Michelle Gilbert
Biographic Data
| ID | 3611751 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michelle Gilbert |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michelle |
| FAMILY NAME | Gilbert |
| SIGNATURE | GILBERT M |
| AFFILIATIONS | 1Trinity College, Hartford |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 119 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Arkilla , Kaasa , and Nsaa
Wool from the Massina sheep was used to create a dozen or so kinds of textiles patterned by extra (supplementary) weft and tapestry weave in the Niger Bend region. This constellation makes the region the foremost center of technical and visual diversity in West African treadle-loom weaving traditions. Two major categories of wool textiles can be identified: kaasa and arkilla , both heavy covers of different sizes. Whereas the visual appearance of…
Bura Funerary Urns
All photos by Manu SassoonianThe site of the necropolis of Bura-Asinda-Sikka in the lower Niger River valley in southwest Niger was discovered accidentally in 1975 by a young hunter who found two small terracotta heads. Three years later the discovery was reported to the Departement d'art et archaeologie (IRSH: l'Institut de Recherches en sciences humaines de l'Universite de Niamey). In 1983, Boube Gado (1944–2015)—head of the Department of Art a…
Trust in Interspecies Sport
This paper explores how young girls develop trust in their equine partners for the purposes of competitive equestrian sport. I argue that interspecies trust manifests through interactional trust and system trust. Interactional trust, as reflected in the horse-human relationship, is built through joint action and results in symbolic interaction. System trust is made possible through the equine community; it develops through communication in an eff…
Into the mountains and across the country
This paper draws upon Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘lines of flight’ to analyze the complex inter-relationship between people and their animals as enacted through adventure travel. Two narrative case studies illustrate how the human/horse relationship has been used to transform and/or escape from power relations. The first takes place during the early twentieth century with Mary Shaffer challenging Victorian gender and class relations throug…
Sport, Animals, and Society
Equine athletes and interspecies sport
This article draws on a range of sociological literature including studies of sport, subculture, interspecies relationships and animal advocacy to understand the social processes that have contributed to the horse being defined as an athlete in equestrian sports. Using a combination of qualitative interviews and archival analysis, we identify trends in the equine industry that have provided the foundation for the emergence of a new type of equine…
Disguising the pain of remembering in Akwapim
In Akropong-Akwapim, south-eastern Ghana, memories of a sorrowful or conflict-laden past are accessed by verbal and visual strategies that are allusive in nature. The name-response that a mother gives to her child, sites marked in the ritual landscape and a chief's gold-covered linguist staff with a carved narrative image are all sites of memory pertaining to the identity of persons or groups. Formalized, repetitive and felt to be obligatory, the…
The King, His Soul and the Pastor
In 1906-7, in Akwapim, a small kingdom in southern Ghana (then the Gold Coast), a bitter conflict occurred between the king, Nana Kwasi Akuffo, and Kwasi Fianko, a wealthy trader who had been appointed as the king's 'soul' (okra) but who later decided to resign his position and rejoin the Christian community. Two detailed accounts addressed to the Basel Mission were written by an indigenous pastor and his superior, a long-serving missionary. They…
Future Remembrance
Future Remembrance: Photography and Image Arts in Ghana. 1998. 54 minutes, color. video by Tobias Wendel and Nancy du Plessis. For more information contact Documentary Educational Resources, 101 Morse Street, Watertown, MA 02171
Concert Parties
Au Ghana, le Concert Party est un spectacle populaire qui fait partie de la culture populaire locale. Les spectacles Concert Party et les peintures sont des reponses a des interrogations et problemes contemporains. Les groupes et le public qui participent a ces manifestations reconnaissent que les pieces ont un message moral. Par consequent, on peut dire que cette forme d'art populaire est une maniere de penser en commun, une opportunite pour la …
No condition is permanent
This article concerns a recent political crisis which led to the fragmentation, in the main along ethnic lines, of the small Ghanaian kingdom of Akuapem. The situation is complex, though one may choose to frame it too simply in terms of hegemony (Akan vis-à-vis Guan) or even as a double hegemony in the sense that arguments on both sides appeal to 'modern' notions, to law courts, the constitution and 'freedom', and to newspapers in order to propag…
The Social Control of Religious Zeal
The Christian Executioner
La christianisation de l'Akuapem, un petit royaume du sud du Ghana a commence il y a 150 ans. Depuis, cette tentative d'evangelisation suscite le debat et l'incertitude de la part de la population locale. Pour comprendre l'experience de christianisation dans l'Afrique d'aujourd'hui, il est necessaire de posseder une connaissance detaillee des contextes historique et social. L'A. analyse les traditions de ce royaume, s'attache aux discours indigen…
Vengeance as Illusion and Reality
Dans la petite ville guan du Sud du Ghana, la coutume « kuna » (c'est-a-dire l'absence de conjoint ou de conjointe) fait partie des rites de transformation qui accompagnent la celebration de la mort. Ceux qui participent a ce rite plein d'ambiguite sont non seulement avares d'explications, mais leurs explications sont souvent contradictoires, ce qui a pu influencer l'interpretation de l'A. « Kuna », un rite qui s'apparente a la plaisanterie ritue…
Aesthetic strategies
The article explores both the meaning of Odwira, the royal ritual which annually cleanses the community of pollution, and the way the rite is used to negotiate the shifting configurations of power in Akuropon and the kingdom of Akuapem. In a small society where consensus is required in public and conflict is covert, where kings formerly had the power to reduce opponents to slavery and still today can deny them a position and a home, opposition mu…
The Cimmerian Darkness of Intrigue1
The Cimmerian Darkness of Intrigue
Akan Terracotta Heads
The Cracked Pot and the Missing Sheep
This essay concerns the difficulties of separating "religion" from "political" strategy and tactics, by demonstrating the place of contingencies in ritual performances and the ways they are resolved in a small Ghanaian kingdom. Two rituals are described, both of which in differing ways failed to conform to the actors' precisely and traditionally defined expectations. The rituals themselves became opportunities to realign patterns of political rel…
The sudden death of a millionaire
Opening ParagraphThe unexpected death of a citizen in 1977 triggered a series of events in one small Ghanaian kingdom, pointing to confusion in the locally accepted criteria for Christian conversion and to contradictions in the avenues to status and power. Since the deceased was a millionaire businessman, something of a huckster, and a person who was at the centre of an unusually complex constellation of social ties, his death forced the people o…
Excavated "Bambara" Terracottas
Art
Journal Article ART: THE PRIMITIVE VIEW Get access Michelle V. Gilbert Michelle V. Gilbert Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 22, Issue 2, SPRING 1982, Pages 167–171, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/22.2.167 Published: 01 February 1982
Mystical Protection among the Anlo Ewe
Ewe Funerary Sculpture
Much has been written recently about Ghanaian art both traditional and modern, and readers of African Arts are familiar with the striking and colorful cement sculpture made by the Fante on the central coast. Both the monumental military shrines (posuban) for the asafo companies, with life-size soldiers, officials, and symbolic animals set in the context of European warships and forts (see Preston 1975, Cole & Ross 1977), and the modern sculptured…
Textilien aus Westafrika. By Brigitte Menzel. Berlin
Textilien aus Westafrika. By Brigitte Menzel. Berlin: Museum für Völkerkunde, 1972–1973. 3 volumes: Pp. 251, 157, 145 (unpaginated). 2397 illustrations collated on 171 pl., 24 colour, 147 black and white, 381 pages of text, map. DM 84. - Volume 46 Issue 1
The sudden death of a millionaire
Opening ParagraphThe unexpected death of a citizen in 1977 triggered a series of events in one small Ghanaian kingdom, pointing to confusion in the locally accepted criteria for Christian conversion and to contradictions in the avenues to status and power. Since the deceased was a millionaire businessman, something of a huckster, and a person who was at the centre of an unusually complex constellation of social ties, his death forced the people o…
Aesthetic strategies
The article explores both the meaning of Odwira, the royal ritual which annually cleanses the community of pollution, and the way the rite is used to negotiate the shifting configurations of power in Akuropon and the kingdom of Akuapem. In a small society where consensus is required in public and conflict is covert, where kings formerly had the power to reduce opponents to slavery and still today can deny them a position and a home, opposition mu…
Equine athletes and interspecies sport
This article draws on a range of sociological literature including studies of sport, subculture, interspecies relationships and animal advocacy to understand the social processes that have contributed to the horse being defined as an athlete in equestrian sports. Using a combination of qualitative interviews and archival analysis, we identify trends in the equine industry that have provided the foundation for the emergence of a new type of equine…
Concert Parties
Au Ghana, le Concert Party est un spectacle populaire qui fait partie de la culture populaire locale. Les spectacles Concert Party et les peintures sont des reponses a des interrogations et problemes contemporains. Les groupes et le public qui participent a ces manifestations reconnaissent que les pieces ont un message moral. Par consequent, on peut dire que cette forme d'art populaire est une maniere de penser en commun, une opportunite pour la …
No condition is permanent
This article concerns a recent political crisis which led to the fragmentation, in the main along ethnic lines, of the small Ghanaian kingdom of Akuapem. The situation is complex, though one may choose to frame it too simply in terms of hegemony (Akan vis-à-vis Guan) or even as a double hegemony in the sense that arguments on both sides appeal to 'modern' notions, to law courts, the constitution and 'freedom', and to newspapers in order to propag…
The Cimmerian Darkness of Intrigue1
Trust in Interspecies Sport
This paper explores how young girls develop trust in their equine partners for the purposes of competitive equestrian sport. I argue that interspecies trust manifests through interactional trust and system trust. Interactional trust, as reflected in the horse-human relationship, is built through joint action and results in symbolic interaction. System trust is made possible through the equine community; it develops through communication in an eff…
Disguising the pain of remembering in Akwapim
In Akropong-Akwapim, south-eastern Ghana, memories of a sorrowful or conflict-laden past are accessed by verbal and visual strategies that are allusive in nature. The name-response that a mother gives to her child, sites marked in the ritual landscape and a chief's gold-covered linguist staff with a carved narrative image are all sites of memory pertaining to the identity of persons or groups. Formalized, repetitive and felt to be obligatory, the…
The Christian Executioner
La christianisation de l'Akuapem, un petit royaume du sud du Ghana a commence il y a 150 ans. Depuis, cette tentative d'evangelisation suscite le debat et l'incertitude de la part de la population locale. Pour comprendre l'experience de christianisation dans l'Afrique d'aujourd'hui, il est necessaire de posseder une connaissance detaillee des contextes historique et social. L'A. analyse les traditions de ce royaume, s'attache aux discours indigen…
Vengeance as Illusion and Reality
Dans la petite ville guan du Sud du Ghana, la coutume « kuna » (c'est-a-dire l'absence de conjoint ou de conjointe) fait partie des rites de transformation qui accompagnent la celebration de la mort. Ceux qui participent a ce rite plein d'ambiguite sont non seulement avares d'explications, mais leurs explications sont souvent contradictoires, ce qui a pu influencer l'interpretation de l'A. « Kuna », un rite qui s'apparente a la plaisanterie ritue…
The Cimmerian Darkness of Intrigue
Akan Terracotta Heads
The Cracked Pot and the Missing Sheep
This essay concerns the difficulties of separating "religion" from "political" strategy and tactics, by demonstrating the place of contingencies in ritual performances and the ways they are resolved in a small Ghanaian kingdom. Two rituals are described, both of which in differing ways failed to conform to the actors' precisely and traditionally defined expectations. The rituals themselves became opportunities to realign patterns of political rel…
Arkilla , Kaasa , and Nsaa
Wool from the Massina sheep was used to create a dozen or so kinds of textiles patterned by extra (supplementary) weft and tapestry weave in the Niger Bend region. This constellation makes the region the foremost center of technical and visual diversity in West African treadle-loom weaving traditions. Two major categories of wool textiles can be identified: kaasa and arkilla , both heavy covers of different sizes. Whereas the visual appearance of…
Bura Funerary Urns
All photos by Manu SassoonianThe site of the necropolis of Bura-Asinda-Sikka in the lower Niger River valley in southwest Niger was discovered accidentally in 1975 by a young hunter who found two small terracotta heads. Three years later the discovery was reported to the Departement d'art et archaeologie (IRSH: l'Institut de Recherches en sciences humaines de l'Universite de Niamey). In 1983, Boube Gado (1944–2015)—head of the Department of Art a…
Into the mountains and across the country
This paper draws upon Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘lines of flight’ to analyze the complex inter-relationship between people and their animals as enacted through adventure travel. Two narrative case studies illustrate how the human/horse relationship has been used to transform and/or escape from power relations. The first takes place during the early twentieth century with Mary Shaffer challenging Victorian gender and class relations throug…
Future Remembrance
Future Remembrance: Photography and Image Arts in Ghana. 1998. 54 minutes, color. video by Tobias Wendel and Nancy du Plessis. For more information contact Documentary Educational Resources, 101 Morse Street, Watertown, MA 02171
The King, His Soul and the Pastor
In 1906-7, in Akwapim, a small kingdom in southern Ghana (then the Gold Coast), a bitter conflict occurred between the king, Nana Kwasi Akuffo, and Kwasi Fianko, a wealthy trader who had been appointed as the king's 'soul' (okra) but who later decided to resign his position and rejoin the Christian community. Two detailed accounts addressed to the Basel Mission were written by an indigenous pastor and his superior, a long-serving missionary. They…
Mystical Protection among the Anlo Ewe
The Divine Gifts
Textilien aus Westafrika. By Brigitte Menzel. Berlin
Textilien aus Westafrika. By Brigitte Menzel. Berlin: Museum für Völkerkunde, 1972–1973. 3 volumes: Pp. 251, 157, 145 (unpaginated). 2397 illustrations collated on 171 pl., 24 colour, 147 black and white, 381 pages of text, map. DM 84. - Volume 46 Issue 1
Ewe Funerary Sculpture
Much has been written recently about Ghanaian art both traditional and modern, and readers of African Arts are familiar with the striking and colorful cement sculpture made by the Fante on the central coast. Both the monumental military shrines (posuban) for the asafo companies, with life-size soldiers, officials, and symbolic animals set in the context of European warships and forts (see Preston 1975, Cole & Ross 1977), and the modern sculptured…
Art
Journal Article ART: THE PRIMITIVE VIEW Get access Michelle V. Gilbert Michelle V. Gilbert Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 22, Issue 2, SPRING 1982, Pages 167–171, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/22.2.167 Published: 01 February 1982
Mystical Protection among the Anlo Ewe
Excavated "Bambara" Terracottas
The sudden death of a millionaire
Opening ParagraphThe unexpected death of a citizen in 1977 triggered a series of events in one small Ghanaian kingdom, pointing to confusion in the locally accepted criteria for Christian conversion and to contradictions in the avenues to status and power. Since the deceased was a millionaire businessman, something of a huckster, and a person who was at the centre of an unusually complex constellation of social ties, his death forced the people o…
Akan Terracotta Heads
The Cracked Pot and the Missing Sheep
This essay concerns the difficulties of separating "religion" from "political" strategy and tactics, by demonstrating the place of contingencies in ritual performances and the ways they are resolved in a small Ghanaian kingdom. Two rituals are described, both of which in differing ways failed to conform to the actors' precisely and traditionally defined expectations. The rituals themselves became opportunities to realign patterns of political rel…
The Cimmerian Darkness of Intrigue1
The Cimmerian Darkness of Intrigue
Vengeance as Illusion and Reality
Dans la petite ville guan du Sud du Ghana, la coutume « kuna » (c'est-a-dire l'absence de conjoint ou de conjointe) fait partie des rites de transformation qui accompagnent la celebration de la mort. Ceux qui participent a ce rite plein d'ambiguite sont non seulement avares d'explications, mais leurs explications sont souvent contradictoires, ce qui a pu influencer l'interpretation de l'A. « Kuna », un rite qui s'apparente a la plaisanterie ritue…
Aesthetic strategies
The article explores both the meaning of Odwira, the royal ritual which annually cleanses the community of pollution, and the way the rite is used to negotiate the shifting configurations of power in Akuropon and the kingdom of Akuapem. In a small society where consensus is required in public and conflict is covert, where kings formerly had the power to reduce opponents to slavery and still today can deny them a position and a home, opposition mu…
The Social Control of Religious Zeal
The Christian Executioner
La christianisation de l'Akuapem, un petit royaume du sud du Ghana a commence il y a 150 ans. Depuis, cette tentative d'evangelisation suscite le debat et l'incertitude de la part de la population locale. Pour comprendre l'experience de christianisation dans l'Afrique d'aujourd'hui, il est necessaire de posseder une connaissance detaillee des contextes historique et social. L'A. analyse les traditions de ce royaume, s'attache aux discours indigen…
No condition is permanent
This article concerns a recent political crisis which led to the fragmentation, in the main along ethnic lines, of the small Ghanaian kingdom of Akuapem. The situation is complex, though one may choose to frame it too simply in terms of hegemony (Akan vis-à-vis Guan) or even as a double hegemony in the sense that arguments on both sides appeal to 'modern' notions, to law courts, the constitution and 'freedom', and to newspapers in order to propag…
Concert Parties
Au Ghana, le Concert Party est un spectacle populaire qui fait partie de la culture populaire locale. Les spectacles Concert Party et les peintures sont des reponses a des interrogations et problemes contemporains. Les groupes et le public qui participent a ces manifestations reconnaissent que les pieces ont un message moral. Par consequent, on peut dire que cette forme d'art populaire est une maniere de penser en commun, une opportunite pour la …
Future Remembrance
Future Remembrance: Photography and Image Arts in Ghana. 1998. 54 minutes, color. video by Tobias Wendel and Nancy du Plessis. For more information contact Documentary Educational Resources, 101 Morse Street, Watertown, MA 02171
The King, His Soul and the Pastor
In 1906-7, in Akwapim, a small kingdom in southern Ghana (then the Gold Coast), a bitter conflict occurred between the king, Nana Kwasi Akuffo, and Kwasi Fianko, a wealthy trader who had been appointed as the king's 'soul' (okra) but who later decided to resign his position and rejoin the Christian community. Two detailed accounts addressed to the Basel Mission were written by an indigenous pastor and his superior, a long-serving missionary. They…
Disguising the pain of remembering in Akwapim
In Akropong-Akwapim, south-eastern Ghana, memories of a sorrowful or conflict-laden past are accessed by verbal and visual strategies that are allusive in nature. The name-response that a mother gives to her child, sites marked in the ritual landscape and a chief's gold-covered linguist staff with a carved narrative image are all sites of memory pertaining to the identity of persons or groups. Formalized, repetitive and felt to be obligatory, the…
Equine athletes and interspecies sport
This article draws on a range of sociological literature including studies of sport, subculture, interspecies relationships and animal advocacy to understand the social processes that have contributed to the horse being defined as an athlete in equestrian sports. Using a combination of qualitative interviews and archival analysis, we identify trends in the equine industry that have provided the foundation for the emergence of a new type of equine…
Sport, Animals, and Society
Trust in Interspecies Sport
This paper explores how young girls develop trust in their equine partners for the purposes of competitive equestrian sport. I argue that interspecies trust manifests through interactional trust and system trust. Interactional trust, as reflected in the horse-human relationship, is built through joint action and results in symbolic interaction. System trust is made possible through the equine community; it develops through communication in an eff…
Into the mountains and across the country
This paper draws upon Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘lines of flight’ to analyze the complex inter-relationship between people and their animals as enacted through adventure travel. Two narrative case studies illustrate how the human/horse relationship has been used to transform and/or escape from power relations. The first takes place during the early twentieth century with Mary Shaffer challenging Victorian gender and class relations throug…
Bura Funerary Urns
All photos by Manu SassoonianThe site of the necropolis of Bura-Asinda-Sikka in the lower Niger River valley in southwest Niger was discovered accidentally in 1975 by a young hunter who found two small terracotta heads. Three years later the discovery was reported to the Departement d'art et archaeologie (IRSH: l'Institut de Recherches en sciences humaines de l'Universite de Niamey). In 1983, Boube Gado (1944–2015)—head of the Department of Art a…
Art (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · History (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · History (7 works) · African history and culture studies (6 works) · Archaeology (6 works)