Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.
2023, Tamarra: A Story of Termites on Gurindji Country
Tamarra: A Story of Termites on Gurindji Country is a fascinating, illustrated science book that takes kids inside the life of termites through storytelling from the Gurindji People. Did you know there are four types of termite poo? Or that a warm paste made from termite mound is used to strengthen a Gurindji baby’s body and spirit? Or that spinifex (which termites eat) is one of the strongest plants in the world? Created as a collaboration between over 30 First Nations and non-Indigenous contributors, the story and artworks explore how termites and their mounds connect different parts of Country, from tiny Gurindji babies and their loving grandmothers, to spiky spinifex plants growing in the hot sun. Written in traditional Gurindji, Gurindji Kriol and English (with a QR code to an audio version spoken in language), Tamarra is a truly original story with beautiful artwork that takes readers on an educational and cultural journey through Gurindji Country. Suitable for children aged 7 to 12 years.
Exploring Materiality and Connectivity in Anthropology and Beyond. Editors: Philipp Schorch, Martin Saxer, Marlen Elders. UCL Press., 2020
Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya) In this world of ours live many kinds of amazing creatures. In addition to the ants, honeybees, dogs, cats, flies, spiders, horses, chickens, seagulls, sparrows and other species we know so well, there are also many we have not yet encountered. In many parts of the globe, there are millions of kinds of living things which we have never heard of. Even if we learned their names, we would have nothing to which we could compare them. The subject of this book is an insect that most of us aren’t used to seeing in our environment. This insect is the termite, which resembles an ant in appearance and partially in the way it lives. But even though they look like ants, termites have very different characteristics—and abilities. Some people may be surprised to find a book entirely about termites. What, they may ask, is there to tell about these small insects? But as you will soon see, this little-known creature has characteristics that may open people’s minds to an entirely different horizon of ideas. This book investigates that hidden world of termites, their physical characteristics and the marvelous social system that orders their lives. Having read all these details, you may well conclude that termites, like every other living creature in the world, offer a clear proof of God’s being named the “perfect and incomparable” Creator. He is God – the Creator, the Maker, the Giver of Form. To Him belong the Most Beautiful Names. Everything in the heavens and earth glorifies Him. He is the Almighty, the All-Wise.(Surat al-Hashr: 59:24)
Background: The number of termite species in the world is more than 2500, and Africa with more than 1000 species has the richest intercontinental diversity. The family Termitidae contains builders of great mounds up to 5 m high. Colonies are composed of casts: a queen, a king, soldiers and workers. Some species of termite cultivate specialised fungi to digest cellulose. Termites constitute 10% of all animal biomass in the tropics. The purpose of the study was to make an overview of how termites are utilized, perceived and experienced in daily life across sub-Saharan Africa.
Scientists aspire to ‘discover’ new environmental phenomena; they rarely consider the existing knowledge of First Peoples. The scientific debate1 over ‘fairy circles’ (regular bare patches within arid grasslands) is a case in point. Ecologists visiting Australia used brief field observations and numerical modelling to explain ‘fairy circles’ as plants responding to dispersion of water and nutrients2,3. By contrast, Australian Aboriginal people have long understood the bare patches to be created by termites. They have used linyji (Manyjilyjarra language) in their food economies and for other domestic or sacred purposes. They transfer intergenerational knowledge of termite ecology through talk and demonstration, art and song. Aboriginal art and narratives, and scientific field measurements confirm Aboriginal knowledge that ‘fairy circles’ are pavement-nests occupied by harvester termites. Aboriginal people’s observations and uses of termites and pavements are sophisticated; linyji are...
ECOLOGY is most fundamental to the survival of human cultures and populations. Ecological resources are exploited by humans for creation of an artificial hierarchy of ecosystems. Technologies are evolved for efficient transfer of ecological resources. During this course of material and technological evolution ; symbols, motifs are absorbed; rituals are formulated, cults emerge through common symbols and rituals; gods and goddesses; demons and devils; spirits and angels assume forms and shapes and religious systems befitting the levels of technology get rooted. Magic is related to technology. Primitive agricultural and fertility magic could be considered as monopolised knowledge of stagnated, unevolved or dynamic technology depending upon the ecological specificity of each culture.
When the developing world seems to be swayed by the late currents of modernity overlooking the environmental concerns and climate change, Sundara Ramaswamy's Tamil novel Oru Puliyamarattin Kattai (1966), translated by Blake Wentworth in 2003 as Tamarind History in English explores the themes of the changing interaction between humans and nature in a fictional Indian town in the context of historical and social-political changes. It highlights nature nurturing not just life at earth but also facilitating the imagination of the creative spirit of the mass of humanity. The novel also looks at nature as the ‘Subaltern’ becoming the victim to the games of the power-hungry-race of humanity. The paper analyses the telling of the life story of the specific tamarind tree at the main crossroad of the narrator's hometown in the novel as the author’s attempt at telling anthropocentric history in a novel earth centric way. KEYWORDS Ecocriticism, Anthropocentrism, Nature-Human Relation in Literature, Modernity, Ecocide
2010. Pest Control Technology (PCT) Convention Extra, October 2010. Pp. 38-39, 50.
Stone Masters. Power Encounters in Mainland Southeast Asia. Holly High (ed.), Singapore: NUS Press , 2022
Termite mounds are frequently mentioned in anthropological discussions of territorial cults in the region Paul Mus called monsoon Asia. While Mus emphasised stones and their veneration to identify a shared ritual language of chthonic cults that enabled him to formulate this alternative regionalisation, he did not address termite mounds and their worship explicitly. This original omission may be the reason why termite mounds, although frequently mentioned by anthropologists working in the region, are largely neglected as study objects sui generis. Most anthropologists tend to follow Mus and focus on stones, which makes them miss the essential fact that many stone-like artefacts worshipped in territorial cults throughout Southeast Asia bear intimate linkages to termite mounds. In this chapter I follow Mus and use termite mounds to look at ancient India from the East to better understand everyday ritual practices in contemporary Thailand. I am, however, not suggesting that we find the origin or true meaning of these local practices in the Indian subcontinent, Sanskrit texts or Hindu mythology. I am rather emphasising Mus’ central point that the meaningfulness of termite mound veneration rests on a shared language game of chthonic cults in which the worshipped ‘stones’ are not ‘the “seat” of the god, but the god himself, consubstantially. Not the stone of the genie, but the stone-genie’. I am drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a rural sub-district (tambon) of Thailand’s Buriram Province in which termite mounds and their stone-like remnants are objects of worship in localised territorial cults to answer why these earthly structures and their stone-like remnants have such a great ritual significance in the region.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
Surface Technology, 1984
Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences, 2022
Toxicology Letters, 2011
İnsan ve Toplum Bilimleri Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2024
Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work