African
Journals Online
The Journal of Cultural Studies
Volume 2 Number 1,
2000
Editorial
Ethnicity is a universal human phenomenon which
manifest itself in several forms and contexts and is
variegated by the nexus of time and space. It
encapsulates such terms that make possible the imagining
of `self' and `other' within the praxis of cultural
experience and difference. The imagination it breeds
plays itself out in varying degrees of consensus and/or
conflict, which in turn (re)create or (re)inforce the
conditions of ethnic existence among human beings.
In this issue of the journal, several contributors
have attempted to situate the subject, both as concept
and social condition, within the ambience of different
African experiences. The attempt is significant because
the character of ethnicity even within Africa itself
(either as it relates to intra- and inter-group
relations, or to the question of the play of identities
within the framework of local and national politics) is
shifty from one community to the other. Furthermore, it
is standard practice to hear intellectuals and statesmen
all over the continent admonish Africans to shun
ethnicity and live as one people. Yet ethnicity is one
ubiquitous category of human thought and transaction,
which has for several centuries, largely determined and
continues to determine the nature and substance of
African development.
The contributors, therefore, provide a largely
multidisciplinary approach in their exploration of the
subject. They also take on a wide range of ethnic
experiences which touch on such grades of racial
difference as African versus non-African, black versus
non-black, etc. Issues that are examined relate ethnicity
to such social conditions as democracy, economic
advancement, gender, language, minority existence, and
the question of an African renaissance, among others.
Against the background of historical and contemporary
experiences, ethnicity is portrayed as a social constant
which cannot be erased from the map of development in
Africa, as in elsewhere.
Thus, an overall socio- political and economic
development in the continent is envisaged through such
practices that encapsulate principles of political
correctness and such a management of differences that
would produce the highest degree of consensus in human
and inter-group relations.
Uduopegeme Joseph Yakubu
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