Examines the complex sociologies, politics and histories of the debates that arose after the death of Kenyan lawyer S.M.Otieno and the struggle over where his body should be buried. The dispute between his wife and members of Otieno's clan revealed a range of issues as diverse as the meaning of death and the purpose of interment, the standing of statutory and traditional law, the nature of marriage, and the value and power of such constructs as 'modernity', 'tradition', 'Kenyan', 'Luo' and 'home'. North America: Heinemann

BURYING SM (CLOTH)

History

David William Cohen

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Heinemann

The authors of this highly original book set out to remove the persistent boundary between the authors and readers of ethnography on one hand and the subjects of ethnography on the other – those who observe and those who are observed.
The authors use stories to reveal Siaya, the Luo-speaking area of Western Kenya down near the Lake but still surprisingly vulnerable to drought. There are the stories of survival by a woman with her carpenter husband in Nairobi, there is the launching of a boat as bride into the Lake and there is the great Boro Christmas disco riot. The book finishes with an Afterword on the burial of the lawyer S. M. Otiono that divided its whole of Kenya.
It is both written about and for the Luo. It brings together Luo ideas and debates about their own past and present with findings, arguments and questions produced about this “other people;” by outside scholars writing in their own disciplines. Among the Luo, what constitutes culture, what is correct behavior, what is history, are questions that are heavily fought over.
This is one of those rare books that makes students and other interested individuals question their own cultural preconceptions and what are the genuine concerns of academic disciplines.

Siaya: The Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape (Eastern African Studies)

E. S. Atieno Odhiambo

Africa

Ohio University Press

The authors use stories to reveal Siaya, the Luo-speaking area of western Kenya, bringing together ideas and debates which Luo express about their past and present with findings, arguments and questions produced by scholars. For the Luo, what constitutes culture, what is correct behaviour, what is history, are questions that are heavily fought over. This is one of those rare books that makes students and other interested readers question their own cultural preconceptions and re-examine the concerns of academic disciplines. North America: Ohio U Press; Kenya: EAEP

Politics & Social Sciences

D.W.; Odhiambo Cohen

Anthropology

James Currey

Historically, nonclassical physics developed in three stages. First came a collection of ad hoc assumptions and then a cookbook of equations known as "quantum mechanics". The equations and their philosophical underpinnings were then collected into a model based on the mathematics of Hilbert space. From the Hilbert space model came the abstaction of "quantum logics". This book explores all three stages, but not in historical order. Instead, in an effort to illustrate how physics and abstract mathematics influence each other we hop back and forth between a purely mathematical development of Hilbert space, and a physically motivated definition of a logic, partially linking the two throughout, and then bringing them together at the deepest level in the last two chapters. This book should be accessible to undergraduate and beginning graduate students in both mathematics and physics. The only strict prerequisites are calculus and linear algebra, but the level of mathematical sophistication assumes at least one or two intermediate courses, for example in mathematical analysis or advanced calculus. No background in physics is assumed.

An Introduction to Hilbert Space and Quantum Logic (Problem Books in Mathematics)

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Springer, Verlag

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Books by David William Cohen