Difference between revisions of "Yoruba identity in Nigeria"

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[[Image:250px-LocationNigeria.svg.png]]
 
[[Image:250px-LocationNigeria.svg.png]]
  
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''Some observations:''
  
Waterman, p. 368-9:
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* Pattern:  social internalization of external social grouping imposed by more powerful culture, absorbed as a hegemonic internalized structure.
  
"It appears that a
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* Constructions of ethnicity, implying a degree of homogeneity, often result from an outsider perspective, since the "homogeneity" of an  "ethnic group" is only "visible" from the outside.
good number of the societies represented in authoritative books about
 
Africa...are
 
at least in part the products of colonialism, which had to create its objects
 
in order to control its subjects.'"
 
  
"There were no Yoruba-that is, no one who would have said "I am
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* When the "outside" is powerful (i.e. colonialism, imperialism), the outside--vested in special interests--becomes the hegemonic insider perspective, though not without resistance.
Yoruba"-before the early 19th century. As one writer has perhaps overzealously
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phrased the matter, "the word 'Yoruba' was nothing short of pure
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* Such homogenization is a useful tool for governance, colonial or otherwise, and its use often occurs within positions of power.
Greek to no less than 99% of the people now called Yorubas, when they
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first heard it being used for them as a common name".
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* Thus the operation of "othering", when carried out from a position of superior power, may become a primary source of identity.  Yet such identities, once internalized, can also be revised to serve new ends, e.g. transformed into a tool of colonial resistance.
The peoples of southwestern Nigeria, the Benin Republic, and Togo who
 
are today referred to by scholars as "the Yoruba" were, until the late 19th
 
century, organized into a series of some 15 to 20 independent polities,
 
linked by shifting patterns of allegiance and competition...."
 
  
"The term Yariba or Yarba appears to have originated among the Hausa,
 
who applied it to their southern neighbors, the Oyo. By 1800 Muslim Hausa
 
clerics used this term to refer to the subjects of other kingdoms that had
 
fallen under the suzerainty of the Oyo Empire, ....The Oyo themselves had adopted the designation Yoruba as
 
a mode of self-reference by the early 19th century, a process probably
 
encouraged by the high status associations of Hausa regal culture and Islam."
 
 
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Social internalization of external label imposed by more powerful culture:  such a phenomenon is common since the "homogeneity" of an  "ethnic group" is only "visible" from the outside. 
 
  
In this sense, the operation of "othering", when carried out from a position of superior power, is a primary source of identity. Yet such identities, once internalized, can also be maneuvered for new ends.
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[[Formation of Yoruba identity]]
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[[Yoruba neo-traditional popular music]]
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[[The role of neo-traditional Yoruba music]]

Latest revision as of 15:04, 25 September 2007

Colonial formation of local ethnicity: the case of the Yoruba in Nigeria

250px-LocationNigeria.svg.png


Some observations:

  • Pattern: social internalization of external social grouping imposed by more powerful culture, absorbed as a hegemonic internalized structure.
  • Constructions of ethnicity, implying a degree of homogeneity, often result from an outsider perspective, since the "homogeneity" of an "ethnic group" is only "visible" from the outside.
  • When the "outside" is powerful (i.e. colonialism, imperialism), the outside--vested in special interests--becomes the hegemonic insider perspective, though not without resistance.
  • Such homogenization is a useful tool for governance, colonial or otherwise, and its use often occurs within positions of power.
  • Thus the operation of "othering", when carried out from a position of superior power, may become a primary source of identity. Yet such identities, once internalized, can also be revised to serve new ends, e.g. transformed into a tool of colonial resistance.


Formation of Yoruba identity

Yoruba neo-traditional popular music

The role of neo-traditional Yoruba music