You are right. But any academic approach that ignores social reality will run into serious difficulty and any attempt to deal with empirical reality without deep and serious conceptualization will also be problematic. Interestingly, Confucius saw the need for a dialectical relationship between thinking and acting.
And again, it is like those in the cave that Plato described. Those in the cave just focused on the sun light they saw in the cave and thought it was everything about reality. Yet, while it was something, there was a deeper something outside, i.e., the source of the sun light and when someone escaped from the cave and saw the sun -- the source of the light in the cave, he did not say that there was no sun light in the cave, but now the sun light in the cave was understood in a broader perspective. It was a great excitement.
This is why we have "PRAXIS," OR "ORTHO-PRAXIS" for those who begin with orthodoxy. We need a dialectical relationship between theory and practice and between thinking and doing, appearance and reality.
Again, thank you very much. It is always nice to know how different approaches to knowledge, inquiry, and understanding might lead to different conclusions. What we need now is SYNTHESIS -- we already have the thesis and anti-thesis
Samuel
--Shina,
After years of watching Nigerian political leaders exhibit inclinations toward selfishness which manifests in making pre-election promises, most of which they know that they cannot fulfill (like taking down Boko Haram within a month of assumption of office), just to get power, what does one develop and exhibit?
Samuel,
You cannot in all honesty expect everybody's approach to social change to be academic ("paying attention to the deep structure and underlying social realities of the society") But the question is; is academic approach to social change superior to other approaches? I do not think so. I do hold and will continue to hold political leaders to their pre-election promises and in doing this; I do not necessarily need to pay attention to the deep structure and underlying social realities of the society.
Interestingly, you guys did not raise any objections when I was "troubling" (apology to Mazi Cornelius Hamelberg) President Goodluck Jonathan on this forum.
I however thank both of you for commenting.
CAO.
On Sunday, 25 October 2015 14:19:17 UTC+1, Samuel Zalanga wrote:Thank you very much indeed. I a appreciate your patience. I sense the difference in our methodological approaches.
For me, in order to understand a politician or what he or she said, I start by looking at the broader social context, the broad structure of state and society, and then situate the politician or what was said within it. This leads me to the conclusion that what politicians say can only be understood in the context of the broader society.
It is not just Buhari but whoever assumes power in Nigeria will have to deal with chronic and long term decadence in governance. I do not say this out of disrespect but this is the fact for anyone who invest serious interest in how things happen in Nigeria.
There are many people in Nigeria who will criticize Buhari on something that on the surface appears legitimate but the reality is that there is an elite in Nigeria that is used to doing what it likes at the local government, state and federal level without accountability. For them, government position is like a fiefdom. They have no concept of fiduciary responsibility.
No serious observer will say that Buhari can solve all Nigeria's problem. I do not think even Buhari and his Vice President will say that. But they can initiate some serious changes and hopefully there will be a trend in that direction. In order for him and his Vice President to succeed, they will need the support of everyone. But it would not be an easy task. Many cheaply enriched themselves under GEJ and sometimes you just wonder whether there was even a government in Nigeria that realized that the Nigerian population is over 150 million people. Th is corruption was in all regions, all ethnic groups and all religious groups. It was an equal opportunity affair.If I am correct in my analysis, your approach is just to listen to what a politician says and treat the words like magic and assume that without paying attention to the deep structure and underlying social realities of the society, what was said can just be taken on its face value. Thinking that way, you assume that Buhari or anyone for that matter can just bring about total change. There are problems that ought to be pointed out but just reading what many people posted on this listserv, it is obvious that the new administration has compelled some people to sit up straight.I spent this weekend reading this book: https://www.rienner.com/title/The_Time_of_Youth_Work_Social_Change_and_Politics_in_AfricaIt is amazing to read the situation of the youth in Africa. One warning I see there is that without serious and sustained reform in Nigeria, the yearnings of the youth is going to be a time-bomb. I remember worshiping in one church in Jos, and virtually 70% of the congregation were less than 30 years in age. I immediately asked, what is the country planning for them. And some policy documents in Nigeria treat the youth as a liability. We need to hurry up otherwise the situation will explode one day. Please note that given the structure of Nigerian constitution, governors have a lot of freedom in shaping the direction of public policy. I hope you will broaden your interest beyond Buhari. I know he is the president but he can only go so far.Unlike you, I do not expect a miracle. Some may disagree with Bishop Kukah but I think he is right in telling Nigerians that they should not expect Buhari to solve all of Nigeria's problems. It still gives me concern that some people are expecting a political Messiah. Buhari by and large won because of the great disappointment that many had with the previous administration. With excellent record, it would have been impossible, no matter what for Buhari to win. The elites in Abuja just took ordinary Nigerians for granted. We are just a means to their ends and not seen as ends in ourselves. I will have no problem if APC fails the Nigerian people, and another party takes over.In so far as our methodological approaches differ, we will see this kind of differences over and over. It is interesting that the author of the book I am reading accounts for the behavior of the youth in Africa not by focusing on the behavior per se, but by primarily situating the behavior within the context of changes in the economy and society over a long period of time. The social changes have impacted the younger generation in different ways compared to the older generation, and the social changes force them to adopt certain coping strategies. Some people just focus on the behavior of the youth while ignoring the underlying causes. Situation matters very much in explaining human behavior and choices.Thank you very much.SamuelOn Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 5:07 PM, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:--"So the fact that they did not promise change, they do not need to be questioned" (Samuel Zalanga)
Samuel,
They need to be questioned, but based on what their emergence was anchored on. My problem is not with change, but with the wobbly walk of Buhari's "change" nearly six months after assumption of office, after the promise that; "we will hit the ground running".
CAO.
On Saturday, 24 October 2015 22:33:30 UTC+1, Samuel Zalanga wrote:There is an implicit conservative tendency or orientation in what you are saying. First let me say that we want constructive criticism for any government in power. And anyone in politics should be prepared for that. But from what you have said, if I do not want to have problem with your analysis and I am a politician, I will not promise anybody any change, because if I do not do that, then you will have no concern about me. You have no concern about others that are in power but they did not promise any change. So the fact that they did not promise change, they do not need to be questioned.When I was going to Bayero University to start my undergraduate studies as a relatively young person, I had great hope about Nigeria even though I was from a poor family. I thought if I work hard, I will be somewhere. Even though an ethnic, religious minority and from the social margins and periphery of Bauchi State in terms of social class, the system was not as bad as it is today. And it is so with many states across Nigeria today.
Today, many young men and women will not get what I got in spite of my disadvantages and I feel for them. And when I see them, I put myself in their situation. All these mean that whether a politician talked about change or not, "we the people" have to compel him or her to understand our yearnings. If their purpose of acquiring power is not to serve but to enrich themselves or for the sake of satisfying just their ego, we have no time for that, whether it is Buhari or whoever it is.
Moreover, wee are not just interested in change, but we will deploy all that we know about change in the literature to interrogate such a leader. Such can be good or bad, but it is still change. Nigeria is too slow. The world is not going to wait for the country as some people think. The world will move and it has moved on while Nigeria has been left behind in many respects, indeed not just Nigeria bu many African countries.
At least the Enlightenment project that informs Nigeria's constitution is the idea that individuals will prosper as part of nation-states, and so if your nation-state fails, it is like hell without purgatory. See the example in Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo etc. where innocent citizens happen to be maybe at the right place but the wrong time and they suffered the consequences. This is what you see in the film "Timbuktu." Families living peaceful lives and someone in the name of religion comes to interrupt the pursuit of their legitimate aspirations.
So one's humanity is by and large based on how good his or her nation-state competes in the "dog eat dog" world. People may not say this bluntly but this is it, if you dress down everything to the basic. We know there are going to be winners and losers in the competition. At least even you lose, it should not be by a wider margin.
You can be promised all human rights but presumably within the context of a nation-state, the functioning of which is open-ended. I do not care what the ethnic group of a person is from Nigeria if they will run the system well and create a public good that will empower all to pursue their legitimate aspirations effectively. I have lived in the state of Minnesota for U.S. without having anyone from my family or ethnic group being in the government. I am better off that way than thinking I need someone from my place to be in government. We cannot have all our people in government, that is the fact. And that is why we should focused on getting the system functioning well for everyone and having public goods that create an enabling environment for all humans with aspirations to forge their own biography out of the environment.
The main focus should be running the system truly well for the benefit of everyone, and any system that fails this test should be held accountable whether the functionaries of the system are from Sokoto, Maiduguri, Lagos or Akwa Ibom. If the politician is not educated to understand we need change, we should educate him or her not just about change but socially desirable and transformative change, for not all social change is really the type that enhances life.Let us channel our energy to get the system working for everyone instead of all these ethnic this or ethnic. Nigerians talk a lot about their ethnicity or heritage but after that, t hey are number one in consuming foreign products and they flaunt it to demonstrate their status. That is why I do not take many cultural arguments seriously because if one is so particularistic about his or her culture, they will be restrained from consuming products rooted in or that originated from another culture, where the producer of the product may not even care about them. The producer just cares about a generic human being called "a consumer with effective purchasing power."
In economic anthropology, people who have strong commitment to ancestral their home would not migrate or move to another place even if there are better opportunities for them because doing so will dishonor their ancestors. This means that anyone who is willing to migrate from his or her ancestral homeland, maybe came to realize that there are new ways he or she can be a person from that land by being in another land where there are better opportunities.
Furthermore, anyone who has a strong sense of identity to his or her land / place but they import things from another place, ought to ask himself or herself why his or her culture is not good enough to produce anything he or she wants. If one's culture is ordained by God or whoever it is, but it fails to produce certain things and one joyfully orders from another culture, there is a need for a paradigm shift in thinking. This entails the need to broaden one's perspective.
Nigerian Christians and Muslims for instance no matter how proud or sure they are about the God they worship would have to admit that they do not yet have the wisdom and discipline from him to make Samsung or Nokia phones-- thus they go to countries that they otherwise refer as "pagan" to order such phones and SUVs and flaunt them. They consider these things now as integral parts of their normal lives. This shows that even if they love and are sure of their religion or culture, there are also other cultures or faith traditions that can produce something of value. This should compel a paradigm shift in thinking, away form particularism, where people see their ethnic or religious identity as the center of the universe; and they are so much in love with such an identity that they feel like kissing themselves when they look into the mirror. Without some space and distance for critical judgement, how can we move fast to bring about desirable change? They need a broader sense of identity.
I suggest to anybody who has a puritanical spirit about his or her ethnic group, whatever they want to call it to read about the "Galton Problem" in Anthropology. There is no culture that can survive without borrowing from other cultures. There is no clear cut boundaries for cultures. Charles Tilly made this same point about not seeing the boundaries of nation-states as water-tight.
The cultures or individuals that are most likely to thrive are not those that are just focused on conservation but those that understand that, to refuse to change means you will sooner or later be irrelevant to important questions of the historical moment as you are fixated on the past; on the other hand, if you just decide to change without thinking, then you stand the chance of losing your identity -- this is the position of Peter Berger based on his work on the question of whether one remains a fundamentalist or secularize in order to cope with social change. Any culture that in the name of conservation or being particularistic ignores the outside wholesale, will lose its youth.
The realistic thing to do is somewhere in between the two. People or cultures who learn to selectively adopt and adapt new things and understand that their identities over time will change if they behave so are more likely to survive and thrive in a meaningful way. I can assure you that my consciousness now cannot be accommodated within the context of my village. If I say otherwise I am not telling the truth. Over time, I have evolved from that village boy orientation even though I still respect my village as my starting point and if I have the means, I will like to introduce some things that can move the village forward.
And if I were to do so, they will agree with me, because they have talked about all this culture, religion, this and that, but what is there? Many village communities in Nigeria are not self-sustaining. There is no growth without death. For people to grow, they will have to die somewhat. A seed cannot germinate without dying first. If we want to grow, there are certain things about our past that will have to die. I agree that this is a matter of choice and people have the right to choose to remain ignorant if they choose to but they should also be prepared to suffer the consequences.In the U.S. some people know t hat there is huge risk in climbing the mountains in Colorado, but they do so out of choice. And when they die becasue of snow avalanche, we say, the die loving what they want to do. This is making a choice and suffering the consequences.SamuelOn Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:--"Your real lament now is that If only Papa Goodluck was at the helm of the national development express train, change would have now been permanently established for the next three and half years."(Cornelius Hamelberg).
Mazi Cornelius,
You once accused me here of "troubling" the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
"How many people have been in power in Nigeria and for how long and how much change did they bring." (Samuel Zalanga)
Samuel,
Buhari's emergence was anchored on change.
CAO.
On Saturday, 24 October 2015 09:38:56 UTC+1, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:It is nearly six months and the Nigerian "change" is still tottering.
CAO.
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--Samuel Zalanga
Department of Anthropology, Sociology & Reconciliation Studies
Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive #24
Saint Paul, MN 55112.
Office Phone: 651-638-6023
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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--Samuel Zalanga
Department of Anthropology, Sociology & Reconciliation Studies
Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive #24
Saint Paul, MN 55112.
Office Phone: 651-638-6023
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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Department of Anthropology, Sociology & Reconciliation Studies
Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive #24
Saint Paul, MN 55112.
Office Phone: 651-638-6023
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
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