Vernacular historiography and self-translation in early colonial Nigeria: Ajiṣafẹ's History of Abẹokuta

Africa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 91 (5) ◽  
pp. 768-789
Author(s):  
Adrian M. Deese
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Oral History ◽  
African History ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
Civil Authority ◽  
Divine Kingship

AbstractEmmanuel Olympus Moore (aka Ajiṣafẹ) (c.1875/79–1940) was a pioneer of Nigerian Yorùbá literature and popular music. Ajiṣafẹ was one of the most significant Nigerian popular cultural figures of his generation. Written during the amalgamation of Nigeria, his History of Abẹokuta (1916) (Iwe Itan Abẹokuta, 1924) is a seminal text for our understanding of Abẹokuta and the Ẹgba kingdom. This article examines the bilingual passages of the History in which Ajiṣafẹ invokes oral history to construct a religious ethnography of the early Ẹgba polity. Self-translation enabled vernacular authors to mediate constituencies. The English and Yorùbá texts of the History differ in their engagement with Yorùbá cosmology. Ajiṣafẹ's texts converge in his defence of the Odùduwà dynasty; Abẹokuta, in a constitutional Yorùbá united kingdom, would be the seat of ecclesiastical power. Civil authority in Nigeria could be stabilized through an Abrahamic renegotiation of divine kingship. To establish his treatise within a genealogy of world Christianity, Ajiṣafẹ utilized self-translation as a rhetorical device to reconcile the working of providence in precolonial and colonial African history. Ajiṣafẹ's History, ultimately, is an Abrahamic exposition of the role of God's providence in bringing about the complete unification of Nigeria in September 1914.

How Finance Colonised Aotearoa: A Concise Counter-History

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Catherine Cumming
Keyword(s):  
Financial Institutions ◽  
The State ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Financial Instruments ◽  
Financial History ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of

This paper intervenes in orthodox under-standings of Aotearoa New Zealand’s colonial history to elucidate another history that is not widely recognised. This is a financial history of colonisation which, while implicit in existing accounts, is peripheral and often incidental to the central narrative. Undertaking to reread Aotearoa New Zealand’s early colonial history from 1839 to 1850, this paper seeks to render finance, financial instruments, and financial institutions explicit in their capacity as central agents of colonisation. In doing so, it offers a response to the relative inattention paid to finance as compared with the state in material practices of colonisation. The counter-history that this paper begins to elicit contains important lessons for counter-futures. For, beyond its implications for knowledge, the persistent and violent role of finance in the colonisation of Aotearoa has concrete implications for decolonial and anti-capitalist politics today.  

Case Study: Rome's House of Memory and History: The Politics of Memory and Public Institutions

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Portelli
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Political Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ambitious Program ◽  
The City

This article centers around the case study of Rome's House of Memory and History to understand the politics of memory and public institutions. This case study is about the organization and politics of public memory: the House of Memory and History, established by the city of Rome in 2006, in the framework of an ambitious program of cultural policy. It summarizes the history of the House's conception and founding, describes its activities and the role of oral history in them, and discusses some of the problems it faces. The idea of a House of Memory and History grew in this cultural and political context. This article traces several political events that led to the culmination of the politics of memory and its effect on public institutions. It says that the House of Memory and History can be considered a success. A discussion on a cultural future winds up this article.

scholarly journals Aproximando o cuidador do idoso: a história oral de vida e a humanização do cuidado / Getting Closer Caregivers from the Elderly: the Life Oral History and Care Humanization

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Souza Mota ◽  
Valdir Reginato
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historia De Vida

ABSTRACTThe population aging has brought social issues of great repercussion, among them try to identify the role of caregiver, as humanizing agent, in this dynamic process of aging was the challenge that gave rise to this study. The attempt of our project is to give importance to the history of the Elderly Life, valuing it as a unique, experiencing your opportunity to speak and be heard, approaching caregiver and elderly and involving them in a therapeutic process.RESUMOO envelhecimento populacional têm trazido questões sociais de grande repercussão, dentre eles procurar identificar o papel do cuidador, como agente humanizador, neste processo dinâmico do envelhecimento foi o desafio que originou este estudo. A tentativa do nosso projeto é dar importância à História de Vida do Idoso, valorizando-o como ser único, experenciando sua oportunidade de falar e ser ouvido, aproximando cuidador e idoso e envolvendo-os num processo terapêutico.

scholarly journals Oral Histories of a Layered Landscape: The Rushworth Oral History Project

2007 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keir Reeves ◽  
E. Rebecca Sanders ◽  
Gordon Chisholm
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Landscape Analysis ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Cultural Complexity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Town

This article reflects the authors’ experience of undertaking an oral history project in the regional Victorian town of Rushworth. The authors of the article contend that to conduct an investigation of the natural and cultural heritage of the town and surrounding forests is also to engage in an archaeology of historical landscapes. The authors, after articulating the theoretical and methodological issues of oral history, name and trace the various historical layers of the landscape of Rushworth and the forest that surrounds the town. They argue that the use of oral history in conjunction with cultural landscape analysis enables a deeper understanding of the cultural complexity of the history of Rushworth and the surrounding region. Broader issues concerning regional identity and the role of historians in providing a greater understanding of the community in the present day are also evaluated.

scholarly journals “Africa for the Africans?” – Mapmaking, Lagos, and the Colonial Archive

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 275-296
Author(s):  
Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Population ◽  
African History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Digital Representations ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Colonial Archive ◽  
History Of ◽  
Story Maps ◽  
Ownership Of Land ◽  
Place And Identity

AbstractIn early colonial Lagos, struggles over race, place and identity were played out over ownership of land, and ended with the displacement of sections of the indigenous population. “Africa for the Africans” combines texts and maps to narrate the history of 1860s Lagos. This article demonstrates how, with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), European colonial maps can be used to analyze the significance of changing urban spatial relationships in 1860s Lagos. Though much of this analysis employs GIS, it also leans heavily on other tools for making timelines, story maps and vector diagrams. This process of creating digital representations of the past also has pedagogical applications, as these methods can be extended to the classroom for undergraduates learning about African history.

Remembrance of Things Past: Marxism and the Study of Popular Music

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
SIMON FRITH
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Commercial Music ◽  
Popular Music Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Ideology ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractThis article considers the role of Marxism in the history of popular music studies. Its approach combines the sociology of knowledge with a personal memoir and its argument is that in becoming a field of scholarly interest popular music studies drew from both Marxist theoretical arguments about cultural ideology in the 1950s and 1960s and from rock writers’ arguments about the role of music in shaping socialist bohemianism in the 1960s and 1970s. To take popular music seriously academically meant taking it seriously politically. Once established as an academic subject, however, popular music studies were absorbed into both established music departments and vocational, commercial music courses. Marxist ideas and ideologues were largely irrelevant to the subsequent development of popular music studies as a scholarly field.

Losing the local: Sydney and the Oz Rock tradition

Popular Music ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane Homan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Rock And Roll ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Live Music ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

In a tiny inner city pubThe amps were getting stackedLeads were getting wound upIt was full of pissed Anzacs‘Got no more gigs for Tuesday nights’ said the barman to the star,‘We're putting pokies in the lounge and strippers in the bar’The star, he raised his fingers and said ‘fuck this fucking hole’But to his roadie said ‘it's the death of rock and roll’‘There ain't no single place left to play amplified guitarEvery place is servin' long blacks if they're not already tapas bars(TISM (This Is Serious Mum), ‘The Last Australian Guitar Hero’, 1998)Introduction: local music-makingA number of recent studies have focused upon the places and spaces of popular music performance. In particular, analyses of British live music contexts have examined the role of urban landscapes in facilitating production/consumption environments. Building upon Simon Frith's (1983) initial exploration of the synthesis of leisure/work ideologies and popular music, Ruth Finnegan's detailed examination of amateur music practices in Milton Keynes (1989) and Sara Cohen's account of the Liverpool scene (1991) reveal the benefits of engaging in detailed micro-studies of the local. Paul Chevigny's history of the governance of New York City jazz venues (1991) similarly provides a rich insight into performance contexts and the importance of hitherto unnoticed city ordinances in influencing the production of live music.

The Nile Waters Issue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terje Tvedt
Keyword(s):  
River Basin ◽  
North Africa ◽  
African History ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The World ◽  
Nile Water ◽  
History Of

To understand the role of the modern Nile in African history, it is first necessary to have familiarity with the premodern “natural” Nile, including both its hydrology and societal importance. It is well known that no river basin in the world has a longer, more complex, and more eventful history. The Nile water issue in modern times is a history of how economic and political developments in East and North Africa have been fundamentally shaped by the interconnectedness of the Nile’s particular physical and hydrological character; the efforts of adapting to, controlling, using, and sharing the waters of the river; and the different ideas and ambitions that political leaders have had for the Nile.

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