January 2015

Prosperity, penury and polarization: Disaggregating the peasantry in the historiography of colonial Zimbabwe

Underdevelopment and modernization theorists have long agreed that peasant agriculture was not universally damaged and curtailed, but the two schools remain very much at odds over the general trajectory of peasant agriculture during the colonial period. This dichotomy, however, is unwarranted. In the canonical literature there is a pervasive ambiguity surrounding the term “peasant,” an ambiguity that allows...

Author(s): Gary Blank

January 2015

Is culture a restraining or a driving force for entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka?

Being entrepreneurial is vital for a country to ensure sustainability. Sustainability is ensured by high levels of opportunity recognition of ventures. Given this, this paper seeks to investigate context specific problems. Does entrepreneurship exist in a country like Sri Lanka? Are entrepreneurial activities limited due to the inherent culture in Sri Lanka? And does culture act as a driving force or a restraining force...

Author(s): Dissanayake D.M.N.S.W and Semasinghe D.M.

January 2015

Globalization, Culture mutation and new identity: Implications for the Igbo cultural heritage

The paper engages in globalization debate to explore culture mutation and resurgent new identity in the periphery societies of Africa. It focuses on the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria. The study of Igbo culture mutation is particularly interesting because 'traditional' scholarship presents the people as 'acephalous','egalitarian' and “republican”. It locates culture mutation within a social...

Author(s): Luke Amadi and James E. Agena

January 2015

A Short Political Biography of Kibur Ato Haddis Alemayehu

The main purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the political biography of Kibur Ato Haddis Alemayehu who was one of the senior officials of Ethiopia during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie I and the author of the most accomplished Amharic novel, Feqer Eska Meqaber (“Love unto Grave”). In order to undertake this study, both primary and secondary sources were used. The source analysis revealed that after...

Author(s): Alemu Alene Kebede