Journal of African Studies
Online ISSN : 1884-5533
Print ISSN : 0065-4140
ISSN-L : 0065-4140
Volume 1998, Issue 53
Displaying 1-6 of 6 articles from this issue
  • A Folk Explanation of the Citemene Cultivation of the Bemba of Northern Zambia
    Yuko Sugiyama
    1998 Volume 1998 Issue 53 Pages 1-19
    Published: December 20, 1998
    Released on J-STAGE: April 30, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The Bemba of northern Zambia have long practiced a unique slash-and-burn cultivation, known as the Citemene system. The uniqueness of the Citemene system is based chiefly on the procedure for clearing the woodland in which (1) men climb the trees and cut only the branches, after which, (2) women bring the branches, which have been well dried, to the center of a cleared area and pile them into a roundshaped bed, and then burn them in order to make a Citemene field.
    Based on the research of the folk explanation of the Citemene clearing method, the following points can be clarified: 1) The villagers share the idea that it is necessary to refer to a “secret knowledge” in order to fully explain the Citemene clearing method. 2) This secret knowledge is kept exclusively by the elders of the village. The secret knowledge is mutually related to Bemba folk belief regarding the ancestral spirits as well as folk reproduction theory. 3) However, younger villagers know that there is such secret knowledge. They are even able to approximate the outline of it, if not detail it completely, because some key ideas of the secret knowledge can be discerned in various rituals. This understanding produces an idea among all villagers that there is a single “perfect knowledge” to explain everything in the world. 4) This perfect knowledge consists of the two different aspects of knowledge, one, the empirical aspect of knowledge based on daily experience and personal observation, and two, the knowledge resulting by connecting the different contexts of daily life and systematizing them to produce a cosmology. Such a structure, inherent to the folk explanation, gives a socially accepted grounding to the Citemene clearing method and supports the Bemba idea of “beautiful job” and “manhood.” This structure ultimately contributes to the maintenance of the Citemene clearing method and therefore ensures woodland sustainability. This paper analyzes this structure and discusses the Bemba sense of “agricultural technology”
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  • Akio Nishiura
    1998 Volume 1998 Issue 53 Pages 21-37
    Published: December 20, 1998
    Released on J-STAGE: April 30, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    It is said that the South African Government had played important roles in the manufacturing sector through industrial decentralization policy, import substitution policy, and export promotion policy with high political motivation since the 1920's. Those government interventions, however, should be reconsidered under the new GATT/WTO agreement. South Africa must reduce the levels of protection and terminate export subsidies. Thus, improvement of industrial competitiveness would be a major challenge facing democratized South Africa.
    The steel industry is one of South Africa's most export oriented industries, which has strong international competitiveness. This industry has strong forward linkage effects with downstream industries as well. But few books describe its developmental processes from the economic point of view.
    Therefore, this paper attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of government's industrial policy for the development of the steel industry, in particular, in terms of successful policy shift from import substitution to export orientation. This paper also tries to examine the direction of the new steel policy in the post-apartheid era based on the author's survey in summer, 1995 and 1996.
    It is found that the steel industry has firmly reflected the needs of the government at various times. Although government obviously affected its development, the author doubts the effectiveness of the past policies. Firstly, some external factors, beside that of the government's, seemed to influence export increases. Secondly, it created an oligopolistic situation in the domestic market, preventing the development of downstream industries. Finally, lack of training for African workers especially, caused low labor productivity and reduced the number of African workers in the 1980's.
    The new South African government has two types of steel policies, namely that of supply-side measure and cluster study. It would be said that the government still has a role in creating more jobs and an environment which facilitates the manufacturing sector as a whole
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  • Taku Iida
    1998 Volume 1998 Issue 53 Pages 39-41
    Published: December 20, 1998
    Released on J-STAGE: April 30, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Takehiko Ochiai
    1998 Volume 1998 Issue 53 Pages 41-44
    Published: December 20, 1998
    Released on J-STAGE: April 30, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Mitsugi Endo
    1998 Volume 1998 Issue 53 Pages 44-46
    Published: December 20, 1998
    Released on J-STAGE: April 30, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Motoki Takahashi
    1998 Volume 1998 Issue 53 Pages 47-51
    Published: December 20, 1998
    Released on J-STAGE: April 30, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (798K)
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