Main Article Content
Editorial. Full Text
Abstract
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.
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.
