of Kabaaru. The paper ends with a discussion of the pros and cons of French loan-words in Fula.

The 21st chapter of the pre-accession negotiations refers to "Regional policy and coordination of the structural instruments" and is expected to open in 2002. Regional development, sustained by the Structural Funds is the pillar of the social cohesion policy, one of the major objectives of the European Union. During the pre-accession period, Romania, together with the other nine Central and East European countries will benefit from a substantial non-reimbursable financial support, by the means of the three specially created, pre-accession instruments Phare, ISPA and SAPARD. Among others, these instruments are supposed to stimulate the social and economic convergence of the candidate countries. In view of the accession, an adequate legislative and institutional framework should be created in a very short period of time in Romania as well as a good professional training of the staff within the central and local public administrations. The challenges of the 2000-2006 period come from the necessity of a fast assimilation of the aggregate of procedures and norms specific to the various fields of communitarian interest, to the so-called "acquis communautaire". The present paper refers to the main elements concerning the EU regional policy, respectively to the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund, of their allocation principles and of the programming documents, which are the basis of the community financial support. The pre-accession funds are granted in order to facilitate the legislative and institutional transition and the transition in the field of human resources, towards the complex and integrated system supporting the cohesion policy of the UE.

The paper examines the relationships between anthropology, history, and region. It has long been assumed that the discipline of anthropology has made a significant contribution to the definition and conceptualization of Southeast Asia as a region in its own right. The roots of Southeast Asian identity are said to be located firmly in shared pre colonial cultural and social elements, and it is argued that some of these continue to have salience in modern Southeast Asia. Yet oncldoser examination it is clear that anthropologists have played very little part in the project to establish and authenticate Southeast Asia as a region and thereby !end legitimacy to Southeast Asian Studies as a separate field of scholarly endeavor. Instead it has been mainly historians and prehistorians, in their preoccupation with origins and the discovery of a “traditional» and pristine Southeast Asia uncontaminated by colonial and indeed Indian and Chinese influences, who have played a vital role in identifying the region. Anthropologists, on the other hand, with their concerns to discover and present cultural otherness and their significant involvement in cross-border margins and peripheries, have generally been preoccupied with “the local,” the particular, the distinctive community. With their interest in cultural diversity, they have generally been reluctant to construct broader cultural and social categories, and even the more ardent comparativists rarely venture beyond a dfiined sub-region or a set of socially, culturally and geographically related populations. Southeast Asia’s cultural diversity is also matched by the diversity of anthropological approaches and paradigms, and il is lffiicult to identfly a dominant analytical “style” in the study of the region. What is more, those anthropologists who have written more general texts on Southeast Asia have invariably maintained the distinction between the mainland and the island worlds. The reluctance to construct a Southeast Asian culture and the focus on specific “alterities» have also increased in recent years, mainly in response to post-modern and post-colonial criticisms of the imperialist roots of anthropology and some of its modernist and universalist assumptions.

Our knowledge of the history of Siamese literature before 1767, when Ayudhya was destroyed by the Burmese, is questionable, as the task of ascribing dates and authorship is made chancy by the modes of preservation, the later reconstruction of works destroyed, and the weight of an unyielding tradition. A prominent and original poem, one of few classical poems recognizable as a tragedy, the Lilit Phra Lo has been credited, for some obscure reason, to the time of King Naray (1656-1688). This paper, based on clues found mainly in the Ayudhya Annals and on an analysis of the poem’s versification, submits an earlier date – late 15th or early 16th century – and ascribes it to a son of King Boromotraylokanat (1448-1488). It concludes that the Golden Age of classical Siamese literature should be dated from the times of kings Boromotraylokanat, Boromorachathirat iii (1488-1491), and Ramathibodi ii (1491-1529), contrary to the broadly accepted view (second half of the 17th century).

The issue of the independence of prosecution is a focal debate in France and Italy. The fact that prosecutors are members of the magistracy is at the origin of a controversy in those countries, as some consider them an organ of the executive power while others consider them an organ of the judicial power. The actors of the debate –politicians, magistrates, law professors– all develop an elaborate juridical argumentation to support their theses. Going through the analysis of the arguments put forward by the confronting parties and highlighting the motivations for those, this paper aims at making explicit the reasons for the ambiguity of the role and of the statute of the prosecutor in the magistracy. Particularly, this study intends to demonstrate that, regardless of the thesis supported, it is impossible for the actors of the debate to conceive the function of the prosecutor without also thinking of the function of the judge through the concept of “magistrate”. It is the conception of the role of the judge-magistrate that ends up determining the fate of prosecution.

This article probes into the historical details and the present practices of Karen Buddhist movements. The Christian Karen have had a dominant position in the media and scientific publications. However, the Buddhists are probably still the majority among the Pwo and Sgaw Karen. The recent split between the Christian Karen National Union and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Organization is a dramatic expression of the political role of religion. Religion, religious movements, and prophetic leaders are important elements in Karen identification and their relationship with neighboring peoples, states, and colonizers. Religious cosmology and rituals are not merely the essentials of their world view but also constitute modes of empowerment, which are analyzed and discussed in this paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork begun in 1970 among the Karen in Thailand on the border with Burma, as well as on archival research in London.

This paper explores the ideological context of rural development in Sabah, Malaysia. Drawing on ethnographic data of state practices and discourse, and local reactions to state policies, I discuss events surrounding a rural development initiative. I conclude that development in Sabah serves as the primary point of entry for the federal government into village politics. Thus, if development does not necessarily raise the local standard of living, it facilitates the expansion and entrenchment of the ruling elite – the United Malaysia National Organization (UMNO). In effect, development serves to consolidate the power of the Malay-Muslim elite over Sabah’s indigenous population and promote the government’s ideological commitment to a nation united by “one language, one culture, and one religion.” Building on Ferguson’s radical critique of development, I look for the instrument-effects of development that occur behind the rhetoric of poverty alleviation. Contrary to Ferguson, however, I argue that, in the context of development in Malaysia, these instrument-effects are not unintended. Instead, development is knowingly deployed by state representatives to expand bureaucratic power. Furthermore, villagers are able to demystify the rhetoric of development and are aware that access to development funds is contingent on their support of UMNO political candidates.

Women worldwide face discriminations and subordination in the society. This subordination of women is even more pronounced in the developing countries of Asia and Africa. Several scholars (Kenig 1996; Adeyeye 1988; Howard 1985; Kazi 1995; Kumar 1993) have asserted that rural women are discriminated against in terms of employment opportunities, access to social and productive resources, education, health status and family decisions, among others. However, rural women in developing countries have been found to play an important role in agriculture and agricultural development (Kumak 1993). Indeed, Williams (1988), Mabawonku (1988) and Olawoye (1994) have all emphasized the paradox that the woman is the nutritional bedrock of human society who feeds and nurtures mankind and at the same time manages the home. Despite these realizations, the Nigerian rural women continue to suffer subordination and the ability to fully realize their potential is greatly hampered. This paper therefore examined the constraints facing rural women in a rural Yoruba Community. The data was collected through focus-group discussions, in-depth interviews and observational methods. Specifically, fourteen focus-group discussions with different groups of women and men, and ten in-depth interviews were held. Findings reveal that despite the increasing awareness of women's education, there is still a tacit preference for the education of the male-child. Again, perhaps the greatest pattern of subordination is in the area of 'who decides what'. Findings generally revealed that males enjoy a domineering position in this area. Other problems faced by Nigerian rural women are reflected in their small volume of economic activities, female circumcision, health and rights. The paper concludes by suggesting some intervention programmes including the mobilization of resources to prepare women for leadership roles, and awareness creation about the problem facing women and indeed rural women in South-Western Nigeria.

The paper describes the social function performed by the Yorùbá royal bards in the society. The data are from the Oyo-Yorùbá communities, but mutatis mutandis they can be seen to represent all the Yorùbáland, because cultural variation between different areas is limited. The bards sing and chant in honour of the kings, and they also announce the advent of important guests by drumming or piping the names and attributes of such guests as they enter the royal palace. The social responsibilities of royal bards include entertainment, the description of the qualities of the character and physical appearance of patrons, historical documentation, and image-making for their patrons. Socio-economic changes, however, have caused considerable changes in the roles of these bards. Since the economic status and the social prestige of the traditional rulers has declined, most of the male bards have become freelance minstrels in addition to the traditional trade, and they go about entertaining the public at social gatherings and even on the street. Female bards, on the other hand, have stayed loyal to the palace. (Ed.)

Several Bantu languages have adopted a disjoining writing system, which forms a special challenge for automatic analysis of written text. In those systems, part of bound morphemes is treated as independent words, while other languages treat equivalent morphemes as affixes of a head morpheme. The concept of word is blurred in disjoining writing systems, because there is no systematic rule system for writing conventions. Not only are bound morphemes written as separate words, also independent words are sometimes written together as one string. The paper makes a claim that dis­joining writing systems require a special treatment, before they can be analyzed successfully. This can be done either by pre-processing the text first into a conjoining format, so that the analysis program would get the input in a form that conforms to the linguistically more motivated writing system. Another possibility is to construct the morphological analyzer so that it identifies bound morphemes although they are written as separate words. This paper applies the first choice and describes a system, which maps between a disjoining and conjoining writing system. The implementation was made on Kwanyama, a Bantu language spoken in Southern Angola and Northern Namibia. The performance of the system is evaluated.

This paper explores the origin, growth and demise of autocracy in post-independence Zambia from a macro-historical perspective. It is argued that the underlying dynamic, which gradually turned Zambia into a virtual autocracy after its independence in 1964, stems from its colonial past, although augmented by the Zambians themselves. It is shown how emerging hero-worship within the dominant United National Independence Party (UNIP) turned the country's first president, with the support of the people, into an autocrat. In the 1980's the autocracy started to seriously crumble in the face of food riots and rising unemployment resulting from a deepening economic depression. It is concluded that, despite the return to a multi-party state in 1991, there are strong indications that this newly found democracy is already being undermined by the same dynamic that led to autocracy in the first place. [Ed.]

The vast majority of developing countries, especially on the African continent, have leapt into the new. The millennium is trapped in an enormous economic decline. The popular diagnosis blames the self-defeating tendencies of the Third World states as the main source of the dismal economic performance. It is against this background that the paper seeks to present an alternative account of the rampant economic stagnation experienced by developing countries on the African continent. It has been motivated by the dramatic ascendancy of Afro-pessimism, which seems to conclude that the African condition is largely of its own making and, therefore, there is little or no hope for improvement. The argument of this paper is that the colonial legacy has, to a very large extent, shaped, influenced and impacted on the range of post-colonial policy options for most countries within the policy framework of the market. The pervasive market distortions that presently characterise the majority of the economies on the continent are an enduring heritage of the colonial schemes and mechanisations.