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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Classical and colonial cultures in Africa and the problem of democratic politics
Author:Oculi, OkelloISNI
Year:1990
Periodical:Savanna: A Journal of the Environmental and Social Sciences
Volume:11
Issue:1
Pages:1-12
Language:English
Geographic terms:Africa
Nigeria
Subjects:traditional society
democracy
colonialism
national plans
political systems
Abstract:There has been a coexistence of two types of cultures in Africa: the older major cultures and the grafted ones. The major cultures are the classical cultures which had formed over centuries. Colonialism consciously created political, economic, and social change. Both the classical and the colonially engineered cultures had their own set of elites as managers and spokesmen. In several countries in Africa the colonial social engineers co-opted major sections of the elites of the classical cultures into their colonial culture. Colonialism was essentially a regime of organized economic warfare through the use of military dictatorships. The relationship between cultural processes and the possible emergence of democratic political processes and structures can be analysed within a framework which takes into account the evolution of central themes in culture over long periods of time. The integration of a model of conflict within this diachronic perspective enables one to see the cataclysmic historical processes which have often emerged from the relationship between certain categories of cultural forms and the society's demand for democratic processes. In Nigeria, experiences with electoral processes from the 1950s to 1983 can be usefully analysed as yet another variant of this historical process. On the basis of an examination of Nigeria's 1986-1992 Transition Programme, the author argues that the adequacy of recent proposals for resolving the crisis of this cataclysmic relationship between culture and democracy is problematic. Notes, ref., sum.
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