1,720,959 research outputs found
‘Our Past, Our Present, and, Most Importantly of All, Our Future’: The Role of Potters in Botswana
Get PDFThis study integrates various multi-disciplinary approaches on ceramics that provide coherent answers to the past, present and possibly the future of the subject. Special focus is on the four main stages of pottery production in south-eastern Botswana: raw material acquisition and processing, forming and shaping, decoration and surface treatment, and firing and finishing of pots. The purpose is to demonstrate the changing pottery traditions in Botswana over the last 50 years. This period is marked by conflicting land uses affecting pottery raw materials due to the expansion of villages, cities and industries following the post-Independence economic boom. Global warning has also taken its toll on potters as there is a shortage of resources –especially clay, temper, oxides, fuel and water. In recent years, potters who have adopted modern technology by spinning their pottery on the wheel and using modern kilns that require power, but these have been affected by power shortages. In addition, traditional potters face water shortages due to recent drought and fuel for making pots as a result of deforestation. Despite these challenges, potters in south-eastern Botswana still find potting to be a source of livelihood beyond subsistence farming, which also is drastically affected by global warming
Ethnoarchaeology of pottery: style and technology boundaries in southeast Botswana
Get PDFA thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy. 22 March 2017.The notion that ceramic styles mark ethnic and linguistic groups is problematic. The notion perceives cultures as geographically discrete with distinct material and cultural traits. Research in the 1960s has demonstrated that social boundaries are a product of interaction and not isolation. Ethnoarchaeological research in the 1970s and 1980s adopted information exchange and social interaction models to understand stylistic boundaries. These studies show that material culture style does not always mark ethnic or linguistic boundaries and may not be prominent if there is no competition for resources. Depending on a number of factors, style variations in material culture may mark the style of an individual, a community of practice or social identity. Other factors are also relevant; the matter is complex.
To investigate this complexity, an ethnoarchaeological study was launched to study the products of 41 contemporary potters affiliated with different social, political and linguistic groups in south-eastern Botswana. This study demonstrates that variations in different parts of the process of manufacturing ceramics can mark different kinds of social boundaries. Clay sourcing strategies in south-eastern Botswana today show that the choice in the selection of potting clay is principally dictated by distance to the source. In contrast, in the forming and shaping of pots, boundaries are influenced more by teacher-learner networks than ethnic group and geographic location. Decoration styles also show strong association to learning networks. Geographic location is more influential in determining techniques of firing pots. Here, ―community of practice‖ and mobility of potters present significant stylistic and technological boundaries. The chaîne opératoire of living pottery traditions may assist in the interpretation of pottery in the Iron Age of southern Africa, however, the connection between the past and present is complex.LG201
In Search of Identity and Ownership of the MmaMotshwane Gorge: Heritage Tourism and Management of Mogonye Cultural Landscape
Get PDFThe paper discusses challenges associated with managing cultural landscapes at Mogonye, SouthernDistrict, Botswana. In this area, different stakeholders attach diverse values to the same locale. This hasbecome challenging in the face of heritage tourism since some stakeholders are perceived as detrimentalto the resources that are otherwise valuable to other stakeholders. These so-called ‘destroyers’ aretherefore considered as ‘outsiders’ –the ‘other’. However, the perceived ‘other’ do not see themselvesas being environmentally unfriendly but recognise themselves as having the right to the resources too.In discussing heritage tourism and values attached to the cultural landscape, the scientifi c, tourism, andspiritual values among others of the MmaMotshwane waterfalls are underscored. This paper furtherdiscusses gorges within theoretical frameworks developed by heritage practitioners and geographers inthe fi eld of recreation and tourism. To the local community of Mogonye, MmaMotshwane Gorge is asacred site; a spiritual haven to traditional doctors and churches while to tourists and other stakeholders,the gorge remains a scientifi c, recreational and economic resource. Examples are drawn from variousparts of the world including Jamaica, South Africa and Botswana
"There is no hurry in Botswana": Scholarship and stereotypes on "African time" syndrome in Botswana, 1895- 2011
Get PDFThe lack of a strict and disciplined adherence to keeping time or punctuality
has been an issue of major concern to many authorities in the African public
and private sectors. Botswana is no exception, as this article will demonstrate.
So pervasive is lack of punctuality among Africans in sub-Saharan Africa
that a stereotypical notion of “African time” gained currency a long time
ago and is still prevalent to this day. Undoubtedly, this attitude towards time
negatively affects the productivity and economic performance of numerous
African countries, such as Botswana, in their seemingly futile endeavour to
become competitive globally and attract the much sought after foreign direct
investment (FDI). In this article we try to make sense of African time from
the scholarship on the African traditional socio-economic and environmental
factors relating to time, as well as the popular stereotypical views of African
time. This article shows that African time among the Batswana is something
that frustrated the Victorian missionaries in the late nineteenth century. We
also discuss how African time has translated into expression of political power
by tribal and national political leaders. The problem of African time continues
to be prevalent in the twenty-first century Botswana where a poor work ethic
is also believed to be a major impediment to doing business in the country
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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