History of divisive ethnic identities shows it s time Nigeria admits its role in enforcing them
By Muhammad Dan Suleiman & Benjamin Maiangwa - The Conversation
Artificial identities created by colonialists must be deconstructed to attain unity. - Source: Jorge Fernández/GettyImages Listen to article
The Nigerian state, as with other African countries, is trapped in a crisis of belonging. This is expressed through identity battles which sometimes harm people of “other” religions and ethnicities. Such battles have even led to a call for the state to be dissolved.
In our paper we trace the history of how this came about. We use frameworks provided by three philosophers and historians. To trace the first phase – what we refer to as the invented phase, from 1885 to 1914 – we use a framework by historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger . The second phase we describe as the imagined phase. For this, we draw on a framework provided by political historian Benedict Anderson.
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To Coronavirus, C: An Anthropological Abecedary
The images are from
Breathe, an exhibition of masks at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. The co-creators, Nathalie Bertin and Lisa Shepherd, both Métis artists, invited other artists to create masks to reflect emotions felt around the world during the
COVID-19 pandemic. See more at whyte.org/breathe.
A, Archaeology
Archaeology is the study of the past and its adherents are archaeologists, who would rather die than be compared to their popular counterparts like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. Archaeologists are curious beasts. Excavations are marked not only by scientific rituals, like mapping and licking stones to see if they are bones, but by traditional mating rituals that feature alcohol, meat, and sex. Their informants are primarily the dead, alongside close examinations of rocks, pots, and architecture, which allows them to amass pools of empirical data designed to recreate life in the past. Their preoccupation with
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