Thank you for your rich post in response to Biko's. It was a rewarding and shareable read. When I read posts like yours I realize how privileged I am to be part of this group.
Chielozona
https://neiu.academia.edu/ChielozonaEze
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 identifier
c) Culture as autonomous content.
d) Culture as pattern
e) Culture as guidance mechanism.
f) Culture as expression of experience
g) 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_1933-1999
They 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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