The Hadendowa Salif: Successes and failures of indigenous cultural institutions in managing the food system
The Hadendowa's customary law code, the Salif, used to regulate the social and economic behaviour of the Hadendowa, as well as their rational utilization of resources. Since the outbreak of the 1984 famine, however, the Hadendova have been depending on relief food, which has disrupted their Salif and rendered it uncapable of helping the Hadendowa to to cope with the current stress situation.
Are There Customary Rights to Plants? An Inquiry Among the Baganda (Uganda), with Special Attention to Gender
"Debates around Common Property Resources and Intellectual Property Rights fail to consider traditional and indigenous rights regimes that regulate plant resource exploitation, establish bundles of powers and obligations for heterogeneous groups of users, and create differential entitlements to benefits that are related to social structures. Such rights regimes are important to maintaining biodiversity and to human welfare; failing to recognize them presents dangers. The case study investigates the gendered nature of informal rights to selected tree and plant species that are distinct from, but related to, customary rights to land and trees, and are embedded in cosmology and social norms. from Author's Abstract
greetings in the desert1
Tuareg men must frequently travel into the wilderness of the western Sahara. The stakes are high in encounters. The desert is vast and threatening; the solitary traveler is continuously reminded of man'sand his own-insignificance. The camel is the "ship of the desert, " and the sighting far off of another rider engenders tensions similar to those experienced by seafaring travelers in the days of ships of sail, viz., is the unknown stranger friend or foe? News and companionship are highly valued in the wilderness, but strangers may be or become enemies. Sensitivity to cues of identity has high survival value; adult males must also learn complex rules for the interpretation of verbal and other behaviors in the accomplishment of greetings and information exchange. A nalogs to encounters and greetings in other settings are adduced. A concluding section propounds some tentative universals on