New forces continued to have an impact on the traditional culture of sub-Saharan Africa throughout the 20th century. Conversions both to Islam and to Christianity gained ground, although a polytheist minority remained. Whereas in 1900 80% of all sub-Saharan Africans adhered to traditional religions, by 1990 80% were either Muslim or Christian. Conversion brought more than new beliefs about the deity; it also attacked family traditions (such as polygamy, for Christians) and traditional ideas of harmony with nature. Some African conservatives blamed the new religions for Africans’ willingness to attack animals and forest with a new vigor that threatened ecological balance, for the monotheistic religions held humans to be above nature. Education spread, and with it not only literacy but, often, knowledge of a European language—another force for change.The documents that I would like you to read (you can read them all by clicking here) deal with missionary activity, urbanization, and changes in family roles as sources of change and tension in 20th-century African society. European missionary activity, both Catholic and Protestant, increased rapidly from 1890 onward, as various Western teachers and medical personnel worked hard to modify or undermine traditional African religious values, property concepts, and family practices. African reactions to missionary efforts ranged from stark rejection to a combination effort to outright acceptance. (It is important to remember that Islam was also spreading rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries; Christians were not the only missionaries, and Muslims might be preferred precisely because they were not European).
Urban growth was another framework for cultural change. African cities, once small, grew rapidly both under colonial administration and with independence. About a quarter of all sub-Saharan Africans lived in cities by the 1970s, and the rate increases steadily. Urban Africans, though often poor, were more often educated than their rural counterparts, and they enjoyed the excitement of city life. But they were also confusingly torn from traditional community customs.
The documents you will read are divided into two parts: the first two documents deal with successive waves of cultural change affecting parts of Nigeria; they are drawn from the work of a perceptive Nigerian novelist who chronicled what he saw as major and in some ways tragic cultural disruption. The third and fourth documents involve reactions of African women, drawn to change themselves but with various specific qualifications and hesitations.
The first document, by Chinua Achebe, reflects deep awareness of the complex balance of gain and loss brought by changes away from tradition. Discussing British missionary activity around 1900, Achebe conveys the different types of Africans and different kinds of motives involved in at least partial religious conversion, and at the same time the reasons for resistance (and its failure). The document is fictional and written after the fact, but it conveys ongoing intellectual issues in Africa. The document ends with a resistance meeting, centered on the strong traditionalist figure of Okonkwo (whose son had converted) and the arrival and death of a messenger sent by the British colonial administration to prevent disorder.
The second document comes from another Achebe novel, this one involving Okonkwo’s grandson, now an urbanite, after World War II but before independence. Obi Okonkwo is the first village member to receive higher education in British-run schools. He goes to Lagos, the growing Nigerian capital, to take a civil-service job. He finds the glitter of city life there, but also a consumerist culture and a pleasure-seeking sexual ethic both influenced by Western standards. These at first shock and then beguile him so that he cannot respond to village customs in the old way, for example, to a tragedy such as his mother’s death. The combination of stimulation and confusion give this Achebe novel its title, No Longer at Ease.
The third document focuses less on confusion, more on new aspirations and opportunities. Many African women found new roles as they moved to cities and gained education. Even rural women had new power when their men left to take urban jobs; willy-nilly, they had to run their families and often support themselves. Thus African family bonds, which once gave women security while holding them subordinate, loosened rapidly. The passages come from a series of interviews done by a Western anthropologist with women in Kenya, including one group organized in a cooperative to try to compensate for new uncertainties about family ties and support from men.
Cultural change, including some expressions striking for their resemblance to modern Western movements such as feminism, is clearly a major factor in contemporary Africa. In the fourth document, the African feminist Ifi Amadiume discusses gender relations between African men and women, although in terms that challenge Western feminism as well as current African realities.
All these cultural changes and reactions express Africa’s growing international contacts, but also new uncertainties as older institutions unravel. As in the West in previous periods, greater individualism can be both exhilarating and damaging. Africans themselves disagree over whether new opportunity or the erosion of vital traditions should receive the main emphasis. Not surprisingly, important traditional emphases, such as family solidarity, persist as well, as Africans create their own cultural amalgams.
After reading the documents, I would like you to reflect on and discuss the following: What were the main disputes over Christianity in the Nigerian region Achebe describes? What kinds of people were most drawn to this religion? Why? What kinds of people most resisted? Given the novel’s title, Things Fall Apart, does Achebe suggest that it would be best to go back to traditional values? What are the value dilemmas in the excerpt from No Longer at Ease? What are the dominant features of the urban culture of Lagos? How do they relate to traditional culture? What are the main aspirations of the Kenyan women interviewed in the third selection? What is new about them? In what ways do they clearly seek to defend older cultural and social traditions? What problems of interpretation do novels raise in trying to get at historical conditions? What kinds of problems do interviews raise, even one conducted by a skilled Western scholar? On what bases does Ifi Amadiume criticize the evaluations of African women by Western feminists and anthropologists? What, in her view, were the three main strengths, for women, of traditional Igbo language, family structure, and economy? By implication, what goals should modern Igbo women have? Would the Kenyan women interviewed in the third selection agree or disagree with Amadiume’s prescriptions for the most part? Are they reacting to changes in ways Amadiume would approve of? Do Achebe and Madiume agree on the nature of African gender traditions? Do they agree on what combination of change and tradition is desirable for contemporary Africa? How do the cultural changes discussed in these documents compare with African nationalist goals and reactions? Would nationalism help deal with some of the cultural issues raised by Achebe, Amadiume, and the Kenyan women? Your thoughts…
4 comments:
Wow. this did not seem like it was that long. Very quick and very interesting read.
I like the begining of the first document. The African ppl were mocking the missionaries, giving them cursed land and asumming that they were not going to have to interact at all. The ppl are converting to Christianity because they see that the church is on this cursed land but nothing is happening, so the missionaries must have some kind of power. So it was their own religion that turned them toward Christianity. Interesting. At first it seems like the missionaries were only attracting ppl who were outcasts, but when schools and hospitals were built as well they had many more converts. The African ppl liked them because they say the medicine worked and at the schools they sometimes became teachers, giving them jobs. Achebe believes that the missionaries are bringing the tribe apart. At the meeting near the end he points out that no Christian converts attended. the man talking at this meeting wants to fight even though it would mean killing hi own ppl. That's what the title means, "Things Fall Apart", there is no more unity.
"No Longer at Ease" jumps right into the life in Lagos. The first social thing Joseph mentions is women, which was pretty funny. He has had girlfriends sonce he moved to Lagos and even says that virgins are rare. this is one thing Obi feels very uncomfortable about. He doesn't even like the pillowcases that she made "She left a nasty taste in Obi's mouth, like th pillowcase...". When he returns Obi is critizied for nnot returning for his mother's funeral, also for just living in the city itself. He is looked at as a traitor and accused of forgetting his home.
With the loosening of family ties women are uniting. They even created a women's group to teach each other how to sew, do handicrafts, and such. Their main goals are to make money and educate their children, and have a place to do this of course. The women say that the main problem is money. She says in her mother's generation no one needed money, but now she is having to work so much harder and od things like send her kids to daycare while still trying to keep tradition of family values. The woman talking is very very pro-education. she wants to educate girls and boys equally as the women catch up. She's even willing to get involved herself, that's amazing. She mainly blames men for all of their problems but hopes to have their support in the future.
This lady was confusing but really neat.
Amaduime brings up Western feminists and claims that they can be just as oppressive as racist males. She believes that one strength the Igbo have is that sex and gender are two different things??? She means, I think, that Igbo women are very equal to men in this society. They are involved in politics and such. I thoght it was cool how she brought language into the matter. in english we have words like He and She to divide sexes but they just have O, which can stand for He She and It. And how the word humankind has MAN in the middle. I've never thought about that before. As far as the economy, Amaduime claims that with the introduction of mills work has been taken out of the home. Now the women cannot sell palm-oil because their husbands go and work in factories to produce it. They have lost their independence. This is fascinating. I think Amaduime would be proud of the women in Kenya for trying to gain back their monetary independence. I think the women in Kenya would highly support her values on equality.
There are nationalist values all over these documents. Economic independence, upholding traditions, ect. The novelist authors seem to support it, and i'm sure the women do too.
Western ideas in many ways shaped what Africa has become today. In the first document the Christian missionaries ability to defy the superstitions of the traditional religion gave them great attention and attracted followers to them thus upsetting the traditional religion followers and then somebody get decapitated. In the second document you see how corrupting western society is on the African people with Obi in Lagos. He sees new things that he has never seen before many of which promote sexual promiscuity and disregard for one' morals. We see this best in his attitude towards his mothers funeral. As for women's rights, we see that there is a proudness within African women and that they are able to help hold society together while men only complicate things with their sexual misconduct and their putting down of women. Women can do exactly what men can and used to have more control over socirty until the west enters and puts its patriarical socity on Africa.
Achbebe blames the missionaries for cleverly turning the traditionalists against converts. "we have fallen apart" It seems the younger generation was more open to Christianity while the older traditionalists were not. Perhaps this is because the younger generation entails the people going to the Western -style school. Achbebe suggests that a return to traditional values would create unity, but that is too utopian and he presents that this will never happen. Achbebe presents the idea that perhaps Africans hostile response to Westerners cuased tumult. This is seen when Okonkwo uses the machete. Achbebe states that the Africans traditionalists are to blame for violent recation. The missionaries are depicted as canniving and able to manipulate the Africans. The West is displayed in having some positive aspects such as a flow of money and literacy.
Lagos is charecterized by a lack of traditional values, cinema, dance halls, poitical meetings, electric lights, and motor cars. Relationships are depicted as meaningless and shallow. This is seen in the situations with Joseph's girlfriends. When Obi's mom dies it is said that he lacks concern, this dispalays the deteroriation of family values in the chaos of urban life. Novels are fiction, certain things can be exaggerated to make a point.
The main aspirations of the women interviewed is education in order to take care of the family and become independent. Interviews create the problem of skewed stories biased towards the interviewed. It was interesting how the woman stated that money used to not be important, but now it was. In the case of AFrica was money needed? The conflict is women being able to be able to be financially independent with the introduction of money .
Amadiume states that white feminists care nothing about the third world. Amadiume states that Igbo women have always been more traditionally equal in gender roles. This is linked to a difference in biological sexes and genders, which is linked to a lack of him or her in the Igbo language. This allows for women acting as husbands and men acting as daughters. Polygemy is shown positively because it allows for sexual denial. Based on these facts Igbo women should be working to regain their status which was made possible by traditional values. This is difficult in an increasingly monetary-based and WEstern influenced Africa. The women from Kenya would disagree wiht Amadiume because she advocates traditional values while the women from Kenya valued Western education, feeling it to be the key to success in the monetary-based Africa. Achebe presents traditional values condemning women while Western ideas are seen as more liberating "Nneka*had had four previous pregnancies and childbirths. But each time she
had borne twins, and they had been immediately thrown away. Her husband and
his family were already becoming highly critical of such a woman and were not
unduly perturbed when they found she had fled to join the Christians. It was a
good riddance" African nationalist reactions are very similar to the reactions to those seen in these documents. The failure of Okonkwo to deal wiht the missionary event is representative of the struggle AFrican leaders faced with nonalignment. Nationalsim would help reinstilll traditional values while working towards a goal of coping with WEstern influence and handling internal affairs without WEstern influence.
The document was part of the book that we are reading for language arts. Okonkwo was part of the African population that didn't confirm with all his other tribesmen into Christians. After killing the messenger he newly found gov't came looking for him where they found his dead body hanging from a tree.
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