Gloria,
Thank you very much for your message. I have been very busy and could not get back to you on time. Of course I was also partly concerned about how you will react given the nature of your response to me. I will be quick here because I have other things to do and will be leaving soon for a ten-day teaching trip to Central America. Please do not take anything personal in my analysis.
First, I do not owe Biko any apology. We can agree to disagree. I do not have anything against Biko. I might also add that I sense maybe you and I read things differently. I do not just read words and stop there but I asses the tone and context. Of course I can be mistaken but so also you. We can leave that there.
When I write, I always provide sources so that the person reading anywhere anytime can judge the standing of the arguments on their own, irrespective of whether the person likes me or not. I always tell my students to provide some evidence out there to support their line of reasoning so that when people respond to them they can focus on the evidence. That is my style. I am sorry that you do not like that. Otherwise, and especially with my experience with many debates, it can easily result in something personal. I think Biko's subsequent response confirmed my initial reading. To accuse of me of not being concerned of the millions that die during the civil war in Nigeria I think is going too far. What about the people for instance who died in Benue, Taraba, Plateau State, Southern Kaduna and Zamfara etc etc? What will make anyone of us get into that kind of accusation? I will try to squeeze some to specifically respond to Biko not to accuse him of anything but just to clarify some issues and then we move on. For instance, checking some information about me online and trying to share it on this forum is unnecessary frankly. I have no reason to doubt that Biko is a scholar even if we differ in terms of how we think on certain things. And reading Martin Buber's "I And Thou", my attitude is even if there are differences, let us go and have coffee and trace step by step the arguments to see what is the bone of contention. Everyone knows me in my university as someone with an irenic spirit. Some are very surprise I am able to engage in a truly meaningful way with the leading conservative scholar on campus. Once, and this was long ago, I engaged in a very public debate with a leading Professor of Business in the university on the whole faculty listserve and I remember my dean calling the chair of our department and telling him that he wished the students are aware of the debate. I provide reference backing for my line of reasoning in public forums because someone can just deal with the evidence out there. I never assume I will always be right and no one should make that kind of assumption. This was what the business Professor found difficult to handle. But with the reference provided, anyone anywhere can process the argument on his or her own decide to do what they want to do with it, if they so desire.
With regard to your concern about my optimism of the heart, and how it will bring about the development and social justice that I claim to be dedicated to, I will just respond by saying, you will get my sense of reasoning by reading Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of Hope." Hope is a very important part of the human existential struggle. I am surprise that you do not seem to appreciate it. Please do not trivialize hope. I remember a movie on South Africa which was produced at a time when there was no clear end to apartheid at all, but at the end of the film, the South African kids, sang a beautiful song saying "Freedom is Coming" which is more an expression of hope than stating a guaranteed reality. I truly love the literature on hope.
There is some teaching about hope in the Christian tradition but I will not go there in detail. There is one documentary film I have which focused on that where Cornel West discusses from a theological point of view the role that hope rooted in faith kept many African Americans alive. Otherwise when you look at the struggles of slavery and later, after Reconstruction, you feel like asking why did they not commit suicide given the circumstances? Without hope, I could not have made it where I am. Of course it is not only hope that one needs but people need it even when it may not appear irrational. Many of the human struggles for freedom and justice were made possible because of among other things the deep sense of hope. I believe Hope was central to the struggle that Martin Luther King Jr. led because it was obvious on so many occasions that there was no clear definitive end to the struggle. Hope was what made him see the Promised Land and continuing the struggle even when he knew he would not be there when people reach it. Otherwise, there were times the reality on the ground cannot be said to prove anything on rational grounds that oppression will end or be alleviated soon.
You said the group is multidisciplinary. Of course. Interestingly, my training is interdisciplinary. Allen Repko wrote an introductory text on interdisciplinary studies. If I give you an idea of the genealogy of my thinking partly, you will see the difference between multidisciplinary studies and interdisciplinary studies. Interdisciplinary studies is driven primarily by the desire to solve a problem out there and not to develop a discipline as such. Once the problem is identified, (whatever it is), then the question is asked, how do we solve it? In the process of solving it, the people will go anywhere (e.g., discipline) to get any information that is relevant to solving the problem and so at the end there is synthesis. The agenda of developing one's discipline is central in multidisciplinary studies but in interdisciplinary studies, the concern is the contribution one can make in collaboration with others to solve a problem. The problem takes center stage. So interdisciplinary studies scholars differ from multidisciplinary scholars in their approaches and you can check that out please. I am not making any criticism here but just clarifying.
If I quote anything sociological, it is just because I find it relevant at that point and I will not object to anyone, you or Biko, for instance, quoting a source relevant to solving the problem. Most of my reading now is not in sociology frankly, if I may let you know. What I say here is a small part of who I am. And in many other contexts, people never think of me as a sociologist as such, indeed, even in my university. Part of this is so because the MacArthur Fellowship that sponsored my doctoral studies required my cohort to participate in two years of interdisciplinary seminar and studies. It was not about sociology but about identifying problems and working together to solve them. They later started issuing certificate for that but that was after my cohort.
You would have found it interesting if you were in the university committee that was making decision on prioritization of academic programs in my university last summer. Many departments or scholars are very territorial. But I am not. And I told the university committee that sociology is not Samuel Zalanga's grandfather. I can teach a whole course critiquing sociology. But others can do the same for their disciplines if they maintain a disinterested approach. I maintain disinterestedness when it comes to that. The prioritization committee ended up eliminating the sociology major in my university because of low enrollment but the university officially told me that even though I am a sociologist by training, they know I can do so many things for them outside sociology. Not only that, they said, I connect with diverse members of faculty irrespective of political ideology. That was why the university kept my position by moving me to work with political scientists.
Please note that I am not by any means putting down multidisciplinary studies, but if you check it carefully, you will see the difference. To be a good interdisciplinary scholar, I have to be committed to synthesis. So if Biko made a contribution that is relevant to solving a problem, and someone from another discipline makes contribution, my role as an interdisciplinary scholar is to find a way to synthesize the insights to come up with a more coherent understanding that is more than what anyone discipline can provide in solving a problem. But sometimes synthesis is not possible with fundamentally divergent visions of the future. At a particular juncture in dealing with any problem that needs to be solved, a particular discipline's insight maybe more helpful, but ultimately it is the synthetic contribution that matters and I am not the type that will tell you sociology is in this respect, the best. In my view, that will be vanity. Actually, at one point I found out that even sociologists cannot understand our world today without understanding the power of economics in shaping our society, whether we like it or not. It is important to know that sometimes because sociology is a holistic study of society, it can be present in many areas that you may initially not think and so sociological insights may appear imperialistic. The variety of chapters in any introduction to sociology text is scaring. You cannot cover all in a semester. Actually, economics is the discipline that you should fear in terms of its rapid colonization of the different spheres of society and discourses implicitly or explicitly. But if you ask my colleagues, they will tell you immediately that if someone just gives me sociological arguments only, I will find it boring. But within sociology, you also have historical, economic, religious, philosophical etc. specialization. The discipline has many branches and fields.
I do not see any reason why you or anyone should assume my comments prioritized sociology. Many of the arguments I made in my response to Brother Adepoju originated outside sociology. Blau for instance wrote on exchange theory but much of the logic of his argument is in economics. I do not know whether you took note of that. Dos Santos, who I quoted, is a Brazilian economist and not sociologist. You can verify this please. I may not be in a discipline, but if I find the work of for example a theologian, philosopher, economist, historian, psychologist or political scientist etc. etc. useful, I will find a way to integrate it. Weber's work, if one reads his intellectual biography carefully, is interdisciplinary indeed. He wrote a lot about economics. With due respect, Biko just went over Weber's argument and not coherently representing him because I assume he was in a rush, which was unnecessary because it never crossed my mind that he is not a good scholar or anything like that. Weber's work is so complex. His work influenced my doctoral work. Many Americans fear the ideas of Karl Marx because he is communist, but I think they should fear Weber more in terms of the implications of his ideas in history and society since, his warning is that the future of modern society is going to be "an iron cage" and that we will struggle with meaning in life because capitalism will be so successful.
I appreciate your comment on meaningful suggestions for solving problems in relation to my response to Brother Adepoju. I will share my thoughts on this. Since I am just typing this from my head, bear with me. I am not criticizing you and do not say it is sociology please, but it is based on insights I have drawn from many disciplines and my experience in life. Since I grew up poor in northeastern Nigeria, in the social margins and social periphery of the region, even when I was in teacher training college, my desire was to help in bringing about development and my initial desire was to study rural sociology. Indeed it was this desire that made me write my MA Thesis in Sociology on the relevance of Paulo Freire's ideas in "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" in Africa. I was advised against that here in the U.S. because as one senior Chinese colleague told me in Graduate School, American rural sociology is not the same as that of Africa. Given my biography, I make no apology to my concern about the oppressed and masses even if some may not like. The greatest sermon in America is on being a faith consumerism as discussed in the book "The New Prophets of Capital" and the documentary film "The Persuaders." I supposed people can tolerate all those kinds of daily sermon in the culture industry quietly, but feel uncomfortable with me being explicit about the struggle for social justice. Indeed, I just submitted a course proposal I was guaranteed will be approve and it is focusing on social justice. But saying that does not mean I am the only person in this category. There are many of us in this struggle. As Fanon said, "Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it." Our biography is central to understanding our scholarly engagement and Mannheim's work affirms that. Sometimes, in order for us to understand each other, we need to meet, sit down and just talk step by step and after some time you see meaningful dialogue.
While I was in Nigeria, I observed that most of the people who tell someone who raised or put forward a systematic critique about the dysfunction of the Nigerian system to also provide or as they will say "proffer" solutions are people who identify themselves with the status quo implicitly or explicitly. Often they suggest or imply that if you will offer critique but not proffer solutions, you should keep quiet as if the reason for Nigeria's current level of underdevelopment is lack of proffered solutions at this historical moment.
It is important to note as Thomas Piketty highlighted in his very influential book Capital in the 21st Century that while we have all these general theories or explanations for how societies can develop even within the capitalist mode of production, ultimately every nation will have to figure out its own pathway. One of the implicit arguments that he was trying to make is very methodological.
And in my scholarly work, I have taken methodology seriously to the point where, I feel critiquing the West because of racism or Eurocentrism while important is not enough as a pathway for Africa's development. I say so because even if we do that very well, there are certain problems inherently associated with the process of knowledge production and application that apply to all people in all places irrespective of their race, especially when the social structure of the society is characterized by structured inequality and vested interests. Actually ignoring this dimension of knowledge production has created a situation where many of our people in Africa have reproduced some of the problems that were initially perceived as existing only between the West and Africa or only a problem of white people. There are many scholarly works in Africa that are elitist. Westerners named places in Eurocentric manner, but the logic of how many postcolonial Africans named some places is very elitist, totally ignoring the rest of the people as Eurocentric scholars ignored the continent. When I was in Sokoto for a conference some years back, I raised this kind of question when we visited the museum gallery of the past history of city and it was evident that there is gender and class bias in the representation. There is not as much to reflect or represent the lives and struggles of women and ordinary people. History is represented in a one-sided manner. But this is about Africans and Africans. This is happening because there are certain problems in knowledge production and application that you have to deal with irrespective of race. Inequality of power can vitiate social relationships not only between the West and Africa or between White and Blacks but within any group where such inequality of power exists. That was one of the points I was getting across to what Biko said about Stuart Hall. My point is not to deny the role of culture in society but to stress how the production and consumption of culture in socially stratified societies is mediated by class, status and power. Of course the Hegelian Marxist theory of the state will argue that the great majority of cultures that take such structured inequality as normal especially to the elites will create a mechanism for projecting and persuading the masses to see it as just and fair and so they embrace it with little or no questioning. The masses are encouraged to develop false class consciousness.
But more importantly, I believe that while it will be nice to have one person who can provide suggestions or all the solutions to all the problems of the world that he or she raised in a document about a particular place, that is not a necessary condition for the validity of the standing of a particular critique. These are conceptually and analytically two separate issues. In my own tradition of scholarly training, if someone provides a critique, my first concern is to establish the validity of the critique. Is the critique really valid given the reality and evidence on the ground? In this respect, I will have no problem if someone challenges with evidence that the critique I made is not valid. I will learn from that and there is no reason why I should assume I cannot make mistake. That is not who I am. Actually even if the critique is theoretical or conceptual, and its stops there, the way it works is that someone will say, since he or she feels the theoretical or conceptual critique is valid, the next person will proceed to push the work further, that was started by the original person who produced the critique. Scholarship should be inter-subjective and a collective project. And this second person too might stop somewhere, and someone will say, well the last person raised a point that was good but need to be further extended, which he or she did not do for whatever reason, so the next person will push the work forward. That is how scholarship works in the kind of literature that I work with a lot. It may be good if you get a person who has all the answers to the world problems, but that is not a necessary condition for scholarly discussion.
An example here is that some people critique capitalism on its inefficiencies and exploitative nature. They mentioned some things, but never empirically prove them, let alone provide practical solutions. Then George Akerlof (among others), decided to conduct a research to prove part of what the problem was. He studied information asymmetry in used car market and proved that for capitalism to work well, the seller and the buyer must have equal amount of information about the product otherwise the seller can take advantage of the buyer. His work was initially rejected by the prestigious economic journals for publication but when he got it published, people saw value in it and that brought him to lime light and he got Nobel Prize, together with Joseph Stiglitz and one other guy that I cannot remember from my memory. Now with that known, what is the next step to change the system? Should we scold George Akerlof he did not provide concrete solutions to solve the problem of information asymmetry in capitalist economies? Is it mandatory that he should provide solutions or recommendation before the conclusions or insights from what he concluded are treated as valid? And is not solving the problems of society a collective humanity project? Akerlof has made his own contribution and if he did not proffer solutions, those in authority that are convinced about the validity of the insights and conclusions from his research can make effort to implement them. Whether they consult with him or not regarding the policy is another matter. They issue is for them to understand what he said and verify their validity.
I want to also highlight that there are organizations today in this era of globalization that once they know there is a valid critique and conclusions about an undesirable situation that needs solution, in terms of the concrete solution, they will just create a website for the general public all over the world and sometimes offer a reward or special recognition for anyone who can proffer a solutions to the problem by uploading it on the website. Many compete globally and people from somewhere will indeed contribute. The responses they get are global and there are people who even without compensation are willing to submit such proposal of solutions. And then the organization will look at it carefully and choose the best. Someone in India or Brazil may have a solution that can help solve a problem in Africa if the conditions or situations are similar.
Knowledge and wisdom do not have to be the monopoly of one person or people e.g., on USA-Africa Dialogue. A scholar may identify a problem or provide valid critique but admit he or she is not qualified to develop a practical policy that will solve the problem. That is intellectual honesty and what is wrong with that? There are on the other hand, people who may not be good in generating ideas or systematic critique as such, but very excellent in coming up with practical strategies for translating ideas that originated from someone into concrete policies. A transformative team requires both types of people. Some are best at publicizing the idea. The best approach in my view is to see solving a development problem as a collective project rather than U.S.A- Africa Dialogue thinking it is a requirement that if someone provides a critique that is valid they must provide solutions. Of course it is important whether the critique is valid or not. Often also, a deep reading of the critique will have the directions for the solutions or strategies implicit in it.
Related to this, I will say without fear of being contradicted that whether in the U.S., Nigeria or Africa, the reason why we still have many problems that are not solved or address is not because we are lacking knowledge about what the problems are and what the solutions are. No one will claim in Nigeria that the problems we have today are there because of lack of knowledge of the solutions. Rather, it is because of the lack of political will, among other things. And when it comes to political will, generally when you draw insights form some of the valid arguments of Public Choice theorists such as Buchanan and the work of Mancur Olson, it is obvious that the people in power have their own substantive interests and often they make decisions or run the government in such a way that will best protect their vested interests. They will ignore doing what will necessarily uplift the welfare of the citizens if that will undermine their vested interests, whatever they are. The insights from public choice theory that I am drawing from here (in spite of the controversy surrounding the theory), is the one dealing with how interests groups get organized and even when they are small, they influence the state disproportionately given their size, leading to "state capture." This is in addition to the fact that we cannot assume that the people at the center of the state machinery are naturally benevolent and have no vested interests and those vested interests are not necessarily coterminous with that of the majority of people in the general public. This is particularly the case if the calculations of the predatory elites as highlighted by Peter Evans in his book "Embedded Autonomy" lead them to believe that uplifting the welfare of the ordinary citizens, will not immediately serve their private vested interests broadly conceptualized.
It is for this reason that in Economy and Society, Weber argued that often politicians or people in power are most likely to pursue or implement a policy when doing so coincides with or intersects with their social and material interests. Thus, we can write as many recommendations as we have written on this forum, and there are tons of such recommendations in government documents in Nigeria or other African countries, for example, but they have not been implemented because (among other reasons), doing so did not coincide and intersect with the social and material interests of the elites and their constituencies.
Aware of this, I write papers and provide recommendations but I am not under the illusion that because I have provided a recommendation from Minnesota in the U.S. someone in leadership position in Nigeria will appropriate it and use it. I have read many documents written by Nigerian scholars back home and I have no doubt that there are excellent recommendations or solutions proffered. For instance, there is a certain deep sense of care and vision about the ordinary Nigerian when the Second National Development plan was written. Here are the objectives of the plan for the country then. I believe it was 1975-1980: The goal was to build:
a) A United , strong and self-reliant nation.
b) A great and dynamic economy.
c) A just and egalitarian society.
d) A land of bright and full opportunities for all.
e) A free and democratic society.
Whether one likes the people who wrote this or not, one has to admit that there was something going on in the country then that was laudable. There are more expert documents that further extended this discussion. The country remains relatively underdeveloped not because there were no known solutions proffered in the country. Let us be frank and sincere about this.
So two things here: it is not wrong for you to demand suggestions, but the validity of a critique provided should be decided irrespective of whether solutions have been provided. Furthermore, in an enterprising scholarly environment, scholarship is collective and so if one provides a critique, if it is valid, someone can push it further and on and on it goes until some implement the solutions proffered. And third, scholars can provide excellent recommendations but they should not assume that the social problems we have today persist simply because of lack of knowledge or proffered solutions, even here in the U.S. It is about political will and whether the implementation of the solutions intersects with the social and material interests of the elites fundamentally. There are other things that can be added to this, but this will be at the center. I do not have the time to get into other details.
In another respect with regard to implementation, just as Piketty argues, every nation will have to move beyond all this general solutions that are provided by scholars and figure out ways in the nation's context for the best translation of the ideals into practice. One insight from that is that the more the level of data aggregation is far and distant from the source of the data, the more likely that if policy is implemented based on the solutions proffered based on the data, if not adapted to the local specificities of the situation, the policy will fail. Data is important for making public policy. And in Nigeria, long ago, I read a book written by someone in the 1960s about Nigeria when the country was just taking off and there was a tradition of development planning across the developing world. The title of the book is "Planning without Facts " and the author was Wolfgang F. Stolper. He stressed the importance of data in making decisions. Interestingly, the EU group in providing support to African countries concluded that one major factor for the failure of poor solutions and public policy was lack of data through research. So they helped some countries to start a Master's in Research and Public Policy (MRPP), which is offered now in several Nigerian and other African universities to improve the quality of public policy making and implementation. To formulate and implement a public policy to transform lives requires data and reliable one for that matter. This is not to say that this is the only piece that is important. Moreover, the level of aggregation of the data that can be used should not be distant from the original source of the data where the policy will be implemented. With this in mine, for me to provide a true recommendation that will be of practical relevance, I cannot be here and do that. I either have to have data that is close to the location that the policy will be implemented or I have to be there and do some specific applied / evaluation research for that purpose. When I was in Nigeria, I encountered many professors that told me they or other professors have participated in such applied / evaluation research, but in many cases the information has not been used to influence public policy in any serious way.
For instance, if one is going to implement a public policy to improve public education in Nigeria, there will be variation across regions. When I did my national youth service in Imo State, I was aware then that the number of students enrolled in secondary school in the then Aboh Mbaise Local Government Area was more than the number enrolled in secondary schools then in the whole of Bauchi State. There were then only public secondary schools in Bauchi state whereas in Imo state there were more private secondary schools than public. I paid attention to enrollment in primary school too, and it was very high compared to the situation in many parts of Bauchi State. It was later when I read the book titled: "Religion and the Making of Nigeria" by Olufemi Vaughan that I became aware of the long historical gap between the Southwest and Southeast on the one hand and the North on the other hand in terms of access to western education and its provision. History becomes relevant and central then. So in this respect, policy recommendations, if they will be useful need to be close to the context where they will be implemented when developed. And even then, the question of social and material interest of the elites matter unless if the masses will find a way to shake up the system. From my preceding analysis, all other things being equal, I will love to be on the ground in Nigeria. But this is not feasible. The debate about Brain Drain and Brain Circulation is a serious concern about any discussion regarding Africa's development. I have no time to get into that here because I am in a rush.
There are two good examples to illustrate my point above the need to be close to the place where policy based on generally proffered solution will be implemented. One of the examples is in a book titled: "The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa." In one chapter of the book, the author, I remember documented an effort in Zimbabwe where they thought based on a general theory that to reduce the infection rate of HIV among women, young women have to be empowered. So they came up with a program that will economically empower the young women so that a man may not lure them to sleep with him for a small amount and get infected that way. As she documented in the book, the people implementing the program quickly realized that the success of the empowerment was actually increasing the risk of infection among the young women. So when they reexamined the whole process and policy strategy, in Botswana or somewhere there, they tried a different method which proved more successful and that was empowering the young women by going through mothers and the family. It was an interesting example that shows in terms of solutions for program implementation, general understanding and good intention alone are not guarantee for success. One has to move closer to the location so as to fine-tune whatever general solutions or recommendation would be provided to fit the local context specifically. This kind of insight is relevant not only based on the differences in regions, but even within a state, or within an a large ethnic group with many local variations in Nigeria or Africa. But I will be honest that I am far away. And even some of the colleagues in Africa are far away from the grassroots levels and situations in rural communities in the interior in some cases.
The second example is from a documentary film produced by National Geographic titled "Church Rescue" in the United States. One can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Church-Rescue/
The actors wanted to help churches or more generally places of worship that were struggling to survive. Some of them were Jewish places of worship. Now we have a lot of theories that explain all these problems and the remedy in the literature. But in order for the three persons with different relevant expertise helping to solve each of the several cases to really help effectively, they went and spent some time with the churches, collected some data and information about the way things were. Then they returned to their base and synthesized their different insights and expertise and then came up with solutions, which turned the churches or places of worship around. It is very exciting to watch. It is about religion but beneath the surface it is an example of how to bring change by leaving your location and go close to the situation that needs solution. Methodologically, what was so interesting was how the level of aggregation or synthesis of the data was not far from the source but really really on the spot. So one has to admit that solutions at the general level cannot be used to directly change a specific situation, unless the person providing the solution is very close to the source or location for implementation where the data was originally generated. I think the World Bank in its implementation of Structural Adjustment Program realized this mistake and later apologized to Africa. They initially designed a program from far away to be implemented everywhere without paying attention to the unique realities on the ground and variations in contexts. In many cases if not all, the program failed. They had to reform the Structural Adjustment Program to have a human face as some later characterized it.
It was also quite interesting to know that Fanon realized while working in the Asylum in Algeria that people go there and they were cured but when they leave and returned to their environment, they got sick again. In that respect, he abandoned his work in the Asylum which was under French control in Algeria, and joined the Algerian revolution. The logic is that the problem was in the social environment and that was what needed to change because no matter the treatment in the hospital if the social environment remained problematic, the people who got healed and returned to the social environment will get sick again. Fanon was able to write much that is still very meaningful and insightful about development in postcolonial Africa today because he got himself involved in the real struggle out there, while remaining a deeply reflective scholar, i.e. praxis. Still, many postcolonial African elites did not implement insights from his recommendations or in-depth analysis, whether explicit or implicit because the recommendations did not fit their social and material interest.
Similarly, when Che Guevara wanted to help the postcolonial struggle in then Congo which later became Zaire, he decided to organize a team and left Cuba for the Congo. He just felt that he could not provide any constructive practical recommendations or solutions as he did in Cuba, from far away, that would strategically work on the ground, and so he moved to the Congo. Of course there was quite a lot of risk that he took. The Americans were uneasy that he was in the Congo even though they were not sure of his exact location. Some of the Congolese were shocked that he would commit himself that way by being on the ground. I was really touched by that act of commitment for Africa by Che Guevara. It was inspiring.
I was also impressed by Commandante Marcos who with others led the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico. If my memory is correct, he is a professor of Philosophy and Communication studies. He studied in Europe, I think either in Italy or France. He was teaching in Mexico City but decided to move to the South to live with the indigenous people. He was an outsider. But he was able to cultivate their trust and they made him to be their leader or one of the leaders. What made the movement to draw global attention was his role in framing it. When you read the vision, it was obvious that the persons behind the movement were up to something serious. The presence of persons like Marcos on the ground made a huge difference by making it difficult for the government to just violently crush them. But he left his job in Mexico City which was a huge sacrifice. In one of their documents, they listed how neoliberal globalization renders some persons to become "surplus people" and therefore irrelevant to the global economy. He said that was the problem they were facing in Chiapas when Mexico joined NAFTA. Then the Zapatista said, wherever you are in the world, if you face problems that are similar to theirs, then such a person is also a Zapatista and should join the struggle like them. It is fascinating to see how the framing of a struggle can make a huge difference. News reporters from all over the world started heading to Chiapas because the framing of the struggle shows a deep sense of global awareness. The struggle was broadly focused on justice.
You raised the question of jargon. I find it useful that you said that. That is one limitation of our discussion here. The language itself and the explanations we provide may not be accessible to the ordinary people whose lives we want to change. I am part of the problem. That I am part of the problem since I participate in the process. No matter what we discuss if we cannot get it translated so that it will be accessible to the ordinary people who will be part of the struggle to change Africa, frankly, it is a conversation among a small percentage of African scholars. It is not bad but how can we move the discussion to the people at the bottom of the totem pole. I raise this concern because you are suggesting to me that some of the things I say are jargon. Indeed, the subject matter alone of some discussion on this forum is jargon. I can only read and keep quiet about your interest in Ancient Egyptian or Africa, other than making general comments because it is too technical for me to meaningfully engage with that and I have very limited time on this planet. This is not your fault. I just have to decide. For you, some of the things you are saying about ancient Egypt and Africa are okay but not so for all. I do not get into all conversations on this forum because I may not have much to say about the subject matter others are talking about. I do not feel obligated to write every time or day at all. But if I decide to, then I will check it out. I have read discussions on this forum in the past and had to go and check out more detail about what the person said, or the book in reference, because I found it interesting and a new area of concern. Even then, I may not respond. I do not feel I have to comment on everything. And I believe there are many like that. If you check the statistics, the percentage of persons always exchanging ideas on the forum is few. There is nothing wrong with that.
Finally, if you find what I am saying as sermon or whatever, I am sorry please. There are many who write on this forum that use language that I do not like, and I just ignore it unless the moderator intervenes. For instance, even if someone disagrees with Farooq, I do not feel some of the language that was used against him recently on this forum was necessary. I have not read other things Farooq wrote but even if assuming he used strong language, personally, I will never engage in any kind of personal attack anywhere and at any time. What am I looking for in life?
Thank you very much and I think that is all I have to say about this. I felt compelled to respond so that you do not think I ignored you please. Just know that I have no problem exchanging ideas and I am not looking for any elevation in status by writing on this forum. The reason why I provide references is to help the reader whether in Africa or anywhere to know the ideas that are guiding my thinking instead of just arguing like that. I hope this provides you some insights into my way of thinking. We may differ in how we think but that is fine.
Samuel
I looked at the alleged outrage and saw no evidence of it. I support Biko on this. In fact you owe him an apology for the accidental or deliberate mis -characterization.You need not create fake straw men to be heard.--
Do not assume the mantle of development and social justice crusader unless you have some clear idea about implementation.All on this list are supporters of social justice and development and it is true that few of us know how to achieve it. We are hoping that your extensive readings, lecture notes, and written discourses will bring us closer to the question of implementation. Just a little bit closer beyond the sociology text book.
Bear in mind though that some of us are also interested in other issues. One of my passions is the history of technology from antiquity to the present. I even ventured to write a paper on the development of the desktop computer sometime ago. Am I to shut down my intellectual activities in that area because they do not fit into the areas you claim to be interested into?If yes, then we are looking at another form of bigotry and conceit.
In your response to Adepoju you pointed out that charitable giving encourages dependency and sycophancy; that religions and neoliberalism are disappointing; and books and the internet largely inaccessible and so on, but failed to give an alternative suggestion. I am still trying to figure out what optimism of the heart is and how that will bring about the development and social justice that you claim to be dedicated to. After deriding lamentations you proceeded to give us the same, dressed up in sociological jargon and sermons.
Now this is fine. This group is multidisciplinary and I rather like hearing sociological discourse but do not prioritize it- especially when, in the final analysis, we are left with no actual meaningful suggestions for solving the problems identified.
I am expecting a long sociological response with citations of this and that. I have a lot of surplus time this weekend.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Professor of History
From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, March 1, 2019 7:48:24 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote--Uncle Sam,
What is this long-winded self-pity from you all about? No one attacked you personally. Falola told you that there is no need for you to defend yourself, I agree, but he was wrong when he suggested that you should not explain what you mean in a dialogue forum, as CAO pointed out. You are not under attack. Take another look at the short comment to which you have responded with an 'emotional' diatribe about the Igbo and how much you fear them even after living among them for a couple of years and even though you have one friend who is an Igbo man. Is this what someone is praising as superb scholarship? Wow indeed!
I am not competing against you in your area of specialization which is elites studies. But even a Freshman in your classes deserves the right to exercise critical thinking about your ideas without the professor accusing the student of showing emotional pride in his or her ethnicity. Charles Wright Mills also theorized about the Power Elite but he has been criticized for assuming that only the military-industrial power elites call the shots in the US and that the poor people are only manipulated because they have no power to bring about significant changes. Writing at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, he failed to understand that the masses of the people are the true drivers of change in American history. His classic, The Sociological Imagination, also failed to take into consideration the immense articulation or intersectionality of class with race and gender in the US. This is fair critique and not an attack on the moral worth of the valuable contributions from C.W. Mills. Do not take it personally in your case.
A student who tells you that you should not quote only western philosophers when discussing Africa because there are more relevant African thinkers to cite is not saying that you should never cite European authors at all. For instance, you suggest that if German scholars were to demand that German theorists should be cited in the US, they would be called separatists but they do not need to make such a call because German thinkers are privileged in American social thought already. Contrary to your suggestion, Habermas never cites African authors. Edward Said challenged him for ignoring intellectual contributions from colonized locations and Habermas said that his thoughts were only about people of European descent. Said rejected that excuse on the ground that there is no way you can understand modern Europe while ignoring the hundreds of years of the European conquest, enslavement, and colonization of others. According to Said, Frantz Fanon is a more powerful authority on Culture and Imperialism than Habermas or Foucault. Do you think that Said was attacking Habermas and Foucault emotionally?
Afrocentricity (not what you called Afrocentrism) never said that scholars in Africana Studies should never read texts by white people but it will be strange if such scholars never read texts by Africans for fear of being labelled separatists. We Africans do cite European scholars but should we never cite Africans just because Europeans tend not to cite Africans and prefer to cite only Europeans in accordance with Eurocentrism? The difference is that Afrocentricity insists that whatever you study should be at the center of your paradigms. If you study Africa, Asia, Arabs, Jews, Hispanics, Music, Culture, then they should be at the center of your thoughts. But that does not mean that you should ignore contributions from other regions or other disciplines. Afrocentricity is not the same as Eurocentrism or ethnocenterism because Africa-centricity is never offered as the best way to study the entire universe contrary to the claims to universalism by parochial Eurocentrism.
As an award-winning professor of Third World Studies, Samuel should really read the sources suggested by colleagues before asserting magically that 'I have not read Stuart Hall's work but irrespective of what he says about culture, I can guarantee you that it falls within one of these dimensions of culture.' Go and read Hall before pontificating because it is no longer against the law for people of African descent to read. Listening to the few seconds of Stuart Hall on Isaac Julien's Frantz Fanon is woefully inadequate for a professor to claim that he can guarantee to know what the man wrote. Just Google the name and you will find dozens of his essays to educate yourself. For your information, Stuart Hall will tell you that there is 'no guarantee' that you will master his theory even after reading his work, you will also need to engage in cultural politics.
I am not sure where you read that Weber said that class, power and prestige are 'separate' (you must love that word for it echoes in your long-winded opinion - 'the separation was very emotional'). They are different forces but they are never separate. By the way, Weber was obviously wrong because he neglected racism and sexism in his class analysis whereas they were never separate from class. His theory of the rational ideal bureaucracy has been knocked by Bauman, in Modernity and the Holocaust, precisely because there is no awareness of the need for compassion in the face of genocide in the work of Weber on power, contrary to the canonical work of Du Bois that European sociologists neglected at the expense of the discipline.
Class, ethnicity, gender, and race are different social relations but they are never separate, they are joined together or articulated, according to Stuart Hall. If you read nothing else by Hall, download a copy of 'Race, and Class Articulation in Societies Structured in Dominance'. You will see how he based his theory on the anti-apartheid struggle as a struggle that cannot be said to have been only about class by crude economists. Marx suggested the articulation theory in Capital based on his passionate studies of the genocide against indigenous people, the exploitation of women, and the enslavement of Africans, not just about class struggles in Europe.
You lived among the Igbo for two years and now you think you are an expert on Igbo culture? That is baffling coming from a professor who spent over a decade trying to master western sociology from introductory texts. Nnamdi Azikiwe University is a Federal institution and not an Igbo one but you suggest that you went there to serve the Igbo, link them to the American consulate, teach them not to hate themselves, and to enjoy yourself with the full knowledge that everyone agreed with you. Thank you for helping to save the Igbo from themselves.
When the Owerri people talk about a snake and a stranger in their house, you should have read Igbo texts to avoid misunderstanding what they mean when they said that they were less scared of the snake. In that part of the world, snakes are allowed to come into the house as a totem or ancestral symbol but any stranger who tries to trespass will have to be apprehended and asked what he was looking for in another man's house. Makes sense to me.
Cheikh Anta Diop explained that classical Africans domesticated snakes to help them to control the population of rodents that might bring in plagues. The Igbo still do that. How many Mbaise people did Owerri people kill recently or while you were preaching the gospel according to King Samuel to your bemused students? You seem shocked to learn that Umuleri and Aguleri people fight over land but you shed not even one drop of ink for the 3.1 million Igbo killed by fellow Nigerians without apology. Show us where you have ever condemned the genocide against the Igbo and where you have called for justice to be done for the innocent victims in all your prestigious writings. This is not an attack, just a scholarly query, mind you.
Do not be surprised when next you find a Hausa community that speaks Igbo fluently in Igboland the way that even more Igbo communities speak fluent Hausa in the north. If you ask the Awusa people, they will tell you that their Nyamiri neighbors have never killed them en-masse or given them quit notices or threatened to drown them in the river Niger for voting a certain way, nor have the state governors deported any of them allegedly to decongest the city of beggars.
As you may know, the Igbo elected a Fulani man as the first Mayor of Enugu and he defeated the candidate preferred by Azikiwe's party. He was the Mayor from 1952 to 1958. That is the way it should be in a democratic society where people are free to travel and thrive without being threatened as settlers by those who call themselves indigenes. Pan Africanists call for this to be the case across Africa so that poor South African will stop attacking poor West Africans allegedly because their languages sound incomprehensively like makwerekwere.
The recent presidential election should serve as a lesson to elite theorists who believe that the rich dictate how the poor will vote whereas people with conscience do sometimes vote against the interests of corrupt elites, despite rigging, voter intimidation, and the irrelevance of the election to the lives of the 2/3rd majority who stayed home to eat Owerri soup.
I do agree with you that class divisions are found all over the world, Igboland included. However, your emotional utterances appear to obsess about the Igbo. You first raised it when you said that the Igbo woman who sells her wares from a barrow had nothing in common with the Igbo elites. I pointed out that all the people have the same right to live in a democratic society free from genocidal violence that affects both the elites and the masses equally. The children of the poor woman may rise through education, sports, arts or business apprenticeship to do better in life than the children of the elites because of the belief that all heads are equal. Is this what you called emotional attack and fight against you, bro Sam?
Thanks for the offer to collaborate with me on a research project. I regret to say that I have my hands full at the moment. Keep up your good work. I look forward to learning more from you. I also hope that the Talakawa will learn from Ndinkiti about how they can use education and apprenticeship to overcome some of their disadvantages due to class stratification.
Biko
On Friday, 1 March 2019, 9:32, Samuel Zalanga <szalanga@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Biko,
I will try to respond to some of the issues you raised. But I feel your response is too emotionally charged. We are not fighting please and we are not competing with each other. We are exchanging ideas and trying to learn from each other.First, let me say that this is a diverse group of scholars and we have different interests and approaches. My approach to knowledge is that I will go anywhere in the world to learn something; I care less whether it is the West, China, Igboland, Kenya, Tanzania, Japan, the U.S., ancient Rome, France etc. etc. I have worked with many people who are Afrocentric and there are different ways of doing that also. But I am not the type that will say just because an idea does not come from Africa, then it is not worthwhile or that the only to engage in great scholarly thinking is to only cite Africans. There are many great ideas that come from Africa but depending on what I am writing I am not under obligation to quote. Indeed I wrote a chapter on Julius Nyerere but I am attracted to his ideas because there is something I am looking for in life and I found it in him which is very inspiring. Note however that I am equally interested in Che Guevara. Simply quoting an African scholar does not make one to automatically be more in love with Africa. It all depends, according Jurgen Habermas on the human interests behind quoting the African scholars. Many have quoted past Africans or Nigerians to perpetuate ethnic and religious bigotry. I am not one of those.As a sociologist who is highly interested in the social context of knowledge, i.e., sociology of knowledge, simply because something is written by an African even if it is from my ethnic group does not automatically mean it is undistorted, or that it cannot be epistemologically biased. Wherever there is hierarchy and class inequality, not only in Ancient Greece, Roman Empire, France, Britain or the U.S., indeed even in the Bible, it will distort and vitiate the kind of knowledge that is produced. Just check the book "Reading the Bible from Margins" and you will see how certain things were prioritized while others were ignored. The ignored were equally important but the authors chose to ignore them. This can equally happen in any ethnic group in Nigeria and so if Afrocentrism just assumes that knowledge produced by Africans, just because it is African is hanging up there in the sky or in social vacuum, then from the point of view of the sociology of knowledge, it is naïve.Go to any part of Nigeria, the kind of ideas or knowledge that fascinates the elites is not necessarily the kinds of ideas and knowledge that fascinates the poor and ordinary people even if they come from the same ethnic group. I lived in Igbo land for one academic year and I can guarantee you that there is high inequality Igbo land that is enough to create a situation where some elites are living up there in their world while the masses are struggling. The density of capital is very high in Anambra state and while there is more poverty in Bauchi because there is not as much wealth density in Bauchi state, it is more painful to be poor in Anambra state where you see conspicuous consumption more clearly that can hurt one's self-identity if the person cannot himself or herself make money and demonstrate they have it. This is true to some extent in all parts of the world where there is social stratification and high inequality. This is what we call a social fact.You may dislike me because I quote some western source, but that does not affect me because from the point of view of sociology of knowledge, simply because something is written by an African does not automatically give it a free pass, just as what is written by a westerner does not get a free pass. I believe the key issue, (and we may disagree on this) is to first come up with criteria for evaluating what we consider even with imperfection, what constitutes good knowledge and then once we have that, we can use it to evaluate any idea we encounter and if it fails the standard, even if it is our own personal ideas, we have to allow it to go. But at this point in my life, for someone to tell me that I should quote only African scholars will come across to me as provincialism in knowledge production and acquisition. I am not against quoting African scholars but you are trying to make it some kind of litmus test. I believe here we should agree to disagree. I believe in a market place of ideas. Globalization is not just of consumer goods. When I was in Ibadan last year, I delayed my departure to go to one bookstore that sells many books by Nigerian authors. If this forum is some kind of spiritual sect for quoting just Africans, having taught religion for some time, I am afraid of such spiritual sects.Dear Biko, please do not assume that simply because someone comes from another part of Nigeria he or she hates Igbos. Unlike you, I am a minority person in Nigeria, and I grew up not in a matrilocal or virilocal residence. I grew up in an environment that was neolocal for my parents. What that means is I did not grow up among my father's or mother's people. I did not speak their language. I grew in a neutral place. My last name is the name of my village in Bauchi State, but I have no ancestral blood relationship there. So when I see people writing in this forum in the 21st century using ancestral, genetic, and ethnic identity platforms, I feel frankly scared.For me as a sociologist, one's ethnic identity is a particular point in his or her long process of developing human consciousness. There was a time in life when one is not even aware of himself or herself as a baby, then gradually the person becomes aware of his or her family, community, ethnic group or region, and nation. But it should not stop there if you understand Lawrence Kohlberg theory of moral development, in spite of the criticism raised by Carol Gilligan. We need to reach a point where we see all of us as part of the human race. The way you engaged this topic is such that if I white person of German ancestry did the same publicly in the U.S. they will refer to it as racial / ethnic separatism. The point is not that one should hide or feel ashamed of his ethnic identity, but rather, how can I be for instance, a person from a minority group in Bauchi without feeling that I do not share certain things in common with other human groups in Nigeria. Or how can I be a Nigerian without a feeling of diminished sense of self-hood when I align that identity with a shared sense of humanity with people in other countries in Africa and the rest of the world. Where I differ from you is that being Igbo land would not threaten mysense of identity because I have laid a foundation for an identity that is cosmopolitan and therefore can relate to all if they respect my humanity. I think I did an excellent job being from Bauchi and living in Awka and enjoying it.Please if you care go to my Facebook account and you will see pictures of sendoff that was given to me when I was leaving. At the university they bought me a traditional Igbo dress. I worked hard to arrange for a team of the American Consulate to visit Nnamdi Azikiwe University when I was there and I am happy to tell you that it has now promoted a closer relationship between the Consulate in Lagos and Nnamdi Azikiwe University. Interestingly, when the advanced party of the delegation arrived at the university to check the security situation and I was their contact person, when they asked some people in the university about me, the people referred them to the Chinese Center because they thought my name was Chinese. And so I got a call from the Chinese Center that day. This can happen because in Nigeria sometimes we do not make much effort to know each other. We are either angry at each other or feel we are superior to others.You may think form your tone that because I am from Bauchi State, I am one of the genocidical group and does not care of a person like you because you are Igbo. I lament this line of reasoning. Actually on your way to Enugu from Awka, at the outskirts of the city, there is a Hausa community there. Ogochukwu, my personal assistant took me there and told me in advance that the Hausa people will speak Igbo to me and they speak it fluently without accent. If you see how people interact there, you know that the conflict among us is promoted by elites but generally when left alone, many ordinary people can live in peace. Please let us be careful with our tone and substance. My students in Nnamdi Azikiwe know that I care about them even though you may not feel so just because I am from Northern Nigeria. The students on their own made a plaque which is memorable to me and they insisted we have to take group pictures. The separation was very emotional frankly. I truly enjoyed my time there. And for me, it was not an issue that I am from Bauchi but my Fulbright Fellowship was in Southeastern Nigeria. How did it happen? Well because I met at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Third World Studies an Igbo person who is a Professor at Nnamdi Azikiwe University and we became close friends. He was the basis of my collaboration. He got the letter for me from the university that I uploaded with my application. We communicate regularly and I can say more about my time there but let me stop here.So where is this anger coming from in your posting? Let me also say that there are three of us Nigerians in my university. One is Yoruba, the other Igbo and I am not a Hausa person but from Bauchi. My father is originally from Yobe. We relate to each other as brothers. And when I was in Yobe for my Carnegie Fellowship, when my Igbo colleague and friend was in Jos, I drove from Yobe to pick him up in Jos to take him to my village in Bauchi State. We were there for two days. And then when he came to Awka, he took me to his family. On my way back from Nigeria, I spent time with my Yoruba colleague who was in Lagos. We stayed in the same hotel room. He handled some of my complex issues while I was away and has therefore done a lot to me that I cannot even expect more from my brother. This focus of genetic ancestry is truly a matter of concern to me. I believe in the sacredness of human life.As a sociologist, sometimes I restrain myself in raising some issues because I do not want to offend people. Serious intellectual exchange requires trust but I did not sense that in the tone of your response. On another note all this question of being proud of one's ethnic group needs to be qualified. I cannot imagine someone who loves his or her ethnic so much and leaving it to another person's country. We still love Nigeria, but my point is that we have to admit that if our primary goal is to honor our ancestors, there are some anthropologists who say that some think one of the best way to do that is not to migrate from you hometown or speak any other person's language. In contrast, some say that any strong culture survives by not just relying on itself only but by adopting and adapting. Westerners have done that. At the human level, I can see something in you and adopt and adapt it to my life. When I did my NYSC in Imo state, even as a young person, I saw many things in Igbo land that I appreciated. And when we attended convocation at Olabisi Onabanjo Univesity last year in Nigeria, I was highly impressed by the way education is celebrated in the Southwest of Nigeria. I wish elites in Northern Nigeria learn from that. I do not feel ashamed to acknowledge something good in another culture, person or people. It does not affect my ego.There is no one Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa or Fulani identity. And if there is one, it was a project and not something given. Identity is socially constructed. There is injustice among all ethnic groups in Nigeria. There is injustice in my village and there is injustice in Igbo land. I worked with honest Igbo scholars who pointed this out and this by no means they are less Igbo or ashamed of their heritage or their identity. What we need to do is to organize and work hard to fight injustice. I do not see injustice in Bachi state alone but across the country, Africa and the world. Once, one elderly woman in a graduate course I am teaching in my university asked me why is it that I was not born in the U.S. but I talk passionately about the struggle of the disadvantaged people. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" injustice in one place is injustice in all places. He was thinking in terms of shared humanity. I will feel ashamed even in a dream if I only consider the injustice of only people in my state or region of the country. Indeed, John Stuart people in his concept of ideal utilitarianism, argues that we can derive pleasure not necessarily only through hedonistic consumption but by the realization of certain ideals that promote human welfare. So even if I am from Bauchi state but I learn that communities are organizing to help support the poor in Igbo land, it gives me joy, because the ideal of human compassion and social inclusion is being realized among human beings.When I did my NYSC in Imo State, I was shocked to learn that there is a saying that if an Mbaise man and a snake are coming into your house, leave the snake and hit the Mbaise man. This is a very dehumanizing assertion but it is said by some Igbos against other Igbos. Interestingly, on the day a farewell reception was organized for us in the Local Government, when it was my turn to speak, I told them that I was not happy with this saying. I thought it was bad and improper. I remember the information officer of the local government said he wanted to interview me about that. I did not say that out of disrespect, and the place was really quiet when I expressed that. When I look back, I feel proud that even as a young person I had the courage to raise this issue.Human oppression does not have to be inter-ethnic or inter-racial. It is about power and what Saint Augustine calls "libido dominandi" i.e., the lust to conquer dominate. At this point in my life, I have reason to believe that if black people have power over others, just because they are black does not make them automatically more just than whites. Deep down, it is a human condition. I made presentation at Nnamdi Azikiwe University and I raised this issue. The audience all agreed with me. Why? Because people experience oppression in Nigeria even within the same ethnic or religious group. We need to be honest and courageous to point out these things. Whites have oppressed us and it is continuing though there are whites who oppress whites, but the issue is not white skin per se sociologically. The issue is power, and how defending on how someone is cultivated and restrained exercises the power they have over others. One of the issues that every human society has to address is developing a mechanism for how people acquire power and now they exercise it. All human societies and all ethnic groups have to address this issue. They also have to develop mechanism for regulating human insatiable desires otherwise they will just be fighting over scarce resources. These issues are challenges in Igbo land as they are in all parts of Nigeria and other human societies.One Igbo woman last year during Professor Falola's conference in Ibadan made an interesting presentation where she said Igbo culture is highly individualistic and emphasizes high level of achievement orientation. This has contributed to the success of Igbo people very much. But she said this has affected the ability of Igbo people to do well in Nigerian politics because the high emphasis on personal achievement makes it difficult for individuals and people to cooperate. Many people pushed back at her argument but the woman stood firm. If you read "Becoming Modern" by Inkeles and Smith you will see where they argued that Igbo society has a higher chance of succeeding capitalistically because capitalism is about individualistic pursuit and achievement based on competition, and given that even in precolonial Igbo culture, those elements existed, there is a kind of elective affinity. Economic anthropology has done much research along this line.When I was in Nigeria, I told anyone who is just interested in worshiping his or her traditional heritage to please feel free to rediscover his or her authentic culture of five thousand years and try to live out again today. It is their choice. The person has the freedom to do that as a way of honoring his or her ancestors. But my warning is that if the person or people decide to live in the modern world, which is not necessarily fair and just, but I believe it cannot at this point be reversed, the person or people must ask: what are the minimum social, cultural, and institutional requirements for succeeding or being an active player in the modern world? This is a realistic approach. Try to succeed in the modern world will require a great amount of ingenuity and creativity. Sometimes, to save a culture, people have to adapt it else it may disappear. One can come up with an African modernity in so far as it can engage in effective exchange and communication with other modernities as part of a global society.Finally, you raised the name of Stuart Hall. I did not read any of his books but I saw him in an extended documentary on Frantz Fanon and I enjoyed listening to his ideas. The way I study culture as a sociologist may be different from yours depending on your training. Long ago when I was an undergraduate I read many introductory sociology texts from the U.S. and Britain. And soon, on my own I noticed something. In British introductory text books of sociology, they first introduced what sociology is and society, and then the next chapter you encounter is "Stratification and Inequality." Without understanding stratification and inequality you cannot understand culture. The only way to ignore that is if you live in a communal society but even then there is variation of not just class, but power, and prestige or status if you are familiar with what Weber said. Weber said while the three are separate, in capitalist society ultimately class becomes important. It is very unrealistic in my assessment to live neoliberal capitalist economy and understand how the logic of such an economy operates and to still assume that all people in an ethnic group share the same cultural experience. Class inequality in capitalist society means there is elite culture, there is popular culture etc. Igbos do not experience the same culture because I lived there and just as in the North, people with money can experience the culture differently compared to those that are poor. Even in the case of traditional Igbo food, there are some Igbos who cannot purchase it even if they desire that because it is about money. There is traditional Igbo marriage but I attended marriages that are differentiated by class and the amount and kind of cash that is sprayed. It is intellectually dubious even in the U.S. for one to say that just because of American patriotism the culture that all Americans experience is the same. Lay persons can say that but scholars know that how of African culture you experience depends on how much your money can buy for you.Robert F. Kennedy in a PBS documentary film on his life said that one thing he regretted was that he lived an exclusively privileged life and so did not know what the ordinary American experience in his or her daily life. He therefore took some time to learn from the masses through interacting with them (e.g., native Americans before he became a presidential candidate and communicated well to the people because he felt he knew their struggles. All cultures in a society that is stratified and especially in Igbo land where having money plays such a huge factor in one's social standing compared to Bauchi where I grew up, the culture has to devise means of conveying a sense of oneness so as to cover up the yawning gap between the rich and poor, which has serious existential consequences. This happens in all parts of Nigeria. Acknowledging this does not mean you are condemning Igbo culture. It is just intellectual honesty. Any person that says Hausa culture is the same for the talakawas and the ruling classes is intellectually dubious. I do not believe in that. Even Dante's Divine Comedy, there are different grades and that affects how they arrive at paradise and the penance they need to pay.But more importantly, I want to draw your attention to the variety of ways that culture is used in sociology and anthropology. Just using cultural arguments like that for a sociologist is to make a nebulous comment because culture is not just one thing. If you say Igbo culture, it is not just one thing. Culture is a composite whole and sometimes and William Ogburn argues, there is a tension between material and non-material culture as he explained in his "Cultural Lag" theory. In anthropology and sociology, for better analytical utility, culture is conceptualized in numerous ways so that the person who is using it can specify clearly what he or she means instead of using it vaguely. Here are several ways culture is used in research for analytical precision:a) Culture and institutions as cause and effect.b) Culture as identifierc) Culture as autonomous content.d) Culture as patterne) Culture as guidance mechanism.f) Culture as expression of experienceg) Culture as negotiated symbolic understanding.I have not read Stuart Hall's work but irrespective of what he says about culture, I can guarantee you that it falls within one of these dimensions of culture. The structure of stratification and inequality especially in the way it is manifested in neoliberal capitalism or capitalism in general mediates how people in a society or ethnic group experience the culture. They will not all experience it the same way. So as you can see, your reaction to me in the way you cited Stuart Hall is scratching the surface. I will appreciate anybody who knows of a culture that exists today in the 21st century that all people in that culture even with the social stratification in the society, experience it exactly the same way. If you are in doubt that the nature of social stratification and inequality mediates how people in Igbo land experience Igbo culture, let us work together on a join research project please. We can demystify that. But my argument is not just applicable to Igbo land but all parts of Nigeria and all human societies, past and present that are stratified. There are many sub-divisions and subcultures within the broader idea of an ethnic group. Some of these ethnic groups in Nigeria fought within themselves or still fight in varying ways within themselves. Hausa states fought wars among themselves; there were the Yoruba wars of the 19th century and I believe you are aware of the war between two clans in Anambra state as described by one doctoral student at Nnamdi Azikiwe University. The clans are: Umuleri and Aguleri https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308818446_History_land_and_conflict_in_Nigeria_The_Aguleri-Umuleri_experience_1933-1999They have the same ancestral blood but fought each other bitterly. Human societies are complex wholes and to repeat again, conflict does not have to be between persons of different races or ethnic groups. I am not ashamed of my African identity. I always tell people in my university that if at my age I am still wrestling with that I can as well go and hang myself. But that does not make me to be so gullible as to romanticize everything about my ethnic background, country or even precolonial Africa. History is full of the good, the bad and the ugly. We have to be courageous to be inspired by what excellent and inspiring in the past, and avoid what was terribly oppressive.In conclusion, I will just say that please kindly take a deep breath and know that even if you feel some people are against Igbos, not all are and surely I am not one of them. Furthermore, if you are honest, if there are outsiders who oppressed Igbos, there are many Igbo people who hurt other Igbos even equally as outsiders. Remember Hannah Arendt who said based on her study of the holocaust asserted that often the colonizer uses people within the colonized to colonize the people. There is therefore a question of personal or social responsibility. Africa was oppressed because there ware African leaders or elites who accepted to be used as agents at various times and in various contexts. This is true in all parts of Nigeria too.I had a great time in Igboland and I have made great friends that we will continue to relate to each for the remaining time we have in this world. I hope if you do not have any very close friend from another region of Nigeria, you will try to get one. As I have always said, even if every family in Nigeria or in Igbo land will get its own country or state, if there is no justice, there will be conflict even within families and when I was in Nigeria, I heard many of such stories of conflict or violence within families owing to feeling of injustice. So what we need is to cooperate and struggle for justice. If your concern is the lives of the Igbo people, for me, I am concern about the lives of all human beings and I am willing and prepared to contribute for the human development of all in any part of Nigeria or the world where the opportunity arises.
Thank you very much and please take it easy. We do not need vent anger on this forum. At least that is not how I relate to people please.
Samuel
--On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 5:06 PM 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
What the Igbo have in common with most Nigerians is the right to live in a democracy where all heads are equal despite the articulation, disarticulation and rearticulation of ethnic-gender-class relations in societies structured in dominance.
When the genocidists come for the Igbo, they do not spare the elites nor the nkiti people. And when the Oha is determined to pursue education as an unqualified common good, the child of the female barrow pusher may whoop the behind of the children of corrupt millionaires.
Zalenga suggests wrongly that class explains every outcome but such crude economic determinism has been transcended by the Cultural Studies o f Stuart Hall.
Uncle Sam quoted Plato and Aristotle as authorities on democracy but they were vehemently opposed to what they called mob rule and preferred the philosopher king and the aristicracy, respectively. The Igbo proudly proclaim that they know no king.
Cite Azikiwe, Achebe, Ngugi, Soyinka, and Anikpo on this radical republicanism that is indigenous to Africa.--
Biko
On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 3:08 PM, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM<chidi.opara@gmail.com> wrote:Samuel,
Anyone fighting evil should be encouraged regardless of the motive.
CAO.
--
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