Humanities and social science students and academics in Nigerian universities need to expand their research orientations through greater sensitivity to the character of research as the cultivation of new insight into phenomena.
This insight could be demonstrated in exploring what has either not been studied before or little studied or the development of new angles of perception on subjects already significantly investigated.
Thus, academic research reports often open with a justification of the project in relation to the field within which it exists, explaining, in general terms, its contribution to knowledge in terms of the observation of what is yet undiscussed or unexplored at the level of the current project or the new project's opening of a new space for viewing the already familiar.
"The newer, more unfamiliar a topic is, the greater the payoff and originality of potential insights and thus the greater the original contribution to knowledge--the most important factor in evaluating masters or doctorate dissertations [ a criterion also central to assessing research articles and books]", as summed up by historian Moses Ochonu.
There are materials and topics all around [ the Nigerian environment] that are unresearched and unused and that would enable insightful observers who can see the evidentiary and analytical potentials of such sources to make an ORIGINAL contribution to knowledge, as different from largely derivative research, summing up Ochonu largely in his own words.
"As we speak, it's the season of elections" Ochonu continues. "Rallies and public gatherings are occurring everywhere, with so many visual [ what is visible to the eye and by implication, the senses, foundations of human awareness] , discursive [ accessible to critical examination, a second stage of relating with phenomena, beyond basic awareness of them], and material [ the physical form in which phenomena are expressed and thus immediately accessible to human knowledge] aspects to the campaigns and events around them.
[ A sensitive] researcher's eye can see many potential [ research] topics in these campaigns alone--from the crowds--the dueling crowds and the social media debates around them, to the musical compositions and performances at the rallies to the political economy of crowd rental to debate theatrics and debates about debates to new forms of political rhetoric and lexical innovations to the stagecraft of election rallies.
This election/campaign season is a fecund research field where a serious, innovative researcher would find plenty of [ research material ] ranging from interviews to newspaper and social media debates and writings to electronic news reports and videos to political musical and dance performances to campaign-branded textiles to campaign accessories, billboards, TV and radio political adverts to the emerging archive of sociopolitical acoustics.
These are all potential topics of [ research for ] masters and PhD dissertations [ as well as articles and books] in political science, sociology, literature, theatre arts, anthropology, journalism, mass communication, economics, and other fields.
What are Nigerian scholars doing to capture, document, analyze and theorize this political moment and its many fascinating multidisciplinary potentials?
Where is a historical study of material culture of elections and political campaigns in Nigeria?"
Beyond entertainment, scholars should wonder about how these situation can be discussed and explained and the knowledge developed shared with the world, this process being the remit of scholarship.
As a scholar once put it, the researcher organizes a discipline around his or her research subjects or questions. The same subject can be explored from various perspectives, reflecting the specific methods and insights of particular disciplines as well as through forms of interdisciplinary research, conjuncting the methods and understanding of various disciplines so as to better demonstrate the multifaceted unity of the phenomena in question.
The fact that a topic is unconventional, unfamiliar, has not been theorized or researched, suggesting an absence of research material on it, represents a chance for the insightful researcher to become the creator of such materials, to lay foundation stones in creating a new path of inquiry , to blaze a trail of new research. To adapt the biologist Edward Wilson, a scientist's achievement can be summed up in the completion of the question "Scientist A discovered.....".
Research culture is centred In ways of positioning oneself to provide fruitful answers to that question in relation to oneself.
At the core of this process of uncovering new possibilities is curiosity about phenomena, trying to understand them and share what one learns. Scholarship, ideally, is a way of life, a vocation, a focus in terms of one's underlying values, one's way of navigating the world, of journeying through life, an "orientation of one's life and work in terms of one's ultimate sense of mission", as Websters Third New International Dictionary describes "vocation", not simply a job or a means of getting certification and gaining social positioning, these latter being possible outcomes of scholarship. It involves being open eyed to the universe one inhabits and trying to understand as much as possible about what others have discerned on what one is observing, critically relating one's knowledge to those of others and sharing what one learns in the process.
Such a culture can be cultivated anywhere and at any level of an educational system. Ideally, it should be cultivated from the earliest stages of learning, developing an understanding of learning as essentially exploratory and recreative rather than purely assimilative and reproductive. The more developed socio-economic and academic contexts of some global regions are more facilitating of such learning but various cultures have long developed this orientation.
"We see much but how much do we understand of what we see?", a conflation of conceptions on visuality from Yoruba, Aristotelian, Igbo and Akan thought, the latter as presented by Ayi Kwei Armah in The Healers, may ask. The movement from seeing to interpretation, from perception to the exploration of the significance of what is perceived, from "oju lasan", basic, unexamined perception, as understood in classical Yoruba philosophy, to "oju inu" and "oju okan", the inward eye, the mind's eye, the critical relationship with what is perceived as the data communicated by the senses is processed by the mind at varying stages of acuity, the exploration of meaning beyond the obvious, beyond the evident, in a movement from the known to the unknown, from the visible to that which is not visible until uncovered by the seeker, is the core of scholarship, as this progression is delineated in Babatunde Lawal's "Aworan: Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art".
--Nigerian Graduate Students are Surrounded by Research Topics But they Complain of the Lack of "Viable" Topics--Why?
By Moses E. Ochonu
Nigerian humanities and social science graduate students, especially those based in Nigerian universities, are always scrambling to find topics to research.
Sometimes they send you private messages to ask for "materials," as they call sources, or to ask for topic suggestions. There are materials and topics all around them that are unresearched and unused and that would enable them to make an ORIGINAL contribution to knowledge, but they are too lazy or clueless to research such topics or to see the evidentiary and analytical potentials of such sources.
When you point out a topic to them because the topic is unconventional, unfamiliar, or has not been theorized or researched, they get scared and say "but where will I find materials on it?"
They seem to think that if a topic has not been researched, if there is no literature on it, then it cannot be researched or that it is not a viable subject of dissertation inquiry.
They want to research topics that have already been researched to death and where as a result the potential to make an original contribution to knowledge is slim to none. But they don't care if they simply reinvent the proverbial wheel and reiterate familiar insights. They want the easy way to a dissertation and a masters or PhD certificate. Their supervisors don't know any better, having themselves produced derivative rather than original research for their own PhDs, so the students almost always get away with their scheme.
They have no idea that the newer, more unfamiliar a topic is, the greater the payoff and originality of potential insights and thus the greater the original contribution to knowledge--the most important factor in evaluating masters or doctorate dissertations.
As we speak, it's the season of elections. Rallies and public gatherings are occurring everywhere, with so many visual, discursive, and material aspects to the campaigns and events around them. My researcher's eye can see many potential dissertation topics in these campaigns alone--from the crowds--the dueling crowds and the social media debates around them, to the musical compositions and performances at the rallies to the political economy of crowd rental to debate theatrics and debates about debates to new forms of political rhetoric and lexical innovations to the stagecraft of election rallies.
These are all potential topics of masters and PhD dissertations in political science, sociology, literature, theatre arts, Anthropology, journalism, mass communication, economics, and other fields.
This election/campaign season is a fecund research field where a serious, innovative researcher would find plenty of "materials" ranging from interviews to newspaper and social media debates and writings to electronic news reports and videos to political musical and dance performances to campaign-branded textiles to campaign accessories, billboards, TV and radio political adverts to the emerging archive of sociopolitical acoustics. Where is a historical study of material culture of elections and political campaigns in Nigeria?
What are Nigerian scholars doing to capture, document, analyze and theorize this political moment and its many fascinating multidisciplinary potentials? They're just sitting around and getting entertained, still thinking of potential topics for their dissertations.
In March when the elections are over, they'll start sending out texts and private messages again to mentors and friends asking for suggestions on topic ideas.
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Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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