In Step With The Times

The helmet-shaped mapiko masks of Mozamxadbique have garnered admiration from African art scholars and collectors alike, due to their striking aesthetics and their grotesque allure. This book restores to mapiko its historic and artistic context, charting in detail the transformations of this masquerading tradition throughout the twentieth century. Based on field research spanning seven years, this study shows how mapiko has undergone continuous reinvention by visionary individuals, has diversified into genres with broad generational appeal, and has enacted historical events and political engagements. This dense history of creativity and change has been sustained by a culture of competition deeply ingrained within the logic of ritual itself. The desire to outshine rivals on the dance ground drives performers to search for the new, the astonishing, and the topical. It is this spirit of rivalry and one-upmanship that keeps mapiko attuned to the times that it traverses. In Step with the Times is illustrated with vibrant photographs of mapiko masks and performances. It marks the most radical attempt to date to historicize an African performative tradition.

Prof. Mubanga E. Kashoki deals with a subject that is often neglected in linguistics - lexical borrowings, and how they enrich a language that adopts them. The study is organised into four parts, Introduction; Glossary of Lexical Adoptives in Icibemba; The Sociocultural Context of Lexical Adoptives in Icibemba; and Phonological and Morphological incorporation in processes involved in lexical adoption in Icibemba.

An emergent approach to organizational strategy making assumptions that few organizations actually realize the goal of deliberative, top-down strategic planning, and that effective strategy making occurs on a continual basis and is a shared activity of the entire organization. This innovative book provides the first in-depth look at how real organizations are formulating and implementing strategic change under this new paradigm. The authors have dug deep into three large and varied organizations (Hewlett-Packard, the California State University system, and the County of Los Angeles) and identified each one's efforts to develop a new strategic planning process better-suited to match the current pace of change and environmental unpredictability. The book is filled with vignettes, quotes, and real-world examples that illustrate the trend toward faster, more adaptive strategic planning processes. It is relevant for a wide range of business, governmental, and non-profit settings, and should be required reading in any course on strategic planning.

A Bible student reference A New Testament prophecy of a falling away from truth into apostasy and lawlessness, in the final generation before Jesus Christ returns in glory, is being fulfilled now and is shortly to end. Yet Christianity has overwhelmingly moved so far from its first century roots that it could not even recognise this – or that Christ’s return is therefore now almost upon us! How and why this is the case is here explained thoroughly and logically with many examples directly from the word of God. In God’s saving plan for the world, everyone must in time make a free will choice to become part of the ‘Israel of God’ in order to access eternal life in the kingdom of God. The route to take is the “strait and narrow” way (Mat 7:13-14) that very few have so far found, and it involves the biblical new and old covenants which both apply to this Israel. Embark on this voyage only if you are willing to: be challenged about some basic Christian preconceptions, be a serious open-minded Bible student, and trust what the Bible teaches - but remember that time is short. “What the Bible has taught me I see as both vital and urgent for our eternal salvation; yet I know of no church or individual theologian who teaches what this book deals with in any substantive way” “Be prepared for major challenges to your understanding just as God has challenged me.” “In the epistles, Paul refers to two Israels whom he calls Israel after the flesh (I Cor 10:18) and the Israel of God (Gal 6:16); I focus mainly on the latter (but I also explain an unexpected but critically important connection between them)” “Dependent on the teaching, nearly all Christian denominations either teach nothing at all on it or almost the opposite of what Scripture repeatedly showed me. Looking back, I find this absolutely staggering!” “Very few [Christians] understand that the new covenant also only applies to Israel (as I will clearly show).” “I no longer believe that the NT [New Testament] can be fully understood without this extra Israel dimension” “Had I felt I could deliver this in a more light-hearted way I would have done so, but its implications are too awesome and fundamental to our eternal life prospects for that”