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African tales are characteristically told to amuse and to instil moral values in the younger generation. However, Jukun Kona and Hausa female narrators fashion gender-based stories from incidents that go beyond immediate and common happenings to speak of hybridization and transformations from plant/animal to human form with the cryptic mission to criticize the gendered status quo. These female narrators typically weave these tales from their imaginations or draw their ideas from occurrences within their immediate environments to showcase extant predicaments of women. This article uses the close reading technique which affords the facility to draw from the diction, tone, narrative voice, and rhetorical and literary devices in a given text to advance its argument. The evidence, as discovered in Hausa tales recollected from memory and Kona tales collected during fieldwork in 2018, illustrates that transmogrification is drawn on by female narrators to subtly critique communal gendered norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral traditions have played and continue to play a critical role in the lives of African peoples albeit changes in context and usage. In this article, I discuss the development of what I term the African Oral Traditional Storytelling (AOTS) Framework as an ethical and culturally centered approach to studying with African peoples. Akin to narrative inquiry methodology, the AOTS Framework is developed as an alternative approach to studying or working with African peoples by centering African oral storytelling, African philosophies and worldviews, languages, and cultures as relevant and essential to understanding the experiences of African peoples. The collaborative philosophical underpinnings of the AOTS Framework rest on the communal and the collaborators' engagement in the study not just as people who provide information but as co-creators in the narratives, meanings, and understandings that are brought to bear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The portrayal of sexuality in folktale course-books that are prescribed for secondary school learners in Zimbabwe is indeed a cause for concern. Not much attention, if any, has been given to exploring the portrayal of 'sexuality' especially in ChiShona prescribed course-books. This article qualitatively explored through content and discourse analysis the portrayal of 'sexuality' in folktales prescribed course-books based on an Afrocentric perspective of Unhu and Ubuntu. The study sought to determine whether course-books are an asset or a liability for the socialisation of learners of both genders especially at the critical adolescence stage of development. This undertaking assessed gender attributes, norms, values, and behaviour patterns proffered in school course-books. The examination of the 'sexuality' portrayed in these course-books was based on the assumption that education is value-laden. The gender value inherent in these course-books being a vaccine for the social ills like gender inequalities bedevilling Shona communities. The major finding was that the portrayal of 'sexuality' in the course-books analysed in this study shows that they are more of a liability. The article recommended a gender discourse that evaluates and critically analyses the gender portrayals in the course-books to avoid losing the gender equality milestones achieved so far in Zimbabwe. Contribution: The study examined sexuality sensibilities secondary school learners are exposed to through the authority of folktale prescribed course-books: Hodza's (1983) Ngano Dzamatambidzanwa and Fortune's (ed. 1983) Ngano Volume 4. It adopted the Afrocentric perspective of Unhu and Ubuntu to assess the impact of these instructional materials on the learners' socialisation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Folktales constitute one of the oldest traditional forms of education based on the method of delivery through oral tradition. Among the Yorùbá, folktale is a viable medium for transmission of cultural values, belief, history and philosophy of the community to the younger generation. The fact that African societies’ customs, morals and way of life are ingrained and codified in folktales shows the veracity of the indigenous knowledge system (IKS) embedded therein. This has contributed immensely to appreciating the culture, as well as the African people’s social norms. This study examines the aesthetics and utilitarian essence of African folktales, using four purposively selected Yorùbá folktales as case study. The goal of the paper is to bring the aesthetics and usefulness of African folktales, thus the songs are documented in a staff notation for musical analysis. Data for the study were collected through oral interviews and review of related literature. The selected Yorùbá folktales were examined through a descriptive method. Findings show that the essence of African folktales, as noticed in this present day, is being jettisoned and will soon become extinct by the current realities brought about by globalisation. This has greatly affected the cultural values which African folktales retain, maintain and disseminate. Hence, the need for the revitalization and digitization of African folktales to preserve the indigenous knowledge system deep-rooted in the narratives for future generations. This study concludes that the importance of African folktales would be better understood if properly harnessed, translated and notated from the musicological viewpoint, as it will further popularise the old tradition of storytelling in this modern age.

This article is about a young farmer named Linga and his encounter with a water spirit in Oubangui-Chari (present-day Central African Republic) in 1930. It is also about the telling and re-telling of Linga's encounter as the story was transcribed into Banda, translated into French, and rewritten as an ethnographic folktale. Responsible for these transformations were two Banda interpreters and a colonial administrator from the Caribbean. In the last two decades, historians of colonialism have turned increasingly to interpreters and other intermediaries. Often missing from this scholarship, however, are analyses of the granular details—of how colonial intermediaries used transcription, translation, and other methods to create new words, texts, and ideas. Linguistic anthropologists refer to such interventions as "entextualization," the process by which fragments of discourse are extracted from their immediate settings and rendered into detached texts. Drawing on this scholarship, I argue that tracing the granular processes of entextualization opens up new vantage points from which to study the role of colonial intermediaries in the production of knowledge. The article also illuminates a methodology for mapping otherwise invisible constellations of language, meaning, and colonial power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Malagasy Folk-Lore Society was founded in 1876 in Madagascar and counts as the first Folk-Lore Society to be so named. The holdings of SOAS University of London allow its history to be documented for the first time. Along with the South African Folk-Lore Society (1879), it was one established in the Global South. The Malagasy Folk-Lore Society and The Folk-Lore Society in London were to become linked through the figure of the Rev. James Sibree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a talk about reciprocal autoethnography that was given during the 2020 Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society (AFS). The author's decision to conduct a collaborative and community-centered research on African and African-American folklore was her encounters with racism in folklore studies. She also promotes an exhibition on AFS website called "Notable Folklorists of Color: Remembering Our Ancestral Legacies."

This article is drawn from a larger action research study that seeks to explore the extent to which "ordinary" citizens, on the margins, can actively access and use digital platforms for self-expression and self-representation. This paper, in particular, discusses insights gleaned from a collaborative participatory research project, with a focus group from the Abakuria community in Kenya, on adapting digital storytelling as a research method for an African context. Two overarching strands inform this work. The first is epistemic, guided by critical discourses on African folklore and African ontologies on personhood. Here, works by Bukenya, Finnegan, Courlander, Mbiti, Menkiti, Nyamnjoh and Wiredu, among others, provide a launching pad for the engagement. The argument is that an iteration of digital storytelling that is relevant and effective in an African context needs anchoring on an episteme that is intrinsically African. The second strand focuses on the process that this adaptation takes. Here, Participatory Action Research principles and processes are a central cog. The assertion is that an iteration of digital storytelling that is appropriate and effective for an African context needs to be participatory, emancipatory, transformative, self-critical and empowering, tenets encapsulated in Participatory Action Research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The African consciousness has been subsumed mostly by western ideology and resurfaces only in misrecognition and habitual disavowal. Valorising everything European, a history of haplessly succumbing to the seductions of western rationality and perspectives has led to the denial and erasure of self and culture. In its place, the morbid African has birthed, confronting his othering in self-defeating acquiesce and accepting his servile status as natural and ordained. Indeed, there is no ready panacea for centuries of exploitation, domination, and telling to. This paper suggests that one way to counter these ideological formations is to provide pathways to recognise the self. There can be no better way of doing this than to rekindle the myth, folklore, and aphorisms long extinguished on the altar of western education. Consequently, this study explores African stories as artefacts that may shape our consciousness, remind us of cultural wisdom rendered invisible and barbaric by colonial authority, focus our attention on an African centred morality and value system and school us in the inherent dignity of being human and African. A case in point is the abundance of tales that promote social cohesion, adherence to rituals, and the rule of law as well as survival over seemingly insurmountable odds. The lessons from these tales may be modelled onto the coronavirus pandemic in an African centred advocacy. Recruiting the resources of bibliotheraphy and decolonising scholarship, this paper enthuses over African narratives that celebrate our own conundrums, our own angsts and engages with lessons to survive the coronavirus pandemic in an Afrocentric intertext. It also makes a persuasive claim that African folktales are an important decolonial tool in university English curricula. This, I argue are the first and necessary steps of emancipation from the shackles of western epistemologies and hegemony and in addressing the null curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kgolomodumo story is becoming extinct in Sepedi folklore with the risk of losing its deep structure and embedded meaning. Very little, if any, has been performed to determine the relationship between the monsters and cosmology, also revealing how they are used to construct eschatology. In this article, I analyse the story of a monster and explain how monstrosity and the grotesque are used as a discourse to craft, uncover and (re)construct how Bapedi interprets the teleological and eschatological from the tale; Kgolomodumo. The tale is a source of explaining the metaphor of the devouring monster to describe the end of things and messianic eschatology in Sepedi religious conceptions. The story was conveniently chosen from a folklore anthology, Diphekotšabagologolo because it is a threatened textual construct. The interpretation of the tale is both Afrocentric and hermeneutical relying largely on my knowledge of Sepedi culture and folklore; drawing from my insider, self-reflexive engagement after teaching of folklore as indigenous knowledge for the past 30 years. The story is framed within the postcolonial discourse, selecting the Afrocentric lens as a tool to explain and contextualise eschatology within African religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about arts and culture of Zimbabwe. Topics discussed include carving of woven baskets and stools with single piece of wood; talks about Shona sculpture which is fusion of African folklore with European influences; and highlights traditional story writings of Charles Mungoshi whose books are sell in African and European communities.

This article is a comparative study of trickster tales from a Haitian collection (Le Roman de Bouqui, by Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain) and a Senegalese collection (La Belle histoire de Leuk-le-lièvre, by Léopold Sédar Senghor and Abdoulaye Sadji). The analysis traces the transformation the stories underwent when they were transmitted as oral literature to slaves in the New World. Drawing on Maryse Condé's work, I relate Bouqui and Malice, two of the most famous characters of Caribbean folklore, to the bossale and the créole, two figures associated with slavery as well as with continuing social divisions in Haitian society. Using Glissant's concept of the contre-poétique, I investigate Bouqui and Malice's countercultural values as embedded in their stories, arguing that the storytellers crafted a form of fictional revenge through their folktales: by subverting the plot of the African tale, they confronted and challenged the dominant colonial discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of its evident presence in Southern Africa's rich cultural heritage, the bird metaphor has received surprisingly little attention. The cultural materials analysed in this article include children's stories, songs, heroic poetry and ethnographic accounts of rites of passage. At first the data seems to suggest that bird symbolism could be interpreted in terms of a simple dual conception of gender identity. Some magical birds signify the prowess and authority of men. Others could be linked symbolically to the procreative powers of women. On further reflection, however, we identified a third category of more ambiguously gendered birds. It is contended that this additional bird type can be explained in terms of the female-male dialectic that shaped gender relations in small-scale societies. It is further proposed tentatively that the bird metaphor could have provided women with a symbolic means to negotiate their identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African American and Black Caribbean relations dominate research on interactions across black ethnic divides. Using National Survey of American Life data, we explore a different aspect of black interethnic attitudes: how close these groups feel towards Africans. African Americans and Black Caribbeans were largely similar in their feelings of closeness to Africans. For Black Caribbeans, younger and male respondents, those reporting higher levels of financial strain, living in the northeast and persons who immigrated to the US at least 11 years ago, report feeling especially close to Africans. Being male was the only significant correlate among African Americans. The findings are discussed in relation to how race, ethnicity and national origin shape personal identities within the US and their significance for intergroup perceptions. These broader issues warrant further consideration in light of assertions that race as a defining feature of American life and intergroup relations is obsolete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Where grass has grown, grass will grow’ was a common phrase capturing the invincibility of Akokhan, a naturalized Kenyan superhero created by Ghanaian-Kenyan cartoonist Frank Odoi. Described as ‘Africa’s Hergé or Urdezo’ by his colleagues, Frank Odoi migrated to Kenya from his native Ghana in the early 1970s and was largely credited with the ability of appropriating African folklore into a template akin to that of the Marvel comic superheroes. Using his most celebrated work,Akokhan, a comic strip that appeared at different times in all three major Kenyan daily newspapers (Daily Nation,The Standard,The Star), this paper seeks to make tentative steps towards a characterization of an African comic superhero. Although legitimate questions arise as to whether a ‘single text’ can account for an entire continent, the paper argues that Akokhan’s transnational character, not just in the biographical migration of its creator but also in its content and its intended readership, mark it out as an important text in delineating an African superhero. TheAkokhancomic series positions Tonkazan, the ultimate embodiment of evil against Akokhan, his deadly opposite who occupies the ambiguous position of the misunderstood superhero. The story is largely, if not wholly, drawn from Ghanaian folklore, complete with references to cultural artefacts, labels and social contexts that are obviously West African but are able to transcend both time and space. I argue that Akokhan as African Superhero is a product of both remediation and syncretism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers Helen Oyeyemi s novel, Boy, Snow, Bird, as a critical integration of European fairy tale and African folktale. Reimagining "Snow White " as a story about race and history in midcentury America, the novel unsettles the fairy tale s color symbolism and its relation to "fairness, " insisting instead on whiteness as racialized and determined by shifting lines of sight structured by histories of slavery, violence, segregation, blood, and passing. Structurally, the novel s use of African folktale forms exposes the racial assumptions underpinning the "Snow White" tradition while also contesting the cidtural hegemony of the European fairy tale more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supernatural creatures have existed in all countries since the most ancient times. Most of them are believed to reside in particular countries, areas or landscape habitats. Many of primary sources of information about particular creatures (e.g., legends, tales, songs, anecdotes) contain geographic references that can be analysed geographically. We have demonstrated it with the Map of Mythical Creatures of Europe, published in 2013 (English version in 2020). The list of mythical creatures of the geographic territory of Africa contains 111 records. The geographical database has been compiled from 34 cumulative sources and verified against other published sources in several languages. The aim of the project was to once again demonstrate the possibility and advantages of a geographic approach in mythology and folklore studies. The main tasks of the map project were (a) collecting reliable information of the most known mythical creatures in Africa into the database, following the same structure as the database for Europe, with possible extensions to include information about new types of creatures or their characteristic and (b) designing an attractive wall map based on collected data, preserving the style of the Map of Mythical Creatures of Europe but also making it different to reflect the specificity of African continent and (c) develop database structure and web services for provision of collected data, both for Europe and Africa, in form of interactive web maps. Typology of mythical beings of Africa is mainly the same as we used for the map of Europe. It is based on appearance of creatures and encompasses the same categories: anthropomorphic (human shaped), zoomorphic, hybrid of human and animal, hybrid animal, undefined (creatures which appearance is variable, ambivalent or invisible). In addition, phytomorphic (plant-like) creatures that have no instances in Europe are present in Africa. Understanding that our database is far from complete, we will continue developing the web map. Geographers and academic folklorists will be invited to co-operate in developing the database. The user groups targeted are children of various age and general public as well as amateur folklorists. The map as a piece of art, made specifically attractive combining old and modern cartographic design elements, can raise people's interest in folk-lore and leads to better understanding of other cultures in Europe. The database is a kind of geographic inventory that may be of use for anyone interested in mythology and ethnology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setswana folktales and proverbs about birds demonstrate the deep-rooted understanding of natural history by Africans in general and the Batswana people in particular. Traditionally, birds played a central role in the life of the Batswana, because birds share their physical space, resources and food, and in so doing impact human society in various spheres of life. This study attempts to trace the relationship between birds and the Batswana people from Setswana folktales and proverbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: In Africa, Garcinia kola Heckel (Guttiferae) seed is commonly recommended in folklore medicine for the treatment of diabetes and its associated complications. Objective: The present study evaluated this traditional claim by mechanistic investigation into the effect of G. kola seed administration on renal, hepatic, and testicular oxidative damage in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats. Materials and methods: Diabetes mellitus was induced in adult male Wistar rats by an intraperitoneal injection of STZ (50 mg/kg). The diabetic rats were thereafter treated orally once per day with G. kola seed (250 mg/kg) and monitored for 14 d. Clinical observations, plasma biochemistry, hormonal profile, oxidative stress indices, sperm characteristics, and histopathological examination of the kidney, liver, and testes were evaluated to monitor treatment-related effects of G. kola seed in STZ-induced diabetic rats. Results and discussion: Garcinia kola seed administration significantly ameliorated hyperglycemia mediated damage by decreasing the blood glucose level (72.8% and 84.6% on the 7th and 14th post-treatment days, respectively), enhancement of the antioxidant system, inhibition of lipid peroxidation, and improving the architecture of the kidney, liver, and testes in STZ-induced diabetic rats. In addition, G. kola seed intervention restored the kidney and liver function biomarkers, the sperm characteristics as well as the plasma levels of luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), testosterone, triiodothyronine (T3), and thyroxine (T4) to normal in STZ-induced diabetic rats. Conclusion: The findings from this investigation provide persuasive scientific support for the traditional use of G. kola seed in the treatment of diabetes and its associated complications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses folklore in rural Malawi on vampires and Satanists during the early 21st century, including its impact on society in the country and the role that local chiefs play in stimulating suspicions of possible vampires. An overview of Malawi police's efforts to stop acts of vigilantism against suspected vampires is provided. An overview of the social conditions of Malawi villagers, including in regard to the metaphorical aspects associated with villagers' concept that the Malawi government and white foreigners are bloodsuckers, is also provided.

This note reviews the extent to which the Swakopmund Protocol for the Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Expressions of Folklore, adopted by the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO), conceives of the role of communities in the management of expressions of folklore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A disjuncture in the description of persists between practitioners of the genre, deemed custodians of Northern Sotho culture, and some scholars. Drawing from extensive fieldwork and consultation of literature from established scholars, this article presents a descriptive analysis of the dinaka/kiba song-dance performative compound. It does so by looking into the constituent elements of the genre, particularly its attendant nomenclature, instrument playing techniques and the technology used in instrument making. It was found that by investing in unravelling the deep lying philosophical underpinnings, as well as gaining insight into the functions of genre, chiefly embedded within the attendant indigenous languages systems, a contextually sound and accurate description of the genre is possible. This article, therefore, apart from challenging a few misrepresentations surrounding scholarly definitions, seeks to provide a practitioner-informed, analytical and comprehensive definition of dinaka/kiba as a song-dance performative compound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representations of hunter-gatherer pasts are often stymied by the difficulties of escaping colonial depictions. Explorations of hunter-gatherer historicity require an understanding of their axes of social differentiation, deployed in processes of persuasion, coercion, and judgement. This article discusses the presentation of the ‘monstrous’ in the oral literature of the |Xam Bushmen, nineteenth-century hunter-gatherers of the Northern Cape (South Africa). Drawing on the Bleek–Lloyd archive, it examines the characteristics that these people considered emblematic of the grotesque, and discusses the ways in which these figures were deployed to create social pressures enjoining people to behave in particular ways. The article looks at how these notions were used by |Xam individuals to characterize and understand their interactions with an internally differentiated |Xam society, and with non-|Xam groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The article traces the integration of African tunes and languages in Israeli theater. Hebrew and Arabic are the official languages in Israel and used in the public domain, including theater which used to be dominated by Hebrew. The Morrocan Israeli Theater called Tami successfully brought the Maghrebi language on mainstream stage in 2001. Two Ethiopian Jewish theater companies introduced Amharic and Ethiopian traditions and folklore to Israeli audiences in the 1990s. Their shows are described. INSETS: The Servant of Two Masters;The Maghrebi Theatre Industry;Teret-Teret;The Ethiopian Theatre Industry

This article addresses the relationship between southern African San myth and rock art. Three nineteenth-century | Xam San narratives, recorded verbatim, are shown to contain specifiable entities of meaning, here dubbed ‘nuggets’, that are easily misunderstood or missed entirely. Each performance of a myth developed or abbreviated the significances of these ‘nuggets’ as the narrator tailored the story to suit the social, political and economic circumstances of the moment. Similarly, San rock art contains painted ‘nuggets’ that, for the San, situated the panels in one way or another at the interface between existential realms. Each in its own way, certain tales and images both played a social role by emphasizing the functions of ritual specialists who were believed to move between realms as they healed the community of physical, economic and social ills, especially tension between affines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The materials collected from /Xam informants in the second half of the nineteenth century by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd have received attention from historians, anthropologists, rock art interpreters, and poets. Generic categories have been imported into /Xam studies in ways that are derivative and critically unreflexive. This article argues that the consequences have been far-reaching for the reading of the texts as well as for the ways that the materials have been positioned ontologically and in relation to history and period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tsitsi Dangarembga's novels provide us with ways of thinking about philanthropic practices in Africa and in the world by using the lens of the gift-as-charity in a self-help project. It becomes clear that the power structures which are animated in the act of charitable giving do create bonds of violence, instead of solidarity, where inequalities are exacerbated, instead of being lessened. Charity sometimes deepens these inequalities that bedevil any kind of project which assumes that philanthropy necessarily induces positive development. There are often clashes between the receivers and givers, all to do with largely overlooked aspirations and initiatives of the receiving as well as giving communities. The world view of the receiver is very important and more participatory and deliberative democracies need to be instituted so that the receiver of philanthropic aid does not feel insulted and disempowered ironically by the act of being upraised. A recognition that charitees might not necessarily want to develop in the ways devised by the giver is important, as overlooking that fact, and not devising ways of matching project to aspirations, creates alienation and frustration. This shows through the vindictiveness with which charitees, and even givers of charity, sometimes show to each other, when strategic interests in the gift clash. African folklore abounds with warnings about how to receive, and how to create cultures of giving and receiving that don't kill or create an abusive dependency. More than in any other cultural site, it is in the spaces of the excellently written novels of Tsitsi Dangarembga that complex African reactions to philanthropy-as-development are registered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses several aspects of a /Xam Bushman story in which a man brings home a lion cub and insists that it is a dog. The paper seeks to demonstrate that the text is capable of eliciting a range of important critical questions. It argues that the call to exegesis is inherent in most forms of literature, including those that are often treated as folklore or mythology. The paper suggests that there are several aspects of the story that accord with current critical concerns. It concentrates on just two of these: the tension between character and identity in the text and the different modes of knowledge that are present in it. The paper does not attempt to provide an exhaustive or authoritative analysis of the story. Instead it contends that the interpretative possibilities in /Xam literature are more extensive than some of the ways in which it is read would suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout world folklore, tales of animal trickery such as the West African tales featuring Anancy the Spider showcase the use of cunning and thievery to overwhelm stronger foes. In several such tales, Anancy leads a liminal life on the edges of society, which provides him easy access to communities while allowing him to maintain a safe distance. He uses shape-shifting abilities to fool his opponents or his victims and manipulates language through Signifyin(g) processes to trick his prey or enemy and disrupt social practices. In Black bazar (2009), the Franco-congolese writer Alain Mabanckou draws upon these three trickster strategies to illustrate the complexity of francophone migrant identities in Paris. In so doing, Mabanckou emerges as a master trickster himself who elaborates a new Francophone discourse of migrant identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In enacting his ritual of kingship, the Xhosa imbongi (praise poet) in South Africa is marked by his accoutrements and his artistic performance as separated from society; he assumes a sacred stance in a transitional position and effects the social incorporation of his audiences; he mediates between chief and subjects, serving as both upholder of the chief's status and as social critic. His liminal location invites comparison with other trickster figures of African mythology and folklore like Ananse and Legba. This perspective explains the occasional self-belittling assertions by the imbongi, as well as the imbongi's license to criticize and use ribald language with impunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revue des Sciences Sociales is the property of Universite des Sciences Humaines and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

'When the drumbeat changes' is a short story about the brutality and contradictions of slavery in eighteenth-century Brazil. It is an attempt to restore emotion and morality to the practice of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyzes the absence of an African presence in Argentinean and Dominican official history, becoming Blacks assimilated into an homogeneous national culture that not only lacks an African perspective but also a gender one. Through a further analysis of the role of women in current social movements, and the elucidation of a symbolic connection to the domestic struggle and resistance from the part of women during Colonial times, it attempts to unveil this paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the constellation of Orion and the cosmic hunt in equatorial Africa. It states that the association of specific constellations with a hunting scene and stories related to hunting is apparent in the folklore of many traditional culture of the Americas and North Central Eurasia. It discusses several subtopics related to Orion constellation and the cosmic hunt in the country including the African cosmic hunts, diffusion of African myths, and the similarities of African and Eurasian-American Cosmic Hunts.

The culture of a people is usually reflected in its folklore. As important constituents of folklore, folktales are consequently expressive of the worldview of a society at some point in time; they convey indicators of the prevailing ideology in a society. Thus, they are suitable sources for an inquiry into gender relations at work in a given social formation, especially when folktales by women are considered. This essay embarks on a listening/reading of such folktales in search of transformational trends in gender relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a single story from the /Xam materials in the Bleek and Lloyd collection. After briefly relating the narrative, I discuss its aetiological implications. Various interpretations of the story are then offered and critiqued. The article proceeds to consider the story in terms of power and agency and to investigate its discursive features: its chain of speaking, the nature of the laughter it presents and its mode of interpellation. This is followed by an examination of identity in the context of the narrative and an investigation into how a /Xam mythic framework plays itself out in the story. The article concludes with a consideration of the story's narrative voice. My discussion of the story aims primarily to show that the structuralist, comparative and functionalist ways in which the /Xam narratives have previously been read have missed much of the play of difference that becomes apparent when the discursive character of the /Xam materials is foregrounded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identity of the 'spirit child' may be ambiguous, but 'its' place in the experiences and in explaining the intricacies between the human nature and the spirit world remains a vital component of the Nankani religio-cultural system. Yet, in line with the current globalized world, can the Nankani continue to live out all the dynamics surrounding the phenomenon of 'spirit children'? To those who possess the power of identification, it is not about what others say or do, 'it is in our blood', they say. This raises concerns. In what ways and to what extent is this religio-cultural phenomenon a challenge to euthanasia, human rights and rural development in the contemporary society? This paper examines the phenomenon of 'spirit children' from an insider perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there have been several attempts, through UNESCO and other international cultural agencies, to preserve African oral 'folklore'. Many of the supporting arguments for such actions are based on a simplistic binary model of African oral culture, contrasting modern, individually authored, cultural products backed up by copyright laws, with anonymous, static and collective pre-capitalist cultural traditions. This article argues that the binary is itself questionable, since the collective nature of oral culture is more in the reception than the creation of artworks. In addition, a simplistic account of a shift from oral to literary/mediated culture as a shift from traditional to modern, ignores the complexity and dynamism of African cultural responses to globalisation. While not denying the possibility of African artists being exploitated in a modern context of industrial cultural production, the article suggests that African ambiguity to legalistic intellectual property rights may be part of a larger Third World dialectic struggling against globalised culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius, Réunion, and Seychelles, named the "Mascareignes" after a Portuguese explorer, are products of an eastward African diaspora, almost invisible in the West except to a few historians. Empty of human population until European exploitation settled them with a few colonists and thousands of slaves from East Africa and Madagascar, their multicultural history demonstrates the astonishing durability of African and Malagasy cultures. Folktales provide the finest window into that history and its values. Through that window, creolization is revealed in its actual occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the significance of the tale of the kind and unkind girls (AT 480) by treating an African example. The ensuing analysis does not pretend to be exhaustive or definitive; experience teaches us that such rich and complex narratives allow for the possibility of multiple levels of interpretation. In the course of previous tale analyses, the theme of initiatory quests repeatedly commanded the author attention. Passage from childhood to adulthood and integration into the social group pose a fundamental problem in the majority of human societies.

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This review summarizes existing scholarship in order to theorize how Abrahamic religions and Hinduism were influenced by African beliefs, in order to illuminate the contributions that African beliefs have had on other world religions. The review begins with a brief historical overview of the origins of indigenous ideologies, followed by a review of classical theories of religion and a summary of contemporary religious trends, with particular attention on African beliefs. The Black Madonna, with origins in Africa, is a prominent example of how African beliefs have been integrated into other faiths in ways that are often obscured from view. The Black Madonna is compared with the characteristics and symbolism of the traditional fair-skinned Virgin Mary. It is estimated that there are hundreds of depictions of the Black Madonna, yet her identity as truly black is generally minimized. This review contributes a theoretical rationale for the lack of recognition and acceptance of the Madonna as black, contextualizing this within a feminist theoretical viewpoint and analyzing the connection to African folklore and traditional religious beliefs. The theoretical framework articulated in this paper contributes an elucidation of the ways that indigenous African religions have affected other world religions. Acknowledging this influence challenges the simplistic notion of reified distinctions between Western and non-Western religions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]