Systematics and Evolution of Xanthophyllum (Polygalaceae)

R. van der Meijden

Leiden University Press

Griottes (female bards) are a striking feature of Mandinka culture. They can be recognized by their flamboyant style of dressing and their sharp voices. Nevertheless, griottes have largely been neglected in scientific literature, while ample attention has been paid to griots (male bards). This book tries to fill the gap. Marloes Janson lived with the griottes from a Mandinka community in eastern Gambia for more than a year and was trained by them as an apprentice. From this perspective she describes the daily life and concerns of the griottes, their skills, their techniques for learning the profession, their means of subsistence, their relationships with the griots and their patrons. The main activity of griottes is daaniroo. When they set out for daaniroo, they praise their patrons, and in return they are rewarded with money or goods. This book shows that daaniroo is a highly controversial practice. It is sometimes considered a new development, while at the same time it fits in with the bardic tradition. Some patrons disapprove of daaniroo, yet they are dependent on it to have their prestige confirmed. Several Koranic scholars regard daaniroo as conflicting with Islam, while the griottes do their best to embed their activities in an Islamic discourse. By studying the gendered practice of daaniroo, the dynamics of female 'griotism' are demonstrated. (In English, 322 pp. incl. bibl.& index) 'A very fine achievement that gives scholars of Africa, performance, and gender much richness to build on.' - Caroline Bledsoe in: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 11, no. 4, Dec. 2005, pp.874-875.

The best hand is the hand that always gives: Griotes and their profession in Eastern Gambia (CNWS Publications)

Jason, M.

The festivals of the four months differ from other celebrations held in the Kathmandu Valley in their over riding concern with death. The two main themes of these celebrations of death are sacrifice and Kingship

Caturm�sa: Celebrations of Death in Kathmandu, Nepal (CNWS Publications)

Hoek

For much of its two centuries of existence (1602 to 1799), the VOC, the Dutch East India Company was the largest trading company in the world. Although the VOC was established to operate primarily as a trading company, it soon also came to play a prominent military, diplomatic and political role on the Asian stage and eventually it laid the foundations of the Dutch colonial empire in the Indonesian Archipelago. Merchant in Asia is the first study to pay attention to the full breadth and width of the VOC commercial activities in Asia. It looks at the company from the peak of its fame until its final decline at the end of the eighteenth century. The study focuses on the main trade goods - spices, Indian textiles, Chinese tea and Javanese coffee - and their specific by-products. Els Jacobs has analyzed in detail the VOC trade in fifteen of the most important commodities that together made up 85% of the total turnover. This innovative study is based on extensive research of the VOC archives and many other Dutch sources, as well as a detailed quantitative analysis of the VOC bookkeeping records. In the study the author sketches in vivid detail how the merchants of the VOC sold, bought, and even supervised the production of tropical products and how they dealt with Asian suppliers and consumers. In addition, she looks at the range of problems the merchants encountered in the maritime trade from Yemen and Persia in the West to China and Japan in the East, including India, Ceylon, Malacca, and the Indonesian Archipelago.

Merchant in Asia: The Trade of the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century (CNWS Publications)

Jacobs, Els

Sweelinck's Keyboard Music (Publications of the Sir Thomas Browne Institute)

Arts & Photography

Curtis, Alan

Music

Views and attitudes. towards termination of pregnancy have shown con siderable evolution over the past few decades. Along with these changes has come a growing concern to adopt means and methods which could make termination easier, safer and more effective. In this evolution, termination in the second trimester in par~icular is notable as being responsible for a dis proportionate share ofthe complications and adverse experiences associated with pregnancy termination. Although the almost universal shift towards earlier abortion has reduced the number of second trimester procedures as a percentage of the whole, the problems of interrupting pregnancy in the second trimester remain conspicuous. Delay in either seeking or obtaining abortion is still, in many parts of the world, all too frequent. AdditiDnally, recent developments in the prenatal diagnosis of fetal malformations, alphafeto protein screening programmes and changes in the pattern of and approaches to intrauterine fetal death now also place greater emphasis on the need for adequate methods of interrupting pregnancy in the second trimester. Unlike the first trimester in which vacuum aspiration is universally con sidered to be the method of choice, in the second trimester of pregnancy the clinician is faced with alternatives; one method may be more appropriate than another in a particular circumstance and no single method is unequivocall~ accepted as best. Neither do second trimester terminations form a neatly defined single category.

Second Trimester Pregnancy Termination (Boerhaave Series for Postgraduate Medical Education)

J. Bennebroek Gravenhorst D. a. F. Van Lith M. J. N. C. Keirse

Medical Books

Dutch archaeology has experienced profound changes in recent years. This has led to an increasing use of archaeological predictive modelling, a technique that uses information about the location of known early human settlements to predict where additional settlements may have been located. Case Studies in Archaeological Predictive Modelling is the product of a decade of work by Philip Verhagen as a specialist in geographical information systems at RAAP Archeologisch Adviesbureau BV, one of the leading organizations in the field; the case studies presented here provide an overview of the field and point to potential future areas of research.

Case Studies in Archaeological Predictive Modeling (Volume 14) (Archaeological Studies Leiden University Press)

Politics & Social Sciences

Verhagen, Philip

Archaeology

The human brain and its one hundred billion neurons compose the most complex organ in the body and harness more than 20% of all the energy we produce.  Why do we have such large and energy-demanding brains, and how have we been able to afford such an expensive organ for thousands of years?  Guts and Brains discusses the key variables at stake in such a question, including the relationship between brain size and diet, diet and social organization, and large brains and the human sexual division of labor.  Showcasing how small changes in the diet of early hominins came to have large implications for the behavior of modern humans, this interdisciplinary volume provides an entry for the reader into understanding the development of both early primates and our own species.

Guts and Brains: An Integrative Approach to the Hominin Record (Amsterdam University Press - Leiden University Press Academic)

Anthropology

Leiden University was founded as an institution that would embody a particular set of academic ethics that sought to improve society through the acquisition of knowledge. In this volume, author Willem Otterspeer draws on the idea of Leiden as a “bastion of liberty” and proposes that concepts such as “equilibrium” and “scale” are key to understanding the university as an institution, ultimately showing how universities are a form of social capital, one of Western society’s answers to the dilemma of collective action, and an instrument for preserving and restoring continuity in the world.

The Bastion of Liberty: Leiden University Today and Yesterday (Amsterdam University Press - Leiden University Press Academic)

Education & Teaching

Otterspeer, Willem

Higher & Continuing Education

African policy on customary land relations has become increasingly problematic in the wake of the growing value of residential and agricultural land; in Ghana, land has been the subject of growing commodification which has led to increased attempts by tribal chiefs, earth priests, land users, and governmental actors to redefine “custom,” land ownership, and tenure. This collection of essays critically examines the relationships between customary and statutory tenure, as well as the institutional interactions between the state and traditional authorities, addressing issues of power, accountability, and equity in a number of case studies, as well as accounts of past and contemporary policy.

Contesting Land and Custom in Ghana: State, Chief and the Citizen (Law, Governance, and Development Research)

Legal Theory & Systems

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