Suchergebnisse

Since the end of the Cold War, and especially since 9/11, religion has become an increasingly important factor of personal and group identification. Based on an African case study, this book calls for new ways of thinking about diversity that go "beyond religious tolerance". Focusing on the predominantly Muslim Yoruba town of Ede, the authors challenge the assumption that religious difference automatically leads to conflict: in south-west Nigeria, Muslims, Christians and traditionalists have co-existed largely peacefully since the early twentieth century. In some contexts, Ede's citizens emphasise the importance and significance of religious difference, and the need for tolerance. But elsewhere they refer to religious boundaries in passing, or even celebrate and transcend religious divisions. Drawing on detailed ethnographic and historical research, survey work, oral histories and poetry by UK- and Nigeria- based researchers, the book examines how Ede's citizens experience religious difference in their everyday lives. It examines the town's royal history and relationship with the deity Sango, its old Islamic compounds and its Christian institutions, as well as marriage and family life across religious boundaries, to illustrate the multiplicity of religious practices in the life of the town and its citizens and to suggest an alternative approach to religious difference

Based on the example of the Oodua People's Congress (OPC) in Nigeria, this article argues that vigilante activities are embedded in a range of social relations and historical trajectories. While vigilantism transforms relationships of power within the state, it does not necessarily undermine all aspects of state authority. After the annulled presidential election of a Yoruba speaker in 1993, the OPC was founded with the explicit political aim of safeguarding Yoruba ethno-nationalist interests vis-à-vis the state. By fighting crime, and state institutions perceived to be implicated in the perpetration of crime, including the police and military, the OPC's vigilantes have undermined and challenged the state's security institutions. Representing the state as both weak and strong, the OPC has undermined the state's control of security but legitimised and strengthened the state as a mechanism of political decision-making and social reform.

This article examines the politics of youth in Ijebu-Remo (henceforth Remo) from the 1950s to the present. The emergence of the politics of youth in the 1950s and 1960s drew on precolonial discourse and was closely associated with the emergence of Remo's anti-federal postcolonial political identity. Since Nigeria's political and economic decline in the mid-1980s, strong feelings of exclusion – strengthened further by the political sidelining of Yoruba-speaking politicians in national politics between 1993 and 1999 – have contributed to an increase of nationalist sentiment in Remo youth politics. This is enacted through secrecy, a reinvention and utilisation of 'traditional' cultural practice, and the growing definition of local identity through ethnic discourse. Traditionally, Remo youth and elite politics have legitimised and supported each other, but the cohesion between these groups has declined since the return to democracy in 1999. Rivalry and conflict over local and national resources have led to bitter intergroup fighting, and young men's strategies to combat social exclusion remain mostly individual.

This article provides an introduction to the Special Issue entitled, "Views from the Shoreline: Community, trade and religion in coastal Yorubaland and the Western Niger Delta." Introducing the 19 articles in this Special Issue, which cover the coastal stretch from Ikorodu (near Lagos) to Ore-Isi (Urhoboland) and Benin, the article maps out how the coast's lack of centralization, its complex settlement histories, and its underrepresentation in government and mainstream mission archives may be addressed by using multi-methods approaches and in-depth fieldwork. It emphasizes both the high mobility and heterogeneity of coastal communities and illustrates the diverse ways in which local leaders have mobilized a range of resources – including Islam, traditional practice, and especially Christianity – to ensure individual wellbeing and to affirm or re-shape local boundaries and hierarchies. This article argues that the study of the coast, like that of other borderlands, affirms that both mixing and the assertion of difference are constitutive of the political economy of the area.