Journal of Cultures and Ideas: An African Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

Globalization and the Consequential Effect of Universalization of Western Cultures on Peripheral Others

Akinwale Onipede — 2025-02-06

Globalization is a multifaceted, widespread phenomenon affecting people all over the world. It simply connotes worldwide interconnectedness and the exchange of ideas, cultures, technology, peoples, goods and services. It is reputed as having both positive and negative dimensions and being driven by Western and Asian capitals, concepts, technology, products, etc. Keen observation of globalization has revealed its lopsidedness and tendency to impose foreign cultures, particularly, of the Western variants and their products on erstwhile colonized and, developing nations of the world; termed ‘the peripheral others’. This has manifested in the supplant of their indigenous cultures and practices such as language, religion, values, dressings, belief systems, and arts, among many others. This study therefore seeks to highlight and draw attention to this global cultural anomaly with the intention of waking up the affected peripheral cultures to the imbalance inherent in the universalization of Western cultures and the dangers in the wholesale adoption of the same. The study is library-based but also involves deductions from the realities of everyday life. The descriptive qualitative method, involving verbal explanation, was used to expound the study and establish the thesis of the universalization of Western cultures on peripheral others. The study denounces the indiscriminate adoption of foreign cultures calls for the reversal of the trend and suggests as best for sustainable development, a blend of local cultural products and the best of global techniques.

“Tete wɔ bi ka, tete wɔ bi kyerɛ” : The remaking of a church community through Adinkra symbolism

Felicity Apaah — 2025-02-06

This study set out to explore a Christian Church community’s perception of how indigenous philosophies, values and spiritualities encoded in Adinkra symbols influence the making of a church community. The study examines the following: (i) How the symbols, rituals and language embodied in Adinkra symbols have been incorporated into the Grace Presbyterian Church, West Legon, Accra (ii) How this community reconciles both worlds and (iii) How the coming together of two parallel traditions-African and European shape the experiences of the church community. Multiple approaches including semi-structured interviews, photo and video ethnography were employed for data collection (N=30). Key observations made from this study include the repackaging of the typical Reformed approach to worship and the creation of a productive and explorative space for the construction of new religious meanings and experiences.

Nature in Times of Pandemic in Recent Nigerian and Cameroonian Poems

Clement Eloghosa Odia — 2025-02-06

The advent of the coronavirus has ushered new perspectives from which several issues have been addressed. The human predicament, with its attendant humanitarian concerns, poverty, the quest for survival, and human resilience to feminist interests has inspired poetic expressions. One aspect which appears to have been neglected is the portrayal of nature in times of pandemic. This gap in pandemic studies has necessitated this essay. The aim is to explore, from an eco-semiotic angle, how pandemic poets have expressed the state of nature as the coronavirus wreaks its deadly blows on humanity. Nature, as conceived in this essay, presupposes the entire range of ecological species comprising animals, plants and aquatic worlds. This essay explores how Nigerian and Cameroonian pandemic poets fictionalise the positive and negative impacts of the pandemic on nature. This essay focuses on four Nigerian poets, namely, Ikechukwu Emmanuel Asika, Kayode Iwayemi, Balogun Kehinde and Alfred Fatuase and one Cameroonian poet, Marinus Samoh Yong. These five (5) poets are drawn from World on the Brinks: An Anthology of the Covid-19 Pandemic (henceforth abbreviated WTB). The textual analytical method is used to interrogate these poets’ eco-semiotic vision of nature in times of pandemic to interpret the relationship between nature and humanity as well as the impact of the pandemic on both the universe and the people. The following findings reveal that the pandemic redefines the way humanity should treat nature; it demonstrates the bond between the two and it establishes the fact that nature is critical in providing the cure to the Covid-19 pandemic. The essay concludes that, during the pandemic, nature regains its lost essence; exposes the interdependence between it and humanity as well as posits that herbs from nature can cure the coronavirus disease.

The Philosophical Essence of GẸ̀LẸ̀DẸ́

Adeola Seleem Olaniyan — 2025-02-06

It has been an age-old hot debate, debunking the misconception by the Europeans, out of their Eurocentric gaze on the African continent, that the continents did not have that idea labelled “philosophy.” This paper shows that no people can truly survive, flourish, and qualify to be accorded the full status of possessing a ‘culture’ without having their philosophies and philosophers. Africans are not exempted in this case. Copious evidence has been presented by different African philosophers from different African cultures that the traditional Africans have what is ‘philosophical’ in their archives. With the aid of expository and critical analysis methodological approaches, this paper draws a line of continuum with the preexisting African philosophers, by presenting Yorùbá arts and aesthetics performance named Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ as one of the ways through which Africans express their philosophy. Being aware of the distinction made that there is the ‘loose’ as opposed to the ‘strict’ sense of philosophy, the paper presents Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ as not merely qualified as philosophy in the loose sense of it but argues that it is systematic enough to be qualified as philosophy in the strict sense of it. This, the paper does by exposing some elements and essences of Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ to engender a clear look into how it participates in some of the essential philosophical universalities enough to be accorded as being philosophical in the strict sense of it, in the one hand, and that it contains enough peculiarities about it that should accord it a distinct class in philosophy, on the other hand.

An African Revolution and its Foot Soldiers: Femininity, Race, Power, and Postcolonial Trajectories in Ngugi and Mugo’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi

Dominic James Aboi — 2025-02-06

The exploitation of African countries by colonial powers while denying their indigenous populations access to their own human and natural resources incurs a revolution. This essay focuses on the Kenyan revolution otherwise known as the Mau Mau uprising, but with particular attention to the exceptional contributions of its women who acting as foot-soldiers of the revolution have been able to undermine imperialist strategies deployed to break their male counterparts into submission. It highlights how women transcend notions of traditional femininity to collapse the powers of the colonialists by decentring it through their active participation in the war of liberation, as well as their commitment to ensure future generations are not left out of the struggle. The essay also explores the praxis of postcolonial and feminist criticism to call attention to Ngugi and Mugo’s historical response to Western imperialism in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976), by interrogating the effect of exploitative capitalism and the resilience of the human spirit, especially that of women in Kenyan’s struggle for mental emancipation and socioeconomic independence.

Evolution and Development of Fashion Designing in Yorubaland, Nigeria

Williams Ehizuwa Orukpe — 2025-02-06

Dressing and grooming are tangible aspects of Yoruba culture and civilisation that spanned thousands of years. Despite this truism, in Yoruba studies the politics, economics and religious underpinnings of Yoruba civilisation have been more isolated and adequately interrogated by scholars; than Yoruba clothing history. Thus, there is a lacuna in the understanding of fashion designing in the context of the changing utility of clothing over time and space in Yorubaland. Consequently, this paper examines the evolution and development of fashion designing in Yorubaland to bridge this gap. It used the historical research methodology to achieve this objective. The paper historicises the development of fashion designing from the Garden of Eden to the twentieth century. Within the period of study, the paper finds that the rise of clothing nationalism and the weaponisation of dressing in the struggle for Nigeria’s decolonisation were significant milestones in the clothing history of Yorubaland and Nigeria as a whole. Therefore, this paper concludes that fashion designing served a purpose that was beyond covering human nakedness in Yorubaland. It featured prominently in the politics, economics and sociology of the Yoruba people. This means that Yoruba traditional textile designing was both responsive to time and the environmental milieu. Therefore, Indigenous Yoruba textiles and clothing evolved as a Giffen or utility goods in Yorubaland and changes in price, preferences and modernity could not extinguish their demand.

Shifting Personality, Narcissism, and Trauma Among African Immigrants in the Diaspora: A Horneyan Reading of Teju Cole’s Open City

John Katung Kwasu — 2025-02-06

Discourses on African Diaspora literature have mostly hinged on issues of hybridity, displacement, cross-cultural alienation, and Diaspora compromise as essential responses to the condition of the African immigrants in their host country. Such narratives, however, often neglect the importance of individual traits and personality formation as unconscious constructs by African migrants in response to the harsh reality they face, and an attempt to cope with or escape daunting psychosocial stressors that permeate the Diaspora space. This paper interrogates the character formation of the African immigrant in the Diaspora, exemplified in the characters of Julius, Farouq, and Moji, in response to the prevailing social, cultural, political, and economic environment in the Diaspora. Using Karen Horney’s strand of psychoanalysis, the paper accounts for the narcissistic, traumatic, and dynamic identity and personality traits of African Diaspora immigrants in Teju Cole’s Open City, and puts forward the argument that these anti-normative behaviours are a technique adopted to survive incidence of racism and alienation in the Diaspora.

Ọba ní kòró (The king has coronavirus): Lexical Innovations and Yoruba Naming Strategies in the Covid-19 Pandemic

Ibukunolu Isaac Olodude — 2025-02-06

COVID-19, a worldwide pandemic since 2019 influenced individual and collective behaviours and practices. Consequently, existing words and expressions in the Yoruba vocabulary were used to convey new thoughts and perceptions. Using the corpus planning framework of language expansionism, this study investigates the lexical innovations of Yoruba speakers in their reactions to COVID-19 as shown in the lexical expressions developed to describe their perceptions and experiences about the pandemic. Their lexical innovations are reflected in the naming of the disease and the pandemic outcomes through punning devices. Data were obtained through participant observation and questionnaires administered to 200 randomly selected respondents in Southwest Nigeria to harvest their expressions about the pandemic. Key informant interviews were also conducted with officials from the Africa Centre of Excellence for the Genomics of Infectious Diseases, Ede, Osun State, Nigeria. The study identifies several lexical innovations such as kóbíìdì, kófíìdì, kòróbíyí, kòrómúyìwá, kòrólà, etc. which present the naming strategies of the Yoruba people of Southwest Nigeria of the pandemic. The study revealed that other lexical innovations in the Yoruba language such as, kòrófirọ́si, irónikòró, Ọba ní kòró, amplify the beliefs of some Nigerians that COVID-19 is an elitist disease, hence, a societal low rate of compliance to the prevention protocols. The study however concludes that COVID-19 is not elitist and has no regard for social status.