Second International Conference of the Trans-Atlantic Research Group

Participants and Abstracts of the Second International Conference
of the Trans-Atlantic Research Group

Throughout the Atlantic world Igbo Africans had a reputation as ‘bad’ slaves. Stereotyped as lazy and despondent, ornery and obstreperous, tending to bolt (and even commit suicide) rather than to revolt outright, Igbo resisted slavery in ways that confounded their masters. As a German traveler to Bonny on the Calabar coast in 1840 learned, even after generations of slaving the Ibani still spoke of Igbo “as they would speak of sharks, ‘Iboman wawa too much’, ‘Ibo people are very wicked’.” In other parts of the Atlantic littoral, like the Carolina lowcountry in the 1770s, other Africans berated Igbo as rogues, perhaps in an early form of verbal jousting not unlike ‘the dozens’. As a visitor to a late-colonial South Carolina rice plantation in the 1770s noted, slaves there would lambaste each others’ African nationalities, especially ‘Gulli’ (Gullah, i.e., Ngola) and ‘Iba’ (Igbo) slaves. Barclay wrote that, “The one will say to the other, ‘You be Gulli Niga, what be the use of you, you be good for nothing’. The other will reply, ‘You be Iba Niga; Iba Niga great ‘askal [rascal]’.” Ironically, however, Igbo women had a surprisingly ‘good’ reputation. They were generally thought to be hard workers, industrious and diligent. And most significantly, Igbo women were the only Atlantic Africans whom white men generally saw as beautiful. In 1788 a major Bristol merchant trading to the West Indies wrote that, unlike females from the Gold Coast, “Eboe Women (from Bonny & New Calabar) are very fine and may be had.” As Captain Hugh Crow, who traded extensively at Bonny from 1791 to 1808 wrote of enslaved Igbo at the coast, “many of their women are of remarkably symmetrical shape, and if white, would in Europe be deemed beautiful.” A generation later (ca.1830), the Lander brothers, having come down the Niger from the north via Nupe, noted (and presumably in contrast to other Africans) that in riverain Igboland “the women are generally pretty.” A late-antebellum American (USA) evocation of this trope of the ‘very fine’ Igbo woman, a fictional “beautiful Eboe mulattress,” exists even in the novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Within this white male gaze, this burden of beauty, enslaved Igbo women and their immediate descendants resisted slavery in distinctive ways. As with Igbo in general one could enslave the bodies of Biafran women, but not their minds. And in the Black Atlantic, it seems that enslaved Igbo women used their own bodies at times as sites of resistance. This paper will explore a central ‘burden’ of Igbo female beauty; strategic reproduction.

G. Ugo Nwokeji,
Department of African American Studies, University of California at Berkley

"Slaving and Overlapping Transitions in the Bight of Biafra during the Nineteenth Century."

As part of security measures taken for George W. Bush’s 2003 visit to Gorée Island residents were, according to those interviewed, taken to a soccer stadium and locked inside. In their words, “Da fa mélni Diaam mo gna watt”: “It was like slavery had returned.” How is one to understand this discourse of slavery emerging more than 150 years since it was outlawed in French territories? And why is this narrative aimed at the United States, when President Abdoulaye Wade has done so much to cultivate amiable relations with this superpower nation? In the aftermath of 9/11, George W. Bush praised Senegal for being among the most democratic of the world’s Islamic nations. Why, then, this coercive treatment—or at least the impression of it—from the standpoint of Goréeans? And why was a soccer field chosen to be the stage for this political spectacle? As this article reveals, in fact, Senegal’s effort to promote itself as an anti-terrorist Islamic nation while aggressively pursuing privatization is linked to the way soccer is promoted internally, for the purposes of national cohesion, and externally, as evidence of Senegalese potential. Both developments spring from the most dominant feature of the nation’s post-Independence “crise economique”: a labor shortage that has encouraged the state to pursue foreign direct investment as the most feasible way to bolster revenue while youth engage sport as the best way to escape career unemployment. By drawing from discourses surrounding Senegal’s participation in the 2002 World Cup, I show how that attitude guiding that endeavor parallels the political strategies developed by a government concerned with maintaining a particular public image of itself as “democratic” in order to guarantee investments from more powerful nations interested in the country’s cultural resources.

The African-Americans constitute the third sizable ethnic group in the US after Anglo-Saxes and Latinos. Nowadays its amount is more than 36 million people that cannot be but kept in the minds of the United States policy-makers when they plan official attitudes toward the African states – the “Ancestors Motherland” for modern African-Americans. During the Civil War in the US two trends started to emerge in the Blacks’ movement – conciliating and radical. The conciliating trend (in the end of the XIX C. its most impressive representative has been Mr. Booker Washington) suggested that the Whites should be leaders in the world processes and the Blacks should be their subordinates – their role was to help the Whites to realize their historic mission. The forefather of the radical trend among the African-Americans can be truly considered Mr. Frederick Douglas. During the Civil War he became famous with his appeals to the armed struggle with the slave owners and all those who sympathized them. On possibilities of the modern African-American community we can judge by the simple fact that by 1997 in the US there were 270 companies and businesses (each with a capital fund of more than 10 million USD) owned by the Black skinned individuals; 60,000 people worked at these enterprises and their market value was about 14 billion USD. In 2003 the African-Americans had an aggregated income of close to 700 billion USD annually. In a few years it is expected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 850 billion USD. In 2003 there were nearly 9,000 African-Americans elected officials throughout the US. Now there are some influential African-American figures who enjoy their talents for the sake of both the U.S. policy toward Africa and Community. Among them first of all is Mr. Jessie Jackson, PUSH. In their struggle for equality with the Whites the African-American politicians are looking for a political support in Africa. Among many African-Americans there is a wide-spread opinion that the Africans have not any historical past and all their culture is closely connected with the European civilization. Moreover, because “technologically” the US has gone far ahead of the African states the black-skinned Americans’ mission should be to “lead” the African peoples. The strategic plan of the African-Americans is to form a kind of global unity of the African-American community, African Diaspora in Latin America and African states. It is very early to say in what forms it would be done. But the general idea is clear – it should be done under the guidance of the U.S. African-American community. At the same time it seems that this wide-scale mission cannot be realized without a support of one of the major U.S. political groupings – Republican or Democratic Parties. It was not coincidental that at the 2004 Democratic National Convention it was created the African-American Leadership Council (AALC) as a “part of a comprehensive effort to recognize the loyalty, great dedication and vast contributions of the African-American community to the Democratic Party”. The Republicans also saw an importance of African-Americans. Particularly, in 2001 President George W. Bush has appointed two of them: Mr. Colin Powell as Secretary of State and Miss Condolizza Rice as National Security Advisor. In 2005 he appointed Miss Rice as Secretary of State.

“Unmasking the Macho Male: Masculinity and the U.S. Media in the Caribbean”

This proposed essay will examine the influence of the US media on the Caribbean male. In recent times, one of the many social problems facing men in the region is the state of masculinity among our boys and men. They are usually the culprits in such social ills as road accidents, drug trafficking, incest, common-law unions, extra marital relationships, single-parent families, divorces, HIV/AIDS, kidnappings, suicides, homicides, rapes, alcoholism, vagrancy and domestic violence. Headlines in the daily newspapers provide ample proof that males are guilty of being involved in criminal acts and posing a burden to the Caribbean. This is a result of improper socialization of the Caribbean male who is heavily influenced by the movies of US cable networks and cinema. Women and children are the innocent victims of the irresponsible, aggressive, abusive and uncaring males. One of the themes to be explored in my paper is-- the men who are the perpetrators of this crime, are they influenced by the images and shows of the US media. Is the macho Caribbean male image responsible for these anti-social actions? Emphasis on proper role models which reflect the multicultural Caribbean society is badly needed and only when this is achieved can we expect to achieve a more peaceful society with fewer acts of crime, racial harmony, stable families and gender equality. The paper will also consider the reasons for the dominance of the heterosexual Afro-Caribbean male and the apparent insubordination of the gay Caribbean male in the Caribbean’s men movement. The heterosexual Caribbean male not only tends to dominate the men’s movement in the Caribbean but also conceptualizes this role of the macho male. They have taken the initiative and are involved in men’s organizations, workshops, seminars and debates on male-related topics such as suicides, poverty, drug abuse, alcoholism, crime and health. Indeed, the voice of the Caribbean men’s movement has a Black voice which tends to inadvertently isolate other minority groups as the Indians, Syrians, Chinese, Portuguese and Whites.

Walter Emerole
Department of History and International Studies,
Imo State University

Gender empowerment and social consciousness - a case study of the Igbo in Eastern Nigeria.

This paper seeks to properly inform and educate my audience on the socio–economic cum political status of pre-colonial Igbo women, as well as their contributions to the economic development of pre-colonial Igbo society. This paper will also evaluate the various efforts made by the Igbo woman to liberate themselves from decades of social, economic, political and intellectual constraints in the post colonial period. Further, effort will be made to evaluate the contemporary place of Igbo woman in terms of economic contributions, intellectual liberation and political achievements. To conclude this chapter, attempts will be made to assess the extent the socio political cum economic conditions of Igbo society have aided the Igbo woman in her moves to achieve political and economic relevance in Igbo society. Finally at the end of this exercise, one will have stimulated proper appreciation of the abilities and capabilities of Igbo woman in nation building.

Waibinte Elekima Wariboko,
Dept. of History and Archaeology,
The University of the West Indies, Mona – Jamaica.

The Pongas Mission and its Impact on Black Personhood: a neglected theme in the Caribbean-African connection, 1855-1952

The desire by European and American missionary organizations to utilize Christianized persons of African descent in the Caribbean for the evangelization of their ancestral homeland predated the formal ending of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the New World. These two points, among others, explain the desire to evangelize Africa through its sons and daughters in the emergent New World diaspora. Considering West Africa as the “white man’s grave” in the nineteenth century, European missionary bodies engaged persons of African descent to evangelize their ancestral homeland on the reasoning that they would be more resistant to the abiding health hazards and ailments of the West African environment. Secondly, because of the presumed racial affinity between blacks on both sides of the Atlantic, including the ideological desire of those in the African diaspora to reconnect with the ancestral homeland, missionary bodies readily perceived Christianized Caribbean blacks as the best suited persons to assist Europeans in the evangelization of West Africa. Studies abound on European and American initiatives to evangelize Africa through its sons and daughters in the New World, but the Caribbean Rio Pongas Mission has received very little attention especially from African historians. Also known and called “The Mission from the sons and daughters of Africa in the West Indies to Africa”, the Pongas Mission was a Caribbean initiative that was designed and funded almost entirely by the Anglican Communions in Antigua, Barbados and Jamaica to “civilize” the “benighted” peoples of Conakry, Dominga, Fallangia, Farringia, Isles de Los and Dubrica – all in present day Guinea-Conakry, West Africa - through the propagation of Christianity and European secular values between 1855 and 1952. The prime movers of this programme, informed and motivated by the notion of race pride and belonging, argued that the redemption of Africa from its spiritual and socio-cultural degradation cannot be left to European humanitarian and missionary organizations alone; it is, they further argued, a moral and political responsibility of the black populations in the New World diaspora to rescue the ancestral homeland. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the aims and activities of the Pongas Mission, including the social and cultural impact of its activities on the black personhood.

Timothy Mark Mechlinski
mechlinski@umail.ucsb.edu
University of California, Santa Barbara
Department of Sociology

Making it Across the Border: The Social Interaction of Internal and International Mobility Control in West Africa in Comparative Perspective

Migration is undoubtedly central to the economies and histories of many nations. It is a much theorized and studied topic across various disciplines and is often a site of contention for policy-makers and lay-people of both sending and receiving zones. My research aims to expand the body of knowledge surrounding one particularly important regional migration system: the flux of people from landlocked Mali and Burkina Faso to their coastal neighbors, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.

There has been inadequate new systematic data collection on this particular migration system since the 1970s and what data has been collected since then has yet to be published. Since the 1970s, when research on this migration system was rapidly developing, the four nations concerned have undergone important political, economic, and social changes. These changes have affected patterns of migration between these countries, the contexts of reception in which migrants find themselves, transportation structures, and internal and international mobility control policies.

Writing with and against this literature, I recreate experiences of border crossing based on interviews and focus groups conducted with individuals and families. I present a thematic analysis of the interpersonal relationships and structural forces that influence and constrain migrants’ experiences during their migrations and the changes in these experiences over the last several decades. Throughout the analysis, I pay particular attention to the ways in which gender and generation, in terms of age, as well as migrant generation in Côte d'Ivoire, affect individuals’ and groups’ experiences of migration. Finally, I critically interrogate the use of the household as a unit of analysis in migration studies based on the experiences of Burkinabe who have migrated to and from Côte d'Ivoire and on those of their relatives, opting instead for an expanded understanding of migrant networks, adapted from the North American model.

Panel: Crossing Over with Beads Asunder: Women, The Transatlantic Slave Trade, Social and Cultural Transformations

Chair/Moderator/Discussant:
Joseph Miller,
Professor of History, University of Virginia/ Virginia Foundation of the Humanities

Akuma-Kalu J. Njoku
Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology
Western Kentucky University
njokujak@yahoo.com

Transformations in Gender and Class System Resulting from Atlantic Trades and Colonialism in the Bight of Biafra

This paper discusses the contributions of the Atlantic trades and colonialism to transformations in marriage, gender and class in hinterland of the Bight of Biafra. The author draws attention to how the Atlantic trades in slaves and material goods together with colonialism brought about significant social changes especially in marriage, gender, and class system. Before and after the colonial period, adult females played and continue to play important roles in the reproduction and production at the family, community, and regional levels. Women bore the children that with them provided most of the stoop labor that produced the wealth, yam, and other staples upon which social status depended. During the Atlantic slave trade when more and more men were required as headhunters, slave raiders, escorts, and porters, the brunt of reproduction and food production rested mainly upon the women. In order to replenish the decreasing number of men in the labor force and meet the demands for food to feed the communities and sustain the regional slave trade, men began to marry more and more wives whose children (umu-afo) would enlarge their labor force. Men also began to get additional labor by owning slaves (ohu), using cult servants (ndi osu), getting house servants or attendants (umu-mbina), and paid laborers (ndi ozi-ego). Eventually, the establishment of farm villages for food production centers to support the slave trade and cash-crop plantations for the production of export goods, mission schools for training clerical staff for colonial administration, teachers for schools, and religious personnel for the churches complicated the dynamics of marriage, gender, and class system leading to rapid social transformations, differentiations, and stratifications in the Bight of Biafra.

Patricia E. Clark
English Department
State University of New York at Oswego
pclark1@oswego.edu

Cookbooks, Cuisine, Nationalisms: A Comparative Study of National Cuisine, Nation-Building and Gender Formation in Africa and in the United States (Black Nationalism 1960s-70s)

This paper looks at the collation of national cuisines in African cookbooks and how the creation of national cuisines help define, serve as models for and reinforce ties to specific regions in sub-Saharan African for black nationalists of the 1960s and 70s in their creation of a black nation within the United States. The study will consider the work of Igor Cusack, Arjun Appadurai, Steven Mennell, Diane Spivey, Luce Giard and others in examining the impact and effects of the creation of a national cuisine and nation-building through the publication and promotion of cookbooks in Nigeria, Ghana, and other West African nations on the creation of “soul food” in the United States (Amiri Baraka, Verta Mae Grosvenor), promotion of vegetarianism (Dick Gregory, Nation of Islam), and other cuisines and diets that helped define black nationalism at the intersection of gender formation in the United States in the 1960s and 70s.

Kathleen Phillips Lewis
Associate Professor of History and African Diaspora Studies
Spelman College, Atlanta, GA
klewis@spelman.edu or kplewis@drkpl.com

“ ‘They Brought their Gods on Board with them:’ West African Goddesses, Gender, Social and Cultural Transformations in the Caribbean”

This paper continues an exploration of Afro-Caribbean women’s ways of knowing, doing and seeing in response to enslavement, forced dislocation and transplantation, and prolonged subordination. One of the ways enslaved women used to help them cope with the trauma of the Middle Passage, enslavement in general, and continue to use to negotiate life in the Caribbean setting is the reinterpretation of deities – goddesses that become icons, role models, protectors, intercessors and sustainers in times of trouble, symbols of hope. In African- Caribbean religions West African goddesses reappear in transformed manifestation, serving purposes tweaked to suit their new environment and life realities: Erzulie, La Siren, Yemanya, and Oya, Oba, Oschun all have assumed different significance and vary according to locale. The cult of the black virgin or madonna that appears throughout the Caribbean is another example of such reinterpretation: La Divina Pastora, La Virgen de la Caridad are just two examples. Water Goddesses, above all else, have survived the Atlantic Passage and have been reconfigured and reinterpreted to lend special relevance in function to their manifestation in each specific region of the African Diaspora in the Americas. With special reference to the Caribbean, this study analyzes the African roots and Atlantic Diasporic dimensions, and dynamics of transformed West African goddesses. This paper examines the nature of the transformation and reinterpretations, their function across the Caribbean and the reasons and significance of intra-Caribbean/intra-Diasporic variations. It argues that such reinterpretations lie at the heart of the ‘Miss Nansi’ poetics of African-Caribbean woman’s existence. It argues further that the nature of their variations across the region mirrors the process of identity development in the diaspora and the process of creolization and the development of locale specific New World identities within the Black Atlantic.

Kelly Hayes
Department of Religious Studies
Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis
keehayes@iupui.edu

Gender, Class and Social Transformation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: The Case of Pomba Gira Spirit Possession

This paper discusses issues of gender, class and social transformation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by examining beliefs and practices connected with the popular Afro-Brazilian spirit entity known as Pomba Gira. Of the many inhabitants of the Afro-Brazilian spirit world, Pomba Gira is perhaps one of the most notorious and beloved. The small temples in which one or more of her various incarnations—Queen of the Cemetery, Lady of the Crossroads, Mistress of the Night—are venerated may be found throughout the city of Rio de Janeiro, but most especially in the crowded neighborhoods that throng the urban periphery. Most often represented as a bawdy she-demon, the figure of Pomba Gira embodies dominant notions of femininity and female sexuality as both alluring and dangerous. These characteristics are central elements in the stories and songs that compose her mythological corpus, in which Pomba Gira emerges as a Brazilian version of the vamp: a sexy, yet dangerous enchantress whose behavior contravenes all norms of proper feminine comportment. For example, in both story and song, Pomba Gira is often linked with the cabaret, the real-life locale where ladies of the night plied their trade in urban centers such as Rio de Janeiro. Yet unlike the prostitute, Pomba Gira is a figure who is highly revered and religiously powerful. Perhaps surprisingly, the majority of Pomba Gira’s devotees are not prostitutes but working class housewives and mothers. These women claim to “work” with Pomba Gira spirits, who are believed to be effective in resolving romantic troubles. In fact, the complex affairs of the heart represent Pomba Gira’s characteristic field of action. Many women who claim to receive Pomba Gira in possession trance have been able to achieve a measure of economic independence from this work, offering a range of spiritual and healing services to clients from divination consultations to spiritual purifications to large-scale ritual works known as trabalhos. As this suggests, issues of gender and class are central to the phenomenon of Pomba Gira spirit possession. Historically speaking, this figure seems to have emerged in the city of Rio de Janeiro in the first half of the 20th century among working-class inhabitants of the urban periphery. This was a time when rural Brazilians were immigrating to urban centers like Rio in search of jobs and a new way of life—a time of great fluidity geographically, but also socially. By examining beliefs and practices related to Pomba Gira, we gain new insight into issues of gender, class and social transformation in 20th century Rio de Janeiro.

The Political Bungle (Crisis) in Owerri Division Election in Post-Independence Nigeria

This paper focuses on the political contest between the NCNC forces and their antagonists, namely expelled members of the party during the Regional elections of 1961. The central focus is on the political contest between Rev. M. D. Opara of Mbieri and Barrister Ubochi Osuji of Ogwa, both from the Mbaitoli constituency. Though the contest was essentially local, it nevertheless reverberated throughout the Region, and thus attracted the attention of the NCNC hierarchy (including Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (Zik). The paper, therefore, explores the nature of the election debate (crisis), the intricacies of party nominations and voting patterns, and the ultimate aftermath of the crisis within the NCNC in the Owerri Division.

This paper contextualizes the history of the enslaved children of Jamaica in a framework which recognizes that they were part of a larger socio-economic system that had a long history of using child labor both in Britain and in West and West Central Africa. It explores how British and African notions of childhood operated in Jamaican slave society. As this paper will highlight, there were a number of competing notions about childhood and child labour circulating in Jamaica during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. An historical exploration that looks at the history of enslaved children in a wider Atlantic framework, will better situate the history of enslaved children into the narrative of children’s history.

Sybil Nmezi
Postal address: P.O. Box 2877 Owerri, Imo State. Nigeria
E-mail: snnmezi@yahoo.com

Every society accepts transformation. Transformation means positive change to new values and direction. Studies have recognised that transformation process should be people centered. Consequently, gender is a social construct that defines sexual roles and the kind of relationships created by the society.Therefore the purpose of this study is to provide a gender perspective to transformational process. Specifically this study will: Examine the effects of patriarchal system of governance on sexual roles in Imo State.; Examine the processes of development and it’s effect on gender roles in society; Highlight the key levels of women’s rights and interests in the areas of protection, development participial and survival and how the gender inequalities have been made manifest in them; Determine if the mobilization, enlightenment and women empowerment programmes by Non Governmental Organizations and the government have exposed women to their rights and interests as demanded by the changing environment.; Identify the formidable obstacles to achieving equality of sexual roles in the society.

To achieve positive goals, objectives and values demanded by the development in the present day democratic society in Imo State, findings will be made on gender roles using the following strategies-; Reviewing works on gender issues; Interviewing selected sexes in urban and local areas to find out if transformation process have had a profound effect on gender roles; Interviewing sampled socialization agent personnels to find out if they can be utilized to establish positive cultural values that will help elevate the standard and status of women.

A total number of six hundred respondents (300 females, 300 males) will participate in the investigation. They will be further stratifies into young and adult females and males. Responses will be presented in table and analyzed to make decisions.
Consequently, recommendations will be made on how to institutionalize into reality positive changes concerning gender roles.

Poststructural feminists have illuminated the fluid nature of self and identity by pointing out that these formations are highly dependent on the location of the individual. This fluidity is particularly apparent in situations of war where gender roles tend to change and actors of war often assume different gendered roles. The Sierra Leonean war, where many boys and men were feminized and a considerable amount of women masculinized, is a case in point. It is commonplace that during and after wars or violent conflicts, lives change for people, whether male or female, and that often times these changes lead to opportunities in which women are able to occupy public spaces. While some women do move from private to public spaces, or are able to carve out new spaces to deal with their new realities, it is also true that such access is dependent on how these women are positioned in their society. Access for many women is often based on educational status, language, class, ethnicity, race, sexuality, etc. As such, the focus of this paper is to interrogate historically gendered spaces in Sierra Leonean society and see if and how these spaces were transgressed during the Sierra Leone civil war. Furthermore, it will examine whether and how these transgressions of gender and gendered spaces are manifested in postwar Sierra Leone.

Raphel Chijioke Njoku
Departments of History, and Pan-African Studies
University of Louisville, KY 40292

This paper will explore the meaning of the increasing global contacts between different cultures for African women. The central question to address is to examine the ways African women perceive the emerging trends, their concerns and expectations. Contrary to what some social scientists often imply, globalization is not entirely a new phenomenon. Globalization has been a force to reckon since the fifteenth-century Age of the Vasco Da Gama and Christopher Columbus when the Europeans opened a new chapter on the “voyages of discovery.” However, the more recent advances in science and technology have radically transformed the way the various regions of the world now relate to one another. I will closely examine African women’s perception of the expanding global contacts in a historical perspective. The study draws from other works that provide ideas about African women’s expectations and disappointments and what they think should be their role in the emergent order.

In the past five decades, the paradigmatic scope of globalization has continued to grow rapidly and significantly in the study of politics. It is also increasingly becoming the dominant paradigm in gender studies. This essay will examine the influence of globalization on the status of Women in Nigeria since the 1980s and how it has transformed the institutions of politics, economics and culture. The focus of this work is to explore how the forces of globalization have changed the way we think about women by exploring their impact on Nigerian politics. This study will demonstrate that the various military regimes in the past ultimately gave women the opportunity to get involved in the domestic affairs of the country than their civilian counterparts. Therefore, this essay will conduct a comparative study of the military and civilian administrations and their attitude towards women in politics through power relations that existed in the social structures. It will examine the present positions of women and their empowerment in the Nigerian civil society. This essay will also focus on the influence of women in politics through participation in political parties and other civic organizations. In conclusion, questions will be raised as to what role Nigerian women should play in the forthcoming election of 2007.

Henrietta Jenkins
Department of Political Science
University of Louisville, KY 40292
jenkins1118@hotmail.com

Christianity and Indigenous Culture: A Comparative study of African Theology and Black Theology

The total African reality includes the ongoing changes in the indigenous culture. African Theology has evolved over time to be closely linked with the local culture through which the Christian faith is given a distinct African expression. Black theology, as encountered in the United States, focuses mainly on politics and the issues of race and color. In a comparative perspective, this paper will compare and contrast African and Black adaptations of Christianity and the forces driving their various unique but similar directions. The comparative approach draws ideas from the Bible and how these are related to African culture and vice versa. It examines the points of Christ and his teachings (the gospel), from an African perspective, assessing how it fits into the African conception of the universe. My thesis is that Christianity has been adapted, as evident in African and Christian theologies, in response to both cultural and sociopolitical realities that emerged with European encounter with of the people of African descent. Some of the major driving forces behind the African adaptations include reactions to European racism, African nationalism, and resistance to Apartheid as demonstrated by the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa

The process of becoming a woman and the definition of womanhood are things that are specific to each culture. This ceremonious event, which marks ones first step up the social ladder, is very important because it helps to teach children how to be productive adults within their society. It is essential in helping to preserve the character of the community because individuals are trained to value certain traits over others. When one goes through the rites of passage, the individual is forced to endure certain situations that draw out specific qualities such as good decision making, honesty, knowledge of self, and love for community. All of these virtues will help the woman, and the idea of womanhood, to be sustained, preserved, and supported making the identity of the woman distinct to her culture. When a culture lacks a distinct form of passage that signifies the ascension from the status of child to adult, the culture and overall society suffers because they are not taught how to become productive within their own culture as individuals or amongst each other as a whole. In the case of African Americans, because there is no distinct event or ceremony that recognizes new adults, or trains the young girls how to be African American women, the young girls are totally dependent on the dominant Euro-American culture to signify to them that they are women. I plan to compare and contrast the rites of passage in the cultures of women of the Igbo of Nigeria, the Zulu of South Africa, and the African American in the United States. The objective is to explore the continuity and change in the ideas of womanhood within three African cultures and the overall effects that the process has on the young girl’s identity.

Ogechi E. Anyanwu
Bowling Green State University,
Bowling Green, Ohio 43403-0220.
ogechia@bgnet.bgsu.edu

Nowhere, in recent times, has the question of the Islamic Law of Sharia produced such a crescendo of concern, posed such as challenge to the prevailing justice system, as in Nigeria. In ‘modern’ societies, the criminal justice system not only produces social solidarity by reaffirming the society's bond and its adherence to certain norms, but also serves to legitimize the political authority of the state. In the postcolonial pluralistic society of Nigeria, the criminal justice system has been fundamentally influenced by the ascendancy of Western penology. During the era of European colonization of Africa, existing systems of justice were suppressed; in Nigeria’s case, by the British imperial power. Predictably, the British system of justice clashed with the indigenous systems. Nowhere is this historical conflict more manifest than in the ongoing challenge Sharia has posed to the Nigerian state. Sharia was an incendiary issue during the colonial period in Nigeria, and has continued to challenge the classic view of the modern state ever since. This challenge has reshaped Nigeria’s postcolonial criminal justice system. Here gender, religion, and politics intersect, shedding light on the arrival, reactions and crises of modernity, themes that run through the Sharia controversy like interwoven threads.This work considers the driving forces and gender implications behind the demand for the expansion of Sharia law into the criminal justice system of Northern Region since the colonial period, and the eventual success in 1999. Taking a functionalist approach and analyzing the human right, constitutional and religious elements surrounding Sharia debate, this paper holds that Sharia Law was essentially a product of the struggle by Muslims to adopt an alternative justice system based on shared religious beliefs, values and sentiments, which was intended to reaffirm as well as create the collective conscience that has held, and will hold, Muslims together. Above all, the eventual adoption of Sharia by the twelve states in Northern Nigeria was essentially the result of Muslims’ struggle since 1900 to reject the imposed British colonial justice system which was upheld by successive post-colonial Nigerian governments.

Devon Raneé Turner
New York University
Department of History
Hunter College, New York
dtu@hunter.cuny.edu

“Except as a punishment for crime…”: Revisiting the Legacy of the 13th Amendment

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment
for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist
within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
—13th Amendment, U.S. Constitution (1865)

At a critical juncture in American history—the era of slave emancipation—United States national and state governments maintained the institution of slavery through the 13th Amendment and prisons. Contradictory, is it not? The “unfreedoms” of the antebellum period were thus transferred to former slaves who comprised the majority of southern prisoners after the Civil War. In particular, Black women oftentimes found themselves in postbellum jails and prisons. Black women, because of their race, gender, and class, have consistently been denied the rights and privileges afforded American citizens. Incarceration further limits Black women’s ability to partake of these rights and privileges. This paper argues that the incarceration of southern Black women from 1865 to the present was grounded in the following: the paternal language of the antebellum period, stereotypical beliefs in Black criminality, and the impoverished conditions experienced by Black women. Black women in prison continue to experience political and social deaths as they are made invisible because of their physical isolation and are largely stripped of their rights as both humans and citizens simply because of their imprisonment. True democracy in America has therefore been compromised, and not only because of disproportionate participation in government, but because the language of the constitution (particularly the 13th Amendment) views portions of the American population as outside of its citizen base. The incarceration of women of African descent and their treatment while in prison are in part reflections of how they have been viewed, or not viewed, as American citizens. Changing the language of the 13th Amendment could very well help to alleviate, although not completely eradicate, some of the problems faced by Black women in prison today. Other solutions revolve around our understanding of true democracy and the limitations of capitalism.

Obiwu Iwuanyanwu
Director, Writing Center
Central State University
Wilberforce, OH 45385
oiwuanyanwu@centralstate.edu

A Sport of Nature (1987) is Nadine Gordimer’s most voluminous, most complex, and most politically ambitious novel. It is a fictional juxtaposition of the national conflict of Ethiopia under Haile Sallasie and the Biafran Revolution under Chukwuemeka Ojukwu. The female protagonist is characterized in the Lacanian-Irigarayan schema as a wandering phallus. There is no mistaking the familiar profiles of Sallasie and Ojukwu, not so much in the contradictions of their Marxist-Patriarchalist beards or in the (mis)recognition of their imposing military presence but rather in the intimate socio-cultural drama from which they both emerge as historical personages. The narrative problematizes the subject of the Jew, the Igbo, and the woman in their archetypal figuration as the global alien, exile, and migrant. This paper interpolates the representation of a South African white-Jewish female activist as the political alter-ego of a Nigerian-Biafran black-Igbo male militant in an African postcolonial conflict. Question is raised as to the metonymic space of the Igbo and the Jew in the universal unconscious of contemporary society. When, how, and why does a white-Jewish female become an agency of hybridity to transmogrify from “Kim” to “Hillela” to “Chiemeka” in the tumultuous life-span of a single novel?

Beatrix Schwarzer
Institut für Politikwissenschaften
Robert-Mayer-Straße 5
D - 60054 Frankfurt am Main
Email: bschwarzer@soz.uni-frankfurt.de

Discourses on Race and Gender in South African Transition Process: A challenging liaison

Analysis of changes and challenges of interwoven discourses on race and gender in South African political landscape especially on the level of feminist movements and state anti-discrimination politics. The breathtaking and worldwide recognised transition from apartheid to democracy, the strong participation of women, and wide institutional changes will be the frame for a critical analysis of the development for equality based on interwoven differences. During the South African transition process one leading discourse is the demand for equal citizenship rights and the restructuring of the state. Issues of social division and differences and the debate about perspectives to generate solutions were and are important in South Africa’s political landscape. In my presentation I’ll focus on the relationship of two special discourses in the area of anti-discrimination: the discourses about race and gender. This two main political discourses are in my view not independent. Specially in South Africa’s historical context political movements with relation to race and/or gender were interwoven. The anti-apartheid movement was in my opinion crucial for organising women around racial discrimination as well as creating the space to talk about gender discrimination in and outside the movement. Also the race issue is an important one in women’s movements and groups in the country. I’ll ask about the limits and chances of the relationship for a) feminist discourses and the development of feminist movements and b) for the conditions that influence the state discourses on differences especially on race and gender. To illustrate this relationship I’ll present empirical data that I generated out of an influential South African feminist Journal called AGENDA. Using this as an example for feminist discourses I’ll compare political ideas, debates and concepts formulated in the journal to developments for equality and anti-discrimination on the state level.

Gender Roles and Economic Relationships: Zimbabwean Women under Pre-colonial, Colonial, and Post Colonial Patriarchy

Women in sub-Saharan Africa have especially been excluded from the benefits of the economies of their own societies. My paper focuses specifically on the central, but little recognized role of women s agency in transforming their status and material living conditions. This salient agency is urging Zimbabwean women to struggle for rights and entitlements and to demand their share in the economy. Essentially, I focus on Zimbabwean women because they provide an excellent example of the realities of women and the poor in Africa. Contemporary African feminists have argued that colonialism and post-colonial states reduced the power that pre-colonial women enjoyed. I begin this paper by analyzing the shift of African women s positions under pre-colonial patriarchy, in which they possessed certain kinds of circumscribed power and economic influence, to a lower status under colonial and post-colonial patriarchy, which compounded their economic difficulties. I examine how the interests of Zimbabwean patriarchal states, pre-colonial to post-colonial, intersect with the domestic/public dichotomy in gender roles and the economic positions of Zimbabwean women and how women of Zimbabwean respond to these constricting interests. I link Zimbabwean women s further exclusion from the margins of power in the public sphere to the emergence of new forms of class stratifications and to the country s interface with global environments. Throughout the dissertation, I explicate the nature and form of patriarchy and other hierarchical relationships in African societies. This is in an attempt to make clear as to when women within African societies had power and agency, as well as the nature of choices they had within the constraints of those existing institutions. I conclude that the agency of women must be deployed in culturally specific ways so as to enable us to assert new understandings of women’s power dimensions in the home and in the work place. When these new understandings are reached, I hope they in turn will yield liberating and positive changes in social relations and in state policies.

Miriam Chitiga, PhD.
Assistant Professor of English and Leadership,
Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina, 29115
mchitiga@claflin.edu

The paper, which is based on an ethnographical study, critically examines the major roles of women leaders in shaping the grassroots and national political discourse in Zimbabwe.
Using an indigenous framework that is based on the centrality of the human factor in African organizations and an eclectic feminist approach, the paper explores how women leaders are influencing and changing the patriarchal familial and national political systems in the post-colonial Southern African nation. The paper also draws from the works of Tsisi Dangarembwa, a Zimbabwean woman writer, who portrays some of the gender role conflicts that post independent Zimbabwe imposes on society. The results of the study indicate that women leaders are now becoming more of a compelling force than ever before; their visionary leadership practices, inclusiveness, empowerment orientation, economic prowess and decision-making processes are gradually, but effectively, changing the way the traditional patriarchal nationalists have conducted business since the country gained political independence from its British colonizers in 1980. Nevertheless, the findings also show that in order for the female leaders achieve their successes among the black male traditionalists with whom and under whose supervision they generally work, they have to navigate their way through a multitude of challenges that can be attributed to the intersections of race, ethnicity (and culture), gender, class, (postcolonial)nation and sexuality. Their survival, balancing, resistance and maneuvering skills, coupled with their leadership practices, provide useful information for aspiring female leaders in the region and in other cultures that are male-dominated.

African-Descendant Women Building Multiethnic and Transnational Solidarities for Human Rights

This paper will examine a U.S. southern regional network of African descendant women who are building a coalition among grassroots activists involved in parallel yet interrelated struggles against racism, labor exploitation, environmental injustice, and inequalities in reproductive and sexual health. The coalition situates the problems it targets in the South within the Global South. In the leading activists view, the current struggle for justice must advocate human rights rather than civil rights, which was the goal of the freedom movement forty years earlier. The human rights movement for which they are mobilizing links violations that occur in the U.S. South to those found in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. This global vision is being reinforced by the way the south is being affected by globalization, with new inflows of people from abroad and economic restructuring shaped by foreign capital investment. The coalition s global vision is also influenced by its participation in hemispheric and global conferences such as those related to the build up toward the UN s World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa in 2001. The paper will focus particularly on the shifts in the key activists’ political identities and their growing commitment to establishing both multiethnic and plurinational alliances to secure the regional coalition s grounding in both national and international space.

Martha Kuwee Kumsa
Faculty of Social Work,
Wilfrid Laurier University
mkumsa@wlu.ca

This paper presents some findings from an ongoing grassroots study stemming from a community-based initiative of Oromo spiritual revival. Movements of spiritual revival have become global phenomena in response to the contemporary ontological insecurity fostered by rapid shifts, uncertainties, and extreme fluidity. In the Oromo case, however, these are also movements in response to 150 years of oppression, denigration, and dehumanization suffered through their colonial incorporation into modern Ethiopia. Oppressed and persecuted, most Oromos in the diaspora fled Ethiopia as refugees. They were flung far and wide and globalized. Finding themselves painfully separated from their people in the homeland and alienated in their adopted countries by the violence of oppression and marginalization, they seek solace in each other and in reclaiming their ancient ancestral spirituality. These movements are broader in context and Oromos are deeply involved both in the homeland and in the diaspora. While the ongoing study involves broader aspects of spirituality, this paper focuses on Oromo women s birth rituals. Data were generated through collecting audiotapes of old birth rituals, through my ethnographic participation in birth rituals performed at eight sites in Canada and the United States and through in-depth interviews. Data were analyzed by using critically reflexive methodology. Theoretically, this paper disputes the mind/body split so entrenched in Western thought and argues that the material and the spiritual are intimately and inextricably interwoven. Oromo women perform embodied spirituality to reterritorialize and to soothe the wounds of the nation. It also contests the assumption that technology fragments the soul, arguing that, intimately interwoven with its fragmenting function, technology also plays the simultaneous role of enhancing spirituality and congealing dispersed communities. Giving voice to Oromo spirituality that was dubbed demon-worship and silenced back in Ethiopia signifies the resilience and survival of Oromos as a people and the reassertion of their identity. As keepers of Oromo spirituality, the leading role of Oromo women in the movement of spiritual revival is transformative in the national liberation struggle that is now both local and global.

In my paper, connections are made between globalisation, oppression(s), migration(s) as processes and migrants as people(s). The multiplicity of meaning of diaspora, both African and non-African and how these diasporas differ and what they share will be explored. Further explorations will be how the ‘two groups’, i.e. Africans and non-Africans are historically related within the diaspora-experience whilst refusing to ‘relativise’ the African prominent position in this and the multiplicity of specifically African oppressions and realities. The gender dimension within this will be explored in terms of society-related (including economic) and/or family related oppressions that can be causes of migration. Society-related and/or family-related oppressions are often dealt with separately from the effects of globalisation – something where I argue a link between the two subjects is important. Further, links with the psychological effects will be made.

My own ‘example’ as a ‘largely non-African diasporian woman’ will be referred to. On the other side of the various reasons why people migrate to escape various oppressions, all of which are more or less a result of globalisation, are ’migrants’ who do not share the features of the ‘typical migrants’, which is one of fleeing oppression(s). This group is fuelling the economic system that re-enforces globalisation. This group of ‘migrants’ (better known as ‘expatriates’) may even cause the reasons for migration for ‘the others’ and thus have a negative effect on state transformation i.e. keeping them static instead of allowing positive transformation. However, heterogeneity within this ‘group’ is pointed out, because female members of this group may also be victims of gender-based oppression. It will be asked whether, given their status, the gender-oppressed women of this group can be regarded as victims or not, given that they are also perpetrators. On the whole my study will have a bias towards the victims of globalisation, as they are in the majority, particularly Africans – a bias that can be justified in regard of the human rights issues that are at play here.

Layli Phillips, Ph.D.
Women’s Studies Institute
Georgia State University
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.
layli@gsu.edu

Womanism is the movement of everyday women for the liberation of all people from all forms of oppression. What are the implications of womanism for democracy, state transformation, and liberation in Africa, the African diaspora, and, ultimately, the globe? How does womanism permit and even generate non-state formations that can challenge and subvert both statist and supranational formations around entrenched problems of human well-being, such as poverty, education, militarism, health, interpersonal violence, or environmental degradaton? While womanism tends to fly under the radar because many people erroneously conflate it with feminism or underestimate the potential of its vernacular, non-ideological, social change praxis, its unique perspectives and methods are well-suited to human problem solving under emerging global conditions and will be elaborated here.

Okungbowa Francisca I.
Department of Botany, University of Benin, Nigeria.
& Okungbowa Michael A.O.
School of Medical Laboratory Sciences,
University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Nigeria.
fiokun2002@yahoo.com

Gender Issues in the use of Mosquito Bed-nets in some Nigerian Rural Communities

Malaria remains one of the most serious public health problems in Africa and other tropical countries in terms of geographical spread. Globally, about 1.5-2.7 million people die from malaria yearly, children under 5 years and pregnant women being the most vulnerable groups. In spite of efforts at control there has not been much improvement in the overall malaria picture in the last 25 years; the situation in the rural areas is worsening. Some of the malaria control measures are the use of anti-malaria drugs, insecticides and most recently, insecticide-impregnated bed nets – the most promising of all. Some cultural practices affecting the use of mosquito bed nets were examined in thirty nine rural communities from thirteen ethnic groups in Southern Nigeria with the aid of questionnaires. Results showed that females were relatively more favored than males in the use of bed nets. In the use and maintenance of bed nets among the respondents, 73.6% of men purchased nets, 6.9% mended nets, while 1.5% used nets, as against 26.4%, 83.1% and 98.5%, respectively, for the women. Certain traditional beliefs like the notion that women are the “weaker sex”, and preparation of young girls for marriage, even made bet net use mandatory for some categories of females. Whereas these practices were apparently for the good of the women, the latter were so “favored” to suit the gender-biased motive of the men. These practices which make men more prone to malaria and other diseases may partly explain the lower life expectancy for men in the rural area. The health of a nation has direct impact on economic development. For a developing nation like Nigeria and, in deed Africa in general, to grow, the health of its people must take top priority. Gender-biased practices that impact negatively on the control or eradication of malaria should be discouraged.

Richard Mordi, Ph.D.
Florida Memorial University, Miami Gardens, Florida
mordir@bellsouth.net

Our world is in the midst of the third industrial revolution. Effects of this revolution became apparent after the political and economic implosion of the Soviet Union in 1989. Triumph of the free market and democracy over socialism and communism dubbed “the end of history” (Fukuyama, 1991) cleared the way for people to see the emerging phenomenon we now know as globalization. In a globalized economy, just about any product can be produced in any country and sold in virtually all countries. National economies are no longer immune from foreign encroachment. Even labor can now be outsourced from countries where wages are low and skills are abundant. Competitive advantage now belongs to individuals and nations with knowledge, skills and entrepreneurship. Only such individuals and nations are in a position to take advantage of globalization. Left behind are those individuals and nations that are less skilled and less conscious of globalization forces. Thus, globalization is stratifying the world into prosperous winners, a struggling middle, and economically declining losers. My purpose in this study is to find answers to two questions. First, are people of the African Diaspora aware of the colossal economic opportunities inherent in globalization? My assumption here is that those who are aware of these opportunities would take advantage of them. Second, are they aware of the serious economic consequences of ignorance about globalization? Data for this study come from three sources—published materials, focus group research, and interviews. Preliminary findings suggest that while many people in the African Diaspora are aware that new economic forces are impacting their lives most of them do not know how to benefit from these forces or escape their adverse effects.

Ihunna Obinna
General Studies Department
Federal University of Technology
Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria
obinocent@yahoo.com

Interrogating Cultural Factors in the Women and Development Question: The Igbo Cultural Area in Focus

There is a rising profile in the gender factor in contemporary social theorizing. In this context, efforts to chart women's experiences in varied locales provide considerable intellectual stimulation towards a better understanding of women. It situates as a significant social enterprise, therefore, to examine the problematic of women in development in relation to extant cultural clogs persistent in many primordial communities. Against this backdrop, it appears challenging to interrogate the debilitating effects on women development aspirations that issue from the cultural realm. The paper draws on the cultural experiences of the Igbo women believed to be anti-progressive social practices limiting their development capabilities. It explores the possibilities of extirpating these constrains cultural practices checking their progressive transformation. In so doing, we intend to argue for a definition of development that is gender blind and permitting of greater freedom for women in the development process to enhance the goal of positive transformation of the women. Our methodological approach is essentially qualitative, given its preference for interpretive social analysis. This is apt to objectively match empirical evidence with theoretical claims within Igbo cultural model.

Christine Cynn
Fulbright Lecturer/Researcher
University of Abidjan-Cocody, Côte d’Ivoire
cjc13@columbia.edu

In Haiti, where only about half of the population is literate, songs constitute a particularly important repository of insurgent history and memory—and a particularly effective mode of public protest. My paper focuses on efforts by women in the Raboteau Victims’ Association to demand justice for a 1994 massacre in Raboteau, a poor coastal community in Gonaives, particularly as they articulate their protest in songs. The first part of the paper situates the Association in the context of Haitian history and of transnational social justice movements, especially the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina. While the Association borrows from the tactics of the Madres and their mobilization of potent tropes of maternity and victimhood, they explicitly de-link their protest from any association with maternity or femininity. While this troubles any simple affirmation of the Association as an integral part of an exemplary transnational feminist network, I argue that the privileging of communal over gendered identification and the staging of victimhood in the songs and in the Association’s activities paradoxically enables the assertion of women as political agents, rather than “innocents.” The Association’s songs commemorate the massacre of Raboteau and its victims and assert a communal counter narrative against attempts to claim that the massacre never took place. Further, they call for justice, a demand that would necessitate a transformation of the state and its institutions and their relation to the poor black majority. The songs’ situating of the community as victims, in effect, insist that these transformations take place and stake the women’s claim to the nation and to national belonging. My paper draws from ongoing research tracing Haitian women’s organizing and from a 2003 documentary that I co-produced, Pote mak sonje: The Raboteau Trial, which explores women’s participation in the November 2000 trial of military and paramilitary for their roles in the massacre at Raboteau.

Terna Gbasha
School of Justice and Social Inquiry
Arizona State University, Tempe
Terna.Gbasha@asu.edu

Secessionist Movements, Gender and Justice under contemporary global conditions in Nigeria

This paper is an attempt to provoke, and hopefully, stimulate discussions in respect of integrating liberal principles of justice and equity, in examining the question of gender transformation under conditions of globalization. We focus on secessionist movements specifically, because they are implicated in the global appropriation of discursive regimes such as “democratic” discourse, and human “rights” talk. Most often than not, the discursive platforms are derived from the post-modernist inspired phenomenon of the politics of difference, which has played out in the political arena as “identity” politics. Hence, the first question the paper examines, is to what extent do the secessionist movement in Nigeria, based on some reified, ethnic identity inclusive or exclusive of other differences? To approach this question, the paper begins with Rawlsian “Justice as Fairness” and the feminist response to his postulations; then goes on to examine the extent justice and equity talk within the “secessionist” movement postulations are derived from any liberal principles. . This paper poses three key questions: In a world that has made social, cultural and sexual identities uncertain and transient, can ‘identity’ be a firm enough category to examine movements of autonomy? If struggles for recognition simplifies and reifies group identity, does it help or marginalize struggles for redistribution? If some recognition struggles represents genuine emancipatory response to serious injustice that cannot be remedied by redistribution alone, what theoretical insight will accommodate the complexity of social identities, and promotes respectful social interaction across differences, not one that encourage group enclaving and “ethnic cleansing.” The paper concludes that what is needed is a non-identitarian politics that can remedy misrecognition without encouraging displacement and reification.

Prior to Western colonialism in Africa; the role of women in many societies were considered sacred. Many great Ancient African civilizations were matriarchal in their existence. My paper will attempt to explain how deep the woman’s influence and what factors led to their disposition. Women role has not always been the same contrast to most than just procreation. Her image was considered to stand for wisdom and cultivation. Just as a child would look to their mother kingdoms and nations look towards women for leadership and divine rule. A woman is considered to have given life to the universe as great deities. Opposite to what Western society teaches many of us women in Africa were at the forefront of many governmental decisions and led armies into battle. Women also led ceremonial traditions. In the Ancient Kemet (

Egypt

) women stood for life and added balance to the world. The symbol for the laws was a woman with wings stretched out at an equal balance. The African World before the influence of its Euro-counterparts respected the female and understood the capabilities and role she plays in life.

There has been a disposition of women in African society. Many try to trace this back to the invasion of Arabic and European civilization. The adoption of religions and policies transformed the African women’s position and image in eyes of not only the African man but the world as well. Her influence has even touched parts of Asia and Early-Europe. When African nations had maintained early world influence, respect and admiration for the woman was standard. Out of these matriarchal societies we get many terms and deities which were changed during the spread of European paradigm. Her current condition has been maintained by the ideals passed down from those who for some strange reason undermined her majesty. My desire in this paper is to explore the African woman as the Queen, the Mother, and the Goddess before she was made the condemned.

Female dramatists in Nigeria are faced with the Herculean task of attempting to create and uplift the status of women in the face of changing global views on women. Growing up and living in a male dominated society has not made this job easy. Nigeria like most other countries of the developing world is largely a patriarchal society, where male views are supposed to count more than their female counterparts because they hold the political power and subsequently economic power. This trend has dominated the Nigerian theater since its inception. Since the emergence of gender studies and the subsequent upsurge in the global movement for female activism, female dramatists in Nigeria have used their creative prowess in the field of playwriting to promote female empowerment against the background of a male dominated society reflecting tin the theatre. Notable among these crops of female playwrights is Tess Onwueme. J.P.Clark, though a male is also sometimes given to using strong female characters in his plays. His play ‘Ozidi’ will be looked into in this paper. This play is chosen because it was written long before the popularization of gender studies the world over and the emergent term of Feminism. He therefore belongs to the ‘old school’ of writers in this regard. Tess Onwueme on the other hand is of the new crop of female playwrights writing exclusively for women, using female characters and through her writings, the Nigerian woman has found her lost identity in the Theatre.This paper therefore intends to look at the trend of writings and literature through the decades to chart a new course and set an identity for the Nigerian woman, in every sphere thereby bringing about her empowerment.

Women, Higher Education, and the Challenges of Transforming African Societies for the 21^st Century

Philomina Okeke-Ihejirika,
Women’s Studies Program
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
pokeke@ualberta.ca

Over the past two decades African leaders, policy makers, social activists, foreign and local organizations, and scholars have increasingly engaged in numerous debates on how to move the continent forward. These groups have also realized the stumbling block to this vision presented by the appalling social status which African women, especially those south of the Sahara are carrying into the twenty-first century. Existing scholarship has been consistent in crediting education and tertiary education, in particular, as a road-map not only to gender equity but also to women’s participation in social development as nation builders with men. This paper argues, however, that the social drive to improve African women’s representation in higher education has for the most part ignored the ideological content of this training and how it shapes the present differentials in 1) Men and women’s career aspirations, 2) The benefits men and women derive from tertiary credentials - as assets that fetch economic and political prizes, and 3) Men and women’s readiness to serve as social transformers. This papers argues therefore that policies aimed at improving women’s progress in higher education should in addition to promoting access and representation, challenge the gendered hierarchies in the administrative and academic structures of these institutions (which convey to students crucial information about the status quo), the environment in which learning takes place (which, in many ways, reflect the dynamics of social relations in the larger society), gaps in the curriculum (which leave unanswered many questions about contradictions between the prospects of training and the traditional expectations of roles and responsibilities).

Women in the Aftermath of Ethnic Conflicts in Nigeria: Coping with the Socio-economic and Environmental Consequences of Egbirra-Bassa Crisis, (1986-2000)

Ibrahim UMARU
iumaru@yahoo.com
Department of Economics
Nasarawa State University, Keffi
And Theophilus D. LAGI
teelagi@yahoo.com
Department of Sociology
Nasarawa State University, Keffi

The Egbirra-Bassa crisis will go down the annals of history of ethnic conflicts in central Nigeria, and indeed Nasarawa State as one of the most protracted and intense. Past studies have rather focused on unraveling the remote causes, quantifying the social and political costs of the conflict to the exclusion of economic and environmental consequences on the most vulnerable groups in the society, women and children. As a way of expand the frontier of our knowledge on the issue, this study examines the role of women and how they have been coping with the socio-economic and environmental effects in the aftermath of the crisis against the framework of a typical African patriarchal system and the challenges posed by the existing traditional-cum pseudo-modern economic reality in Nigeria. Using an economy-environment link model, an attempt has been made in this study to quantify the overall costs of the conflict to women in the area. Then possible ways to reduce the vulnerability of women as well as rehabilitate them in ethnic crisis situations are suggested.

For a year I have been a participating observer in meetings of two women’s groups-one embroiders, the other plays theater. Although the two groups meet once a week, they differ from each other. The embroiderers participate in the group on a personal and rather temporary basis, skipping several meetings at their convenience. Furthermore, the participants may stay in the meeting for two hours, or they may get their instructions from the founder and organizer of the group and leave immediately. The second group, however, that of women players, meets regularly. They are committed to the group, which they call: Home, Ours Family, etc. These two groups are further compared to a third group of women gardeners, whose participation in the activity is on a communal basis. The latter are well known in literature both in Israel and in the world, and I will refer to them briefly. It is suggested that women who frequent these groups and participate in their weekly rituals do it in order to compensate themselves for their marginality in society. The weekly rituals, which stress equality, comradeship and temporary freedom from conventional norms, provide these women with new powers as they experience self-esteem, which they have lacked outside the groups.

Barbara Lewis,
Director, William Monroe Trotter Institute
University of Massachusetts-Boston

Going far beyond one’s traditional boundaries is key in two plays, each written by women, and both pivotal in the dramatic history of the two countries to which the respective playwrights are native. In Ama Ata Aidoo’s groundbreaking Ghanian play, The Dilemma of a Ghost (1964), Ato Kom, recently returned from America, is lost in emotional territory, caught between the culture of the past and of his parents, and that of his American wife, Eulalie. His parents and the villagers look upon Eulalie as a stranger and a slave, as an oddity without roots that has cropped up in their midst. She does not share the values of the village. Her focus is not the group, but the self. She is not eager to reproduce and become the source of new life, replenishing the tribal supply. Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun opened five years before Dilemma made its debut. In its cast of characters, Raisin included a son of Africa who is much traveled. Joseph Asagai, a Yoruba from Nigeria, has come to North America to earn an education and then return home to make things better for his countrymen. In the windy city, he is drawn to Beneatha Younger. Her willingness to use her education to benefit others matches his ambition to exert a positive political influence on his homeland. Asagai, well-rooted in his culture, represents grounding and adventure. It is not surprising that their relationship develops, and in the third act, Asagai asks Beneatha to return home with him. Against a background of changing political and social circumstances, two couples of different countries tempt the boundaries of difference. Both playwrights present an African man and an American woman moving beyond the limitations that slavery erected limitations that made them strangers to the continuum of their lineage.

This study traces the role of women in the social transformation of Obolo (Andoni) in the Niger Delta. In the pre-colonial period, they influenced the migration of Andoni forebears from their homeland in Cameroon to their present location in the Eastern Niger Delta. While their patronage of Christianity was proverbial in the colonial period, the post-colonial era saw their contributions to the building of educational, health-care delivery, recreational and civic centers. One of them uses her position as Co-coordinator of the United Nations Development Program to ensure the establishment of Women Development Centre that takes charge of palm oil milling, kernel cracking, cassava processing, fashion designing, barbing and hair-dressing salons. Yet, others formed co-operatives that provided the people with skill acquisition programs, electricity and water and cold-room for fish preservation. They are also in the campaign against HIV/AIDS. The mechanically driven boats for waterways transportation in Obolo (Andoni) is an innovation of women. Not the least is an Andoni female scholar at the University of Port Harcourt who initiated an invention of a special paint that could be manufactured anytime. These contributions are worthy of mention, analysis and publication.

Rose Uchem, MSHR.
Executive Director, Ifendu For Women’s Development,
No. 1. Ihiala Avenue, City Layout,
New Haven, P. O. Box 9677, Enugu, Nigeria.

This paper explores the cultural and subliminal dimensions of the present social construction of gender in

Nigeria

around the symbol of the Igbo kolanut ritual. It calls for a critical re-examination of the attendant human rights violations against women and urges for change in the interest of development and progress. African cultures are replete with symbols and rituals that evoke deep religious meaning, akin to the Christian sacraments, in celebrating and affirming human identity and relationships. An example is the Igbo Kolanut ritual, which celebrates hospitality, communion, blessing, inclusion, and reconciliation. Ironically, this great symbol of inclusion is at the same time, a symbol of women’s exclusion and oppression. This is in the sense that it denies women’s equal humanity with men and treats them as ‘other’ when they are omitted and passed over during the ceremonial head count of who is who which is part of the Kolanut ritual. Whenever this happens, as in the case of a growing number of women who have achieved excellence in their field of specialty in the Nigerian civil arena, whatever empowerment these women have experienced elsewhere gets cancelled out when it comes to the symbolic and ritual arenas. Therefore, it remains a challenge for African opinion leaders to re-examine aspects of African cultures that undermine women’s human identity and dignity and therefore indirectly hampers development and progress since it hurts solidarity and unity between men and women particularly where symbols are concerned. Recognizing the power and role of symbols in the human unconscious in influencing attitudes and behaviors, this paper calls for a critical re-evaluation and change of the obnoxious discriminations against women in the Igbo Kolanut ritual.

Feminism, Womanism, Naming, and Misnaming: Inscribing Black Women’s Struggles into African Cultural Contexts

Naming Black women’s concerns is crucial because Black women have often been shadowed by misconceptions, misnaming, and misrepresentation. The majority of African cosmologies show that name carries a deep significance; hence in Black Africa, more than in many other cultures, one’s name has a significance that is sacred to the individual. Name holds a special place in most communities, for people tend to assume the image conveyed by the meaning of their names. For instance, an Igbo proverb says, “afa onye na achoga onye” (the name a person bears defines the person). Therefore this paper attempts to properly name Black women in Africa and the diaspora in their own terms—occupation, struggles, and aspirations—to reflect their unequivocal personhood in the face of an imposed identity emanating from foreign theories and interpretations. Historically, traditionally, and because of cultural values of Black people Black women’s fight for equality with Black men cannot be subsumed under White women’s feminism.

This paper theorizes and names Black women’s gender struggles by arguing that a distinguishing characteristic of most Black African societies is a sense of community. This sense of community has an impact on the way gender relations are perceived, defined, and pursued. Some Black women writers, critics, and theorists in their attempts to describe Black women’s involvement in liberation, as situated in postcolonial African and diasporic contexts have come up with different names with several nuances of meaning and applications. Some of these names overlap. For instance, feminism recurs in Negofeminism, Black/African feminism; alternative terms are Womanism and Africana Womanism, and from the first derives the term De-womanization. The paper attempts to crystallize the central ideologies behind these names into cultural pragmatism, relevant in a general way to denominate Black people’s Africanness and experience. Cultural pragmatism merges the practical strategies for survival gleaned from the experiences of some African foremothers with traditions that support the rights of women; hence, the naming Africana womanhood. African context is elastic enough to give African women possibilities and choices instead of their relying upon Western feminism that may alienate them culturally, determine their actions, and consequently obfuscate their horizon and space.

Understanding Spirituality and Models of Black Women’s Creative Endeavors as Source of Creative Empowerment

Creativity is invested in the orality, politics, and spirituality of most African societies; hence, creativity is the effect of living and participating in social, political, and spiritual affairs in the society. Authority that comes from spiritual empowerment affects creativity and articulation in the sense that inspiration, which is usually considered a spiritual concept, provides new ideas and a basis for creativity, and acts as a model for a particular piece of work and masterly handling of situations. Some African women writers demonstrate a pattern between their spiritual illumination and their creativity.

The boost spirituality gives to humans is a pattern that needs to be acknowledged; this pattern suggests how humans can manipulate the spiritual, or exploit the superior authority of the spiritual over the physical for their own benefit. For instance, Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, in Things Fall Apart, tells of Chielo, the priestess of the Oracle of the Hills and Caves, Agbala, who assumes a powerful position in her society once she is acting under the influence of Agbala’s spirit. Chielo creatively negotiates the different terrain of gendered power relations in the case of her interaction with the powerful male Okonkwo through giving herself over to possession by Agbala. The possible connection between visibility through creativity (crafting order in the articulation of experiences) and spiritual authority can be exploited by men and women alike. Black women, especially, exploit the connection between poetic art and inspired utterances as part of their spirituality in order to nullify patriarchal surveillance and imposed powerlessness. For instance Turn Thanks, a collection by Jamaican-born Afro-Caribbean poet Lorna Goodison and The Spring’s Last Drop, a collection by Nigerian poet Catherine Acholonu, reveal that African and Afro-Caribbean women’s strong sense of community, spiritual sensitivity, holistic attitude of women’s fight for liberation, the quest for healing and hope through the power of crafted words and rituals present an ideology of Africana womanhood as embedded in African cultural traditions. The paper argues that spiritual sensitivity is a model in the creativity of Black women because spirituality posits new emphasis in literary studies and suggests for African women empowerment as opposed to weakness, articulation as opposed to silence, connection as opposed to fragmentation.

Catholic Missions and the Education of Girls in Southeastern Nigeria, 1885-1960

Nicholas I. Omenka
Department of Religious Studies
Abia State University, Uturu

Nigeria

A central trait of the revitalized missionary movement of the 19th century was the resolve to bring about a socio-cultural change in the mission lands. To this end, the school apostolate became a mission strategy of choice and in South Eastern Nigeria, and indeed in Africa as a whole, it emerged as a visible sign of mission presence within indigenous communities. However, because of the prevailing discrimination of women in traditional society, the education of girls was initially not embraced with the same degree of enthusiasm as was the case with regard to the education of boys.

The missionaries themselves had to overcome some initial ideological mindsets that militated against the education of girls. Some thought it was “sinful” to gather boys and girls under one roof, while others reasoned that because of local apathy towards “emancipated” women, it would be wrong to go against the loyalties prescribed for women by native customs. Despite the apprehension articulated by the people and by some mission leaders, the education of girls emerged triumphant in the end. This paper is a historical investigation into the educational empowerment of young women in South-Eastern Nigeria by the Catholic missions. The mere fact that this project featured in their mission plan ab initio is indicative of the seriousness with which they pursued it.

Forced Labor in the Jos Tin Mines: The Psychological and Emotional Implications for Women in Tiv Society, Central Nigeria, ca. 1902-1945.

Akpen Philip
Dept of History
Bayero University
Kano, Nigeria
akpenphilip@yahoo.com

During the pre-colonial era, there were different types of labor utilized for different purposes with active involvement of both the men and women in Tiv society. Labor in pre-colonial times was an important factor in unifying the household. The labor regime dramatically changed due to colonialism in

Nigeria

. The establishment of Tin mines in Jos led to the forced recruitment of labor from the entire Northern region. The method used in the labor recruitment had series of implications on the society of Northern Nigeria at large. Apart from diverting the attention of the people from previous economic activities, forced labor transformed and dislocated Tiv family structure. It was during this period that labor was massively recruited from Tiv area to work in the Tin mines on the Jos Plateau. The recruitment into the colonial labor for mining at Jos popularly called Kuza in Tiv targeted mostly the “bread-winners” (men) of their respective families. This paper examines the psychological and emotional implications of forced labor migrations on the women as their spouses were forced to work in the mines.